Sarah Macneil—who went by Lin Hsiao-mai—had been given numerous administrative assignments involving the Pootung Center. Ishihara seemed satisfied with her work and was gradually giving her more responsibility. How much of that trust derived from her work and how much from his sexual satisfaction, Sarah could not say. Probably both.
Kazuo Ishihara was no anti-Semite. In fact, he had come to regard himself as a kind of guardian of the Pootung Jews. With Sarah’s encouragement, he had done much for them, although the Jews voiced acrid complaints about their treatment at the hands of the Japanese administrators.
Jewish complaints Ishihara could handle. His real problems came on one hand from Colonel Gerhardt Kahner, the recently arrived Gestapo chief for the Shanghai area. At Kahner’s first interview with Ishihara, the German had wasted no time coming directly and bluntly to the point.
“My mission here, Colonel Ishihara, is to urge you to let us help you with a solution to the Jewish problem in Shanghai.”
Since the two colonels had no language in common, Sarah was present to interpret the German’s English and Ishihara’s Japanese.
An unconscious grimace appeared on Ishihara’s face. “I have heard of your ‘solution’ to the problem of the Jews.”
Kahner pressed on eagerly. “Then I am certain you can see how much assistance we can offer you, what with our broad experience in these matters.”
“I don’t think we have quite come to that yet, Colonel Kahner. And whatever solution—as you call it—we arrive at will, I am sure, be a purely Japanese solution. We have our ways, Colonel, and you have yours. I fear we will seldom find them in harmony with each other.”
Kahner’s face—with a Schmiss or dueling scar—mottled with suppressed anger. “We were led to understand by your ambassador in Berlin that we would be accorded an advisory role in this matter.”
“Tell me, just why is this a matter of such concern to the Third Reich? We are, after all, thousands of miles from Germany. There are no German forces in the Far East and very few of your nationals. For my own curiosity, I would like to know why a pocket of Jews here in Shanghai is of so much concern to you.”
Kahner sputtered, “For one thing, many of your Jews have—or had—German nationality, even though they won’t admit it.”
“Would you like to send them back to Germany? I believe we have about three thousand German Jews. How do you propose to transport them? Overland? Across Mongolia and through Russia? By sea? You would have to fill several passenger liners and move them around the Cape of Good Hope and finally through the English Channel. And who would pay for all this, Colonel Kahner? I can assure you, even without referring the question to General Doihara, my country will not.”
Kahner rose with a curse in German. “Does your country intend to coddle these vermin?”
“I will gladly allow you to spend a week in one of the Pootung barracks, Colonel. Then you can tell me if we are coddling them.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Kahner spun around and snarled over his shoulder, “We will see about this.” The thud of his boots was the only sound of his departure.
Ishihara smiled at Sarah. “We haven’t seen the last of him, I’m afraid.”
Ishihara’s second difficulty was with his superior, General Doihara, which did not concern the Pootung Jews since the general was content to entrust their affairs to his subordinate. It was, rather, Ishihara’s girl Friday in whom Doihara was more keenly interested.
Coming from behind his desk, the diminutive colonel sat beside Sarah and took one of her hands in his. The office door was closed, so no one dared enter without invitation.
Ishihara spoke in Japanese. “Has the general made any more overtures to you? I must know. To speak the truth, I lose much sleep over you. I don’t want to give you up, but I’m afraid if I don’t, he will ruin my career. Has he said anything? Have you given him any encouragement?” There was a puppy-like pleading in the colonel’s desperate eyes. Of course, as a Japanese man, he would never say he was desperately in love with her, although those words would do more to bind Sarah to him than any others.
“Nothing has happened since that meeting I told you about three weeks ago.” Actually, that was not the truth. More had happened, but Sarah was not going to tell her patron about it. She was playing a dangerous game. There might well come a time—and not too far off, at that—when the general could do more, given his rank, to save her Jews than the colonel. She refused to ignore any possibility to save them.
Ishihara was still an officer of the Special Political Police—Tokko Kmatru-—although on detached duty with Doihara’s staff. He maintained relations with the agents he had recruited in Manchuria. If he ever learned of Sarah’s secret rendezvous with General Doihara, she was uncertain how far Doihara’s protection of her would extend.
Nevertheless, that was a chance she was determined to take. Even now the Pootung Jews were in desperate straits. How much worse would their situation become if Tokyo decided to let the Gestapo take a hand in the administration of Pootung was a nightmarish possibility that terrified Sarah.
She thought of herself as the Kakure Tenrhi—the Hidden Angel—of the Pootung Jews and wanted to keep all the allies she could enlist.
Chapter 9
Tokyo, Japan
December 1942
The first year of the war had not yet brought serious inconveniences for Tokyo residents.
To be sure, the Japanese living standard had always been low. Privation had grown throughout the 1930s as Japan’s imperialist war in China siphoned resources. In this last month of 1942, few Japanese could have dreamed what lay in store for them—and in the near future. The Doolittle air raid on Tokyo in April might have served as a wake-up for a few, but the harm done to the capital was a mosquito’s teardrop, as the Japanese would say, to what would befall them over the next two and a half years.
That morning, Helma Graf, now twenty-two, donned warmer clothing than usual. Although a clear day—Mount Fuji could be distantly seen from the second floor of the Macneil residence in Azabu—it was cold as chill winds from the Siberian landmass swept through the passes of the Japan Alps and over the Kanto Plain. The young Swiss woman had been sleeping in Bill Macneil’s old room. When she pulled the covers over her shoulders at night and composed herself for sleep—after her prayers for universal peace, of course—she never forgot she was comfortably snug in her true love’s bed. Blushing hotly in the dark, she wished he were there to comfort and guide her.
She wrote to Bill as often as she dared, but did not want to endanger her channel of communication through the Swiss Embassy. Without any letters from him in return, she could not know if he had received hers. She could only pray he had. She shuddered at the thought that he—having heard nothing from her—had assumed she had forsaken him.
She wished she were as pure as the snow the Tokyo Meteorological Bureau predicted would soon fall. Sadly, she was not. Her seduction of Bill Macneil aboard the City of Glasgow shamed her, but the memory of that brief embrace caused her to squeeze her legs together tightly as a mysterious dampness moistened her upper thighs. Nor was she above employing her fingers to encourage the vaginal dew. This embarrassed her even more, but she was powerless against the emotions that flooded through her like a sea-surge when a hurricane buffets a tropical coast.
Helma
