“What the fuck are you talking about, man? I don’t know that bitch! Man, my boys are gonna mess you up!”
Bobu kept smiling, but a wave of malice seemed to ripple across his features.
“Your boys? You mean the two-bit punks outside, preening and grooming for the Lolita harlots that walk this street? Please, let me summon them for you.”
Bobu nodded, and one of his henchmen disappeared from view. He turned back to Sonny. “Nihon. Japan. Our island. Our home is dying, my friend, from the worst cancer of all. Weakness. And you are part of this weakness, this sickness that is strangling our home. Just as I once was.... Ah, your associate has arrived.”
Bobu moved his massive head. His lackey had returned from his errand. In his left hand, he held a metal hacksaw. In his right hand, he held the severed head of Sonny’s second-in-command, one of the bosozuku he had stationed outside to stand guard. Both dripped blood onto the scattered papers and debris strewn across the floor of the tattoo shop.
“Look, man, I can help you! I’ve got people, I’m senpai....” Sonny didn’t even care that his voice quaked. All pretense of courage and defiance drained from his features. He knew the man could see the fear in his eyes. There was no hiding it.
Bobu laughed. The sound was deep and guttural, like wind blowing through a dark, wet cavern.
“You are a weak, insolent child, a parasite who dreams only of sucking the blood of a diseased, cancerous host. You wish to be yakuza? I was once yakuza. And I tell you, they have lost their way. They flaunt their tattoos and cheap suits and gold-plated sports cars. They squabble over money and territory. Meanwhile, all around them, Japan is dying. The real enemy grows stronger and stronger.”
Sonny struggled, but Bobu squeezed his throat tighter. “Let me see the picture.... I ... I think I know her. I can help!”
Bobu reached his free hand over to a tattoo needle on the counter next to him. He held it up, staring at it, fascinated.
“This instrument ... this is not even the proper tool for a yakuza to receive his tattoos. It should be irezumi, the traditional way. Done by hand, using needle and chisel. The time, the pain ... that is the price you pay for the beauty. The honor of proving your conviction.”
The big man shook his head and laughed again, looking back at Sonny. “The honor of strutting around like a peacock in heat. Bah! I was yakuza once, but as you can see, I have renounced those convictions. Our scars mark us now. They show that our devotion is to a higher cause. And make no mistake. We will restore Nihon to its rightful place in the world. We will flush out the weakness, just as I had to flush the poison from my veins. But first, we must find this girl. She was working as a hostess at a club in Roppongi. Tiger Velvet. The other girls there say you were her client. They saw her leave with you.”
Sonny nodded. “Yeah, yeah, some bitch at some club. Let me see. I’ll help you find her.”
“I gave you one chance. You refused. Now, you say you want to help us? Like a true yakuza, you must prove your convictions. I have no more time to waste.”
Bobu plunged the tattoo needle into Sonny’s right eye. A brief spurt of clear fluid burst from the wound, followed by a stream of crimson blood.
Sonny’s shriek echoed through the room. Bobu and his men stared as his cry of pain turned to a pathetic sob.
“Said I’d help, man. I’ll help! I’ll do anything.”
Bobu raised the needle again. “I am glad. You have one more chance. And one more eye.”
Chapter Seven
Rebecca wiped her brow as she paced back and forth in front of the iron fence. The plants and flowers of the garden before her filled the hot air with a sweet scent, but they couldn’t mask the stench of sweat and sewage. The combination was nauseating, like rotten fruit.
The garden occupied a tiny strip of land, no more than a meter across, before it was cut off by another set of bars. It was a tiny sliver of beauty trapped in a filthy metal cage. A private little paradise for no one’s eyes.
Normally, neither visitors nor prisoners were allowed here. But Rebecca’s visit was abnormal in every way.
The guards who had escorted her hurried away as quickly as possible. She felt like a witch or some kind of boogeyman. And that was fine by her. Whatever works....
The muted shriek of metal grating against metal came from deep within the bowels of the hellish prison. Then footsteps. Distant at first, they grew louder along with another sound: the jingling of a chain dragging along concrete.
And then he was there, standing in front of her, on the other side of the far fence. He was little more than a meter away, but ages of unanswered questions stretched between them.
He stared, unblinking, body perfectly still. She remembered how sometimes his stillness could unnerve her, as though he were dead inside. Then he would touch her face, or stroke her hair, or make some other human gesture. She would laugh and smile, no longer able to see the shadow that had so unnerved her, as if it were an optical illusion.
She nodded, not sure why, but feeling it was the appropriate response to seeing a living man she’d believed to be dead for so long.
“Well,” she said.
“I knew someone would come,” he said, his voice soft, but sharp, like a paper-thin knife, “but I didn’t expect it to be you.”
Rebecca bit her lip. “Who did you expect?”
Caine shrugged. “Anyone but you.”
“You’re supposed to be dead.”
He smirked. “You sound disappointed.”
Rebecca dug a plastic band from her purse. She pulled back her hair, heavy and damp with sweat, tying it into a loose ponytail.
Caine watched like a cat watches birds play on the other side of a window.
“Your hair is longer,” he said.
Rebecca’s face flushed. The two sets of bars cut the man before her into disjointed slivers, like reflections in a house of mirrors.
“My hair is longer?” Her voice rose to a strangled shout. “All these years, that’s all you can say? I wake up, and you’re gone. I mean, disappeared, completely out of my life. And now ... Tom, what the hell happened to you?”
Caine paused, then looked away. A muscle in his neck quivered. “That’s not my name anymore. I don’t know why you’re here, but you should leave.”
“No, Tom, that is your name. That’s why I’m here. You’re why I’m here.” Rebecca’s slim, porcelain hand gripped a metal bar. “Mark Waters was the asshole you were pretending to be. A drug dealer, who traded guns for heroin to terrorists. Is that who you are now? Is that who you decided to be?”
“No, that’s who the United States government decided I should be. It served their interests, and I paid the price. Trust me, they got the better end of the deal.”
Rebecca had to force herself not to step back from the bars. His voice—cold and raw with hatred—was like a blade of icy steel stabbing at her. She shivered, despite the intense heat.
Caine smirked again. “Now, I serve my own interests. I’ve earned that. So how about you drop the jilted lover act and tell me what it is you want?”
“I want the truth, damn it!”
Caine chuckled. “Then you may need to reconsider your career path.”
“Fine. Screw the truth then. I’ll just assume you are what your file says you are. A traitor and a disgrace.”
“And dead. Let’s not forget that.”
“Well, if you’re not interested in debating the truth, neither am I. Besides, I don’t think it will be too long before the facts reconcile themselves. People don’t last long in here. The locals call this place ‘The Big Tiger.’ Know why?”
Caine didn’t answer.
Rebecca finally felt like the conversation was on equal footing. She took a step closer. “Because it eats men alive.”
Caine held up the manila folder in his hands. “And this is what, exactly? My ticket out of here? A favor I do for you, in exchange for my freedom?”
She nodded. “I can fill you in on the deta
ils later, but the elevator pitch is in there. Arinori Kusaka is a prominent Japanese businessman with fingers in every technological pie there is. Works with all the major Chinese factories and has close ties to many government officials. He’s also a CIA asset, whose intelligence has been instrumental in thwarting several industrial espionage and cyberterrorism attacks sponsored by the Chinese government.”
Caine flipped through the dossier, scanning the photos and reports in the folder with a lazy detachment. “You want me to take him to a hostess club?”
Rebecca ignored him. “Kusaka claims he has knowledge of an imminent terrorist attack that will take place on U.S. soil within the next seven days.”
“Well, good thing you’re all such close friends then,” he said without looking up from the folder.
“Kusaka has a daughter, mid-twenties, mother unknown. Apparently, she’s fallen in with a bad crowd. Gangs, yakuza wannabes, that sort of thing. She stole some money and papers from his safe about a month ago and disappeared. Nobody’s seen her since then.”
Caine continued flipping pages in the file. He sighed. “Why on earth are you getting involved in this? Japan run out of cops and private eyes?”
“According to the report, Kusaka hired four private eyes to find her. The body of one was found in Tokyo Bay. The other three simply disappeared without a trace. And Kusaka claims the authorities are burying the case due to yakuza corruption in the department. Bottom line, Kusaka refuses to release his intel unless we help him find his daughter. And like I said, we’re on the clock. We have seven days, including today, to make this happen.”
“And you believe this intel is real? You trust him?”
“Doesn’t matter what I believe. Bernatto believes him, and he’s calling the shots.”
Caine’s head jerked up, and his eyes zeroed in on hers. The dark shadow of death that lay just beneath his handsome exterior glowered with menace. “Bernatto? Allan Bernatto? He’s your boss?”
“Director of HUMINT. He’s placed me in charge of a new group, Extra Departmental Assets Liaison, or some other bullshit title. Basically, I get this done, or it’s my ass.”
Caine dropped the folder on the bench next to him. “And a disgraced traitor in a Thai prison is the best you could do?”
She looked down at her taupe leather flats. “I was hoping you could tell me something, anything....”
“Hoping I was innocent? No, that’s not it. You were hoping I could sell it to you. Because deep down, you didn’t believe it, but you want to. So you can use me. Like Bernatto.”
She looked up. “What do you mean?”
“Bernatto was my handler on Operation Big Blind, the op that got my partner killed. The op where he sold me out to the White Leopard clan.”
“Bernatto sold the heroin? He actually used agency assets to facilitate a personal drug deal?”
Caine turned his back towards her. “I’m not saying anything. Get someone else.” He shuffled away.
“Tom, wait!” She moved along the fence, trying to keep him in sight. “Tom, just tell me what happened! Please!”
The clink of his chain grew quieter, then disappeared. She heard the metal crash of a gate slamming shut. He was gone.
She was alone again in the courtyard. The garden was quiet, save for the buzzing of insects and the distant sounds of men, and metal, and pain.
Chapter Eight
Caine opens his eyes, and he is back. Back in the crumbling stone basement. Back where the harsh sunlight pierces through the cracks in the rock. The thin slices of light burn so bright, they are painful to look at in the darkness.
The chain of the rusty cuffs is slung over a hook in the ceiling. His wrists ache, and the rough metal bands have rubbed his palms raw. His feet dangle about a foot above the sandy floor. Every muscle in his body is taut and screaming. He cannot remember the last time he has slept. But nor does he seem to be fully awake. A prisoner now, his state of mind hovers somewhere between life and death.
He has no idea where he is. His captors have moved him several times, always covering his face with a dirty hood. He does not know when they will come again. All he knows are the lies he has to tell. The truth is forbidden. His life, his suffering, is nothing. He has to tell his lies. That is how he can win. The only way left to him.
He has lost the ability to see emotions in his captors, though he knows they are there, hidden in the men’s shadowed features. Hatred, of him. Horror at the atrocities they inflict upon him. Fear. Flickering glances of doubt. Tiny reminders that these are not demons, not monsters from hell. Human beings are doing this to him.
But he can’t see them anymore, those minute glimpses of humanity. Maybe they were never there to begin with, just a trick of the light.
He opens his mouth to laugh, but no sound comes. There is no sound at all. Not the creaking of his chains, not the rats scurrying from the sacks of rotten grain in the corner ... all is silent.
Caine opens his mouth again, trying to make a sound, any sound. He shouts for help. He cries out his name, but nothing comes out, not even a dry croak. It is as if a heavy blanket has been laid over the entire room and no sound can escape its smothering embrace. But if he can’t speak, how will he tell his lies? How can he win the game?
He hears footsteps on the stairs. In the unnatural silence, each step echoes like a gunshot. He twists and shakes, struggling to free himself. More blood spills from his ravaged body. Crimson droplets strike the sand beneath his feet.
CRASH. CRASH. CRASH. They are close now. He cannot see them, but the sunlight blinks and shifts as they descend the stairs.
And Caine knows one thing. When they come, the pain will start again. And it will feel like forever. Until the next time. And then forever will begin again.
He screams. Not for help. Not in pain. He screams just to scream. But there is no sound.
Caine woke up screaming.
He was laying atop a mattress of tattered, soiled blankets. The cell designed for two prisoners now housed eight men. They had to sleep lying head to toe across the floor. Their elbows and shoulders touched, skin rubbing against sweaty skin. The stench of the open toilet wafted through the still air. A single lightbulb filled the room with a pale, flickering glow.
Caine had found sleep nearly impossible for the first few days, but now exhaustion and hunger had dulled his nerves. Tonight he’d finally managed to plunge into a deep trance before the nightmare woke him.
The other men in the room grumbled and moaned, pulled from their slumber by his screams and thrashing. But no one uttered a word of complaint, not after his violent display in the prison yard.
Caine sat up and rubbed his aching shoulders. He had known the nightmares would come, just as surely as he had known Lau would send his killers. And he had known someone from the agency would come looking for him, once his alias popped up on their radar. But seeing Rebecca again.... It had to be someone. It just happened to be her. She didn’t come for you. She came to recruit an asset.
And Bernatto. He had avoided thinking about the man for years. He had buried the past, with all its pain and betrayal and death. He’d even buried his own name. He had lost himself in his false identity, eking out a meager existence among the smugglers, pimps, and other entrepreneurs of the street. Hiding.
No, surviving, he countered. He almost believed it. But after seeing Rebecca, surviving no longer seemed like enough.
He took a deep breath. Stepping carefully, he picked his way across the carpet of bodies lining the floor. He stepped on a few elbows and fingers along the way, but again, no one confronted him. They grunted and shifted out of his way.
When he reached the wire mesh gate, he pounded it with his fist, sending a metallic clang echoing through the prison. “Guard! Get over here.”
Mumbled complaints and curses drifted from the other cells, as footsteps traipsed down the hall.
“Aow a-rai!” the block guard barked. “What do you want?”
“The lady left me a f
ile. I want to see it.”
The guard stared at Caine for a few seconds. Had he overplayed his hand? Whatever leverage Rebecca had over the warden to set up her secret little meeting, maybe it was played out now.
The guard muttered a curse, then shouted down the hall to his partner as he unlocked the door. The other guard arrived and yanked Caine from the cell. “Let’s go,” he said in a thick Thai accent.
Caine looked back into the cell as the door swung closed. Its dark shadow moved across the other prisoners. They were a tangled mass of bodies, contorted into whatever space was available. Then the door slammed shut. Even under the glare of the buzzing lightbulb, the room seemed lost to impenetrable darkness.
They were the damned. He realized how close he had come to joining them. How childish his earlier refusal had been.
Twenty minutes later, he sat on a metal chair in a stark, empty room. A small metal desk was bolted to the floor, and an ancient rotary phone hung from the wall. As he flipped through the pages of the file, a strange sensation flowed over him. He felt neither awake nor asleep. Alive nor dead. The place in his nightmare, where the pain lasted forever ... he knew he was not there. But neither had he truly escaped. Not yet.
Rebecca had given him the rundown on Arinori Kusaka, but Caine suspected there were details being withheld from him.
Details ... there were always details, hiding in the shadows. And knowing Bernatto, he would not have told Rebecca everything.
The criminal underworld and the intelligence community both operated in a never-ending sea of intel and data. The movements of high-level players like Bernatto and Kusaka left ripples and eddies. If you looked hard enough, you could just barely see them or, rather, the absence of information they left behind. Caine felt himself sinking into those dark currents now.
Thomas Caine series Boxset Page 5
