And how could he like her? She was Coppersmith's assistant. She was valuable to him among friends, just as other people, men, and women too, must have been valuable to him among enemies. He wanted her to like him; it made his work easier. Therefore, the easiest thing for him to do would be to show her that he, for his part, liked her. But did he, truly? How could she know? How could she ever know?
Swanson had just said, "I knew the pilot. They killed him. They had a right to, but I hate them for it just the same."
Sarah supposed he was talking about the photo plane. Dugan responded by closing his face — quite literally shutting out all expression for an instant — so that he looked like a dead man. Or like a Japanese! Sarah saw, with a flash of intuition, that she had caught him betraying himself — for the first distinguishable second in days of their being together. For once, Dugan had gone back to his wartime role and had responded with the manner of a Japanese, the dead formal silence with which Japanese men bore news of disaster. He must have had many friends among the Japanese during his years of wartime spying: and of them, many must have died, so that the expression of quick military sorrow could have become habitual. But before she could catch her breath or say anything, Dugan let his face go doleful in the American manner. He looked Irish again, and American too.
And yet, thought Sarah, he was a Japanese for just that moment, a Japanese like the nisei interpreters and intelligence men in our own Army.
She picked up the thread of the conversation again. Dugan was protesting, "You mustn't hate the Russians. If you do have to fight them, hating them is no use, medically or psychologically. It reduces your own efficiency."
"And you throw your trump away," said Swanson.
"You know it, too?" Dugan asked the question quickly, eagerly.
"You mean," said Swanson, "that liking people is the only way to win wars, or even better, to get out of them? Certainly. Any scientist will tell you that. America will get sick and weak if it hates. That's why I'm sorry I hate the Russians right now. I hope I'll get over it. I've got to. If we have humanness on our side, we can be muddled and mixed up and argumentative, and still come out right. If that's what you mean by knowing it, too, I know it. But the Army doesn't. Just try to tell them they ought to like their enemies." Swanson sounded defiant.
Dugan sighted Swanson over the top of his glass. "We can't change everything, doctor. I'm alive right now, because I liked the Japanese while I was doublecrossing them and making their plans go haywire, as far as I dared." A dry chuckle, very Irish, followed. "I really liked them. Defeating Japan was the best way I knew of helping the Japanese people. I had friends, and I sent some of them to die. But though my Japanese friends and I could not have agreed on the precise reason for it in each case, they and I would have agreed that dying for the sake of Japan was a good thing to do. If I go into Siberia, I'm going in the damndest pro-Russian you ever saw. Do you think I could stand it, otherwise?"
Swanson asked the question which Sarah had not dared to ask, "What are you, Major?"