Excerpt from NAGASAKI

A welcoming party – if you could call it that – was lined up on the Nagasaki quayside, a dozen officials, some in military uniform, some in khaki kokumin-fuku – the drab, civil uniforms encouraged by the authorities as Japan edged towards war – encircled Dan as he approached in his off-white, slightly crumpled linen business suit, with his purposely battered Panama perched jauntily on his head. The crumpled suit and the scruffy hat were elements in Dan’s armour, deliberately donned to fool the opposition into thinking him weak and of no account. The Japanese officials moved forward and corralled him, using hand gestures, into an echoey, covered warehouse.

There, a small, rotund official, wearing a pristine uniform with a curved sword hanging low on his hip, and surrounded by a gaggle of deadpan subordinates, looked Dan up and down, before slowly spit- ting out two words – ‘you wait’. The official nodded to a younger assistant, who thrust his arms out and presented his superior with a large sheet of heavy paper that had been expertly folded down to foolscap size.

The crowd went silent for a moment. This document had accompanied Dan from the Japanese Consulate in Sao Paolo – in a word, it was the deal agreed between the Americans and the Japanese to allow the ship to avoid sanctions and, given that pedigree, it was not to be welcomed.

Ignoring his assistant, the official opened the document and flattened it out on a rickety cloth-covered table. He leant a heavy hand on each of the top two corners, and carefully read the details as several of his colleagues held the other corners. Every inch was covered in column after column of carefully penned kanji characters, with the occasional box bordered in red. The party gathered around, leaning over the table, reading, gasping, muttering, nodding, ‘Hai’, or ‘Naruhodo’, or ‘So-ka’.

Dan smiled gently and shook his head. Was this theatre, or the way Japanese always do business?

And then he saw her.

At the back of the group of muttering men, slightly to one side, wearing a plain, dark pair of loose-fitting trousers and a neatly pressed white summer shirt with short sleeves bunched around her upper arms, stood a slight woman in her early twenties. Her shiny jet-black hair had been carefully fastened at the nape of her neck and she was nervously clutching a pretty cloth bag to her midriff, while staring vaguely in his direction.

Their eyes met briefly before she shyly looked away with a slight bow of the head, a daughter of the Imperial Empire, obedient, detached, her ivory cheeks glowing a faint red. Somehow, this slender woman exuded a sense of curiosity that no-one else did, and was immediately of interest to him.

Dan towered above the group bent over the huge official document and watched with interest as they became increasingly agitated, their shouts echoing around the warehouse. One after another they were pointing at sections, glancing at each other, waving at another section, before repeating the same gestures and catcalls. Finally, the older official, who had a face like a hornet, held up his delicate hands, sniffed with disdain at the obviously ‘corrupt’ document, and then inexplicably bowed to Dan.

Unsure what to do, Dan bowed back then held out his hand to shake, which the official angrily dismissed with a flick of his wrist. All eyes now on him, Dan shrugged, and watched as the official spat out his words while gesturing to the document, as if Dan had brought shame on them all.

Turning round, the official shouted an order at the wide-eyed girl at the back, her tightly- gripped bag squeezed firmly against her chest.

To Dan, already feeling protective towards this innocent-seeming, doll-like girl, it appeared as though the official was unfairly blaming her for some mistake in the document, but he held his tongue and watched as she stepped forward, her head down while she fumbled in the bag for a crisp new writing pad and carefully sharpened pencil.

The whole warehouse fell deathly quiet. Mumbling an apology, she gave a little bow to the official and drew alongside him.

‘Hello. My name is Ayako Okunaga,’ she said nervously. ‘You can call me Okunaga.’ She looked down at her notepad. The sheet was blank. She hesitated. ‘You have coffee on your… trade ship?’

Having been living a monk-like existence surrounded by leather-skinned reeking men for seven weeks while crossing half the world’s oceans, Dan could not resist a beaming, boyish grin. ‘I do, indeed, Miss, Oku… Miss, er, Ayako.’

She turned a cheek modestly down and away from him, feeling in the bag for her wire-rimmed spectacles, looked towards the official, nodded and gave a shaky, ‘Hai.’

‘How much coffee you have?’ Hornet-Face asked, oddly in English. ‘Four thousand tons, as agreed with your consular in Sao Paulo.’ All eyes turned to Ayako as she finished scribbling on her pad and carefully translated. Then she turned back to the official who flicked disdainfully at the document and spat out a series of phrases in Japanese.

‘Hai. Mr Hayashi says, this all is paid. So, why you come Japan?’

Dan took his time, aware that every face was watching, knowing the importance of controlling the pace. ‘Because I have to guarantee that five hundred tons goes to embassies and foreign delegations in Tokyo. That was the deal negotiated with the United States so the coffee could pass through the embargo.’

Ayako frowned as she wrote, and then translated back, creating a burst of outrage from Hayashi at the impudence of this young man, and a flurry of whispers from the seemingly flustered lower-ranked officials next to him. Hayashi stood and, turning towards Dan, jabbed a finger at the document as though the paper itself had the final say.

‘You no go Tokyo. No go.’

Dan shook his head, holding his ground. ‘Then the coffee goes back to Brazil, and no more will be sent.’

‘Coffee not back Brazil. Stay in Japan.’ The official stared resolutely into the distance and fell silent.

During a secret briefing, before leaving Brazil, Dan had been told to expect this; an elderly, boss-like hard man, furious, demanding, explosive, unbending. The Japanese, he was informed, have a word for it. Tetsujin – midway between Samurai and bully. But he’ll be a ‘put-up job’, they said, ‘to get you riled, check the young ‘gaijin’s spirit.’

Time to flush out the real boss, Dan thought, enjoying the transparent intrigue.

So, he deliberately turned away from Hayashi and spoke directly to his interpreter. ‘Would you tell Mr Hayashi, Miss, that perhaps he’s misunderstood. If there isn’t confirmation of delivery to the embassies in Tokyo, the embargo will be enforced, and there won’t be any more coffee.’

Ayako gave a single nod and, abandoning her notepad, rattled off the translation, hesitating slightly before she reiterated Dan’s threat of ‘no more coffee’.

Hayashi’s shoulders shuddered, but otherwise he didn’t react. He simply clasped his hands together defensively. After a collective gasp, the whole group fell silent again, now seemingly more hurt than outraged.

As if on cue, a dark-eyed officer in shiny jackboots and an immaculately pressed black suit – with conspicuous white and orange Kempei armband – who had been sitting on a tea chest to one side, stood up and slowly, deliberately, ominously, brushed himself down.

The room held its breath. He walked over, heels clipping on the concrete, bowed to Dan, and simply said, ‘Wakarimashita.’ Hayashi lowered his head in submission while the military police officer turned to Ayako and spoke for some time, ending with raising his chin in Dan’s direction.

Ayako replied with a short, sharp, ‘hai’ and then turned back to Dan. ‘He says we Japanese always honour agreement, not like Americans.’

‘“He”?’

‘Ah.’ She looked towards the officer but he slowly shook his head, so she turned back to Dan and waited for him to speak, hoping he might not push it any further.

‘I like to know who I’m dealing with.’

Ayako blushed and looked down at her pad, but while she care- fully turned to a new page the officer crisply said, ‘Saito.’

Dan swung back to the military man, staring him in the eye, while Ayako scribbled furiously on her pad.

‘Ah. Well, I’m Daniel Lawrence. Sent by my company, Amparo, to ensure fair dealing with the coffee, and to employ a local manager for a regular supply. Once that’s done, I will take the train to Tokyo, where I will board a ship to Singapore, and get out of your hair.’

As Ayako translated, Saito listened blankly, looking bored, while slowly twisting a gold wedding ring round his thin, bony finger. No clues there. But Ayako was shivering with nerves, glancing down at her notes, hesitating, afraid to say in Japanese what she knew would be seen as impertinent, almost arrogant – her voice faded to a whisper as she said the final word, ‘Shingaporu.’

Saito looked up at Dan with pursed lips and murmured, ‘Yousu o miyou, Lawrence-san.’

Dan stared back at him, declining to look at Ayako as he asked, out of the corner of his mouth, ‘What did he say?’

The two men continued staring at each other as she replied, ‘“We will see, Mr Lawrence.”’