He had not looked at this for over twenty years. He blinked, then refocused his eyes. There was a very young woman standing with a baby in her arms. Behind her the Golden Gate Bridge arched over the water. The woman appeared to be part Caucasian, part Japanese, the blend mixing together to form an exotic beauty. She was tall and slender, the Western-style dress clinging to her body. Her hair was jet black and very long with edges of it framing her waist. Her skin was dark and her eyes coal black. The slant to them wasn’t strong enough to pass in Japan but too far to pass as white in the West. Today he knew she would be considered beautiful, perhaps a model, but back then she was simply a half-breed.
“Nira,” Kuzumi whispered, slowly putting the photograph down on his desk. Nira Foster. The name was strung like a harp string inside of him. A string that he had long ago thought he had put away by sheer force of will. Over half a century before that string had played hard and loud.
It was her beauty that Kuzumi had not been able to resist at first. That she was Dr. Lawrence’s primary undergraduate assistant made her that much more attractive. She knew all that Lawrence did. Kuzumi had used that as a justification to get closer to her, not admitting the real reason, even to himself for a long time. That she had returned the attraction had not surprised him. She was half-Japanese and in those days there was much prejudice against Asians in California. She was also a budding physicist and Kuzumi represented the cutting edge of international study. He’d been published and she’d read his articles even before he’d arrived. He was three years older and had traveled the world. And, most importantly, he was the first true Japanese she had spent much time with.
Nira’s father had been a petty officer in the American Navy. She didn’t know her mother. Her father had dumped her in the care of a convent when she was two. She’d seen him several times over the next, decade when he happened to be in port, but then he’d disappeared and she’d never heard from him again. He had never told her about her Japanese mother or where she had been born. There were no records at the convent other than the papers her father had signed to get her into it.
She’d done well on her own and the nuns had given her a good enough education to get a scholarship to UCBerkeley, but there was a glass ceiling waiting for her and * she was smart enough to know it. Her ethnic background and her gender limited her options in the United States. That intellectual awareness didn’t temper her pain and anger, though.
Their first talks had been of atoms and particles and cadmium and all the other subjects that made up the burgeoning science they both were immersed in, Kuzumi could not recall when the talk had changed. He did remember the first time they had slept together. For two reasons. First, of course, was the experience itself, passionate and exciting beyond anything he had experienced before. But of more consequence was the fact that in his next message to be sent back to the Society through the Japanese Embassy pouch, he reported that he was involved with her, as was required by his standing orders.
He had been half-afraid he would be ordered to stop the relationship. What happened was worse. His instructions were to continue, build it, make it stronger. Then he was to recruit her. Kuzumi knew he would have to return to Japan soon to begin work on Genzai Bakudan. The Society wanted Nira to stay at UCBerkeley and keep an eye on Lawrence and his work. They knew that Lawrence would undoubtedly be part of any atomic project the Americans developed and being an American citizen Nira was the perfect spy. Because of her father’s abandonment, she hated the United States deep inside and it wasn’t hard for Kuzumi to tap into that. He told her stories of a Japan she’d never seen and the different life she’d have there. They kept the relationship a secret so that there would be no stories of her liaison with Nishin to filter back to the FBI.
At first it had been easy to work Nira as an agent and to be her lover. Another part of the job coupled with certain distinct advantages. But the more he spent time with her and talked, the more Kuzumi realized he wasn’t being honest or fair with Nira. He knew her Caucasian blood would keep her from being racially accepted in Japan. In fact, to be honest, he had to admit that she was treated better in the United States than she would be back in the Islands. And there was no doubt she could not study atomic physics in Japan. There were no women in the higher scientific fields. She would have to be a wife, but no true Japanese man would take her as wife because of her Western blood.
Kuzumi knew he could not take her back when he left and the orders of the Black Ocean reinforced that. She understood. As she understood everything about her situation. Her understanding disconcerted Kuzumi for a while until he realized it was because she was acting like a man would. Accepting reality stoically and with a sense of duty.
But she was still a woman, Kuzumi reminded himself. He should have remembered that. He looked at the picture again and the child in Nira’s arms. He had left in the fall of ‘39, unaware of her condition. And she did not even tell him in the letters she sent, forwarded through the spy network the Society had tapped into. He was informed by his Sensei in the Black Ocean. They kept track of all their people and Nira could not hide the birth and the child from the spies who. spied on the spies.
By then Kuzumi was wrapped up in Genzai Bakudan. As Nakanga had briefed Nishin, the government and military in Japan had not been impressed with the potential of the atom that Kuzumi had put into his report upon his return to Japan in 1939. But the Genoysha Taiyo had given him the go-ahead with all the resources of the Black Ocean to support him. “We do not have the time to wait on those fools,” had been Taiyo’s explanation. “They drive the country to war but they realize not how to negotiate the path. You have seen the beast we must fight. The United States will not break as easily as the General Staff thinks. We must have a weapon that will break them.”
Kuzumi had to agree with that. Crossing the breadth of the United States by way of New York to San Francisco coming from Germany he had been numbed by the sheer vastness of the country. The industrial might and the numbers that the country could throw against Japan were chilling. But Kuzumi had understood something even more profound, something he had not shared with anyone. His relationship with Nira had shown him something, a paradox. Although Nira was not treated as equal, she was American. All Americans had come from other places at various times. To believe that the national psyche could be encapsulated so easily into a caricature of a weak-willed white man as the military would like was foolish. Kuzumi believed there was much more to the people across the great ocean, and he knew that to defeat them Japan would need more than it presently had.
Kuzumi was working at the Rikken, the national laboratories, when his Sensei told him of the birth of his son. In the same telling, he had been informed that nothing would be done. Nira was to stay in San Francisco and continue her duties. Kuzumi was to continue with Genzai Ba kudan. And the boy, the boy was just a baby for now and not a factor to be considered yet.
Those were the exact words: “Not a factor to be considered yet.” Kuzumi ran a liver-spotted finger across the picture. Nira had named him James and kept her American family name. James Foster. Strange for a child so clearly of Japanese ancestry. Her unmarried status piled another boulder on top of the many she had to shoulder. But she continued to work at UCBerkeley and she continued to spy for the Society. And Kuzumi, well, he received this one photo at least in the beginning.
Genzai Bakudan. Nira. San Francisco. Kuzumi pressed his hands against the arms of his wheelchair. What were the Koreans up to? What had they discovered and what were they looking for? How had they found the cave? What had they learned about San Francisco and what were they looking for there?