“She watches every move.” Goro’s tongue searched the corners of his mouth for crumbs, and only after could he bother with chat. “Are you in trouble, Harry?”
“Me? Furthest from it.”
“This request was a little unusual.”
“Was it scary at your end?” Harry asked. “Did you have to get into some offices? Get past a guard? Was it fun?”
Goro permitted himself a grunt of satisfaction. He drank the dregs of his coffee and sat for a moment with his eyes closed, breathing deeply the scent of cream and powdered sugar before rising from the table. “The wife.”
Harry left a minute later. He waited until he got to his car to unfold the newspaper to an envelope that Goro had slipped in so smoothly that even Harry hadn’t noticed. The envelope was government issue, with a twine closure he unwound to draw out two sheets of paper that were blank except for the letterhead of the Department of the Military Police, Defense Section, Ministry of War. A third piece of paper as fine as tissue bore the red imprint of a ministry stamp. The government printing office was also responsible for rubber stamps. A forged document wasn’t quite as good for Willie and Iris as a call from Saburo, which would have swept all objections aside. However, it was heartening to see that a son of Asakusa like Goro still had, despite all efforts at reformation, an itch that had to be scratched.
Harry felt better, more the captain of his fate. He didn’t have to go to the ballroom right away. Knowing what he did about Hawaii was like standing by a burning fuse and doing nothing. It was just too…annoying. He didn’t have to go through Hooper, he could go direct.
Michiko would have to wait. He knew she had made it to Haruko’s long enough to swipe a dress and she had a gun. At the ballroom card game, she would be protected by the yakuza. Harry couldn’t wait to get his hands around Tetsu’s throat for the rebuff at Saburo’s gate, but Tetsu wouldn’t let anyone harm a woman at his game. She was safe.
WEST TOKYO petered out into dry fields, sun-warped wooden houses and small children with bare bottoms who waved as Harry drove by. If the Japanese fleet really was headed to Hawaii, he felt he had to do something. He wasn’t a patriot, but the con he had run on Gen and the navy about phony oil tanks on Oahu was the shell game of a lifetime, his masterpiece, and he refused to see it come to such a miserable end. He refused to lose.
When he thought about Iris, he wondered if he really had helped her. Assuming that the Orinoco made it through the blockade, racist Germany was going to be no bed of roses for a Chinese bride. That was the problem with good deeds, they rarely stood up to scrutiny. Besides, mixed marriages always seemed to bring grief. He could just imagine Michiko meeting California girls, like a panther among tabbies. When he did tell her that he was leaving, he had to remember to take the gun away from her first. His back began to throb again, and he chewed aspirin as he drove.
Ten miles out, he reached an oasis ringed by pines that separated the manicured fairways of a golf course from the muck of fallow paddy fields. Everything about the rice paddies suggested a desperate, crowded, exhausting struggle for life, and next to them the course hovered like a green and spacious heaven. The entrance to this paradise was a clubhouse reminiscent of a Spanish hacienda and a circular driveway with limousines and idle bodyguards.
Harry had caddied in Florida, enough to pick up the rudiments of the game, which enabled him to make occasional money teaching golf in Japan. Japanese golf was different from American in that it was tacitly understood before a match began which player, for reasons of respect, should win. Harry wasn’t crazy about golf as a game, but it was a gold-plated entrée to Japanese business. Harry could sell the Queen Mary over eighteen holes. He wasn’t a member of the club, but he had steered enough players to it to be welcome. To look the part, he shouldered the bag of clubs he’d bought at the pawnshop.
Members came and went through a reception area of Mexican tiles and mission wood. Notices on the reception counter advised that all guests had to be signed in, only golf shoes were allowed on the links, only regular shoes in the clubhouse and, as a patriotic sacrifice, players were limited to two balls per round. One of the first shortages caused by the American embargo was golf balls; some enterprising boys would be out by the water hazards, selling balls they had dredged out. The reception area opened to a sitting room of leather chairs and trophies and a fireplace stoked like a furnace. For Harry, it had never hurt to be seen at the club. Golf was a Japanese version of America, played in plus fours and tam-o’-shanters, celebrated on the nineteenth hole with a round bought by the highest score. Now, however, anything as American as golf was unpatriotic, and the club was virtually empty.
A horseplayer Harry knew was behind the reception desk. He wore a blazer with the club insignia on the breast pocket.
“Harry, what can I do for you?”
“I was supposed to meet the American ambassador here. I wondered whether he checked in.”
“An hour ago. You were going to play golf with the ambassador?”
“He asked if I could. Said to find him on the golf course if I missed the tee time.”
“Sorry, Harry, he’s got a foursome. You know the rules, four’s the limit.”
“Is the sensei here?”
“The teacher is at the shop. But I’m not supposed to let you past the desk unless a member invites you.”
“Since when?”
The receptionist shrugged apologetically.
“That’s too bad, because the fact is, I have a deal on golf balls.”
“That’s different. You’ll find the teacher at the shop.”
“I know the way.”
Harry walked through to the mournful shadows of the bar. The members present were mainly in import-export, and since the embargo, they had all day to drink. Harry worked his way out to a flagstone patio that overlooked the course. In a shop that stood separate from the clubhouse, the pro was demonstrating a putter. Customers were rare, and the pro was thoroughly occupied.
The course might be virtually abandoned, but it was beautiful, famous for fast greens of Korai grass and water hazards that were ponds paved in lily pads. The holes were framed by dark pine and autumn maples, all the colors of a blaze, as if a man with a torch had run around and lit the grounds. On the first tee, facing a relatively short dogleg right, were players Harry didn’t recognize, all four in knickers, the uniform of golf, and taking some very bad swings. In Japan, golf was performed with almost religious intensity of effort, never mind that the breeze from off the course carried a rice-paddy tang of rotting cuttlefish and human waste. No one else was even waiting to tee off.
The question was how far out on the course the ambassador was. Past the first pin, Harry could just see a foursome approaching the tee of the second hole.
Harry stepped back inside the bar to borrow a pair of binoculars hanging by the door. He focused on the second tee and a commanding figure with the look of an American eagle-dark brows and mustache and silvery hair-who towered over the other players. Unmistakably the ambassador. He was at the second hole with sixteen to go and would be out on the course at least four more hours. Harry couldn’t wait four hours. Michiko wouldn’t wait four more hours at the ballroom, safe or not. He’d wasted enough time getting this far.
He replaced the binoculars. Maybe a dozen members sat by the window in the bar but couldn’t look out without blinking into the sun. The party on the first tee hit the last of four brutal hacks and started down the fairway with their caddies. Harry waited until they were a hundred yards along and strolled after them with his bag as if he had every right, no questions asked.