A mosquito buzzed between them, floating in the damp air.

“He made her do awful things. He found out she was smuggling messages into the camp along with the food, so he made her bring tainted food the next time. Not enough to kill, just sicken, and there was nothing in the way of medical supplies, so people suffered. That’s the kind of bastard he was. I had to tell her the next time she came, and her face just crumpled. She hadn’t known. I believe that still. She hadn’t known but she couldn’t do anything. She didn’t know if he would do it again, or if the food would be all right the next time, and we were in such desperate need that we just took it and ate it.”

“How do you know he did it?”Claire asked. “Maybe it was just a mistake.”

“Oh, yes,” Will said. “We knew. He asked her after she returned how her friends were doing, and he laughed in her face. She only told me that afterward.”

“And Victor?”

“Victor Chen.” He laughed. “Oh, yes, my esteemed employer.”

“But Pwhat? ” she asked. “What of him?”

“What of Victor Chen?” Will said. “What of Victor Chen? How to begin?”

He slapped Claire suddenly on the arm.

“Got it,” he said, lifting up his hand to show a bloodied black spot, a tangle of tiny insect legs and antennae. “Damn bloodsuckers.”

He leaned over and rinsed his hands in the sea. He lifted them up. Drops of water sparkled and dripped from his fingers. He looked at them contemplatively.

“Victor Chen murdered Trudy,” he said.

April 10, 1943

“A GRATEFUL OTSUBO is what I want,” Trudy is saying. “If he’s grateful, who knows what he’ll do. Maybe he’ll get you repatriated! But you can’t leave. I don’t want to live in England.”

She never asks him again, not directly. She whispers, implies, ingratiates. She dangles rewards before him and then, finally, hate-fully, hints at what may befall her if she does not come through for the man.

“He wants one big payday, you know,” she says. “He is a simple man. He wants to go back to his country, buy some land in the country, and build a cottage for himself and his family. He wants to bring his parents out, take care of them. He’s really a family man.”

As she outlines this outlandish idea, he nods, pretends to listen, possibly agree.

“And he’s getting a wee bit impatient, but I think he’s getting close. He’s found out that Reggie Arbogast is indeed one of the people who was entrusted with the location. So you should know that. He has eyes and ears everywhere and I think they’re making progress. But he does get frustrated…” she trails off. “And when he’s frustrated…”

Three weeks later, another furlough.

“I’m working on getting it weekly for you. Do you like it?” she says when she picks him up. “All the bankers are outside, I don’t see why you shouldn’t be. They’re putting them up at the Luk Kwok and they escort them down to the office every day. I don’t think they’re getting better rations than us, but who knows.”

He gets in the driver’s seat.

“Have you seen Angeline? How is she doing?”

Trudy looks up at the sky.

“Angeline,” she starts. “Angeline seems to have suffered a crisis of conscience, is that what you call it?”

“What happened?”He starts up the car.

“She has gotten all up on herself and has decided that I am not a person that she wishes to associate with. Can you imagine?” She smiles tightly. “The godmother of her child!”

“Did she give you a reason?”

“No,” she says. “I went to visit her in Kowloon and her maid told me she wasn’t home. She was funny about it, though, and when I walked away I looked up and saw Angeline at the window. She wasn’t even trying to hide. She looked at me straight and then drew the curtains. Very grim.”

“You are presuming…”

“Oh, no, darling,” she says. “I know Angeline very well and she doesn’t need to say anything to me for me to know exactly what she is thinking. I’m just hoping you won’t come to the same conclusion. I’m going to become a pariah; I can just see it now.”

He bursts with his own confession.

“Trudy, I haven’t asked.”

She knows immediately what he is talking about.

“Maybe the right time hasn’t come up,” she says.

He cannot lie to her.

“I will not ask,” he says. “It just seems wrong.”

“Oh! You won’t even try!” A choked sound comes from her throat. “Wrong! Well, I can see that.”

“And why would Arbogast tell me anyway?” he finishes lamely. “We aren’t friends.”

She doesn’t speak again until they’re at the Toa.

“Here we are,” she says. “Are you hungry?”

Always the Chinese with their damn food, he thinks.

“No,” he says, getting out of the car. “Are you?”

“Otsubo wants us to meet him for lunch,” she says. “He’s waiting upstairs.”

“And you were going to tell me this when?”he says. “When I sit myself down on his lap?”

“Will!” she cries. “This is serious. Dominick has promised Otsubo he will get the information and that I will help him to get it. I wouldn’t ask you if it weren’t important, but…” she trails off.

“Trudy, I can’t help you,” he says. “I cannot.”

“Will,” she says. “If you really knew what was at stake…”

But her mouth is set. She knows this man. The question is how much she can manage the other one.

By the time they get to the room, she has shaken off her bad temper. Her moodiness is like a cloak she can take on and off at will.

“If I lose my pass because of this, you’ll be the first to pay,” she says lightly. She pushes the door open. “Otsubo-san! The valiant Will Truesdale is here to tell us of the wonderful resortlike conditions in Stanley. Was it coq au vin at dinner last night? And I heard you have entertainment now. The Stanley Players?” And she’s off, bubbling with vivacious energy, going around the room, dispensing kisses and quixotic pronouncements, clinking ice in highballs, as if she hasn’t a care in the world, as if she hadn’t fixed him with a long, pleading look right before they entered.

Dominick joins them for lunch, and Will notices the way Otsubo looks at him with barely disguised contempt, and yet, now his hand lingers on Dominick’s shoulder longer than necessary, he allows Dominick to serve him food, and Dominick treats him with a servile facility that sickens Will. So that’s how it goes, he thinks. The sophisticate becomes the dog and the soldier becomes the master. Brute force trumps all in the end, doesn’t it.

Still, this is not what concerns him. What’s been eating at him since they alighted from the car and made their way to Trudy’s suite is something else entirely.

What is making him uneasy is his own unwillingness to compromise and where it might be coming from-the niggling feeling that he cannot shake: that he is calling his reluctance integrity, but what it might be is simply cowardice.