Assignment Tokyo

by Edward S. Aarons

  “Then you admit the possibility of the Soviet Union’s guilt at Hatashima too?”

  Skoll looked angry. “I admit, I concede nothing. You have given me some nasty knocks in the past, but I admire you for it. You are a competent man. I wish you were my partner, my comrade. But this cannot be, eh? So I am here only to consult with you.” Skoll shrugged. “Very well. It shall be on your terms. I want that girl. You want her too. And so do the Japanese authorities. And perhaps the Chinese, as you say. We have very little time, you must agree, before the whole business becomes internationally public. So I warn you. I aim to find that girl and keep her.”

  “To take her to the Soviet Union?”

  “As I am ordered.”

  “To get a serum from the antibodies in her blood, if she survived the plague and proved immune to it?”

  “It is part of defensive warfare. Defense against potential attack. The girl must be considered as a defensive weapon against your CBW developments.” Skoll looked cruel and competent. His face changed and resembled that of a distant Mongol ancestor. “So you and I,” he said softly, “are at war, Cajun.”

  11

  A LIGHT mist hunq over the Hatashima islands, making them look like old prints by Hiroshige. The sea was oily smooth. The twisted pines and arched bridges and red torii gates of Shinto shrines were like a peaceful dream of old Nippon, from a time of samurai warriors, feudal castles, and lords and delicate ladies of baronial courts. It was ten o’clock in the morning. There was a slight ground swell, and the fishing boat lifted and fell as it nosed around a rocky point of the island farthest offshore. As a resort, Hatashima and the whole area was suffering a ban on tourists. The village, seen vaguely through the sea mist, looked almost deserted.

  “Try here,” Durell said in Japanese.

  The old boatman grinned nervously and pushed on the tiller. The diesel coughed and aroused clattering echoes from the shore, lifting seagulls from the rocks. They flew off, mewing, among the gnarled pines and hillocks of the island.

  The boat stank of fish and fuel oil. There was a small cove, a rickety dock, a winding path that led uphill to a torii gate; beyond that a small shrine gleamed like a fairy image in the mist. They had circled four of the islets before Durell spotted this place. It was the same shrine he had seen in one of the yakatoro paintings in Yoko Kamuru’s studio.

  “This is the place,” he said.

  The fisherman’s wizened face grew wrinkled with fear. “You will go ashore here, sir?”

  “Yes, here.”

  “It is not permitted. There is a police restriction—”

  “I know.”

  “Everyone is ill in Hatashima, they say. They say some American poison was spilled in the air.”

  “You can stay on the boat. You’ll be safe. But you must wait for us.”

  The old man looked at Liz. “The lady will go ashore, too?”

  Liz spoke a precise Tokyo dialect. “Yes, I will go ashore. I am not afraid.”

  She wore slacks and a suede windbreaker against the chill of the fog. Her dark hair was kept in place with a yellow ribbon. Her brown eyes behind her glasses were impersonal and efficient.

  “I will wait for you,” said the fisherman.

  Durell offered Liz a hand to the pier, but she ignored it and jumped lithely from the gunwale, adjusted her glasses, and fell in step with him. He wondered if she had been trained at K Section’s “Farm” in Maryland. If so, she would be more of a help than he had expected.

  It was good to escape the smells of the fishing boat. The walk up from the shore, between gnarled and wind-bent pines, was made of carefully swept gravel and shell, with a rustic rail on the seaward side. The mist moved in thin layers through the green pines. A bronze bell rang with a deep tone somewhere ahead. No one was in sight. Normally, during the tourist season, there would be dozens of camera-laden sightseers. There was a garden ahead with a formal walk and an emerald green lawn that rolled from under the torii gate to the shrine. The deep-toned bell rang again.

  “It looks as if they’re gone,” Liz murmured.

  “Someone is ringing the bell,” Durell pointed out.

  They mounted some broad, shallow steps before the shrine and paused on a columned porch under gilded eaves. Stone dogs and dragons guarded the open entrance, which was made of two high wooden doors. Durell kicked off his shoes and Liz stepped out of hers. Something yellow flickered in the shadows within, and Durell caught a glimpse of saffron that became a young, robed acolyte with shaven head and careful black eyes.

  “Sir? Lady?”

  “We wish to see the priest,” Durell said.

  “He is at meditation. I am very sorry.”

  “It’s urgent.”

  The boy licked nervous lips and turned his shaven, gleaming head toward the dim interior of the shrine. “I am sorry,” he said again, and turned to go. Durell put out a hand and caught his arm, and the boy jumped and made a hissing sound and tried to tear away. Durell held his sleeve in a tight grip and kept him on the temple porch.

  “No harm will come to your priest or Kamuru-san.”

  The boy’s eyes widened. “K-Kamuru-san?”

  “The young lady who came here.”

  “There was no young lady.”

  “No matter what you may have told the police, I know that she was here.”

  “Who are you? You are an American, a Westerner, of course, b-but—”

  “We are friends of Kamuru. We came to help her.”

  The boy pressed his lips together and shook his head adamantly. At the same moment, a deep and gentle voice said, “It is all right, Minamoto.”

  The boy almost sobbed with relief. Durell turned to the priest who had come around the comer of the temple portico. He was a stout Japanese in saffron priestly robes, with a benign smile and calm, gentle eyes. His hands were folded across his potbelly. An aura of incense clung to his robes.

  “She is not here, sir,” the priest said.

  “Father,” the acolyte began, “you promised you would not tell. You did not tell the others, or the police—”

  “These people are different,” the priest said. “Let your heart be at ease, Minamoto.” The priest looked at Liz and then at Durell. “You will do little Yoko no harm?”

  “We only wish to protect her.”

  “She was very ill, poor child. Such a wonderful talent. She is the embodiment of the artists of old. Their spirits move in her. She makes beautiful paintings, and this humble shrine has always been one of her favorite subjects.”

  “When did she come here?”

  “Last night, early in the evening. She was sick with a very high fever. She—”

  Liz said, “How did she get here, so far from shore?”

  “She swam. She did not really remember. She said she remembered only that she was too hot, burning, aflame from her sickness, the same that is killing the poor folk of Hatashima.” The priest was neither accusing nor forgiving, but his black slanted eyes were fixed calmly on Durell. “It is not for me to understand these things. The nature of the world is beyond our mortal comprehension.

  I found her on the beach and carried her to safety, and Minamoto helped nurse her. Her fever died quickly, and she recovered and left.”

  “You said the police were here?” Durell asked.

  “At dawn, yes, asking for her.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “Nothing. Yoko was frightened. Perhaps there were devils in her mind from the sickness. She thought she was in danger, and I sheltered her, since she came to me for sanctuary.”

  “The boy said there were others beside the police.”

  “Only two hours ago. Russians, I believe. I was at morning devotions, and I refused to see them. And the Chinese gentlemen, as well.”

  “They were all together?”

  “No, no. They came separately in separate boats and did not meet each other. I told them nothing.”

  “Why do you tell me?” Durell asked.

 
; “Yoko said if an American came, I should speak to him. You are American. You must be the man she mentioned.”

  Durell supposed Yoko had meant Bill Churchill, but he did not contradict the priest. “Where is the girl now? Is she still on the island?”

  “Father, you must not speak!” the acolyte cried, and abruptly spun away and ran down the steps of the shrine.

  Durell leaped down the steps after the boy. Minamoto’s yellow robe flickered through the trees and vanished. Durell headed across the lawn to cut around the red torii gate. The island was small, less than a mile long, rising to a single hill that made a spine for most of its length. The way led uphill, through woods and then a clearing from where he could see the mainland, shining in the strengthening sun. The village of Hatashima stood out in the light on the beach, and the sun twinkled on rolls of barbed wire stretched in a perimeter around the community. He spared only a moment for the scene. The boy made a lot of crashing sounds as he scrambled down the opposite slope to the seaward side of the island. Durell glimpsed his robe again against the shining, misted sea. He came out on a path above the red tiles of an inn on the shore. The acolyte was heading that way, calling someone’s name. Durell caught up with him just before the path curved sharply to the water’s edge. The air smelled of pine and ozone. There was a small surf on this side, splashing among mossy rocks. The inn was a long complex of red roofs nestled below a small cliff. The place looked closed. Durell caught Minamoto by the arm and the boy stumbled and sprawled on the graveled path. His breath hissed angrily in his throat.

  “You must not hurt Yoko Kamuru, sir!” he gasped.

  “I did not come here for that. I came to help her. Is she in that inn?”

  “She was. I do not know if she is still there.”

  “Go back to the shrine then. It’s all right.” Durell’s Japanese was good enough for the boy to understand, but the acolyte shook his head stubbornly and replied, “I must go with you.”

  “Fine. But conquer your fear.”

  The lad’s chest heaved. “Yes. I am sorry.”

  Several of Yoko’s wall scrolls hung just inside the main entrance to the inn. At the other end was a delicately designed garden, enjoying the sea wind. A sign said the inn was closed but the door had not been locked, and Durell pushed inside with Minamoto and heard the quick shuffle of wooden clogs beyond painted screens. He swung that way and caught up with a gray-haired Japanese woman in a traditional kimono, who was trying to leave by a side exit.

  “Please,” Durell said. “I am not the police; I am a friend of Yoko’s. Where is she?”

  The woman’s face was leathery from her long years beside the sea. Her mouth closed as tightly as the boy’s.

  There was a new bruise on her cheek, still darkening and swelling just under her left eye. Her lower lip was split as well.

  “You are Russian?” she mumbled.

  “No. American.”

  “You Westerners all look alike to me.” Her old eyes hated him as an alien, hairy and smelling differently from her countrymen. “The Russians were here. Also two Chinese. I suppose Minamoto told you. He is a stupid boy. He will never make a good priest.”

  “Who hit you?” Durell asked.

  “Your friends, the Russians.” She tried to laugh bather split lip began to bleed, and she covered her mouth with her hand. “They, too, wanted to know where my darling Yoko might be. Well, you will not learn it from me, either.”

  “I want to help her,” Durell insisted.

  “That is what the others said too.”

  “She’s sick, she needs help—”

  “And whose fault is that?” the woman shrilled. “We all know what happened at Hatashima. We are all in quarantine, waiting to die, because you brought the plague to us! You are cruel, inhuman people—”

  “We did not do it,” Durell said quietly. He took out some money. “Look here, I want to know about the others who are looking for Yoko. It’s very important. They only wish her harm. I am a friend of Bill Churchill, who loves her—”

  “Bill-san?” The old woman was startled. “You know him?”

  “My best Mend. He sent me here.”

  “Ah.” She was thoughtful. “Yoko loves him. He came here sometimes with her. She talks of Bill-san always. I do not approve of mixed relationships, you understand. No good ever comes of it. Westerners and Japanese are too different. But in Yoko’s case—”

  “Help me,” Durell urged. “Bill wants to find her.”

  The old woman looked at the acolyte and Durell and then out through the door of the inn. A path led to a dock there, but no boats were tied up in the cove. Durell did not push it now. He had been lucky, mentioning Churchill’s name, and finding a hidden spark of romance in the old woman’s shriveled breast. But he couldn’t be sure if this was an advantage or not. These fishing people of Hatashima were independent and often rebellious. The police did not impress them. Authority was something they scorned. He was sure she had not told the other seekers about Yoko’s presence here.

  The old woman suddenly walked outside into the misty sunlight. The boy followed, chattering in a local dialect that Durell could not grasp; but the old woman flung a dismissal to the acolyte with a contemptuous hand, and Durell followed her down to the dock.

  “I cannot see if you are an honest man,” she said. “But Yoko is like a daughter to me. She was sick, but she was better when my husband took her away.”

  “Where?”

  She pointed south into the shining mist. “In my husband’s boat to Fuyakuro, perhaps twenty miles away. It is on the railroad. She wished to get on a train.”

  “Was she here when the other men came for her?”

  “Yes. She was very frightened of them.”

  “Didn’t they suspect she was here?”

  She touched her lip angrily. “I told them nothing. Not even when the Chinese offered me much money. I do not want money. I will not take yours.”

  “What did the Chinese look like?”

  “They were pleasant and polite. Not like the Russian who hit me. I cannot remember. I told you, all foreigners look alike to me. But one of the Chinese had a peculiar scar under his eye. It was like a triangle, upside down.”

  Durell felt a cold qualm in the pit of his stomach. “He was stout, like a sumo wrestler? He breathed hard? He had asthma, perhaps?”

  “All those things? Yes. You are troubled by him?”

  “A little,” Durell said. He thanked the old woman quickly. “I’d best get on to Fuyakuro.”

  He said to Liz Pruett, “Skoll hit the old woman. He has a bad temper, one of his worst faults. But the Chinese are a problem. I can’t figure why they’re in it—why the Black House, and especially the Third Branch, and more especially, why the head of the Peacock Division, Po Ping Tao, is here in person.”

  Liz said, “You speak his name like a filthy word.”

  “It is.”

  “I never heard of him.”

  “Be glad of that.” Durell looked back from the fishing boat. Hatashima and the pine-crowned islands were falling astern, drowning in the sun-glare and mist. “The Peacock Division handles counterintelligence and internal security for Peking. Colonel Po Ping Tao started out as a historian on the Middle Kingdom, specializing in governmental security during the Empire. He’s an expert on interrogation, inquisition, torture. Po killed Johnny Lang-don and sent Frank Duval back to us as a gibbering idiot, and he has my own name at the top if his list. He’s a devout Communist, was on the Long March with Mao, and moves behind the scenes like some macabre presence. He only left China once, years ago, to go to Indonesia. So what is he doing in Japan, looking for a little girl artist who was lucky enough to recover from a plague in Hatashima?”

  Liz said, “You make him sound like an ogre.”

  “He is,” Durell said quietly. “I’m afraid of him. And very afraid for Yoko.”

  12

  MAJOR YAMATOYA said savagely, “The cannery!”

  “What?”


  “The cannery in Hatashima!” Yamatoya shouted.

  The police inspector in Sendai, on the other end of the long-distance line, sounded baffled. “I do not understand its importance.”

  “The fish caught by the fishermen of Hatashima,” Yamatoya said. He dabbed at his forehead with his immaculate handkerchief and looked without pleasure at his office walls. “Several boatloads were brought in day before yesterday and processed in the plant there. They may be contaminated.”

  “How so?”

  “Never mind ‘how so.’ We must trace all shipments of canned fish out of Hatashima made within the past four days, do you understand? At once. Without delay.”

  “But—”

  “Idiot! The fish may be infected. They were handled by sick men. You need know nothing more. What is the major market for Hatashima’s canned products?”

  “Right here in Sendai, sir. I can check the warehouses and the distributing companies for recent shipments, of course. But the products are sold quickly to department stores, small groceries, restaurants—”

  “Get on the job, then,” Yamatoya said. “I want to know where every single can went from Hatashima in the last four days. Give me the information by this afternoon,

  or you will be peddling fish yourself, inspector.” He added, “If you are not dead.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  “Nothing. I meant nothing.”

  Yamatoya hung up and looked at his trembling hands as if he had never seen them before.

  13

  SHE thought, My name is Yoko Kamuru. I am perfectly sane and healthy, but something has happened to me that I do not understand. It must have an explanation. Perhaps it is something to do with Bill. I do not know. I do not remember. But I am in danger, and I must help myself.

  She got off the train wearing the new clothes she had purchased at Fuyakuro—a cheap yellow blouse and brown skirt, brown shoes, and sunglasses, along with a plastic rain-slicker and hood, a lipstick, and a brown plastic purse. The handful of money that the old woman at the inn had given her was more than ample for what she needed. She could even rent a car, if she had to. What she most regretted was the loss of all her painting equipment at Hatashima. She knew she had been ill—everyone had fallen mysteriously ill—and a quarantine had been set up around the village. But she did not remember how she had arrived at the island, how Minamoto had carried her to the shrine, and then led her to the inn. She had been swimming in the sea—why? And she had been lucky to reach the island, the priest said. But she recalled little of it. The fever had burned and distorted all the memories of it from her mind.