ABSTRACT
His life reads as though written for Hollywood. False passports play a role. A cloak-and-dagger tale leads our hero across Asia and half of Europe, by train, by car, and by mule. This hero undertakes a complicated journey halfway around the world with two submarines in the middle of World War II. He meets Hitler and Tojo, Mussolini and Lord Halifax, Attlee and Benes and de Valera and, of course, again and again, Mahatma Gandhi, the Übervater; and Pandit Nehru, the rival who is so like him and yet so different; and Muhammed Ali Jinnah, who works toward the creation of Pakistan—against Gandhi and Nehru and Bose. Moments of triumph: tens of thousands cheer him on; moments of recognition: he negotiates with other Asian leaders as an equal among equals, yet always overshadowed by the fact that all of this is possible only by the grace of Japan. And a bittersweet love story—in transnational, transcontinental, and transcultural terms. Finally, the tragic element: an airplane catastrophe.
