“You will not!” Cheung rushed the men, tried to pry his mother’s body from their arms. “Give her back to me!” he roared. His large body swelled with rage to twice its normal size. In the ex-colony’s only instance when one of the occupied was able to intimidate four of his occupiers through the sheer force of grief and anger, Cheung wrenched the body from the arms of the policemen. With Tanaka and Horace’s help, he carried his mother back into the bar, where Noma slept on the same stool he had occupied while drinking the night before.

“How dare you!” Cheung snarled, waking Noma.

Tanaka and Horace laid the body out on the counter, as it had been last night.

“The old witch was giving me nightmares.”

“Stinking dead man!” Cheung grabbed Noma, threw him to the ground. The bar came awake with other Kempeitai asleep at the tables. It took eight men to pull the raging hulk of the normally compliant chief steward off the kicking colonel, and even then, not before Cheung had landed his massive fist in the monster’s left eye.

The eight men yanked him upright.

Noma’s chief executioner had his sword drawn, ready to sheer Cheung’s head off right there in the jovial first-floor bar.

Noma stood, spat out a tooth. Grinned a bloody grin, then began to laugh. Said something in Japanese.

Tanaka whispered a translation: “Don’t kill him, Daichi. Don’t you know Cheung is my favorite Chinaman?”

To Cheung, Noma said, in English, “If I let you go, will you promise not to hit me again? My eye kind of hurts.”

Cheung grunted like an animal.

“Speak English, man.”

The executioner ran his sword across Cheung’s chest, slicing a clean gash in his fresh white shirt without even grazing skin.

“I want a proper funeral for my mother.”

“Proper Chinese funeral, or proper Japanese funeral?”

“Chinese funeral. She wanted to be buried at the Colonial Cemetery in Happy Valley so she could watch her natal village for eternity.”

“Japanese funeral,” said Noma. “And it’s a deal.”

The swordsman slashed. A thin line of blood opened at the level of Cheung’s heart.

“Chinese funeral. Buddhist style. With mourners in white hoods and real crying.”

The swordsman directed his sword at Cheung’s solar plexus, as though readying to disembowel him. Pressed it into the white shirt.

“We will cremate her here at the cricket club,” said Noma. “Ashes to be guarded by whichever team wins this infernal test match. If the British team wins, you can bury her urn at Happy Valley. If the Japanese team wins, we will cherish her ashes as those of the first citizen of New Asia.”

The sword pressed in, and the shirt tore again.

“Cheung,” said Horace. “The man could kill you. If you die now, what will happen to your mother’s spirit?”