“What about China?” Smalldane said.
“Nobody can take China.”
“Treason.”
“Make the most of it,” Toyofuku said and smiled for the first time. “But as I said you’ve got a lot of big-shot friends in the States. So you’re on the list. We were going to shoot you.”
“Why?” Smalldane said.
“You wrote nasty things about us in Manchouku in 1932. Then you wrote some more nasty things when you came back in thirty-nine. We’ve got long memories, but you’ve got big-shot friends. If we hadn’t agreed to put you on the list, then they were going to take one of our bankers off. He’s in New York now and we’d very much like him to come home.”
“This is the repatriation list?” Smalldane said.
“Right. It’s divided into five classifications: diplomatic and consular officials, correspondents, missionaries, Canadians, and Latin Americans. Also some businessmen.”
“When do we leave?”
“That presents a problem,” Toyofuku said. “I studied business administration at Berkeley. The stock market fascinated me. So did the commodity market. I learned all about hedging.”
Smalldane grunted and ground out his cigarette. I still had a couple of puffs left. “How much?”
“Three thousand for you. Two thousand for the kid.”
“What about that banker in New York?”
“You could always come down with pneumonia and die. They’d just exchange him for somebody else.”
“I haven’t got five thousand.”
“You can get it. Just write a note.” Toyofuku took a pad from a pocket and handed it to Smalldane along with a thick fountain pen. “She’s still in good health and prosperous. She married, you know.”
Smalldane looked up. “I didn’t.”
“A Frenchman. She’s now a Vichy citizen. Sort of an ally of mine.”
Smalldane finished the note and handed it to Toyofuku, who read it and said, “It tugs at the heart strings.”
“I gave it my all,” Smalldane said.
“You’ll sail in two or three months on the Conte Verde. It’s Italian. The Gripsholm will sail out of New York with our people. You’ll rendezvous at Lourenço Marques in Portuguese East Africa and trade ships. The Gripsholm will take you to New York, the Conte Verde will bring our people to Japan. Probably Kobe.” He tapped the note that Smalldane had written. “If this works, I’ll let her see you off.”
“How many bets are you hedging?” Smalldane asked.
“Twenty or so. It’s my personal share in the greater co-prosperity sphere.”
“I think you think you’ll lose.”
Toyofuku shrugged. It must have been something he’d learned in San Francisco. Possibly from an Italian girlfriend. “If we do, we’ll bounce back. And with a hundred thousand bucks I’ll be right on the ground floor.”
“You know something, Captain?”
“Yes?”
“I’m not really so sure that you could keep anyone off that repatriation list.”
Toyofuku picked up the note from the table and offered it back to Smalldane. “Would you like to bet your lives against it?”
Smalldane shook his head. “No, and I don’t want to play poker with you either.”
Toyofuku smiled for the second time. “I didn’t think that you would.”
Except for the widespread bribing, the International Red Cross handled the whole thing out of Geneva. Only three of us left the cell at Bridge House in late May: Smalldane, me, and the redheaded man who claimed to be a Mexican. They took us to General Hospital, where we were examined by a British doctor. Except for the lice, he complimented us on our health and then gave us a series of inoculations which made me sick. They also gave us some new clothing and Smalldane grinned when I insisted that I be permitted to change mine in complete privacy.
“He’s very shy,” he said to a nurse.
I wasn’t really. I needed the privacy to shift my hoard of dollars and pounds from the lice-infested money belt to the pockets of my new clothing. I distributed it evenly to avoid bulges.
We stayed in the hospital for ten days and then a truck came to take us to the Conte Verde. Smalldane was carrying our vaccination certificates and an authorization that allowed us to draw $100 each from the ship’s purser for incidental expenses. Before we left for the ship, Smalldane borrowed $10 from me to spend on a wardboy, a born scrounger, who came back an hour later with the order: six pairs of dice.
The Conte Verde was one of the better Italian liners that sailed the Pacific route to the Orient and had been caught in Shanghai on December 8. It carried an Italian crew of about 300, and would sail for East Africa with a contingent of Japanese foreign-office officials aboard to make sure that Japan’s new allies didn’t head straight for San Francisco. None of the Italian crew seemed overly patriotic.
Tante Katerine met us at the dock with a basket of fruit, booze, cigarettes, and her new husband, a wisp of a man, about sixty-five, whom she introduced as M’sieu Gauvreau in French and as Mr. Soft stick in English, assuring us that he didn’t understand a word.
“He does something in the Vichy government,” Tante Katerine said, holding my hand in both of hers, “but nothing in bed.” She shrugged, released my hand, and patted her new husband on the cheek. He smiled, delighted at any attention.
“Lucifer’s too thin and you owe me eleven thousand dollars,” she said to Smalldane. “That Captain Toyofuku was such a nice man, but greedy.”
“There’s a redheaded Mexican on board,” I said.
“Don’t trust him,” Tante Katerine said automatically. “When do you intend to repay me, Gorm?”
“After the war.”
“Yes,” she said and smiled sadly. “After the war.”
“What are your plans, Kate?” Smalldane said.
“Fatten Lucifer up,” she said. “He’s far too thin.”
“He’s been in jail. What are your plans?”
She turned to smile at her husband and to tell him in French that he wouldn’t be shivering if he had worn his long underwear as she had suggested. He replied that the weather was too warm and that it made him itch. She said that she had no desire to become a widow and he said that he would wear it from now on even if it did make him itch. It was all very domestic and it was one of those conversations about nothing that somehow become inextricably stuck in memory. It’s really the only thing I remember that M. Gauvreau ever said.
“I have no plans, Gorm,” Tante Katerine said, turning from her husband. “He talks about returning to France, but he’s only dreaming. They have no use for him there. My only plans are to keep alive. As long as he lives, the Japanese will let me alone. Just promise me one thing.”
“What?” Smalldane said.
“Take care of Lucifer. Get him safely to America,”
“All right.”
“See that he brushes his teeth.”
“All right.”
“Make him change his underwear.”
“All right.”
“Lucifer.”
“Yes, Tante Katerine.”
“Look after Gorman.”
“Yes, ma am.”
“Don’t let him drink too much.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Keep him away from the poules. The bad ones at least.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She leaned down to kiss me and then fussed with my clothing, straightening it here and there. “I’ll miss you, Lucifer. Don’t trust that redheaded Mexican. Stay away from him.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She turned back to Smalldane. “I don’t want to come aboard, Gorm. I don’t think I could.”