So now it was all on Tanaka and Ishiyama, with Tanaka as striker and Ishiyama as nonstriker. They took their positions across from one another on the pitch. Ishiyama, one of Noma’s most vicious interrogators, glared at Tanaka as if to say, You’d better get this done or else. Tanaka tried his best not to meet Ishiyama’s eye. He could not bear the thought that he had anything in common with this murderer, and yet, they were both Japanese. Though required to hang out at Cheung’s first-floor bar, Tanaka had been doing everything in his power over the past nine months of the occupation to avoid both Noma and Ishiyama. Of course, they could not be entirely avoided. Tanaka had been to the basement of the Supreme Court. He had translated the words of the doomed Chinese and British prisoners. He had translated the words of their killers too. But when asked to do so, he had refused to raise a hand against his fellow Hong Kongers, the ones he’d gone to school with, the ones he’d sat beside on trams and buses, the ones he’d elbowed or exchanged brief small talk with in department stores and noodle shops. To Noma and his henchmen, he had said, “I can’t. I’ll translate for you because that is my profession. But I won’t hurt them. Kill me if you must.” As yet, they had not, though they disdained him as a coward and traitor. Tanaka knew that his death could come suddenly, at any time.

Sonny Maria knew none of Tanaka’s thoughts. He didn’t even know who Tanaka was. In pre-war Hong Kong, Sonny had worked for his family’s shipping company Shun Hing, moving goods in both directions between China and the Latin world. He spoke Chinese, English, Portuguese, some Russian, and enough Spanish for work. There was little back-and-forth between Shun Hing and Japan, though the family’s business contacts did include shipping families who concentrated on inter-Asian trade. Sonny and Tanaka’s paths could have crossed in the old days, but if they ever did, the crossing was brief and incidental. Sonny didn’t remember.

He knew, however, that Ishiyama was an interrogator for the hated Kempeitai. And all the POWs at Sham Shui Po knew what happened to people who fell into the hands of the military police. Since Tanaka was Japanese and was up to bat with Ishiyama, Sonny assumed he was one of them. He whipped the ball at Tanaka with the considerable pent-up hatred that had accumulated as a consequence of all the brutal deaths of his friends, comrades, and lovers.