Chapter 3 – Chapter 3

December 13, 1937, Nanking, China

"Professor Krentz? Wilhelm Krentz?"

"Yes," I answered, standing at the door, maintaining a position between me and the students in the art studio who were packing up art supplies. A Japanese officer, backed up by several soldiers, all with rifles drawn with bayonets attached to them. There had been sounds of gunshots and screaming as the Japanese soldiers had spread out across the university campus, having easily broken through the city defenses, such as they were, that morning. The government and most of the Nationalist army had already drawn off into the interior of the country.

"You are Wilhelm Krentz, German citizen?" the Japanese officer asked again.

"Yes," I answered, not really lying anymore, I suppose, as I had been in German hands for the last eight years and no American had come looking for me. I handed over the papers that Heinrich had made sure I had documenting me as a German with German government and Nazi Party connections.

I'd asked Heinrich before he left why he was so adamant that I have these papers.

"If the Japanese see these before they shoot you, you should be safe—if you don't leave Nanking in time. The Chinese don't know, but Germany—the Nazi Party—has a secret pact with the Japanese. We're allies. Our leaders in Berlin just want to be seen backing both horses in this war until we can see who will win."

I obviously hadn't left Nanking in time.

"Yes, these papers are in order. Come with me, please."

"My students. I have a responsibility for my students," I said. But soldiers had already stepped forward, taken me in hand, and were dragging me down the hall. Other soldiers entered the art studio. I was only half way down the stairs when I heard the shots and screaming, the screaming quickly cut off. I nearly collapsed on the stairs, screaming myself in despair, anger, and frustration, but strong hands carried me out of the building and loaded me onto the back of a canvas-covered truck.

I was taken into the foreign quarter, which was nearly deserted, except for the scurrying about of Chinese civilians, most being pursued by Japanese soldiers—and most being run down and dispatched within my sight until I pulled back from the back of the truck and also in my hearing, which I couldn't deaden and was forever after haunted by.

The truck stopped at a stone villa, built in the Western style, and, dejected and my wits dulled, I was taken up the stairs and to a dining room. The table had been pulled to the wall and a low table supporting a Japanese tea set was in its place. Cushions were spread on the other side of the table, and at one side of these sat an elderly Japanese man in a blue, billowy silk yukata. He lifted his head and I sucked in air. It was Prince Satsuma. He was grayer now, in his early sixties, but he still was trim and his back was ramrod straight. He was nearly bald.

"Come, take tea with me, William," he said simply, gesturing to the cushion beside him, as the Japanese soldiers who had brought me here melted out of the room. "Please take off your clothes and put that yukata on before you sit by me," he said.

"How . . . why . . .?" I stammered.

"It doesn't matter. It only matters that I found you in time and that you are safe with me. Come over to me. We'll take some tea and then I will be inside you again. I've often thought of you, the sweetness and yielding nature of you. I have a room back in Tokyo lined with drawings of you being taken by me and other men. Very sweet and invigorating. They had helped keep me young—my chinko hard and vigorous. You'll be interested to know I still can fill and seed you."

And he could. Resigned to giving him what he wanted, I sat by him, brushed the folds open at his groin, and found him still capable of an erection and with the Prince Albert ring in the head of his cock. As he rolled over on top of me, I brushed my yukata open, bent and spread my legs, rolled my pelvis up, and took him deep inside me.

We stayed in the villa—in hiding it seemed—as the city died around us. Satsuma never left the villa in the five weeks we were there. He wore a general's military uniform but I could see no invasion or occupation force that he commanded and later could testify he was at the Rape of Nanking but couldn't attest to him having had any part in it—quite the contrary. He rarely was anywhere but on top of and inside me. I could hardly say at a military inquest that he was that close to me all of the time, though.

After five weeks of looting and raping across the city, the pillage seemed to die down. There really was no one left to rape or rob. Only then did he say, "I think it's safe for us to leave now."

We did, in a staff car, taking us all the way back to Shanghai and then by ship to Japan. In Japan, after enjoying my body for two more weeks in the room he told me about where sketches of me being fucked were hung, he had me driven to the American embassy and repatriated to my home country.

After what I'd seen and heard in Nanking, there was really only one thing I could do from there.

* * * *

September 15, 1945, Tokyo, Japan

I sat, ramrod straight, in the passenger seat of the jeep, while the soldiers jumped out of the canvas-covered truck behind me, pulled open the leaning gates of the park-like block in the middle of the bombed out Japanese capital, and then fanned out over the grounds, avoiding the cavernous holes dug out by Allied bombs.

My driver drove me up the winding road that had once trailed artfully through landscaped gardens, gardens that now were both overgrown and beaten down by bombs. I took in my breath and nearly teared up as we got within view of the palace that had once been a breathtaking Frank Lloyd Wright creation. Only one wing stood now, the central part of the building having taken a direct hit from an Allied bomb.

As I got out of the jeep and motioned a couple of the soldiers to come with me, the irony didn't escape me that I now was doing what had been done to and for me back in Nanking eight years previously. I had come for a prince, to escort him safely through a city in turmoil.

We entered the building and I felt I knew the place. Indeed, I had been held prisoner in this wing for weeks as the German generals were given free rein in ravishing my body to their brutal needs and desires. Halfway down the corridor I brought the escort to a halt and spent a few minutes in the room where, sixteen years earlier, I had repeatedly been hung from an overhead beam and flogged and imprisoned in stocks and fucked. The prince had occasionally taken me as well, but he had me taken to more comfortable quarters to fuck me, and his attentions were almost soothing and love-like in contrast to the German generals he was trying to impress by gifting me to their sexual pleasures. I, of course, had never heard from or about Professor Tyndale again. For all I knew he was still roaming the private collection of homoerotic he had sold me to access.

My thoughts were conflicted. I could do an ineffectual search and let the prince go uncaptured. He had saved me in Nanking. But would that be doing him any favors? I doubted he would be the focus of military trials. He quite possibly would be examined and then let free. But perhaps he should be put on trial for having given me to the Germans in the first place. I never revealed how I had gotten from Tokyo to Germany and then back to China.

Prince Satsuma was right where I assumed I would find him. He had described his "William" room to me well enough in Nanking that I could walk directly to it. He was sitting on cushions behind a tea table in the center of the room.

I stopped the accompanying soldiers just outside the door, as a lieutenant announced, "Major William Toliver, of U.S. Army Intelligence"—a position I had risen too based on my facility with German and personal knowledge, which was put to good use, of the hierarchy in the Nazi Party. After that introduction, I told my escort they could go back to the jeep, that we would be out in a few minutes. I had spied something that settled my quandary on what to do here.

"You're looking divine, William," Satsuma said in a crackly voice. "The uniform becomes you, although I always preferred you naked."

"I've come to take you back to our headquarters, prince. I have no idea whether you will be kept or for how long. But you must understand that there will have to be an investigation of your wartime activities."

"I understand," he said. He sounded so tired—and old. And he suddenly, at seventy-two was, in fact, at-the-end-of-his-rope old. Despite how he had used me, I found I no longer felt any bitterness toward him. He also had saved me in Nanking and, most important, hadn't, as far as I could see, had anything to do with the Japanese carnage there.

"Do you understand, completely?" I asked. "You were in Nanking, as a general. It's a matter of record. If you go with me, I will do what I can to separate you from what happened there, but you were there, so the questioning will be difficult."

"I do understand. But I don't think it will matter. Not unless your justice is swift. Come, can you come sit by me one last time and take tea with me?"

"We don't have much time," I said.

"No, there isn't much time," he said. "But, please, one last time."

I went over and went down, cross-legged on the cushion beside him. There were two tea pots and he poured our tea from separate pots. That there were two tea pots and that he served us separately made all the difference in what I would do here. He was taking the responsibility and decision out of my hands. We drank.

In the silence that followed, I could hear him sniff back a tear. "If only . . . one more time."

I reached into the folds of his yukata. As old as he was, he still could achieve an erection. As he softly moaned and sighed, I stroked him to a dribbling ejaculation that didn't take long to accomplish. As he came, though, he coughed, sighed, slowly collapsed back onto the cushions, and expired.

I knew I'd have to make sure the tea in the two pots was carefully preserved and analyzed—and I would have to ensure that I expressed surprise at what had transpired here.