Thomas Caine series Boxset

by Andrew Warren

  Caine smiled back and picked up a magazine. He slid several hundred yen across the counter. “Keep the change,” he said as he peered out the door. No one had followed him in. The woman jabbered at him, trying to force his change on him, but he ignored her. He rolled the magazine into a tight tube, then headed back out onto the street.

  As he walked, his sense of being watched increased. He stopped again and leaned against a wall, flipping through the pages of the magazine. Every now and then he glanced up, taking in his surroundings like quick snapshots. Woman in a blue dress. Two scrawny young guys. Old man with a camera. Nothing definite, nothing that pinged his inner radar.

  Then he saw it. Across the street, a grey sedan with tinted windows pulled into a loading zone. There were hundreds of cars like it in Tokyo. But Caine knew this one was here for him.

  He rolled up the magazine again and continued walking. As his eyes flicked across the mass of faces up ahead, he caught sight of a Japanese man in a grey suit. He was taller than the average Japanese male. His posture was perfect; his gait balanced. The man was walking slower than the rest of the crowd, occasionally stopping to peer in shop windows.

  To Caine, he stood out. He felt wrong.

  Forward tail, Caine thought.

  Caine waited until the man turned and walked forward again. Then he ducked into the first doorway on his right. A dark stairwell led to a basement of some kind. Faint music drifted up as he descended into the shadows. Once his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he saw a red curtain at the end of the stairs. He parted the soft velvet with his arm and surveyed the bar beyond.

  Dark wood, warm candlelight, and plush upholstery met his gaze. A woman’s voice sang softly in the background. The notes of slow acid jazz floated over the murmur of hushed conversations.

  As Caine took a seat at the bar, a young bartender slid over to take his order. He was a good-looking kid. He looked to be in his early twenties, with an intricate, spiked haircut. It looked like a work of modern art. “What can I get you?” he asked in English.

  “Johnny Walker Blue, rocks.”

  Caine swiveled the chair to watch the entrance, but the curtain did not part again. Keeping one eye on the door, he assessed the various faces scattered across the room. They were young, hip, and blandly attractive. Most were Japanese, but he spotted a few Caucasians here and there.

  The bartender set his drink down on a cocktail napkin. Caine paid cash, never taking his eyes off the entrance. The song ended, and, for a few seconds, he could make out the low, staccato chatter of men and women talking. The language was Japanese, but the sounds were the same as every bar in every part of the world.

  The music started up again. He felt a puff of hot breath by his ear. A woman’s voice, quiet but not a whisper, spoke.

  “Are you waiting for someone?”

  Caine swiveled around so quickly he almost spilled his drink. Sitting on the stool next to him was a Japanese woman with thick, lustrous hair that fell down past her shoulders in a gentle wave. Somehow he hadn’t noticed her sit down. Very few people could sneak up on him, especially when he was on the lookout for danger. He feigned confusion; he was just a tourist who had consumed one drink too many.

  The woman nodded towards the curtain. “I noticed you watching the entrance. You didn’t even see me sit down. I thought you might be waiting for someone.”

  Caine shook his head. “No, not at all. Just spacing out, I guess.”

  The woman tilted her head and gave him a curious look. “Oh ... too bad. I was thinking how nice it would be to have someone waiting for me like that.” She smiled, but it looked wrong. More like a trap than a flirtation. When she blinked, he felt like he was being scanned by a pair of cold, black camera lenses.

  “Since you’re alone, why don’t you buy me a drink?”

  Caine imitated a drunken leer, taking in her long legs, small waist, and the gentle swell of her breasts beneath the lace of her cocktail dress. When she crossed her legs, he could just barely hear the rustle of the fabric as it slid against her creamy, coffee-colored thighs.

  “My pleasure,” he said. He figured the woman was either what she appeared—a bored, lonely single looking for a free drink—or perhaps a prostitute. But there was another possibility. If the man outside had been a forward tail, Caine might have been made. The car, the tail, they might have been herding him to this location. In which case, his best option was to play the situation as normal as he could. Make them think they had the wrong man.

  And normal men, alone in a bar, did not refuse drinks with beautiful women.

  He gestured for the bartender and smiled at the woman. “I love this kid’s haircut. Maybe I should get one.”

  She giggled, a light titter like most Japanese women. But again, her eyes were hard and cold. There was an intensity there that she was unable to hide.

  “I don’t think it would suit you.” She reached up and brushed a stray lock of hair on his forehead into place. “That style is too young.”

  Caine laughed as the bartender approached. The woman ordered in Japanese, and he hurried off to make her drink.

  “Are you calling me old?”

  “No, not old. But not young either.”

  Caine sipped his whisky, the cold ball of ice clinking against the side of the glass. “Just right?”

  The woman shrugged. “Could be. What’s your name?”

  Caine thought for a second, taking another sip of scotch to mask the delay. He decided to go with the identity he had given the hotel. “John. John Wilson. And you?”

  “Mariko.” She gave her strange, forced smile again. The bartender returned with her cocktail, and Caine had it added to his tab. The young man nodded and moved away, leaving them alone at the bar. She took a sip of her drink, a light golden cocktail made with whisky, brandy, and apricot bitters.

  “Thank you,” she said. “It’s delicious.”

  He slid enough yen to cover her drink across the counter, then turned his stool to face her.

  “Mariko, it was lovely meeting you, but I’m afraid I must be going. My wife is waiting for me back at the hotel.”

  She sipped her drink.

  “Liar. You’re not married.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I just know.” She looked up at him, her eyes a pair of black holes in the dark space of the bar. Her pupils were singularities, their gravity pulling him in, deeper by the second.

  He wondered if it was too late to escape. Had she trapped him here? Was this where he unraveled into a single frayed thread? Was this where it all fell apart?

  “You don’t like me?” she asked.

  “I don’t think I can afford you.”

  She pursed her lips. “With your friends, I wouldn’t think that would be a problem. Assuming I was for sale, of course.”

  Dammit. Looks like option three. This meeting had been set up from the beginning.

  “From what I hear,” she said, her voice matter of fact, “Mr. Yoshizawa is quite generous to his close associates. Money, drugs, girls....”

  Caine looked her in the eye, but her dark, black pupils gave away nothing. They merely studied him with mild curiosity.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know who you’re talking about. You must have me confused with someone else.”

  She took another sip of her drink. “That’s certainly possible. Things can get very confusing, where these people are concerned. So, you don’t know Mr. Yoshizawa?”

  Caine said nothing.

  The woman shrugged. “Then, as you say, I must have confused you with someone else. Do you play pachinko, Mr. Wilson?”

  The pachinko parlor. The bodies....

  “I’m sorry, Miss...?”

  Her lips curled into a bitter, sarcastic smile. “Smith.”

  Caine smiled back. “Mariko Smith?”

  She nodded. “Yes. I know it’s a rather dull name, Mr. John Wilson. But at least it’s simple. Easy to remember.”

  Caine stood. “Well, Ms.
Smith, I’m afraid I really do have to go. Enjoy the drink.”

  “I will. Thank you. I hope we can run into each other again.”

  “Somehow I doubt that, but you never know.”

  As he turned away, she whispered into his ear, “Ja, mata.” See you later.

  He looked her over one more time. “Sayonara.”

  As he walked back to the curtain and up the dark stairs, he hoped the goodbye was as final as he intended.

  He stalked the streets surrounding Kabukicho for nearly an hour, but saw no signs of the Toyota sedan, or the man in the grey suit, or Miss Mariko Smith and her lace dress.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ethan eased back in his chair as the girl on his screen twirled around. Her skirt lifted up as it spun through the air, revealing the curves of her body underneath. Ethan moved closer to the screen.

  “Oh baby, that is beautiful. What’s your name again?”

  “I’m Ashley,” she said in a breathy voice. She was employed by a one-on-one video chat service Ethan liked to use when he felt the need to relieve stress. It ran a little over two dollars per minute, but the cost was immaterial, of course. He had hacked their billing software. All his charges were forwarded to a secretary at the EPA who had stood him up on a date once.

  “What do you want to see next?” Ashley asked.

  Ethan gulped as her fingers crawled up her inner thighs....

  BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

  He jumped in his chair as the small black window covered the images on his screen. Red letters typed out a short message:

  SECURE CONNECTION REQUEST. RF-07716. STATUS: MOUNTAIN

  “Crap,” Ethan muttered. Ashley and her lovely behind snapped off his screen. He initiated a homemade program that tagged the video call with a virus. In a matter of seconds, all records of the exchange erased themselves from the chat company’s servers.

  He turned his attention to the chat window that had interrupted his fun and tapped a response on his keyboard.

  SECURE CONNECTION INITIATED. DR-23748. STATUS: ORIOLE

  The black box was replaced with another video chat window. Rebecca stared back at him with a curious look on her face.

  “Ethan, you okay? You look a little red.”

  Ethan laughed as he adjusted his glasses and ran his fingers through his hair. “Yeah, yeah, boss. All good. Just working on some, ah, some reports.”

  She glared at him suspiciously. “Right. Look, are you alone? Is this connection secure? I mean, airtight secure?”

  “Yeah, definitely. End-to-end encryption, my own algorithm. What’s up? Your guy find the girl yet?”

  Rebecca looked hesitant. “No, not yet. The op is in progress. But there are some ... irregularities. Some things I need you to look into. Off the books.”

  Ethan cracked his fingers like a pianist and grinned. “Off the books is where I do my best work. Ask and you shall receive.”

  Rebecca nodded and looked off screen for a second. She bit her lip, then turned back to Ethan. “Okay, two things. One is intel for the op. I need you to see if you can dig up any mention of a group called Tokyo Black. Splinter group from the yakuza, but politically oriented. Rightwing, nationalist leanings. Check the usual sources. Propaganda websites, extreme rightwing politicians, hate crime records, you know.”

  Ethan scribbled the words on a notepad on his desk. “Tokyo Black. Sounds like a punk rock band. What else?”

  “Ethan, this is sensitive. You have to be careful. Do you understand? No one can know about this.”

  Ethan blinked, then smiled. “Come on, Rebecca, you’re freaking me out. But look, I’m the Digital Ninja. I live in the internet’s shadows. If I don’t want someone to see me digging, they won’t see me digging. It’s that simple.”

  “Right. Except, you were caught once. That’s why you work for me.”

  “I wasn’t caught; I was entrapped. There’s a difference. And you may be a pain in the ass for a boss, but you beat life in federal prison.”

  She nodded. “Okay. The operative we found, Thomas Caine. Bernatto doesn’t know about him, right?”

  “Nope. I purged all records of his arrest like you said. He hasn’t turned up on anyone’s radar but ours.”

  “Good. I need you to look into his last assignment. Operation Big Blind. Some things don’t add up.”

  Ethan sighed. “Rebecca, that was what, eight or nine years ago? God only knows how much that intel was massaged, cut, redacted. Even if I can find anything, verifying it will be next to impossible. No one wants to dig up that skeleton again.”

  “Impossible? Even for the Digital Ninja?”

  Ethan laughed. “This Caine guy got under your skin, huh?”

  “Ethan, please. It’s personal.”

  “Okay, okay, I’ll see what I can do.” Rebecca opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off. “Yes, yes, I’ll be careful. I’ll be an invisible wind, a shadow in the night, a—”

  “Ethan,” she interrupted.

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t ever watch porn in my office again.”

  He gulped. “Right. Sorry, boss.”

  Rebecca smiled as she reached forward to sign off. “Thanks, Ethan.” She tapped some keys, and her image disappeared from the screen.

  Ethan sighed and leaned back in his chair. He shook his head before tapping away on the keyboard once again. He opened a new secure connection. Once he had received the proper call sign-in, he typed another short message.

  SHE’S DIGGING. WE NEED TO MEET.

  Birds chirped and squawked as they soared above the thick forest trails of Theodore Roosevelt Island. Ethan was no nature expert, but he was pretty sure the brown bird circling overhead was a hawk or some other avian predator. He watched as it lazily drifted by the clearing where the remains of an old manor house lay sunken in the ground.

  He huffed and puffed in the cool air. The island was accessible only by foot, via a small bridge on the Virginia Bank, and he was unaccustomed to traversing such distances. The forested island served as a monument to Theodore Roosevelt’s love for nature and the untamed wilderness. No cars and bikes were permitted anywhere on the grounds, and there were no roads—only long, winding dirt trails, pounded to a smooth surface by decades of use.

  He shifted his backpack on his shoulders as he peered down into the sinkhole. It was covered in vines and tangled weeds, but he could spy signs of cracked, weathered fieldstone lining parts of the sunken pit. The house had belonged to some old banker named Mason. A fire had destroyed it long before the United States government took ownership of the island. Years of weather and neglect ate away at the remaining walls and structure. This hidden foundation was all that remained of the old house, save for an occasional fragment of old china washed up by the rain.

  He heard footsteps crossing the grass and vegetation behind him. A tall man in a black overcoat approached.

  Bernatto.

  Ethan stood in silence and jammed his hands in his pockets as Bernatto walked up to him. For a few moments, they stood together, staring into the deep hole.

  The hawk soared above, a dark shape against the blue sky. There were few other visitors on the island this late in the afternoon. The shriek of the bird rose above the distant rumble of traffic on the Roosevelt Bridge.

  Bernatto turned and stared at Ethan. “Well?”

  “You said to let you know if she started digging, if anything seemed out of the ordinary.”

  “Get to the point, Ethan. If you called me, something must be up. Don’t waste my time.”

  “Look, we had a deal right? I do this for you, act as your eyes and ears on this op, and then I’m out. No more cyber-crimes unit. No more ratting out my old hacker friends, no more restricted computer access. I’m free to start over.”

  “You did the right thing, Ethan. Everyone deserves a second chance. This is an important operation. I need to make sure everything goes according to plan. You help me take care of this, I’ll take care of you.”

  “Good.
Something’s got Rebecca spooked. She’s asking about some kind of Japanese terror group, something called Tokyo Black.”

  Bernatto stared at him. “Go on,” he said, his voice low and flat.

  “Well, I don’t know how they fit in with this girl you want found, but I dug up some information about them. They’re like the Japanese version of our wack job militia groups, you know? Some yakuza guy got radicalized in prison. Gets out, comes home, decides the yakuza have lost their way. Feels like they’ve lost touch with their roots, they don’t represent Japan anymore, or the Japanese people.

  “So, he puts a cap in his brother’s ass, takes over the family chapter, and turns them political. Low-level, domestic stuff. Kidnappings, extortion, a few bomb threats at government buildings. They say they want to unite Japan against China and their other common enemies. Japan is destined to be the Asian superpower, that kind of stuff. They start turf wars with the other yakuza families, steal their money, weapons ... anything to keep the group running.”

  Bernatto nodded. “Fascinating, but that sounds like Japan’s problem, not mine.”

  Ethan pulled a manila folder from his backpack. “There’s more. I know you didn’t want details on the asset. Deniability, right? See no evil, hear no evil?”

  Bernatto glowered at him, his teeth clenched. Ethan handed him the file folder.

  “Right, well, this guy we found ... I think you should take a look. I’ve never seen anything like it. Aside from his operational record, half of which is blacked out, he’s a ghost. No background, no history, no military record, nothing. It’s like he just popped up at CIA headquarters one day and started killing people. For all I know, he’s a freaking terminator robot you guys built.”

  Bernatto took the file but didn’t open it. He looked out over the dark hole of the old foundation and squinted. “What’s the asset’s name?”

  “He surfaced in a Thai prison under the name Mark Waters, but that was just a cover ID. Rebecca said his real name is Thomas Caine. You know him?”

  Bernatto nodded and opened the file, flipping through the pages without reading them. “Oh, yes, I know Thomas. Mr. Caine is a very dangerous man.”