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 of himself doing it.
She was already drunk, and getting drunker. No doubt hoping to take advantage of her, the guy beside her set a confident Spanish hand on her knee. Chaim wanted to do things like that so confidently. He wanted to flap his arms and fly, too.
Confident or not, the Spaniard misread the signs. La Martellita picked up his beer mug, threw the beer in his face, and broke the mug over his head. “?Madre de Dios!” he shrieked, beer and blood running down his cheeks and dripping from his nose and chin. “What did you do that for?”
“To teach you to keep your hands to yourself, you shitheaded motherfucking no-balls faggot,” she answered, and went on from there. Spanish was a good language to swear in, and Chaim realized he was listening to a modern master.
Like the beer and his own blood, it all rolled off the Spaniard. With immense dignity, he accepted a towel from the bartender and patted himself dry. When he saw how much blood splotched the towel, he mournfully shook his head. He got to his feet, which impressed Chaim. After a clop like that, the guy might have had a fractured skull.
He actually bowed to La Martellita. “You don’t need to worry about that any more, not with me,” he said. “You may be a whore, but you are a frigid whore.” He turned and walked out. He was taking a chance-she might have knifed him in the back or chased after him and beaten him to peanut butter. All she did, though, was give him more details on where to go and how to get there.
Then, to Chaim’s alarm, she picked up her glass of whiskey or brandy or whatever the hell it was and carried it over to his table. Unlike the hard-headed Spaniard, she wobbled when she walked. She plopped herself down across from him with a warning glare. “Don’t you start anything,” she snapped, breathing high-proof fumes in his face.
“What? You think I’m loco?” he said. “I like my head. It’s the only one I’ve got. I don’t want you to break it for me.”
“You’d better not,” she said fiercely. Then she took another big swig from her glass. How many times had she already emptied it? Quite a few, if Chaim was any judge. She slammed the glass down, slopping a little booze over the edge. And then she started to cry.
Weeping belligerent shikker women, care and management of was a manual Chaim hadn’t read. Hell, he didn’t even know where they issued it. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “You still mad at that guy?”
She stared at him as if she thought he was even more cretinous than usual. “Claudio? Oh, no. He’s just an asshole,” she answered. “But the revolution in Spain is ru-ru-ruined.” She had to try three times before she could get the word out. It made her cry harder than ever. Eyeliner and mascara dribbled down her face. She dabbed at her eyes with a dirty handkerchief.
Chaim wanted to cuddle her and comfort her and tell her everything would be fine. He would sooner have tried it with a rattlesnake. All he said was “We’re doing fine. The Nationalists haven’t beaten us yet, and they won’t.”
The look she gave him then made him think he’d have to study to be a cretin. “Where will our munitions come from?” she said. “England and France have jumped into bed with the Nazis. Do you think they’ll keep sending arms to the progressive elements here? It will be even worse than it was before the big war started.”
If she was right, the Spanish Republic was, to use a technical term, screwed. But Chaim only shrugged. “They weren’t sending us much before,” he said. “They were using the stuff themselves.”
“They kept the Sanjurjo junta from getting any, though,” La Martellita said. She hiccuped, whether drunkenly or because she’d been crying Chaim couldn’t tell. “Now they won’t.”
He shrugged again. “If Germany is fighting the Russians right next door, she won’t have much to spare for the half-assed Fascists way the hell over here.”
This time, she eyed him like a floating spar in the middle of the ocean. “Do you really think so?” she asked. He wondered if he could get plastered on her breath. What a way to go, he thought dizzily.
“Sure,” he said with yet another up-and-down of the shoulders. “You wait. We’ll whip the bastards yet.”
Instead of answering, she upended the glass and waved peremptorily for a refill. Chaim recognized the brandy bottle the barman brought to the table. That shit was a distilled artillery barrage. She’d regret it come morning. Jesus, would she ever! But she poured down some more. With muzzy suspicion, she said, “Maybe you’re trying to soften me up so you can go to bed with me.”
“No,” he said, and the regret in his voice was plangent. “I don’t want you to kill me, and I don’t want Sanjurjo’s pendejos to kill me, either.”
“That’s what you say.” But even La Martellita couldn’t make herself sound too angry at him.
He nodded. “Yes. That is what I say. What can you do after you get killed?”
She considered his foolishness with drunken gravity. Then she thrust out an accusing forefinger at him. “You were very silly there, outside the Party offices. You looked like a boy who couldn’t get the candy he wanted.”
“Asi es la vida.” Chaim used that one a lot. When you spoke a language badly, cliches came in handy. And So it goes was better than bursting into tears the way she had. He thought it was, anyhow.
La Martellita wagged the finger his way. “You still want the candy.”
“Well, so what?” He hadn’t drunk a lot of beer, but he could feel his temper fraying. She’d drive a saint to armed robbery. Not without bitterness, he added, “Who wouldn’t? You’re smart, you’re beautiful, you’re-” He stopped. Dammit, he didn’t know how to say sexy in Spanish. What the hell? He said it in English instead.
She understood it. He saw that right away. He wondered if he’d get a faceful of brandy with a glass chaser, the way she’d baptized luckless Claudio with beer. “But you don’t try groping me,” she said, and drank some of the vicious stuff instead of flinging it.
Yet another shrug. “Not American style. Not my style. Just coming to see you took all the nerve I had.”
La Martellita got to her feet. Chaim was amazed she could. “I am going home,” she announced, as if challenging him to doubt her.