“Christ!” Stanley Laanui burst out. “I thought I was kidding!” Those bloodshot eyes flicked back and forth like a hunted animal’s. “Can you beat them? Uh-can we beat them?”
“All we can do, we will do,” Genda said-a reply that sounded more promising than it was.
King Stanley, unfortunately, understood as much. “Jesus! What’ll they do if they catch me?” He put a fist by his neck and jerked it upward, turning his head to the side as if hanged.
Genda did his best to look on the bright side of things: “No American soldiers are here yet. Maybe we will beat back the landing. Maybe we will beat them on the ground here. Japanese soldiers are very brave.”
“Yeah, sure, Commander. I know that,” King Stanley said. Under his breath, he muttered something that sounded like, If pigs had wings… If that was a proverb, it wasn’t one Genda knew. The king gathered himself. “All right. We’ll do what we can to give you a hand. After all, it’s our necks, too, if the USA comes back.”
“Thank you, your Majesty. I knew you would stand by us.” Genda bowed his way out of the office. The really worrisome thing was that he was grateful for the sen’s worth of support the King of Hawaii had to give. Any port in a storm. That was an English proverb Genda did know.
As he stood in the hallway, a tiny Chinese cleaning woman, easily ten centimeters shorter than he was, slipped a little piece of paper into his hand. She was smooth as a stage magician; she didn’t even break stride as she walked past him. He opened it as he limped down the stairs. It had a number, nothing more. He folded it up and stuck it in a trouser pocket.
He got on the bicycle he’d managed to lay his hands on and rode around to the back of Iolani Palace. The guards at the stairs that led up and down there also saluted him. He absently returned the gesture as he went down into the basement.
The door that matched the number on the slip had a window set with wire-strengthened glass. Genda sighed to himself. Queen Cynthia wasn’t going to take any chances today. He didn’t suppose he could blame her, but he wished she would have. At least he would be able to speak freely behind the closed door. That too was release of a sort, though not the kind he craved.
Cynthia Laanui was more conscientious than her husband as well as more decorative. All the charities that moved food and medical supplies from hither to yon and tried to extract more ran through her. She really had done good work-and here she was, doing more. But she closed her fountain pen when Genda walked into her little office. As soon as the door clicked shut behind him, she exclaimed, “I was afraid you weren’t coming back!”
So was I. But that was not a thought Genda would have shared with any woman-or with any man, unless he got drunk with a friend who’d gone through the same thing. “Here I am,” he said, bowing.
“Yes-here you are… and you came here in a destroyer.” Like any proper queen, Cynthia obviously had her spies. “Where is the Akagi?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes things go your way. Sometimes they go the enemy’s way.”
“What will you do?” she asked.
He couldn’t tell whether she meant him alone or the Japanese as a whole. The answer was the same either way: “Fight.”
Queen Cynthia’s gingery eyebrows leaped. “Can you win?” If they couldn’t win, she would face whatever the Americans chose to dish out to her husband and her. Whatever that was, Genda didn’t think it would be pretty. King Stanley could at least claim he was a Hawaiian trying to regain his country’s independence after half a century of U.S. occupation. It wouldn’t help, but he could claim it.
His wife, pure haole, couldn’t even offer that excuse. If the Americans won, they would probably reckon her a traitor to her race.
“We will do our best. We have won before,” Genda said: almost exactly what he’d told her husband.
“You’d better,” she said fiercely. If she led the little Hawaiian Army, it might well fight harder than it would under King Stanley.
Genda shrugged again. “Karma, neh?” After that, he found only one thing left to say: “Karma too that we fell in love, neh?”
“Yes,” Cynthia Laanui answered, and looked down at the desk. Was she remembering she was an American? She’d been willing, even eager, to forget when things were going better for Japan. Now… She looked up again. “What are we going to do? What can we do?”
He shrugged. “I do not know. Everything we can.” His own chances of living through the fighting ahead were anything but good. He didn’t tell her that-what was the point? No doubt she could see it for herself anyway. If he didn’t live, her chances were better if no one knew she’d been sleeping with the enemy. Of course, as queen to the Japanese puppet King of Hawaii, she faced long odds, too. He got to his feet to go, and bowed once more. “Good luck.”
“Same to you,” she said. “I used to have it, but it seems to be gone now.”
He didn’t know what to say to that. He’d just got back on his bicycle when air-raid sirens began to wail. When he saw the swarms of American planes tearing up Hickam Field again, he feared Japanese luck in Hawaii was gone now, too.
FLETCHER ARMITAGE WAS DIGGING an antitank ditch north of Wahiawa when American planes roared by overhead. He wanted to laugh in the face of the worried-looking Jap guard who rode herd on him and his fellow POWs. He wanted to scream, All right, motherfucker! You had it your way for a while. Now see how you like taking it for a change!
He wanted to, but he didn’t. He didn’t get out of line at all, in fact. The Japs had been jumpy even before those planes came over. Fletch hadn’t known why, but their wind was up. They started beating people up for no reason. If you gave them trouble on purpose, you’d be lucky if they just shot you. They’d probably bayonet you and leave you to die slowly under the hot sun.
And yet… There were a hell of a lot of prisoners and not very many guards. Before, it hadn’t seemed to matter so much. The Japs were top dogs, and they knew it and so did the men they guarded. But if all of a sudden they weren’t guaranteed top dogs any more, an awful lot of Americans owed them plenty-and wanted to pay it back, with interest.
More fighters and bombers flew by. The noise of explosions not too far away said something-probably Wheeler Field-was catching hell again. Unlike the big, heavy bombers the day before, these planes were coming in low. “Son of a bitch,” Fletch said, staring up. “Son of a bitch.”
“What is it?” another POW asked.
“They changed the wing emblem on our planes,” Fletch answered. “They took out the red ball in the middle of the star. When did that happen?” What else had his country done while he wasn’t looking-couldn’t look? All at once, he felt like Robinson Crusoe, trapped on a desert island while the rest of the world went on about its business.
“No talk!” the closest Jap guard shouted. “Work!”
Like any POW, Fletch worked no harder than he had to. He doubted he weighed even 110 pounds. He had little strength and less stamina. The Japs didn’t care. A lot of the work they’d had the POWs do was designed more to wear out and destroy men than for serious military reasons.
No more. Fletch could see how this ditch would slow an armored attack. The mud of the rice paddies wouldn’t help tanks, either. The U.S. Army had done its best to fight when the Japanese invaded. Now the Japs were getting ready to do the same.
And they’re making me help them, the sons of bitches! Fletch wanted to scream it. Under the Geneva Convention, they weren’t supposed to make him do work like this. Since he was an officer, under the Geneva Convention he wasn’t required to work at all. Did the Japs care? Not even slightly.
“Work!” the guard yelled again, and bashed somebody in the side of the head with the butt end of his Arisaka. The luckless POW staggered and fell to his hands and knees. The guard kicked him in the ribs, and went on kicking him till he lurched upright once more. Blood running down his cheek, the prisoner dug out another spadeful of earth. He didn’t say a word. Complaining only got you deeper in Dutch. Keeping your head down as much as you could was a hell of a lot smarter.