He read the Daily Lass-O. He read that the school chucked its original name in 1905 to call itself the College of Industrial Arts, or CIA. He was too tired to appreciate the irony, or coincidence, or whatever it was. There were too many ironies and coincidences. A shrewd person would one day start a religion based on coincidence, if he hasn't already, and make a million. Yes yes yes yes. He looked around for an ashtray. He hadn't felt well for a long time now. Ever since whenever it was. He felt tired and forgetful. He had to talk to himself, inwardly, when he was driving the car, give simple commands, scold, to keep his concentration. He fumbled change at drug counters, buying kiddie soap in an aerosol can for his little girl. There were times when he could not bear to be alone in the house. The house was a terrible place when his wife and child were not there, when they were late coming home in the car. He imagined accidents all the time. A stunned wreck at the side of the road. The house grew dark around him.

It was all part of the long fall, the general sense that he was dying.

The dark plane drifted down, sweeping out an arc of hazy sky to the east of the runway. It had a balsa-wood lightness, a wobbliness, uncommonly long-winged, and it came in over the power pylons that stretched through the rice fields and up into the hills and out of sight. A strange high sound whistled through the air, bringing people out of houses outside the base, men taking bowlegged stances to follow the line of descent-a sound like a gull-shriek endlessly prolonged, caroming through the deep caves set around the base, the kamikaze nests of the second war. Men appeared in barracks windows to catch a glimpse of the landing. A man stood outside the radar bubble watching with folded arms. Two men in utility caps paused outside the mess as the plane glided finally in over the fields and the barbed-wire fences, touching down lightly, its lop-eared wingtips sparking when they scraped the runway, cartoonishly, in the chalk blaze of noon.

"The son of a bitch climbs unbelievable."

"I know. I heard," Heindel said.

"But fast. It's gone before you know it. Never mind how high."

"I know how high."

"I was in the bubble," Reitmeyer said.

"Eighty thousand feet."

"The son of a bitch requests winds at eighty thousand feet."

"Which isn't supposed to be possible," Heindel said.

"I was plotting intercepts. I heard. The mystery man speaks."

The first marine, Donald Reitmeyer, had a large squared-off frame and a lazy amble that made him seem to be sinking into the ground. He watched the tractor approach to tow the plane to its remote hangar. The plane would be escorted, the hangar surrounded, by men with automatic weapons. Reitmeyer took off his cap and waved it at someone heading toward them across the fuming tarmac, a slightish man who walked with his head tilted and one shoulder drooping, the Marine who'd been watching from the radar hut when the plane came in.

"It's Ozzie. Looking like his usual self."

Heindel shouted, "Oswald, move it."

"More skosh," Reitmeyer called, using a familiar pidgin phrase.

"Show some life."

"Show some interest."

The three men walked toward the barracks.

"We know how high it goes, so the next question," Reitmeyer said, "is how far it goes and what does it do when it gets there."

"Deep into China," Oswald said.

"How do you know?"

"It's logic and common sense. Plus the Soviet Union."

"It's called a utility plane," Heindel said.

"It's a spy plane. It's called a U-2."

"How do you know?"

"Common knowledge, pretty much," Oswald said. "You hear things, and the things you don't hear you can find out easy enough. You know those buildings way past the hangars at the east end.

That's called the Joint Technical Advisory Group. Which is a phony name where the spies hide out."

"You're so fucking sure," Reitmeyer said.

"What do you think's there, dormitories for the wrestling team?"

"Well just shut up about it."

"I go to the briefings. I know what to shut up about."

"You see the armed guards, don't you?"

"That's my point, Reitmeyer. Nobody gets near this base without clearance."

"Well just try shutting up."

"Imagine flying over China," Heindel said. "The vastness of China."

"China's not so vast," Oswald said. "What about the Soviet Union, for vast?"

"How vast is it?"

"Someday I want to travel the length and breadth of it by train. Talk to everybody I meet. It's the idea of Russia that impresses me more than the physical size."

"What idea?" Reitmeyer said.

"Read a book."

"You always say read a book, like that's the answer to everything."

"Maybe it is."

"Maybe it isn't."

"Then how come I'm smarter than you are."

"You're also dumber," Reitmeyer said.

"He's not as dumb as an officer," Heindel said.

"Nobody's that dumb," Oswald said.

They called him Ozzie the Rabbit for his pursed lips and dimples and for his swiftness afoot, as they saw it, when there was a scuffle in the barracks or one of the bars off-base. He was five feet nine, blue-eyed, weighed a hundred and thirty-five, would soon be eighteen years old, had conduct and proficiency ratings that climbed for a while, then fell, then climbed and fell again, and his scores on the rifle range were inconsistent.

Heindel was known as Hidell, for no special reason.

He went to the movies and the library. Nobody knew the tough time he had reading simple English sentences. He could not always get a fixed picture of the word in front of him. Writing was even tougher. When he was tired it was all he could do to spell five straight words right, to spell a single small word without mixing up the letters.

It was a secret he'd never tell.

He had a liberty card, a gaudy Hawaiian shirt that made him feel like an intruder in his own skin, and a window seat on the train to Tokyo.

It was Reitmeyer who'd arranged the date, explaining to Lee that all he had to do was show up at the right time and place and flash his heartwarming American smile. A thousand forbidden pleasures would be his.

Welcome to JP-land of sliding doors and slant-eyed whores.

He walked invisibly through layers of chaos, twilight Tokyo. He walked for an hour, watching neon lights pinch through the traffic haze, with English words jumping out at him, terrific terrific, under the streetcar cables, past the noodle shops and bars. He saw Japanese girls walking hand in hand with U.S. servicemen, six doggie bakers and cooks by the look of them, all wearing jackets embroidered with dragons. It was 1957 but to Lee these men had the style of swaggering warriors, combat vets taking whatever drifted into meathook reach.

He walked through mazes of narrow streets mobbed with shoppers. He was remarkably calm. There was something about being off-base, away from his countrymen, out of America, that took the edge off his wariness, eased his rankled skin.

He checked the piece of paper with her name on it.

Lamps were lit along the alleyways. He saw a legless man with an accordion, his torso set on weird metal supports, like a Singer sewing machine-an ideogram sign flapping on his chest.

He found Mitsuko all right, a baby-face girl, sort of formless, wearing a skirt and white blouse and a handkerchief on her head, waiting by a sign that read soldiers access, the rendezvous point as devised by Reitmeyer, on a street of cheap arcades.

She took him to a pachinko parlor, a long narrow room full of people pressed against upright machines. They were trying to maneuver a steel ball into a little hole. The machines made a factory din, like a stamping plant maybe. When she found a free machine, she pressed a lever that released the ball. This was the signal for nirvana or whatever they call the absolute state. She stared into the gray circle, watching the ball go round and round. People pushed through the room, students, old women in kimonos, men who looked educated, with high-paying jobs, all waiting for machines. They were three-deep in some places, patient in the noise and hanging smoke as if nothing hit upon the skin but the racing gray ball.