The Phoenix Tree

3

Tom Okada had had great difficulty in persuading the servant woman to allow him into the villa. To begin with, he was not accustomed to dealing with servants. The Okada household in Gardena, California, had had a cook and a woman who came in every day to do the chores; but he had never had to assert any authority over them and he had looked on them as part of the family. When he had graduated from his law studies at UCLA he had gone into the office of the nursery and run the business side for his father; the nursery by then had forty employees but it had always been his father who had given the orders. Faced this evening with a tiny servant, and a woman at that, as obdurate as a career army sergeant, he had felt for a while that he was fighting a losing battle. Then he had said, in a moment of inspiration, that he had been a student of Professor Cairns.

Yuri had eyed him suspiciously, but at least she had stopped shaking her head. ‘Then why do you wish to see Mrs Cairns?’

‘I have some information for her.’

Ever since the appearance of Major Nagata, Yuri had been doubly wary. Was this good-looking young man also from the kempei?

‘Where have you come from?’

‘A long way.’

The distance had been nothing compared to distances in America; but he had had to change trains twice, waiting a long time in each case. Once he had had to walk six miles; the railroad tracks had been bombed out. As he had got further down out of the mountains he had seen more and more evidence of the American bombing; the war was being brought right home to the Japanese. He was tired and hungry and it was after dark before he reached Nayora.

‘I haven’t eaten since midday,’ he said.

Yuri was torn between suspicion of the stranger and the thought of offending the ghost of Cairns-san, the one man she had come close to loving. At last she stood aside and gestured for the stranger to come into the villa. Later, she gave him supper, then went out on to the verandah to wait for Natasha’s return, wrapping herself in two blankets against the cold. Once she crept into the house and saw the young man fast asleep on a couch. She decided that, in sleep at least, he looked honest.

Okada woke when he heard the car drive up; men he heard the voices out on the verandah. He had been exhausted when he had fallen asleep; he had had no more caution left than he had energy. If the woman servant had wanted to betray him, she could easily have done so; now, as he came awake, he knew he would have to be more careful in future. From now on trust might be an extravagant luxury.

He stood up, tensing as the door opened. When only the two women came in, he almost sighed with relief. There was only one lamp in the room, a small green-shaded table lamp in a corner; it threw enough illumination for him to see that the girl standing beside the servant woman was beautiful. Nobody in Intelligence at San Diego had told him what Mrs Cairns looked like; for some reason he had expected her to be older, tougher-looking, a woman whose mixed blood would have coarsened her looks. He had his own prejudices.

‘Are you Mrs Cairns?’ he said in Japanese.

‘Yes. Who are you?’ Natasha at once had guessed who he was, though she had not expected him so soon. She saw his questioning look at Yuri and she nodded reassuringly: ‘I trust Yuri. I think you can too.’

‘I’m Joshua. You should have been expecting me.’ He still had one eye on the doorway, waiting for – soldiers? police? – to come bursting through. The day-long trip had been only prologue, from now on the real danger began.

‘I have been.’ She turned to Yuri. ‘You may go to bed now, Yuri.’

‘Will you be all right?’ With him: she didn’t say it but she nodded her head suspiciously at Okada.

‘I’ll call you if I’m not. Take a knife to bed with you.’

Yuri didn’t think that was much of a joke; she snorted and backed out of the room, not respectfully but watchfully. Okada said, ‘She doesn’t trust me.’

‘She’s never trusted any man. Except my late husband.’

‘They never mentioned her when they briefed me. They didn’t tell me much about you.’

‘What would they know about me, only that my husband had recommended me?’ They were treading warily through the bramble-bush of suspicion and ignorance of each other. Natasha knew that she had not been able to send much information of value on her monthly radio transmissions; that feeling of inadequacy and the danger she was exposing herself to had weighed heavily on her. She welcomed someone who would share the burden with her, but she was not going to accept him blindly.

Okada, for his part, had been put off by Natasha’s beauty. He was not averse to women and particularly beautiful women; but he had preferred them in the plural, taken singly only for a night or two and never with any commitment. But he would have to commit himself to this woman: it would be an affair, even if there was no romance to it. He was wary of her: a girl as beautiful and composed as this one must have received plenty of offers of commitment. She had a lot to sell besides secrets.

‘They told me nothing about you,’ she said. She had been fin looking at him objectively, something she had always done ever since she had become aware of men. He was of medium height but tall for a Japanese, and muscular. He had a strong face, good-looking but for the dark suspicion in his eyes.

They had sat down opposite each other. The room, he had observed earlier, was furnished in Western style; which, for almost trivial reasons, made him for the moment feel more comfortable; he wanted to come back to Japan, to the style of living, a step at a time. Natasha, suddenly deciding the ice needed cracking, got up, went to a big ugly cabinet and came back with two drinks.

‘Scotch whisky, the last of my husband’s stock.’ She took it for granted that he drank liquor; all the men she had known had been drinkers. ‘Now tell me about you.’

But Embury and particularly Irvine had told him that an agent in the field should never know much about his or her control. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to take me at face value. All I can tell you is that I’m a Nisei, a Japanese-American. For this mission –’ he was still awkward with the jargon’ – I’m supposed to have come from Saipan, where I was an under-manager at a sawmill. You’ll report to me once a week – I may or may not have information for you to transmit. You’ll be transmitting every week from now on, instead of monthly.’

‘That increases the risk.’ She didn’t feel comfortable with the thought. Then, remembering Yuri’s comment, she said, ‘I’m not being paid for this.’

He caught the mercenary note in her voice. ‘They didn’t say anything about that. Was your husband paid?’

‘I don’t know. But with him it was different – he was a patriot.’ She had never been sure that he was; he had seemed to have more love for Japan than for Scotland. ‘It’s very difficult trying to live without money.’

‘You came home by car. Who paid for that?’ The whisky, served without ice, hadn’t broken any.

‘It was a friend’s.’ She decided she wouldn’t tell him about her mother, not yet.

‘You’re well dressed, too. A fur coat.’ He had forgotten how cold an unheated house could be.

She put her glass down and said sharply, ‘I don’t have to answer to you like some servant.’

He had been studying her carefully. The male in him appreciated her looks; but he was unaccustomed to women of mixed blood. The Japanese he had known in California had been a tightly knit community; even amongst the whites he had known at school and university he could not remember any who had had any Negro or Oriental blood in them. He had grown up in a society that believed that any relationship between races had to be promiscuous and any child, especially a girl, born of that relationship would also be promiscuous. And being promiscuous, in that way of thinking, meant having less regard for other values. He would have to adapt to her and, tired as he was, that made him angry.

‘You can raise the point with them in your next broadcast. I’ve got only enough to keep myself, till I get a job.’

‘What are you going to do? Maybe I can help,’ she said grudgingly. ‘I have contacts at the university.’

He shook his head. ‘No. If you were picked up and questioned, you would know where I could be found. It’s better for both of us if you can’t get in touch with me. I’ll contact you each week.’

‘You’re not going to trust me, are you? What if I have something important to tell you in a hurry?’

He considered that, going over all the instructions Irvine, the experienced control, had given him. ‘We’ll settle on a mail drop, somewhere where you can leave a message for me. Or I can leave one for you, if I need you in a hurry. But we can’t do that till I know my way around.’

‘Will you stay around here?’

‘No. It’ll be easier to lose myself in Tokyo.’ He could risk telling her that. He looked at his watch. ‘I’m supposed to ask you a lot of questions, but I’m too tired. What time does the first train leave Nayora in the morning?’

‘There’s one comes through from Shizuoka at 7.15, if it’s on time. They’re not always on time these days, because of the bombings.’

‘I’ll get out of your house before daylight and go up to the station. I’ll be in touch with you, where to meet me. Do you have a phone?’

‘It was disconnected when we were interned.’ She began to envy him. ‘You seem to have had an easy war in America. Expecting the trains to run on time, telephones to work …’

He smiled, a tiny crack in the ice between them; she was quick to notice that with the smile his face changed, his eyes became livelier. ‘Score one to you. Now may I get some sleep?’

She led him upstairs to one of the bedrooms, made up a bed for him and left him. ‘I’ll set an alarm to wake me at five,’ she said. ‘It’s still dark then.’

‘There’s no need for that—’

‘Yes, there is. You look worn out – if you’re not wakened, you’ll sleep right through to midday. Yuri will get up with me. She’ll see that you have something to eat before you leave. It won’t be an American breakfast, but it may be a long time before you have another one of those.’ Then she said in English, ‘Goodnight, Mr Joshua.’

‘Goodnight,’ he said in the same tongue. He took a risk, chipping away further at the ice: ‘My name is Okada. Tamezo Okada.’

She smiled at him from the doorway. ‘That could be a trap, speaking in English so carelessly. I think you are like me, Mr Okada. Not a very experienced spy.’

She closed the door, leaving him to sleep on that. He fell asleep wondering how long he would survive. He did not wonder about her: she looked a survivor, if ever he’d seen one.

4

Natasha lay in her own bed, wrapped in some wondering of her own. She had no doubt that Tamezo Okada was who he claimed to be; his arrival, however, had put sudden pressure on her, and, just as suddenly, she wondered if she could cope with it. Up till now she had been doing little more than playing at being a spy; keeping the transmitter oiled, as it were. From here on, if there was to be a transmission a week, it was obvious that the game was to be played seriously. She tried to think how Keith would have reacted; then knew he would have welcomed the pressure. But then he had been so much more experienced at the game than herself – or Tamezo Okada. She suddenly longed for the comfort of Keith’s arms; but it was too late. She fell asleep, making love in her memory, which, like the real thing, is often disappointing.

In the morning she decided to tell Okada about Major Nagata but not about her mother: some relationships were, well, not sacred but suspicious. ‘Major Nagata is working for himself more than for the kempei.’

‘Jesus!’ said Okada, thinking English so early in the morning. ‘Does he suspect you’re an agent for us?’

‘I don’t think so. But I have to report to him what I learned last night at General Imamaru’s.’

Okada looked up from his plate of rice and cold fish. ‘You were at a general’s place? You move in high circles.’

‘A friend of my husband’s from the university took me. Professor Kambe.’ She shook her head before he could ask the question: ‘No, we are not lovers or anything like that. He’s an old man.’ Anyone over fifty was an old man to her; Keith had just escaped the description, dotage had been only four years away when he had died. ‘He knows everyone in high circles, as you call it.’

‘Have you been using him to get information?’

‘The professor? No. Last night was the first time he’d taken me to a reception like that.’

He felt some excitement for the job now: with she and Minato both giving him information, the weekly transmission should raise some excitement back in San Diego, too. At the same time he realized that he would probably be transmitting no information of his own, that while Mrs Cairns and Minato moved in high circles, he’d be no more than the anonymous coach calling the signals. One hidden away in very low circles.

‘Is Nagata having you watched?’

‘I don’t know. If he’s working for himself, I shouldn’t think so.’

‘What makes you think he’s working for himself?’

‘Intuition.’ She had done it for herself for so long.

He hadn’t expected complications so soon. ‘Well, we’ll have to take a risk. We’ve got to meet at least once again, so that we can arrange the mail drop. The trouble is, you’re conspicuous. Your looks, I mean.’

She was so accustomed to compliments that she took his remark as another one; and was surprised. ‘Thank you.’

He looked at her blankly for a moment, then shook his head. ‘I meant you’re different. I’d pass in a crowd more easily than you would.’

She was rebuffed; but she saw his point. ‘We’d better meet at night then. It will have to be an obvious place, till you get to know Tokyo better. Come to the university. There’s a small garden next to the Art Department. There’s no one in the Department now except some elderly gentlemen, like Professor Kambe, and they won’t be there at night.’

They settled on a meeting at nine o’clock three nights hence. Then it was time for him to leave for the station. He held out his hand and she took it.

‘Don’t do that again,’ she said, ‘not in Japan. Good luck.’

He smiled, embarrassed at the small mistakes he was continuing to make. ‘I hope we can work well together.’

This morning she liked him, despite his wariness of her. Though she didn’t recognize it, she had the talent all good women spies should have: an ability to suffer men. ‘I hope so, too.’

She let him out the side door of the house and he disappeared into the morning darkness.

Three hours later Major Nagata called on her again. His visit was prompted more by the desire to see her again as a woman than as one of his operatives. But she gave him a report on last night’s reception at General Imamaru’s and he was so pleased with it he was tempted to give her a bonus. But habit held him back: charity is not part of a secret policeman’s make-up.

‘And how was your mother?’

‘Maternal,’ she said and left it at that. After all, as a Japanese, he should appreciate there were some matters that were ‘family’.

Chapter Three

1

It took Kenji Minato only five weeks to reach home. None of the contacts along the route wanted to hold him longer than was necessary. Those outside Japan and Germany knew how badly the war was going; they were planning escape routes of their own. Minato had managed to limp out of the desert to a dirt road where he had been picked up by a Mexican farmer who had charged him fifty dollars to drive him the two hundred miles to Hermosillo. It was almost as much as the farmer would earn in six months and he was not going to ask any questions of an enemy who was willing to pay so much. Mexico was officially at war with Japan, but not so the farmer.

Minato had gone on by bus to Mexico City and from there by plane to Caracas. There he had been put aboard a Swedish freighter that was bound for Lisbon. From the Portuguese capital he had been flown to Berne with a mixed bag of diplomats, couriers, businessmen and an exiled king’s mistress going shopping in Zurich. There were two other Japanese on the flight, but they ignored him; he was not sure whether they knew who he was or whether they considered him socially inferior. He had been given a new wardrobe in Mexico City, but it was cheap and ill-fitting, as if spies on the run should not expect to be well-dressed. He longed to be back in naval uniform.

From Berne he travelled by no less than seven trains to Istanbul. On each leg of the journey he met other Japanese; these were more sociable, though none of them told him what their jobs were and he told them nothing of himself. But the number of Japanese travelling told him what he already knew, that the war was not going well. His fellow-travellers had a look of defeat about them.

He went all the way from Istanbul to Tokyo by plane, through Tashkent, Alma Ata: it was strange to see that the Russians were not yet at war with Japan. He stopped in Peking for two days when he had to wait for a seat on a plane, sleeping at the military airdrome and in his waking hours watching the military brass, none of them looking happy or victorious, trooping aboard the aircraft. He was closer to home than he had been in six years and suddenly he was more depressed than he had been in all that time. When he finally flew in over the huge bronze statue of Buddha at Kamakura and landed at Atsugi air base he felt it was more than just the end of a journey.

He was met by Lieutenants Sagawa and Nakasone. At the naval academy they had been close friends; but now they seemed like strangers. They bowed formally to him and he to them; then on an impulse he put out hands to both of them. They welcomed the intimacy, as if they had wanted proof that he had not changed. Did they know how one could be so insidiously corrupted in America?

‘You must be glad to be back.’ Haruo Sagawa hadn’t changed, Minato decided. He still looked as he always had, a man so afraid of being thought vulgar that he had gone to the other extreme, primness. He had a round soft face and a mouth that was continually pursed. He still sounded as if he were preaching: ‘There is no place like one’s own country.’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.