Fire Flowers (36 page)

“Afternoon, Lynch. Colonel Wanderly. The sumo wrestler is Captain Ohara.”

I saluted back. “Harold Lynch.”

“We know who you are.”

The room was lined with metal drawers, and the entirety of one wall was taken up with a large map of China, Siberia and the Japanese islands. As the door closed, the office became silent. I was suddenly put in mind of my sealed cabin in our F-13, a moment before takeoff.

“Why don't you park yourself down there, Lynch?” Wanderly said, gesturing at a hard metal chair. “Sorry about the mess. They won't let me get a woman in.”

He placed a pair of spectacles on the end of his nose as Ohara perched on the edge of the desk.

Wanderly licked his fingers as he flipped through a thick manila file, picking out photos and press clippings. I recognized my photo of the railway men in the hospital at Hiroshima, then my first piece in the
Stars and Stripes
. I almost smiled. Our rat man, from way back in September. I felt a wave of nostalgia at the sight of the old man's face, gazing forlornly up the river. Wanderly chuckled.

“Well, I've got to hand it to you, Hal. You've got a good eye. And a fine way with words.”

“What's this about, Corporal?”

“How long have you known Mark Ward, Lynch?” Ohara interrupted. His face was pockmarked. I remembered him now, from the lobby of the Imperial Hotel, the night when Ward and I had gone there for drinks. General Willoughby's hawk eye behind the monocle, scrutinizing Mark, as the man pressed upon his tailored uniform arm.

“About six months. We met on a train.”

“Never met him at Columbia—your alma mater?”

“Must have been before my time.”

“Tell you much about his career during the war?”

“He spent time in China.”

“Ever tell you where?”

“All over, I guess. I was stationed in Chengtu for a time myself.”

“We know you were. Ward was based mainly in Shaanxi. That ring a bell?”

“Well. Sure.”

Shaanxi had been the headquarters of Mao's forces, his “Golden Land” up in the hills, where the Red Army had ended their long march and the exiled Japanese communists had holed up during the war. I recalled Ward's distraught face the day after he'd been dragged in by G2, after his return from the Snow Country.
Don't you see, Hal? I'm next on their goddamned list!

“Where he enjoyed the hospitality of Mao Zedong for several months. As did Wilf Burchett.”

“Burchett?”

I frowned, recalling Burchett's gleaming eye, as he pulled tight the straps of his kit bag.
Good luck, mate. You're going to need it.

“Well,” I said, “they were both war correspondents, after all.”

Wanderly's eyes softened and his voice took on the tone of a sympathetic teacher. “Look, Hal. I think you're tangled up in something you don't understand. I think people may have taken advantage of you. They sense you're vulnerable. You reek of self-pity. They've used your misplaced guilt to their own advantage.”

“We've seen your medical, Lynch,” Ohara butted in. “Reads like a horror movie. Still can't sleep?”

Wanderly glanced up at him in apparent distaste. I folded my arms. The room had darkened, but he didn't switch on the lamp. He spread his hands out on the desk, like a priest about to begin a sermon.

“You tell me, Hal. What are we to make of it? You ask for a transfer almost the day the war ends. You turn up in Tokyo and start knocking on the door of every red agent in town. You travel to a prescribed area with what looks like the express intention of embarrassing the Occupation. What are we to make of it, Hal? What are you doing here, anyway?”

I pictured Tokyo from the sky, looking down at the neighbourhoods and parks, the schools and the temples.

“I guess I just wanted to see what was left.”

Furtively, I glanced at my watch. Satsuko would be on the tram by now, heading toward Asakusa Pond.

“This Hiroshima piece,” Wanderly said, as if embarrassed to mention it. He flipped through the folder and I made out the original carbon of my story.

“‘Aftermath of the Atom.' Very portentous, Hal,” Wanderly said.

“Did Ward tell you what to write?” asked Ohara.

As Wanderly held up the ink-stained article, I pictured Frayne Baker in his office, flinging the pages into the air.
Radiation disease. Horse—shit!

“I've already been fired for that, Colonel.”

“And a decision regarding your tenure in Japan has been made, Hal.”

There was a pulse in my stomach.

“You know I met a Jap last week, Lynch?” Ohara had come around and now stood behind me, resting his hands on the back of my chair. He bent over, and I could feel his hot breath on my neck. “Worked as a doctor at a medical institute up north during the war. A planeload of our boys crash-landed not far away one day. The Japs took them along for treatment. Hell, you might even have known them. Smiling boys, about your own age. Well, I asked the man what they'd done to them, how they'd died. He was as cool as you like. Do you know what he told me?”

Ohara's hands moved to my shoulder blades, his fingers squeezing.

“He said they'd performed live experiments on them, Lynch. Cut out their lungs. Injected them with chemicals. Just to see what would happen. As if they were rats. How do you like that?”

It was grotesque, macabre. I tried to resist the bait. “And what was Hiroshima, gentlemen? Wasn't that an experiment? The live vivisection of an entire city?”

“It was just a bomb, Hal,” said Wanderly. “A bomb that saved the lives of thousands of young American men.”

“But they're still dying in Hiroshima, Colonel.”

“That can't be helped. Here's something that might interest you, Hal.” Wanderly slid another sheet from the dossier. He held up a glossy photograph of Ward. He raised his eyebrows. “Your friend. Maxim Alexandrovich Warszawski. Born in Minsk, Russia, 1905. Studied at the Soviet Institute for Teachers, Librarians and Propagandists, 1920 to 23. Moved to New York to study at Columbia University, 1925. Quite a coincidence, wouldn't you say?”

My stomach knotted as his words sank in. I saw Ward coming aboard the train at Kyoto, wheezing as he slung his kit bag onto the luggage rack. At the press club, that first night, exchanging fluent jovialities with the Soviet correspondents.
Don't get them mixed up, Lynch—they'll break your arm!

“Two summers ago, Hal, the FBI raided Ward's office in Chicago. They discovered documents recently stolen from the Office of Strategic Services, concerning the battle plans of Chiang Kai-shek. Six months later, Ward was in Shaanxi along with Mao, Burchett and all the other Reds. Six months later, he arrived in Tokyo. What's he doing here, Hal?”

A vein pulsed in my forehead. I remembered the glow of Ward's cigar in the train carriage, his crinkling face as I unburdened myself to him. My fierce, wounded sense of self-pity.

“He help you write that piece, Hal? Or was it just spiritual encouragement?”

Are you still bothered by what you did up there, Lynch?
There'd been such sympathy in his eyes, behind the wide spectacles, and I'd bowed my head, like a boy in a confessional box.

The big hand on my shoulder, as I told him about my trip to Hiroshima.
You know I'm proud of you, don't you, Hal?
My profound feeling of solace. As if he was a priest, granting me absolution from my sins.

“You've been a sap, Lynch, a first-class fucking sap,” Ohara spat. “Ward sure sucked you in. Had you eating out of his hand. Radiation disease. They'll give you the Order of fucking Lenin. Thought you were a hotshot, Lynch? Or did you know you were taking pictures for Joe Stalin?”

Wanderly paused, looked at me, then continued.

“I'm going to be frank with you, Hal. You're an intelligent man. Mark Ward is a Stalinist agent. That's a simple statement of fact. Now. There's another war coming soon, Hal. Did you know that? Sad but true. In fact, it's already begun. There will soon be a time when we will need a strong Japan, Hal, when we will need this country on America's side. This kind of thing could tip the balance. The Russians know that. That's why Ward is here. He's no teacher, and he's certainly no librarian. You've been made a fool of, Hal. You can see that now. Bad people have taken advantage of your weaknesses to damage our position. We'd like to give you a chance to show us whose side you're really on.”

Ohara moved from my chair and went to the other side of the table. The room was almost entirely dark now, the map on the wall obscured. Wanderly leaned forward.

“Tell us about Ward, Hal. He's your friend, isn't he? He trusts you. He confides in you.”

“What are you asking me, gentlemen?”

“Hal, he's been using you. Don't you see that? You don't owe him a thing.”

“Where are the fucking negatives, Hal?”

Ohara's words reverberated in the darkness. Wanderly smiled thinly, his fingers drumming the manila envelope. I felt a sudden flash of unexpected advantage as I pictured Dutch handing me the envelope. My trumps. Hidden in a cigar box, under the floorboard of an anonymous room in a downtown Tokyo saloon.

“I don't know what you mean.”

“Fuck off, Hal!” bellowed Ohara. “You know what we're talking about!”

I leaned slowly back in the chair, holding his gaze.


“What are you asking me?” I repeated.

Wanderly tapped the envelope, the smile lingering on his face. “We're asking you to consider your position, Hal. Your future.”

I slowly shook my head. “No.”

After a long pause, Wanderly sighed and shrugged his shoulders. “Oh well.”

He replaced the outlying documents in the dossier and closed it carefully.

“The
New Mexico
is leaving for San Francisco in two days, Lieutenant. You'll be on it.”

I tried not to smile as I pictured the ticket in my jacket pocket. I imagined the moment, six months from now. Standing on the dock at Oakland. Watching the ship steam beneath the San Francisco Bay Bridge. The passengers coming down the gangplank. Satsuko pausing, her dark eyes searching the crowd.

“You can't take the girl, Lynch.”

My heart jolted. Ohara's face was hidden in the shadows. “Sure,” he said. “We heard all about her.”

Another photograph appeared on the desk. Satsuko and I, squinting in the spring sunshine outside the Senso Temple.

Smile!

Eugene. Just the kind of bright, callow boy that Intelligence liked to employ. Ambitious. Venal. Naive.
They started it, didn't they, Hal?

This, then, was the reason for his sudden desire to see the world; his unexpected passion for journalism. His nocturnal visit to the newsroom on the night of my return from Hiroshima. The look on his face as he saw me come into the office the next day, like that of a whipped dog.

“Pretty girl,” Ohara said.

I swallowed. “The Exclusion Act
 
won't last six months.”

Wanderly placed a square sheet on the table. I glanced down. The paper was covered with Japanese writing, unintelligible stamps.

“Going to tell me what that is?”

Wanderly picked up the sheet, and drew his finger across the ideograms at the top.

“‘Recreation and Amusement Association,'” he read. “How do you like that?”

“You know they register their whores here in Japan, Lynch?” Ohara said. “They're a bureaucratic bunch.”

My senses were suddenly alert. Wanderly stared at me over his spectacles.

“Not the kind of girl we want in America, Hal. Sorry.”

“Undesirable is what they call it, Lynch.”

“Tend to be crawling with all manner of disease and such. The rules are very clear. She won't make it past immigration. Not now. Not ever.”

A hollow pit opened up in my stomach. Just as I had felt every night, as our plane had lurched from the end of the air-strip, pitching just yards above churning indigo waves. The words and stamps wavered before me, the green ink blotting into the cheap fabric of the paper, as I pictured Satsuko, sitting on the bench by Asakusa Pond, pulling her shawl around her.
An undesirable.

Ohara was gazing steadily at me. “They'll never let her into America, Lynch. I will personally make damned sure of that. And you will never come back to Japan, as long as we are here.”

“Let's make this easy, Hal,” sighed Wanderly. “Give us the negatives. Forget about Hiroshima. Forget about the war. Go back to your nice saloon. Make an honest woman of her. You can take that sheet away with you if you like. Start again from scratch.”

I pictured her, helpless in my arms, as we'd stood in the ruins of her house. Clinging to me, burying her face in my chest. The intensity of that feeling—as if we were the only two people left on earth.

I picked up the sheet and rubbed the rough paper between my fingertips.

“Why don't you start again, Hal. Make a new life from all this ruin.”

A soft explosion came from somewhere far away. The men's voices seemed to spiral around me in the darkness.

“What do you say, Lynch?”

“There's another war soon coming, Hal. Sad but true. Whose side are you on?”

“It's them or us, Lynch. You need to make a decision. What's it going to be?”

A
t Asakusa Pond, rain drummed against my umbrella and dripped into puddles by my feet. The water had soaked into my sandals now and my socks were quite saturated. Men walked past my bench, faces glowing behind cigarettes as they leered at me from the darkness.

The night was cindery and bleak and I remembered a neighbourhood fairy tale my mother had once told me, about the tap-dancing girls from the Casino Folies, whose ghosts, she said, had danced upon the roof of the building long after it had burned down. It was just the kind of story she had loved.