“It wasn’t pretty.”

“You used to be a lot slicker. I hate to say it, but you’ve lost your touch.”

“Yeah, I agree.”

Harry could see half of the temple and the park, the world where he and Gen had once run wild. And Taro, Jiro, Tetsu, even Hajime. The stalls and souvenir stands were designed for boys with deft hands and quick feet. Escape routes had led around the pond, behind the Buddhas, in back of the shrine and out to the movie crowds on the Rokku.

“Once a con man, always a con man,” Gen said.

“I guess so.”

“So I’ll just ask you to be honest about one thing. One thing, and we’ll let the rest slide.”

“What’s that?”

“Did you fix the Long Beach books? The changes in the oil ledger, did Long Beach make them or did you?”

“Me? I only looked at those books because the navy asked me to.”

“Maybe you did more than that. Maybe you altered the numbers for Long Beach Oil, Manzanita and Petromar. Did you, Harry?”

“I’m looking over there.” Harry started down the steps toward the torii gate at the other end of the temple grounds. “I’m searching for a killer and you’re talking about oil?”

“Because oil is more important. Tell me about the oil tanks in Hawaii. Are they real or not?”

“I don’t know. I told you about the loudmouth in Shanghai-”

“I know the story. The bar, the whores, the drunk who boasted about the tanks. I know the story back and forth. So I’m going to ask you if you made it up. It will be between the two of us, just tell me the truth.”

“It’s like I told you. Do secret tanks actually exist? I doubt it.”

“You know that once the possibility is planted, doubts don’t matter.”

“I only passed on what I heard. What you make of it is up to you.”

“What we make of it can be very big, Harry.”

Harry understood Gen’s predicament. He was the poor Asakusa boy made good, the C in C’s protégé, the hero of the Magic Show. He had brought the rumor of the Hawaiian tanks to the attention of Naval Operations. If there were a strike on Pearl, Operations would want to know exactly what to hit. Gen’s career was on the line. All the same, Harry said, “That’s up to you. I’m looking for Michiko.”

Gen stayed at his shoulder. “Did you make up everything? Are the tanks a con?”

“I have no idea. What does it matter? What’s so urgent about Hawaii?”

Gen said nothing, but the two men came to a stop. This was the point in a game where you turned up the cards, Harry thought. He said, “Is it too late to tell your friends in Naval Operations to turn the ships around?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s happening, isn’t it? I saw Tojo taking an innocent ride in the park today, and I knew then it was a matter of hours. You know why I’ve done so well at cards over the years? The Japanese are lousy bluffers. They have too much honor, too much face. I don’t have either, so I’ve always had the odds on my side. You understand odds?”

Gen looked like a fighter rattled by a combination. “I’ve heard this before.”

“But you haven’t understood. Odds are the long run. In the short run, you may sink the American fleet, burn all the oil, send Hawaii under the sea. But you won’t win, because the other side will just produce more fleets, more oil and more islands if it needs to.” Harry started down the steps again. “I can’t believe someone as smart as Yamamoto went along with this.”

“The C in C does as he is ordered.”

“Doesn’t matter. You may win the battle, but in the long run, you can’t win the war. The odds are too high.”

“That’s what you want.”

“No, that’s not at all what I want.”

“Japan defeated is what you want.”

“No.” Harry stayed one step ahead.

“You have always been against a greater Japan.”

“I’ll show you what I’m against. I’ll demonstrate.” At the bottom of the steps, Harry bought out a vendor’s stack of dream papers, the cheap prints of seven clownish gods meant to be placed under one’s pillow on New Year’s to inspire good luck. Harry carried them to the smoking urn, crumpled the papers and tossed them in among the joss sticks. People stepped back, horrified. Harry went on balling up the sheets and throwing them in until the urn was full. “These are paper houses, this is what Japanese people live in. Have you ever seen the effect of incendiary bullets on paper houses? This is what it looks like.”

Harry’s lighter was good for one more flame. He touched it to a paper, which opened as it burned and touched off all the surrounding papers. They bloomed until the entire urn filled with a floating plasma of orange flames and the blue smoke of joss sticks. For a few seconds, the paper burned brilliantly and cast a light that Harry saw reflected in the eyes of the crowd; then it turned black and twisted on the sand amid the bare glowing wires of the sticks.

Harry said, “That’s what I’m against. A Tokyo like that.”

The space around him grew. Not all the people were strangers; some vendors had known Harry for years. No matter, all were shamed and offended. Everyone stared at the gaijin and made room only because courtesy prevented them from beating him.

Gen said, “Harry, I know about the plane tomorrow. If you want to be on it, tell me about the tanks. If you want to get out, tell me.”

“I don’t know.”

Harry turned and made his way through the crowd. The pariah’s privilege, he thought, was that people let you pass.

THE HAPPY PARIS was only a few blocks away. The club felt cocked like a mousetrap. Harry expected Ishigami to step behind him at any moment. He took a deep breath before turning on the lights.

Michiko wasn’t in the club or upstairs in the apartment. There was no note or indication of where she had gone or how she expected to connect with him. Maybe she didn’t intend to at all, Harry thought. Why stand next to a target on a firing range? If she took a powder, good for her. If she was smart, she’d go the far end of the island, and if he was smart, he’d be on the plane, so everything evened out. Harry realized that from the moment he stepped into the ballroom, he hadn’t even thought about the plane until Gen mentioned it. He hadn’t thought about Alice at all.

He dug out a potato stored under the galley floorboards, cut it in two and left a cross-section wrapped in a towel to dry while he typed on the stationery that Goro had delivered. A Japanese typewriter was a special misery, a scroll that rotated over a tray of hundreds of characters that had to be picked up and linked one by one, but over the years Harry had become adept at the creation of documents. While he wrote an official approval of Iris’s politics from the War Ministry-that clean bill of health under the ministry letterhead that would allow her to accompany Willie on the Orinoco-he played some Ellington, getting up to punch in the numbers for “ Mood Indigo. ”

What kept coming to mind were Haruko’s head and vacant eyes. Most awful, however, was his relief when he saw she wasn’t Michiko. Harry hadn’t thought she was, not once he’d glimpsed her wrists, but he hadn’t dared hope. To hope for anything that much was unlike Harry. You ain’t been blue, no, no, no / You ain’t been blue / Till you’ve had that mood indigo. Haruko had blue beat. Michiko was smart to lay low. Anyone who could be both the Record Girl and a geisha had a gift for survival.

A PLAIN LETTER wasn’t enough. Just as important was a chop, an officer’s stamp. Harry applied the stamp impression Goro had given him to the round heel of the potato, and the extra-fine paper almost melted, leaving a clear impression in red. With his smallest, sharpest knife, Harry cut away the surface in between, just as Kato had taught him to carve a woodblock. He wet a red inkstone and made a practice impression. Trimmed the excess and stamped the letter. In China he’d done fifty illegal documents a day. There were artists and there were artists.