"Tell me what they mean," Hon repeated.
Moore told him and could tell by the look on Lieutenant Hon's face that he was disappointed.
"Look beneath the surface, beneath the obvious," Hon said.
"Sir, I don't quite understand."
"Forget you're a sergeant, forget that you're an American. Think like a Japanese. Think like General Homma."
How the hell am I supposed to do that?
When there was no response after a moment, Hon said, "OK. Try this. What, if anything, did you notice that was unusual, in any way, in either message?"
Jesus Christ, what is this, Twenty Questions?
He went over the messages in his mind, then picked up the original messages in Japanese and read them again.
"Sir, I thought it was unusual... I mean, Homma is a general. Why the reminder about the Code of Bushido?"
"Good!" Hon said, and made a "keep going" gesture with his hands.
Off the top of his head, Moore said, "If I was General Homma, I'd be a little pissed-insulted that they had given me the lecture."
"Good! Good!" Hon said. "Why?"
"Because it was discourteous. Not maybe the way we would look at it, but to a Japanese..."
"OK. Accepting it as a given that the IJAGS..."
Hon pronounced this "Eye-Jag-Ess," saw confusion cloud Moore's eyes, and translated:
"-the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff-did insult General Homma by discourteously reminding him about Bushido. He is a General officer who has to be presumed to know all about Bushido." Hon now switched to Japanese: "Why would they do this? In what context? Reply in Japanese."
Beats the shit out of me, Moore thought and dropped his eyes again to the calligraphs.
"The context is in..." he said.
"In Japanese," Hon interrupted him.
"... reference to a shortage of shipping," Moore finished, in Japanese.
"Is it?"
"Homma's message to-What did you say, 'Eye-Jag-Ess'?-said that the food he captured from us was inadequate to feed the prisoners," Moore said. He had in his sudden excitement switched back to English. Hon did not correct him.
"And?"
"IJAGS's reply was that there was a shortage of shipping, and then reminded Homma of the Code of Bushido."
"Right. And how, if you know, does the Code of Bushido regard warriors who surrender?"
"It's shameful," Moore said. "Disgraceful. A failure of duty. More than that, there's a religious connotation. Since the Emperor is God, it's a great sin."
"Meaning what, in this context?"
Moore thought that over, and horrified, blurted, "Jesus, meaning, `fuck the prisoners, they're beneath contempt, let them starve'?"
"That's how I read it," Hon said. "You did notice that there was just a hint of sensitivity to Western concepts of how prisoners should be treated-the Geneva Convention, so to speak-the reference to the shortage of shipping, which IJAGS uses to rationalize not shipping food?"
"My God!"
"Why are you surprised?" Hon asked. "You grew up there."
Moore's mind was now racing.
"I still can't accept this," he said. "Jesus Christ, can't we complain to the International Red Cross or somebody? Maybe they'd arrange to let us send food."
"We cannot complain to anybody," Hon said.
"Why not?"
"We cannot complain to anybody," Hon repeated. "And stop that line of inquiry."
"We have their goddamn messages," Moore plunged on. "Why the hell not?"
Hon held up both hands, palms out, to shut Moore up.
"In about ten seconds, that will occur to you. And in ten seconds, Major Banning's warning to you will move from the realm of the hypothetical to cold, cruel reality."
Moore looked at him, confusion all over his face. And then, in five seconds, not ten, he understood.
"We've broken their code, haven't we? That was a coded message, and we intercepted it and decoded it, right?"
"Since I didn't hear the question, Sergeant Moore-If I had, I would have to inform Major Banning-I obviously can't answer it."
"Jesus!" Moore exhaled.
"Apropos of nothing whatever, the correct phraseology is 'encrypted' and 'decrypted,' " Hon said. "The root word is 'crypt,' variously defined as 'burial'; 'catacomb'; 'sepulcher'; 'tomb'; and 'vault.'"
"And they don't know we can do that, do they?" Moore asked, more rhetorically than anything else.
"I hope you're about to get your mouth under control, Sergeant Moore," Hon said, "because I feel my memory is returning."
Moore exhaled audibly.
"Jesus Christ!" he said.