The spy laughed louder. “You underestimate me, Yamamoto. I am playing every end against the middle. I am building a fortune. What will it cost me to keep you out of my game?”

“I am not a mercenary.”

“Oh, I forgot. You’re a patriot.” Idly, he picked up a thick black towel that had been draped over the arm of his chair. “A gentleman spy with high morals. But a gentleman spy is like a pistol that shoots blanks—good for starting bicycle races, but little else.”

Yamamoto was coldly sure of his position. “I am not a gentleman spy. I am a patriot like your father, who served his Kaiser as I serve my Emperor. Neither of us would sell out our country.”

“Will you leave my poor dead father out of this?” the spy asked wearily.

“Your father would understand why I must stop you.” Yamamoto drew from his coat his Nambu semiautomatic pistol, deftly pulled the cocking knob, and pointed the short barrel at the spy’s head.

The spy looked at him with a thin smile. “Are you serious, Kenta? What are you going to do, turn me in to the U.S. Navy? They may have questions for you, too.”

“I am sure they would. Which is why I’m going to turn you over to the Van Dorn Detective Agency.”

“What for?”

“The Van Dorns will hold you until I am safely out of the country. They will turn you over to the U.S. Navy.”

The spy shut his eyes. “You’re forgetting one thing. I don’t have a country.”

“But I know where you came from, Eyes O’Shay. Mr. Brian ‘Eyes’ O’Shay.”

The spy’s eyes popped open. He stared at the towel that he had been raising to his face. It lay in his hands like an offering.

Yamamoto gloated. “Surprised?”

“I am very surprised,” the spy admitted. “Brian O’Shay has not been my name for a very long time.”

“I told you, I was playing this game before you were born. Put your hands where I can see them or I’ll give the Van Dorns your corpse instead.”

The spy squeezed his eyes shut again. “You frighten me, Kenta. I am merely trying to mop the perspiration from my face.” He dabbed his forehead, then pressed the black towel as tightly as he could to his eyes. Hidden at his feet was a thick electrical cable that connected the public-utility main to a knife switch in the open position. The switch’s hinged metal lever was poised inches above its jaw. He stomped down on the lever’s insulated handle, closing the circuit. A fat blue spark cracked like a pistol shot.