Microsoft word 2 2 bfa.., p.41
Microsoft Word - 2-2 BFA Book_2_Chked_Rough_proofs-done, page 41
Smiling, Joy and John watched. John yelled, “C’mon, little guy, pull, pull. Grrr.”
Still tugging on her end, Jy-ying asked, “When will you be in China? I don’t remember you mentioning dates.”
“We plan on being in Peking on March 8th,” Joy responded, “then we will be going down to our office in Shanghai for our business. We do have a business; it’s sometimes hard to remember. And then a week on vacation to play tourist. We’ll be shipping home on the 25th.”
John looked up from watching the tugging contest. “Say, did I mention that Dolphy is raring to go with us? How about Mariko?”
A happy note, Joy thought, and replied, “Mariko can’t wait. Her father gave her permission for the trip, and although he was concerned that Mariko and Dolphy’s rooms are next to each other, he gave his approval when her mother told him in a non-Japanese manner, ‘Do it.’
We would have a hard time without Mariko, since she’s the contact with our office, and can help us getting around Japan.”
aaa
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Jy-ying
The day after Joy and John left for Japan, Jy-ying traveled to Gibb Street in New Chinatown, to see Lin Huifeng. He was the major source of opium and heroin for Chinese and, she had found out, the major contact for the San Francisco Sue Yop tong, who itself had contacts with the leaders of the most notorious secret societies in China. She had left Little Wei whining behind the door in her apartment. She could not take a chance on his being stolen and eaten.
After settling with Lin on what she requested, paying him an advance of $6,000 in real money—she did not want him, of all people, discovering she had given him counterfeit money, no matter how remote—she sent a wire to Janet:
Dear Janet:
Sabah be with us. Joy and John off to Japan and China. My little project looks
good. Wish me success.
Jy-ying
aaa
Joy
Halfway through their voyage to Japan, during dinner at the captain’s table—there were only five cabins available for passengers, and passengers always ate with the captain—Dolphy told them, “Mariko has proposed to me and I accepted.”
Mariko hit Dolphy on the shoulder. Blushing, she said, “Iie—No.
Warui—wrong. He get down on both knees and beg me marry him. If I say no, he say he would throw himself off ship. So I am—what you say?— Jiha-bukai.”
“Merciful,” Joy translated.
“Yes, merciful. I say yes.”
They all laughed. John looked at Dolphy, whose whole face had collapsed into a grin, and asked, “What took you so long?”
Mariko was twenty years old and a Japanese beauty. She was majoring in an ad hoc collection of courses that would later in the century evolve into American Studies. She had hoped to get a job in the Japanese Foreign Ministry when she returned. If she married an American,
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however, that would not be possible, and most likely she would try for a job in the United States as a translator.
With pleasure, Joy told her, “You always have a good a job with us.”
Oddly, Dolphy managed to speak through the huge gap his grin created in his face. “Yeah, she can be my assistant and translator.”
“Of course,” Joy pointed out, “a job filled only by the best.”
They made it to Japan without incident, just missing by several days a powerful typhoon that spun through the central Pacific. The captain did not think they would have survived it if it hit their ship directly.
All John could say to Joy for a week was, “You see? We should have traveled separately.”
Joy’s response was always, “You see? It didn’t hit us, did it?”
In Japan, they had their meeting with the venerable Japanese statesman and oligarch Ito Hirobumi, the critical historical pivot. This had been arranged by Mariko through her father and, as far as she knew, was part of their company business.
When Joy and John were alone with Ito, they warned him that a Korean would try to assassinate him in October at Harbin, and this would be the pretext for Japanese annexation of Korea.
After much discussion and with a proper offer of financial compen-sation in dollars for his canceling the trip to Harbin, they overcame his doubt about their motives. They also secretly provided ten million dollars for Prime Minister Saionji’s democratically oriented political party and for use in bribing the oligarchs into conceding more power to parliament.
Afterward, while finally alone together in the evening, Joy told John, “I hate to lie to Mariko and Dolphy about what we’re doing in Japan, you know.”
He replied sadly, “I know, but we have no choice.”
During the rest of the week in Japan they toured the historical sites, especially in Kyoto, and had a lovely visit with Mariko’s mother. What a sweet woman, Joy thought. She’d seemed to like Dolphy right away.
It helped that Mariko had taught him to bow properly before he met her.
They sailed for Shanghai on the new Japanese passenger ship Tenjo Maru. From there they took an incredibly old train to Peking—even older than the ones they rode in Mexico.
Through their office in Peking they had arranged an appointment with General Jung Il Han, a Korean Righteous Army general who was seeking aid to free Korea from being a Japanese imposed protectorate.
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While the train puffed through Shandong Province, Joy wrote down what she remembered, then hid it. She fidgeted. Across from her, John was reading Volume Two of Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Finally, she could wait no longer and kicked his foot.
When he looked up at her, she said above the chugging of the train and the almost hypnotic clickity-clack of its wheels, “Where’s my lecture?
I’m bored.”
His brow furrowed. He looked around, as though wondering where this strange woman sitting across from him had come from. He looked back at her. “You want a lecture?”
“On Han.”
“You’re asking me for a lecture on Han?”
“Yes.”
“I must be dreaming.” He mimicked pinching himself. “No. I’m awake.” John studied Joy’s face suspiciously, but she was very attentive. “I can’t believe this,” he mumbled. “You just want to say, ‘I know,’ a million times again.”
“No, I promise. No I knows.”
“Not one?”
“Not one!”
John peered at her. “Okay, you asked for it. Here goes. Now, listen carefully.
“Now, Han is in Peking meeting with foreign diplomats, but they are reluctant to aid him and thus anger the Japanese. Anyway, except for China, which doesn’t have the means to provide aid, no one, including the United States, really cares about Japan’s dominance over Korea.”
He waited, still watching her suspiciously. Leaning toward him, Joy looked back wide-eyed, lips slightly parted, as though fascinated. John raised an eyebrow, shook his head in disbelief, and continued.
“Ah, it is critical to discourage the Japanese military in their aggressive interests in Korea, Manchuria, and eventually China. This is a very high-stakes game, involving as it does the possible militarization of Japan, invasion of China, and even Pearl Harbor several decades up-time.
We’d agreed, you know, that we’d offer Han ten million in gold and another twenty million in American dollars, with the usual threat that if he used the money for other than its intended purpose, we would have him painfully assassinated.”
“Are you done?” Joy asked sweetly.
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“Yes,” and he hopefully added, “for the moment.”
“Ha-ha!” Joy reached under the large map of China on her lap and pulled out two sheets of paper. She shook them at him. “I have that little lecture here, word for word. I wrote it down an hour before you gave it. I can now repeat your lectures verbatim, I’ve heard them so often.”
John ripped the papers out of her hand and started reading what she’d written. “I’ll be damned,” he said, looking up. “You missed the most important part of my absolutely stimulating historical presentation.”
Joy’s eyebrows shot up. “I can’t believe it. What did I miss?”
“Why, baby, I’m shocked that you already forget my incredible course lectures. You know, the part where I say, ‘The defeat of Han likely would be followed by the Japanese military demanding, and the quivering politicians accepting, the complete colonization of Korea.’
That’s the key to understanding all this. And you missed it. I should never have given you an ‘A’ for my course.”
“You didn’t say that.”
“Ha-ha, yourself. You don’t even remember it. You need more lectures, girl.” He handed the papers back with a flourish, and went back to his reading, the dimples deepening at the corners of his mouth.
Joy held the papers in one hand as she crossed her arms and tapped her foot. He’s lying. I think. Okay, next time I’ll have our digital recorder with me.
She reached over and hit him on the knee with the papers. “Beast.”
“Hey, why’d you do that?”
“On principle,” she explained with a smile.
When they got to Peking, Joy received a surprising report from the Zhao Detective Agency on Han’s character. She’d had Han investigated to make sure they could trust giving him so much money. She told John what they found. “You won’t like this,” she said. “The agency discovered that except for fighting the occasional battle, Chinese and especially foreign women were the center of his life.
Regardless of his age and girth, he was a walking erection.”
John was startled. “They wrote that?”
“No. That’s my mature female interpolation. They did write that he had forced a number of high-ranking Koreans to make their wives available to him, and he brags about a woman a day while here. The agency warns us of rumors that, with the help of his guards, he has re-sorted to rape if a woman resists him.”
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John gaped at her for only a moment before exploding. “No way are you going with me to meet with Han. Apparently wearing a wedding ring—and he won’t know it’s false—and my being with you as your supposed husband will mean nothing. I know of his attitude. In Asian society of this age, women are only for procreation and men’s pleasure.
Husbands donating their wives for an evening at the request of the powerful is not unusual.” Getting even more worked up, he actually shouted at her, “This man will have nothing to do with it. You are not for barter.”
Just on general principles, and with a little irritation, she replied,
“Excuse me, isn’t that my decision? Since when do you decide by your male lonesome what we do together? What are you afraid of? I can take care of myself, I think you know.”
He replied a little defensively, “No, your taking care of yourself is not the problem. It’s my fear that he would refuse our aid or have anything to do with us once you deny him your body.” Looking at her with raised eyebrows and a pouting mouth, he revealed what he feared most.
“What would you do if he made accepting the aid conditional on you sleeping with him?”
“The aid is too important, Korea too important, for him to do that.”
“Come on, baby, you’re not that naive. What would you do?”
She didn’t answer.
“Okay, you don’t have to say anything. I know how important the mission is to you. And because of your training in sex, I know you could treat it with Han as would a prostitute with a particularly unsa-vory customer.” He mimicked her feminine voice, while giving a loose-wristed wave. “‘Oh, it’s just part of our job. I’ll just do it and get it over with.’ Right?”
She didn’t answer.
Shaking his head, he told her a might too loudly, “I’m going alone, damn it.”
aaa
Through their Peking office, John made sure that Han would have a Chinese interpreter during the appointment. Joy actually was not needed anyway.
Two days after they’d checked into the old Peking Hotel, John donned his armor, holstered and pocketed his guns, and went to the afternoon meeting with Han to make his offer. This would be the first
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meeting of their mission where Joy and John would not be together.
And Joy was scared that he was doing it alone.
She expected him back by dinner, but no John. Nor did he come back that evening by midnight. Nor did he use his communicator to tell her why he was delayed.
She was frantic. Growing worry and fear prevented her from sleeping at all that night. There was nothing Joy could do, either. If she took a rickshaw to the Palace Hotel on Goldfish Lane where Han was staying, John might be on his way back at that moment and they would miss each other. They had agreed when they first arrived never to initiate contact if one of them were delayed, unless in a dire emergency.
They could easily endanger the other person if they distracted them at a critical moment. Moreover, if in a meeting or otherwise involved with other people, one could not respond to the call. This would only raise the anxiety or worry of both the caller and the recipient. So she decided to wait until midmorning before calling him, and if she received no answer, she intended to storm Han’s hotel room.
A little after 8 a.m., when Joy felt and must have looked like one of those passengers standing on the deck of the Titanic just before it sank, she heard the knob of their hotel room door turn. She was lying down on the bed, fighting panic, and immediately sat up straight.
The door started opening; she was halfway there before it opened completely.
In stumbled John, his face flushed, unsteady on his feet. She was all over him before he could shut the door. She threw her arms around him and cried, “You’re safe. You’re okay. Thank God. I was so worried.”
Getting some control of herself, Joy could finally ask, “What happened? Why didn’t you communicate with me?”
Then she smelled the alcohol. She had never seen him drunk. Only a little high at celebrations, but during any part of their mission, he never took a drink.
There was something else. A female-in-heat smell.
Joy dropped her arms and stepped back, amazed and with growing disgust. “What happened to you?” she asked again, now giving different meaning to the “happened.”
John looked sheepish and then defensive, and muttered, “Let me sleep. I’ll tell both of you afterward.”
“That’s not funny,” she threw at him as he flopped on the bed. Angry, she only took his shoes off and left him to sleep in his clothes. She put a Do not disturb sign on their hotel door, and left for their company
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office on Damochang Road to help prepare a large consignment of six-teenth century jade statues they were importing in return for Singer sewing machines. She was glad for the distraction.
That afternoon, exhausted from lack of sleep, Joy returned to their hotel room. John was snoring, so she climbed into bed. With his snores assuring her he was with her and safe, regardless of anything else, she fell into sleep.
It was evening when John woke her up as he got out of bed to relieve himself. When he came back, she reached out her arms to hug him, and the words tumbled out, “You scared me, darling. I thought something happened to you. You were somewhat drunk when you came home. Why didn’t you communicate with me? What happened?”
Then Joy remembered. “You also smelled of woman.”
He looked at her for several moments, and said, “I have to take a shower first. Want to take one with me?”
So they showered, and toweled each other’s back dry, and after they put their hotel guest robes on, he took her by the hand and seated her on the bed. “Now,” he said, “I want to tell you what happened. There must always be truth between us, not only because it is right for us, baby, but because it is important to our mission.”
Joy tensed. Where’s this bullshit going?
He stopped, looked down for a moment, and added, “Please listen and don’t say anything until I finish. Okay?”
As Joy was about to say something, he put two fingers on her mouth, and went on, “I met with Han—a real bastard, but we have dealt with bastards before, and it’s part of our mission. I made our offer, but he would not believe I was a secret agent and kept demanding, ‘Who is the money from?’
“I simply said, ‘The money is yours. The only stipulation is that you spend it to fight the Japanese.’
“He wanted to know when he’d get it. I told him, ‘Four days for the money transfer, and ten days to get the gold to you.’ He seemed satisfied with that, and had his guards bring in food and drink. He demanded, ‘You must drink with me to seal the bargain. It is an old Korean custom. It’s like what you Westerners do—a handshake.’
“Okay, I thought, I can sip along. After about thirty minutes, his guards brought in four Chinese dancing girls. They not only danced, but while doing so they slowly . . . ahh, discarded their clothes. Ahh, all of them.
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“At that point Han toasted me, and said something the interpreter had trouble with: ‘Those who do business with me must drink with me; those who drink with me must fuck with me.’
“I told him we didn’t do these things in the West, and that besides, I’m a happily married man. He laughed uproariously and said, ‘So, don’t tell her.’
“Anyway he insisted, saying, ‘I will not trust someone who is not a man, like this,’ and he started stroking one of the dancers between the legs.”
