“Okay. The food was bad, and I already saw the movie. But I bought a book in the airport. Have you read any Basho?”
“No. I’m more of a Murakami fan.” The responses were all correct. The names of the authors they used signified that neither party was speaking under duress, or suspected others were listening in.
“Do you have an update for me?”
“No, the deadline is the same. Four days. And keep in mind, the home office didn’t approve these expenses, so it’s vital these negotiations are successful.”
Great. Typical Bernatto. The higher ups at the CIA hadn’t approved his little favor for Kusaka. Probably didn’t even know he was in Japan.
“I’ll do my best,” he said. “And Rebecca?”
“Yes?”
“Next time you hear from me, it will be a different number.”
“What? That’s not—”
He hung up on her, popped the back off the phone, and removed the battery and SIM card. Then he dropped the bundle in a trash can as he walked past. He would keep her informed of his progress, but he had no intention of letting her, or anyone else at the CIA, track his movements.
He walked up to a waiting taxicab. As he approached, the rear door automatically swung open, powered by a motor. For some reason, this strange little detail made him smile. He left his bags on the sidewalk, but watched to make sure the attendant placed them in the open trunk.
The driver, an older man, looked back and blinked. “Park Hyatt, Onegai shimasu,” Caine said.
The cabbie smiled, his eyes wide with surprise. Caine’s Japanese was not fluent, but it was better than the average tourist. As the car pulled away from the curb, he realized his instructions were the first time he had spoken the language since….
He halted that train of thought. Instead, he took in another deep breath of the cold night air. Here, far from the metropolitan center of Tokyo, the countryside consisted of rolling hills, dark against the moonlit sky. The air smelled of trees and grass and damp earth. It was invigorating. Caine closed his eyes and cleared his mind.
The past is in the past. Deal with it later. You’re working now.
He opened his eyes and focused on the rear-view mirror. He scanned the traffic behind them, looking for headlights that seemed too close or matched their movements. From time to time, he would look at the cars that drove alongside them. He searched for warning signs that they were being followed, but each car seemed to pursue its own, independent path. Each driver was moving towards their own destiny in the dark, cold night.
Occasionally, he would take interest in a driver or passenger, a pretty girl or a young man with glasses, flowers on the passenger seat next to him. He wondered where they were going, what waited for them at their destination.
If only you could answer that question for yourself.
The cab ride from Narita to Metro Tokyo was normally about an hour, but Caine requested several stops along the way. First, he asked the driver to pull into the parking lot of a convenience store. “Chotto matte,” he apologized. Just a moment.
With practiced ease, he rubbed his eyes and tilted his head down as he entered the store and walked past the counter, obscuring his features from the domed security camera.
The clerk, a younger man maybe in his early twenties, greeted him with the traditional welcome: “Irashimasee.” He didn’t even look up from his manga as he said it. Caine approached the newsstand in front of the shop window. He flipped through a few magazines, letting himself dissolve into the background of the store.
Another man came in, wearing a suit and tie. He trudged over to the glass cabinet of cold drinks and grabbed a strange-looking beverage, whose label read “Pocari Sweat.” Then he made his way up to counter. Business as usual.
Caine looked up from his magazine to scan the parking lot outside. He was looking for cars that lingered too long—people standing alone, watching the parking lot or his cab. But he saw nothing that aroused suspicion. Cars came and went, people finished their drinks and left. Only his taxi remained in the parking lot, its engine quietly humming.
He dropped the magazine back into the rack, returned to the car, and the driver pulled back into traffic. Caine requested two more random stops, but there were no issues. The confused, inquisitive glances from the driver made Caine smile. He was sure the man was beginning to wonder just who was in his cab.
It was a little after eight when they pulled into the circular driveway of the Park Hyatt Tokyo. A valet stood next to the cab, even though the rear door opened automatically. Caine handed the driver the credit card Rebecca had given him, knowing it would electronically place him at the hotel. The driver handed it back, along with his bill. As he signed the small piece of paper, he started to add in a sizable tip for the driver. Then he remembered that tipping was not the norm in Japan. He shrugged and signed for the larger amount anyway. The driver looked at the total, then looked back up, confused. Caine smiled. “Gokuru samadeshita.” Thank you for your trouble.
He slipped out of the cab and went around back to grab his bags from the porter. The driver sped off. Caine looked up at the hotel.
Three gleaming towers pierced the night sky, each taller than the next, like a series of steps. Each tower was capped by a sparkling glass pyramid, traced by glowing neon light. They were brilliant spears of metal and glass, piercing the dark purple sky. It was beautiful, but Caine had no intention of sleeping anywhere the agency could trace him.
He checked in at the front desk and let the porter bring his bags up for him. The room was spacious, modern, and luxurious. He barely even looked at it as he threw his belongings on the bed.
He pulled out a roll of black electrical tape, which he used to block the security hole in the door. He wasn’t planning to stay there, but no sense in giving that away. Next he threw some of his new clothes and a few essentials into one of the larger shopping bags.
He left the room, slipping a toothpick into the doorjamb as he closed the door behind him. When the door clicked shut, he broke off the stub of wood he held in his hand, leaving the other half of the stick wedged invisibly in the door frame. If anyone opened the door to search the room, the tiny fragment would fall, and alert him if he returned.
He had to laugh. The people he was protecting himself from, the people who had tried to kill him in the past, were part of the largest, most well-funded intelligence agency on the planet. They had spy satellites, remote surveillance drones, and an unlimited army of operatives at their disposal. And he was relaying on toothpicks and hotel switches for protection.
He took a combination of elevators and stairs down to the lobby, slipping out through a side entrance. He avoided the main driveway and taxi line. Instead, he walked a few blocks north, and managed to flag down a cab on Minami-dori.
He had the cab drop him off just outside Kabukicho, a common destination for lone male tourists. He walked around the neighborhood for a bit, re-acclimating himself with the city’s frenetic heartbeat. He made sure he looked like just another tourist, window shopping, taking in the lights and sounds. He walked past the twin red arches that led into the infamous red light district, but he didn’t pass through.
When he was certain no one was following him, he caught another cab to the Shinjuku Prince Hotel.
In his emergency stash he’d kept a spare wallet, complete with ID and credit cards under the name John Wilson. The cover wouldn’t hold up under intense scrutiny, but for three to four days, it would serve his purpose.
It was 10:30 pm when he finally rode the elevator to the fourteenth floor of the Prince. The hotel towered in the Tokyo sky. The building was a thin slab of black granite, like an ancient monolith, watching over the city. It was not as fancy or ostentatious as the Park Hyatt, but it was known for its spectacular views of the city.
Caine stepped into his room and drew back the drapes. The lights of Tokyo spread out before him, a rolling carpet of stars, twinkling, flickering, burning, and dying. They surrounded him, taking
up his entire field of vision. There was no other city like it. No other place on Earth felt so alive. It was like watching evolution on fast forward.
He locked the door behind him and taped over the security hole. He considered dragging the dresser in front of the door, but he was just too tired.
He collapsed on the bed and looked around the small room, his vision blurry. It nothing like the spacious, luxury suite he had left at the Hyatt. But it was anonymous. No one knew he was here. He was hidden. Invisible. Safe.
And that was the greatest luxury of all.
Within minutes, he was sound asleep. No nightmares disturbed his rest. Instead, he dreamed of dark, haunted eyes. They were waiting for him in the sea of light, just outside his window.
CHAPTER TEN
Rebecca wiped her brow and took several shallow sips from her water bottle. She had begun her run early, leaving the lobby of the Bali Hai Bay hotel at 6:00 am. She had been out only an hour, but the temperature was already in the high eighties and climbing. The humid air made the park trails and walking streets feel like a sauna, and her sleek body glowed with a sheen of sweat.
She had circled around the hotel and then made her way down the Bali Hai pier and back. The pier was of recent construction, part of Pattaya’s efforts to attract family tourists. The pristine, white beams jutted out over the teal sea water. An array of bright, colorful fishing boats were docked at the various berths along the way. Few tourists ventured out so early in the morning, and she was grateful to have the serene beauty of the ocean to herself for a short time. But even the stunning view couldn’t distract her thoughts from one uncomfortable subject…
Caine.
She was still processing the series of events that had brought him back into her life. One moment, he was a memory, a shadow, dead to her and the world. The next, has was standing in front of her, staring at her with those intense green eyes. She shivered in spite of the heat and humidity. The anger in those eyes, in his voice … something had happened to him. Something not in his file. Something so bad he preferred the anonymity of death rather than seek her out. Rather than confide in her.
Operation Big Blind. His last mission. The file said Caine had been working a long-term deep cover operation, posing as an arms dealer and international criminal operating out of Japan. Through his association with the yakuza, he was able to forge connections to Aydin Turel, a Turkish arms dealer. Turel was believed to be the primary weapons supplier to a collection of fundamentalist terror groups in Afghanistan and throughout the Middle East.
Turel was simply a step along the way in Caine’s mission, which was to identify and eliminate key players in the White Leopards. The Leopards were an upstart drug cartel operating out of the southern Kandahar region of Afghanistan. Their drug money was believed to finance numerous extremist terror groups in the area.
The yakuza linked Caine to Turel. Caine gained his trust, then set him up for a CIA rendition. All standard procedure. After a short but brutal stay in a black site prison, Turel was ready to play ball. He vouched for Caine, and introduced him to the Leopards.
A meet had been set, complete with merchandise samples. Caine and his partner, an operative named Tyler, were both there when something had gone wrong.
Intel was sparse on what actually happened. All anyone knew for sure was Tyler was reported killed, and Caine had dropped off the grid. Turel’s guns and the Leopards’ heroin disappeared with him. It had been a simple matter to connect the dots. Caine was a highly trained operative. He was a living, thinking weapon in the war against terror. A machine. And sometimes machines malfunctioned.
Bernatto had been Caine’s handler at the time. His final analysis of the operation was that Caine had played the various parties, including the CIA, and gone rogue. He had killed Tyler and taken the guns and drugs for himself, to sell on the black market.
In a follow-up report, Bernatto’s intel suggested that the Leopards had tracked Caine to Indonesia, and killed him in a retaliatory attack. General consensus around the CIA was, true or not, it was a tidy end to the story of a traitor. Caine was either dead, or soon would be. He had too many enemies to survive for long as an independent operator. He was no longer a concern.
Rebecca remembered the night she had heard the news. The emptiness in the pit of her stomach. Sitting alone in her cold, silent DC apartment as she had sifted through the reports over and over. She had searched in vain for something, anything that could refute Bernatto’s claims. But she had arrived at the inescapable conclusion that the man she had fallen in love with, the man she had shared laugher and memories and even her body with … that man was a cypher.
His past, his background, family, friends … all just shadows. She knew so little about him. She had never truly known Tom. And back then, she had thought she never would. He was gone. All she had left were a series of slim reports filled with damning accusations. Sketchy, fleeting glimpses of a stranger.
Now here she was. Thailand. Japan. Caine.
That look he’d given her, the anger and betrayal in his voice. That, she knew, was real.
By the time she reached the air-conditioned lobby of her hotel, she had made a decision: she was going to use this operation to uncover the truth about Caine, Bernatto, and Operation Big Blind.
On her way to the elevator, she noticed a man sitting in a lobby armchair, playing with his cellphone and reading a newspaper. She felt a ping in her subconscious. The man was young, late twenties, and white. Blond hair, blue eyes, chiseled features. He was wearing a Hawaiian print shirt, khaki pants, and work boots. The boots looked odd. She would have expected sandals or flip flops this close to the beach.
She made a note to keep an eye out for him. Strange taste in footwear wasn’t enough to set off her mental alarms, but she would have to be careful moving forward. This mission was off book…. She had no back up, no support. And if Caine’s story was true, then Allan Bernatto was even more dangerous than she’d thought.
As the steel elevator doors clamped shut, she realized that, if that was the case, she had stumbled upon a secret Bernatto needed to keep hidden … a secret he’d already sacrificed two CIA agents to protect.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Caine sat in front of the small pachinko machine and twisted a pink plastic wheel, feeling vaguely ridiculous. The machine was covered with pictures of kittens and ice creams cones, and emitted a nonstop cacophony of electronic chimes and sugary pop music.
Earlier that morning, after a workout in the hotel gym and a traditional Japanese breakfast, he had made some phone calls to his old contacts. Yakuza bosses and lieutenants he had done business with, smuggling counterfeit jeans and purses through his operation in Thailand. Most seemed surprised to hear he was still alive. News of Lau’s takeover must have travelled fast.
Like all criminals—himself included—they were a suspicious, paranoid bunch, and they all sounded vaguely uncomfortable to hear from him. The conversations were polite, but terse. Until they could figure out what exactly happened in Thailand, no one was going to give him what he wanted: a sit-down with Isato Yoshizawa. Isato was the oyabun, or leader, of the Yoshizawa clan, a powerful yakuza family based in Tokyo. They ran the local bukuto gambling trade in Kabuki-cho, and other neighborhoods.
There was protocol to observe, in Japan more than most places. Business deals could take weeks to close. Social meetings—to exchange business cards, share drinks, give gifts—were all part of the complex process. Each step followed its own rules of etiquette. In the underworld, things moved at a faster pace, but the principles were the same. There was an established order, a way of doing things. There were rules.
Caine didn’t have time to wait. So he planned to change the rules.
As he twisted the pachinko wheel left and right, a stream of tiny metal balls poured into the machine. The wheel altered their speed, making them drop faster or slower, but the flow never ceased. Each tiny metal sphere would fall down the length of the machine, bouncing off a pattern of
metal rods along the way.
If the speed and angle of the ball were just right, it would spill out an exit hole, into a plastic bin. If the ball hit a “jackpot” bar on the way down, it would trigger more balls to come pouring out, increasing the player’s total ball count, and triggering flashing lights and music to emit from the machine.
The object of the game was to accumulate as many balls as possible in the winning bin. By hitting multiple jackpot bars, the final ball count could far exceed what the player started with.
Caine had chosen this particular machine not for its confectionary charm, but because it sat under a 360-degree security mirror. By looking up, he could observe the long, narrow room behind him. It was filled with flashing lights, blinking machines, and curiously sullen Japanese men who seemed to take no joy whatsoever in the lively, noisy game they were playing.
He continued twisting the plastic wheel, then stole a quick glance at the security mirror. Pachinko was mostly a game of chance and, like all games of chance, an underworld of gambling had sprung up around it. In this section of Shinjuku, pachinko gambling was controlled by the Yoshizawa clan.
That was why he was here.
Sure enough, a few minutes later, a pair of Japanese men sauntered into the parlor. They were clad in shiny, sharkskin suits, their white silk shirts opened down to the chest. Their long hair was slicked back with pomade. A variety of chains and jewelry hung from their necks, and tattoo ink peeked out from either side of the open V across their chest.
Yakuza.
The two men made no effort to avoid jostling the gamblers as they navigated their way through the crowded room. Instead, the men and women at the machines shifted in their chairs or stood up and moved aside to make room.
The men stared at Caine as they walked past. His was the only Caucasian face in the parlor, so he knew he stood out. Caine smiled at them. One of the yakuza scowled, but the other returned his smile, an exaggerated leer, and dropped his hand to the left side of his waistband. Brushing aside his coat, he casually revealed the butt of a gun.
[Thomas Caine #1] Tokyo Black Page 6
