s from their hands. A third was a shop clerk in an apron speckled with blood from his nose. Another was an old man with a twitching mole. The fifth, Harry guessed, was a lawyer in a torn pin-striped suit; he looked like a busted mattress. Next, a coolie who was little more than a starved frame in a loincloth, then a man in a long nightshirt, as if he had been roused from bed, and a fat man-a merchant or a pawnbroker-with almost no neck. Finally, a man with eyes and mouth pressed shut, already braced for the blade; and a boy, maybe thirteen, who stank with fear. Over all ten of them lay an ocher dust daubed with blood. Perhaps a hundred soldiers gathered as ad hoc witnesses, and another fifty with more torches stood on the wall. It was the blaze on the rampart that had drawn Harry and Willie. The city was a landscape of ruin and fire, and it was sometimes difficult to tell whether violence was past, present or imminent, but Harry and Willie had long since lost their sense of personal safety. There was no personal safety, there was only bluff. Willie was a good leader because he demonstrated moral assurance on a Wagnerian scale. All the same, when he and Harry drove toward the wall, soldiers made way with smirks of disdain. The Japanese had contempt for the international safety zone to begin with, and one of the open secrets of the war was that the Chinese enemy had German advisers-in fact, German, Russian and American advisers-helping them resist the Japanese. A swastika on a truck could be a safeguard one moment and a target the next, especially at night. As the truck nosed its way closer to the scene, the soldiers on the wall whipped their torches all the faster. When Harry braked to a stop, a sergeant jumped on the truck’s running board and shouted in his face, “Ten heads in ten strokes in under a minute! See for yourself!” As Harry and Willie got out, the soldiers eagerly pushed them forward, making them derisively honored guests. In the middle of the turmoil, a man gathered himself with the intensity of a sumo scattering salt around a ring, and Harry recognized Ishigami at once, by motion as much as looks. Ishigami had stripped to a white loincloth that accented the darkness of his face and hands and the alabaster smoothness of his body. Close up, he had sturdy legs, a long torso banded with muscle, wide shoulders and forearms thickened by hours of fencing and tiger-striped with scars. His hair was long, tied in a bun. A tub of water stood by for him to wash with when he was done and a fresh uniform for him to wear, but at the moment his mind was on his sword, and he rubbed the blade with oil of cloves that lent his hands a sharp-sweet scent. The lieutenant’s orderly was a young corporal with doelike features, long hands and wrists, lips full of anxiety. Harry wondered whether the corporal had ever seen combat, or had Ishigami protected him from harm? The orderly murmured something to Ishigami, enough for Harry to catch a country boy’s soft zu-zu accent. Ishigami glanced up, but Harry doubted there was any chance the lieutenant would connect Harry with the boy he had been fourteen years before. Ishigami wiped the blade clean, the sword weightless in his hands. Harry believed that Ishigami could probably take ten heads in ten seconds if he just waded in, but the lieutenant was a man of ritual. He positioned the orderly at his back with a bucket and ladle, practiced his approach from back to front so the kneeling men would hear only his progress. Satisfied, Ishigami returned to his starting point and took a balanced pose, breathing regulated, chin tucked in. A sergeant stepped forward with a pocket watch. Ishigami lifted his sword perpendicular to his shoulders, a silvery baton calling an orchestra to silence, all but the drone of flies. The sergeant with the watch raised his arm. There was a little respectful, preliminary coughing. The Chinese were motionless, leaning submissively, tilted toward their fate. Why no blindfolds? Harry wondered. For some reason, a white chrysanthemum came to mind. Harry took in Ishigami, the orderly, the sergeant with the stopwatch and the crowding circle in a more professional way, as if he had joined a game in progress and had maybe a second to find the chump, the weak link. He dug into his jacket and came out with a wad of money that he flourished next to a torch. “A hundred yen, a hundred yen each,” Harry declared, “to Lieutenant Ishigami and his orderly, and ten yen to every soldier present if the lieutenant can take ten heads in under thirty seconds. Or let the surviving Chinese go.” It was an offer that Ishigami, alone, would have despised, but the sight of the money and the sound of the offer had already inspired a cheer that spread to the heights of the wall. Here was an American crazy enough to practically burn his money. How at that point could a hero deny such a windfall to so many comrades? “Money,” Harry told Ishigami, “makes things more interesting.” Ishigami seemed interrupted at the top of a dive. He looked at Harry to determine if he was real or apparition. “Disappoint a lot of people,” Harry said. Ishigami’s eyes shone, taking in the ring of torches and enthusiastic soldiers. “Done?” Harry asked. Ishigami seemed to decide that it didn’t matter what Harry was. He nodded. Done. As he raised the sword again, cords of muscle played across his chest. His hands rotated in to the top of the grip to deliver the power of his palms through the blade. Thirty seconds. The first Chinese was the most difficult one, the merchant with the fat, sweaty neck. How many bolts of silk or tins of tea or bars of soap had passed across his shop counter? How many pipes of tobacco or plates of crispy duck enjoyed? How many women lain with, lied to, regretted? No matter, it all came to this, a balmy night in the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere when the most he could hope for was a clean cut rather than a hatchet job. Behind the man’s left shoulder, Ishigami seemed absolutely balanced, sword motionless, his eyes focused an inch above the collar. The lieutenant’s hand began to drop, and already the merchant’s head was on the ground, separated from the body, which, still upright, jetted blood. A general expulsion of breath went round, an expression of awe as if each soldier had felt a phantom impact of the decapitation. Ishigami flicked blood off and held out the sword so that the orderly could ladle water on the blade, one side and then the other, to wash off bone and gristle. With three steps, Ishigami set himself behind one of the soldiers caught escaping, a man who knew enough to stretch his neck. Ishigami took his head off as if removing a sausage end; it dropped neatly between the dead man’s knees like a bowl to catch the blood. Two heads in four seconds; Ishigami was doing well. The orderly, however, moved stiffly. The light of the torches was shifting and uncertain. A hundred yen was a staggering amount. When Ishigami held out his sword to rinse, the orderly missed and had to scoop water on the blade a second time. Worse, he failed to make way for the back-swing, which plucked the ear off the side of his head and threw the lieutenant’s timing off. Ishigami only scalped the next man and had to swing a second time. When he held out his sword for water, it took him valuable seconds to realize that his orderly was too busy searching the ground for his ear to mind the ladle. It was a distraction. Ishigami looked at Harry. More precious seconds passed. Ishigami went back to work. He severed the head of the old man, mole and all. The coolie’s head flew into the air like a hat tossed at graduation, and then Harry called out, “Time!” Five Chinese-deserter, clerk, lawyer, man in his nightshirt, boy-were still alive. Behind them spread soaked earth, soaked bodies, dusty heads, insect spirals, Ishigami bloody to his waist, sweaty with clots of blood, strands of hair loose from his exertions, the long arc of the sword bright red. The survivors seemed the last to realize they were alive. Harry and Willie had to lift them to their feet and drag as much as guide them toward the truck. When soldiers blocked the way, Ishigami ordered them to step aside. A wager was a wager. The last to be saved was the boy, who cried, shit and pissed, every sphincter open as Harry threw him over the tailgate. “Don’t look back.” Harry told Willie as they got in front. “This is loss of face, great loss, so just look ahead.” Ishigami called after Harry, “How do you know my name?” Harry played deaf. “Who are you?” Ishigami shouted again. Harry ignored him, put the truck in gear and eased away from the soldiers until he dared glance in his rearview mirror and saw Ishigami turn, press the orderly to his knees and push down his head. All this Harry remembered not in sequence but as a single spherical moment, a special lens to see through…