

# URASHIMA

A novel by

## Steven Salazar

Book 1

## Going Back

The Samurai Press ©2014 Smashwords Edition

Not to be copied or held in any electronic retrieval system without the permission of the writer

This is a work of fiction. Characters are either a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously

Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is entirely coincidental 

# NOTE I

## THE PLAYERS

### AT THE SENJU FREIGHT YARD

YAMADA Sadanori, chairman National Railroad Corporation (deceased)

### AT TOKYO GHQ

CULLEN Lt Col Joseph, staff officer G-2 (Military Intelligence); Roth's second-in-command

FUJIMOTO Capt Jack, staff officer G-2; friend of Jimmy Miller

HAYMAN Maj Todd, staff officer G-2 (deceased); former investigator of the Red Rose murders

MACARTHUR Gen Douglas, Supreme Commander of the Allied Pacific (SCAP)

PACKARD Maj Don, staff officer G-2, attached to Yokohama

ROTH Maj Gen Henry (aka The Great Doberman), head of Military Intelligence G-2

TANAKA Tsutomu, prime minister Yoshida's personal representative attached to GS (Government Section)

WHITNEY Maj Gen Courtney, head of GS; MacArthur's second-in-command

### AT GHQ CID

MILLER Capt James 'Jimmy' (aka O'CONNOR Danny), staff officer G-2 attached to CID

PETERS Capt Orville 'Pete', officer in charge CID (Criminal Investigation Detachment)

KANEKO Sgt Ronald 'Ronnie', Allied Translator and Interpreter Service (ATIS) attached to CID

WATANABE Cpl Edson 'Eddie', ATIS attached to CID

MORI Insp Yoshihisa, head of Osaka police detachment attached to CID

### AT THE TOKYO CORRESPONDENTS CLUB

DAVENPORT Roger, foreign correspondent Newsweek

DAVIES Gordon, photographer Reuters

HUBER Frank, foreign correspondent Chicago Sun

YANG Norman, foreign correspondent Pan Pacific News Agency HK

MUNGAVIN Jean, foreign correspondent Washington Post

### ON THE STREET

NISHI Saburo, member of the Sumidakai Crime Syndicate; former sumo wrestler

OBUCHI Jun (aka TERADA Jun), head of the Sumidakai

OGAWA Hidekazu, noodle seller Yurakucho Bridge Tokyo

SAITO One-eyed, member of the Sumidakai

SHIBATA Eri, prostitute in Yurakucho

UEDA Kazuyoshi, member of the Sumidakai; Imperial Army veteran

USUMI Blackface, shoeshine boy and self-appointed leader of the Bridge people

### THE RIGHTISTS

NAGAI Osamu (aka HAYASHI Shin), leader of The Red Rose Society; owner of the Kiku Teahouse

SEKINE Kazuo, politician; member of The Red Rose Society

### THE LEFTISTS

SUZUKI Yashiro, General- Secretary Motion Picture Guild

TOKUDA Kyuichi, General- Secretary Japan Communist Party

### AT TOYOKO STUDIOS

IWASAKI Ko, actor; political activist; owner of Toyoko Studios

IWASAKI Yuki, Ko's personal assistant and sister

### AT YOKOTA AIR BASE

BUCHANAN Col Buck, staff officer A-2 (Air Force Intelligence) attached to Yokota Airbase; friend of Miller's from China

### AT THE PROSECUTOR'S OFFICE

MIURA Ichiro, Senior Prosecutor of the Hoarded Goods Hearings

### FROM AMERICA

KERN Harry, Foreign Editor Newsweek; founder, American Council on Japan

DRAPER Gen William, Under-Secretary of the Army; Vice-president, Dillon Read

# NOTE II

## JAPANESE NAMES

## **  
**

###  A ORDER OF NAMES

People's names, when expressed in Japanese, have the FAMILY name first and the given name second.

Example: IWASAKI Ko

When used in English, however, this practice is usually reversed to follow Western or European practice.

Example: Ko IWASAKI

In the book, I have rendered all names in the western manner, for the sake of clarity.

### B PRONUNCIATION OF NAMES

Japanese is not a tonal language and all syllables are pronounced.

Examples:

Sekine SE-KEY-NAY

Nagai NA-GUY-EE

Obuchi OH-BOO-CHEE

Saburo SA-BOO-ROH

Yuki YOU-KEE

Ueda WAY-DA

Ume OO-MAY

Abe AH-BAY

Meiji MAY-JEE

# NOTE III

## READER INFORMATION

Footnotes are located at the end of each chapter.

Glossaries of terms- English and Japanese- can be found at the end of the book.

Tap on GLOSSARIES at the end of each chapter to be taken to the glossary sections.

You can also connect directly to the URASHIMA companion website from within your ebook to access a number of sections as follows:

Tap on WEBSITE at the end of each chapter to be taken to _www.urashima-novels.com_ for general background to the books

Tap on CHARACTERS to be taken to a list of main players. From this list, tap on a highlighted character's name to be taken to a thumbnail of that character

Tap on MAP to be taken to a website map of Central Tokyo, circa 1949

Within the text, tap on an H link to be taken to the relevant HISTORY section on the website

#### The URASHIMA Series

Book 1 Going Back

Book 2 Tokyo Beat

Book 3 The Red Rose

Book 4 Firestorm

Book 5 End Game

"War is a racket. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many."

_Major-General Smedley Butler, USMC, 1881-1940_

"Don't worry about the job! It's gonna be a snap!"

Captain Jack Fujimoto

# INTRODUCTION

IT IS DECEMBER 1949. Four years have elapsed since the end of World War 2 but the economies of the western nations still lie in ruins. The United States' wartime ally, the Soviet Union, has consolidated its iron grip on those European countries to the east. Four months earlier, it exploded its first atomic bomb. In China, another wartime friend has just fallen by the way side. The Nationalist Chinese leader, Chiang Kai Shek (Jiang Jieshi), has lost his lengthy civil war with Mao Tse Tung's (Mao Zedong's) Communists and has fled to his final stronghold in the mountains of Taiwan. Meanwhile, in the United States, anti-communist hysteria is sweeping the country, fanned by Republicans who seek to blame the 'Red Menace' threat on President Franklin Roosevelt's successor, Harry Truman and his continuation of Roosevelt's New Deal policies.

Across the Pacific in Japan, the Allied Occupation- under the maverick control of General Douglas MacArthur- is entering its fifth year. The Supreme Commander's GHQ is charged with democratizing the country and curing the Japanese elite of its totalitarian tendencies. MacArthur and his civilian/ military administration have embarked upon a radical program of social and economic reform, yet progress has been slow. The country remains racked by strikes and crime, and the popularity of the newly legalized Communist Party grows by the day. Alarm bells sound in Washington. Truman is forced to demand policy changes in Tokyo but General MacArthur ignores him. Belatedly, the president and his advisors come to realize that the fate of America, itself, may lie in the increasingly fallible hands of the aging war hero on the other side of the sea ...

# CHAPTER 1

_New York June 1948_

THE ELEVATOR JUDDERED to a halt, the doors slid open, and Harry Kern stepped out into an ocean of sea-green carpet. Beyond it, lay the Harvard Club's main banquet room and a sign that read:

_Private Function_

_Mr James Lee Kauffman, Mr Harry Kern_

_American Council on Japan, June 28th, 12-2:00pm_

_No Press_

Kern grinned as he read it. It had taken a long time and no little effort to corral the Great and the Good into this one place. Two years of hosted dinner parties, thousands of prawn canapés, tens of thousands of scotches and soda- why, he'd pressed the flesh so many times he thought his hand would fall off! In the end, though, it had been worth the candle, for now they were all up here waiting to be saved and he, Harry Kern, was determined to save them.A man wearing a black suit and bow tie hurried towards him. It was the _maitre d'_.

"Thank you, Henry. Tell Mr Kauffman he can make a start."

Kern slipped into the banquet room via the rear entrance just as a small stocky man with a powerful voice strode onto the stage. He harrumphed into the microphone and tapped a wine glass three times.

"Gentlemen! Your attention, please! Most of you know me- Lee Kauffman's the name- and I want to thank you all for finding time to attend today's inaugural meeting of the American Council on Japan.H Now we've just enjoyed a fine meal courtesy of Molly and her girls but as you know there's no such thing as a free lunch so I give you fair warning- I'm coming after your wallets!"

A ripple of laughter followed. Harry Kern thought he could smell the brandy in it.

"Now many of you have been clients of my law firm for more years than I care to remember. Some of you even go back with me to the early thirties, to those lucrative days when we first opened our offices in Tokyo..."

As Kauffman droned on, Harry Kern hovered at the back of the room, nervously surveying the scene in front of him. There were a dozen or so round tables, each seating eight to ten people. His eyes moved from one to the next, checking off the big names: John Curtis of First National, Standard Oil's Clarence Meyer-. On the far side of the room, a raft of ex-State Department people were huddled together and further away, near the stage, he could see Admiral Bill Pratt and General Bob Eichelberger- war heroes both- sitting with the party from Westinghouse.

Up on the stage, Lee was getting into his stride. Another joke, another ripple of laughter. The crowd was warming to the pudgy lawyer as he worked effortlessly on them: the humor, the folksy charm:

"... and over the last couple of months, some of you have openly expressed your disquiet about what's going on in Japan. Those crackpots in GHQ are running hog wild, you've complained. Well, let me tell you we share your concerns!" Kauffman jabbed his spectacles at them. "You've made investments over there and you don't know if or when you're gonna get your money back.

"But isn't this about more than money? Like us, I'm sure you're disturbed that some people in Washington- especially in the State Department- are supporting the development of the Japan Communist Party at a time when leftists world-wide are threatening to turn our wartime victory into peacetime defeat-."

"Shame!" someone shouted out.

"A national disgrace!" yelled another.

Kauffman beamed down at them. "You don't like it, eh? Well, neither do we! We want changes, and it's our estimation that with your collective influence we can get 'em. Now I know it's difficult for some of you to come right out and declare for us. Those still active in military and diplomatic circles may find it all but impossible to go against what is the official policy of the United States' government at this time. We appreciate your dilemma. Just make yourselves known to us and we'll exercise the utmost discretion-." He shot them an indulgent little smile before slipping his spectacles into the top pocket of his jacket. "Well, I've said what I came to say and now it's time for this boring old lawyer to shut up and make way for someone much more interesting. I'd like to introduce a man to you who's worked tirelessly with me over the last few years to get this thing up and running. Some of you know him personally; all of you will have read his opinions in the press. Gentlemen, put you hands together for the Foreign Editor of Newsweek magazine, Mr Harry Kern!"

Something propelled Kern forward. He found himself wading through the applause, nodding, smiling, as his brain effortlessly matched faces to names. And as he moved amongst them, so his confidence grew, so his nerves withered and died. He clambered up the three steps to the dais and moved smartly over to where Lee was stage-managing his entrance. The applause was reaching its crescendo now. Harry stood at the podium and milked it, enjoying every moment of their adulation of him. Then pulling out his speech, he begged for silence and started in on the most important twenty minutes of his young and exceedingly ambitious life.

Half an hour later, their work all done, Kern and Lee Kauffman adjourned to the Harvard Club bar. Once more, Harry found himself pressing flesh and trying hard to deflect the plaudits that had rained down on his head the instant his speech had drawn to its rousing conclusion.

One man edged ahead of the others. Kern recognized his lupine smile. It belonged to General William Draper.

"What can I say, Harry?" Draper gushed. "Great speech! Impressed a lot of folks. As far as the ACJ is concerned, I want you to know that Dillon Read is one hundred percent on board. And so am I- unofficially, of course! I've already authorized this check. Will two hundred thousand be satisfactory?"

"More than generous, sir!" Kern was about to take the money when he was assailed by a blinding flash. "What the hell!"

It was Kauffman who reacted first.

"Who let the goddam newspapers in here? Stop that man! Stop him, I say!"

He careered into the crowd leaving Kern and Draper somewhat bemused.

"I- I'm sorry about that, general," Kern mumbled. "The front office had strict instructions-."

"No harm done, Harry!" Draper was keeping his irritation on a tight leash. "No point letting one ill-mannered hack ruin our big day."

"Quite so, sir."

Draper took a long toke on his cigar then he said: "You'll be popping down to Washington? Now things are up and running?"

"I thought Friday."

"Excellent! I'll tell them to expect you. And now-," the general peeked at his gold pocket watch, "I'm afraid I must run. Perhaps that newspaper feller can give me a ride, eh?"

He shook Kern's hand and, with one more lupine grin, ducked out through the fire exit.

A few minutes later, an irate Kauffman returned, looking less than mollified.

"Did you catch him?" Kern asked.

"No!" the lawyer fumed. "I've organized a search. The fucker can't have got far!"

Harry looked down at the check burning a hole in his right hand. "Let's hope not," he said.

§

Three days later, Harry Kern rode the B and O down to Washington and spent the night at the Fairfax Hotel. The following morning, after a simple breakfast of bagels and coffee, he took a cab to East Street. Number 24301 was a block and a half down on the right. He pushed open the door and walked inside. The officious-looking woman at the front desk gave him a less than cordial welcome.

"Good morning, sir. Are you sure you're in the right building?"

"Quite sure. Unless The Director has moved. Tell him Harry Kern's here."

Allen Dulles' office was up on the third floor, lost in a maze of corridors. A rat would have had trouble finding the place but not Kern. He'd been there before. Outside the door, a well-built man packing a shoulder holster was checking IDs. Kern offered up his driver's license and was admitted to an outer office where a sultry-looking secretary was parked in front of a silver Underwood. She batted her eyelids at him before inclining her head towards a dividing door.

"Mr Dulles will see you now, sir. Do go through."

Allen Dulles looked just like his desk. Disheveled. "Harry!" he chirped when Kern walked in. "I believe congratulations are in order!"

"You've heard from Draper?"

"Let's just say there was talk." Dulles' smile was evasive. "They all showed up then?"

"Most of them." Kern helped himself to a chair. "We're still counting the money. Three million at least."

"Excellent! Excellent!" Dulles pushed a well-stuffed brown envelope at him. "This is...uh... yours, I believe. Your expenses. You know this job is entirely self-financing? We can't have a money trail leading back to this office."

"Don't worry!" Kern chuckled. "Let those who benefit pick up the check!"

Dulles' grin kept getting wider. "My sentiments, exactly. By the way, we're going to need a person to handle the Tokyo end. As insurance."

"You have someone in mind?"

"It wasn't a hard decision." Dulles passed across a photograph. "After all, why break up a winning team?"

Harry Kern hardly glanced at it.

"Why indeed!" he smirked.

CHARACTERS

MAP

GLOSSARIES

WEB

**FOOTNOTES**

1CIA address at that time

# CHAPTER 2

_Japan, December 1949_

"ANY SIGN OF the Japs, sir?"

Captain James 'Jimmy' Miller raised himself on one elbow and peered through the dirty storehouse window. The fishing ketch opposite was sheathed in gloom.

"Hard to tell!" he grunted. "Gimme the binoculars, will ya?"

The young sergeant passed them over and Miller scanned the dock. Down below, the ketch was still creaking gently against its moorings. Beyond it, on the far shoreline, the city of Yokohama lay crouching like a great, beached whale.

"They're hunkered down. Waiting. There's no one in the wheel house." He swung the glasses to the right, following the line of cranes up the pier as far as the gate man's hut, a quarter of a mile distant. A dim light was burning there- he could just make out a figure hunched inside. "Our guy's in place. When are the GIs supposed to come?"

"The major said midnight."

"It's midnight now, goddamit!"

Miller was crammed into a tiny crawl space and, though he'd tried to twist his body into a more comfortable position, he'd been thwarted on every occasion. Worse, his army fatigues had ridden up into his groin and were chafing at his balls. It was a far cry from what he'd expected when he'd landed at Yokota Air Base thirty-six hours earlier. His old China pal Major Don Packard had been there to meet him, but instead of whisking him east into Tokyo, to the relatively plush confines of the Nomura Hotel,2 Packard had turned the staff car south, to Yokohama's G-23 annex.

"Sorry, buddy, but I got personnel shortages. There's an operation tomorrow night an' I need you to head it up for me."

For months now, the Eighth Army had been having trouble with pilfering from the local office of the Quartermaster's Corps. In recent weeks, it had reached epidemic proportions. The culprits appeared to be a group of larcenous GIs who had access to the Corps. They were selling supplies to a local _yakuza_ gang that was moving them onto the black-market. Packard had received a tip-off that the goods were being trucked to the Yokohama port then spirited away by boat up the bay to Tokyo. "I want you and the rest o' my boys to hide out down there," he'd explained. "Wait for the exchange then nab the bastards!" It wasn't the way Miller had his resurrection planned but what could he say? It had been Don Packard who'd hauled him out of oblivion, brought him back to the orient to make peace with his past. He owed the guy a big favor, even if it meant spending a night in a freezing cold godown stacked to the rafters with dried fish.

The team had arrived after sundown- the wharf still glistening from an earlier rain shower. They'd settled in to wait but nothing much had happened for the first three hours. Miller had been on the point of questioning Don Packard's intelligence sources when he'd heard the sound of an approaching launch. It had to be the _yakuza_. They cut their engine a hundred yards out and drifted in on the tide. But instead of tying up at the wharf- as Packard had predicted- they moored their boat to the far side of the fishing ketch where Miller and his men couldn't see them. He heard them scurrying up the sides of the bigger boat like rats, then there was silence and he realized they'd gone to ground, waiting for the Americans to show. That had all been thirty minutes ago when the moon had last poked its head out from a patchwork of leaden clouds. Now, with the light coming back at them, Miller chanced another look.

"Where is everyone again?"

"Captain Berces and his platoon are behind that lumber stack." The young sergeant motioned to a point fifty yards beyond their storehouse. "The back-up contingent is in place by the main gate. They're ready to seal it off as soon as the GIs drive through."

" _If_ they drive through!"

Miller sighed and wiped the sweat out of his eyes. A hair came with it. A white one. He'd never looked old for his age. Boyish good looks was what the girls had always told him. His mother said he looked like the actor Robert Mitchum but Miller had never fallen for it. He didn't have Mitchum's physique, his barrel-chestedness. And Mitchum didn't have his gray hair.

James Jefferson Miller was thirty-seven. The march from thirty-five had been a long and arduous one. At thirty-five, a man could still kid himself he was young, could still believe that the world was out there waiting for him to conquer it. Jimmy Miller had and why not? He'd held on to his field commission, surviving the officer cull when the army moved from war to peace. More than that, he'd been in for a colonelcy, or so that slimy little general had told him back in '45:

"Tri-lingual intelligence officers don't grow on trees," the general had gushed. "And your record, major, well it speaks for itself. Which is why we've picked you to work on this sensitive new operation that Washington's put together with our embassy in Nanking."4 At which point the greaseball had lowered his voice. "We've received disturbing reports that the Chicoms are intending to attack our boys. We want you and your team to interrogate their spies, get to the bottom of it. If it's true, the implications for the United States are far-reaching."

So Miller had followed his orders to the letter. He prodded and poked, called in a few favors from those communists he'd known in his Yenan days.5 Pretty soon he unearthed something that didn't smell quite right. Something called Operation Willow. He kept on digging and eventually got to the bottom of it. It turned out that the would-be-assassins weren't Mao's people at all but Chiang's. It was a little two-step someone had dreamed up; Chiang's troops dressing up as Mao's men and launching attacks on American marines just to suck Uncle Sam into their civil war.H The miscreants behind the plan were clearly American; a rogue intelligence outfit though which service they belonged to Miller was unable to find out. There were too many turf wars going on; too many old Washington hands who blamed Harry Truman for pulling the plug on their war-time ally Chiang, and who saw their careers heading south as a consequence.

Not that that was any of Miller's business. He did his duty and passed his findings up the chain of command, expecting to get a citation, a colonel's braid even. What he got instead was a bullet in the back; a one-way plane ticket to Fort Benning, a major when he got on and a captain when he got off. Conduct unbecoming, they told him at his debriefing. And then they pulled their rabbit out of their hat: a Chinese informer supposedly beaten half to death on Miller's watch. A man Miller didn't know and had never laid a hand on. He complained long and hard that someone had set him up, wanting to discredit him and, by extension, his report. No one would listen but they didn't want to court martial him either; for a court martial would shed light onto things some people wanted kept in the dark. So, instead, he was shunted into The Hole- a windowless little office at PACMIRS6 \- where he'd aged five years in eighteen months. That was when the first gray hair had popped out, swiftly followed by thousands of others. There was a thick swathe of them now, cutting across his forehead like one of those planetary rings around Saturn. It was later that he got the idea of the flag- the white flag of surrender. Look at this loser, the hair was saying. This guy's thrown in the towel. And Miller nearly did. Then, two weeks ago, a message from an old China friend had fluttered out of the ether. A guy called Don Packard. "Jimmy, Tokyo GHQ are looking for someone special to solve a little problem they got. I told 'em you ticked all the boxes. It seems they agreed with me!"

And that was how Don had rescued him from a living death; whisked him to Japan so fast he didn't even have time to change his Jockey shorts. But for what? To spend the night in some festering godown just to haul in a few penny ante smugglers?

Miller sighed again and searching for the hip flask he always kept in his field jacket he took a good long pull at it. It was scotch- White Horse. He thought of offering his sergeant some but he didn't look old enough to drink. So Miller just wiped his mouth on his sleeve, stared out at the wharf and wondered when life was going to give him an even break. Then all hell broke loose.

"Captain!" The kid's hands had started to shake. "I- I think I saw somethin' move on the boat!"

Miller whipped out his Colt .45 just as a garbled hiss burst from the sergeant's radio.

"The truck, sir! It's here!"

It was a two and a half ton eight-wheeler, crawling down the pier like some monstrous insect. It stopped twenty yards away and Miller saw the cab door open and a man- a GI- drop lightly to the ground. As if on cue, the fishing ketch burst into life. _Yakuza_ swarmed out of the hold and hauled themselves up onto the wharf. The tailgate of the truck dropped down and two more GIs jumped out. One of them, a non-com, ambled towards the boat people and an animated discussion began.

"What's going on?" the sergeant whispered.

"Haggling, I reckon. What the hell! They've heard something!" Miller panned his glasses over to the lumber stack where Captain Berces had hidden his men. The whole thing had collapsed and logs were rolling in great crashing waves along the wharf.

"I don't fucking believe it!" he growled.

There was a clamor of accusing voices then a momentary silence. When Miller looked again, the Japanese had all disappeared! He dropped his glasses to see half a dozen men running for the boat. Then the moon fled behind another cloud and he was blind.

"We gotta go now!" he yelled. "Tell them now, damnit!"

He was up on his feet, leaping for the stairwell as the sergeant babbled at the radio. When he got outside, the pier was in chaos. To his right, someone who looked like Berces was barking out orders. Indistinct figures were milling around the truck but no one had gone for the boat.

"Someone follow me!" Miller screamed. "Quick!"

He was sprinting across the wharf, heading for the noise of water, when the darkness in front of him exploded and he felt the scalding heat of a bullet tug at his sleeve. Over by the water's edge, he could just make out a shape. He threw himself down and fired at it. The scream, when it came, seemed barely human. The moon chose that moment to break out and, for the briefest of seconds, Jimmy Miller saw a body slumped over a capstan and someone else- a kid- trying to revive it. Then the light was gone, the bullets started to fly and he lay hugging the asphalt, waiting for help that never came.

CHARACTERS

MAP

GLOSSARIES

WEB

FOOTNOTES

2The Nomura Hotel was an Occupation billet for middle-ranking officers

3G-2: Army staff designation for military intelligence

4During WW2 and in the immediate post-war period the Allies supported the Chinese Nationalists (Kuomintang) under Chiang Kai Shek (Jiang Jieshi). The American Embassy moved around frequently during these years as the Kuomingtang GHQ responded to military pressure from both the Japanese Imperial Army and the Chinese communists

5Yenan was the wartime HQ for Mao Tse Tung (Mao Zedong) and his communists. The Americans kept a multi-service intelligence liaison unit with them

6Pacific Military Intelligence Research Section, Maryland

# CHAPTER 3

THE CO's OFFICE was the last one on the left. Miller peered inside and recognized the size twelves cluttering up the desk. They belonged to his savior, Major Don Packard.

Packard was a bear of a man, oversized in all matters except intellect, or so Miller had once thought. Large men were often considered to be dumb and they didn't come much larger than Don. But it was a misconception, as Miller had later discovered for Packard knew his business inside and out. His mind was as sharp as his big black boots were heavy.

"You wanted to see me?"

"Jimmy!" Packard looked up from the papers he was reading and a big grin eased its way across his face. "I heard you'd stopped one!"

Miller fingered his arm. "It's nothing. A graze."

"Lucky for you, then!" Don swung his boots off the desk. "And for me. Where would we be if you'd got yourself killed, eh? The Army would want its money back!"

"But the bastards were getting away-!"

"Not the ones we were after. You wanna drink?"

Packard didn't wait for an answer. He reached into the drawer for the scotch he always kept there but the bottle was empty.

"Goddamit! Gimme a minute, will ya? Take your jacket off! Relax!"

While the big man trundled from the room, Miller undid his collar and laid his jacket over the side of the chair. He caught sight of his captain's bars winking up at him; bars where there should have been oak leaves. He felt the old rage starting up so he lit himself a Lucky and went for a walk.

Don Packard's Yokohama office was a mess but his office in Nanking had been a mess, too. Miller wandered over to the bookcase and inspected the array of silver frames that adorned it: Packard as a kid- a football in his hands almost as big as he was; Packard at high school, the football now a giant silver trophy. And then there was the one that had pride of place, the one of the ursine major decked out in the colors of his college, the season they won the Bowl. The caption read 1934; fifteen years ago, give or take a month. In all that time, Don's face had hardly changed. Fuller, certainly, but he still had the same sun-bleached yellow hair cut too close to the scalp; the same infectious grin-.

"I made All American that year!" Packard was back in the doorway now, a bottle of Black Label in one hand and a couple of paper cups in the other. "I could run the hundred in twelve seconds. Includin' the tackles."

"And now?"

"Hah!" He gestured at his stomach. "Too much army food. Too much booze. I see you aint gettin' any younger yourself."

It was the hair he was looking at but Miller let it ride. He watched the big man unscrew the bottle and pour out two generous tots.

"Let's drink to China, Jimmy! China and the good old days!"

"To China!" Miller had barely knocked back the premium liquor when Packard was once more searching out his cup.

"So who was the guy you shot?"

"Just one of the yaks from the boat. A kid. You aiming to write up a report?"

"Hell, no! If anythin' you deserve a citation."

Miller didn't seem so sure. "The _yakuza_ got away, Don. They had a launch on the far side of the ketch-."

"So fuckin' what? Our fearless leaders over at G-2 don't give a rat's ass about those guys."

"Are we talking General Roth here?"

"Yep. The Great Doberman himself." Packard hefted his huge frame onto the edge of his desk and stared morosely at his drink. "He's a shithead, Jimmy! And so's his shadow, Colonel Joseph Cullen. Cullen's lined up to take Roth's job when he retires next year. Already anointed is the word on the street."

"And the guy we nailed yesterday?"

"This man." A finger the size of a large sausage prodded at a ten-by-eight. "Staff-Sergeant Ernest Clark. He's the quartermaster over at Zama. Or was, until last night. Him and his cronies been up to their tricks for quite a while now. Last night, they were shiftin' gas but they aint fussy. That's how we found him, actually. The sonofabitch was bankin' three times his salary!"

"Yeah? With enterprise like that, they'll be making him a major next."

Don picked up on the bitterness and patted him on the shoulder. "Don't worry, buddy! We'll get to the bottom of that Nanking business. I'll help you all I can."

"Thanks. And thanks for bringing me back east."

"You don't sound so sure."

"No, I mean it." Miller glared down at his cup, swirling the liquor a few times. "To be honest, I was ecstatic when I first heard. A chance to set the record straight, I thought. Now I'm here though-." He looked up at Packard, a resigned expression cluttering up his face. "I'm tired, Don. Maybe I shoulda just moved on-."

"Move on?" Packard's jaw sagged. "And let those bastards get away with it? C'mon, Jimmy! Don't let me down now! I put my ass on the line gettin' you this job. It'll work out, you'll see."

"Sure it will." The eyes below the gray hair flickered briefly. "It's just I didn't think it would be, well, down here-."

"In Yokohama, you mean?" Packard threw back his giant head and a raucous laugh gurgled up from his throat. "You're not stayin' here, buddy!" He tossed some papers at him. "You're to report to GHQ by Monday 1800. The Old Man wants to see ya!"

"MacArthur does?"

"Who else?"

"Jesus!" Miller gaped at the air, the drink in his hand entirely forgotten. "I don't know what to say!"

He never figured he was still on The General's radar. The first and only time he'd met him was at Atsugi in August of '45. The Supreme Commander was paying his first visit to Japan after the cessation of hostilities. The problem was his entourage- including his translators- had been delayed in the Philippines. As luck would have it, Miller had been sent in from China with some intelligence reports. His plane had landed some thirty minutes after MacArthur's and he'd disembarked to see the war hero strutting around the airfield unable to make himself understood. Miller had promptly volunteered his services and was retained as The General's aide for a further two days.

"You figure he still remembers me?" he said now as the shock of Packard's announcement began to fade.

"Course he does!" Don said. "The man's a goddam elephant! Now you'd better get ready. I already made your train reservation. It leaves at 1500."

But Miller was still feeling puzzled. "So what was last night all about then ? Down on the wharf?"

"I had to keep you busy for a coupla days!" Packard winked. "They weren't ready for you up there. Now it seems they are!"

CHARACTERS

MAP

GLOSSARIES

WEB

# CHAPTER 4

JIMMY MILLER CHECKED his watch. Two minutes. That's how long he'd been waiting in the lobby of Tokyo's Nomura Hotel while the fresh-faced little corporal behind the counter studiously ignored him. The trip up from Yokohama had been slow and uncomfortable. What Miller wanted more than anything was a shower and a cold beer, not to be wasting his time at reception while the jerk in front of him played musical chairs with a bunch of paperwork.

"In your own time, son!" he snapped.

The corporal gave an irritated sigh and swung round in his chair. "Name?"

"Miller, James"

"Rank?"

"Maj-" He hesitated, feeling like a fool. "I mean captain."

The corporal casually flipped through a card index. "You got ID?"

Miller pushed his G-2 pass at him. The kid didn't even look at it.

"Room 406. Sign here."

The elevator ride was short and smooth. Number 406 was fifteen yards down on the left. Miller slipped the lock and went in. It was a small unit but neat and functional. A bed, a desk, ample shelving and a closet to hang his uniforms in. He tossed his cap at the desk, loosened his tie and sat down on the bed. Then the phone rang.

"Yeah?"

"Jimmy? It's Jack!"

§

It was like stepping back in time when the elevator door slid open. Jack Fujimoto was standing by the front desk slicking at his jet-black hair. He was wearing a pair of denims and an army-issue parka beneath which was an appalling orange shirt covered in pink flowers. Under his arm he was clutching an attaché case.

"Jimmy Miller, you sonofabitch!" Jack's grin kept getting wider. "Goddamit! I knew it was you!"

They embraced like brothers.

 "How long's it been, for Crissakes?"

Miller didn't need to think about it. "Six years, give or take a month. The last time was on Kalakaua, in the front bar of The Oriental. You were drunk as a skunk and doing your Chihuahua impersonation!"

"I was?" Jack scratched at the nape of his neck. "Jeez, I don't remember that!"

"The hell you don't!" Miller pulled back to study his old friend. The face had filled out a little but the small muscular frame seemed untouched by the passing of years. "I see you still got your impeccable dress sense. And that abominable Californian drawl!"

"Now don't start in on my accent!" Jack chuckled. "You took me for ten bucks that first time we met. All that 'I bet I know where you're from' crap. You remember that?"

Miller didn't; he'd pulled the same stunt too many times on too many people. It was the linguist in him that couldn't resist the challenge. That it also paid his bar bills was a bonus.

"So how's Tokyo?" he asked now.

"Like comin' home! What about you? When d'ya get in?"

"Two, three days ago. Seems you been expecting me."

"I heard through channels. Jimmy Miller, I says to myself. That's gotta be the guy I know." Jack glanced at his watch. "Look, buddy, we don't have a lot of time. You wanna grab a quick one?"

They headed up to the seventh floor restaurant and fought their way through a throng of uniforms.

"Say, Mack!" Jack hailed the bartender. "A couple of Asahis over here. Blocks of ice, know what I mean?"

The barman gave him an insolent stare. "You got ID?"

Jack flipped out his G-2 pass. "Captain, Military Intelligence. That good enough?"

Miller's surprise saw its echo in the barman's face.

"Captain? Gee, I'm s- sorry, sir! It's just that- well, we sometimes get- unauthorized people- in here."

"Japs, you mean? Just give us the beer, will ya?"

It came back with the tops off, foam dripping deliciously down the cloudy-cool bottles. They moved away to a quiet table and sat down.

"Well, here's to you, captain!" Miller took a sip of the ice-cold beer. It tasted like heaven. "So when did that happen?"

"My commission?" Jack was smiling indulgently at him. "A couple of years ago. General Roth promoted me himself!"

"I've never met the man but I gather Don doesn't care for him."

"Him and Packard fell out a while back. Least that's the word on the street." Jack shrugged. "I got nothin' against The Doberman. He had enough balls to make a _nisei_ a captain, didn't he?"

"You stuck with it, then? The army?"

"Sure. What else am I gonna do? Go back to Placer County and grow cabbages?H Besides, now I got a commission, it's cash in the bank. An' if I tough it out, there'll be money at the end. Real money, Jimmy. A pension-."

"And that's worth putting up with all the shit?"

"That business with the barman? Hah!" Jack unwrapped a stick of Juicy Fruit and crammed it into his mouth. "It comes with the territory. You know the deal." Then a far-off look snuck into the corner of his eyes and Miller knew his friend had something he wanted to say. "You remember in '42 when we were workin' at JICPOA?7 How the Navy wouldn't let me an' the other _nisei_ guys into the port for so-called security reasons? I used to watch you drive off to Pearl every mornin' to pick up the latest Sigint. An' me like a dog, waitin' for its master to come back." Jack stopped chewing for a moment as the memories came flooding back. "Well that made me madder'n hell, Jimmy; I was fit to crack someone's head open. But I'm older now. Wiser. An' now the Army's finally done right by me, I don't have a beef no more. As for that-?" He jerked his beer bottle at the bar. "That guy made himself look like a jackass, didn't he? Why should I give a fuck about that?"

"Why indeed?" Miller couldn't fault his friend's logic. Unlike him, it seemed Jack had mellowed over the years. Somewhere, somewhen, the two of them had passed each other going in opposite directions.

They polished off their beer and started in on two fresh ones.

"So how you been, buddy?" Jack was running his eyes over him now. "You're lookin' pretty good for an old man. Kept your weight. But what the fuck happened to your hair?"

"It's a long story."

"I bet it is. An' how about that great memory o' yours? You still got that?"

"I remembered you, didn't I?"

Miller did have a good memory though where it came from he had no idea. As a child he'd honed it in various ways, first by eavesdropping on the regular Friday night arguments between his mother and father that, week by week, followed such an identical course he could accurately predict the next stanza long before his sixth birthday. From there he progressed to the Saturday matinee, learning by rote Gary Cooper's entire movie repertoire while his mother went to visit her sister (the day after the argument) and his father went fishing. It was at school, though, where he'd really shone. He had the ability to retain- in that special part of his brain he nicknamed the Trash Can- any number of entirely useless facts without which a co-ed could never matriculate. He was always ashamed of himself when test time came round; it was like he had a crib sheet in his head that the others were denied. His teachers told him he was a genius but he just thought he was a freak.

So it was that, when it came to college, Oriental Languages chose themselves. The Trash Can was ideally suited for the retention of those nasty squiggly things the Japanese and Chinese chose to use as a lexicon. Westerners were supposed to struggle with them but not Miller. He could see beyond the spaghetti, could identify the numerous small ideographs that lay hidden inside the bigger ones. After that, everything else was easy and he graduated from UCLA top of his class. Yes, the Trash Can was a godsend of sorts, for it opened a lot of doors, including those that led to military intelligence work. He didn't have instant recall and his memory wasn't photographic, but if he stared at something hard enough and long enough, the Can would always nail it. People said it was a blessing but Miller wasn't sure. They didn't know the flip side; all the things he wanted to forget but couldn't.

"Yeah, I've still got the memory."

"You still got those captain's bars, too!" Jack's eyes had moved on to his shoulder tabs. "I thought you'd be a general by now."

"What can I say?" Miller wasn't ready to tell his friend about Nanking. "Life passed me by, I guess. You gonna tell me about the op?"

"That's why we're here." Jack delved into his attaché case and pulled out a manila envelope. "G-2 was runnin' this baby before Mac took it away from us. My boss Colonel Cullen was headin' it up-."

"Would that be Joe Cullen?"

"You know him?"

"No but Don Packard does. Says he's an asshole."

Jack considered the opinion, but only briefly. "He leaves me alone so I can live with it. Like I was sayin', he was in charge of your op, has already done a load of background work on it. This dossier-," Jack patted at it, "is the way he sees the set up. He has you goin' undercover for a few months. As a newspaperman."

"A newspaperman!" Miller's surprise turned into a laugh.

"What's so funny? You _are_ one. Or were."

It was true enough. After graduating from UCLA, Miller had wasted a couple of years bussing tables in Hollywood, imagining how he might save mankind from itself. Then an old college friend had pointed him at journalism; the Times wanted someone for its Pacific Desk and Miller, with his knowledge of the region, was perfect. The only problem was the editor there. He believed a guy ought to work his way up from the bottom. The very bottom. So Miller had spent his first year in the newsroom fetching coffee and running in hot dogs, and his second on the sub editor's desk, checking other people's punctuation mistakes. He was well into his third before he was trusted with any kind of story worth a damn, then those guys had to show up in their dark suits and fedoras, politely enquiring if he'd like to go work for the government. He could have refused but, like they said at the time, war for Uncle Sam was a certainty. Volunteer now and pick your service, be drafted later and take what was on offer. In the end, they sent him to the Military Intelligence Language School and that was the end of his career as a newspaperman. Or so he'd thought, until a few seconds ago.

"So why am I fitting into Colonel Cullen's plans if Mac has taken the op from him?"

"No point reinventing the wheel, Jimmy. Cullen may be an asshole but he has some good ideas. If you want to do it your way, tell them at the briefin'. In the meantime, you're to check in at the Tokyo Correspondents Club by tomorrow noon; it's four blocks from GHQ. You've been given a new ID, too. Daniel O'Connor. Irish. And while I'm thinkin' about it, the Press Club's gonna want a letter of introduction from the Seattle Post- that's the paper we fixed you up with. It'll be in your mail box first thing."

"Anything else I need to know?"

"Just read Cullen's dossier. Your eyes only. Like I said, you got questions, ask 'em at the briefin'." Jack drained the last of his beer and leaned back in his chair. "So waddaya think? The hotel?"

Miller contemplated the diners in their myriad-colored uniforms. "All officers?"

"Captains and majors, mostly. The food's tasteless and the plumbin's temperamental but hey, it's home! Not yours, though. You'll be stayin' at the Press Club."

"What about my room here?"

"Keep it. A bolthole. Look, buddy, I gotta go." His friend slipped on his parka and stood up.

"You'll be in touch?"

"Sure. Three. Four days, tops. And don't worry about the job!" Jack gave him a playful punch. "It's gonna be a snap!"

CHARACTERS

MAP

GLOSSARIES

WEB

####

#### FOOTNOTES

7Joint Intelligence Center Pacific Ocean Area

# CHAPTER 5

THAT EVENING, AFTER Jack Fujimoto had returned to G-2, Jimmy Miller went down to the Nomura _'_ s first floor PX and bought himself a fresh bottle of White Horse. He returned to his room, readied his memo pad and a selection of HB pencils, then started in on Colonel Joseph Cullen's dossier. The first document to catch his eye was a list:

_August 14th 1947 Eisaku Obayashi, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Japan, murdered_

_Dec 2nd 1947 Narumi Senzaki, Head of the Port of Tokyo, murdered_

_June 6th 1948 Tsuyoshi Fukai, Vice-minister at the Department of Agriculture, murdered..._

There were a total of fifteen incidents recorded; nine acts of sabotage, all directed at public utilities and six deaths, the last of which was one Sadanori Yamada, Chief of the National Railways and dated July 5th of that year.

The second document- and signed by Colonel Cullen- was a rather one-sided analysis of the local communists and their attempts to infiltrate and subvert the fledgling labor unions. Three people had been signaled out for Miller's attention and their photographs were appended to the article. First was Kyuichi Tokuda, General-Secretary of the Japan Communist Party. He was a thin rabbit-faced man who'd spent time in Moscow being groomed by that high church of Stalinism, the Cominform organization. The second man was the diminutive Yashiro Suzuki, prime mover of the Motion Picture Guild and this year's General-Secretary of the _Sodomei_ Labor Federation. The last man- and youngest of the three- boasted a handsome face that peered sultrily from a mass of wavy black hair. His name? The movie heart throb, Ko Iwasaki. How did these three men fit into whatever it was GHQ wanted him to do? Miller didn't know yet, but included with the dossier was a memo from Jack informing him of a labor rally at the Imperial Plaza:

_Jimmy- these guys will be there the day after tomorrow if you want to check them out._

Miller made a note of it, drained his scotch and promptly fell asleep.

§

The next morning, he found himself standing in a quiet side street off Avenue A. In front of him was the Tokyo Correspondents Club, a dreary-looking building of weatherworn concrete. Across from it, on the other side of the street, were three ex-Army jeeps parked diagonally in a tight bay. The words PRESS CORPS were stenciled in white across their bows. Next to them was a trash dumpster and beyond that, a small park that boasted half a dozen cherry trees, their branches now bare, and a circular carp pond flanked by three benches. A foreigner- probably a journalist- was standing by the pond tossing something at the murky water.

Miller took a deep breath and passing beneath a frayed canopy of sun-bleached canvas, he pushed through the Club's heavy swing door. Immediately, he found himself standing in a dark lobby that smelled of furniture polish. Above him, were two large ceiling fans, currently redundant. A man in a hurry brushed past his right shoulder.

"Excuse me-!" Miller chased at the shadow. "Can you tell me-?"

"At the end, pal! On the left!"

Miller sauntered further into the gloom, following a faint trail of high-pitched voices. Before long, he found himself in a recessed reception area. A long wooden counter ran down one side of it and at the end, separated by a Japanese-style _noren_ curtain, there was a gleaming kitchenette where someone was making tea. Miller's eyes worked back and forth, absorbing everything: the gray steel chairs, the bank of metal cabinets, the large wooden table that dominated the center. In the far corner, there was a cubicle of some kind. Inside it, a green switchboard was hugging one wall and a state-of-the-art teletype machine the other.

"May I help you?" The less-than-confident voice came from the bowels of a filing cabinet. When a head finally popped out, it belonged to a plain young Japanese girl with short straight hair and a snub nose.

"That depends." Miller leaned nonchalantly against the counter and lit himself a Lucky. "I take it you're Manami?"

The girl gave him a blank stare. "Now how did you know that?"

He motioned with his cigarette. "It says so on your badge!"

"Ah!" She blushed. "Are you new?"

"Afraid so." Miller handed over his credentials, retrieved earlier that morning from his mailbox at the Nomura. "Daniel O'Connor. Seattle Post."

The girl looked briefly at the paperwork then called over her shoulder. "Alice, can you help? It's a new man."

The woman called Alice emerged from the kitchenette. She was about thirty with a curvaceous body and jet-black shoulder-length hair. Miller guessed she was Hawaiian.

"My name's Nakajima," she announced curtly. "I'm the Office Manager here. You're new, you say? We _were_ expecting someone-." Her fingers spun through a correspondence tray and settled on several sheets of paper that had been fastened with a paper clip. "Ah, yes. Here we are. Daniel O'Connor. Do you have any ID?"

Miller handed over an old Seattle Pos _t_ press card that Jack had left for him. He looked painfully young in the photo; young and naïve. Where they'd got it from, he had no idea.

For her part, Alice Nakajima registered no comment as to his likeness. She just turned the card over and over in her delectable little hand as if she could smell the very phoniness of it. "So you worked for the Post? In that case, you won't mind answering a few questions."

"Fire away!"

"What's the address?"

"Eh?"

"Of your offices?"

Miller was stumped. "Doesn't it say there-?"

"How about your editor's name?"

"E- editor? Now who the hell was it?" He raked at his unshaven chin, hoping the Trash Can would come and rescue him. It did. "Heffernan, I think. Yeah, Charlie Heffernan."

"You don't seem very sure?"

Miller stared gauchely back at his inquisitor. "Look, I'll come clean. I've never met the man, okay? Or even been to their offices. I was hired overseas, through a contact."

"A contact no less?" Alice's coal-black eyes were squeezing the very life out of him. "Well, your papers seem to be in order Mr O'Connor but we'll have to telex your head office. Just to make sure. You see we've had a few people in off the street lately. It's nothing personal." She gathered up his documents and stuck them in a paper file. "Do you want to live in?"

"It's either here or that dumpster you got outside."

Alice didn't laugh; she didn't even smile. "In that case you'll have to fill these out." She shoved some forms at him. "We'll need bank references, too. By Tuesday."

"You don't leave anything to chance, do you?"

"Not if I can help it. When would you like to take up residence?"

Miller was breathing easier now. "Well, let's see. I've got to pick up a few things; take care of some errands. Would later today be OK? Around four?"

"We can manage that. Room 6 is free. I'll get Manami to clean it up."

And then Miller had her. "You're from Oahu."

Alice Nakajima stopped dead in her tracks. "Now how did you know that?"

"Your accent."

"You know about accents?"

"Kind of. It's a hobby of mine." It always made him feel dumb to admit it. "And yours- well, I've heard it before. You see, I used to live in Honolulu. During the war-."

"Did you now?" At long last, her face thawed. "An Irishman in Honolulu? Fancy that!" Then her hand went to her hair, self-consciously pulling at the pins that held it in place. "Perhaps we've met? I was quite popular in those days-."

"I don't think we did," Miller grinned. "I would have remembered!"

§

The cab driver brought in the last of his bags and Jimmy Miller paid him off. The Press Club lobby looked deserted now; even the formidable Alice Nakajima seemed to be somewhere else. From a room off right the muffled clatter of tableware was leaking out of a half-open door. A restaurant? He was about to go investigate when he heard a soft voice behind him.

"I take it you're just off the boat?"

Miller turned to see a tall languid-looking man with sandy-colored hair. He was emerging from a telephone booth.

"I've still got the ticket in my pocket! You're British?"

"'Fraid so." The man grinned, loped over and offered his hand. "Gordon Davies, photographer for Reuters. Why don't I show you around?"

§

Gordon Davies didn't do things by halves. First, he guided Miller through the lobby, pointing out all the places of interest like the mahogany mailboxes and the mustard-hued phone booth. From there, they pushed on through another swing door to the dining room. It was an impressive arrangement, far better than anything the army had managed at Miller's own Nomura Hotel. To the right, a line of upholstered stools protected a well-stocked bar; to the left, a homely mosaic of red and white checkered tablecloths stretched away to the far wall.

"We have two bartenders," Gordon explained. "Both speak English, after a fashion. In fact, all our local staff do. There are set meal times and if you get to know Tommy in the kitchen you can sometimes get out-of-hours food. He's our Chinese cook. Damn good, too."

"How does it all work?" Miller asked. "Pay as you go?"

"No. Just sign for everything and you'll get your account at the end of the month. Dollars only." Gordon brought Miller back out into the lobby. "The club's open twenty-four hours a day. There's usually someone keeping an eye on the door at night and the front office is always manned. They'll take telephone calls for you, Alice will make restaurant reservations; anything you like. She's very efficient." He led the way down to the basement. "This is our library." It was a narrow room with twenty or so shelves laden with musty tomes.

"You seem to be well provided for."

"The books, you mean?" Gordon gave a wry smile. "Yes, indeed. An irresistible read. We've got bound copies of the American Constitution, a compendium of all legislation passed by your senate in the last three years. We even have a full listing of Ivy League yearbooks going back to 1932. Perhaps you're in one of them?"

"Not me. Wrong end of the country." Miller ran his hand across the book spines. "So where does all this junk come from?"

"The American Embassy, where else?" Gordon pointed Miller in the direction of a small annex. "Most of us come down here for that- the newspaper archive. Back copies all the way to 1945. You never know when you might need them. Shall we go upstairs?"

As they began their slow climb, Gordon Davies filled Miller in on the Press Club's history; of how, after Japan had fallen, the US Military had requisitioned all the decent hotels in the city, turfing the world's press out on its ear.

"They eventually let us have this place. We designed it, they paid for it."

"So you're independent?"

"Pretty much." Gordon paused in front of a landing window and nodded at the street below. "They're lending us those jeeps down there and the fuel to go in them. You can reserve one anytime but it's on a first-come-first-served basis. The keys are hanging up in the office. Right, this is the second floor. Japanese only. People on early call sleep here- cooks, waitresses-."

"And how do you file?" Miller asked as they moved on up the stairs.

"That's where the jeeps come in. That phone box down in the lobby is only for private calls. We trust each other with it. So the only other places you can use are the SCAP PRO Building,8 about seven hundred yards down Avenue A or the KDD Building, a mile the other way. There's a teletype in the office here but that's only for incoming. The news services have their own lines, of course. My office, Reuters, is just up the road. As an American, you might want to use INS on Avenue A. That's if they'll let you."

"And this Avenue A you keep talking about- that's the big road at the end of the block?"

"Correct. The American Military renamed all the roads. In fact, most streets in Tokyo don't have names at all so it can get jolly confusing. Best to use markers, like bars or hotels. When you have some free time, take a look at the map downstairs. It'll help you get your bearings." Gordon Davies frowned for a moment. "Well, I think that's about it. Male journalists are up on the third- I'm in Room 10 if you need anything. The fourth floor is women only and the fifth, we no longer use."

"Dwindling numbers?"

Gordon nodded morosely. "The Tokyo Press Corps will soon be an endangered species. Japan doesn't make any headlines these days and GHQ's happy to keep it that way."

CHARACTERS

MAP

GLOSSARIES

WEB

#### FOOTNOTES

#### 8SCAP was an acronym for Supreme Commander of the Allied Pacific and referred not only to MacArthur himself but also to his GHQ. PRO was his Public Relations Office

# CHAPTER 6

JIMMY MILLER WOKE up at dawn the following day. A new bed in a new room; it had been difficult to sleep. He crawled out from under the covers and pulled back the drapes. The weather was overcast but the clouds were high. It was good news, for today he intended to head over to the Imperial Plaza to witness the Communist Party rally that Jack had mentioned. He wanted to check on the three protagonists in Colonel Cullen's dossier. See them in the flesh. But not before he'd done a little research himself.

After an indecently early breakfast of eggs and coffee- and while just about everyone else was still asleep- he went back down to the basement archive to see what he could find out. And not just about the three men. While Miller had been in the States, he'd lost touch with Japan and the Occupation. News in the press had been scant. Jack and Gordon were right; people wanted to forget about the war. What he found in the archive was depressing, even taking into account the exacting censorship GHQ had maintained over the press. The country was an economic basket case. The Japanese government seemed hell bent on pursuing hyperinflationary policies, in complete disregard of GHQ edicts.H Earlier in the year, a Chicago banker had been brought over by MacArthur- someone called Joseph Dodge. The recent papers were full of his promises to root out the financial gangrene and restore prudence to the economy. The tools? Massive cuts in public expenditure and a revaluation of the yen. The unions were howling about it but so was the Japanese parliament. Miller figured the banker must be doing something right.

His initial observations of Communist Party leader Kyuichi Tokuda had proved correct; he was firmly in the pocket of the Soviets and the right-wing press spared no excess in their purview that he was little better than the devil incarnate. As for the labor leader, Yashiro Suzuki, the court of public opinion appeared less sure of itself. The man was certainly an enigma; his rise to the top of the right-leaning _Sodomei_ federation had been nothing short of meteoric. Four years earlier, he'd just been a menial sceneshifter at the Toho movie studios. He'd sprung to prominence by standing for and winning the general-secretaryship of the Motion Picture Guild. Eighteen months later, he'd been elected to the federation's top job in a two-horse race his competitor, Junji Higuchi, should have won at a canter. Unfortunately, Higuchi had died of a mysterious ailment a few days before the votes were cast. The left-leaning Asahi Shimbun claimed he'd been poisoned by Soviet spies and that Suzuki was little more than a proxy of Tokuda's, charged with guaranteeing him labor votes in the forthcoming June election, an election the Communists were desperate to win. It sounded a plausible theory to Miller but the right wing press had mostly discounted it and the rumpus had died down. There was little subsequent mention of Suzuki in the press and none at all in the last three months. Miller assumed he'd gone to ground.

The same couldn't be said for the third person in Colonel Cullen's dossier; the actor Ko Iwasaki. If Miller had known nothing about him before, the man was hard to ignore now. His handsome features seemed to adorn every newspaper, every single day. There were progress reports on his latest movies, pictures of him receiving awards. There were even scandalous articles about the bevy of leading ladies he was supposed to be bedding. Most intriguing of all were the tittle-tattle suggestions that the actor might run for political office, rumors Iwasaki himself had repeatedly quashed. Maybe they weren't rumors after all? It would certainly explain why the actor was scheduled to participate in that morning's labor rally.

Miller continued to soak up everything he could, then at ten o'clock he put his newspapers away and set out for the Imperial Plaza.

§

It wasn't really a plaza, just a huge empty space across the street from GHQ. By the time Miller got there, it was three parts full. Delegates, tens of thousands of them, had been assembling since before daybreak. Many of them carried placards sporting the likeness of the movie actor Iwasaki. Miller was only able to secure a vantage point with the help of the MPs who were policing the event.

"My advice is to get on that low wall over there," a sergeant told him. "It's out of bounds to the Japs so you'll get a decent view."

The wall he was talking about ran the length of the Palace Gardens, not far from the old _Nijubashi_. Miller set himself up at the end of it, crouching low on his haunches. The stage was now only thirty yards away. He raked it with his field glasses, eventually focusing on the half dozen figures arrayed behind a bank of microphones. The old pro Tokuda looked ten years older than his dossier photograph. To his right, the labor union man Suzuki was easy to recognize with his unruly hair and Tojo-style eyeglasses. Tokuda was the first to speak.

"Comrades!" His distorted voice echoed grotesquely around the Plaza. "Recent times have been good to us. Thanks to the support of workers and patriots everywhere, the Japan Communist Party has gone from strength to strength while the forces of darkness have been in retreat. In particular, this last year has seen unprecedented progress. We took twenty per cent of the vote in last May's elections and we now have as many as thirty-five members in parliament. It's not too much to say that our party has become the first choice- the only choice- for those who seek change in our land. But there are clouds on the horizon, comrades. Public morality has collapsed and Tokyo is fast becoming a den of thieves. We can no longer trust our neighbors and while we sleep, the dregs of imperialism wander through our streets like stray dogs. At times such as these, it behooves us to be vigilant. If our neighbors can break into our homes and steal our food, what might the fascists do? Be vigilant, I say, lest those who have become discredited by war try to plunder our peace!"

A roar of approval swept through the crowd but Tokuda's hands begged for silence.

"Already we see them stoking the fires of inflation so that our pay rises become worthless. They try to sidestep our labor unions by shutting their factories, only to reopen them under new names. Then there's this new menace stalking the land. This American banker. This Joseph Dodge. He's here to help us, we're told but don't believe it, comrades! The man's a thief and he's come to steal your jobs! A half million, no less! If he gets his way, why, we shall all starve! We shall be helpless, even as the rightists and imperialists roll back the reforms that have been paid for with so much of our blood!"H

A swarm of indignant fists thrust themselves skywards. Again, Tokuda calmed them.

"Fortunately, the news is not all bad, my friends. We have one powerful advantage over the enemy; a truly great man that they can never take from us. General MacArthur, comrades. He will preserve our jobs and succor our needy, even as the fascists try to steal our new democracy from us. MacArthur _gensui_! _Banzai_!"

The crowd cheered ecstatically. "Tokuda! Tokuda!" they cried, their red flags rising and falling like a sea of crimson waves, a sea made angry by the sharp wind of the old revolutionary's words. Then a new chant started from somewhere near the stage and soon spread through the crowd like a bushfire.

"We want Ko! We want Ko!"

Miller still had his field glasses fixed on Tokuda and he could have sworn he saw the Party man bite his lip. It was a momentary aberration, for, in a split second, a broad smile was back on his face and he was joining in the syncopated hand clapping as enthusiastically as everyone else. If it was designed to lure Ko Iwasaki to the podium, however, it failed. The handsome actor reluctantly got to his feet, bowed at the adoring multitude then took his seat again. A groan replaced the cheering, only to increase ten-fold when the third man in Miller's dossier- the diminutive union leader Yashiro Suzuki- strutted forward to speak.

Later, when the orations had all finished, when the flags had been laid to rest and self-effacing smiles had replaced the raucous chants, Miller wandered amongst the good-natured crowd, thinking about those on the dais who had addressed them and why the one who everyone had wanted to hear- had not.

§

That afternoon, he took a cab down to the Ginza9 to find a gentleman's outfitters Gordon Davies had recommended. He'd learned pretty quickly that his old lounge suit wasn't going to cut it amongst the hacks of the Tokyo Press Club. The journalists he'd seen favored khaki. Khaki shirts, khaki chinos. He bought several sets of the same, plus a tan-colored safari jacket with multiple pockets. To finish it all off, he opted for a light-brown fedora that he wore with the brim straight, cutting a line just above his eyes. He grinned when he saw himself in the mirror. He looked the real deal.

Back at the Press Club, the lobby was quiet, the clock in reception just chiming six. He made his way up to his room, threw his parcels at the rickety sideboard then collapsed onto the bed. His eyes wandered around the little room. It wasn't much; an old table and chair in one corner, a lop-sided bookshelf in another. How many rooms like this had been his home? Miller had lost count. Then there was a knock at the door.

"Who is it?"

"Gordon. Am I disturbing you?"

"No. I've just got in."

"Well, if you fancy a drink, we're downstairs."

"OK." Miller yawned and swung his legs off the bed. "I'll take a shower and be right there."

§

The bar was busy but not crowded. Miller scanned the random groups but he couldn't see Gordon Davies. Down at the far end, in an alcove under a dartboard, a swarthy-looking man with a large nose was holding court in front of a knot of drinkers. On the back of his head, he wore a battered-looking pork pie hat.

"Fascism, my friends, depends on the holy trinity!" The accent was pure Brooklyn. "I refer o' course to The Pols, The Proles and The Hogs. Now your Hogs are the corporations; tdighe Mitsubishis and Sumitomos, the Du Ponts and Rockefellers. It don't matter where they come from 'cos they all got the same angle, see? To dream up wars and make millions and millions out of 'em. They can't do it without The Proles, tho. Bums like you and me who don't want much. A cold beer, maybe. A girl. But if The Hogs are to get their war, they need us Proles to fight it for 'em, am I right? 'Cept we don't need them for shit, apart from a job, mebbe. And who in their right mind's gonna chuck in a job to go fight a war?" He leveled a soggy cheroot at them. "That's where our friends The Pols come in. I'm referring to the political classes, gentlemen. Capitalism's used-car salesmen. The Hogs give 'em a percentage, see? An' in return, those tricky old Pols- they gotta persuade us to go and do the fightin'. Now they're not dumb- tho they look it- an' they know we aint gonna fight anyone, not unless someone comes along and threatens to boost our girls n' our beer. So on come the lies and the bullshit. Boys, they say, there's some nasty sonsabitches out there wanna take away your freedom to drink beer and screw girls. Oh yeah? we say. Like who, exactly? Well, once upon a time, it was Red Indians and Mexicans. And then it was the Nazis and the Japs. Now it's the commies and in the future it'll be someone else. It don't matter, see, as long as there's a steady supply of bogeymen. 'Cos the game always stays the same-."

"Too right!" someone interjected. "It's called propaganda and you're spreadin' it, Huber!"

The man called Huber ignored the heckler; he was seemingly determined to finish what he'd started. "But even the thought of all those nasty people out there," he ploughed on, "plannin' to steal your beer n' your girl- even that, of itself, aint enough to get some grass-suckin' Tennessee cornball off his ass to go fight for Uncle Sam. No, siree! There needs to be a greater mission; somethin' altogether grander, nobler, more awe inspirin'. And this is where those dirty old Pols dig deep into their bag o' tricks and pull out God, Democracy and the American Way. The War to end Wars- that's my own personal favorite- but any one of 'em 'll do. Yet if you use 'em all together, hell, they pack a punch like a howitzer!" Huber left the last comment dangling in the air and, for a brief moment, his audience stood there speechless. "Well, that's it for today, boys!" He grinned wolfishly at them. "Time to rush back to your hot milk!"

The small group recovered its voice and began to jeer.

"Tell us who pays you to come up with this crap, Frankie?" a furtive-looking man demanded. "Joe Stalin, right?"

"The lecture's over, Fellman. I charge extra for questions!"

There was a ripple of laughter and the crowd dispersed in good humor. The orator- Frankie Huber- regained his seat below the dartboard and that was when Miller caught sight of Gordon standing at his shoulder.

"Danny! Over here! Come and meet some friends of mine!"

§

There were two of them. Huber himself was an old-looking forty, stocky, with a jumble of curly black hair that was as tough as prairie grass. It was his nose, though, that was his most impressive feature. Bulbous and protuberant, the history of a thousand drunken nights was etched into its every livid vein. Huber was the kind of guy who dominated a room by force of personality but the same couldn't be said of the other man standing next to him. He looked Chinese, early thirties and was sporting a three-piece suit of immaculately cut gray silk. His hair was parted cleanly down the left side of a small head and he was wearing a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles that gave him a timid, almost endearing look. Gordon waited for the drinks before making the introductions.

"Gentlemen, this is Danny O'Connor, the chap I was telling you about."

"Glad to make your acquaintance." The Chinese thrust out a dainty hand. "Norman Yang of Pan Pacific."

His English bore no hint of an accent. British public school was Miller's guess. Frankie Huber on the other hand offered no such sophistication.

"How ya doin'?" he growled, the cheroot now wedged firmly between a set of yellowing teeth. "You're outta Oregon, I hear?"

"Seattle," Miller corrected.

Huber shrugged. "Same difference. What's your angle?"

Miller had already rehearsed his lines. "What am I writing about? Labor, mostly. The unions; whatever my editor wants."

"Unions, huh? That'll mean diggin' up stuff on the commies. GHQ won't like it."

"Why not?"

Huber pushed his crumpled hat further to the back of his head. "You mean I gotta wipe _your_ ass as well?"

He was about to deliver his second oration of the evening when a fresh voice interrupted him.

"Well, well! A newcomer, I do believe!"

Miller turned to see a portly rumpled-looking man shambling towards him, a large gin balanced in one fleshy hand.

"Danny O'Connor, meet Roger Davenport!" Gordon said. "Roger works for _Newsweek_."

"My dear old thing!" Davenport's clipped British vowels came in short, labored heaves. "Welcome to Tokyo! How are you settling in?"

"Pretty well, thanks."

"Splendid, splendid. Always good to get new blood in the Club. You'll find this is a pretty friendly place-," Davenport scowled across at Huber, "most of the time that is. Well, I must go. I'll see you again, Danny. Hopefully in more congenial circumstances." He shot Huber another dirty look, nodded pleasantly at Norman Yang and waddled off.

"Sonofabitch!" Huber snarled.

"You seem to be surrounded by reprobates," Miller observed.

"Listen! I could tell you a few things about that faggot-!"

"We don't have time, Frankie!" Gordon had downed the rest of his beer and was looking impatient. "Danny, do you want to join us? We're meeting a few friends for dinner."

"I'll take a rain check if you don't mind. I-."

But he didn't get a chance to finish. Huber had slipped off his stool and with the unlit stogie now dancing crazily between his lips he shoved a menacing face into Miller's and snarled:

"What's wrong? Aint we good enough for ya?"

And with that, he strode away with the other two journalists trotting at his heels. Miller watched them head for the door. They made an odd trio, he decided: the belligerent New Yorker, the polite Englishman, the inscrutable Chinese. They liked Frankie Huber, though. The mystery was why.

CHARACTERS

MAP

GLOSSARIES

WEB

#### FOOTNOTES

9An upscale part of Tokyo famous for its shopping, dining and _kabuki_ theater

# CHAPTER 7

LATER THAT EVENING, Miller found himself stranded in the middle of an unknown street, wondering if he had the right place. The neighborhood seemed to be residential and the large wooden building before him looked nothing like a whorehouse.

He took out the address Don Packard had scrawled down for him in Yokohama- a farewell gift he'd called it- and peered at it one final time:

_Miyoshi's, Sakai 2-156, Asakusa_

That was what was written on the porch plaque so Miller shrugged, opened the gate and walked up to the entrance. No sooner had he hauled on the bell pull than the door slid open and an elderly _kimono_ -clad woman was chivvying him into a flagstone lobby where dozens of slippers lay like dead fish on a polished wooden step.

The woman bowed low and, coaxing him out of his shoes, beckoned him towards the shadows.

"This way, _gaijin-san_!" she purred.

He followed her down a narrow lobby towards a muted whisper of revelry that was leaking out of a door at the far end. By the time she finally opened it, the whisper had become a roar.

"What the hell-!" Miller was almost knocked sideways by what lay before him: a _tatami_ room as big as any he'd ever seen! And everywhere, cavorting at low tables or stretching out on the pale beige straw, were groups of young girls and soldiers: drinking, eating, laughing- all embalmed in a dense blue fog of cigarette smoke. Between them, deftly navigating their way through the sea of prone bodies, were the floor walkers- elderly women in dun-colored _kimono_. They'd be former prostitutes, Miller mused, and their job would be to supervise the young girls and ensure a smooth transition from beer to bed. Too much alcohol caused problems, not enough made the men dollar-counting cautious. It was the same the world over.

He was still gawping at the vastness of the scene, still trying to adjust to the overpowering smell of male sweat and cheap perfume when he heard a familiar voice shouting his name.

"O'Connor! Over here! Come an' sit down, why don't ya?"

It was the journalist Frankie Huber, sitting by himself in a corner and looking slightly the worse for wear. The battered pork pie was still clinging miraculously to the back of his head while in his hands, he was nursing a bottle of Jack Daniels.

Miller maneuvered his way through the bodies and flopped down next to him. "So how was your dinner?" he asked pleasantly unsure whether this chance meeting was a blessing or a curse.

"Very nice, thank you." Huber gave a timely belch.

"And Gordon?"

"Him? Hah! He's out chasin' dames!" There was a hint of deprecation in the way the older man said it. "The Limey don't do whores. He prefers nice girls, see? 'Cos he's a nice guy himself. A regular fuckin' hero. He gets 'em to fall in love with him, screws 'em, then dumps 'em. How heroic is that, eh?" Huber grabbed a dirty glass from a neighboring table and poured Miller a drink. "Talkin' o' which, I see it didn't take long for you to find this joint?"

"Someone recommended it," Miller said vaguely. He looked around again and suddenly felt apprehensive. "Jeez, look at all the uniforms! Half the Eighth Army's in here!"

"More'n half!" Huber opined. "The parkin' lot's like Fort Bragg. Always the same Saturdays."

"It is?" Miller felt distinctly uneasy. What if someone from China was there? Someone from his past who could walk right up to him in the next thirty seconds and blow his cover with Huber? He tried not to think about it. "So what's the form?" he said gulping at his bourbon.

"Whatever you want but the table's only good for ninety minutes. When you're ready for a girl, just signal to one of the floorwalkers. A bath comes with the action."

"It sounds like a well-oiled machine."

"That's why the Army comes here," Huber winked. "To learn about efficiency. Me, I just come to get laid!"

They both laughed and the ice was broken.

"So where ya from?" Huber asked conversationally.

"Chicago." There was no reason to lie about it. "Oak Park."

"I know it. One of Hemingway's old haunts."

"'A place of narrow lawns and narrower minds!'" Miller quipped. "You know the city well?"

"Pretty well. I work for The Sun but mostly I'm based outta New York. Or was. They moved me over here last year so I wouldn't embarrass 'em too much. Outta sight is outta mind, if you catch my drift-."

"Can't say that I do," Miller probed.

"No? Well, it's like this-." Huber's sagging body jerked forward. "In the halls of the Fifth Estate I'm considered _persona non grata_. A commie. And you know why, O'Connor? 'Cos I upset too many people. Ask too many awkward questions."

"What kind of questions?"

"War profiteerin'!" Huber whispered it conspiratorially. "By blue-blooded American families! Did you know the trucks, planes, and bullets that killed our boys were all but made in America? Or while the Fords, General Motors and Standard Oils were helpin' Adolf arm himself to the teeth, they were actively doin' the opposite in the United States, tryin' to stymie American war production through patent tie-ups and monopolies that still gave 'em top dollar for every goddam thing?" Huber sucked back a mouthful of Jack Daniels, his mood darkening by the second. "It went on until Pearl, O'Connor. And some even continued after that. Hell, there we were goin' at it with the Krauts and all they cared about was the dough!

"I tried to stir things up a bit during the war. Wrote a few articles, pointed a few fingers but no one wanted to know. Hold off, Frankie. Wait 'till we get our boys outta there. So I did. Then in '46, I tried again but the post war press is dominated by Henry Luce and his cronies. The Scripps Howard papers, McCormick, Hearst. These bums were- are- buddies with those war criminals the Rockefellers and Mellons. You think they're interested in tellin' the American people the truth? Now anyone tryin' to bring the subject up is labeled a commie!"

"So they dumped you in Japan? Keep you out of the way?"

"For my own good, my editor says." Huber rubbed at his chin ruefully. "The Establishment's gunnin' for ya, Frankie, he says. Live to fight another day. He don't want to lose me, see? On account o' me bein' a good hack. He hopes the mountain air and the _sake_ will calm me down a little..."

"And has it?"

"I don't drink _sake_!" Frankie shot Miller an evil grin and pulled a fresh cheroot from a pack he kept in his sport jacket. "I'll tell ya one thing, tho. Tokyo aint no vacation postin'. There's a story to be had here; a big juicy one. Don't be fooled by 'Dugout Doug' MacArthur10 and his sparkly clean GHQ. The guy's tryin' to run this occupation like a toothpaste commercial, using the SCAP PRO Office to suppress all the shit." Huber edged closer and started to jab at Miller's lapels with his cigar. "Mark my words, this has nothin' to do with Japanese democracy and everythin' to do with that fucker's career! He's burnishin' his credentials, O'Connor! For a UN job that's comin' up-!"11 H

Miller was intrigued, even though he'd hear the same story a dozen times before. He pulled out his Zippo lighter. "You need any help with that?"

"The cigar?" Huber scowled at it and shook his head. "Nah! I've given 'em up. Doctor's orders."

"You don't say? Then how about cutting me in on the Mac story, instead? Your source?"

Huber gave a snort of derision. "Share a gem like that? You outta your mind?"

Just then a young girl in a lime-green _kimono_ padded up and knelt down at the table. "Frankie!" she cooed. "We go to bath now. Then we fuck."

"Looks like my number's up!" Huber stuck his unlit cheroot into the breast pocket of his sport jacket and lurched to his feet. "Tell ya what, O'Connor. If I don't survive this, you can have my favorite stool at the Press Club bar. See ya around."

"Why don't you call me Danny?" Miller suggested.

The older man turned and finally shot him a friendly smile. "Yeah? Maybe I will."

§

The first light of dawn struggled into the shabby room and poked Miller sharply in the ribs. He winced, stirred and for a moment wondered where the hell he was. His mouth was as dry as cardboard and his head was pounding so hard, it felt as if someone was locked up in there, trying to break out. Someone Miller didn't know.

After Huber had left the previous evening, he'd polished off the Jack Daniels and had a few scotches for dessert. What happened after that was a blur. A girl had come. There'd been a bath, certainly. But sex? Had there been sex? He couldn't remember until he rolled over and saw her lying next to him. She'd looked pretty cute the night before when all that booze had been pumping through his brain. Now? Now she just looked ordinary. More than that, she looked disturbingly young.

Miller checked his watch. Five thirty. His hand snaked out of the _futon_ and searched for his cigarettes. He lit one and once more found himself contemplating the prone shape at his side. Was she really sleeping or just waiting for him to go? Just waiting to grab the tip he'd leave her, get dressed and hurry back to the shack where she lived? Maybe she had kids of her own or a day job, even. And then again, maybe not. And that was the beauty of it. He didn't know a damn thing about her and she didn't know squat about him. They were just a couple of celestial objects speeding through the night sky, their trajectories intersecting for the briefest of moments. And during that time, they could be whatever and whoever they wanted. He could bullshit her and she could give it straight back. She didn't give a damn about his past and he couldn't care less about her future. And when it was over, money changed hands and life moved on.

He slipped out of the _futon_ and stumbled uncertainly to the tiny bathroom. In one wall there was a cracked sink with a single dripping faucet. He splashed some cold water on his face and peered groggily into the mirror. James Jefferson Miller stared back at him, thirty-seven, aging fast. And it wasn't just those white hairs, marooned in a sea of chestnut brown. His forehead now resembled a ploughed field, his eyes had marched backwards into his skull and the cute little dimples that had once resided around his mouth had metamorphosed into tight diagonal lines. Yes, sir. Forty was rushing up at him like an express train and his career - his life - seemed almost over. Which set him thinking about his father. Again. He'd always had nothing but scorn for his old man, ending his days as a god-forsaken vacuum cleaner salesman. The question that consumed him now though, was could he do any better?

He shook the last drops of water from his face, finger-combed his hair and three minutes later, he was ready to go. The girl was still asleep or pretending to be. He tucked a ten-dollar bill under her pillow. Food for her, appeasement for him. Then he tiptoed from the room.

Outside, a thin undernourished light was seeping through the half-filled car park. Miller turned his back on it and, hunching his shoulders against the early hibernal chill, he set out briskly for the Press Club, no longer thinking of whores but of hot coffee and bacon.

CHARACTERS

MAP

GLOSSARIES

WEB

#### FOOTNOTES

10A scathing epithet ascribed to the general by some of the rank and file who claimed their leader could only be found in harm's way if a newsreel camera was present

11There was no UN job coming up for the real MacArthur; he was more interested at a shot at the US presidency

# CHAPTER 8

JIMMY MILLER SPENT most of the following day rechecking all he knew about the three men in Colonel Joseph Cullen's dossier. Jack had phoned him shortly after breakfast to say his GHQ briefing was scheduled for 1700 hours. He wanted to make sure he was in full command of his facts.

At four o'clock precisely he stepped out of the Club, just as dusk was starting to fall. It wouldn't do to be careless now, Miller mused, just as his alter ego Danny O'Connor was gaining some semblance of acceptance in the journalistic firmament. What if Frankie Huber or that effete English guy- what was his name? Davenport?- what if either of them should take a notion to follow him on his nocturnal jaunt? Or what if he should bump into that office manager Alice Nakajima just as he was setting up a rendezvous with Jack? Miller silently cursed the cramped geography of Central Tokyo and taking a left, he sauntered down the largely deserted street, passing UPI and Reuters on his right- their office lights now dimmed- until he reached Fourth. A pedicab offered him a ride and he used the lively negotiations with the driver to sneak a look over his shoulder. No one had followed him. He waved the pedicab away and pulling his fedora lower over his eyes he set off at a brisker pace, this time in the direction of Yaesu. Turning a corner, he suddenly found himself staring up at the red brick facade of Tokyo Station. In front of its main concourse, two American MPs were directing traffic. He skirted them and ambled over to a taxi rank reserved for occupation employees. An old Buick was first in line.

"Where to, Joe?" The face leering up at him had a mouth full of rotting teeth.

"Hibiya Park, and go the long way round."

He opened the rear door and got in. The back of the cab smelt of disinfectant and vomit. The driver hit the column change and the big Buick trundled off along Fourth until it made the lights at Yurakucho. The driver hung a sharp right under the tracks and they headed off down Avenue Z. Darkness had fallen quickly. Miller peered out at the ranks of neon-stained restaurant fronts. In the shadows, behind the shuttered newspaper kiosks, he could just make out the girls.

Fifteen minutes later, the park hove into view. Miller paid off the driver and walked the last hundred yards. The rendezvous point was a bench opposite a statue of the poet Basho. He sat down, lit himself a Lucky, and took a good look around. It was a cool evening; the sky was cloudless and he could just make out Venus, shimmering low on the horizon. Ahead of him, beyond a canopy of hornbeam trees, was the _Imperial Plaza_ where the communist firebrand Kyuichi Tokuda had woven his spell just the previous day. Over on Avenue A, the traffic was keeping up a steady hum. Beyond it, the hulking granite facades of GHQ stood stiffly in a long straight line; quiet, imperturbable. Miller stared up at the lights in the windows and wondered which one was MacArthur's.

Then he heard a noise and snapped out of his reverie. Was it the wind? A small animal? He tensed, only to see Jack Fujimoto looming out of the trees. He was wearing his uniform and grinning the way he always did- his mouth distorted by the inevitable gum ball that had nested inside it.

"Hi, buddy! Been here long?"

"About ten minutes. I did the grand tour."

"Better safe than sorry, eh?" Jack eyed his watch. "We'd better make a move. Won't do to keep the brass waitin'."

They set off on foot, the knots in Miller's stomach telling him this was his last shot at the big time. Telling him not to bitch it up.

"Mac's building's that first one with the Greek pillars," Jack explained. "It's called the _Dai Ichi_. All the main departments are headquartered there, though General Roth complained long and hard about it. He wanted G-2 in a separate building."

"How come?"

"General Whitney. The Doberman hates his guts."

"What's it about this Whitney that's so objectionable?"

Jack's gum bubble burst with a soggy pop. "Come see for yourself!"

Instead of walking up the steps, past the honor guard and into the _Dai Ichi_ 's impressive marble lobby, Jack led Miller round to a narrow side street that was all shadows. "Better to use the tradesmen's entrance," he cautioned. "The general public has access to the lobby. It wouldn't do to be seen by your journo pals, eh?"

After thirty yards or so, they came to a plain iron door. Jack took a key from his pocket and unlocked it. They stepped into a musty passageway that had a low wattage light bulb flickering uncertainly from the ceiling.

"Who has access to this?" Miller queried.

"Only our department. Roth set up the system a few years ago. Said it would be convenient for us to come and go, G-2 being on the second floor. Whitney was furious when he found out." Jack handed over a spare key. "You're nominally one of us so this is yours. Just remember that the duty sergeant bolts the door from the inside at 1700 hours every night. If you're planning to use it after then, call through and he'll leave it open for you."

Miller glanced around the narrow space. The staircase was to his right. In front, there was another door. "Where does that go?"

"Into the main lobby. Like I said, it's best to avoid it."

They started up the stairway.

"Who's going to be there?" Miller asked.

"At the briefing?" Jack's voice came echoing down at him. "Mac, o'course. Then there's Whitney and Roth. Roth's a Kraut, by the way. I heard he came over in the thirties; changed his name-."

"That's why they call him The Doberman, Jack!"

"No kiddin'?"

They were out of breath when they reached the top. The stairs opened out into a disused storage room, which abutted the main G-2 corridor.

"That's Roth's office, right there," Jack pointed at a door ten feet away, "if you ever need to see him about anythin'. From here, we use the service elevator."

They rode it as far as the Sixth Floor lobby where a security detail was checking passes. The Supreme Commander's suite was a short walk away.

Miller felt his feet gluing up. "You coming in to hold my hand?"

"Hell, no! I got my own business to attend to." Jack patted him on the back, sensing his trepidation. "Don't worry, Jimmy. You'll do just fine!"

§

Miller knocked on the door and ventured inside. The room was little more than an antechamber. The nameplate on the sole desk said _Colonel Sidney Huff_. The man behind it was fiftyish and friendly.

"Captain Miller? Welcome to GHQ! I'm General MacArthur's _aide-de-camp_. He's just in there, if you'll go on through-."

Douglas MacArthur's _Dai Ichi_ office was a spacious room, though not unduly so. The walls were paneled in walnut and a large desk covered in green baize dominated the center. Away to the left, there was an imposing white plaster fireplace; to the right, an oblong mahogany table with five chairs arrayed strategically around it. The General was sitting at one end, perusing a personnel file. He looked up when he saw Miller and beamed at him.

"Major Miller, nice to see you again!12 Please take a seat." He nodded at the chair directly opposite him. "So how have you been? You look older!"

And so did MacArthur. The melodious voice was the same but his face was drawn and haggard. The hair had thinned, too.

"I'm fine, thank you, sir. Except-."

"Well?"

"Since we last met I've been demoted to captain. I've lost my oak leaves."

"You have?" MacArthur's eyes tightened momentarily as his gaze returned to the file. "Ah, yes, it does say something about that here. Still, it's all water under the bridge, eh? I didn't bring you to Japan to dwell on the past."

Just then Colonel Sidney Huff appeared in the doorway.

"Generals Roth and Whitney are here, sir. And Colonel Cullen."

"Then show them in, Sid!" the Commander-in-Chief beamed. "Show them in!"

The first to strut across the chocolate-brown Axminster was MacArthur's number two, General Courtney Whitney. He was a short, pugnacious man with little or no hair and a pair of angry blue eyes. Behind him, came The Great Doberman, General Henry Roth. Tall, erect, strong of physique, he carried his head high, just like a Prussian prince. From the expansive contours of his chest a monocle swung back and forth, drawing attention to a staggering array of service ribbonry. Everything about the man was imposing unlike the specimen trotting at his heels. Colonel Joseph Cullen- for Cullen it must be- was of average build but had one of the strangest faces Miller had ever seen. It started off well enough: there was a generous clump of lushly textured dark hair that tumbled in wavelets over a noble forehead. His eyes were clear, too and his nose, classically aquiline. Unfortunately it all ended there, for everything else rather fell away in a kind of metabolic landslide, as if whoever had made the face had run out of the requisite parts to finish the job. The lower features were all pinched, the jaw too weak and the mouth much too small. To draw attention to it all, Cullen had chosen to sport a rakish Clark Gable-style mustache. It just made everything worse.

The three men took their seats- Whitney on MacArthur's right, the other two on his left. With the battle lines seemingly drawn, MacArthur made the introductions. Roth gave Miller a welcoming smile, Whitney a peremptory nod but from Joseph Cullen there was no acknowledgment of any kind.

It was Whitney who spoke first. "I note the captain is improperly dressed. Does he imagine he's on some kind of safari?"

General Roth cleared his throat. "That is probably my doing. We in G-2 thought it would be appropriate if Captain Miller went undercover for this job."

"Oh, you did?" Whitney's already florid complexion reddened further. "Do I have to remind the general that he no longer has any jurisdiction in this matter? Captain Miller was recruited by Government Section13 for this mission. _My_ Government Section. I gave no such clearance for a clandestine operation!"

Roth sighed heavily and stared up at the ceiling. "I discussed the matter in detail with General MacArthur here and he agreed that the labor people and the communists would have no truck with anyone obviously connected to this building. By posing as a foreign reporter, we believe Captain Miller's chances of operational success will be greatly enhanced, particularly as he is fluent in Japanese, something our adversaries will not expect."

Miller turned to MacArthur. "Sir, I have no objection to being undercover if that simplifies matters. As General Roth said, it may be for the best-."

MacArthur nodded his agreement but General Whitney refused to be placated.

"Sir, General Roth's obsession with leftists and communists in this case is entirely unfounded. We in GS believe that the weight of evidence supports the involvement of right wing elements associated with Tojo's wartime government. They are out there, hiding behind Prime Minister Yoshida's people, waiting for their chance to regroup."

"And what evidence might that be?" Roth asked scornfully. He was eying Miller now. "Captain, did you have a chance to look at Colonel Cullen's dossier?"

"Indeed, sir. I read it with interest."

"Then you are familiar with the details of the Red Rose mayhem?"

"Red Rose, sir?"

"The murders. The sabotage. There can be little doubt but that we are caught in the maw of some kind of terrorist group. Their victims have been carefully chosen- all Japanese, key people cooperating with the occupation. The sites of sabotage likewise: food trains derailed, power stations torched, water purification plants blown up- all designed to cause maximum pain to the population at large and maximum economic carnage."

"You said Red Rose, sir?"

"You mean you don't know?" Roth's flinty eyes were boring into him now. "Each outrage has been accompanied by a red rose sent to a leading national newspaper. Together with the rose, there is a newspaper clipping attesting to the alleged guilt of the victims. Crimes against the working classes, as the perpetrators like to describe them. Factory closures, sackings, inflationary policies that lower workers' living standards-." Roth turned to Whitney. "The antics of this Red Rose gang are aimed at fanning discontent amongst ordinary people, the same people whose vote Tokuda's Communists must secure if they are to win next year's general election. The facts are irrefutable!"

"Only to those people who refuse to countenance an alternative!" Whitney jutted his jaw. "Red roses, indeed! Pure Hollywood! They might just as well have sent in copies of _Das Kapital_!" He shifted in his chair so that he was directly facing MacArthur. "Sir, this is a less than sophisticated attack to tarnish the reputation of the newly-formed trades unions; to discredit the communists, even. The victims of these thugs are in every case senior Japanese officials working for us. Whoever is doing this knows our reforms cannot succeed unless the locals step up to the plate. This is a warning to all those who would come after them. Don't get involved with GHQ, the warning says or this could happen to you. I ask you, sir- and you Captain Miller- who would benefit most from seeing us leave here with our tails between our legs? Not the Communists or labor unions, that's for sure. Everything they have now, we have given them. No, gentlemen. It will be those whose power we stole-." He turned his fire back onto Roth. "And you, sir-. For reasons I do not begin to understand, you have deliberately ignored all this. Communists, you say. Extremists in the unions. Well if that is so, where are your arrests? What has G-2 got to show for two years of investigation?"

For the briefest of moments, Henry Roth flinched. Then screwing in his monocle, he went onto the attack.

"I don't deny we got off to a slow start but it hasn't been easy. The red roses were originally ignored by the newspaper that received them. The editor thought they were the work of cranks and did not tell the police who were in any case overloaded with hundreds of other- similar- cases. It wasn't until an enterprising young inspector connected the dots that we were belatedly informed. Thereafter, it was you General Whitney who wasted a further six weeks arguing about which department should handle the investigation. By the time the matter was settled, these Red Rose people had enjoyed a free rein for more than a year!"

"That's most unfair-!" Whitney began but Roth would not yield the floor.

"Matters have been further complicated by the sheer volume of work my department has been forced to accept in recent months. The Soviet bomb, the formation of the People's Republic-.14 Do you know how many nationals from these two countries have permits to live in Japan? Thousands, and each and everyone of them is a possible subversive. To make matters worse, the Soviets deliberately chose this year to release hordes of Imperial Army veterans from their Re-education Camps,H knowing we'd struggle to process them. In the circumstances, this Red Rose business did not seem to be a priority. Of course, I did what I could. My best man Major Todd Hayman was put in charge of the case under the personal supervision of Colonel Cullen, here. I'm sorry if General Whitney feels this was insufficient-."

"But the man was working alone!" Whitney griped.

"It was the way Hayman wanted it." It was a new voice- thin and reedy- and it belonged to Colonel Joseph Cullen. "The man was a loner. Even so, I have reason to believe he was making good progress-."

" _Was_?"

"Yes." Cullen returned Miller's stare with interest. "Unfortunately Major Hayman is no longer with us. He's dead. Murdered."

"Murdered?" A frisson zipped up Miller's spine. "But why? What happened?"

"We believe he was killed by criminals- _yakuza_. Unbeknown to me, Hayman had a gambling problem; had been borrowing money from the mob to cover his debts. When the time came to pay, he defaulted. They didn't like it, strangled him and dumped his body in Tokyo Bay. It was washed up a day or so after he disappeared."

Miller pulled a pad from his pocket and jotted it all down. "And this happened when?"

"In July," Cullen flicked at an imaginary piece of lint on his lap, "just after the last Red Rose death. I headed up the investigation myself."

"You have the file?"

"Of course."

"And Hayman's records of the Red Rose case?" Miller was looking hard at Cullen now, feeling the man's animosity towards him. "You said he was making good progress. I'll need to see them."

MacArthur looked across at Roth. "Henry?"

"Colonel Cullen will give Captain Miller everything he has. We in G-2 wish to offer the fullest cooperation."

Whitney opened his mouth to reply but MacArthur had had quite enough. He held up his hand and the two feuding generals fell silent.

"Captain Miller, you have no doubt been bemused by my reluctance to contribute to the discussion thus far. I wanted you to witness for yourself the divisive nature of this business. My generals have very different views about it and I come down on neither side."H He hauled himself out of his chair and wandered over to the pipe rack on the mantelpiece. "It cannot be denied, however, that we've been going around in circles of late which is why I've taken the unusual decision to employ an unattached investigator. A fresh pair of eyes." He paused in front of the rack before selecting a large yellow corncob. "A short list of likely candidates was drawn up last month and I chose you. Both of my colleagues here had a right of veto and I'm happy to report that neither exercised it."

"I am honored by your trust in me," Miller said. "But I'm no Todd Hayman. I need a team and, though I'm grateful for the offers of help, I think it would be best to proceed independently."

"My sentiments exactly!" MacArthur furrowed his brow as he considered the request. "A team you say? Court, what's CID up to these days?"15

General Courtney Whitney seemed sandbagged by the question. "I- uh- I'm not entirely sure, sir."

"Who runs things over there?"

"A Captain Peters."

"And you think this Peters can be persuaded to help out Miller here?"

"I'm sure it can be arranged, general."

"Good. We're all in agreement, then. Gentlemen, I'll take up no more of your time!"

MacArthur strode away to the window as the meeting broke up. Miller was the last to leave but the Supreme Commander called him back.

"Try not to take sides in this business," he cautioned as he filled his pipe from a well worn leather pouch. "Both Generals Roth and Whitney have sound reasons for thinking the way they do. My advice is to listen to what each has to say. I suggest you also pop down to the third floor and talk to Major Kirchner. He heads up the labor union department and Colonel Cullen, in particular, suspects they may be involved-." MacArthur tamped at the bowl of his corncob for a long minute. "This Red Rose case, Miller. It may not be what it seems."

"Sir?"

"The people behind it are sophisticated, make no mistake. It's not just about causing us a little local difficulty here; they're playing to the gallery in Washington, where our critics- my critics- are legion." The Supreme Commander wandered back to his desk. "You see, they want to pull the rug from under us. Nullify our little experiment here. If that happens, a great opportunity to democratize this country will have been lost and the ramifications of that do not bear thinking about." He scowled down at the Axminster. "You have complete freedom of movement, Captain Miller. Go where you want, talk to people, access information-. Sometimes army bureaucracy makes it difficult to do that. Even here, in GHQ." He felt in his pocket and brought out a small ID card edged in red. "Do you know what this is?"

"No, sir."

"It's a Special Investigator's pass. A thing of great rarity. It says you are personally working for me. In effect, it gives you _carte blanche_ to pursue this case anyway you see fit. All officers are answerable to you, including my generals- so you see, you have a senior rank after all. Of a kind-." MacArthur handed it to him with a wicked grin. "This will open doors, captain, but it will also provoke envy. I advise you to use it wisely."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, general."

"You'll let me have your report in due course?"

"How long do I have?"

"Not as long as you need or would like." MacArthur inserted the pipe stem between his teeth and struck a match. "Shall we say until the spring?"

"I'll do my best, sir."

"I'm sure you will."

Miller turned to leave but the old war hero still hadn't finished with him.

"About that business in China. It was unfortunate, to say the least. You do a good job for me, captain and I'll make it up to you."

"That sounds like a promise, sir."

MacArthur stood quietly behind his desk, enshrouded in a fog of tobacco smoke.

"It is," he said.

CHARACTERS

MAP

GLOSSARIES

WEB

#### FOOTNOTES

12The circumstances of their first meeting can be found in Chapter 3

13Government Section (GS) was the largest and most influential of the GHQ staff sections

14The Chinese communists under Mao declared victory over Chiang's Kuomingtang and launched the People's Republic on Oct 1 1949

15Criminal Investigation Department

# CHAPTER 9

"HIS EXCELLENCY WILL see you now," the aide said. "If you'll just follow me."

It had been twelve years since Osamu Nagai had last met Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida. In 1937, to be precise. Nagai had been a junior attaché at the London Embassy in the final year of his first overseas posting and Yoshida had been the ambassador, a noted anglophile chosen by Tokyo to placate the British as Japan secretly prepared for war.

Since those nostalgic days, their lives had followed very different paths. He, Nagai, had gone on to the embassy in Berlin and had just managed to complete a two-year stint there when the declaration of war in Europe had cut short his service. He returned to Japan, enlisted, and fulfilled his imperial duty in China and Hong Kong. Yoshida, meanwhile, had stayed on in London until 1938 then, returning to Japan, did his best to avoid contact with the military government until a public falling out with war time prime minister Hideki Tojo resulted in him being locked up in 1945.

And that had been the old man's good fortune, for when the Americans came looking for a Japanese partner in the immediate postwar years, there was Yoshida sporting his prison term like a brightly burnished medal. Had MacArthur's people checked more thoroughly, though, they would have discovered that Yoshida's hands were far from clean; he'd supported the quest for Empire as energetically as others, had also stolen honey from the hive but had never managed to get stung. Not getting stung, Osamu Nagai mused as he padded through the subdued corridors of the prime minister's official residence. That was the inescapable lesson that life taught.

"You'll find him just here on the right." The aide motioned towards a door of seasoned walnut, bowed again then took his leave.

Nagai dropped to his knees, inhaled sharply and slid open the _shoji_. Shigeru Yoshida was seated at a low table on the far side of the room, a thick ink brush in his right hand. Next to him, on a red velvet cushion, was a very plump tabby cat.

"Nagai, _de gozaimasu_. Your humble servant, Nagai, sire."

"What's that?" The prime minister cocked an ear. "Nagai, did you say? Well, don't hover, man! Come in! Come in!"

Nagai's slipper-clad feet shuffled across the _tatami_ until he reached the alcove where the prime minister was working. He stopped and waited, fingering the felt brim of his homburg and wondering if the old man would remember who he was. The minutes ticked by. Yoshida continued to ignore him, bent low over his table. Finally, he turned and offered up a piece of parchment on which he'd written four distinct Chinese characters: _min shu shu gi_. Democracy.

"Well? What do you think, Nagai- _kun_?"

Nagai caught his breath. "Marvelous, _sensei_!" It was no idle flattery. Yoshida was a master of calligraphy; the fact was well known.

"No, no! You misunderstand me!" the prime minister chuckled. "I wasn't referring to my miserable effort with the pen. More to the concept. You have an opinion?"

" _Sa_!"

"My thoughts exactly!" The old man struggled to his feet. He was wearing a simple black _kimono_ that made his skin seem terribly pale. He looked like a tiny porcelain doll, frail and vulnerable. "I remember you, of course. Your father was Viscount Hayashi, was he not?"

"You met him?"

"Of course. A fine man. A fine patriot. The circumstances of his death, well-." Yoshida shook his head sadly. "You took another name?"

"My uncle's."

"Because of the war?"

"My father's enemies were legion."

"Yes, I do see." Yoshida was squinting up at him. "But those days are over now, surely?"

"Are they?"

"So I am told!" The squint turned into a mischievous grin. "Come, Nagai! Will you not take a little _sake_ with me?" The old man coaxed him towards a pair of cushions that overlooked a garden of raked gravel. "You know, I told MacArthur it would never work here."

"I'm sorry, sire?"

"Democracy, man! The General refused to listen to me. He's still not listening." Yoshida filled two small porcelain cups. " _Kampai_!"

" _Kampai_!"

The _sake_ was sweet, though not excessively so. It was a fine brand. In fact, everything about the room, from the Chinese scrolls hanging from the walls to the hand-painted motifs on the lacquered tableware, bore the hallmarks of quality. Yoshida had expensive tastes and they were tastes that Nagai himself coveted.

The prime minister reached inside his _kimono_ and pulled out a leather cigar holder. He took a panatela from it and lit it with a flourish. "Did I ever tell you what GHQ stands for, Nagai- _kun_?"

"What's that, sire?"

"Go Home Quickly!"

Yoshida guffawed loudly and Nagai joined him for good manners' sake, even though he'd heard the joke a thousand times before.

"MacArthur and I are both in our dotage," the old man rambled on. "We should retire, leave this business for others to settle. I said to him only last month, Douglas, why don't you and I give all this up? Go play some golf together and let the younger ones mind the store? You know what he says to me? I'm not old, he says. Speak for yourself, he says. I have unfinished business here and I'm going to damn well see it through. _Damn well_ , Nagai- _kun_. That's what he said!"

Nagai smiled politely; Yoshida was well known for spicing his lectures with English phrases. He expected that his interlocutors wouldn't understand, a not-so-subtle way of brow-beating them. Nagai, though, wasn't fazed by any of it; his English was every bit as good as the prime minister's. He was about to venture an opinion on the subject but Yoshida had already moved on.

"So what do you think of this room, eh?" The old man was waving his cigar in the air as if addressing a multitude. "Personally, I'm very fond of it."

"It's very nice, sire."

"They're trying to make me move, you know. Over to that awful place in Akasaka. They say it's not safe here. The Communists might blow me up. It's all a storm in a tea cup!"

"Quite so."

Inwardly, Nagai thought the prime minister reckless. Law and order was in free-fall. The streets, were far from safe. And it wasn't just the Communists, either. Gangs of thugs were doing a brisk trade in kidnappings and ransom. Hadn't he recently been followed himself?

"More _sake_?" The old man topped up his cup. "To tell you the truth, I have no time to worry about Communists. There are bigger fish to fry. These Hoarded Goods Hearings, for instance. I'm being pressed by MacArthur's people to start the trial preliminaries next month. I suggested the spring. The summer even, but they won't wait that long." He took an irritable pull on his panatela. "This business could be troublesome for us, Nagai. The foreign reporters are taking a keen interest in it; they're saying that some people in positions of authority took advantage of the post-war confusion to steal billions of yen's worth of military supplies. It's scandalous." The little man turned to face him. "The Americans are already balking at the cost of their experiment here. How would it read in the press if people were to learn that their sacrifice was someone else's profit? I'll tell you, Nagai- _kun_. It would be a disaster! And if proved true, this government- my government- would not survive!"

"A grave matter indeed, prime minister!" Nagai kept his face composed. "But how is any of this my concern?"

"In a word, Sekine. He's an intimate acquaintance of yours, I believe?"

"Kazuo Sekine? I- I hardly know the man-."

"Come now! Don't be coy- it doesn't suit you! That _ryotei_ you own in Omotesando- I believe Sekine's a regular visitor. One might almost call him your patron-."

"If you're referring to the teahouse, sire, I assure you it's only a modest-."

"Stuff and nonsense! I hear it's very nice. Sometimes I wish I could visit it myself-," Yoshida's chuckle turned into a wheezy cough, "-but then I'd bump into half of the Diet Budget Committee, would I not?"

Nagai ran a speculative finger through his mustache. "Sekine- _san_ has been kind enough to recommend my humble premises. Just to a few close colleagues-."

"And a good deal of political debate takes place there, no doubt. Especially of the patriotic variety, eh?"

Nagai froze. Did the old rogue know about the Red Rose? "People talk about all kinds of things, sire," he essayed cautiously. "Especially behind closed doors-."

"Do they talk about that?" The prime minister nodded at an opened letter lying on the low table between them. "Go on, pick it up! Read it for me!"

Nagai took the single sheet of paper in his right hand and cleared his throat. "A secret parliamentary revolt to resist the Hoarded Goods Hearings is being planned by Head of the Lower House, Kazuo Sekine. The revolt is in its final stages of preparation and includes Dietmen-." He looked up suitably perturbed. "But this is hard to believe! If I may ask, where did you get this document, sire?"

"It was delivered by hand last week. Anonymously."

"Anonymously?" Nagai's face lightened. "In that case, I wouldn't worry too much. I'm sure they're just scurrilous rumors-."

"On the contrary!" Yoshida snapped. "I've had it checked. Worse, the Americans already know about it; my sources at GHQ tell me as much. A man of your stature; surely you have your own contacts there-?"

" _Sa_!" Nagai said again.

"Then ask them yourself! See if I am not correct!" The prime minister's face tightened. "Not only do the Americans know, they are biding their time, waiting for Sekine to stick his neck out. And when he does, that viper Whitney will chop it off. It won't stop there, either. There will be the most appalling stink as they hunt down the rest of the conspirators. My own position might even become untenable!"

Nagai peered into his _sake_ cup. "Sire, if these hearings take place, there are those who could be compromised. Many of them."

"And you think the government would fall anyway?"

"It's possible."

Yoshida pulled on his panatela as he thought for a moment. "Possible, yes. But not probable. To rebel would be a mistake, a confession of guilt. I say let the Americans have their trial. Then anything could happen: procedural problems, unreliable witnesses, lack of evidence. To predict the outcome of such a complicated business would be foolish."

A hiatus inserted itself between them as Nagai digested the real meaning of the prime minister's words. Over by the calligraphy table, the tabby cat was purring loudly. Somewhere, in another part of the house, he could hear a clock ticking.

"Time marches on so quickly, don't you think?" Yoshida's voice sliced through the silence. "It's hard to keep up with everything. Old friends, particularly. I seem to remember you were a very popular man before the war. Some of your old university associates, where was it?"

"Waseda, sire."

"Ah, Waseda! Yes, of course! A veritable den of patriots! Tell me, do you still see them?"

"Occasionally."

The prime minister nodded his head slowly. "I hear there are people out there who would pay almost anything to get rid of our American friends. Not that I approve of such behavior, mind you-." And with that, he bounced to his feet and strode spryly back to his calligraphy table. Suddenly he looked ten years younger. He sat down nimbly and selected another sheet of hand-made parchment, arranging it so that its edges were perfectly parallel to the sides of the table.

"I shall be retiring soon, Nagai- _kun_. I'm considering buying a house in Hayama, next to the sea. Mild in winter, it would be a perfect place to write my memoirs." Yoshida selected a medium-sized brush and carefully applied some ink to the tip. "I'd like to write that in 1950, in the Twenty-fifth year of Our Emperor, General MacArthur signed a peace treaty with Japan and sailed away forever. Now please close the door quietly on your way out."

§

Osamu Nagai paid off the cab and watched it drive away. His mind was still fretting over his meeting with the prime minister. How much did the old devil know of his very private business?

He was standing on a narrow side road not far from the busy concourse known as Omotesando, in the Shibuya district of Tokyo. It was an unusually wide boulevard that ran straight as an arrow from Aoyama in the south up a steepish hill towards the big old Shrine of Meiji in the north. The shrine was set in acres of rolling parkland and the Americans, in their kindness, had avoided bombing it, so sparing the neighborhood in which the Kiku Teahouse\- his teahouse- also stood. Had the previous owner possessed some insight into General MacArthur's largesse, she might not have been in such a hurry to part with it. As it was, when the war started to go badly for Japan, she fled to the safety of the mountains and promptly died of a heart attack. The building fell into neglect until Nagai came along in 1946 and rescued it.

Nagai himself had no knowledge of the water trade but he knew someone who did. Her name was Tomiko Sasaki and she'd worked as a whore in The House of the Silver Lotus. Five years older than he, she'd taught him all he ever needed to know about sex when he'd first arrived in Tokyo as a young undergraduate. She was still working there after the war, when he came back to find her, though now as the _mama-san_ , paid by the owner to manage his affairs. Nagai had swallowed the huge expense, had bought out her contract and installed her in his teahouse, trusting her advice in all matters and even acquiescing in her policy that no men should ever be employed there.

Nagai lingered now in front of his investment, regarding it as a man regards a beautiful woman. It was a substantial house, set back behind a tall bamboo fence. Everything about it was graceful, from the gentle lines of its upswept eaves to the discrete but simple solidity of its oak front door. There were those who'd chided him for buying it. The economy was in freefall, they'd warned, and it would be unwise to make reckless real estate purchases. But Nagai had thought differently; surely the time to throw one's hat in the ring was when everyone else was sitting on theirs?

He ignored the front entrance now, and the artfully concealed windows that lay peeping out from behind screens of giant azalea. Instead, he walked on past the building as far as a little side path, followed this for a dozen yards to where another door, this one made of steel, was set in a wall of ivy and bramble. He pulled a key from his waistcoat pocket, inserted it into the lock and the door swung noiselessly open. All at once, Nagai felt the coolness of the old teahouse embrace him; that, and the tell-tale scent of peach blossom which regardless of the season always seemed to be floating through its hallways. From a passageway to his left, he could hear the clang of pans and the scolding voice of the chief cook. Though the teahouse could boast ten guest rooms, he knew only three were occupied that night, all taken by a delegation from Mitsubishi. He grinned to himself; they paid well and always in dollars, though their corporation was officially bankrupt. His grin turned into a chuckle. Everyone was officially bankrupt these days but there was no shortage of cash around. Weren't the finances of his own emporium testament to that?

He headed towards his private rooms that were tucked away in a secluded corner of the first floor. There were three of them: his dressing room, his bedroom and the sitting room that gave onto his private garden, the place he enjoyed most. Sliding open the door to his dressing room, he walked into the closet, dusted down his homburg and laid it carefully on a shelf to the left of several fedoras. Next, he unscrewed the silver handle from his walking stick, pulled out the five millimeter pistol mechanism attached to it and released the two bullets from its chamber, once more wrapping them in their cotton wadding and returning them to the lacquered cartridge box where they would remain until the next time he was obliged to walk the streets at dusk. Finally, he took off his dark gray business suit and arranged it neatly on a wooden hanger, pulling out, in its stead, a brown cotton _kimono_ and a _haori_ overjacket which he draped across the back of a chair. For a moment, he stood there naked, admiring himself in front of the full-length mirror. He looked good for forty, he decided. His face, still handsome, had retained most of its youthful vigor, and his mustache was without a single fleck of gray. It was his body, however, that gave him most satisfaction; it was of a man fifteen years his junior. His upper torso was lean but well toned and his stomach and buttock muscles were tight and firm. He owed it to his twice-weekly trips to the Aoyama _dojo_ where judo bouts against young bucks half his age kept him in excellent shape. That and the scrupulous attention he paid to food and drink. The hospitality business was a slippery slope. Obesity and alcoholism beckoned so readily he rarely took more than an occasional drink.

He did have one weakness, though, and it lay on the low table before him: the navy blue and white pack of Senior Service cigarettes. He'd first come across the fine tobacco at a diplomatic soiree in London's Belgravia. Since then, he'd assiduously tracked down the few importers that handled the English brand and had managed to secure for himself enough to get through the war. Thereafter, the Americans had arrived and the availability of his cigarettes- along with sundry other luxuries- had mushroomed, providing of course one knew where to look. He helped himself to a cigarette now, then slipping on his clothes and _geta  _he clumped his way round to his office.

It was the only room in the whole house that had a lockable door and the only room, with its reinforced concrete shell, that could survive a cataclysmic earth tremor. He turned on the light and let himself in. The room was windowless, an air conditioner set in the ceiling was the only ventilation. The walls were all clad with glazed bookshelves, except for one corner that was occupied by a low desk. On it was a telephone and a bamboo-framed lamp. Nagai made his way over to one of the bookshelves and accessed a secret switch. A section of the shelf sprang forward revealing a six-foot cast-iron safe. His fingers deftly spun through the combination until he felt the heavy door click, then swing open. Inside, the upper portion of the safe contained metal shelves stacked with paper files. The lower half was made up of four large aluminum bins, each piled high with used-dollar bills. Nagai's eyes honed in on an ornate cardboard box marked _Red Rose_. He withdrew it, closed the safe door behind him, and took the box over to his desk.

The Red Rose Society had really been Kazuo Sekine's idea; the same Sekine who had recently blotted his copybook with the prime minister. It was an extension of the politician's Voices of Heroes Association, a patriotic war-time society he'd co-founded with Shintaro Ishizuka, a fellow dietman who'd been close to the Imperial Court. The third founder member was Kisaburo Yanagita, the owner of a mid-ranking _zaibatsu_ conglomerate with interests in metals and banking. Between the three of them, they'd managed to create an effective and influential lobby capable of amassing substantial sums of money for the war effort, despite the desperate times. Nagai himself had contributed to it during his furloughs back in Tokyo, making keynote speeches or inviting other comrades-in-arms to do so. Sekine had been so full of gratitude that, when their paths had crossed again after the war, the old politician had once more solicited his help. "The conflict goes on, Nagai- _kun_! How can any Japanese rest until this American trash has been banished from our shores?" Sekine's old confederate Ishizuka had since died but the businessman Yanagita was still attendant and so it had been that Nagai had offered his teahouse as the headquarters for the new society which must now, perforce, operate in secrecy.

"We will call it the Red Rose," Sekine had suggested, after one of the clandestine societies of _shishi_ that had rebelled against the Tokugawa _shogun_ a hundred years earlier.

"And we will adopt their rallying cry!" Yanagita had added excitedly. " _Sonno joi_! Bring back the emperor. Repel the barbarians!"

And so they had begun, with Nagai taking responsibility for the accounts. It was not hard to raise money. A lot came via the Red Rose's tie-up with organized crime; the rest- as Prime Minister Yoshida had implied- in the form of generous donations from groups who, for various reasons, wanted to see the back of the Americans. The cash, wherever it came from, would go towards sabotaging MacArthur's reforms. It was to be a three-pronged attack: bribing bureaucrats to stall legislation, paying off corrupt union officials to foment strikes and employing goons to commit industrial mayhem. With any luck, the economy would flounder, inflation would spiral out of control and the yen-based war reparations agreed between GHQ and the _zaibatsu_ would become valueless in a matter of months. In short, it was the Red Rose's aim to make the Occupation so expensive, the American taxpayer would demand an end to it and force MacArthur to return home.

"You do realize the kind of war we are embarking on?" Nagai had asked Sekine at their inaugural meeting.

"We will do what we have to do!" the veteran politician had replied. "But first you need to get this business operating. Spies are everywhere and we need to be able to hide behind the comings and goings of others."

So it was that Sekine began bringing other lawmakers to the Kiku Teahouse and they, delighted by the skillful attentions of the _mama-san_ Tomiko and her girls, brought their friends. In less than a year, the place was thriving; and hidden behind the daytime frenzy of produce deliveries and florists- and the nocturnal movements of hostesses and limousines- the Red Rose embarked upon its patriotic business.

It soon became clear to Nagai that, such was the nature of their work, they would need the help of a law enforcer. Mamoru Matsui was their man. As Deputy Metropolitan Police Commissioner, he had a reputation for being thoroughly corrupt and he quickly accepted Nagai's offer of ten per cent of the take, an offer that had to be increased to fifteen some twelve months later when Matsui ascended to the top job. But to be fair, the porcine policeman earned his money. He ensured that Tokyo's finest kept their blue-uniformed presence far away from the precincts of the Kiku Teahouse and the affairs of the Red Rose that prospered there.

For a time, everything proceeded with clockwork precision, until the inevitable day when Commissioner Matsui became greedy. Not satisfied with his share, he started to skim off the top. Nagai had anticipated this and was happy to let the policeman overreach himself. What he had not bargained for was Kazuo Sekine's eagle eye. The politician had discovered the truth just a few days earlier and had called Nagai about it, demanding that action be taken. So Nagai had been forced to do what he didn't want to do and go to the ledgers to check the extent of Matsui's malfeasance. Now, as he sat at his desk, his fingers dancing over his abacus, it was clear there were substantial irregularities. He ran his thumb down the list of figures again; the respective totals for the gambling outlets and nightclubs tallied as did the take from the black-markets. The problem was the money from the Recreation and Amusement Association\- Matsui's domain. The figures were well down on the previous year, even though the number of whores operating in the city had doubled. Nagai scowled; he would have to agree to a meeting and the policeman would be obliged to explain himself. Things might start to unravel and though that might suit Kazuo Sekine, it didn't suit Osamu Nagai. He needed Matsui's hand in the cash box for just a while longer...

§

"Your guest is here," the  _mama-san_  announced.

Nagai let out a sigh of irritation. "Very well. Show him into the  _Momiji_  Room."

The politician, Kazue Sekine was in his late sixties; a thin, gaunt man with a face to match. Ever since Nagai had known him, Sekine had had the pallor of one who doesn't see enough sunshine. In fact, everything about him seemed undernourished, from his scraggy neck to the sad strands of hair that were plastered like piano keys across the top of his scalp. He looked up expectantly when Nagai slipped into the room.

" _Sensei_! I'm sorry to bother you at such short notice-. I've come about Matsui. You do know he's stealing from us?"

Nagai sighed as he knelt down on the _tatami_. "Are you quite sure?"

Sekine slipped a piece of paper across the low table. "Look for yourself. Here are the latest receipts from the Recreation and Amusement Association. As you know my people receive ten per cent of the gross. The sums simply don't add up!"

Nagai perused the numbers, affecting concern. "Yes, I do see what you mean." He pulled a fan from the sleeve of his _kimono_ and tapped his lips lightly with it as he considered what to do. "These accusations of yours- they are without doubt serious. But we need to be sure of our facts, do we not? I suggest my accountants take a look at the numbers and we'll discuss the matter again. At our next Red Rose meeting."

"You're calling a meeting?"

"Yes. I've just been to see the prime minister."

The skin around Sekine's thin lips tightened perceptibly. "Whatever for?"

"He wanted to know all about you!"

§

Later that afternoon, having bathed and changed into a fresh _kimono_ , Osamu Nagai repaired to the sitting room that gave onto his private garden. He loved this time of day, when sunlight fled before darkness. The tranquility of it helped him weigh the complex ideas that ran through his mind, helped him separate them and prioritize them. First and foremost was the policeman, Matsui. He'd have to be dealt with: the later, the better. But could the man be trusted to hold the line, especially if he were asked to testify at these hearings the prime minister wanted convened?

Then there was the matter of the amortization. Nagai's hands went to the manila envelope in front of him and brought out the document that had his seal attached to it, the document that promised he would deliver to the offices of Fuji Real Estate by April 28th, 1950, the sum of eight hundred thousand US dollars in return for a first option on one hundred and twenty-three lots of prime Omotesando real estate. Two payments had been made; there were two more to go. The penalty for failure, though, was high. He would lose the teahouse.

Had he been reckless to sign such a paper? Osamu Nagai had thought it through thousands of times and always he'd reached the same conclusion. That to win the high stakes game he'd joined, he had to be prepared to bet all he had. Everything. How else could he exorcise the painful memory that haunted him day and night? The memory of a bleak winter's morning, sixteen years earlier, when his father Viscount Katsumasa Hayashi had killed himself.

CHARACTERS

MAP

GLOSSARIES

WEB

# CHAPTER 10

KAZUYOSHI UEDA STARED into the plate glass window and didn't like what he saw. Ragged, shaven-headed, his soiled army drabs barely clung to his half-starved frame. Though he'd already passed his twenty-seventh birthday, he scarcely looked like a man at all. Then there was the matter of the scar that ran down his right cheek. He fingered it; it seemed to be getting bigger.

Ueda loathed walking through the Ginza in daylight, while Tokyo's _nouveaux-riches_ paraded themselves up and down its gaudy sidewalks. It was the way they stared at him; no, not at him, _through_ him. Just like he didn't exist. The place had changed beyond all recognition during the nine long years he'd been away. It was starting to resemble the pictures of New York he'd seen in magazines. Flashy-looking restaurants, gaudy neon lights, fancy dollar shops which only the filthy _gaijin_ could use-. He stood before one of them now, gawping up at the Philco Record Players and General Electric refrigerators. Who could afford such things? Such prices?

Money. It sniggered at him from all sides. From the backs of fashionable young women as they minced along like Hollywood movie stars; from the seats of swanky Chevrolets as their over-proud owners posed up and down the pot-holed roads. What infuriated him most, though, were the Parisian-style cafes where former Imperial Army officers in sharp Italian suits sat fondling the breasts of young girls whose favors they'd purchased for the price of a strawberry gateau. Only two months earlier, he'd been lying forgotten in some Soviet Re-education Camp, surviving on rat meat, yet here they were- the bastards who'd put him there- drinking cappuccino with their whores while their wallets bulged with black-market dollars. A seething anger took hold of Kazuyoshi Ueda. He'd been fooled. They all had.

Money. That was all that mattered in this new Japan, and he had almost none of it. He searched in his pockets for his pay; one hundred miserable yen. That's all he got for a week of hauling trash from the fish market in Tsukiji. The Koreans who employed him were scum; fornicating dog eaters. They were robbing him blind and he'd wanted to tell them so but their gangs controlled the work there. If he fell foul of them, he'd be out, sleeping on the streets. He might have survived the trenches in China but he couldn't survive the streets. Not without a gun.

Ueda felt the war coming back at him and knew he had to find a place to sit down. He slipped into the next side street and stumbled on through a foul-smelling alleyway until he found a low wall next to some baskets of garbage. A few strands of watery sunlight straggled into the dreary place, just enough to keep him from shivering. He flopped down onto the wall and took off his army forage cap, now sun-bleached and frayed. On the right side of it, there was a brown stain, faded but still visible. It was blood, though not his. How it had got there even now he didn't know. It was just one of the many unpleasant things that had crept up on him in the war. Changing him, changing his life.

He'd been in such a hurry to sign up, too. Seventeen, scarcely more than a kid. His two elder brothers had already gone to fight and he'd pestered and pestered his mother to let him go, too. She'd demurred, not wanting to be alone now that his father was dead. But she needed the money to pay for the cheap room they rented in Yokohama and so, one day, she'd taken him down to the local police station and affixed her seal to the papers they'd given her. It was just a few weeks later that the _akagami_ \- the red conscription papers- arrived and Ueda was sent off to one of the training schools just south of the city. Curiously, once the process had begun, he found himself ambivalent about his situation. Yes, it was a chance to prove once and for all that he was his father's son, yet he didn't really understand much about the war he had to fight. He didn't understand anything except that he must sacrifice himself for the emperor, a man he'd never heard speak and never once seen.

Training had been hard but not too hard for, as the son of a soldier, Ueda knew all about rigorous discipline, about the five principles of battle ethics: loyalty, courtesy, courage, truthfulness and frugality. Every morning, the new recruits had to line up on the parade ground to be smashed in the face by their officers. Sometimes it was fists, sometimes the soles of hobnailed boots, but as his father had been a military man and had never spared him the rod, it didn't bother him at all. There were other benefits to his military upbringing in Korea, namely his skill with blades. He'd been taught at an early age how to handle a bayonet. A sword, too. He was easily the best of all the new recruits- better even than the officers who trained him- and by the time of his passing out, six months later, he'd been promoted to _hei-cho_ , lance-corporal. He was allowed a few days leave to visit his tearful mother before the day came for his departure.

Assigned to the Manchuria-based Kwantung Army,H his unit, along with hundreds of others, bid their farewells to Yokohama by parading proudly through its cheering streets, their field packs strapped to their backs and their seven millimeter Arisaka rifles slung rakishly around their shoulders. For a brief moment, they'd all felt like heroes until they'd been frog-marched into the cast-iron belly of their transport ship. It was a grim experience below decks. They were crammed in like sardines and instructed to lie on their sides. Every hour they were allowed one turn but as for eating and defecating, they had to do it all where they lay.

It took a week to reach the Chinese port of Tientsin. From there, cattle trucks hauled them north as far as Harbin and from Harbin it was a two-week forced march to their infantry headquarters. And then? Nothing. The hectic pace of the trip dissolved into a routine of unremitting boredom. Endless patrols through the drab landscape looking for 'bandits'. They were always called bandits, though who they really were, Ueda had no idea. Then one day, his patrol was attacked. They followed the perpetrators back to a village of rude-looking huts and discovered the villains cowering under some sacks in a storehouse. Ueda's captain briefly interrogated the guilty before Ueda himself was called forward.

"Kill them!" the officer barked. "Then burn the place down!"

He'd never killed anyone before and couldn't stop his hands from shaking as the bandits- scarcely more than boys his own age- knelt before him awaiting death. He wondered if he had the stomach to pull the trigger but with his superior pacing up and down behind him, a Nambu automatic twitching irritably in his hand, what choice did he have?

In the end, it was all surprisingly easy, though he'd stood a fraction too close and allowed their brains to spatter over his tunic. The whole thing rather reminded him of slaughtering pigs, though there was an unexpected sense of pleasure in it. Was it the proximity of the act? The smell of fear in the whimpering victims? He couldn't work it out but, contrary to his expectations, the enjoyment of it never faded.

Then things changed. The ambushes became more sophisticated and more numerous. Suddenly, they were caught up in a real war and no one pretended any longer that the enemy were bandits. They were Mao's Communists, his route army known as the _hachiro_ , and they proved to be good fighters, too. The campaign to suppress them soon deteriorated into trench warfare. Ueda spent his days firing at an enemy he couldn't see and his nights listening to them scuttling like rats around no-man's land; yelling, goading, until one by one, his colleagues would lose their minds, peer over the trenches and pop, their heads would explode just like overripe fruit.

He did his imperial duty as best as he was able. He killed so many Chinamen, if their bodies could somehow be heaped up in front of the Emperor's Palace, he was sure they'd bury it. Yet when he'd eventually come home, eight long weeks earlier, there'd been no hero's welcome for him. No thanks, no garlands of flowers. Wherever he went, people shunned him, pretended he wasn't there. And no one wanted to give him a job, either. If it hadn't been for his brother, he'd have starved to death in the gutter. Like so many of the others.

Ueda sighed now and reached into his pocket for a couple of amphetamines. He took them sometimes to get through his double nightshift down at the fish market; they also helped when the past crept up and tapped him on the shoulder as it just had. The pills were effective but not as effective as the White Powder he'd used in China. They were even selling the stuff in Tokyo now the rest of the soldiers had started coming home. But though he, himself, had been accosted by the Koreans and the other lowlifes who'd been selling it, he'd always had the strength to say no. The Powder was part of his past; a place he didn't want to return to. As if to confirm the fact, he rolled up his left sleeve and examined his veins. The scabs were healing nicely. Chasing the Dragon, they called it. Ueda smiled grimly. It was the Dragon that chased you!

He stood up briefly, stretched and wondered whether he was well enough to go back out onto the street. Then he remembered his brother Hitoshi and once more his legs buckled.

Hitoshi had done his wartime service in New Guinea. He'd caught malaria and had been invalided out, at a time when the Army High Command still cared about the health of its fighting men. Back in Tokyo, choices were stark. Ueda's mother had been killed in a firebombing raid and Hitoshi had become just one more homeless ragamuffin in a city that was full of them. The only way to survive was to join the _yakuza_ and it was the _Kanemotoka_ i16 that Hitoshi had thrown his lot in with. They were the Korean gang that controlled the Tsukiji fish market and most of the port besides. By day, many of them worked in the market but by night, they hunted in wolf packs, laying down protection rackets in the port-side bars or stealing food from the godowns on the wharves. Their specialty was robbing anyone foolish enough to be abroad after dark. Thereafter the victims, frequently drunk, were carried across to the waterside and dumped into the bay like sacks of trash.

Yes, the _Kanemotokai_ were vicious and being Koreans, they hated the Japanese with a vengeance. Yet they made an exception with Hitoshi and they did so for two reasons. First, because he'd been born in Korea and could speak and read their language; second, because he'd taken the trouble to learn English. His quick wits so impressed Old Kanemoto that the gang boss put him in charge of operations and one of the things Hitoshi then did was to convince his boss that not all American soldiers were enemies; that there were brothers amongst their ranks, kindred spirits who, despite their GI uniforms and the loathsome Stars and Stripes on their shoulder patches, actually thought and acted like the _Kanemotokai_ themselves.

So it was that when Ueda was finally released from the Soviet camps and had made his way back to the homeland, there was a job ready and waiting for him in the fish market. It wasn't much but his brother told him to keep his head down, work hard and if he pleased Old Kanemoto, he'd get his chance with the gang.

That chance had come six days earlier. It was to be a straightforward exchange of goods down on the Yokohama docks: one hundred eighteen-gallon cans of gasoline that would fetch a small fortune on the black-market. Hitoshi had set the deal up with an American Longnose he'd done business with in the past. Ueda had been more than a little nervous but Hitoshi had set his mind at ease. "Don't worry, little brother! This is gonna be easy!"

A dozen of them had borrowed a launch from a contact in Kawasaki and, led by a rough-looking thug called The Snake, they'd set off on a cloudy but calm night for the rendezvous point, a wharf a few miles to the north of the port city. The plan was to tie up alongside a ketch belonging to a Korean friend of Kanemoto's, leaving the launch as a getaway in case anything went wrong. When the GIs had driven onto the pier right on schedule, Hitoshi had turned to Ueda and given him a playful little slap on the head. "You'll make some money out of this, younger brother," he'd promised. "Enough for some new clothes and even a whore, I'll wager!"

Indeed, it had all seemed ridiculously easy. They'd hidden quietly in the hold of the ketch until a lookout had given them the go-ahead. When Hitoshi had hauled himself over the side of the boat to set up a parley with his Longnose friend, Ueda recalled how he'd touched his older brother on the shoulder. "Don't you have a weapon?"

Hitoshi's eyes had just laughed at him. "What for? There'll be no problems!"

It was the last thing they ever said to each other. A few minutes later, they were given the order to unload the truck. But just as they swarmed over the side of the ketch; just as Ueda's feet hit the asphalt, there'd been sounds of a commotion further up the pier.

"It's a trap!" someone screamed. "Run for it!"

What happened next was a blur. Ueda remembered the moon disappearing behind a cloud, then saw The Snake turn and fire at a shape sprinting out of the darkness. The shape returned the compliment, a bloodcurdling wail rent the night sky and suddenly there was Hitoshi draped over a capstan with a bullet in his back!

"Help me, someone!" Ueda shrieked. "The fuckers have gone and shot him!"

But no one seemed interested, least of all The Snake. "To the launch quick!" he yelled.

"But what about my brother?"

"Dump 'im!"

"The hell I will! He's still alive!" Ueda cradled his brother in is arms, feeling his breath, warm against his cheek. He wanted to hold him, keep him safe but The Snake had other ideas.

"Leave 'im I said or, by the gods, you'll be next!"

Calling on two more brothers for help, he had Ueda dragged away but just before they tossed him into the ketch, the moon slipped out from behind a cloud and Ueda glimpsed a Longnose standing over his brother's body, an automatic gripped tightly in his right hand. He looked like the devil himself with his wild staring eyes and silvery-white hair.

"You murderin bastard!" he screamed and for the briefest of moments their eyes met.

Then the clouds rolled back, the barbarian disappeared and Ueda was manhandled onto the launch, his brain numb but his heart pounding for revenge.

§

"Hey you!"

Ueda had been so lost in his daydreaming he hadn't seen another man, short and thick-set, swaggering up the alleyway. He jumped up from the low wall as the interloper, wearing a grubby-looking cook's uniform and hefting a basket full of food scraps, closed him down with a menacing leer on his face.

"Whatcha doin' 'ere?" he hissed. "This 'ere's private property!"

"I aint doin' no harm," Ueda said. "I was just restin', is all."

"Well, do your restin' someplace else. This aint no bleedin' hotel!"

Ueda's hand flirted with the knife in his pocket; he was inclined to teach the fornicator some manners. But then he heard another voice and saw a second man coming after the first.

"Everythin' all right, Toshi- _kun_?"

"I was just tellin' this soldier trash to fuck off!" The first man had put down his load and was starting to roll up his sleeves. "Unless o' course he wants a piece o' me!"

"Don't worry, I'm goin'!" Ueda grunted. "But I got a good memory for faces, see? You'd better make sure you aint in the wrong place at the wrong time!"

And with his threat hanging in the chill morning air, he tossed his cigarette butt away and retraced his steps to the street. The shoppers were still there, crowding the sidewalks. If anything, their numbers had swollen. Ueda cursed each and every one of them before hunching his shoulders and shoving his way through the throng.

Though he tried to avoid them, his gaze kept returning to the plate glass store windows that stalked his every step. He paused outside one that was advertising a luxury condominium development down by the waterfront. It was the mannequins in the display that interested him most. They looked just like the American ones in the electrical appliance store further up the street, except their faces were oriental. There was an improbably long-limbed Japanese woman wearing a pair of pants that were so short, Ueda could almost see the cheeks of her buttocks. She had succulent breasts, too, and her teeth glowed with a virgin whiteness that the rest of her body belied. Her husband- for married couple they must be- had the same ecstatic smile chiseled into his lips. He was dressed in a fancy suit and was carrying a snappy brown leather brief case. There were some children, too, and happiness shone out of their eyes the way it never had for Kazuyoshi Ueda.

That's what he wanted, he decided enviously. A life like that. A payback for all the sacrifices he'd made. Then he chuckled to himself. It was all beyond his reach, wasn't it? And yet? A nice suit on his back, a beautiful girl on his arm, a bowl of ice cream at one of those ritzy joints he'd just walked past? If only he could have that, then he'd be someone, wouldn't he? Not just another remnant of the war, but really someone! He'd have to get out of the fish market, though. Put some distance between himself and the Koreans. What would he do for work? He needed a proper job making proper money and work like that was hard to find. He could start a little business, maybe; hawking imitation lacquerware to the stupid GIs. But that would require some start-up cash and there were only two ways to get that: steal it or gamble for it.

Gambling! Why hadn't he thought of it before? There were some _yakuza_ stalls not far away, just up by Yurakucho Station. He had a month's pay in his pocket, didn't he? Why not give it a chance? He'd been there many times before and, though he'd never actually won anything himself, he'd seen others win. And his past losses didn't mean that he couldn't win in the future. All he needed was for his luck to change. Just for a minute; just for a second. Then he'd be on his way!

§

He crossed under the Yurakucho Railroad Bridge and found the gambling stalls he was looking for in an empty lot, not far from the station. He noticed the two girls straight away. They were standing near a noodle cart looking for customers. The one in the red dress was stunning. She had tits like a _gaijin_. He was almost tempted to go up and ask her how much. A bit of _name-name_ under the bridge would be OK. A grope, even. Then he laughed at his own foolishness. Those girls wouldn't look at him, would they? It was the whites they wanted; the stinking _hakujin_ with their nylons and chocolate bars. He spat again. In the name of the gods, how his loins ached!

Over by the gambling stalls, a barker was strutting up and down, trying to attract customers. His perfectly round head was shaved to a stubble and he had the thickest neck Ueda had ever seen.

"Hello friend!" he rasped as Ueda drew closer. "We're always happy to welcome members of our brave armed forces. But only if they got the cash!" He chuckled hoarsely, his huge stomach juddering up and down.

"I don't need your charity, fat man!" Ueda pulled out the ten precious bank notes he'd been fingering in his pocket. They were damp from the sweat of his palms.

Once the fat man saw the cash, his tone changed. "A high roller, eh? OK, let's play!"

An awkward-looking youth was standing over a folding table that had three straw cups on it. He showed Ueda a small white soya bean then slowly, deftly he placed it under one of the cups. His hands passed and re-passed over the cups, as if casting some kind of magic spell over them.

"What do you say?" the fat man said. "Which cup has the bean?"

Ueda wasn't really sure. It had all happened too fast. "The middle one!" he guessed.

The youth turned up the cup. Nothing.

" _Chikusho_!"

"Bad luck, friend!" The fat man grabbed the bank notes off the table. "You wanna try again?"

Ueda unrolled two more notes. Again he bet, again he lost. He kept on losing. Finally, his temper snapped.

"That aint the same bean, you cheatin' fornicators! You bin switchin' 'em around!"

He lunged at the boy, determined to grab his money back, but the fat man had snuck up behind him and had his arms pinned to his sides. There was another man, too, that Ueda had only just seen. He was loitering against a nearby fence, peeling an apple with a flick knife.

"Steady now, Little Brother! You wanna do somethin' you might regret?"

Ueda shook his head. They had him cold.

"Then get the fuck outta here!" The fat man was about to kick him out into the street when he noticed the scabs on his veins. "Hello? What we got 'ere then? Did ya fight in China?"

"Maybe I did and maybe I didn't!" Ueda snarled back. "But either way, it's none o' your fuckin' business!"

"Feisty little bastard, aint ya!" The fat man tightened his grip. "You got a job?"

"Yeah, I got a job. Haulin' shit at the fish market. That's all a fightin' man's worth these days."

"That so? Then maybe this is your lucky day. Come wi' me!"

He dragged Ueda back under the railroad bridge and into the warren of slums on the far side of the main road. Presently, they came to a building with a tall iron chimney poking out from a mess of roof tiles. _Fukuyama Bathhouse_ a broken sign proclaimed. Next to it, was an old wooden house surrounded by a high block wall. A man wearing an aloha shirt was loitering by the entrance. The right side of his face was totally disfigured- from the black patch he wore over his eye to the withered birthmark that ran down to a twisted mouth. Ueda didn't like the look of him at all; he reminded him of the storybook pirates he'd read about as a kid. The fat man, though, was unfazed.

"Hey, One-eyed! Open the gate, will ya!"

The pirate called One-eyed did as he was told. "Who's your monkey friend, Saburo?"

"Another fuckin' war hero!" Saburo grumbled. "Where's Father?"

Ueda was shoved through the gate and into the forecourt of the house. Ahead, in the darkened lee of the porch, he could just make out a bald _kimono_ -clad figure tossing scraps of bread into a pond. Solid and stocky, the man had the face of a brawler. More interesting, though, was his neck. On the side of it, just below his jaw line, there was a cyst the size of a tangerine.

"Boss?" Saburo pushed Ueda forward, forcing his head down into a deep bow. "I found another one from China. In one of our gamblin' pens."

The bald man ignored Ueda; he was preoccupied feeding his carp. "You see them two, Saburo? The big black bastards?"

"Yes, boss."

"See how angry they get when I throw this bread just outta their reach?"

Ueda watched as the bald man tossed a few crumbs at a smaller gold-colored fish. The black ones darted across but too late; the gold fish had already gobbled them up.

"Sooner or later, them black fish will start to bite the gold'uns. Then they'll fight each other." The bald man let out a strange gravelly half-laugh. "They'll keep at it until the stronger one wins. Fish are greedy, Saburo. Just like people." The bald man looked at Ueda now, as if suddenly aware of his presence. "Who the fuck is this?"

"Kazuyoshi Ueda," Ueda said, setting his jaw at him. Immediately, he felt a sharp burning sensation in his left ear, as the brawler let fly a vicious right hook.

"You bin away so long you forgot your _keigo_? Your manners?"

"I'm s- sorry, Lord!" Ueda bowed lower. "I'm your- humble subject!"

"That's more like it!" The bald man fixed his narrow eyes on him. "I'm Obuchi, _oyabun_ of the _Sumidakai_.17 You 'eard o' me?"

"Y- yes, Lord!" The _Sumidakai_ were the Koreans' bitterest enemy.

"And you bin in China? Where?"H

"Manchuria, Lord. With the 21st, under General Kimura."

"Kimura, you say?" Obuchi's voice keened. "Were you in Nanking?"

"No, Lord. I didn't go out until the Fifteenth Year of Our Emperor. By then, Kimura, he'd bin moved north. We was posted above Harbin-."

"So you never met anyone called Obuchi? Makoto Obuchi?"

"Not as I remember, Lord."

"Too bad!" Obuchi peeled off another piece of bread and threw it half-heartedly at the pond.

"Pardon me, Lord-. Is he your son-?"

The bald man barely nodded his response. "He'd be about your age. It's bin three years since I heard from 'im."

"Many died at the hands of the communist pigs," Ueda said. "But not all. He could still be alive. In one o' the camps."

"You were in the camps?"

Ueda nodded. "When the war finished, some of us got left behind. The Soviets was comin' down from the north. We had nowhere to run."

"There are still others there? Left behind?"

"Thousands!"

Obuchi grunted. "You've given me a little hope, boy. Tell me, do you have work?"

"Yes, Lord. In the fish market but-."

"Tsukiji?" Obuchi's eyes turned to slits. "Then you work for that dung-beetle Kanemoto! Tell, me, do you run with his gang?"

"No, Lord. But my older brother does or at least he did. He was killed-."

"On a job?"

Ueda nodded bitterly. "Those fornicators left him to die. They treat their dogs better!"

"You must feel anger!" Obuchi tapped at his chest with a scarred fist. "Here. Inside. That anger can destroy a man, Ueda- _kun_ ; make you its servant. Unless it is eased-." The gang boss eyed him for a long minute. Then he said: "You wanna to work for me? Maybe even the score with that Korean scum?"

Ueda's heart began to race. He'd promised to avenge his brother's death. Could this be his chance?

"With all my heart, Lord. If I can be of service-!"

Obuchi laid a tattooed arm on his shoulder and forced him down onto his haunches. The cyst on his neck was so close now Ueda could see little hairs growing out of it.

"Look at that pond, boy! You see them two fish there? The black ones? Well, durin' the war, that pond was all mine. From Marunouchi to Yurakucho and on through the Ginza to Tsukiji- everythin' was run by the _Sumidakai_. We had the railway stations, the markets, the girls. Even the gamblin'. There weren't a club nor bar in the Ginza could operate without our say so-. Then that bastard Kanemoto moved in with his dog-eatin' filth! We lost many good men in the war that followed, but more than that, we lost our honor. Our self-respect-."

Obuchi glared bitterly at the carp circling in the pond below, then his fist flew into the water and settling on one of the big black fish he hauled it up before Ueda's startled face.

"One pond aint big enough for two big fish, Ueda- _kun_! Go back to your job; keep a watch on Kanemoto for me. Then, when the time's right, we'll crush 'em!"

With that, his pudgy fingers closed around the throat of the wriggling fish and he squeezed it and squeezed it until its eyeballs popped out.

CHARACTERS

MAP

GLOSSARIES

WEB

#### FOOTNOTES

16 _kai_ , lit: group; here 'Kanemoto's group'

17lit: the Sumida clan- a fictitious mafia gang named after the river that flows through Tokyo. _Oyabun_ is a mafia 'don'

# CHAPTER 11

IT WAS GONE midnight when Kazuyoshi Ueda finally staggered through the door. The rest of the gang had already made it back to the bathhouse and the drinking was well under way.

They'd all scattered in different directions when the police had arrived. He ran east for the bay, where he tossed his knife into a fishing junk that lay moored by the dockside. Turning, he made his way back into the heart of the city and when he came to the elevated levees of the Yamanote tracks, he turned again, this time following the narrow tradesmen's alleys that ran below the rails. When he'd seen the lights of Yurakucho Station winking at him in the distance, Ueda knew he was almost home. Yurakucho was Obuchi's turf. The _Sumidakai_ 's. He was safe at last!

The fat man Saburo had told him all about the bathhouse. Most people in the neighborhood had no bathrooms of their own and so paid to wash themselves there. It was Obuchi's wife that ran the business and her big ears made sure she knew every scrap of news from the streets around, news she passed on to her husband. And while she supplied the necessary respectability, Obuchi beavered away in the background. He had different matters to think about and the rear office was where they received his consideration. Over the years, the place had become the gang's headquarters; access was only through the laundry room and Obuchi's wife always made sure a guard was there, usually one of the wily old crones they hired to do the washing. Now it and the back office were overflowing with the raucous sound of drunken laughter.

"You shoulda seen The Monkey!" Saburo chuckled, wiping the corners of his mouth on his sleeve. "I thought he was gonna do the job all by hisself!"

"All that practice slicin' up Chinese turd-eaters!" One-eyed Saito said. "You did well findin' this one, Saburo, even if he does look like an ape!"

They roared with laughter as they clapped Ueda on the back; it made him cough but he didn't mind. In fact, he liked it. He liked being the center of attention but more than that, he liked the feeling of togetherness, of being one of the group. For the first time in many years, he no longer felt alone.

The attack on the Koreans had been flawless. He'd followed Obuchi's orders and kept his eyes and ears open at the fish market. It wasn't long before he'd heard of a gang meeting to take place in a small _yakitoriya_ ,18 a block or so from Tsukiji. It was Obuchi who'd decided everything. They were to stake out the bar and after Kanemoto's thugs had been drinking for an hour or so, Saburo and a few of the others would go in with their baseball bats and start working the joint over. Then they'd lure the dog-eaters outside where the rest of the _Sumidakai_ would be waiting for them. The Koreans had been momentarily blinded by the darkness of the street and a moment was all that Obuchi's men had needed.

Ueda hadn't seen much of his first victim. His knife had somehow found the man's throat and he'd collapsed to the ground, his windpipe gurgling like a boiling kettle. He couldn't remember much about the next two he'd killed, either; the drugs had taken hold of him by then and he'd been in a kind of frenzy. The fourth one, though, he'd never forget. He'd been The Snake, the very man who'd ordered them to leave his brother behind on the pier that night. He'd seen him trying to slip away from the fracas, and creeping up behind him, he'd forced his knife up through the dog-eater's rib cage. It was just as they'd taught him in the Army but easier. The Snake didn't put up much of a fight; it was like he was waiting to die. The knife slipped through his ribs like chopsticks through bean curd and blood spurted from his mouth as the steel blade pierced his lung. But it wasn't the sight of blood that Ueda enjoyed most, it was more the way The Snake's eyes had bulged just before death took him. The whole thing reminded him of Obuchi's fish.

The fight had been over in a matter of minutes. Ueda had taken four with his knife and Saburo had smashed the brains of two more with his bat. The fat man's strength was remarkable. Even in the Army, Ueda had never seen anyone so strong. He'd heard that Saburo used to fight in the _sumo_ ring and was caught taking falls for a betting syndicate. That would explain his size, he thought. The ox-like bulk of him.

Saburo poured him another drink now, the _sake_ was good, taking away the lingering bitterness of the amphetamines. The pills had helped with the fight; they'd made him feel strong, invincible. Now with the _sake_ , he felt he was flying!

"Congratulations, Monkey!" the fat man growled again. "You did well for us tonight!"

Ueda's mouth grinned back but, to tell the truth, he'd lost control of it; his lips were sliding around like a mess of worms in a tin can. It was hard to concentrate on what the others were saying, too. His mind kept straying back to the street, to the fight; he, with the knife in his hands, thrusting deeper and deeper into The Snake's flesh. It was as if he'd been fucking a giant pear.

"Brothers, quiet!" It was the boss Obuchi who'd stepped up onto a makeshift dais. He'd not been at the fight; Saburo said that protocol hadn't required it. "Brothers, tonight you restored our pride to us! A great wrong that was committed against the _Sumidakai_ has been righted. No longer do we have to hide in the shadows like street women. The Ginza is ours again and honor has been avenged. Now the Koreans will come beggin' like the dogs they are and pretend to make peace with us. And we'll pretend to accept it. Later, after they return to us what they stole, we'll finish the bastards off for good!"

The men cheered long and hard but once more the bald man held up his hands for silence.

"Brothers! We have a young lion in our midst, just back from the war. The Soviet pigs kept him in prison for four long years but now he's found a home at last. Bring The Monkey forward!"

They were all staring up at him now, beckoning him to come down from the ceiling.

"Do you want to join us, Monkey? Be one of us?"

"I am worthless in your sight, Lord!" Ueda babbled; he couldn't take his eyes off the lump on Obuchi's neck. "But if it pleases you, I'll accept this honor with all my heart!"

Someone shoved him closer to the _tatami_ where Saburo had lit some candles.

"Kneel here, opposite Father!" the fat man commanded.

Ueda sank before the _oyabun_ as Saburo handed each of them a cup of _sake_.

"Just take a sip of it, Monkey!"

When the cups were exchanged, Ueda swallowed another mouthful.

"There, it is done!"

With the completion of the simple ceremony, Obuchi stared down at him gravely, the damp ball of pus on his neck glowing orange in the candlelight. "You're one of us now, Monkey. Your duty is to this _ikka_ , your family- and to me, your _oyabun_ , your father. You'll honor and respect the _Sumidakai_. You'll obey my will at all times. If necessary, you'll even die for us. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Father!"

Obuchi lifted his gaze to embrace the gathering. "Brothers! These are hard times for Japan. The Longnoses stink up our streets and our leaders have lost all sense of honor. Those who should have committed _seppuku_ after the war are now linin' their pockets, collaboratin' with the Yankee filth! There's no sense of shame. It's as if we're livin' in an open sewer. Who will show others that the way of the _samurai_ , the path of _bushi_ , is still alive?"

"The _Sumidakai_!" Saburo shouted, pumping his fist.

"The _Sumidakai_!" they all yelled.

" _Banzai_!" Obuchi thundered, his hands rising to the heavens.

" _Banzai_!" they chorused as one. "May our Father live a thousand years! _Banzai_!"

It all sounded just like a battlefield to Kazuyoshi Ueda. He was still crouching on the _tatami_ as the raucous cheers ebbed and flowed over his head. He'd wanted to join in but his mouth had turned to rubber, so he just stayed quietly where he was and, staring up at the sac of pus that glistened on Obuchi's neck, he wondered how long it would take him to hack it clean off.

CHARACTERS

MAP

GLOSSARIES

WEB

#### FOOTNOTES

18a cheap drinking den selling grilled chicken

# CHAPTER 12

CAPTAIN JACK FUJIMOTO rolled up just as Jimmy Miller walked out of General Douglas MacArthur's Dai Ichi office.

"Hey, buddy. How did the briefing go?"

"OK, I guess. I could use a drink but first I need to see your Colonel Cullen."

"You'll be lucky. He's gone home."

"Already?" Miller cursed. "It'll have to be a message, then."

G-2 was back down on the second floor. They took the stairs. The place was quiet, apart from a duty sergeant sitting at the night desk. They walked into the departmental typing pool and Miller saw a Japanese lounging against a filing cabinet reading a document of some kind.

"Who's that guy?"

"Tsutomu Tanaka. He heads up the GHQ-Government Liaison Committee."

"And he just wanders around?"

"Pretty much. He's part of General Whitney's team. Cullen's office is through here."

It was a cramped little room that smelled of cheap aftershave. There was nothing much on the desk; a blotter, a metal in-tray.

"Why didn't you tell me about my predecessor, Jack?"

His friend's eyes went blank. "Todd Hayman? What's to tell?"

"He was killed."

"Yeah, but it has nothin' to with your case."

"You sure about that?" Miller pulled out his memo pad and scrawled the following:

_Colonel, Sorry to have missed you.  _ _Can you send Major Hayman's Red Rose case files over to CID first thing tomorrow?  _ _Thanking you, in advance,  _ _James Miller, Captain_

He underlined the words 'first thing' and left the note where Cullen would find it.

"About that drink," Jack said. "I thought we could go to the Officers Club-."

"Wherever," Miller said. "But first I need to stop in on CID. A Captain Peters runs it. You know him?"

"Old Pete?" Jack chuckled. "Who doesn't!"

§

They drove, Jack opting for his favorite G-2 pool car, a grey '47 Studebaker Commander. The Criminal Investigation Detachment was located in the Meiji Building, just six hundred yards from the Dai Ichi and further down Avenue A. It was a heavy, gothic-looking pile with gargoyles on the roof and intricate iron grilles fronting each window. Away on the other side of the street, lay the Imperial Plaza. Vast, flat and empty.

"I went to the labor rally yesterday," Miller said gazing across at it. "To check out those guys in your dossier."

"What did you think?"

"Tokuda and the labor man Suzuki seemed par for the course. The actor Iwasaki, though- he was a bit of a riddle. The crowd begged him to speak but he just sat there looking inscrutable."

"That's the game he's playing," Jack said. "We need someone to tear down the mask. Find out what he stands for."

"Someone like me?"

"It's your call."

Jack hung a right at the next lights, enabling him to approach the Meiji Building from the back. He pulled up outside two large green gates and honked his horn. The gates opened and they drove through.

"This here's the CID garage. You want a car, use one of these."

Just then, two burly MPs emerged from the building swinging their black leather nightsticks. They smiled at Jack, nodded gruffly at Miller, then climbed into a jeep and drove off. Miller gave an involuntary shiver when he saw them. Two just like them had broken his door down in Nanking in the small hours of the morning and frog-marched him off to the airfield.

"Those guys give me he creeps," he said.

"Yeah? Well you 'd better get used to 'em," Jack said. "There're forty more up on the second floor!"

He went off to pay his respects to the chief mechanic while Miller edged his way cautiously into the Meiji's rear entrance, probing for signs of life. He found them half-way down a dimly lit corridor: a battered-looking sign saying _CID_ Detail Office _._

It was an inauspicious start. Miller prodded open the door the office on the other side of it was full of bedding and drying laundry. Worse, it stank like a locker room. In one corner, there was a ping-pong table; in another, a few Japanese comic books lay strewn over a large table covered with dirty dishes. Surely this was the wrong place? Then he heard a tuneless whistling coming from a side annex. He went to investigate and there, with his feet up on an empty desk, was a tall gangly man in his late forties. He bore an uncanny resemblance to a dog: the long face, the drooping jaw, the sad bloodshot eyes. When he opened his mouth, Miller half expected a bark to come out.

"You lookin' for someone?" The dog had a copy of the Stars and Stripes in his left paw, the stub of a pencil in his right.

"Yes. Captain Orville Peters. Is that you?"

"It depends who wants to know."

"I do. My name's Miller." He took out his Special Investigator's ID and tossed it at the table. "I'm working a case for General MacArthur. I've been allocated your department for the duration."

Peters ignored the card. "Well, pardon me for not rollin' out the red carpet, your lordship but no one's told me diddly. 'Part from anythin' else, I'm rushed off my feet, as you can see."

"Doing the Daily Crossword?" Miller glanced over the man's shoulder and saw that he was wrestling with Seven Across. "Lackadaisical? Eight letters? Try 'indolent'."

It impressed the hell out of Peters. He was about to write it in until he realized Miller was taking a crack at him.

"Tell ya what," he snarled, "why don't you mind your own fuckin' business! When you got some authorization I might be able to spare you a few minutes. Right now, you're just stinkin' up my office so beat it!"

Miller clenched and unclenched his fists, trying hard to keep his temper. He failed. He darted for Peters' legs and shoved them off the table. The CID man teetered on one chair leg before miraculously regaining his balance.

"You fucker!" His lugubrious face descended into fury. Slowly, he stood up, uncoiling himself like a huge snake. When he was all through, he towered head and shoulders above Miller. "You wanna get into it?"

Peters may have been a giant but he was also as thin as a rake. Miller knew he could take him. He watched the other man circle the table, the Stars and Stripes rolled up in his left hand.

"You gonna use that or not? It sure as hell isn't fit for reading!"

And quite suddenly, Peters' morose face twitched into the semblance of a smile. "I know." He looked a touch wistfully at the weapon in his hand. "There aint nothin' else, unfortunately."

"Then how about doing a little work, instead?"

The other man shrugged and the belligerence in him evaporated. "There aint any work. There aint _supposed_ to be any work. I've even had the GHQ Public Relations Office over here runnin' congratulatory stories about it."

"What do you mean?"

"Dontcha see?" Peters went on. "As long as we got nothin' to do, it proves the Occupation's meetin' no civilian unrest-."

"The Japs are in love with Uncle Sam-."

"There you go!"

Miller frowned. "You mean they set up this office so's you can sit on your ass all day long?"

"It's your army, pal. You tell me!"

"You're not Army?"

"Fuck, no! I'm a policeman from Phoenix. Sure, I got the bars on my shoulder but that's just honorary. Half the so-called civilian experts here got ranks but it's all bullshit. For show, just like this place!"

Miller shook his head in disbelief. Here he was, unable to hang on to a pair of oak leaves, yet the GHQ brass were tossing commissions around like confetti.

"Life's a crock!" he moaned.

"So what's new?" Peters dumped his newspaper onto the table. "Come on. Let's go get some coffee."

§

A steaming urn was located in the corner of the Detail Office. The policeman poured out two cups, extra thick, extra black.

"To be honest, I heard about you," he confessed. "You're some hotshot come in to sort out Roth's and Whitney's mess."

"I don't know about the hotshot part," Miller said, "but you're right about the rest. I need some back up. I guess I'm in the wrong place."

"Now wait up! I didn't say I couldn't help you! I got a squad of Japanese police. Ten of 'em up from Osaka. Green as onions, mind, but they're keen. Better'n that, they're not corrupt."

"Where are these guys?"

"Out," Peters said evasively. "Workin' up a light sweat. They'll be back soon, though; chow's at eight."

"You mean they live here, in the Detail Office?"

"That's right."

Miller shook his head in disbelief. "Who else you got?"

"A couple of ATIS guys.19 They been around the block, know the score."

"And where are they?"

Peters shrugged. "Here and there. We also got three pool cars, forensic-."

"Forensic?" Miller perked up. "You got a dark room?"

"Yep." Peters led him down the corridor to a small annex. They had a job to get the door open. "Everythin's here."

Miller poked his head in. "But it's all boxed up!"

"Never had no cause to use it. Won't take but a couple o' days to set it up, though."

"And can you develop film from this?" Miller pulled out his prized possession, a miniature Minox camera he'd had since the war.

Peters grabbed at it and screwed a loupe into his eye socket. "Well, waddaya know! Stainless steel shell. Brass chassis-." He tapped the camera back. "See that? Made in Riga, 1940." The loupe dropped into his open palm. "You got one of the originals here, Miller! Worth a bundle on the black-market!" He sidled closer. "I can move it on for ya, if ya like-."

"You touch it and you're a dead man! So can you work with the negatives or not?"

"Piece o' cake!"

Miller couldn't resist a little smile. The place wasn't such a shambles after all. "Tell me, these police guys- do they speak English?"

"Their boss does. Assistant Inspector Mori. He aint much older'n them, though."

"And you can move them out of this place, so we can do a little detecting in here?"

"Maybe. But like I said, I'll need some written orders-."

"I'll get you your orders."

"Then we could be in business!" Pete Peters said.

CHARACTERS

MAP

GLOSSARIES

WEB

#### FOOTNOTES

19Allied Translator and Interpreter Section- a part of military intelligence. This was mostly staffed by Japanese-Americans

# CHAPTER 13

THE OFFICERS CLUB was a Spartan, high-ceilinged place with about as much atmosphere as a field kitchen. Still, a drink was a drink and Jimmy Miller desperately needed one. He and Jack ordered four beers and two whiskies, then fought their way to a corner table. The Club was having a busy night.

"I propose a toast," Jack said. "To friends reunited!"

"I'll drink to that!" Miller drained his beer and started in on the next one. "So what you been up to, buddy? How have you survived without me to wipe your ass?"

"You want the truth?" Jack laughed then shook his head. "Jeez, has it really been five years? We had some good times in Honolulu, didn't we?"

"The best. Remember that place we used to go to on Kona. What was it called?"

"The Kapahulu Inn."

"Yeah, that was it. Those girls were something else, weren't they? They nearly ripped my pants off!"

The beer flowed and so did the laughter and memories. Then they moved onto whisky and a quieter, more reflective mood overtook them.

"Tell me about your commission," Miller said. "When did you get the good news?"

"Two years ago, near as damn it. I'd been with Mac and Roth since The Philippines. When we got to Tokyo, Roth put me in charge of the G-2 office and promised me a promotion. It took a year to get it through the system, me bein' a _nisei_ 20 _ _ an' all. But he was as good as his word." Jack peered deep into his whisky. "I reckon the wheel's turned full circle, Jimmy. The army's finally paid up!"

"And it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy!"

Miller hadn't meant it to sound jokey but with all the bitterness inside him, it came out that way. Half-assed. But Jack's account of his promotion sounded half-assed, too. Was there really a Wheel of Fortune out there? Did Jack get his rank because Miller had lost his? Or was it all random; just another piece of chaos in a world full of the stuff? It sure as hell had nothing to do with desserts or natural justice. Not in this man's army. Fight well and they kept putting you in the front line. Fuck up and they sent you to the back, out of harm's way with three square and all the tailor-mades a man could smoke. At the end of the day, you still got your campaign medals and you got to keep your life into the bargain. So why did The Doberman give Jack his bars? Because he deserved them? As a _nisei_ sergeant, he'd already crawled to the top of the pile; there weren't going to be any better offers coming along. Roth could have kept Jack on a string and saved himself some ranking points. It didn't make any sense to Miller but then he was feeling a little drunk. Drunk and angry.

"So what happened at the briefing?" Jack probed now. "This Red Rose business?"

"More question than answers," Miller grimaced. "Roth and Whitney went at it tooth and nail. Roth blames the commies and labor people, Whitney thinks it's the rightists."

"Par for the course then. They never agree. Truth is, they hate each other."

"Yeah? What's the problem?"

"How long you got?" Jack drained his glass and flopped back into his chair. "OK, the story goes like this. Roth got the G-2 job back in '42. Mac was in Australia puttin' together his team to retake the Pacific. His Chief of Staff at the time was a guy called Sutherland and this Sutherland couldn't stand Roth; got him sidelined all the time. Just after GHQ was set up here in '45, Sutherland got caught in a scandal involvin' some dame. He lied to Mac about it but the Old Man somehow got the goods on him."

"Roth supplied them?"

"For sure. Whatever he gave Mac, it killed off Sutherland. Funny thing is, Roth was expectin' Mac to show a little gratitude; give him Sutherland's job."

"But Whitney got it instead?"

"His appointment came right out of the blue. He was an old lawyer pal from Mac's Manila days. A regular on the dinner party circuit but nothin' more."

"So now Roth won't work with Whitney, either?"

Jack nodded. "That service elevator we used in the Dai Ichi tonight. It was installed to service those two guys- so they can come and go without bumpin' into each other-."

Miller shook his head in disbelief. "And how does our favorite colonel fit into all this?"

"Joe Cullen? Roth wants him to take over the department. Word on the street is that The Doberman's got health problems. Heart trouble. He keeps trying to retire but Mac won't let him go. He doesn't believe Cullen can fill his shoes."

"So Roth puts Cullen in charge of the Red Rose case, giving him a chance to earn his spurs?"

"That's about it."

Miller nodded, starting to get the feel of how things worked at G-2.

"Fill me in about this Hayman guy, Jack. Cullen says he was killed over money."

"He gambled. Poker. Got in over his head. He used to trawl through here on a Friday night, tryin' to get guys to spot him a little cash. We did at first but he never paid it back. In the end, he started usin' loan sharks."

" _Yakuza_?"

"Who else? Tell the truth, I was probably one of the last people to see him alive. We were havin' a drink just over there- talkin 'bout some G-2 business. About nine o'clock, he suddenly downs his beer sayin' he's gotta meet this guy at Yurakucho Bridge. Somethin' about rollin' over some dough he owed."

"Cullen investigated it?"

"Kind of. A bunch of us went down to the Bridge; spent a coupla days shakin' down the locals but they wouldn't talk. Then Hayman's body turns up in the Bay. Strangled is what the pathologist said. Poor old Cullen was in a real state. He was bankin' on Hayman solvin' the case for him, make him look good in front of MacArthur. Then it all fell apart."

"I know the feeling." Miller said gloomily "So what sort of a guy was he, this Hayman?"

"Big redhead from Arkansas. Six three or four. Had the bullshit to go with it, too." Jack's mouth tightened a fraction. "I hated the bastard, tell the truth of it. He was a racist; thought _nisei_ should stick to being non-coms. He was good at his job, though. Can't deny it. He spoke Japanese, too, after a fashion."

"And he was working the case by himself?"

"Pretty much. Only-."

Jack never got to finish as a loud braying sound drifted in from somewhere left of the bar. The effect on Miller was electrifying.

"Sonofabitch! Who the hell's that?" He sprang to his feet and made for the mule-like laughter as if he were tracking a bear.

Jack was right; there _was_ a side room and four men were engaged in a particularly animated game of Five-card Draw. The one with his back to Miller started to bray all over again.

"There's your twenty bucks and I'll see you!" the man scoffed.

"I knew it!" Miller began to advance on the card-player but Jack touched his arm.

"Easy, Jimmy! That guy's an air force colonel. He can make trouble for you-!"

"The hell he will!" Miller grabbed the man's sleeve. "Where's that ace, you cheating bastard!"

The room fell silent. The accused paused, placed his cards face down on the green baize and slowly stood up even as the other players began to edge away from the table. He wasn't a frightening specimen. Mid-fifties and short, he wore a pair of black-rimmed spectacles perched high on top of his balding pate. But he had a touch of the bulldog about him and, drawing himself up to his full five feet five, he turned and said:

"Well, if it aint Jimmy Miller!"

"Buck Buchanan!"

They embraced gleefully.

"You young scamp!" Buck declared. "What you doing in this joint? This here's for officers!"

"I'm hanging on by fingernails!" Miller admitted.

They embraced all over again then Buck took a long critical look at him. "What the fuck's happened to your hair? You like a goddam zebra!"

"Better than no hair at all!"

The older man started to laugh: a deep growling sound that began in the pit of his stomach, gurgled up his windpipe and came out of his mouth like an express train.

"Jeez, but it's good to see you, Jimmy! I've missed your big mouth! How long you been in town?"

"A week. I'll tell you about it later. You look busy."

"Friday night game!" Buck shrugged apologetically. "What can I say? Old habits-."

"You still winning?"

"If you can't win," Buck winked, "you shouldn't play. What the hell you doing in Tokyo anyhow?"

"A big case has come up. I got chosen to solve it."

"They picked the right man, then."

Miller thanked his old friend for his support and they promised to meet up again soon, whereupon the air force colonel went back to his game and Miller and Jack headed for the door.

"Who's he?" Jack said when they reached the parking lot.

"A-2.21 We were in China together."

"He seems like a nice guy. For a colonel."

"He's the best!" Miller said. "Kinda looks like a cab driver, doesn't he? But don't be fooled. He's the sharpest guy I ever met!"

CHARACTERS

MAP

GLOSSARIES

WEB

#### FOOTNOTES

20 _Nisei_ is a second-generation Japanese immigrant to the United States. Most made their way from Hawaii (where their parents had emigrated from Japan) to California

21Staff designation for air force military intelligence

# CHAPTER 14

THE NEXT TIME Jimmy Miller went back to CID he had the authorization from General Whitney's office that Captain Orville Peters had requested. The rest of the day they worked up a plan to convert the underused facility into a functioning police department. By five o'clock they'd finished.

"You fancy a beer?" Pete said.

"No. I've got to go over to the Dai Ichi to see Joe Cullen about the Hayman files. I was expecting them today."

"Well, good luck," Pete said mournfully. "I doubt you'll get any cooperation from that fucker."

"We'll see."

§

Contrary to Pete Peter's gloomy predictions, Colonel Cullen seemed happy to see him.

"Why, Captain Miller! How are you settling in? Can I offer you coffee?"

"No, I'm good, thanks. I just came about the files. You got my note?"

"I certainly did. I was expecting to get them to you today but it seems they were moved down to the basement store shortly after Hayman died. The Red Rose operation had come to a temporary halt and well, we don't have room up here to hold on to dormant paperwork." He waved his arms around his tiny little office as if to offer testament to the fact. "Captain Brady of the Quartermaster's Corps is in charge-." Cullen glanced at his watch. "It's late but I could send Captain Fujimoto down there to follow it up-."

"No, I don't want inconvenience anyone. Just send the stuff over tomorrow, if you would."

"Of course." Cullen shot him an unctuous smile and Miller wandered away wondering whether Pete Peters had the colonel pegged all wrong.

§

"You say he was pleasant and helpful?" Pete asked the following day. "That doesn't sound like the guy I know."

"Whatever. He's promised the stuff today."

Pete gave a big shrug and they set to work on the new CID office. The day would be spent setting up a forensic lab and a dark room from the unpacked boxes that had been stuffed into the storeroom. They got it all finished by four thirty. Then the phone rang. It was Cullen.

"Captain? I have an update on that Hayman business. I've just heard from Captain Brady. Apparently they had a flood down in the basement a couple of months back. A typhoon that blew in. A lot of the stuff has been moved around down there. I gather some of it was even destroyed by the water-."

Miller heart missed a beat. "You mean the Red Rose stuff has gone?"

A girlish laugh crackled down the line. "No, nothing so dramatic! I'm sure they've just misplaced it. Wait a little longer. It will sort itself out."

Pete confirmed the flood story so Miller just sighed and headed back to the Press Club for a drink and dinner. The Detail Office came together on the third day. The Osaka police detachment was moved out of the main room and into three of the five interview rooms, leaving two for interrogation work. A small side room had even been found for Miller's personal use though he'd remonstrated long and hard about it.

"You're the boss, Jimmy!" Pete Peters insisted. "And a boss gotta have an office!"

By five they'd just about completed everything. They stood around drinking coffee, admiring their handiwork.

"What d'ya think?" Pete said.

"Good." Miller was more than satisfied. He particularly liked the overlarge wooden conference table Pete had scrounged from the Military Police section upstairs. It was big enough for the whole team to sit around. "One more thing. I want two or three chalkboards set up in that corner. When the paperwork starts to come in, we need a place to display it. The whole team has to know what's going on. Talking of the team, where the hell are they all?"

The bloodhound snuck back into Pete Peter's face. "Here'n there," he said vaguely.

"Yeah? Well I want to see them all in this office first thing Monday morning. Understand?"

"If you say so." Pete poured himself some more coffee, seemingly anxious to change the topic of conversation. "Those Hayman files showed up yet?"

"No."

"Takin' forever, aint it?"

"I guess it's the flood. You said so yourself."

"I said there _was_ a flood. I never heard about stuff gettin' lost, though. Tell ya what, I know the guy in charge. Brady. Let me give him a call." He disappeared into Miller's side office and was gone about ten minutes. When he came back his expression was thunderous. "Brady says he aint heard from G-2 in weeks. Not only that, they never sent any stuff down to the basement. Cullen's been snowin' you, Jimmy!"

"The bastard!" Miller grabbed his fedora from the hat stand and headed for the door.

§

It was dark when he reached the Dai Ichi. There was a good deal of commotion at the well-lit front entrance but the side street was deserted. Miller unlocked the metal door the way Jack had shown him a few days earlier and made his way up the stairs to G-2. He was just rounding the corner by the typing pool when someone coming the other way marched straight into him.

"Oh, do excuse me!"

The English was bookish, stilted. Miller blinked and recognized Whitney's government liaison man, the Japanese who'd been there the day of his briefing. What was his name? Tanaka?

"I'm sorry. My fault!" Miller touched the brim of his fedora and walked on.

Cullen wasn't in the office but Jack was. His friend was at his desk, working on some papers.

"Jimmy! What you doin here?"

"Looking for the colonel."

"He's somewhere around. What's it about? Maybe I can help?"

"The Hayman Files. He keeps promising to send them over but they never arrive."

"Ah!" Jack looked awkwardly at the floor.

"'Ah'? Is that all you can say?" Miller's gaze clamped itself onto the wrought iron cage behind Jack's shoulder and the sign that said _Records Office No Unauthorized Entry_. "You sure they're not back there?"

"I don't think so. I-."

His friend didn't finish. Someone had just come into the room and the cloying smell of cheap aftershave told Miller who it was.

"Well, well. Colonel Cullen! Just the man I want to see!"

The colonel flashed him a Clark Gable Special. "And how are you today, Captain Miller? Making headway?"

"You know damn well I'm not! I'm still waiting for those Hayman Files-."

"I believe I told you about that. We're trying to locate them-."

"The flood in the basement? That's a crock, colonel and you know it. There never were any G-2 files down there. The Quartermaster told CID himself!"

"Did he really? We must have our wires crossed." Cullen loitered cockily in the doorway, peeling off an expensive-looking pair of calfskin gloves. Then he pulled a pack of Chesterfields from his pocket and lit one. "Take my advice, Miller. Start from scratch. I've already handed you a very detailed dossier-."

"I'm not talking about the goddam dossier!" Miller advanced on him. "General Roth promised me those files. Now you either give them to me or I'm going over your head!"

Cullen bridled at the threat. "You don't have that authority!"

"No?" Miller snapped out his Special Investigator's card and shoved it under the colonel's nose. "This says I can do what I like and if you don't start to help me out, colonel- and fast- I'll have you arrested and sent over to CID. We've got some cells over there. Nice damp ones."

A spark of hatred flickered through Joseph Cullen's hazel-colored eyes. He turned and padded away to the window. Miller waited for him to buckle. It didn't take long.

"That list of Red Rose murders in the dossier-. Major Hayman had a file on each of them. They- they've all disappeared."

Miller couldn't believe his ears. "Disappeared? When? How?"

"Hayman took the files home every weekend." It was Jack who was speaking now. "He signed them out on Friday afternoons and signed them back in again on Monday mornings, except the weekend he was killed they never came back-."

It didn't make any sense to Miller. "But how come he was allowed to take those files out of the building? Surely they were classified?"

Jack stood there fidgeting, not wanting to answer. Cullen answered for him.

"I gave him permission to take them away."

"You did? And why was that?"

"He asked me; said it was slowing him up having to come in all the time."

"And this happened- what? Once, twice?"

"Half a dozen times. Maybe more."

"You're saying you repeatedly broke G-2 regulations?"

"You don't understand!" Cullen hissed. "You come waltzing in here with your rule book and your fancy Special Investigator's pass. We were under terrible stress! General Roth was ordered to get the murders cleared up in double quick time; General MacArthur was pressing him and he was pressing me. Hayman thought he had a lead; he wanted to run with it. I said go ahead. So, yes, he took the files home with him but there was no harm done. They always came back."

"Does MacArthur know they've gone? Roth?"

Cullen bit his lip. "Not MacArthur. I had to tell General Roth in the end."

"And what did he say?"

"He was understanding but said I'd have to take responsibility if the truth got out."

"He was prepared to hide the truth?"

"Not in so many words. He said we should begin an investigation into it and as long as the case was open, he wasn't obliged to report it."

"He threw you a life line?"

"Yes."

"And the files? Did they turn up in your investigation of Hayman's death?"

"We believe they disappeared into the bay with the body."

"You _believe_?" Miller scowled across at the colonel, hating everything about the man; his Clark Gable smile, his calfskin gloves. But most of all he hated his incompetence. "We are left with nothing, then?"

"Not exactly-." Cullen gently knocked the ash off his Chesterfield. "Just before he died, Hayman said something about an ID card he'd found. Out on the tracks, where one of the Red Rose victims was murdered. It belonged to a union official, I believe. He was following that up."

It wasn't much but it was better than nothing.

"I'd like to go out there," Miller said. "Look around."

"Be my guest. But Captain Miller-." There was a touch of unease in Cullen's voice now. "You won't tell General MacArthur about this? About Hayman and the files?"

"You scratch my back, colonel," Miller said. "And I might scratch yours!"

CHARACTERS

MAP

GLOSSARIES

WEB

#

# CHAPTER 15

"UDON _!_ " THE LEATHERY voice bellowed. "Only ten yen a bowl! Who will buy my udon?"

Hidekazu Ogawa was a small scrawny-looking noodle vendor in his late sixties. He had narrow furtive eyes and a shock of lank hair that he wore crammed under a moth-eaten hat. The hat had once been white but now was of no color at all. The noodleman took it off and contemplated it. As his hat had gone, so had his life.

Ogawa kept his noodle cart under Yurakucho Bridge. He slept there, too; spent most of his waking moments there, and those others who also dwelled under the Bridge were, for the most part, his friends. Sandwiched between Tokyo's Marunouchi and the Ginza, it was a prime site for attracting office staff and shoppers, and Hibiya Park wasn't far away, either. True, the Bridge wasn't the most pleasant of places to lay one's head; there were often thieves and other vermin trawling through there. It was noisy, too, what with the crows and pigeons roosting under its steel beams and the trains endlessly rumbling and crashing overhead. Yet for those that lived there, that plied their trade in the shadow of its red brick piers, it had never once let them down. It kept the fierce summer heat off their backs and protected them from the drenching squalls of the autumnal typhoons. It sheltered them in winter, too, when the bitter northerlies fluted through its arthritic frame and the snowflakes came dancing out of the sky. That was when he liked it best, Ogawa decided. When it was warm and toasty with a brazier at his side and the comfort of a cheap bottle of liquor shared between friends-.

He shook his head as he caught himself reminiscing about it all. "This will never do!" he chided. "I got a business to run!" And he went back to checking the contents of his cash box. It had been another profitable day for him: Fridays were always busy but Sundays were even better. That was when people flocked into the Ginza's golden mile, to gawk at the fancy American goods on display in the department stores. They came to look and to dream but there was nothing wrong with that. Ogawa had his own dream, of renting one of those premium lots over by the station. True, the _Sumidakai_ charged twenty percent tribute for them but a man could make more over there in a day than he could under the Bridge in a week. The trouble was the _atamakin_ \- the down payment. He simply couldn't get his hands on that kind of money.

" _Oi_! Ogawa!"

He looked up to see the man everyone called Blackface hobbling along on the other side of the road. Blackface Usumi's shoeshine concession was on the far side of the Bridge but he spent most of his time limping around talking to people. There wasn't much going on in the streets he didn't know about and this knowledge had, over the years, lent him an aura of power. There were few Bridge dwellers who didn't accept that- to all intents and purposes- Blackface was their leader.

This feeling had strengthened as the result of two events that had happened earlier that year. The first was back in the spring when a fortuneteller who'd set up his booth under the Bridge had fallen foul of the shoeshine boy. Ogawa never found out the truth of it but Blackface had taken an instant dislike to the clairvoyant, claiming a run of bad luck he'd had with municipal lottery tickets had been the result of the other man's divine meddling. It was Blackface who'd organized the petition, insisting the fortuneteller was possessed by an evil water sprite, and it was this slur that had eventually driven him away. Yet this had been nothing compared to the time last summer when those from GHQ had descended locust-like upon them. Army, police, White-hats; there'd been dozens of the fornicators and they'd all been looking for the _gaijin_ giant with the red hair. Apparently this foreign devil had gone missing, believed murdered, and the _gaijin_ police suspected the street people of the crime. Blackface had been so outraged he'd forbidden anyone to cooperate with them. "Remember the fortuneteller!" he'd warned everyone. "And make sure it doesn't happen to you!"

It had been a defining moment for Ogawa. He realized that Blackface Usumi could very quickly become his enemy if he ever managed to get on the wrong side of him. So even though he'd seen the GHQ man hobnobbing with a loan shark who sometimes ate at his cart, Ogawa had obeyed the shoeshine boy's mandate to the letter and had kept his mouth clamped firmly shut.

Eventually, the White-hats and others had given up and had wandered back to where they'd come from. But the matter hadn't ended there. For weeks afterwards, trade suffered as regular customers, scared by the brouhaha, had given the Bridge a wide berth. It caused a lot of hardship and Ogawa knew where the blame lay. With Blackface himself. Hadn't the whole _gaijin_ incident simply been the clairvoyant's revenge on the Bridge people for throwing him out? This wasn't just Ogawa's opinion, either. There were plenty of others who agreed with him but not one of them had the courage to broach the matter with the shoeshine boy. So that's where matters had rested. Blackface, his status enhanced, continued to limp around the place- gleaning a little gossip here, spreading more there- and everyone else continued to welcome him, an effusive smile on their lips but no little trepidation in their hearts.

Ogawa stood there now, watching him shuffle on his way and, by degrees, his attention returned to his mobile kitchen. The water in his vat was starting to bubble nicely. He threw in a fresh batch of noodles and once more his mind drifted back to those premium lots by the station. Was he being too greedy to want a better future, however short-lived it might prove to be? Ogawa didn't think so. But the problem was the money. Where would it come from?

Something made him look across the road to the other side of the Bridge. The two whores were back; he could see their cigarettes glowing in the half-light.

" _Oi_!" he yelled in his leathery voice. " _Oi_ , you two! Won't you try some noodles?"

"Who has time to eat?" the taller one in the red dress griped. "Time's money!"

"I'll feed you for nuthin! How 'bout that?"

The two girls exchanged words then slowly crossed the road. Ogawa wiped the wooden board that served as a counter and gave them a genial smile. "Welcome to my humble establishment!" He bowed melodramatically. "Won't you make yourselves comfortable?"

They ducked under the faded awning and sat down on a pair of rickety stools. The lights from his lanterns picked out their young, drawn faces. Little more than children, he thought wistfully. But beautiful, at least the taller one was.

"So what's the catch?" The taller girl's lip was frozen in an angry sneer.

"There aint no catch!"

"So you say!" She pulled out a pack of Pall Malls and lit one.

"American tobacco?" Ogawa's eyes boggled. "By all the gods!"

"So it's the cigarettes you want? I might have guessed it!"

"I said I'd feed you for nuthin!" the old man snapped. "It's the hand of friendship I'm offerin' and you'll need all the friends you can get if you're to survive on these streets!"

The girl eyed him icily for a moment then her face broke into a smile of truce. "OK. My name's Eri and this is Yoko."

"And I'm Ogawa, proprietor of this emporium!" He gestured expansively at his run-down eatery. "Now how 'bout some hot tea? I see the wind's shifted to the north today. It'll be a cold winter, see if I aint wrong!"

Eri made herself at home but the other girl- the one called Yoko- seemed nervous.

"What's wrong, Little Sister?"

"It's her baby," Eri said. "She's left it over there."

"She's done what?" Ogawa scolded. "Bring it here, at once!"

Yoko hurried across the road and came back clutching a cardboard box. Inside, was a small mound covered with a grubby blanket. It was crying.

"Let me see it!" Ogawa took the box and peered into it. "It's so small! Is the child well?"

"I- I think so!" Yoko stammered.

"Then it must be hungry. Will it eat a little soup, do you think?" He pulled the blanket down a little further, the better to see the crying infant. "What's this? It's-!"

"Black!" Eri said contemptuously. "Yes, a little black Japanese baby, a gift of the United States Armed Forces." She shoved her face closer to his. "What do you think of that, old man? You see, we _panpan_ 22 _ _ are the New Democrats. We accept all customers, regardless of race!"H

Ogawa eyed her cautiously. She was bitter, he thought, but defiant, too. It burned in her eyes like a white-hot fire.

"I, too, am a New Democrat!" he said prodding a shriveled finger at his nose. "And I don't judge others! Let's eat!"

§

Eri scooped up the last of the noodles before placing her chopsticks carefully across the empty bowl.

" _Gochisosama_! Thank you for the meal, grandfather! It was delicious!"

"'Course it was!" the old man beamed. "I know my trade if I says so mesself! So how 'bout you two? Where ya from?"

"Yoko's an _edoko_ ," Eri said. "Local. I'm from Chiba. We met at Tokyo Station in the summer. Yoko was working the Marunouchi side. She helped me a lot. We used to come here sometimes but business was better over there until-." She paused and stared down at her long, red fingernails.

"Eri had a fight with the _yakuza_." Yoko explained.

"The _Ozukai_?"

"She wouldn't pay them."

"Why should I?" Eri said defiantly. "They're just scum!"

Ogawa wagged an admonishing finger at her. "There are rules you must obey, Younger Sister. Even on the streets. How old are you two, anyway? Eighteen? Nineteen? You should both be home, takin' care o' your grandparents!"

"So that's it!" Eri sneered. "I knew there was a catch to all this! A free meal, you said? Now comes the lecture, and we have to sit here and listen to it!"

The noodleman scowled across at her. "You're quick to anger, Eri- _san_. I've met a lot of street girls in my time. A lot of _yami no onna_. They see the fine clothes and the make-up and all the American soldiers. They think they can make easy money and find a husband into the bargain! It's just a dream, child! Don't be fooled! Most girls fall into drugs and end up working for the _yakuza_. Some disappear altogether-." He said it almost as an afterthought. "Take my advice and go home."

"Home?" Eri scoffed. "What home? Yoko lives in a tin shack with no water. Her brothers and mother were killed in the war and she has an alcoholic father who beats her whenever he can get out of bed. Now there's the baby to look after. Who will give her a job, eh? No one, that's who! There are hundreds of thousands of girls like her. And me." She lit up another cigarette, her lips snatching angrily at it. "Anyway, what's wrong having a nice dress; feeling that the world is yours, even if only for a day? It's better than nothing." She stared fiercely at Ogawa. "I don't see why we should feel any shame. These are the choices your generation left us with. Yours and my father's!"

A sense of guilt drifted through Ogawa like stale cigarette smoke. They only wanted the same as him, after all.

"Look, let's not fight," he said gruffly. "Do what you want. But this business with the _yakuza_ , you gotta be careful, that's all. It's not just Tokyo Station and the  _Ozukai_. The whole city's divided up by the gangs. We all 'ave to pay 'em!"H

"Even you?"

"You think they'll show an old man any kindness? Hah! If you don't come up with their tribute they'll stop you from workin'. I bin payin' off the police for five years-."

"What do you mean?" Yoko said.

"We all have to belong to this organization, see? You register through the nearest police station. They send the _yakuza_ around to collect. I hear the gangs keep a third and two thirds go to the cops. Politicians are in on it, too. They all get their piece of us!" Ogawa turned and spat on the broken sidewalk.

"But the police are supposed to protect us from that filth!" Eri said.

"You obviously don't come from Tokyo, child. Police, _yakuza_. Hah!" Ogawa spat again. "Things have gotten even worse since the _Sumidakai_ \- that's the gang what controls these streets- since they ran the Koreans off. They got extra expenses, they say. Keepin' us safe from the dog-eaters!" He pulled wearily on his cigarette, holding the smoke deep in his lungs.

"Will we have to pay?" Yoko asked timidly.

"Not the police. You'll have to pay the _Sumidakai_ , though. They'll demand ten per cent a week. That's the goin' rate."

"But how do they know how much ten per cent is?" Eri asked.

"They know. There'll be someone watchin' you, seein' how many times you come and go. You got a room?"

"We sometimes use the Aloha Love Palace."

Ogawa knew the place. It was little better than a rat hole. "They have all the hotels staked out. They'll know how many clients you've had and if they don't, they'll guess. My advice is pay. You can still make a livin'."

Eri stubbed out her cigarette. "Looks like there's no escape, then. Come on, Yoko! We'll just have to work a little harder!"

He watched the two girls saunter across the street and take up their places in the shadows of the Bridge. Later, when he next looked over, they'd both gone. A couple of GIs had probably taken them. They were nice girls, he thought, and they'd be popular for a while, as long as they kept their youth and their looks. The short one reminded him so much of his daughter, Yumi. How many years ago was that? Four? Yes, four. And the police never did find her.

CHARACTERS

MAP

GLOSSARIES

WEB

#### FOOTNOTES

22 _panpan_ : whores

# CHAPTER 16

"SO WHY THE hell didn't you tell me? About the Hayman files?"

Miller and Jack were back at the Officer's Club sitting in the same corner they'd occupied three or four days earlier. This time, though, the bar was empty and the mood at the table glacial.

"Cullen had me in a hole!" Jack stammered. His eyes were everywhere but on Jimmy Miller's scowling face. "He told me to keep my mouth shut. Said if anyone found out about it, he'd be for the chop and if he went so would I-."

"You were just following orders then?"

"That's right!" Jack was jutting his chin now, managing a little bravado. "Even so, it won't save me, will it? Not if the shit hits the fan. I might even lose my bars!"

"So?"

"Then I'd be right where you are. With a chip on my shoulder the size of the Golden Gate Bridge!"

The accusation nearly blew Miller off his chair. "You bastard! What the hell do you mean?"

"Well, it's true aint it? You _did_ get busted. I seen it in you file!"

"Hah, so you been poking around my service record! I'm surprised you haven't lost it!"

The comment hit Jack right where Miller had intended, a couple of inches south of his solar plexis. The two of them sat glowering at each other, their beers warming from the anger spilling out onto the table. Then Miller made the first conciliatory move.

"Look I'm sorry, okay? I didn't mean to say that. It- it was a cheap shot."

"I guess I'm sorry, too," Jack shrugged. "Only I wish it was you who'd told me first. About gettin' canned. You think I wanted to find out from a lousy 201?"23

"I _was_ going to tell you!" Miller remonstrated. "That first drink at the Nomura. But you were so full of yourself, your promotion. How the hell could I?"

"You could tell me now?"

Miller looked deep into his friend's eyes and saw the wounds there. Wounds he'd unintentionally inflicted. "You sure you want to know?"

"'Course I wanna know!"

"Very well." He lit up a Lucky, punching the smoke deep into his lungs. "After we split up in Hawaii they sent me to China. Yenan- The Dixie Mission."24

"I heard of it. A multi-service op, right? In Mao's back yard?"

Miller nodded. "The Chicoms25 helped us track down the Japs, infiltrate their lines, sabotage them. But they weren't really interested in the fight. The writing was on the wall for Tojo's boys and Mao's real enemy was Chiang; he preferred to keep his powder dry. To cut a long story short, the Joint Chiefs wanted Mao and Chiang to bury the hatchet- form a government of unity- but Mao refused and begged Uncle Sam to stop supporting Chiang. Our CO- most of the team actually- agreed with him. It embarrassed the hell out of Washington. When Joe McCarthy got hold of it, he stood up in the Senate and called us all pinkos. When the mission folded, most people got canned but not me. They hadn't finished with me yet." And he went on to tell the story he'd told so many times before. How he'd been sent to Nanking to work on a crazy-assed plan called Operation Willow and had paid the price for it.

Jack listened incredulously, then he said: "Who were the assholes behind it all?"

"I never found out though I turned up enough stones. You remember the War Department dissolved the OSS26 in '45? It was a big mistake. The plans for the CIA had yet to take off so what emerged were dozens of splinter organizations, fringe intelligence outfits led by colonels trying to outplay each other. Each of them knew the party was about to end and, when it did, they'd be out of a job." Miller stubbed out his cigarette. "Whatever, Operation Willow died a death. It was an embarrassment and now no one will admit it ever existed. But it did, Jack. I'm the wreckage, the living proof. I opened my mouth and spilled the beans. For that, they busted me down, then they hid me away in this shitty little cave they got in Maryland-."

"Where you rotted until Don Packard came riding to the rescue?" Jack took a long swig of beer but when his face emerged from the bottle, it showed little sympathy. "Everyone's got a story to tell, Jimmy. Problem is, the war's over and no one gives a damn any more. You gotta forget that stuff. Do what I did an' get back on the horse. There's a job here with your name on it and if you bitch it up, Joe Cullen's gonna have your balls for breakfast!"

"Not with what I know about him, he won't."

Jack leaned forward- his hand on Miller's arm. "He's found out about us, Jimmy. About Honolulu. Knows we're best buddies. He's bettin' you won't throw him to the wolves, not unless you want me to follow him."

"Goddam him!" Miller's fist crashed into the table. "I should take this to MacArthur right now!"

"But you won't though," Jack pleaded. "Will you?"

CHARACTERS

MAP

GLOSSARIES

WEB

#### FOOTNOTES

23201 is another name for an Army personnel file

24The Dixie Mission was a multi-service American intelligence unit based at Mao's GHQ in Yenan

25Chinese communists

26Office of Strategic Services, an undercover US wartime agency

# CHAPTER 17

OSAMU NAGAI PERCHED himself awkwardly on the grimy cushion and sighed. He didn't much care for Jun Obuchi's office.He was seated at a low table, in the middle of a shabby eight-mat room at the back of Obuchi's bathhouse. Over his lap, he had a _kotatsu_ leg warmer. Now that December had arrived, the evenings had begun to freshen.

He took another look round. All about him, in tottering piles, were boxes of clothes, clocks, radios, paint- anything that would fetch a decent price on the black-market. There was a metal safe, too, but it was empty; and a glass-doored filing cabinet, its bare shelves containing a solitary porcelain doll. Elsewhere, paperwork lay strewn over the dog-eared _tatami_ like confetti. Nagai shook his head in despair; somewhere amid this chaos was his forty thousand dollars, the balance from the special 'crab' consignment Obuchi had processed for him. He wondered if his friend knew where it was.

The _oyabun_ had always been disorganized, even during that brief period when the two of them had shared a dilapidated room in Shinjuku.H It had been in 1932. Nagai remembered the time clearly; he'd just graduated and was about to take his civil service exams. One freezing January evening, there'd been a knock on his door and there was Jun Obuchi with nothing but the rags he was wearing. His name hadn't been Obuchi in those days, it had been Terada and the Terada clan had worked land on Nagai's family estate for several generations. They were tenant farmers, who paid their rents not in the usual way- by donating a percentage of their harvest- but by providing labor to Nagai's father, the viscount, when he needed it. The young Terada was three years older than Nagai and the two of them had attended the same primary school in Ishikawa. Even then, his friend had been massively strong, dishing out rough playground justice to whoever got in his way, and that had usually been him!

But in time, the beatings had led to camaraderie and the camaraderie to close friendship. And this happy association had continued until the day Nagai left their rural haven to start his adult life at Tokyo's Waseda University. He hadn't seen Terada again until that night, five years later, when his friend had stood shivering on his doorstep. And as Osamu Nagai-or Shin Hayashi as he was then known- shared the last of his rice with him, Terada told him all about the bailiffs who'd come to break up their old family home.

"It was at New Year's. We was just sittin' down to eat when the door burst open and these thugs stood there. You all gotta get out right now, they said. Take your junk and go; this land's under new ownership, see? An' they don't want no tenants..

"My old man tried to stand up to 'em. You can't do this, he said. Where's your authority? Authority? This is my authority, the chief thug said and he cracked Pa over the head with his baseball bat..."

Forced out into the snow, the family had gone their separate ways, each trying to find survival the best way he could. Terada had chosen to come to Tokyo, to try and find Nagai. In the end, though, he stayed for barely a week.

"I gotta move on, old friend. You aint got hardly enough to eat yerself."

Nagai had remonstrated with him.

"But what will you do, where will you go?"

"I'll be OK. I met a man on the road here. He knows a boxin' promoter; said he'd get me a trial."

"Boxing? What do you know of boxing?"

"More'n you, that's for sure!" And Terada had laughed it off, cuffed him playfully round the ear, though Nagai's concern had not abated.

"Jun- if it doesn't work out, you will come back, won't you?"

"'Course I will."

But he didn't. In fact, Nagai didn't see him again for a further seven years, not until after he, himself, had returned from Europe as Japan began to prepare for war. He took his uncle's advice and preempted the draft by applying to and graduating from the Officer Training School in Sendai. One night, quite suddenly, a note arrived for him at his barracks in Tokyo's Nakano:

_Shin- Meet me any night in the bar Tanuki. It's behind Yurakucho Station- Jun_

As soon as Nagai opened the door of the grubby little drinking den, he felt the hostile eyes firing into him: from the unsavory-looking men squatting around the unwiped tables, even from the sharp-faced woman who ran the place.

"Who the fuck are you?" a belligerent voice said. It belonged to a foul-mouthed man with a black patch over his right eye.

"Just a customer. I was hoping for a drink."

"We don't serve your kind!"

"And what kind would that be?"

"Just piss off, why don't ya!"

Then the door slid open behind him and, feeling a cold draught at his back, Nagai spun round to see Jun Terada looming in the entrance way. His insolent grin was still the same but the rest of his face was broken beyond recognition, dented by years of pummeling in the boxing ring and the tough life of the streets. They embraced and immediately the bellicose feeling in the bar evaporated.

"You mean- you're the boss' friend?" The foul-mouthed man bowed low. "My humble apologies, Lord! One-eyed Saito at your service! Here, sit here-." He rushed to clean off an empty table with the grimy towel he wore on his shoulder. "And bring _sake_!" he barked at the woman behind the counter. "Only the best for the boss' friend!"

Terada found the whole incident amusing and sat chuckling as the drinks were poured.

"How the hell did you find me?" Nagai said.

"I seen you in the Ginza. The other day it was. You was with some of your fancy soldier pals. One o' my boys followed you home." His granite fist pulled back Nagai's rain coat to reveal the olive green uniform beneath it. "So you're off to fight?"

"China, they say." Nagai could already feel the excitement of it tightening at his chest. "Just as soon as I finish at the Intelligence School."

"What the fuck's that?"

"It's a new idea the Army's working on. I'm a kind of guinea pig."

Terada looked away suddenly, a touch of shame in the narrow eyes.

"Tell the truth, I wanted to enlist myself-."

"Then why don't you?" Nagai urged. "We could go together!"

"No!" His friend scowled down at his battered hands. "They won't have me now. I- I bin in prison!"

And he told Nagai about what had happened since the last time they'd met, how he'd successfully joined the boxing circuit and come under the patronage of a man called Yuta Obuchi. There'd been a job his boss had wanted doing. Shifting some fruit down at the docks.

"He asked me to come along. It was easy work, once we'd broke into the warehouse. But when it was all loaded into the trucks, the _satsu_ \- the cops- they pitched up from nowhere and nailed us. Some dogturd ratted us out. Me and my mates here-." He jerked a thumb at the bar. "We was banged up for three years-."

"Does your father know?"

"My Pa?" The bruised face showed no compassion, "Pa died in the snow, Shin. A week after we was all thrown out of the house-. Everyone's gone."

"The bastards!" Nagai took a mouthful of _sake_ , trying to hide his shock at the news. "Look, Jun, have you considered-?"

But his sentence remained unfinished as a beefy arm snaked across the table and grabbed him by the wrist.

"I know what you're gonna say but you and me- we aint cut from the same cloth, see? I don't have the brains for what you're doin'. I've had to make it my way. Does that bother you?"

Nagai looked deep into his friend's eyes and saw the chagrin still lurking behind the bravado. "No," he said. "It doesn't bother me at all."

"Good!" And Terada's face exploded into a broad smile. "'Cos I got this favor to ask you. I want you to stand up for me at my weddin'!"

And so the shadows between them melted away and his friend told him all about Yuta Obuchi, the gang boss who worked the streets of Yurakucho and about the bathhouse around the corner that his family had owned for generations.

"The old man aint well, Shin. His guts- he's got the wastin' disease. There's a daughter, Mami, but no son. He took me aside one day last week and asked me to marry her. Wants me to continue the brotherhood, to take charge when he's gone."

"You're going to do it?"

Terada nodded. "It'll mean me takin' his name. The woman- she aint nuthin to look at, mind-." He paused for a moment as if revisiting the decision he'd made. "It's a chance for me, though. If I let it slip, what have I got, eh?"

"Then marry her, old friend! And good luck to you!"

_And good luck to you._ Somewhere a door banged and Nagai was back in Obuchi's cluttered office, unable to believe it had all happened quite so long ago. A cacophony of noise had begun to leak in from the bathhouse next door: women cackling, the sound of water splashing, the sharp crack of wooden bowls slapping down hard on the ceramic tile floor. And above the din, there was one noise more irritating than all the others, one voice more strident. It belonged to Obuchi's shrewish wife, Mami. Nagai's eyes automatically went to the desk in the corner and there, propped up against an empty _sake_ bottle, was the ten-year-old wedding photo of Jun Terada and Mami Obuchi. Ten years to the day. Had it been good for them? He doubted it, but what the woman lacked in charm she made up for in hard-nosed practicality. As the wife of a gang boss, she was probably perfect.

§

Nagai felt rather than heard Obuchi slip into the room. The big man was suddenly behind him, clutching a towel and dressed in nothing but a suit of white underwear. The supremely-toned muscles had run to fat over the years but the man's strength hadn't wilted, not even a fraction. If anything, he was even more formidable than before.

"Sorry, _sensei_!" The sweating face was the color of salmon. "I was takin' a bath!"

" _Sensei_? Since when were you so formal?"

Obuchi grinned, a touch shyly. "You come for the rest o' the dough?"

"And a chat." Nagai pushed a brown paper bag gently across the table. "And to give you these."

Obuchi opened the bag and his thick lips crinkled into a smile. " _Gaijin_ cigarettes!"

"The very same brand as my own. There are twenty packs in there. A gift for your wedding anniversary. Ten years ago today, if I'm not mistaken."

"Ten?" Obuchi grabbed a bottle of _shochu_ 27 and brought it to the table. "Feels more like twenty!" His heavy frame collapsed onto a cushion opposite and he poured out two glasses of the colorless liquor. " _Kampai_!"

Nagai's lips barely touched the vile-tasting liquid but Obuchi downed his glass with one swallow and poured himself another. Then he reached under the leg warmer for the cloth bag he'd hidden there.

"Forty thousand, as promised!" He dumped it onto the table with a grin. "Your feet bin keepin' it warm!"

§

As soon as he returned to the Kiku Teahouse, Osamu Nagai changed out of the business suit he'd been wearing and into his _kimono_. He then went to his office, opened his safe and added the forty thousand dollars to the other money that was there. The new sum was entered into the leather-bound ledger he kept with his amortization papers and this he subsequently deducted from the outstanding debt.

There were two more payments to make on the deal he'd struck with Fuji Real Estate. Two payments totaling four hundred thousand dollars. It was a lot of money. Could he get his hands on it? Two more 'crab' runs were scheduled between now and April. If the street price held, each would net him ninety thousand. Plus there was the teahouse's turnover; he could spare twenty thousand a month if business remained good. The 'special' jobs he was obliged to carry out would provide what, another ninety? That left the Red Rose to fund the remainder. How would he bypass the eagle eye of the politician Kazuo Sekine and get his hands on the cash? Easy. He'd let Commissioner Mamoru Matsui do it for him. For the longer his thieving went on, the simpler it would be for Nagai to blame the missing money on the plump policeman. And Matsui would hardly be in a position to deny it, because he would be dead.

Nagai took one more look at the neat rows of figures in his ledger then, satisfied his finances were on track, he put everything back in his safe, locked the office door and made his way across to his private quarters. He stood for a moment looking out of the French windows but his garden was already full of shadows. The evenings were drawing in and earlier, on his way back from Obuchi's place, he'd felt the first really sharp wind of winter stabbing at his face. He liked the changing of the seasons. It invigorated him, helped him to assess progress. And progress was nothing if not a continuum based on the past; a past that even now was smiling down at him from the photo frames adorning the room's four walls. He sought out the one of his father, the viscount, posing on a photographer's chair with an _ogi_ 28 _ _ in one hand while the other lay easily over the brown folds of his favorite _kimono_. The fierce unforgiving look in his eye belied the decency of the man, for he'd been unpretentious in all things and had assumed the burden of his inheritance without complaint.

The viscount's own father- Nagai's grandfather- had been a leading _samurai_ who'd been granted the family lands from Emperor Meiji himself; a reward for helping to overthrow the hated Tokugawa Shogunate. And with the peerage had come generous stipends, not to mention a seat in the Upper Chamber of the Diet, the parliamentary authority that the new emperor had inaugurated. When his grandfather died of old age, the baton was passed to Nagai's father who accepted it with a heart-felt responsibility unusual in one of his class. He treated his serfs and tenants with great kindness but the heaviest obligation he felt was for his role in the legislature, not least because of his violent disagreement with the growing militant faction in parliament.

"The obsessive pursuit of Empire has led the Europeans into ruin!" he warned Nagai. "Why will it not do so for us?"

And as Japan's Chinese adventure29 began to soak up more and more of the public purse, so the wisdom of his father's words became clearer for all to see. Inevitably, the day came when there was no more money left for the annual stipends that the emperor had promised his father's clan and, without the money, it was difficult to maintain the estate. In its place, a one-off payment was made: of twenty thousand yen, a considerable sum in those years but not one that could retain its value in the face of inflation. That was when the viscount's so-called friends gathered around him, offering him a safe-haven in a 'fail-proof' investment based on Argentine cattle futures. Yet the money was lost and his father quickly became indebted as the cost of running the family estate spiraled out of control. A colleague introduced him to a small Tokyo bank that offered generous loans, secured on his land. With few other options available to him, the viscount signed the documents without fully comprehending the implications of the decision. The rate of interest was usurious and he fell further and further into debt.

Then, one day, _yakuza_ -led thugs began to show up at his door. Pay up or sell, they threatened as, night after night, they battered at his gatehouse. They never left him alone, lurking in the shadows of his farms and granaries, intimidating family members and servants. One day, the viscount could endure the shame of it no more. He disappeared into the family storehouse and hung himself from its rafters.

Young Nagai, or Hayashi as he then was, had known nothing of this; he'd already started his studies in Tokyo. The news had been brought to him by his Uncle Jiro- Jiro Nagai- a prosperous merchant from Yamanashi, a hundred or so miles west of the capital. It was Jiro who'd told him the investment fracas had been limited to members of the viscount's liberal-leaning cabal; that the whole thing had been little more than a scam, a way to bankrupt the liberals and force them out of parliament. On hearing this news, Nagai had felt his blood boil, had demanded that he accede to his father's lands and titles and that he be allowed to avenge the family's honor by taking the fight to the viscount's traitorous friends.

"And how will you do that, pray?" his uncle had laughed. "You're just a young pup, with barely enough money to finish your education. Neither do you possess the cunning or experience to fight with such vipers. You will just end up in the family graveyard. Go away and learn a trade, my boy. Lick your wounds and bide your time, for vengeance is a dish best served cold!"

And so he'd followed his uncle's advice and had studied for the diplomatic service, that he might leave Japan at the first opportunity; disappear for a while, maybe forever. Nagai grinned up at the photographs on the wall of his _tatami_ room, of him disporting himself in the famous capitals of Europe. He looked so young, so full of himself. And why not? He'd had a marvelous time soaking up the different cultures, enjoying the women. He'd even been able to forget his grudge against those who'd bilked him out of his inheritance.

But then the time had come when the clouds of yet another war had started to stain the eastern skies. He'd been summoned home and he remembered- as he'd stepped off the boat at Yokohama, as his feet had touched Japanese soil for the first time in four long glorious years- how his happiness had all been just a mirage. Then, as now, he was still chasing shadows, and he knew that unless and until he tasted revenge, the humiliation of it would gnaw away at him until it sent him mad.

CHARACTERS

MAP

GLOSSARIES

WEB

#### FOOTNOTES

27cheap distilled alcohol

28 _ogi_ : a fan

29Chinese adventure: the invasion of Manchuria

# CHAPTER 18

THE DAY AFTER Jimmy Miller's showdown with Jack at the Officers Club, his friend dropped by CID to pay him a visit.

"This a social call?"

"Strictly work." Jack tossed his cap at the hat stand. "General Roth honored us with his presence early this mornin'. He ordered Cullen to help get you started and Cullen ordered me so I'm yours 'til five."

"Then we'd better not waste your talents, had we? What do you suggest?"

"For starters? A cup of Pete's coffee. And have you guys got a map of Tokyo?"

There was one on the chalkboards; it and the Red Rose hit list were the only things up there.

"I thought you'd like to know where the shit went down, geographically speakin'." Jack took him through the list, item by item, while Miller stuck a colored pin into the map at each location: blue for the sabotage and red for the murders. When they'd finished, Miller stared hard at it.

"I can't see a pattern; the crimes scenes are scattered throughout the metropolitan area. We can assume this Red Rose gang is local, though. Let's run through what you know."

"OK. We'll start with the sabotage. So far, there've been nine incidences." Jack's hand danced across the map. "A water purification plant blown up here, a food train carrying rice derailed there. And then there was this power station," his forefinger picked it out, "down in the port area. Burned to the ground. We have proof it was arson."

Miller nodded slowly, letting the Trash Can file it all away. "There were no leads with any of this stuff?"

"The police said it was hopeless. They had too many cases of vigilantism: disgruntled workers complainin' about wages, guys wantin' revenge for losin' their jobs. By the time they worked out the Red Rose angle, the crime scenes had been contaminated beyond use."

"What about the murders?"

"Executions, more like." Jack's eyes scanned the list. "The victims were all big shots, public employees working directly or indirectly for GHQ. We got a Bank of Japan governor, the attorney general, the guy who used to run the Port Authority-."

"How were they all killed?"

"Various ways. Two were kidnapped and strangled, their bodies abandoned on waste ground; one was strangled then tossed into the bay, a couple more were shot and the last one- a guy called Yamada- was manacled to a railroad line and run over by a train."

"Jeez! What did he do for his sins?"

"He'd just sacked a hundred thousand railroad workers. And you're right, Jimmy. They were all sinners; at least these Red Rose guys think so."

"What are you getting at?"

Jack explained further. "You know about the flowers? Sent to the offices of the Asahi Shimbun? Well, it wasn't just roses. There were clippings, too, from earlier editions of the same newspaper. Each indicated some outrage the victims had supposedly committed. Crimes against the working classes. That's how these guys are dressin' it up."

"Which is why Roth thinks left wing radicals are behind it?"

"He reckons it's Tokuda's people. Commies. But Cullen favors the labor unions. According to him, Suzuki's mixed up in it. That's why his photo was in the dossier."

"Didn't Cullen say something about an ID being found? What was that all about?"

"Here-." Jack poked at the map. "A place called Senju. It's where the railroad guy was killed. They found a union card nearby."

Miller squinted at the map. "How long would it take to drive out there?"

"This time o' day? An hour, maybe. You wanna take a look?"

"Why not?"

§

Outside, it was a miserable gray day and bitterly cold. As Miller and Jack headed north into the suburbs, the character of the city seemed to change to reflect the weather. There was none of the brash confidence of Central Tokyo here; none of the devil-may-care, neon-clad amnesia of Marunouchi or the Ginza. Just line upon line of rusting tin shacks. The people all had a hopeless look about them, too. Shuffling along the pot-holed streets, they stared hollow-eyed as Jack's Studebaker drove by.

Miller dozed off only to be woken some forty minutes later by a noise like machine gun bullets. It was the wheels of Jack's car click-clacking its way across Senju Bridge. He stared down at the Sumida River that ran beneath it. The water was inky black. No fish swam and no children bathed. It looked just like the moon or what Miller imagined the moon to be.

"Great place to die!" he observed. "Who was the dead guy again?"

"Sadanori Yamada, head of the national railroad. He'd just sacked a quarter of his work force."

By now a steady sleet had started to fall. Jack slowed and turned into a ramshackled freight yard. The main Tokyo railroad sliced through it, straight as a steel hawser. They parked up about thirty yards from the line, just in time to observe the ten forty-four to Utsunomiya thunder past in a frenzy of steam and smoke.

"Where did it happen?"

Jack walked him over to a section of track and they dropped down onto their haunches. "You can see some scars on the rail just here. This is where the Yamada guy was chained. He'd probably managed to free himself- partly anyhow. We only found one limb attached to the tracks- his right arm. The rest of him was all over the place." He pointed up the line. "The head got dragged way up there."

Miller craned his neck in the direction of Jack's arm. "Who discovered the mess?"

"Some railroad worker. The engineer on the train had reported hittin' somethin'. The poor bastard was sent to investigate."

Miller noted it all down. "And what time was this?"

"He said it was the seven thirty-nine that hit Yamada."

"The trains run along this section, what, every forty minutes?"

"Every twenty durin' the rush hour."

"So when Yamada was trussed up-."

"They'd have had about fifteen minutes to get in, do it and get out."

Miller scowled. "Tell me more about this ID card."

"It was just lyin' by the tracks, or so Hayman said."

"Was there anything else?"

"Apart from the guy's limbs, you mean?" Jack tugged at his ear and thought for a moment. "I seem to remember somethin' about a gold Rolex."

"What about it?"

"Well, this Yamada had one but it wasn't found any place. And neither were the pearls."

"What pearls?"

"The ones he'd bought the day he was killed. That mornin' he'd been shoppin' at a department store in Nihonbashi. The manager confirmed it."

"He was kidnapped then? At first, I mean?"

Jack nodded. "They used his own car; waylaid the driver. We found the guy later, trussed up in a side street. Scared to death he was. Wouldn't say a damn thing!"

"And Yamada? How big was he?"

"Five eight, maybe. Two hundred pounds."

Miller sucked on the end of his pencil. "It'd be hard to maneuver a guy like that around, wouldn't it? I mean, he'd be struggling for his life."

"We found three sets of foot prints, excludin' his," Jack said. "One of those was, well, they were crystal sharp, like the guy who owned them had just stood around."

"The boss watching his men do the dirty work!" Miller muttered. "That leaves two to do the heavy stuff: one holding Yamada, maybe; the other putting the chains on him. They'd have to be big strong guys, wouldn't you say?" He made a rough sketch of the scene then walked back down the line. "So they brought him here in his own car. What about the other guys?"

"There were two sets of tire tracks. They musta come separately."

"You got casts?" Miller looked up expectantly. "For them and the footprints?"

Jack shook his head. "There was a thunderstorm that same night before our lab guys could get out here. We found Yamada's car, though. In the river, a couple o' miles upstream. It was clean."

"And Hayman found no other evidence on the scene?"

"As far as I know it was only the ID card. I was off the case by then."

"Major Hayman found it himself?"

Jack nodded. "He came back out here the followin' day. Saw it then."

"And he never showed the card to you?"

"No."

Miller scratched his head. "See, that's what I don't get. I mean, how come no one saw it when the body was discovered? And then there was this downpour. It would have turned the thing to mush, wouldn't it?"

"Maybe it was in some kind of protective wallet?"

"Maybes, Jack." Miller sighed as he shook the sleet out of his hair. "That's all we got!"

CHARACTERS

MAP

GLOSSARIES

WEB

######

_To be continued_

_  
_

Read more about Jimmy Miller in the second part of the URASHIMA series _Tokyo Beat,_

available at all good online booksellers

The URASHIMA novels and www.urashima-novels.com ©The Samurai Press/Steven Salazar 2014

# APPENDIX I

## ENGLISH GLOSSARY OF TERMS

### A-2

Air force intelligence section equivalent to the army's G-2

### ACJ

American Council on Japan; a New York based anti-MacArthur lobby made up of financiers, diplomats, politicians and the military

### ATIS

Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (part of Military Intelligence) mostly staffed by Japanese Americans.

### Chiang Kai Shek

(Jiang Jieshi) Leader of the Chinese Nationalist movement and wartime ally of the United States

### Chicoms

Chinese communists

### Chu En Lai

(Zhou Enlai) Founder member of the Chinese Communist Party and first prime minister of the People's Republic

### CIA

Central Intelligence Agency, created out of the National Security Act 1947

### CIC

Counterintelligence Corps, a US Army unit and sister service to G-2

### CIE

Civil Information and Education Section, GHQ

### Dai ichi

Large classically styled marble building owned by the Dai Ichi (Number One) Insurance Company, one of a number commandeered by MacArthur to house his GHQ. Untouched by wartime bombing due to its proximity to the Imperial Palace

### DMZ

Demilitarized Zone; the buffer which separates North Korea from the South

### Far East Commission

The allied grouping nominally in charge of the occupation, even though MacArthur preempted them.

### G-2

Military Intelligence staff section

### GHQ

General Headquarters, Tokyo

### GS

Government Section, GHQ, Tokyo

### Heart Mountain

One of a number of detention camps where Japanese-Americans were incarcerated during World War 2

### INS

International News Service, a post war American press agency that was later merged with United Press to become UPI

### JCP

Japan communist party

### JICPOA

Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Areas, Honolulu

### MP

military policeman

### Mao Tse Tung

(Mao Zedong) Founder member of the Chinese Communist Party and first Chairman of the People's Republic

### Meiji Jingu Shrine

Notable shrine located in Tokyo's Omotesando district

### MISLS

Military Intelligence Service Language School

### New Dealers

Supporters of President Franklyn Roosevelt's liberal New Deal policies of the thirties and forties

### Omotesando

Wealthy, westernized sub-center of Central Tokyo

### OSS

Office of Strategic Services, undercover wartime agency absorbed into the CIA in 1947

### PACMIRS

Pacific Military Intelligence Research Section based in Maryland

### Pan Pacific

A Hong Kong news agency of the time

### PX

Military post exchange; a place where goods and luxuries not available in the country of posting can be bought

### PRO

Public Relations Office, GHQ, Tokyo

### Reuters

British news agency

### SCAP

Supreme Commander of the Allied Pacific (refers to both MacArthur and his administration)

### SIGINT

Signal Intelligence

### SIS

Special Intelligence Service

### Stars and Stripes

Official newspaper of the US Armed Forces

### Trash Can

Nickname Miller gives to that part of his brain that is capable of remembering seemingly trivial information

### Yenan

Mao Tse Tung's mountain HQ during and after WW2; also a moniker used to describe a wartime US multi-service mission (The Dixie Mission), whose aim was to persuade the Communists to fight the Japanese and make peace with Chiang's Chinese Nationalists. Washington disagreed with the mission's conclusions that America should side with the Communists. When it was disbanded, many participants were branded as communists themselves and had their careers cut short.

### Yasukuni Shrine

Controversial Shinto memorial to Japan's war dead including those designated by the allies as Class A War Criminals

# APPENDIX II

## JAPANESE GLOSSARY OF TERMS

### baka yaro

'fuck you' or something similar

### bushi

lit: way of arms; martial arts

### -chan

suffix applied to people's names (usually female) to denote familiarization

### chikusho

a profane exclamation; 'shit!' or something similar

### chimpira

street punks, barkers

### dojo

martial arts training hall

### edoko

name applied to a person born in _shitamachi_ or downtown Tokyo

### gaijin

lit: outside person; foreigner

### geta

traditional wooden clogs, worn with _kimono_

### genkan

entranceway to a building; place where guests are received, shoes are removed etc

### hakujin

white person

### happi

hip-length Japanese-style jacket, often worn at festivals or by servants of a household or enterprise. They are made of cotton, dyed in a distinctive color, and carry the family or firm's _kanji_ or crest on the back.

### hinomaru

the rising sun emblem; Japan's national flag

### Kanemotokai

lit: the Kanemoto group; title of a crime syndicate named after its leader

### kanji

lit: Chinese character. The Japanese adopted simplified versions of Chinese characters for their own written language.

### Kansai

the area of western Japan, centered on the cities of Osaka and Kobe

### katana

the blade of a sword

### Keio

a private university in Tokyo

### kempeitai

military police; thought police

### koban

police box

### konban wa

good evening

### -kun

suffix applied to people's names (male) to denote familiarization

### kusuri

lit: medicine; here refers to narcotics, heroin, amphetamines etc

### Meiji

a period of Japanese history, named for its eponymous emperor

### Meiji Jingu

a famous shrine in the Omotesando district of Tokyo

### mizu shobai

lit: water trade; a euphemism for the night time entertainment business including prostitution

### natto

dish of fermented soy beans

### Nijubashi

 a twin-arched bridge separating the palace grounds from the Imperial Plaza

### nisei

second-generation Japanese-Americans who were born in the United States

### ofuro

a Japanese-style bath; can be large or small

### ogi/sensu

concertina fan

### oji

uncle, grandfather

### onegaishimasu

lit: I beseech you; I beg you

### oshireiri

large cupboard with sliding paper-covered doors called _fusuma  _

### oto-san

father

### oyabun

lit: father; refers to a _yakuza_ gang boss; a mafia-style don

### pachinko

Japanese-style pinball

### panpan

prostitutes, street-walkers

### ramen

Chinese noodles

### rikishi

fighter; grappler

### ryokan

Japanese-style inn

### ryotei

high-class Japanese-style restaurant

### sa

the meaning of this vague little word can change according to the circumstances and the way it is said; often used in place of a directly stated opinion

### sanbetsu

federation of labor unions affiliated to the Japan Communist Party

### satsu

short for _keisatsu_ : police, cops

### sen

a sen was a coin worth one hundredth of a yen

### seppuku

ritual disembowelment; a form of honorable suicide

### shinto

one of the two main religions of Japan (the other being Buddhism)

### shishi

groups of political activists, often secretive, often violent who flourished in the Edo period

### shochu

cheap distilled alcohol

### shogun

see also shogunate; military commander/ system of the same that at one time fought against the imperial court for the power to rule Japan

### shoji

door or window screens covered with translucent paper

### Showa

posthumous name of Emperor Hirohito; the calendar term applied to his reign

### sore ja

farewell, good-bye

### Sumidakai

lit: the Sumida group; fictional name of a crime syndicate

### tabi

canvas boots with dual toe sections; still worn by manual workers

### tatami

large mats of packed straw used as flooring

### tsunami

#### tidal wave

### uchiwa

open-bladed paper fan

### udon

noodles

### yaki imo

roasted sweet potatoes; itinerant sellers of these are a common winter sight in Japan's towns and cities

### yakitoriya

cheap, frequently low-class eatery selling grilled chicken and beer or sake

### yakuza

criminal gang or syndicate

### Yasukuni

Yasukuni is a controversial shrine dedicated to those who fought and died on behalf of the emperor including so-called Class A war criminals

### yatai

a wooden cart with wheels from which simple foods such as noodles or fish stew (oden) are sold

### yoroshiku

abbreviated form of _yoroshiku onegaishimasu_ ; literally meaning 'please be good to me'; used as greeting

### zaibatsu

a collective term applied to six or seven influential industrial conglomerates with diverse commercial and financial interests; they were regarded by many as being a key driving force behind Japan's expansionist policies of the 1930s and a leading supporter of its war-time government

