trouble.
Evidently not. The captain had been at Japan’s research center at Pingfan longer than Fujita had-how much longer, the sergeant had no idea. But the man, who seemed to be a doctor or scientist as well as an officer, wasn’t especially harsh. Now that he had Fujita’s attention, he said only, “Fetch me two maruta, right away.”
“Two logs! Yes, sir!” Fujita saluted again. Then he asked, “Do you need a particular kind of log, sir, or will any of them do?”
“Good question.” The captain actually smiled at a noncom, which had to prove he didn’t come out of the Regular Army. “Let me have a couple from the ones you just brought here.”
“Right away, sir!” With one more salute, Fujita hurried off.
The size, the scale, of the Pingfan complex astonished him. It was six kilometers square. Before he got here, people were calling it a village. There had been a Chinese village named Pingfan here. Japanese authorities had driven off the natives, except for the ones whom they’d put to work building what they needed.
This wasn’t a village any more. It was a city, with its own railroad spur. It had a swimming pool and even a geisha house (not for the likes of him: for the officers). And it had the tightest security he’d ever seen anywhere.
The outer fence was electrified with killing voltage. So were the compounds that housed the maruta. Each compound-and the outer perimeter-also boasted plenty of barbed wire, and machine guns atop towers that could sweep wide areas with fire. The relatively weak gates-by the nature of things, they couldn’t be electrified-had large guard contingents at all times.
And all that was just the outer reaches of Pingfan! The citadel where the scholarly captain worked had a solid wall five meters high, so no one on the outside could see what went on within. More barbed wire and electrified wire topped the wall. Nobody inside could come out without permission from those in authority. It also worked the other way around.
Fujita didn’t know what went on inside that citadel. Asking questions was strongly discouraged-which understated things. As Fujita had seen elsewhere, there were things about which it was better not to get too curious.
He approached the lieutenant in charge of one of the gate garrisons. Saluting, he said, “Sir, Captain-I think his name is Sugiyama: please excuse me, but I’m new here-well, anyway, he needs two Russian logs right away.”
“Captain Sugiyama.” The lieutenant slowly nodded. “Yes, I know him. All right, Sergeant. Wait here. I’ll get them for you.”
“Thank you very much, sir.”
After a brief colloquy with the lieutenant, one of the men from the garrison shouted into the POW compound in Russian. A couple of the prisoners Fujita had helped escort from Vladivostok shambled up to the gateway. They were scrawny, filthy, and shaggy-hardly human beings at all, to the sergeant’s eyes. No wonder the Japanese called the prisoners here logs.
At that, the POWs who’d made it to Pingfan were the lucky ones. Ravens and vultures and foxes and flies feasted on the flesh of the thousands of Russians who’d died along the way. The Japanese had marched them hard and fed them little. Why take pains for men who’d surrendered?
Two squads of soldiers aimed their rifles into the compound as the pair of volunteers came forth. No one who wasn’t authorized would come out… and the prisoners wouldn’t try a mass escape.
As soon as the two maruta emerged, the Japanese soldiers closed the gate again and snapped all the locks shut. The posts to which the locks were affixed were steel, and were mounted in concrete. Nobody without a bulldozer, or more likely a tank, could knock them down.
One of the Russians gave Fujita a doglike grin. Pointing to the inner citadel, he spoke in broken Japanese: “Good food in, hai?”
“ Hai. Good food,” Fujita agreed. For all he knew, it was true. Plenty of supplies went in there. Maybe the maruta got their fair share of them. Who could say for sure? No one on the outside. And the hope helped keep the Russians docile. He gestured with his rifle. “You go now.”
Go they did. The one who knew some Japanese translated for his companion. Even if he hadn’t, the gesture should have been unmistakable. Neither of the large, smelly men gave Fujita any trouble. That was all he cared about.
An armored door to the citadel opened. The Russians went inside. The door closed in Fujita’s face. He couldn’t even see anything interesting beyond the wall. Khaki canvas screened whatever was in there away from prying eyes.
Not all the prisoners in the outer area were Russians. There were also pens full of Chinese maruta. Some of them were soldiers who’d been taken in battle; the war between Japan and China dragged on and on, no end in sight. But others were prisoners from jails in Manchukuo and Japanese-occupied China. And there were pens full of women and children. Where they came from, Fujita didn’t know. He did know the men in the citadel sometimes called for female logs.
And he knew how the Chinese arrived: in big black vans without any windows. Every so often, one or more of them would pass through the outer perimeter and disgorge the people it carried. Some of the Chinese were in bad shape when they came out. That didn’t bother Fujita. As far as he was concerned, the Chinese deserved everything they got.
One day, a fancy black Mercedes convertible-not at all the kind of car anyone would expect to see on Manchukuo’s wretched roads-pulled into Pingfan. Out jumped a tall Japanese in colonel’s uniform. He wore an upswept mustache, as if he came from the Meiji era.
Everyone fussed over him and all but kowtowed before him. So this is Colonel Ishii, Fujita thought, impressed in spite of himself. Unit 731 at Pingfan was Colonel Shiro Ishii’s creation. He was a bacteriologist, a water- purification expert, and a Regular Army officer. This was the first time Fujita had seen him; he was just back from a trip to Japan.
“Let’s see how things are going!” he shouted, and took off on a whirlwind inspection tour. Junior officers hurried along in his wake.
This was a doctor? Most of the physicians Fujita had seen-and Pingfan was crawling with them-were shy, self-effacing, quiet fellows. Not Ishii! He had a big, booming voice and an abrupt, aggressive manner. He went here, there, everywhere, always barking out questions. When he liked the answers he got, he grinned and patted a subordinate on the back. When he didn’t, he glowered and shouted and shook his fist in people’s faces. He acted a lot like a sergeant dealing with privates, in other words. Fujita wouldn’t have been surprised had he actually belted somebody, but he didn’t, or not where the real sergeant could see him.
No real sergeant would have hurled around the technical terms Colonel Ishii used. He talked about infection rates and vectors and plague and cholera and typhoid and paratyphoid. He talked about rodent breeding and insect breeding. He talked about anthrax and glanders and horses and cattle and spores. Much of it flew straight over Fujita’s head, except that he recognized it as scientific.
Ishii talked too much, as far as Fujita was concerned. But how could a sergeant say something like that to a senior officer? Simple-he couldn’t.
“I may be going off again before too long, either back to Japan for another lecture or off to south China to see what happens when we put some of what we’ve learned into action,” Ishii told his men. “Even when I’m gone, though, I know you’ll carry on with the work. Isn’t that right?”
“Hai!” they chorused.
“We are protecting Japan. We are serving the Emperor. Isn’t that right?” Ishii shouted.
“Hai!” the men repeated, louder this time.
“Good. Very good.” The colonel who was also a bacteriologist nodded, apparently satisfied. “Any country foolish enough to make Japan angry will regret it for ten thousand years! And isn’t that right, too?”
“Hai!” everyone yelled again. he next time Chaim Weinberg ran into La Martellita, it wasn’t because he was looking for her. It was because he got a pass to go back into Madrid and happened to walk into the bar where she was already drinking. Madrid had a lot-a devil of a lot-of bars. It was just dumb luck. After the way she’d sliced him to pieces outside Party headquarters, he was damned if he thought it was good luck.
His wounds were still fresh enough to hurt. He didn’t go over to her or try to pick her up. He just ordered a beer and some olives and crackers and sat down at a little table where he could look at her without making a pest
