of conquest hadn’t come close to sweeping clean. Englishmen with rifles and mortars still roamed the countryside. So did Burmese bandits. Fujita fired out the window several times. He wasn’t always sure at whom he was shooting. He didn’t much care, either. Nobody who was shooting at him was likely to be friendly.
Myitkyina lay in the middle of steaming jungle. Snow-capped mountains corrugated the horizon to the east and north. Signs at the train station were written in characters he couldn’t read. He grabbed the first Japanese soldier he saw and asked-almost begged-to be taken to the local army headquarters.
Since the soldier he grabbed was only a private, the fellow couldn’t tell him to get lost. He didn’t look happy, though. “Well, come on, then,” he said gruffly. Four other Japanese soldiers who’d got off the train with Fujita eagerly followed. They seemed just as lost and confused as he was.
Not surprisingly, the functionaries who made Southern Army go had claimed the best hotel in town. It was a fourth-rate copy of a third-rate hotel in a second-rate city in some happier English colonial possession. Getting shelled in the conquest did nothing to improve it. The clerks there rapidly dealt with the other newly arrived Japanese soldiers. Each of those men had a slot, and they fit him into it. No one seemed to have any idea what to do with Fujita.
“From the Kwangtung Army? From Manchukuo? To here?” A senior sergeant shook his head in disbelief. “ Eee! Someone’s played a dirty trick on you, Corporal, or maybe on us.”
“You don’t have any records that show where I’m supposed to go?” Fujita asked.
“You might as well have fallen from the moon. For all I know, you did.” The sergeant seemed to think he was a funny fellow.
“But that’s crazy.” If Fujita sounded desperate, it was only because he was. They not only didn’t have a slot for him, they didn’t even have a board with slots to find out where he fit. And here he was, lucky not to have got killed before he made it to this miserable place. He’d thought Captain Ikejiri was doing him a favor. Ikejiri must have hated his guts.
“Well, let’s try a different angle,” the sergeant said. “What did you do when you were in Manchukuo?”
Before Fujita could answer, several more soldiers from the train found their way to the hotel. The military bureaucrat dealt with them and seemed to forget about Fujita. The other soldiers were easy. He wasn’t. And he had to be careful about what he said. “Well, before I got here I served in Colonel Ishii’s unit,” he replied when the senior sergeant had time for him once more.
“Zakennayo!” that worthy exclaimed. “Who in blazes is Colonel Ishii? What does his damned unit do-besides sending people all over the Co-Prosperity Sphere, I mean?”
Fujita wondered how he should answer that. He feared he shouldn’t answer it at all. He also feared he would end up in trouble if he didn’t. But when the senior sergeant shouted Colonel Ishii’s name, a skinny little superior private with glasses pricked up his ears. “Please excuse me, Sergeant- san…” he said, and drew the noncom off to one side. They talked together in low voices for a couple of minutes.
“Oh,” the senior sergeant said loudly. “He’s with those people?” He turned back to Fujita. “Why didn’t you say you were with those people?”
Again, Fujita didn’t have to answer because the bespectacled senior private did some more urgent murmuring. The senior sergeant threw his hands in the air. He made as if to clout the younger man, who flinched.
Frightening someone seemed to make the sergeant feel better. Fujita knew that feeling. “Security!” the sergeant said, as if it were the filthiest word he knew. Maybe it was. He glowered at Fujita. “If you don’t tell us what you’re good for, how can we send you where you need to go?”
“If I do tell you, I violate the orders I got to keep that work secret,” Fujita answered unhappily.
“Bah!” The senior sergeant sounded disgusted. “Go to Yanai, then.” He pointed at the senior private. “He’ll write you orders to get you out there.”
Out where? Fujita wondered. Well, he’d find out.
And so he did. Superior Private Yanai wrote out the orders, saying, “This will take you out to Unit 113, in the 56th Infantry Division. There’s a shed next to the train station. You get your transport there.”
“A shed? Next to the train station?” Fujita knew he sounded dismayed-or maybe furious. A kilometer back to where he’d just come from, in this heat and humidity? He wasn’t looking forward to that.
“ Shigata ga nai, Corporal. I’m sorry.” Yanai spread his hands in what looked like real sympathy. Whether it was or not, he was right: it couldn’t be helped. Wearily, Fujita slung his rifle over his shoulder and trudged away from the hotel. Unfamiliar gaudy birds chirped in the bushes.
The shed smelled like a barn. Both soldiers on duty there were drunk. Fujita had to shout at them to discover what they called transport: a creaking ox cart. They were in charge of a dozen or so carts, with the oxen to haul them hither and yon. The oxen no doubt explained the smell. The first driver the men in charge of the shed hunted up had no idea where Unit 113 was stationed. They swore at him, but he insisted he’d never been there.
Things had been ragged out on Manchukuo’s border with Soviet-backed Mongolia. Here, they would have had to shape up to seem ragged. This was the raw edge of conquest. That Japanese soldiers ruled here near Burma’s Chinese frontier should have been inspiring. That the soldiers actually at the frontier were less than the shining lights of the Japanese Army shouldn’t have been surprising. Fujita had traveled too far too fast to stay tolerant. He screamed at the stablemen. One of them was a corporal, too. He didn’t care. If the other fellow felt like fighting, he intended to maim him for life.
He was almost disappointed when the other corporal quailed instead. Even a drunk could tell he had murder in his eyes. And the next driver the stablemen hunted up did know about Unit 113. “I’ve been there before,” he said. “I can find it again.” He eyed Fujita. “Keep your piece handy while we go, though. You might want to fix your bayonet, too. Things can get pretty hairy around here.”
“I found out about that on the way up.” Fujita unsheathed the bayonet and snapped it into place under his Arisaka’s muzzle.
He could have walked to Unit 113 as fast as the ox cart brought him there. He would have had to work harder, though. The trail they followed wasn’t much wider than the cart. Anything or anyone might have burst out of the jungle before Fujita or the driver could do anything about it. The oxen took their own sweet time splashing across streams.
It was almost sunset when they reached the clearing that held Unit 113. No fancy compound here-nothing but tents. No officer of rank higher than captain, either. And nobody, from that captain down to the almost toothless old Burmese woman who cooked for the unit, had the slightest idea that Fujita was coming or what to do with him now that he was here.
“Demons take it,” the captain said at last. “You’re really from Unit 731?” He might have been a skinny little would-be wrestler talking about someone from a famous sumo dojo.
“Yes, sir. I really am,” Fujita said.
“How about that? I’m sure you’ll do a lot of good here, then, with all the things you’re bound to know. For now, get some rice, pour some of the old gal’s stew over it, and find somewhere to unroll your blanket or sling your hammock. We’ve got a lot going on here. I’m sure you’ll fit right in.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Fujita knew better than to argue with an officer. He also knew better than to ask the Burmese woman what all went into the stew. It didn’t taste half bad, even if it was spicier than he fancied. Better not to wonder where the meat came from. He’d had stews like that before. As long as it filled him up, he wouldn’t complain.
La Martellita looked daggers at Chaim Weinberg. If this was the kind of love wives were supposed to show husbands, he sure didn’t want to see how she’d act when she was pissed off at him. (As a matter of fact, he had seen that, and more often than he wanted.)
Her hands cupped her bulging belly. “You did this to me!” she screeched, more or less accurately.
They were walking along a street in Madrid. La Martellita didn’t care. She let him have it any which way. Other people within earshot turned to listen. Street theater was the best, and cheapest, entertainment in town. It was a hell of a lot more interesting than the crap either the Republicans or the Nationalists put on the radio.
Chaim knew about street theater. Growing up in New York City’s Lower East Side, he couldn’t very well not know about it. But he enjoyed watching and listening to other people more than being watched and listened to.
“Take it easy, Magdalena,” he said, trying to soothe his inamorata till they got to some place where she could
