One thing preyed on Harry’s mind. “You’re not going to hold it against me that my father is a missionary?”

“No. I’ve taken my revenge on him.”

“What kind?” Harry wondered how Kato could ever reach a zealot like Roger Niles.

“Ah, Harry, you’re revenge enough.”

9

A TEA CART WITH scones and cream, strudel and napoleons rattled around the lobby of the Imperial Hotel. The Imperial had been the safe haven of well-heeled tourists, especially Americans who were amplified, on-the-road versions of themselves, busy with backslaps and laughs that had boomed up to the lobby’s timbers. The Imperial had been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, who piled brick and lava rock in a grandiose style suggestive of a Mayan temple. Harry thought the hotel, with its vaulting shadows and wintry drafts, was a proper set for Dracula. Still, it was sad to see the tea cart make its circuit around the lobby like a trolley car in an empty city.

Also, Harry owed the Imperial. He’d come back to Japan for a public relations job that fizzled and left him high and dry, with not even enough money for return passage, until the American All-Stars came to town. Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Lefty O’Doul led a tour by the world’s greatest ballplayers and their wives. Naturally, they stayed at the Imperial. Harry was stalking the lobby for a tourist who might need a knowledgeable guide when a receptionist came up all aflutter. Harry expected the heave-ho. Instead, the receptionist bowed and asked if he would please proceed to the pool garden. When Harry got there, he found an official welcome that was falling apart. On one side of the garden were the Japanese in formal cutaways and kimonos with stacks of boxes, on the other side was a straggling line of the All-Stars in baseball uniforms and their wives in furs. In the middle was a movie camera with an operator who spoke no English, which was just as well because every time his assistant tried to push Mrs. Ruth within camera range, she told him to keep his mitts off. The Babe had had a little brandy in his breakfast coffee and tried to nudge O’Doul into the water. When the Babe’s wife told him to stop acting like an ape, the Babe gave her a playful pop on the shoulder. Meanwhile, the Japanese hosts grew smaller, their eyes wider. The girls in kimonos inched back, ready to run. One of the wives, a marcelled blonde in a fox stole, yawned and spat a wad of gum into the pool, setting off a tussle among the goldfish.

Harry figured this was a classic case of nothing to lose. He stepped forward and announced in English, on behalf of the hotel, how honored the Imperial was by the presence of the All-Stars and their lovely wives, and responded in Japanese, on behalf of the players, how impressed they were by the warm hospitality of the famous Imperial Hotel. He spoke rapidly, no seam between English and Japanese, respectfully but with animation, easing each side toward the middle of the garden, directing the cameraman to start filming, interpreting speeches back and forth, signaling the Japanese girls it was safe to distribute gifts, a happi coat for each player and towels for their wives.

“Do I look wet?” Mrs. Ruth asked Mrs. Gehrig.

The Babe got in the mood, posed in his happi coat and pushed a dimple into his cheek. Before leaving the garden for the ballpark, he lit a huge Havana and asked Harry, “Kid, you want to make some change? My stepdaughter’s along. She’s cute and she likes to trip the light fantastic. Just keep your hand off her ass or I will feed you to the fucking goldfish.”

“Sounds good,” said Harry. He stuck with the All-Stars for the rest of their tour and, by the end, had been hired by the movie company to do promotion, which was the kind of work he had done in the States. From then on he felt a debt of gratitude to both the Babe and the Imperial.

Now he picked up a paper from the hotel newsstand for any word of Ishigami. Nothing. Found an article about the Giants’ midwinter practice and dedication to victory. Returned to the front page and read that the Germans had as good as taken Moscow, as they had for weeks. In America, Charles Lindbergh declared that there was “no danger to this country from without.” Tensions in Washington had eased, negotiations were back on track. Roosevelt was more conciliatory. According to Ripley’s Believe It or Not, most chimps were left-handed. All the stories sounded equally likely to Harry.

The bar was virtually empty. The only occupants Harry saw at first were German officers from the blockade-runner. It was a long run from Bordeaux, evading British cruisers or the torpedo of a submarine, twenty thousand miles not to fire a shot but to carry precious rubber to Germany, and there was something exhausted about the men and the way they sank into their schnapps. Of course, the Imperial was lucky to have them. Aside from troopships, international travel had come to a halt. Tokyo’s World Fair and Olympic Games had been canceled, luxury liners called home, embassy dependents ordered out. In the far corner Harry found Willie Staub with DeGeorge and Lady Beechum.

“Harry.” Alice Beechum offered her hand for a kiss. She was pink as a petit four offering a taste. Pink as a Gainsborough portrait, pinker than pink with an exuberant mass of ginger hair. On the Tokyo stage, actresses who played Europeans wore ginger wigs. Alice’s blue eyes and ginger hair were her very own, and Harry also remembered breasts with the tang of Chanel.

“Lady Alice. I saw your husband this morning.”

“Yes. He was so worked up when he got home, he was ready to strangle puppies. He told me he gave you quite the rocket. He was very proud. Then he went off to toss medicine balls or something with his pals.”

“You’re not a popular man at the British embassy, Harry,” DeGeorge said.

“I’ll slit my throat.”

“Get in line.”

Willie was sipping tea, but for everyone else at the table “tea” meant martinis or Mount Fujis, gin with a peak of frothed egg white. Harry wondered, would this be his social circle for the duration if he missed the plane? The expats of the Imperial bar? DeGeorge, who dripped acid like a wreck leaking oil?

Willie asked, “What would they do to you? You’d be enemy aliens, but there are conventions about this sort of thing. They wouldn’t put you in jail.”

“Or make us learn Japanese,” DeGeorge said. “I’d rather be behind bars.”

“This conversation is absolutely sparkling,” Alice Beechum told Harry. “But I was wondering, how is that little Michiko of yours?”

“Speaking of…” Willie said.

Harry’s heart sank when he followed Willie’s eyes to a young Chinese woman making her way toward the table. She wore a silk cheongsam with a pattern of peonies, her hair was twisted into a chignon set off by an ivory comb and her eyes were bright with hope. Harry had to say that she was a little chubby, a bad sign since it suggested that she was real and Willie truly loved her. She was, in short, a disastrous complication for a man who should be traveling light. The problem was that Germans were such romantics. Not as romantic as Japanese; the Japanese preferred sad endings and suicide. But what Willie needed after China was a Wanderjahr on a beach somewhere, or searching the desert for philosophy, anything but dragging some poor Chinese girl to Nazi Germany.

“Iris is a teacher,” Willie said after introductions. “We’re hoping she’ll be able to continue doing that in Germany.”

“I suppose that would be up to the local Gauleiter or Gruppenführer,” Harry said.

“Yes.”

“Have you tried the Mount Fuji?” DeGeorge asked Iris. “It was invented here.”

“Inventing alcoholic drinks is a major pastime of the expatriate community,” Harry said to her. “Where did you teach?”

“At a missionary school,” she said.

“Iris’s father is a Methodist minister,” Willie said. “Her mother went to Wesleyan College in the United States, and her oldest brother is a graduate of Yale.”