“You owe me five heads.”

“And I always will.”

Ishigami’s hands seemed to make up his mind. He pressed the muzzle to his chest and fired. He swayed, managed a second pull on the trigger and folded over. The sound of the shots rang around the theater, followed by a resonant stillness.

WHEN HARRY STUMBLED OUT, dazed, slightly deafened, he discovered no one could have heard the gun. The street was a rally swept by the contagion of enthusiasm, songs and cheers and the rattle of firecrackers. He had his germ mask on and, except for dried blood on his pants cuffs, looked like any other reveler. The crush was overwhelming and good-natured, faces red from celebration, silk kimonos rubbing against sufu uniforms. The idea of a wartime blackout added novelty, and the lack of streetlamps made the carbide lights of the stalls and the red lanterns of pubs more intense against the dark.

Harry knew that Shozo and Go would pick him up. But as part of the general sweep of gaijin or something more particular? He bet the police would not investigate much. No one wanted to hear at the beginning of a long, arduous war that it was already lost. Knowing what he knew, he almost felt that he stood in a street of ghosts. Faces loomed and bobbed. Bodies pressed against him with a certain insubstantiality, voices hollow as echoes.

Then his hearing cleared and the clamor of the street was overwhelming-the martial delirium of a loudspeaker, the chatter of clogs running after a cascade of lanterns-and in one step Harry was swept along by the bright, irresistible stream.

Martin Cruz Smith