“The war is not over until the Emperor Tenno concedes defeat, a move he will never make.”
“Or until we are all destroyed.”
“I could have you shot for treason.”
Dr. Saski snatched up his telephone and held it out to Nakamura. “Call your military friends, Nakamura-san. Call them now, if you are not a coward. But let me tell you that the great empire is gone. Up in flames with our cities. Tokyo is in ruins. Soon we will join her. Maybe sooner than you think. So it doesn’t matter. Go ahead and call your friends in their high places. Maybe they will come down to deal with me. Maybe they will tell you to go away. Who knows. I am willing to see. Are you?”
“Perhaps I will kill you myself.”
“You are certainly capable of it.”
Nakamura suddenly had no idea what he was doing here, wasting his time like this.
Yet he found himself wondering about the doctor. He didn’t understand the man. “You would rather die than fight back?”
For the first time Dr. Saski’s expression softened. “We speak of being Japanese.
There is no honor left in it. Believe me, I have seen as much as you, maybe even more. The misery, the starvation, the wounds, the open, festering sores. Where is the honor, Nakamura-san? I ask you.”
Nakamura felt as if he were standing at the very edge of an extremely dangerous precipice.
If he made the wrong move he would fall over and plunge to his death. By sheer dint of will he stepped aside, away from the doctor’s desk. The sunlight streaming through the windows across the hall illuminated the room. “You are no Japanese. You are nothing but scum.”
“I am not a murderer… like you.”
“Bastard…” Nakamura said, when a tremendous flash lit up the corridor at his back, as if someone had let off a gigantic photographic bulb.
There was no noise, but Dr. Saski’s eyes turned an opaque white almost instantly, and he staggered backward.
Instinctively Nakamura, who’d survived a number of bombing raids on Tokyo, dove for the floor, protecting his head with his arms. His first thought was that the Americans had dropped another Molotqffano hanakago-what the public called Molotov Flower Baskets, which were cluster bombs. But this flash was much too bright. And there was no explosion.
Nakamura started to raise his head when a huge shock wave hit the hospital as if a loaded freight train going full tilt had slammed into the building’s foundation.
Window glass flew through the open office door like pellets from a shotgun’s barrel, slicing Dr. Saski’s face into ribbons. In the next instant the desk lifted up on unseen hands and fell on top of the doctor.
Ceilings and walls were falling with horrible grinding crashes, and moments or seconds later people began to scream.
Nakamura pulled himself upright, scattering pieces of wood and glass and papers that had fallen on him, and staggered over to where Dr. Saski lay beneath the heavy oak desk. Blood streamed from hundreds of slashes on the doctor’s face and chest, and his eyes were bleeding, both corneas milky white. He was still alive, but it was obvious he would bleed to death unless he got help soon.
“Can you hear me, sensei?” Nakamura shouted.
Dr. Saski grabbed for Nakamura’s shoulder with his one free hand. “What was it? A bomb?”
“Yes, I think so. Are you in pain?”
“My patients.”
“You are in no position to help them now. You must save yourself. I will see if I can lift the desk off you.”
“No,” Dr. Saski cried, desperately clutching Nakamura’s arm. “You must help organize the evacuation before there is fire.”
“Don’t be a fool. There is nothing to be done for them.”
“Damn you, Nakamura, they need your help.”
Nakamura pried the doctor’s fingers from the material of his jacket and backed away.
Scrambling to his feet he went to the corridor door. Everything was different. A big section of the floor above had collapsed, dumping beds and bodies in a bloody heap all tangled with wooden beams, boards, glass, electrical wires and plumbing pipes and even surgical equipment, bottles, bandages and other debris.
None of the window frames held any glass, and the scene outside toward the center of the city nearly a mile away was unbelievable, like something out of a nightmare.
A hellish cauldron of smoke and fire in dozens of unreal colors rose straight up into a gigantic column the top of which was lost in billowing clouds of dust.
This was no cluster bomb. It was something else. Tearing his eyes away from the fantastical scene outside, Nakamura looked back in at the doctor. Japan had lost the war. There was absolutely no doubt of that now. Afterwards, when the Americans occupied the homeland, there would be war trials. Those who had fought hardest and with the most bravery for Japan would be the first to go to the gallows … as Dr. Saski had predicted.
Evidence would have to be gathered. There would be witnesses, even from his own factory where he had used Korean slave labor since 1938.
There would be no extenuating circumstances. Isawa Nakamura would be found guilty as charged: Crimes against humanity.
“I pleaded with him to help save my patients, but he ignored me, running away to save himself instead.”
“He came to visit his parents, but not out of some filial duty. He came to see how long it would be before they were dead. He wanted the inheritance, you see.”
More people were screaming and moaning. A woman’s voice came from beneath the pile of rubble in the corridor. “Tasukete! Tasukete!” Help! Help!
Nakamura went back to the doctor, his shoes crunching on the broken glass.
“Nakamura, is that you?” Dr. Saski cried.
Nakamura looked down at the doctor for a moment or two. He could definitely smell smoke. The hospital was on fire. There was no doubt of it.
“Can’t you hear them crying for help, Nakamura? You must help them. They will die otherwise.”
Nakamura picked up a long, dagger-like shard of glass from the floor, and kneeling down beside Dr. Saski, blotted out the screams of the dying and helpless. Life was for the living, and he intended to live. At all costs.
“Nakamura!” Dr. Saski rose on his free elbow.
Nakamura grabbed a handful of Dr. Saski’s hair, yanked his head back, and with the shard of glass hacked through the man’s carotid artery, and windpipe, blood spurting everywhere, before he reared back.
The doctor struggled desperately for a full minute before he took a last, gurgling gasp and his head thumped back on the floor.
The glass shard had cut deeply into Nakamura’s hand. Tossing it aside he bound up the wound with his handkerchief and hurried out into the corridor. It was very dark, almost as if night had fallen. Looking through the gaping windows he could see that the sky was completely covered with swirling masses of dark clouds and dust.
He was confused. There’d only been the one flash. One bomb. But how could it have done so much damage?
Much of what he could see of the city was gone; either flattened by the blast or burning furiously. There seemed to be fires everywhere. And the street directly in front of the hospital was choked with debris. He’d been saved because he’d moved away from the open doorway at the last moment. He’d been lucky. Those caught outside would not have fared so well.
For the first time he remembered that he had a car waiting for him. Kiyoshi Fukai, his driver, was downstairs with Myeko. He had sent her back outside just before the bomb. They were both outside, exposed.
Nakamura was suddenly angry and frightened. He did not want to be stuck in Hiroshima.
And without a car and driver it would take them days to make it home to his wife and children and business. There was too much to be done, too many records to be destroyed before the enemy landed, too much to be dismantled and hidden, for him to be delayed.