CHAPTER ELEVEN

1943

I had barely a second to think about this letter because REACT had another assignment for me.

“No letter from Madame Liang this time, so listen carefully,” Erich instructed me. “You’re to go to the Shanghai Club on the Bund.”

“And do what?”

“You’re to slip into the water closets on the main floor and bend the rods of the copper floats in each toilet.”

“You’re joking.”

“I am perfectly serious,” Erich said. “Disable the toilets and you create, well, let’s say, a messy problem for our Japanese friends.”

The European Shanghai Club had become the social gathering place for the Japanese navy. I couldn’t just waltz into such a high-security building and ask to jam their plumbing. I was outfitted as a delivery boy—another way to be invisible—complete with a uniform and cap, into which I stuffed my pinned hair.

I had to make sure no one in our house caught me in this getup. I tiptoed past Tanya’s door just as Moishe jumped down from his perch atop the trash boxes. He meowed and curled his tail around my leg and turned gooey eyes toward me. So, he hated the real me but fancied the telegram-boy me. Too bad he was still the same cat.

I did not fool Liu. As usual, he tagged along behind me all the way to the Bund. He was wearing a newish, red-and-white-striped shirt that hung below his knees. I wondered what dead body he’d stripped it from. Somebody a lot larger than he, that was clear. I waved him away, and he hung back a few paces.

If I’d fooled Moishe, maybe I’d fool the angry-looking navy guard who blocked the giant front door of the Shanghai Club. REACT had learned that Admiral Imura conducted a lot of navy business at the club, with a glass of vodka balanced on his rolling belly.

I fluttered a manila envelope under the guard’s nose and struck a deep boy’s voice: “The Swiss consulate sent this for Admiral Imura. Extremely important.”

My heart skipped a few beats and wild doubts raced through my head, mostly on the theme of just possibly I wasn’t cut out for sabotage. But I tapped my foot and rolled my eyes to suggest that the fate of the Japanese navy, even the whole war, maybe the world as we knew it, hung on whether this particular guard allowed the message to get through to the admiral promptly.

He studied the envelope with his face pulled together like a drawstring pouch, and then it dawned on me that the man was faking. He couldn’t read the German. He probably didn’t even read Japanese. As Mother often said, “Such guards are selected for qualities other than their literary proficiency.” Finally he waved me in.

“Arigato, thank you,” I said, bowing low. He bowed, I bowed, he bowed, and I slipped past him into the Shanghai Club.

I couldn’t pause to admire the beautiful blackstone foyer, because of those mean sentries, stiff as department store dummies, every few paces along the wall. I was dying to get a glimpse of that hundred-foot-long bar we’d heard about. I wanted to knock everything off and slide across the smooth, polished wood in my socks. But this was war; no time for trivialities. No, I had to hurry to the toilets.

A guard’s eyes followed me, without his head moving, as I scampered into the men’s room. I glanced at the urinals. How could men be so immodest? Well, as Erich said, men had outdoor plumbing, so no one cared.

Disappointing to count only six stalls—not enough toilets to stop the Japanese march through China, but I’d do my part. Rolling up my sleeves, I set to work in the first stall. The copper float was green and coated with some sort of scum. It was slippery and hard as steel. I couldn’t bend it a millimeter. Dismal failure on my first attempt. The best I could do was unhook the float and move on to the next stall. That toilet was more accommodating because the float was corroded and easier to snap. The third ball cock cracked in my palm like a raw egg. By the last one I was the underground’s expert on dismantling plumbing, and I was feeling quite smug, when someone came into the men’s room.

I climbed onto the toilet, crouching so nothing of me would show under or above the divider. Shiny boots appeared two stalls away, then trousers draped over the boots, suspended above the floor by thick fingers. Assuming he was alone, the venerable officer of the Japanese navy began singing.

And then came the moment a saboteur lives for. The officer tried to flush the toilet. The handle jiggled feebly, followed by a string of Japanese curses. Success! I heard him open the door of his stall. Changing his mind, he threw the lock on the door and crawled out under it, so no one would stumble into that stall and discover his shame. An officer of the Japanese navy who didn’t flush? Unthinkable!

Water furiously splashed in a basin, the linen towel loop was yanked, and the officer stomped out of the men’s room. I finished my work and stuffed a huge wad of tissue into each basin for good measure, then slipped out the swinging door, confident that officers with their elbows on the long bar would have an interesting day or two thanks to REACT. Mission accomplished, I stuffed the manila envelope under my uniform coat and sauntered over to the building entrance. I bowed to the guard, he bowed, I bowed. The Japanese were always polite.

“What a lark!” I bragged to Erich. “I just wish I could keep that nice, warm uniform.”

“Not a lark if you get caught.”

I stopped my mugging around and stared at him. Until that moment I never considered getting caught or what would become of me if I did. I could be tossed into a Japanese prison. We’d all heard reports of the brutal treatment innocent captives got at the Bridge House. Or they rotted away with typhus in the Ward Road Jail.

I could die there. My stomach flip-flopped as the blood drained from my face. “Something worth dying for.” I remembered Erich saying that, but now? So young?

Erich tapped my head. “Just don’t get caught, Ilse.”

All winter there’d been rumors floating on the chill winds that we Jews would be herded into a ghetto. That all of us would be forced to wear armbands, just like in Europe. That Americans and Brits would be sent to dreadful internment camps. That fewer and fewer provisions would reach us, even through Swiss intermediaries, since America’s law against trading with the enemy was being strictly enforced. That we’d slowly starve to death, as if we weren’t already.

Father dismissed these dire rumors as Japanese propaganda.

“I believe there is some truth to them,” Mother quietly responded.

“Ach, they are simply hallucinations of minds consumed by relentless shivering and empty bellies. You’ll see, Frieda. In the spring they will dry up and vanish.”

They didn’t. With the last gasp of winter, February 17, 1943, the proclamation came down on our heads, confirming the rumors.