Gen had diagrammed the room like elevations. Along the east wall were medical cabinets, carboys of water, anatomical charts. North: cabinets, scale, door and transom, table of rubber boots, gloves and smoked goggles, eye chart and optical equipment. West: crutches, copper coils, VD chart, sink, instructions for winding cloth around the midriff to counteract the G-force of a tight turn. South: wheelchairs, cabinets, the observation mirror, more carboys and a row of bottles.
“But imagine,” Gen said. “Imagine if we could transform water into oil. Nothing could stop us, Harry. We could be a force for good, for progress.”
“Gen, not that it makes any difference to me, but I’ve seen progress. I’ve seen mounds of progress. I’ve seen the streets run with progress, I’ve seen progress shoved into pits and stacked to the sky and burned like logs. Progress is overrated.”
“But you’ll help?”
“What are friends for?”
Gen laid his head on a table and closed his eyes while Harry looked at the diagrams. With cons, the simplest answer was best, you didn’t have to go to Harvard to know that. Harry discounted Ito’s elaborate procedure of marking and sealing corks as hokum. As for the electric lights and bangs? A hell of a show. All that really mattered was the apparent change of water to oil in six blue bottles in a tank of water. Oil was lighter than water, which was why a bottle floated when its contents were supposedly transformed by Ito’s bolts of lightning. But a fine string could raise a bottle, and the change of contents could have taken place anytime. And not even six had to rise, all the con needed was one bottle to maintain excitement because this was an audience who wanted, in spite of its intelligence, to believe what a magician showed them. Houdini once made an elephant disappear in Madison Square Garden. He showed the crowd the elephant standing face out, then drew the curtain, and when he reopened it, the elephant was gone. All Houdini had done was stand the elephant sideways behind a drop of black velvet. As simple as that, because people wanted to believe.
There were other possibilities. The steadfast guards might be bribed. The irate Professor Mishima might have been a shill. That got complicated, however, and Harry focused more and more on Dr. Ito’s lab coat as the most likely source of the “blood” the doctor coughed up at will and as a blind for a last-minute switch. Between the fireworks and smoked goggles and his voluminous lab coat, Ito could switch a case of beer.
At four in the afternoon, Harry woke Gen. Kondo had started setting up the bar, briskly wiping glasses. From outside came the street calls of sake vendors and fortune-tellers.
“You can’t cheat an honest man.”
Gen sat up and rubbed his eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“You can’t cheat an honest man. Do you know what that means, college boy?”
“Yes,” Gen said.
“No, you don’t. It means an honest man can afford to be objective, he doesn’t care one way or the other, so he’s hard to fool. A mark, on the other hand, wants something for nothing. He wants the pea under the shell, his share of a lost wallet, a tip on a horse, oil for water. His objectivity is already blown, he’s bought in. And because the game itself is dishonest, he can’t go crying to the police when he’s cheated of what he hoped to steal. Or to God because you can’t change water into aviator fuel. Have you got some dress whites?”
THAT NIGHT, Harry alone slipped behind the observation mirror as Gen joined the band of witnesses. The group was entirely navy, which Harry took as a sign that scientific quibbles were on the verge of being totally ignored. With Yamamoto present, there was enough gold braid in the room for a bellpull. Only one officer was in dress whites, and that was Gen. All eyes, of course, were on Dr. Ito and the six blue bottles in the water tank.
The emaciated doctor looked as if he had spent the day under a mushroom. He did cast a spell. Officers who generally believed only in six-inch armor hung on every word. Harry concentrated on what Ito did: the restless stride around the tank, the long hands and deft fingers, the flapping laboratory coat. Everyone had pulled on dark goggles, and Ito was moving toward the switch when Gen begged to borrow his lab coat. “I’m concerned about sparks that might burn my jacket. It’s the only one I own. Would you mind very much?”
The senior officers were appalled, all but Yamamoto, who looked impartially curious.
Ito hesitated. He had the ability to write amazement on his face. “You need my lab coat?”
“Yes.” That was what Harry had told Gen to say.
“In that case.” Ito shrugged off the coat and handed it to Gen, then continued in shirtsleeves and threw the switch.
Luminous lines of energy filled the room, pulsing back and forth from wand to sphere over the blue bed of the water tank and the dark blue bottles that trembled within. As Ito modulated the voltage, the lines spread like a hypnotic sea of rolling waves, like the view, perhaps, from Sata, where he had first glimpsed the fluid forces of nature. When he shut off the power, one bottle had already risen to the surface. Ito scooped out the bottle and elected Gen to break the seal, verify the mark on the cork and identify the contents. Gen’s face burned with shame down to his white collar.
“It’s oil.”
“You’re positive?”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“Then may I have my coat?” As he pulled the coat on, Ito fell against the tank and began coughing up blood. He waved his hand like a swimmer going under. “No more experiments this week. I cannot proceed with such suspicion, the strain is too much.”
The C in C averted his eyes from the disgrace of his lieutenant.
AT THREE in the morning, Harry and Gen got back to the Happy Paris to salute the end of Gen’s career. Harry brought a bottle of Scotch from the bar while Gen smoked a cigarette as if he were chewing on a nail.
“Sorry, Gen. I guess it wasn’t the lab coat.”
“Wasn’t the coat? Wasn’t the coat? Harry, you’ve ruined me. I can’t face those officers tomorrow.”
“Technically speaking, tomorrow is today. Banzai!” Harry raised his glass.
“Banzai!” Gen threw the drink back. “One commander said I had embarrassed the entire navy. He suggested a letter of resignation.”
“You were doing what Yamamoto asked you to do.”
“No. I was doing what you told me to do. How could you be so sure about the coat?”
“It seemed logical. I figured, forget the light show, he’s just switching bottles.”
“We mark the cork. It’s the same cork when we put the bottle into the water and when we pull it out, so it’s the same bottle. Now what?”
“I don’t know, I’m not a scientist. Maybe he’s really doing it.”
“Water to oil?”
“What do I know? Scientists are doing all sorts of stuff, synthetic this and that. I guess you have a real Einstein on your hands.”
“A Japanese Einstein.” Gen laughed. “And I’ll go down in history as a fool.”
“You and me.”
“Harry, you won’t go down in history at all. How could you say take away his lab coat? You gambled, and I’m the one who paid. If I were a samurai, I’d kill myself. No, I’d kill you first. If I had a gun, I’d shoot you right now.”
“Water to oil. One of the pivotal moments in science, like the first electric bulb, that’s exciting.”
“And now you say he’s really doing it.”
“It looks that way. He puts water in a bottle and takes oil out.”
“I know, I was there.”
Now that Harry thought about it, he himself wasn’t, not for everything. Ito had moved out of Harry’s vision to fill the bottle. “He didn’t use the sink tap. Where did he get the water?”
“He siphoned it.”
“Why? A sink is easier.” Harry remembered the diagrams of the room and the big glass carboys of water. “That’s a lot of effort when a sink is right there. It’s distilled water? Filtered water?”