The Pearl Harbor Murders

Harada smiled, just a little, then looked at each man, one at a time, with quiet contempt. 'You will try to prove this, how?'

Burroughs shrugged. 'Like I said, it's not our job to prove it-that's up to the feds, and Detective Jardine. But they're a little busy this morning … so I thought I'd help out.'

Burroughs brought his hand out from around his back and aimed the L?ger at the grocer's chest.

'What is this?' Harada asked, only his eyes betraying any alarm.

'It's what we Americans call a citizen's arrest.'

The backroom door flew open and suddenly Morimura was at Burroughs's side, pressing the nose of a.38 revolver into the writer's neck.

'This is not judo,' Morimura said. 'This is a gun.'

The slender, handsome spy wore golf clothes-a checkered sweater vest over a white shirt and knee pants with high checkered socks; well, Kita had said Morimura had a golf date, this morning.

With a sigh, Burroughs set the little L?ger on the counter. The grocer did not take the weapon, rather he reached under the counter and swung out a sawed-off shotgun. Hully and his father exchanged glances-this was not going quite as planned.

'I hope you'll forgive me for eavesdropping,' Morimura said, looking a little ridiculous in the golf outfit, though not enough so to take the edge off the weapon he'd stuck in the writer's neck.

“Til let it go this time,' Burroughs said, as the cold steel of the spy's gun dimpled his flesh.

Morimura's expression was smug but his eyes had a

wildness, a fear, in them. 'You should write detective stories, Mr. Burroughs. You put the pieces together very well.'

The writer looked sideways at his captor. 'What now, Morimura? You don't mind if I don't call you 'Yoshikawa'-I'm used to you the other way.'

Morimura offered half a smile. 'The ineffectual, buf-foonish ladies' man, you mean? I must give you credit, Mr. Burroughs-you never did accept that masquerade.'

'By any yardstick, buddy, you're no diplomat. You'll face the firing squad, as a spy.'

The half smile dissolved into a full scowl. 'You're facing a firing squad right now, Mr. Burroughs-something I have no intention of doing.'

'What are you going to do?' Burroughs did his best to show no fear; and he wasn't afraid for himself-but his son, at his side, that was something again. 'You can't just kill us.'

'Really?' Morimura laughed softly. 'Do you see anyone around to be a witness? Mr. Harada and I will be on the tiny island of Niihau, by nightfall, and a few days later, a submarine will take us to … friendlier waters.'

Burroughs locked eyes with the spy. 'Did you know, Morimura? Did you know today was the day?'

The spy smirked, shaking his head. 'I suspected- all signs indicated that was the case… but it might have been next week, or the next. What was the difference, with your military so obsessed with fighting fifth columnists, and ignoring the real threat?'

Hully was looking at the little grocer, the big hollow eyes of the man's shotgun looking back at him. 'How could you do it? How could you kill your own niece?'

Harada's features were impassive, even proud. 'She was a traitor.'

Hully's eyes were on fire, his nostrils flaring as he said, 'She was a beautiful, talented girl, and you murdered her, you heartless son of a bitch!'

Harada shrugged.

Morimura's smile was pursed, like a kiss, and then he said, 'Who was it said, 'War is hell'? Whoever that wise man was, he was so right, even if he was an American … now if you will please to step in back, in the storeroom.'

Burroughs put up his hands and so did Hully, and Morimura reached behind him and pushed the backroom door open with one hand, and with the other he kept the revolver trained on the writer, the grocer keeping a bead on Hully. Morimura motioned with the gun for them to follow him into the back.

The spy did not see Adam Sterling come into the open doorway behind him, and the grocer didn't see the FBI agent in time to warn Morimura, either. With a swift, vicious chop to the base of the neck, Sterling sent Morimura sprawling to the floor, the.38 tumbling from the spy's hands.

Burroughs caught the weapon in midair, and Hully snatched the L?ger from the counter, while Sterling was pointing a.38 revolver of his own at the grocer behind the counter.

Though he had a shotgun in hand, Harada was facingthree guns, all trained on him, from various directions.

'Drop it,' Sterling advised. 'You can't win this game.'

Harada thought that over; then he swung the sawed-off shotgun up and around and under his chin and squeezed both triggers, the explosion shaking everything-and everyone-in the small shop. What had been Harada's head dripped and dribbled and slithered down the weird jars of roots, herbs and skeletons, crawling like strange sea creatures. Then the mostly headless body slid down to the floor and sat, out of sight.

Hully was covering his mouth, horrified. Through his fingers, he said the obvious: 'He … he took his own life.'

'You're going to be seeing a lot of that,' Burroughs said, 'in the coming days.'

Sterling was hauling Morimura to his feet; the dazed spy, his perfect hair askew, looking fairly idiotic in the golf togs, gave the FBI man a bewildered look.

'Judo,' Sterling explained.

Less than two hours after it had begun, the sneak air attack on Pearl Harbor was over. The silver planes again receded into specks on the horizon, taking off in varied directions, one more act of deception designed to confuse the enemy as to the attackers' origin point. The raiders left behind a Pearl Harbor that was a smoldering, twisted landscape of inconceivable devastation. The two pieces of the Arizona lay on the bottom of the harbor; the West Virginia, too. The Utah and Oklahoma, capsized; the California sinking; the Cur-tiss, Helena, and Honolulu damaged; the Raleigh barely afloat; the Nevada, the Vestal, beached. Fires raged on bomb-damaged ships-the Maryland, the Pennsylvania, the Tennessee.

On Ford Island, the husks of dozens of planes lay in charred disarray, while hangars burned around them. On the oil-pooled surface of the harbor floated debris, much of it human. And along the Oahu shores, the pummeled air bases continued to ooze smoke.

Corpsman attempted, often vainly, to identify bodies and body parts at the Pearl Harbor Naval Hospital. At the base of Alewa Heights, just below the Shuncho-ro teahouse-where the Japanese vice consul had wooed geishas and perpetrated espionage-a makeshift morgue was set up.

The triumph of the Japanese, however, was not complete. Huge fuel tanks, holding millions of barrels of oil, had gone unsullied. The Navy Yard itself, that sprawl of repair facilities and shops, was secure. The Naval ammo depot went untouched, as did the submarine pens. Smaller warships by the score escaped damage; and the raiders had failed to find-much less destroy-the aircraft carriers of the Pacific Fleet.

The greatest miscalculation, of course, was the nature of the attack itself-the sheer villainy of such a peacetime assault To the Japanese military, this was a glorious day of victory, but just one day-a war, after all, was made of many days.

But December 7, 1941, was not just any day.

Americans would remember it

Epilogue

On the afternoon after the attack-in response to a radio request for help from all able-bodied men-Ed and