The Phoenix Tree. Jon Cleary
woke when he heard the car drive up; men he heard the voices out on the verandah. He had been exhausted when he had fallen asleep; he had had no more caution left than he had energy. If the woman servant had wanted to betray him, she could easily have done so; now, as he came awake, he knew he would have to be more careful in future. From now on trust might be an extravagant luxury.
He stood up, tensing as the door opened. When only the two women came in, he almost sighed with relief. There was only one lamp in the room, a small green-shaded table lamp in a corner; it threw enough illumination for him to see that the girl standing beside the servant woman was beautiful. Nobody in Intelligence at San Diego had told him what Mrs Cairns looked like; for some reason he had expected her to be older, tougher-looking, a woman whose mixed blood would have coarsened her looks. He had his own prejudices.
‘Are you Mrs Cairns?’ he said in Japanese.
‘Yes. Who are you?’ Natasha at once had guessed who he was, though she had not expected him so soon. She saw his questioning look at Yuri and she nodded reassuringly: ‘I trust Yuri. I think you can too.’
‘I’m Joshua. You should have been expecting me.’ He still had one eye on the doorway, waiting for – soldiers? police? – to come bursting through. The day-long trip had been only prologue, from now on the real danger began.
‘I have been.’ She turned to Yuri. ‘You may go to bed now, Yuri.’
‘Will you be all right?’ With him: she didn’t say it but she nodded her head suspiciously at Okada.
‘I’ll call you if I’m not. Take a knife to bed with you.’
Yuri didn’t think that was much of a joke; she snorted and backed out of the room, not respectfully but watchfully. Okada said, ‘She doesn’t trust me.’
‘She’s never trusted any man. Except my late husband.’
‘They never mentioned her when they briefed me. They didn’t tell me much about you.’
‘What would they know about me, only that my husband had recommended me?’ They were treading warily through the bramble-bush of suspicion and ignorance of each other. Natasha knew that she had not been able to send much information of value on her monthly radio transmissions; that feeling of inadequacy and the danger she was exposing herself to had weighed heavily on her. She welcomed someone who would share the burden with her, but she was not going to accept him blindly.
Okada, for his part, had been put off by Natasha’s beauty. He was not averse to women and particularly beautiful women; but he had preferred them in the plural, taken singly only for a night or two and never with any commitment. But he would have to commit himself to this woman: it would be an affair, even if there was no romance to it. He was wary of her: a girl as beautiful and composed as this one must have received plenty of offers of commitment. She had a lot to sell besides secrets.
‘They told me nothing about you,’ she said. She had been fin looking at him objectively, something she had always done ever since she had become aware of men. He was of medium height but tall for a Japanese, and muscular. He had a strong face, good-looking but for the dark suspicion in his eyes.
They had sat down opposite each other. The room, he had observed earlier, was furnished in Western style; which, for almost trivial reasons, made him for the moment feel more comfortable; he wanted to come back to Japan, to the style of living, a step at a time. Natasha, suddenly deciding the ice needed cracking, got up, went to a big ugly cabinet and came back with two drinks.
‘Scotch whisky, the last of my husband’s stock.’ She took it for granted that he drank liquor; all the men she had known had been drinkers. ‘Now tell me about you.’
But Embury and particularly Irvine had told him that an agent in the field should never know much about his or her control. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to take me at face value. All I can tell you is that I’m a Nisei, a Japanese-American. For this mission –’ he was still awkward with the jargon’ – I’m supposed to have come from Saipan, where I was an under-manager at a sawmill. You’ll report to me once a week – I may or may not have information for you to transmit. You’ll be transmitting every week from now on, instead of monthly.’
‘That increases the risk.’ She didn’t feel comfortable with the thought. Then, remembering Yuri’s comment, she said, ‘I’m not being paid for this.’
He caught the mercenary note in her voice. ‘They didn’t say anything about that. Was your husband paid?’
‘I don’t know. But with him it was different – he was a patriot.’ She had never been sure that he was; he had seemed to have more love for Japan than for Scotland. ‘It’s very difficult trying to live without money.’
‘You came home by car. Who paid for that?’ The whisky, served without ice, hadn’t broken any.
‘It was a friend’s.’ She decided she wouldn’t tell him about her mother, not yet.
‘You’re well dressed, too. A fur coat.’ He had forgotten how cold an unheated house could be.
She put her glass down and said sharply, ‘I don’t have to answer to you like some servant.’
He had been studying her carefully. The male in him appreciated her looks; but he was unaccustomed to women of mixed blood. The Japanese he had known in California had been a tightly knit community; even amongst the whites he had known at school and university he could not remember any who had had any Negro or Oriental blood in them. He had grown up in a society that believed that any relationship between races had to be promiscuous and any child, especially a girl, born of that relationship would also be promiscuous. And being promiscuous, in that way of thinking, meant having less regard for other values. He would have to adapt to her and, tired as he was, that made him angry.
‘You can raise the point with them in your next broadcast. I’ve got only enough to keep myself, till I get a job.’
‘What are you going to do? Maybe I can help,’ she said grudgingly. ‘I have contacts at the university.’
He shook his head. ‘No. If you were picked up and questioned, you would know where I could be found. It’s better for both of us if you can’t get in touch with me. I’ll contact you each week.’
‘You’re not going to trust me, are you? What if I have something important to tell you in a hurry?’
He considered that, going over all the instructions Irvine, the experienced control, had given him. ‘We’ll settle on a mail drop, somewhere where you can leave a message for me. Or I can leave one for you, if I need you in a hurry. But we can’t do that till I know my way around.’
‘Will you stay around here?’
‘No. It’ll be easier to lose myself in Tokyo.’ He could risk telling her that. He looked at his watch. ‘I’m supposed to ask you a lot of questions, but I’m too tired. What time does the first train leave Nayora in the morning?’
‘There’s one comes through from Shizuoka at 7.15, if it’s on time. They’re not always on time these days, because of the bombings.’
‘I’ll get out of your house before daylight and go up to the station. I’ll be in touch with you, where to meet me. Do you have a phone?’
‘It was disconnected when we were interned.’ She began to envy him. ‘You seem to have had an easy war in America. Expecting the trains to run on time, telephones to work …’
He smiled, a tiny crack in the ice between them; she was quick to notice that with the smile his face changed, his eyes became livelier. ‘Score one to you. Now may I get some sleep?’
She led him upstairs to one of the bedrooms, made up a bed for him and left him. ‘I’ll set an alarm to wake me at five,’ she said. ‘It’s still dark then.’
‘There’s no need for that—’
‘Yes,