“A decision.”
“Yeah—about finding you a new home. One possibility is Tokyo. The imperial government, the chief tells me, is impressed by your propaganda value. They feel you might possibly be…turned. That you might come over to their side, and became a major embarrassment to your homeland.”
“But I’ve only cooperated to keep Fred and me alive,” she said, half-enraged, half-defensive. “I mean, of course I felt betrayed and abandoned, by G. P. and Franklin…but that didn’t turn me into some kind of traitor!”
It had to be asked: “How exactly have you cooperated?”
She smiled nervously, shrugging. “Well, you know, they fished the Electra out of the waters…they put her in slings and hauled her up onto the deck of that battleship that picked us up, Fred and me. I don’t exactly know how they got the plane to Saipan…Fred said on a barge, though I heard later someone actually flew it here, and badly, crash-landing through some trees onto the beach near the harbor…. Anyway, Chief Suzuki, who’s been very nice to me, said that things would be better for me, and for Fred too, if I would answer a few simple questions about my ship.”
“Did you?”
“Yes, out at Aslito field. Over a period of several months, I spoke with pilots and engineers, about the plane and its various capabilities. I mean, it wasn’t a fighter plane, what was the harm? These engineers were from a Tokyo firm called, uh…Mits-something.”
“Mitsubishi?”
“Maybe…. Anyway, they made all sorts of repairs, and we took the ship up a few times…that was the last time I was in a plane. Just a passenger, though. Far as I know, the Electra’s still sitting in a hangar out at Aslito airfield. It’s certainly not going anywhere without its engines.”
I blinked. “Without…its engines?”
“Yes, the last time I saw the ship, maybe six months ago, the engines’d been removed.”
Shipped off to Tokyo for further study.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that her flying laboratory had become the blueprint for the revamped Japanese fighter plane, the new and improved Zero. Her own disdain for war, and her love for flying, had created in her a deadly naïvete. On the other hand, it had helped keep her alive.
“Is, uh, Fred aware of how you’ve cooperated?”
The idea of that seemed almost to frighten her. “No! Oh my goodness, no—I’ve never admitted any of this to him. I know he wouldn’t approve, and it would just agitate him. He has it so terrible, as it is….”
“I’m afraid, Amy, that Fred’s problems are going to be over very soon. That ‘nice’ Chief Suzuki informs me that the imperial government has approved Fred Noonan’s execution.”
I’d hit her with so many blows, she was almost punchy; she could barely reply. “W-what?”
“There’s no way to sugar-coat this. I heard it from Suzuki’s own lips. Fred Noonan is considered a dangerous prisoner, uncooperative, belligerent, but most important, he’s a spy, and as such will be executed…and Chief Suzuki feels that you, despite being a fine and beautiful human being, are also a spy, and should face the same fate.”
“Why did he tell you this?”
“Because he asked me…or rather, he asked Father O’Leary of the I.R.A.…to ascertain your true feelings about the Japanese.”
She was shaking her head, as if she were reeling. “True feelings…?”
“Are you sympathetic enough toward the Japanese, and bitter enough toward FDR and the United States, to come over to their side, as a valuable propaganda voice? To help them demonstrate that, as early as 1937, the United States committed an act of war upon imperial Japan?”
She was holding her head in her hands as if trying to keep it from exploding. “How this nightmare could become a greater nightmare, I never imagined…but it has…it has….”
“The chief also wanted me to ascertain whether or not your sympathies could be maintained even after the execution of your cohort. Of course, they may try telling you he died of dysentery or dengue fever—”
“Horrible…horrible.”
I took hold of her by the upper arms and swung her so that she directly faced me; I locked her eyes with mine. “Look, Amy. Love of my life, I don’t know if I can spring Fred Noonan out of that concrete pillbox. But you, you’re out walking around. The security around you is laughable. You think I can’t get around those fat fuckers across the street? I can get you out of here. Tonight.”
She was moving her head, as if shooing away flies. “Not without Fred…we can’t leave Fred….”
“It’s too risky. I’m one man with one gun. A pair of native goons with nightsticks I can take out. Spring your guy out of a maximum-security cellblock…probably not.”
Her mouth tightened; her jaw was firm; her eyes stony. “Then I’ll stay. I’ll talk to them. I’ll convince them I’ll cooperate if they’ll spare Fred.”
“They won’t. They’ve decided. Sentence has been passed, baby….”
She shook her head, firmly; her mouth was a thin narrow line. “No. After all we’ve been through, I can’t leave him behind. I couldn’t live with myself, couldn’t look at myself in the mirror, knowing I’d abandoned somebody who’d been through what I’d been through, worse than I’d been through, no, you have to find a way, Nathan. You have to take us both…or leave us both behind.”
I let go of her, sighing, throwing my hands up. “Even if this were possible, Amy, think about what you’re saying, think of who you are, what you represent to so many people back home. Think of the young girls, cutting out stories about you from papers and magazines and pasting them in scrapbooks, like you did every time you saw some woman succeeding at a man’s task…are you going to take their symbol, the symbol of American womanhood, and turn it into a smiling face on a red sun on a Jap flag?”
“If I have to,” she said.
The breeze was picking up; palm fronds rustling.
“Yeah,” I sighed. “And I don’t blame you, either.”
“When you came here,” she said, “you didn’t know where you’d find me, if you’d find me. I could have been in a prison cell. What would you have done, then?”
“I’d find a way to blast you the hell out.”
She gripped my arm. Tight. “Then find a way. We can’t leave Fred behind.”
There was no moving her on the subject.
So I told her Suzuki and the governor had asked me to talk to Noonan—perhaps Noonan would reveal his secrets to an American priest; it was certainly worth a try, the Japs thought, before they killed him. I would accept their invitation, I told her, and look the jail over firsthand, and see what I could come up with.
This put some spring in her step as we walked back, that gray sky darkening, whether into evening or worse weather, I wasn’t quite sure; the temperature was dropping and that cool breeze, carrying the smell of ocean, was driving out the copra and dried fish odor, or at least diminishing it.
I left her in her room, after a long slow kiss that promised wonderful rewards to a hero who succeeded at his impossible task, and went down to the lobby, where Jesus and Ramon were back at their old stand, their greasy hands filled with greasy cards.
“Tell Chief Suzuki,” I said to Jesus, “that I need to see him.”
Lord Jesus turned his face toward me, a flower seeking sun, and showed me those brown teeth again; it wasn’t a smile. “I look like your errand boy?”
“No,” I said, “you look like the chief’s errand boy.”
He thought about that, rose, brushed by me, in a stunning wave of body odor, and—without asking the clerk’s permission—reached across the counter and used the phone. He spoke in Japanese. His eyes had told me he wasn’t stupid, Suzuki had called Jesus his “top” native detective, and Amy said not to underestimate him; I was starting to see why: this beast spoke at least three languages.