I frowned. “Then you really did almost die. What, were you in a coma?”
She shrugged. “Or they kept me doped up. I don’t really know….” She studied me through narrowed eyes, as if only now she had convinced herself I wasn’t an apparition. “What are you doing here, Nathan? Who sent you on this harebrained expedition? G. P.?”
My laugh was harsher than I intended. “Not hardly. He had you declared dead, I don’t know, two years ago; he’s already remarried.”
The blood drained out of her face; so did the emotion.
“Hey,” I said. “I’m sorry…. I don’t mean to be so cold about it….”
“It’s all right. It’s just…I knew he didn’t love me, anymore. And I never loved him, not really. But we were…a kind of team, you know? A partnership. I think I…deserved a little better from him, is all.”
“You’re preaching to the choir on that one.”
She flashed me the gap-toothed grin and slipped a finger in my collar and tugged. “Preaching to the preacher, you mean. What’s this about? Who
“The same star-spangled bunch who sold you out,” I said. “Uncle Sam and assorted nephews.”
And I filled her in, giving her a brief but fairly complete rundown, from my unofficial investigation in July of ’37 (she was fascinated and astounded to learn that I’d heard her capture on the Myers family Philco) to my current mission, right up to my role as I.R.A. emissary Father O’Leary—leaving out what Chief Suzuki had asked of me.
Then it was her turn, and she told how she and Noonan had been picked up by a launch from a battleship, and were held in a place called Jaluit where a doctor tended to injuries Noonan had received ditching in the water; they were bounced from one Japanese Naval station to another, islands with names like Kwajalein, Roi, Namor, and finally to Saipan, where they were interrogated by Suzuki and others—they denied being spies, having dropped their photographic equipment into the ocean—and were jailed.
“After my collapse in my cell, and that long stay in the hospital,” she said, “I was brought here to the Kobayashi Ryokan. And I’ve been treated more or less decently, ever since. I’m really under a kind of house arrest.”
“You mean, you can come and go as you please?”
She nodded, shrugged. “Within boundaries. There are always at least two of those native police lackeys watching me, here at the hotel—day and night; if I leave, they’re my shadows…even when it’s just a trip out to the privy.”
“How short a leash are you on?”
“I can venture out into the Garapan business district. Like a child, I have an allowance. I can get my hair done. Go to the movies. Stop at a teahouse—they don’t make cocoa here, unfortunately, so I’ve finally learned to drink tea and coffee, at this late date. But always my Chamorro chaperons are nearby.”
“You mean, if we wanted to leave right now,” I said, “we could go for a walk—we’d just have a couple of fat ugly tails on our behinds?”
“Yes.” She gripped my hand, tight. “But Nathan…don’t underestimate them—particularly the one named Jesus.” Her eyes took on a momentary glaze. “Lord Jesus, the islanders call him. His own people are frightened to death of him, even the ones he works with. He’s terribly cruel.”
I looked at her carefully. “You sound like you speak from experience….”
“I know he’s tortured Fred, many times.”
“It’s more than that.”
She nodded in admission, and shared the unpleasant memory: “Shortly after I got out of the hospital, Lord Jesus came to my room, this room, and tried to make me admit I was a spy….” She tilted her head to one side and pointed to her neck, where there were several nasty burn scars.
“Cigarettes?” I asked. A cold rage was rising in me.
She nodded. “But Chief Suzuki came in and saw what Jesus was doing, and put a stop to it.”
I didn’t bother to tell her that she’d just described an interrogation technique that dated back to the time of the original Jesus. Except for the cigarettes.
“This room has become a kind of…sanctuary for me,” she said. Then her tone turned bitter. “But I always remember that, whenever they want, any of them can come right through that door…torture me, rape me, whatever they please…. It’s a pleasant enough prison, Nathan—but it’s a prison.”
“Let’s go for that walk,” I suggested. “A priest and his parishioner.”
She nodded, springing to her feet with girlish enthusiasm. “Just let me grab my sandals….”
We went out through the lobby—a Chamorro clerk in a high-collared white shirt and bemused expression was at the check-in desk, now—and Jesus and Ramon were indeed still playing cards at their matchstick-, billy club-and machete-littered table. Under his misshapen straw fedora, the blunt-featured, knife-scarred, pockmarked puss of Lord Jesus frowned up at us in a startling mixture of indignation and contempt. How dare we interrupt his life?
“Catching some air,” I explained. “In Six—remember?”
He sneered at me, baring mahogany teeth and the space for one.
And then we stepped out onto the wooden sidewalk where a cool yet muggy afternoon awaited under a steel- wool sky. We strolled by the general merchandise store with its shelves open onto the street, dolls and cloisonne vases, cakes and confectioneries, condiments and bean curd, its salesgirls in colorful kimonos. But the passers-by were less formal, men in shorts, women in Western-style dresses, not a parasol in sight; a few young men on bicycles. A pair of green-denim-uniformed officers on a motorcycle and sidecar rolled by, in the direction of Chico Naval Base. This time, I couldn’t catch anybody even stealing a glance—word about my presence, here, must have gotten around.
“For such a striking couple,” I said, “we’re not attracting much attention.”
