“I certainly do.” “Reliable” meant that the son of a bitch was smart enough to praise Japan on the way to Hong Kong and dumb enough to come back.

“I think you have alleviated any concerns about your reliability this morning.”

“Thank you.” Harry added a bow and held his breath.

“So,” the president of Nippon Air let his words fall to a whisper of snowflakes, “you might be able to make yourself available on Monday? Haneda Field at noon. We will be flying a new DC-3. No tickets necessary. I, personally, will put you on the passenger list. Does this please you?”

“It pleases me to have earned your trust.” Gone like a greased weasel, Harry thought.

Only when Mr. Nippon Air was done did other guests approach.

“How does it feel,” Beechum asked, “to be the most despised white man in Asia?”

“Pretty good this morning, thanks.”

“Your ‘fellow Americans’? I doubt you’ve been to America for a year in your entire life. A cute performance. That ought to buy the Happy Paris another month’s protection. You’re the sort that in England we would drag through the streets behind a horse.”

“Is that the England of bad food and good canings?”

The smell of Beechum’s bay rum was more intense the warmer he grew. Harry had never seen the man with so much spit and personality before. “You think your friends look so good against coolies. Just watch when the little yellow Johnnies go up against the guns in Singapore.”

“‘Yellow Johnnies’? That doesn’t sound like diplomatic language to me.”

Beechum said, “I for one hope they do give it a go. This entire circus will be over in a week, and then where will you be?”

“The next circus, I suppose.”

“Not when we’re done with you. Because there will come a day,” Beechum promised. “There will come a day.”

Willie motioned that he would wait outside, but Meisinger, the Gestapo chief, shook Harry’s hand and went right to the point. “You didn’t mention Jews.”

“Didn’t I?”

“So-called refugees. You haven’t noticed them?”

“You know the truth? The truth is that in Japan, all Westerners look pretty much alike.”

“Impossible,” Meisinger said.

“Stick around.”

Well, that was probably not appreciated, Harry thought, but if you even pretended to be friendly to someone like Meisinger, you ended up with the Butcher of Warsaw singing the Horst Wessel song in the Happy Paris. Harry didn’t think he was willing to suffer that, and he knew Michiko wouldn’t.

“They’ve got a little list, Harry,” Hooper said as Meisinger marched away. The American attaché was a gangly, brush-cut man with a bow tie and an empathetic smile. “A speech for the Japanese? Are you totally nuts?”

“Who’s got a list?”

“Everyone’s got a list, Russians, British, Germans. We have a list. Not to mention the Japanese. You’ve made enemies everywhere.”

“Just throwing light on the international scene.”

“Fuel on the fire. Harry, what’s going to happen is going to happen. You and I can’t affect anything at this point, and unless you have some way of disappearing magically from the scene, I suggest you pull your head in. You’re still doing asset searches for the Japanese?”

“I might look through a dusty ledger or two.”

“It’s called colluding with the enemy.”

“Hoop, we’re not at war yet.”

“I hate that nickname. Anyway, if things do blow up in your face and you find yourself running for your life, I’m supposed to tell you not to come to the American embassy.”

“Have I ever gone to the embassy?”

“So you know. They don’t consider you American.”

“Hoop, I always knew that.”

Harry was feeling good, feeling great. Once again, his luck had come through. Who would have thought a beetle was the way to Yoshitaki’s heart? But had he transgressed in his speech? Had he crossed a certain unforgivable line? Didn’t matter, Harry was walking on air. By the time he made it to the street, Willie was waiting with DeGeorge, whose taxi wasn’t going anywhere soon. The driver poured fresh charcoal into the top of the furnace and cranked a fan.

“Like riding a fucking hibachi,” DeGeorge said.

“I wish the readers of The Christian Science Monitor could hear the language of their illustrious reporter,” Harry said.

“Last-minute plea for peace, my ass.”

“’Japan’s Business Leaders Friendly to America,’ I think that’s your headline right there.”

“A goddamn apology for war. It’s happening, isn’t it? I saw you talking to the head of Nippon Air. Any word about the plane to Hong Kong?”

“Why would he tell me?”

“I don’t know.” DeGeorge turned to Willie. “All I know is that Harry is Mr. Connected and Protected. One day we’re going to look around and Harry will be down the rabbit hole, and that’ll be one day too fucking late for the rest of us.”

“I never know if you use ‘fucking’ as an adverb or an adjective,” Harry said. “I guess that’s why you’re the Pulitzer Prize winner and I’m not.”

“Fuck you. I’m going to meet Beechum. Get the British embassy’s reaction to this defeatist bullshit.” DeGeorge gave his taxi a final glance and turned back to Harry. “Give me a ride?”

EARLY DECEMBER could produce days like this, spells of crystalline sunlight and the smell of citrus, smudged this winter by charcoal smoke. Willie sat in front with Harry and rolled down his window as they headed west along the turgid, pea-green moat that wrapped around the imperial castle. All traffic in the center of the city had to go around the palace. No street ran through it, subway under it or air route over it, and no nearby building could even be built high enough to look down on the divine presence, so the city revolved around a powerful absence, a flat green mountain, a hole, the idea of a hidden, undisturbed, jewel-like virtue. Even the castle presented a trick of perspective, the enormous, closely fitted stones made so low by the angle and length of the walls that imperial guards standing at the base, their rifles in white parade socks, looked like toy figures. All that was visible over the walls of the palace itself was a hint of curved eaves and tiled roofs behind a red tracery of maples. The moat was famous for its golden carp. As a boy, Harry would pay ten sen for a paper scoop at a goldfish tank and try to capture as many fish as possible before the paper fell apart, believing this established some sort of connection between himself and the Son of Heaven.

They passed a bus that had slowed so riders could remove their hats and bow in the direction of the emperor.

Willie said, “In spite of China, this seems quite wonderful to me. Serene, as you said.”

“Serene?” DeGeorge had a laugh like the scrape of a shovel. “Hey, they assassinated three prime ministers in sixteen years. Murder, incorporated, doesn’t have a record like the Japs, so ‘serene’ may not be the right word. Things are going to pop, the only question is when. The man who names the day just walks in and picks up that Pulitzer, right, Harry?”

“Could be.”

“They’re holding last-ditch negotiations in Washington that are going nowhere.” DeGeorge leaned forward to Willie’s ear. “Napoleon’s army ran on its stomach, armies today run on their gas tanks. April a year ago, the Japs bought three times their usual amount of oil from the States. Roosevelt made a big show of cutting the Japs off of East Coast oil and sending it to England. Didn’t matter, the Japs just bought all the oil on the West Coast. And aviation fuel? As much as we could sell. Not to mention steel and scrap iron. The Jap navy is built out of old Fords and Frigidaires. All the time, of course, FDR was starting to build three times as many tanks and battleships. Then, this July, we cut them off, no oil, no rubber, no steel, no nothing. There comes a certain point when the Japs are as strong as they’re going to get, and every day from then on they’re weaker. That’s when the shooting starts. I figure we’re there just about now.”