“Harry Niles, marital adviser. Willie, let me explain,” Alice said. “If we were in England, Harry would help my marriage by being my corespondent, the ‘other man.’ We’d arrange compromising photos in bed. He’d be perfect because his reputation can’t get any blacker. He is the bar other villains measure themselves by.”
Harry said, “Aren’t you supposed to be at a meeting of ‘British Housewives Against the Huns’?”
“I’m kind of curious,” DeGeorge said and hunched closer to Willie. “Why would you even ask Harry Niles to help? When did Harry Niles lift a finger for his fellow man?”
Willie looked away.
“Seriously,” DeGeorge said, “how could you ask Harry?”
“In China…” Iris began.
“I don’t know,” Willie said.
“Hey, I’m a reporter,” DeGeorge said. “I smell something here, Willie. You knew Harry in China. ’Fess up.”
“Willie,” Harry said. They’d agreed not to talk about this.
“I heard Harry got in a tight spot in China,” DeGeorge said. “Was it stealing cars, or a scam like his pine-tree gasoline?”
“Don’t do it,” Harry told Willie.
“No, they think I’m a fool for asking you to help. I’ll tell them why.”
DeGeorge sat forward to share the joke. The martinis arrived, and Harry sank with one into his chair. Sometime or other he had to get some food.
Willie said, “I was manager of Deutsche-Fon in Nanking. We handled the telephone exchange and electrical power. By December it was clear that the Japanese army would attack because Nanking was the capital, and once it surrendered, everyone assumed that the war would be over. But the Chinese resisted more than was expected, and even when the city fell, the army wouldn’t surrender, which infuriated the Japanese, and they began executing people. They shot men in the back of the head or bayoneted them or beheaded them or drowned them individually and in groups. I have heard estimates of ten thousand to a hundred thousand dead. I personally would say many more. I had hundreds of Chinese employees I was responsible for, them and their families. I was not alone. There were twenty other Westerners left in Nanking, mainly German businessmen and American missionaries, and we created an international safety zone to protect Chinese whose homes had burned. I was elected head of the committee, a position I accepted because I was also head of the Nazi Party in Nanking and had to set a moral tone.
“The zone was only a few square kilometers, but soon we had three hundred thousand Chinese under our protection. Though, as I said, there were only twenty of us, so the protection was not very good. Every day the Japanese would come to take away women to rape. Some we saved, some we did not. The Japanese came for men to kill. They roped them together a hundred at a time. Some we saved, most we did not. Or they robbed them. The Japanese took jade, gold, rugs, watches, wooden spoons. Attacked safes with guns, grenades, acetylene torches. If they took a woman away to search, we knew we would never see her again. We saved who we could.
“We had to feed all these poor people. We transported bags of rice in my car, the roof of which I covered with a white sheet with a red cross, so that we wouldn’t be fired on, because cars were always being commandeered and the drivers killed. Every time we went for rice, someone would run from a house to tell us his wife or his daughter was being raped inside, would we help? I had a Nazi armband. With that as my authority, I stopped some incidents, but I was not always successful. One time when I was failing, our driver, one of the Americans, a new face, got out with me. Since he had a stethoscope, I assumed he was a doctor. He brushed a line of soldiers aside, pushed up the girl’s skirt, proceeded to examine her and spoke to the soldiers in Japanese. Apparently he convinced them the girl had a venereal disease. That was Harry. I don’t know where he got the stethoscope, I think he stole it. From then on, Harry was my driver.”
Harry studied the ceiling’s Gothic gloom, the crosspieces of concrete and lava rock. All they lacked were bats.
Willie went on, “Sometimes Harry and I would patrol in the car and load it with girls. Harry altered documents from the Japanese command so they seemed to give him the authority to prevent the spread of infection among the troops, which meant removing the women from their rapists. For added authority, he wore one of my armbands to pretend he was German, too.
“It wasn’t only women. We had a truck. Harry and I would load it with men taken from hiding and put on a top layer of the dead bodies in case we were stopped, which we often were. Harry would produce papers ordering us to remove bodies around the zone to prevent cholera or typhoid. He was excellent at creating official papers. The killing went on for weeks. When new Japanese recruits arrived, they were drilled in the use of the bayonet with live Chinese, to accustom them to blood. One officer, a Lieutenant Ishigami, became a kind of legend for beheading a hundred Chinese.”
“End of the story,” Harry said. “Willie, you’ve said enough.”
“Except that Ishigami came to the Happy Paris last night after you left.”
“Enough.”
Willie slid back in his chair. “Very well. Anyway, that’s part of what happened in Nanking and why I am perhaps not such a fool to think that Harry, the Harry Niles I knew in China, might possibly help us here.”
The table was quiet. Finally DeGeorge said, “Harry with a swastika on his arm? I can picture that.”
“No. Harry was heroic.”
“Maybe. You don’t speak any Japanese, you don’t really know what actually transpired, you know only what Harry told you. But Harry in a Nazi armband, that I can believe.”
“I’ll call some people about Iris,” Harry said.
“I would be forever grateful.” Willie jumped up to shake Harry’s hand. “At the War Ministry? Someone from the military police would be best. High up?”
“Well, people with influence.”
“Thank you,” Iris said. “You are just as Willie described.”
“Willie has a hell of an imagination.” Harry stood to leave. “Nice to meet you. Only, no more fairy tales.”
“You can’t stay?” Willie said.
“I’m off, too, to Matsuya’s for the necessities, soap, Scotch, cigarettes,” Alice said.
“Lady Beechum thinks there may be a war in a day or two,” said DeGeorge.
Harry said, “Your husband says, ‘The little yellow Johnnies don’t have the nerve.’”
“There you are.” She lifted a smile to Harry. “It’s men like Arnold who have put the British Empire where it is today.”
AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT Hajime was at Tokyo Station. Gone was last night’s maudlin drunk and in his place was a sober Hajime in khaki, field cap and cape. The railroad platform was crowded with recruits, parents, friends, little brothers waving flags, sisters delivering thousand-stitch belts with all their protective powers. Some men were shipping out for the second time, but most were boys clumsy in their helmets and field packs with bedrolls and entrenching tools. Banners hung vertically from lamp poles announced, ONE HUNDRED MILLION ADVANCING LIKE A WALL OF FLAME!, the sort of wish some travelers could do without, Harry thought. A brass band produced a rendition of “My Old Kentucky Home” that shook dust from the station’s spidery skylights.
Hajime regarded the confusion with a veteran’s detachment. “Thanks for coming, Harry,” he said. “All you need is one friend to see you off, right?”
“I guess so.” Harry probably would not have come at all if it hadn’t been for Hajime’s gun. Harry gave it to him still boxed and wrapped as if handing over a farewell gift. Since its loss was punishable by death, Harry expected a little gratitude. Instead, Hajime demanded a smoke. Harry gave him a pack, and Hajime lit up with ostentatious ease.