December 6 by Martin Cruz Smith

thinks you’d paint your ass and screw apes for free sherry.”
    “Well, fuck you, Harry,” DeGeorge shouted as the car drove off. “Just fuck you.”
    “The Brits love it when you scream obscenities on their driveway,” Harry said to Willie. “They’ll ask DeGeorge back again and again.” He noticed that Willie still seemed unsettled, although they had just visited such a lovely embassy, and on the opposite side of the boulevard, the imperial moat continued along a landscape of maples russet and orange. “Sorry. I told you last night it probably wasn’t such a good idea for you to be seen with me.”
    “I understand.”
    “It’s not that I don’t enjoy seeing you, and I’m grateful for the warning about Ishigami, but I’m on kind of a schedule. Anyway, all good Germans should be getting out as fast as they can.”
    “It’s not as simple as that.”
    “What’s the problem? Short of money? Something personal?” Harry waited while Willie cleared his throat, then again: once too often. “Don’t tell me it’s a woman.”
    “It is a woman.”
    “Don’t tell me it’s a Chinese woman, you’re not that stupid. You know better. Willie, I will take silence as confession.” Harry glanced over. “Oh, boy.”
    “It’s not what you think.”
    “So far, I’m guessing pretty good. I thought you had a haus and hausfrau back in Berlin.”
    “Dresden.”
    “Good old Dresden, where they serve that beer and salted herring you’ve pined for for so long. Don’t complicate things, Willie. If you’re out of China and you’re alive, you’re ahead of the game.”
    “She’s a teacher.”
    “She could be Madame Curie for all the good that’s going to do either of you. She’s waiting for word from you? She’s safe in Shanghai? Hong Kong? I can get money to her if that’s the problem. You just get yourself back to Germany while you can.”
    “I brought her with me.”
    “That’s not the answer I hoped for. She has a transit visa?”
    “No.”
    “Then how did you bring her? She would have to be family. Willie, Willie, tell me you didn’t do it.”
    “We’re married.”
    Harry found his flask. “And the little dirndl back in Dresden?”
    “She remarried a year ago. She got tired of waiting.”
    “Apparently so did you.” Good Scotch was wasted on the headache Harry was developing. He had to get something to eat. “Willie, if you wanted a woman, you could have bought one in Shanghai for five dollars, ten dollars for a Russian. Want to be a saint about it? When you leave the country, you throw in a bonus hundred and you’ve earned your clean good-bye.”
    “It’s not like that. She is a teacher. Harry, there are times I could kill you myself.”
    “Ishigami’s got the corner on that. You’re going to take the new Mrs. Staub to Germany? I know you’re a fervent Nazi, but have you ever actually read Mein Kampf? ”
    “Of course I have. I have read all the führer’s works.”
    “Did you happen to read the part about Asians being subhuman, or were you stuck with the special Asian edition of the book?”
    “I don’t remember any derogatory reference to Asians.” Willie accepted the flask. He had that disappointed look again, Harry thought, the wounded Lohengrin.
    “I’m just saying it’s possible that your bride may be a little uncomfortable residing among the master race.”
    Willie said, “I came to you for advice because you also have such a relationship and it seems successful.”
    “What relationship?”
    “You and Michiko.”
    “Michiko?”
    “You seem to be together.”
    Like two people with drawn knives, Harry thought. “In a sense. But our relationship is based on something more solid than love. It’s based on business, on the Happy Paris. She draws a crowd, I make money, I pay her.”
    “It looks like much more than that.”
    “That’s because you’re a romantic. You see things through rose-colored glasses. You think I live with Madame Butterfly and that the führer