The car’s headlamps are off, of course, and the guards at the gate dare not shine bright lights around. One of them risks opening up a kerosene lantern, and aims its beam at the visitor. A silver Mercedes-Benz hood ornament springs forth from the blackness, supported by a chrome-plated radiator grille. The beam of the lantern fondles the car’s black fenders, its sweeping silver exhaust pipes, its running boards, clotted with the meat of young coconuts—it must have sideswiped a pile on its way up here. In the driver’s side window is the face of a Nipponese man in his forties, so haggard and tired he looks as though he is about to burst into tears. But he is just a driver. Next to him is a sergeant with a sawed-off shotgun, Nipponese rifles being generally too long to wield in the front seat of a luxury car. Behind them, a drawn curtain conceals whatever, or whoever, is in the backseat.