McCoy shrugged.

"You figure the Japs'll find out Sessions is an officer?"

"What makes you think he's an officer?"

"Come on, McCoy," Zimmerman said.

"Christ, for his sake, I hope not."

"What do we do now?"

"We wait twenty-four, maybe forty-eight hours to see what the Japs do."

"Then what?"

"Then I don't know," McCoy said. "There's reason the guys have to hang around here, but I don't want them getting shitfaced in case we need them."

"Okay," Zimmerman said. He walked out of the hotel lobby, and McCoy went up the wide stairs to the second floor and knocked on Mrs. Feller's door.

When she opened it, her hair was up in braids again, and she was wearing a pale yellow dress just about covered with tiny little holes.

He handed her the letter addressed to her. She raised her eyebrows questioningly and then tore open the envelope.

Even with her hair up again, she still looks pretty good. And Christ, what teats!

When she had read the letter, she raised her eyes and looked at him, obviously expecting some comment from him.

"Nothing to be worried about," he said. "They'll show them marching troops and barracks, and feed them food they know they won't like; and tonight they'll probably try hard to get them drunk. But there's no danger or anything like that. If there was, they wouldn't have let them send the letters."

"My husband doesn't drink," she said.

"He probably will tonight," McCoy said.

She seemed to find that amusing, he saw.

"His letter says that you will look after me," she said. "Are you going to look after me?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said.

"Starting at dinner? I missed you at lunch."

"I had something to do over lunch," he said. "And I'm afraid I'll be busy for dinner, too. If you'd like, I can ask Sergeant Zimmerman to have dinner with you."

"That won't be necessary," she said coldly.

Fuck you, too, lady!

"Are you going to. do anything about this?" she asked. "Notify someone what's happened?"

"If I can get through on the phone," McCoy said.

It turned out he couldn't get through to Captain Banning in Shanghai, which didn't surprise him-and was actually a relief. Getting your ass chewed out was one of those things the longer you put off, the better.

And then he realized there was a way he could avoid it entirely. He thought it over a minute and went looking for Ernie Zimmerman.

(Three)

The Hotel am See Chiehshom, Shantung Province 0815 Hours 17 May 1941 McCoy had just finished a hard day and night in the country and was now lowering himself all the way into a full tub hot clean water when there was a knock at his door.

"Come back later," he yelled in Chinese.

"It's Ellen Feller," she said.

"I'm in the bathtub."

Her response to this was a heavy, angry-sounding pounding on the door.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute," he called. "I'm coming."

McCoy hoisted himself out of the tub, wrapped a towel around his waist, and walked dripping to the door.

The moment it was opened a crack, she pushed past him into the room. She was wearing her robe, and her hair was again unbraided and hanging nearly to her waist. When he came back she must have seen him from her window talking to Ernie Zimmerman in the courtyard, he decided.

She walked to his small window, turned, and glared at him.

"Close the door, or someone will see us in here," she ordered.

In his junior year in St. Rose of Lima High, there had been a course in Musical Appreciation. They had studied Die Walkure then. That was what Mrs. Ellen Feller looked like now, McCoy thought, smiling. Obviously pissed off, she stood stiff and strident-looking, with her long hair flowing, her cheeks red, and her teats awesome even under her bathrobe-a goddamned Valkyrie.

"What are you smiling about?" she demanded furiously. Then, without waiting, demanded even more angrily, "And where have you been?"

"I don't think that's any of your business," McCoy said.

"You've been laying up with some almond-eyed whore in the village," she accused furiously. "You've been gone all night!"

"Don't hand me any of your missionary crap," McCoy said angrily. "Where I have been all night is none of your goddamned business. What did you do, come looking for me?"

He could tell from the look in her eyes that she had, indeed, come to his room looking for him.

"Why?" he asked. "What's happened?"

She shook her head. "Nothing," she said. "I just wondered where you were," she added awkwardly.

McCoy was still angry. "So you could start playing games with me again?" he asked.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said automatically.

"You know goddamned well what I'm talking about," he said.

"So that's what you thought," she said, after a moment.

"Go find some clown in the mission," he said, warming to his subject, "if you get your kicks that way. Just leave people like me out of it."

"How can you be so sure it was a game?" she asked.

"Huh!" McCoy snorted righteously.

"Maybe you should have considered the possibility that it wasn't a game and that you didn't have to go buy a woman," she said. "Maybe what you need, Corporal Killer McCoy, is a little more self-confidence."

"Jesus Christ!" he said.

"What's your given name?" she asked.

"Ken, Kenneth," he said without thinking. Then, "Why?"

"Because if I'm going to get in that bathtub with you and scrub the smell of your whore off you, I thought it would be nice to know your name."

"There was no whore," he said.

She looked intently at him and almost visibly decided he was telling the truth. She nodded her head.

"Then the bath can wait till later," she said. "Lock the door."

(Four)

Room 23

The Hotel Am See

Chiehshom, Shantung Province

1015 Hours 18 May 1941

"This is very nice," Ellen Feller said, picking the camera up from the chest of drawers and turning to look at him. She was naked. "Very expensive." That was a question.

"It's a Leica," he said. "It belongs to the Corps."

She held it up and pretended to aim it.

"Pity we can't use it," she said. "I would like to have a memento of this. Of us."

"For your husband to find," he said.

She laughed and put the camera down. It had been practically nonstop screwing (with breaks only for meals and trips to make sure none of the Marines had gone off on a drunk someplace); but this was the first time either of them had mentioned her husband.

"It's possible he could walk in any minute," McCoy said. "And catch us like this."

"You don't have to worry about him," she said. "But I wouldn't want to get you in trouble with your officers. Are they really likely to come back soon?"

"Can't tell. Why wouldn't I have to worry about him?"

"You mean you couldn't tell? Not even from the way he looked at you?"

"What are you saying, that he's a fairy?"

She shrugged.

"Then why do you stay married to him?" he asked. "Why did you marry him in the first place?"

"That's none of your business," she said. She leaned against the chest of drawers and arched her back.

She inhaled and ran her fingers across the flat of her belly. And then she told him.

"When I was fourteen, my father had a religious experience," she said. "Do you know what that means?"

"No," he admitted.

"He accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal saviour," Ellen Feller said, evenly. "And brought his family, my mother and me, into the fold with him. She didn't mind, I don't suppose, although I suspect she's a little uncomfortable with some of the brothers and sisters of the Christian Missionary Alliance. And I just went along. Girls at that age are a little frightened of life anyway; and when the hellfire of eternity is presented as a reality, it's not hard to accept the notion of being washed in the blood of the lamb."