"December 6" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Martin Cruz)

7

HARRY DROVE for half an hour under a dazzling sun from Tokyo to Yokohama Bay only to find waiting for him the familiar shadows of Shozo and Go, the same plainclothes police that had watched his apartment at night. In the daylight Sergeant Shozo had a droll smile belied by heavy knuckles hanging from his sleeve. Corporal Go was young, with the zeal of a guard dog pulling on a chain. They were with the accountant from Long Beach Oil.

Long Beach shared a black-stained dock with Standard Oil of New York and Rising Sun, which sounded Japanese but was actually Royal Dutch-Shell. Long Beach wasn’t much more than a small warehouse of corrugated steel, while Standard and Rising Sun fronted the water with miles of pipeline and acres of ten-thousand-barrel tanks. Didn’t matter. In the most important regard they were no different, because no American or Dutch company, big or small, had delivered oil to Japan since July, six months before.

“Please.” The accountant unlocked the warehouse door.

“I’m so curious,” Shozo told Harry. “All this time I have heard about your special connections to the navy. Now we’ll find out.”

It was winter inside. Harry could see his breath by the clerkish light of green-shaded lamps that hung over a glassed-in office area. Rolltop desks crowded between file cabinets, chalkboards with lists of ships and ports, framed prices and schedules that showed the delivery of Venezuela crude at fourteen cents a barrel. Everything was spick-and-span, as if the American managers might return at any second, probably tidier without them. Harry stopped at a poster of the tanker Tampico with her ports of call-Galveston, Long Beach, Yokohama-a route that was history now. A snapshot tacked next to it showed a group of men around a racehorse. The rest of the warehouse held a truck loaded with ships’ stores of canned foods gathering dust. Tucked around the truck were the wide-mouthed hoses that were usually laid straight on a dock, each hose dedicated to a different product: marine gas, dirty diesel, sweet crude and sour. Harry felt like the Big Bad Wolf asked into a house of straw.

The accountant’s name was Kawamura. He was about sixty years of age, with a long neck and more hair in his ears than on his head. Harry knew the type, the salaryman who was first to the office, last to leave, whose identity was his work and whose sole delight was a binge at New Year’s. He was Harry’s target, but Harry had not expected the participation of Shozo and Go. Kawamura trembled and kept his eyes down, the decision of a man who didn’t know which way to look.

Sergeant Shozo showed Harry a fountain pen. “Waterman, from my wife. I want to document this case. You have made my life and the life of Corporal Go so interesting.”

Harry preferred to be ignored. The Special Higher Police countered espionage, but they were also called Thought Police, responsible for detecting deviant ideas. Harry was riddled with deviant ideas. Like, how the hell had Shozo and Go heard about this meeting? How had they found Kawamura?

Shozo opened a notebook. “‘Son of missionaries, born in Tokyo, grew up wild in Asakusa. Catching cats for shamisen skins. Running errands for prostitutes and dancers.’ I would have traded places with you in a minute. When my mother took me by the pleasure quarters, the girls would always tease me from their windows, and my mother would almost pull my arm out of its socket.”

“You must have been pulling the other way.”

“Very hard.” Shozo flipped a page. “Your parents had no idea what you were doing?”

“They could cover more ground without me. I stayed in Tokyo with an uncle who was drinking himself to death. I spoke Japanese. I sent the telegrams and collected the money for him. It was simpler that way.”

“You would have made a great criminal. Don’t you think so, Corporal?”

Go waved a pudgy fist at Harry. “All foreign correspondents are spies! All foreign reporters are spies! All foreigners are spies!”

Harry said, “No foreign resident has proven his usefulness to the Japanese government more than I have.”

“That’s what I was telling the corporal,” Shozo said. “On the face of it, no American has been more useful to Japan. For example, Japan has an unfortunate shortage of oil. For a time you had a company to create petroleum?”

“Synthetic petroleum.”

Shozo consulted his notes. “From pine sap. You persuaded Japanese banks during a time of national emergency to invest in pine sap?”

“That was one of a variety of approaches.”

“When people talk about you and oil, they whisper about a magic show. What would that magic show be?”

“I have no idea.”

“No idea?”

“None.”

“You also proposed getting motor oil from sardines.”

“It’s theoretically possible.”

“You have no scientific background?”

“Just business.”

“Making money. Better than cat skins, too. What is the saying, what is it they say in English? It’s very fitting.”

“There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

“Yes!” Shozo’s mouth turned down into a smile. “That’s what they say. ‘More than one way to skin a cat’! That’s what you are, a cat skinner, an American cat skinner.”

Shozo’s voice was drowned by a reverberation that shook the walls, a rolling thunder that rose to full throttle and abruptly quit, leaving expectancy and silence until a man in a leather coat and goggles slapped open the door. With a dispatch bag over his shoulder, a broad, confident face and thick hair sculpted by the wind, he was an image off a war-bonds poster. He pulled off gloves and goggles as he entered. Gen always arrived as if he’d just returned from the front, and sometimes he had, because he was more than an aviator, he was in Naval Operations. He bowed to Shozo and Go, winked at Harry. If he was surprised by the presence of the Special Higher Police, he didn’t show it.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Gen said. “It’s been a busy day.”

“You seem to know Harry Niles,” Shozo said.

“Oh, I know Harry.” Gen shrugged his coat off of navy blues. The sight of a lieutenant’s stripes on the sleeve prompted Kawamura to give Gen an additional ninety-degree bow.

“I’m in the dark,” Shozo said. “I am told that Mr. Niles performs valuable services, but I can’t imagine what they are.”

“You’ll see.” From his dispatch bag Gen took a legal-size book of faded maroon that he laid on the desk and opened. “The ledger of Long Beach Oil. Fascinating reading.”

The entries were in India ink for English and blue for Japanese. As Kawamura stared down at the pages, he sweated despite the warehouse chill.

Gen explained to Shozo, “Kawamura is the accountant of Long Beach Oil. He finds himself in an unusual and uncomfortable position because Long Beach assets have been frozen by the Japanese government in retaliation for the freezing of Japanese assets and properties in the United States. The American managers of the company have gone back to the United States, leaving Kawamura, their senior Japanese employee, in a caretaker position, and he has carried out his duty to his employer faithfully.”

“And faithfully to the emperor,” Kawamura interjected.

“Of course.” Gen grinned at Harry.

As kids, Gen and Harry used to strut around Asakusa in dark glasses like hoods. One day they were getting their fortunes told in the temple when they heard a nasal buzzing overhead, looked up and saw a biplane come in low to waggle its wings over Buddha. Gen took off his dark glasses. The plane came by again, a silvery vision towing a sign that said EBISU BEER. It made Harry thirsty, but it changed Gen’s life. Determined to fly, he became a model student who headed to the Naval Academy and aviation, then the University of California at Berkeley, studying English. Gen actually put more time in at American schools than Harry, and at Berkeley, he had picked up a little American sis-boom-bah, which fitted him for the navy general staff. The army’s model was Germany, but navy comers tended to admire the British and the States and adopted a tradition of white gloves and ballroom manners. Somehow Gen Yoshimura had found the money to cover the costs that nagged at a student and officer. Harry thought there must have been some scrimping. With his poor-boy ambition and American style, Gen was a perfect amalgam.

“Let’s assume,” Gen told Kawamura, “that your employers were anxious as to how exactly the freeze of assets would be carried out here-whether there would be appropriation of their property, damage or misuse. By now they should be reassured that the Emergency Board for the Protection of Foreign Commercial Interests has the well-being of Long Beach Oil in mind. The freeze is an unhappy but temporary measure. It is a system that only works, however, when everyone cooperates, as most American companies have done.”

“Yes.” Kawamura tried to ignore Harry, as if not acknowledging a wolf would make it go away.

“But,” Gen said, “there have been exceptions. Unfortunately, some American companies have created Japanese subsidiaries in which they attempt to hide assets. In other cases, American companies underreport their assets or their activity. The more critical the commodity, the greater chance of inaccurate reporting. Yo-yos, for example, have been accurately accounted for. Oil has not.”

“I still don’t understand,” Kawamura said.

“Let’s take an example,” Harry said. “According to your own ledger, the tanker Sister Jane left California for Japan on May first with ten thousand barrels of oil. On May fifteenth, the Sister Jane arrived here and delivered one thousand barrels. It left the States with more oil than it delivered, ten times as much.”

Kawamura finally exploded. “What is an American doing here? Is he an expert on trade?”

Harry said, “I’m an expert on cooking the books. It’s the last item in the ledger. Read it.”

Kawamura put on spectacles to read the page. “Ah, well, this is all a misunderstanding, a simple error. The first number was written as ten thousand but later corrected to one thousand. One thousand barrels left Long Beach, one thousand arrived here. You can see there is even the initial P for Pomeroy, our branch manager, to show his correction. There was no attempt to disguise anything. I would never have allowed it.”

“I remember Pomeroy,” Harry said. “Lived right next to the racetrack. Pomeroy went home?”

“He is gone, yes.”

“To Long Beach?” Gen asked.

“Los Angeles.”

“He treated you well?” Harry asked.

“Always.”

“It’s quite an honor to be left in charge?” Gen asked.

“He trusts me, I think,” Kawamura said.

“He should,” Harry said. “You are obviously a stout defender of Long Beach Oil. But why the mistake? Why did a full ten thousand gallons of oil have to be corrected to a mere one thousand?”

“I don’t know. I am embarrassed that there should be even the suggestion of a discrepancy. I can assure you, however, that when a ship arrives, we measure the quantity of oil in each tank on the ship before it is pumped, and again at the storage tanks after.”

“How do they measure the oil on the ship?” Shozo asked.

“Tape and plumb bob,” Harry said.

“Japan depends on oil,” Gen said. “Japanese soldiers are giving their lives every day for oil.”

Harry said, “It’s hardly worth taking one thousand barrels across the Pacific. Did the Sister Jane stop on the way?”

“Only Hawaii,” Kawamura said.

“Hawaii?” Gen asked.

“There was a problem with a sick seaman, as I remember. The ship was only in dock two nights.”

“Tough luck for the seaman,” said Harry. “But maybe a stroke of good luck for the rest of the crew. Honolulu has a lot of hot spots. Do you think the captain gave the crew two days’ liberty?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Do you think maybe he pumped out nine thousand gallons of oil when the crew wasn’t around?” asked Gen.

“No.”

Harry said, “I’m just wondering why someone thought the Sister Jane left Long Beach with a lot of oil and ended up here with very little.”

“No one was cheated. Whether it was one thousand or ten thousand, that was what we sold, no more, no less.” Kawamura looked to Shozo for support, but the policeman’s expression was grim. Go had started to giggle, which even Harry found unnerving. “I’m sure Pomeroy would have a good explanation if he were here.”

“But he’s not here and you are,” Harry said. “I looked through the entire ledger, and in the twelve months before the freeze on deliveries, there were three other corrections for shortages of deliveries, totaling another thirty-six thousand barrels of oil that Japan desperately needed. You’ll find the ‘corrections’ on pages five, eleven and fifteen, a little smudged but definitely altered.” Kawamura flipped from page to page. This was like hunting rabbit, Harry thought. You didn’t chase rabbits, you lit a fire and they came to you if you showed them a safe way out. “Who actually had possession of this ledger, you or Pomeroy?”

“Pomeroy.”

Gen asked, “Who wrote down the number of barrels leaving Long Beach and arriving here?”

“Pomeroy.” Kawamura looked ready to pull his head in his collar if he could.

“You didn’t actually run the books on oil at all, did you?” Harry said. “That was the manager’s job. After all, you’re a financial man, not an oilman. What you were really in charge of was the branch budget, the payroll, dock fees, accounts payable. It must have been confusing to suddenly have to deal with customs, immigration, bills of lading. I doubt you ever would have noticed these barrel amounts.”

“I didn’t.”

“But thirty-six thousand barrels and nine thousand, that is forty-five thousand barrels of oil,” Shozo said. “Where did it go?”

“Good question,” Harry said. “I personally think that Kawamura here is an honest Japanese employee duped by the American manager Pomeroy, who is probably at the racetrack at Santa Anita even as we speak.”

Gen asked Shozo to take Kawamura outside.

“Let me.” Go gathered the accountant.

“Just a dupe,” Harry reminded the corporal.

“No Japanese should be duped,” Go shouted back as he dragged Kawamura through the door. “All Americans are spies!”

On his way out, Shozo said to Harry, “I take it back. You would have made a good policeman, too.”

The instant the door shut behind the sergeant, Gen slapped the desk. “God, that was fun.” He dropped into a chair and put his feet up. Sometimes Gen’s slovenliness struck Harry as virtually American. “I remember, as a kid, watching you do the change-from-a-hundred-yen-note scam, wondering how you always walked away with more money than you started.”

“It’s just how you count, forward or back. How did Shozo and Go know about this meeting?”

“I told them. It was for your protection. They were going to pick you up, so I had to show them how valuable you were.”

“You could have warned me.”

“No time. Everything’s happening so fast.”

“Like what?”

“Life.” Gen leaned forward to spear a cigarette from Harry. “Did I ever tell you how I got in with the C in C?” The commander in chief of the Combined Fleet was Admiral Yamamoto. Naval personnel reverently called him the C in C.

“No.”

“It was thanks to you. I was in the mess with some other officers, and suddenly the C in C himself was at the hatch asking whether anyone played poker. You know how it is with junior officers, one wrong answer can ruin a career. Guys played bridge, but no one was going to admit they gambled. Without even thinking, I said yes. He almost grabbed me by the neck to get me out of there, then I had to race to stay up with him to the senior mess, where there was a poker game of admirals and commanders, the C in C’s inner circle. One had to go, and they needed a fourth. It’s not much of a game without at least four players. The C in C gave me half of his own chips and said two things. First, that he didn’t trust any man who wasn’t willing to gamble. Second, that there was no point in playing except for money. That’s what you always say, too.”

“God’s truth. So, how did you do?”

“Won a little. The C in C asked where I learned to play poker like that. I said Cal. He learned at Harvard. Anyway, from then on, whenever they needed a fourth, they called on me.”

“Cal and Harvard? Wow, were you in the same fraternity? Both smoke briar pipes?”

“Come on, Harry.”

“In other words, you gave me no credit for teaching you the most valuable thing you ever learned.”

“Harry, you’re the ace I keep up my sleeve.”

“Shozo asked about the Magic Show.”

“Oh, he did? What did you say?”

“That I didn’t know what he was talking about. That’s what I always say.”

“Good. First the police know about it, then the army knows about it, then we’re all in the drink.” Gen pulled a folder tied with a red ribbon from the dispatch bag to signal a change in subject. He undid the ribbon and opened to a loose page that he stared at as if it were half in code: “This is the new total. With shortages of two hundred thousand gallons of oil from Petromar, and two hundred and forty thousand from Manzanita Oil added to Long Beach, altogether four hundred eighty-five thousand barrels of oil seem to have been diverted from Japan to Hawaii. There are enough tanks at Pearl Harbor to hold about four million gallons. We estimate they are already full. Where are they putting the extra oil that you have found? And if you found some, there is probably much more. There must be other tanks in Hawaii, and the only information we have on where they are is your story about an American contractor you met in Shanghai who claimed to have put reinforced tanks in a valley behind Waikiki.”

“He was drunk. We were in a bar. He could have made it up.”

“Why that story, though?”

“Gen, it’s all stories. Books were altered, so what? Books are always altered, and mistakes are always made. The same with Manzanita and Petromar. It’s fun to run Kawamura in circles, but we can’t prove anything. Let me ask you this, have your people ever found those mysterious tanks? Why stick them in a valley? When did they build railroad tracks or oil pipes or access roads? The man was drunk. We were at the Olympic Bar in Shanghai, longest bar in the world, ten languages going at the same time, with two Russian girls who didn’t understand a word, so I don’t even know why he was boasting. You’ve been to the Olympic, it’s a mob scene. I didn’t get his name or his company, and he didn’t draw a map on the back of a cocktail coaster. It’s all smoke, Gen.”

“It’s four hundred and eighty-five thousand gallons, Harry. At least.”

“I suppose it’s a lot of oil. But it’s just a story, that’s all.”

“If you could remember anything else. What he looked like?”

“He was fat and loud and drunk.”

“Anything else?”

“What I know, you know. The only way to prove it is to fly over every valley in Oahu. Until then it’s a rumor, a glass of fog. Why believe it at all?”

Gen released a smile with Pepsodent dazzle. “Because of the Magic Show. You nailed someone who had everyone else fooled.”

“All I said was I saw a magician in China. I could have been wrong.”

“You weren’t. And the place you met him was the Olympic Bar in Shanghai, the same place you met this contractor. So we can’t ignore anything you say happened there.”

“Has this been good for your career? Get you more attention from the C in C?”

“It hasn’t hurt.” Gen was still smiling. “And I take care of you in return.”

“Well, that’s what I want to talk about.” Harry mashed one cigarette and tapped out another. “You know what’s more important to me than spies?”

“What?”

“My neck.”

It took Gen a second. “What are you talking about?”

“Ishigami’s back from China. I don’t mind going over the company books from Long Beach Oil or Manzanita, you name it, anything to help an empire in need. Now I need some help. You do remember Ishigami?”

Gen’s smile went flat. “The name is familiar. He’s been in China, right?”

“Most of all, Nanking. His picture was in the paper yesterday. I’m surprised you missed it.”

Gen put the ledger and folder back together and returned them to the dispatch bag. “Nanking was four years ago. You’ll have to remind me what you were doing there. Or should I say, the scam?”

“For the Japanese government, looking for river tankers, trying to find them before they were scuttled. I was along in case there were any Americans on board. I might have liberated a car or two.”

“You just never give it a rest, do you, Harry? You can’t pull that around Ishigami.”

“Well, he holds a grudge, and now he’s after me. Call him off.”

Gen threw on his leather coat, slipped the dispatch bag over his shoulder, pulled on his gloves. “He’s in the army. The army and navy don’t even talk to each other. The army spies on me. They spy on the C in C. Anyway, I understand they brought Ishigami back to do propaganda. After all, he is a hero.”

“He’s homicidal.”

“Right now everybody’s tense. We’ll all be pulling together soon enough.”

“That old team spirit?”

“You got it. In the meantime, our job is to protect the C in C from the crazies.”

Harry followed Gen out the door to a Harley the size of a pony with a teardrop tank and low-slung fenders. There was something about the way Gen swung onto the bike, how he kicked the starter and twisted the throttle so that the bike ached to race away, that disquieted Harry.

“The C in C is a good gambler,” Harry had to shout over the sound.

“Better than you, Harry. He broke the bank at Monte Carlo. They say he could have been a professional gambler. He really considered it.”

Harry had heard the same stories. “Roulette is a tough game, okay. You don’t play other players, you play the house, and the house odds are inexorably against you. You know about odds?”

“I know the odds.” Gen slipped his goggles over his eyes. The glass spread his eyes like a mask.

“Do you? America outproduces Japan in oil by seven hundred to one. How do you like those odds?”

“That’s why it’s important to get all the oil we can.”

“Really? Do you think a few extra drops of oil in Hawaii make any difference?”

“Every drop makes a difference.”

Harry reached and turned the throttle down.

“No. Listen to me. What makes a difference is Standard Oil and Royal Shell. What makes a difference is a fountain, a flood of oil. Japan used to get ninety percent of its oil from America, sixty percent from Standard and Shell alone. That’s five million gallons a year. Japan hasn’t gotten one drop from Shell or America since June. Most of the oil in Japan goes to the navy, and the navy doesn’t have enough oil to complete an exercise at sea. Don’t ask how I know these things, you know they’re true. Cut off oil and everything will come to a stop. I would guess six months. If Japan goes to war, it has to win by then. The odds? Fifty to one. Worse than Monte Carlo. I know how Naval Operations works. A lot of the planning is done by junior officers like you. Tell them the damn odds.” No deal. Gen could have been a statue on a horse. “I’m only saying, let them know the odds. If there’s a war, it won’t be won with blood and sweat, it’ll be won by the side that has the oil, that’s all.” Still no reaction from Gen. “Okay, try this. Aviation fuel is eighty-nine octane, which the United States has an endless supply of. Japan doesn’t, so it designs the Zero, a wonderful fighter, to fly on piss. American planes will fly faster and farther not because of the pilots but because of the fuel. It won’t be a matter of courage or skill, it will just be better fuel.” Gen might have been stone. Not a word had penetrated.

“The difference is spirit and men,” Gen said.

“Right. By the way, remember Jiro from our gang in Asakusa, how much he wanted to die for the emperor? He made it. He’s in heaven now. I lit a stick for him today.”

“If he died for the emperor, I am happy for him.”

No American sis-boom-bah now, Harry thought. Just pure Japanese.

Gen milked the throttle again and seemed to regard his old friend from a great distance. “I’ll do what I can about Ishigami. You know, Harry, Nippon Air came to me about putting you on the plane to Hong Kong. I backed you up. You shouldn’t be spreading defeatist propaganda.”

“Just numbers, Gen, forget I mentioned them. I appreciate everything you did to get me on the plane.”

“When is it taking off?”

“Monday the eighth.”

“Two days. Okay, I’ll see about Ishigami. You stay out of trouble.”

Gen put the Harley into gear. His hair snapped back as the bike surged and chased its noise along the dock. Across the bay under Yokohama’s verdant bluff, Harry saw ships offloading the wealth of empire: bales of cotton from China, bags of rice from Thailand, sugar and sweet tropical fruits from semitropical Formosa and, from Manchuria-now the Japanese creation of Manchukuo-iron ore and lumber. A German blockade-runner, a gray freighter with a tarp over a forward gun, stood off by itself. The ships of Yoshitaki Lines were everywhere, there wasn’t enough waterfront to go around. Sampans and barges swarmed to other freighters anchored out, the barges loaded until they shipped water. Through the sheer physical effort of a single oarsman, a sampan could move a half-ton of goods. Along the Bund, stevedores in straw hats and padded jackets swung on hooks, clambered up nets and trotted with handcarts between railway cars, men in motion everywhere. The scene put Harry in mind of a drunk bingeing on his last full bottle. But the days when Yokohama swallowed a full measure of sweet Maracaibo crude or clean American diesel the color of honey, those days were gone.

ON THE WAY back to Tokyo, Harry drove by Haneda Field. In the far distance was a white tower and hangars. Harry was tempted to visit Nippon operations and see the plane they were flying to Hong Kong, a DC-3 with a full bar and sleeper seats, but he quelled the urge when soldiers appeared along the edge of the road, and decided it wouldn’t do for a gaijin to show too much interest in an airport. On the other side of the road, however, were ballplayers on a field. It was a small field with grassy slopes for bleachers and a little scoreboard beside a bottle-shaped sign for Asahi beer, but Harry recognized the team’s gray flannel uniforms with black and orange piping even from his car, and he rolled up to a clubhouse of cinder blocks painted green. The ticket window was shut. Harry walked through the turnstiles to the batting screen and joined a couple of reporters who were arguing over who was paid more money, Bob Feller or Satchel Paige. Feller was the biggest star in American baseball, but Paige sneaked around that fact by playing both the Negro league and winter ball.

The Tokyo Giants were taking advantage of the warm weather to hold an off-season workout. Not just for rookies; Harry spotted the home-run slugger Kawakami and the pitcher Sawamura, who once struck out Ruth, Foxx and Gehrig in a row. Japanese were fanatical about practice. Pitchers threw hundreds of pitches a day, which was probably why their arms wore out so soon. Especially with breaking pitches, a Japanese specialty. Every few minutes a fighter plane would pass overhead, towing its shadow across the diamond and up over the slope to the airfield across the road. Otherwise the scene was immaculately normal. One coach hit grounders to the infield, another lofted fly balls toward players stationed in front of the beer sign, pitchers lobbed the ball back and forth on the sidelines. Sawamura had lost two seasons to active duty in China and was resurrecting what had been the league’s best fastball. With each pitch, the catcher’s mitt produced a satisfying pop.

Harry was a Giants fan, and no one on the team ever had to pay for a drink at the Happy Paris. He liked practice almost as much as games. He found a meditative calm in the repetition of the infielders as they broke for the ball, fielded the good hop, set their feet and fired to first. They refused to backhand grounders or dive for liners, but otherwise they were as good as Americans. Also, they played honorable baseball: they would never slide with their spikes high to break up a double play or throw a knockdown pitch. During the season every game had an epic dimension; when the Giants lost, there was mourning throughout Tokyo, and an error on the field demanded an apology from a shamefaced player to his entire team. After games, writers raced back to the office on motorcycles to file their stories. Even at a winter workout like this, when Kawakami, “The King of Batting,” walked to the plate with his famous red bat-fashioned from a sacred tree in a secret forest-the writers studied every swing as if he were a great actor onstage. When he knocked a ball over the scoreboard, they oohed and aahed like children. The Japanese were crazy for home runs.

One of the Giants ran off the field, leaving Sawamura no one to throw to, so he motioned Harry to pick up a loose glove. The pitcher had such a smooth motion and the ball came with such easy velocity that Harry’s hand stung with every catch, but he was damned if he was going to let it get by him or be distracted by a line of bombers coming out of the sun, practicing an approach in close formation. As the planes passed overhead, the gunners in their bubbles seemed near enough to shout to.

When Harry’s arm warmed, the ball went back and forth with more energy. A game of catch was a conversation in which nothing in particular need be said. Motion was all, motion and the elongation of time. Activity around the field-grounders, fly balls, the pitchers’ easygoing throws-took on the steady nature of a metronome. At the batting cage, Kawakami took a cut. The ball rose and hung, spotlit by the sun, as a fighter that had just taken off from Haneda came over the clubhouse. For a moment the ball and plane merged. Then the fighter passed, trailing a shadow that leaped the outfield fence. And the ball came down into a glove and the fielder threw it cleanly, on one hop, to home.