Assignment Tokyo

by Edward S. Aarons

  The path came to an end at an overlook high above the Kokusai Inn’s red roofs and the distant beaches. There were some log benches under a giant, old maple, whose red leaves made a bloody glow in the noontime sun. Beyond this clearing there was a series of granite ledges, and Durell climbed them rapidly with Liz clinging doggedly to his side. Squirrels chattered at them. A few birds made flickering movements among the trees. The sea wind was sharp and clear up here, and the horizon of the ocean made their eyes ache with its brilliance.

  They came quickly to the top of the slope. Landward, the woods receded into a valley where a small river rushed and chuckled. From far inland came the hoot of a locomotive’s diesel horn, but the tracks could not be seen from this point.

  “It looks impossible,” Liz said quietly. “It’s the proverbial haystack.” Her long hair had come undone, and she lifted her arms to tuck the strands away in a feminine gesture that revealed fine breasts and an appealing throat. “Yoko could be anywhere by now. Or maybe the Chinese caught up with her after all. Why is she running?”

  “Panic,” Durell said. “If she had contacted Bill, she’d know now what this is all about. As it is, all she can remember is being ill, and being chased by strange and hostile men. Over there,” he ended suddenly and pointed.

  “I don’t see anything,” Liz said.

  “Across the valley. Something moving.”

  “An animal?”

  “A man. Come on.”

  He led the way down the inland slope of the ledges, dropping the sea out of sight. Out of the wind the air felt hot with a sultry autumnal quality. Insects hummed and whined about them as they went down through hazel bushes, aspens, beech, and maple. Across the valley a crow squawked and lifted its black wings in alarmed flight. A twig snapped and flew aside over Durell’s head. The sound of the gun was a flat, dull report in the bright air.

  “Stupid,” Durell said. He pulled Liz behind some brush growing at the side of the stream, and searched the opposite wooded slope that towered above them. “He’s frustrated, or he wouldn’t have lost his cool and shot at us.”

  “It was a handgun,” Liz said.

  “Po Ping Tao is a crack shot. The best marksman known in the business. But I’m betting he’s lost Yoko. She must have outsmarted him. She could because she’s been in these woods on other visits, and knows them well.”

  “Or maybe he’s got her, and wants to keep us away.”

  He nodded. “Possible. But we’ll soon find out. Just follow me exactly, understand?”

  Liz’ eyes were clear and calm. “Whatever you say.”

  He crossed the shallow stream in a series of swift, zigzag runs, with Liz close at his heels. There were no more shots. He climbed quickly then, gun in hand, the safety off, his footsteps silent. Long ago as a boy in the Louisiana bayous of Peche Rouge, he had hunted game in the swampy fastnesses of the delta. His old Grandpa Jonathan had taught him the cunning, stealth, and art of being a successful hunter. He had hunted men too; but Comrade Po was not ordinary game. To the ordinary qualities of the hunter, Po always added swift and incalculable cruelty, a devastating quality of destructive surprise . . .

  “Stay here,” he said to Liz.

  “Why?”

  “Just do as I say,” he whispered.

  “I’m not afraid—” she began.

  “Perhaps not. But I am.”

  He went on alone. Beyond the ridge was the road to the little railroad station that served the spa and the Kokusai Inn. The sound of the distant train had faded away. There was no further movement on the slope above. Durell moved his gun to his left hand and pulled himself up through the brush. His movements were silent, his every step calculated. When he was near the place where he thought the gun had been fixed, he halted and stood absolutely still. A squirrel began to scold from a tall oak to his right, then it was silent. A crow lifted from a pine tree ten yards to his left and flew away inland. A vagrant breeze made the bushes clack quietly. Only the insects were unconcerned.

  “Durell!”

  The call came from farther to his right, explosive, alarming. He did not reply. He was aware of a quickening of his pulse, a dim trembling in all his muscles. A twig snapped again, ahead and above him. An animal? A man? He stood frozen in the dappled shadows.

  “Durell? Goodbye, Durell!” came another voice to his left, where the crow had risen.

  He chose the spot where the squirrel had been, and suddenly jumped that way, smashing through the brush. Po Ping Tao had been closing in on him from that side, hoping that his comrade’s call would distract him in that direction and expose his back. There was an explosion of movement among the hazelnut bushes. A huge shadow, mottled by stray sunbeams falling through the upper leaves, rose up before him, flickered sidewise, and fell away. He glimpsed a round face, bleak Chinese eyes, the tiny triangular scar on the round cheek. He saw the smile and knew it was a smile of death.

  Something flashed through the air and thunked into the bole of a tree, slicing through the space where Durell had been an instant before. He had jumped forward and to the right. An unearthly scream, like that which a tiger makes to paralyze its prey, came from the Chinese. Durell broke through the brush, unaffected by the screeching yell. Po Ping Tao, for all his vast size, moved faster. He was not where Durell thought he had been. Only a falling leaf marked the Chinese retreat.

  Durell dropped to his knees in the soft mulch of the forest floor and waited. He heard nothing. He saw no movement. He waited. Then, all at once he heard Liz scream.

  “Sam! Sam!”

  There came a sound of pure, agonized terror from her throat, rising from the spot where he had left her down by the stream. He felt his instinctive start of movement, then checked himself. Every impulse in him urged him to run to her. But he didn’t move.

  “Sam!”

  He waited. A minute went by. Then another. All was silent. Then at last his immobility was rewarded. There was the faintest of sounds behind him, a movement of air rather than a noise. Durell spun on one knee and came up against the bulk of another man—the second Chinese, who had come across the slope below and behind him. There was a grunt, an explosion of breath as Durell’s shoulder slammed into the man’s belly. It was like charging into a plank door. It was Po’s companion, a huge barrel of a man wearing a dark blue suit much too tight for his massive girth. He had a model of the new Chinese Hungpa-12 pistol in his vast fist. Durell saw it rising and knew he had to finish this fast, since his back was now exposed to Po, somewhere below him.

  He smashed his own weapon into the other’s grinning mouth. Teeth splintered. A gout of blood came from the man’s wide lips. Durell felt a blow in his belly, another just above his left knee. It was like being kicked by a horse. He coughed, felt himself go down to his left, and desperately jabbed fingers into the man’s throat. The small, slanted eyes widened, showed white around the dark pupils. A heavy arm came down across Durell’s shoulder like a poleax. The forest blurred and swam before his eyes. He stabbed again and saw the other man’s eyes roll up, and the pressure of that huge weight against him fell away. Durell rolled over and over through the brush, letting himself fall down the slope. Ten feet away, he rose and, heedless of the noise he made, ran down the side of the little valley to where he had left Liz Pruett beside the stream.

  “Liz?”

  She did not move.

  “Liz!”

  She sat bowed over, her head between her knees, on a mossy rock beside the rushing, chuckling water. Durell sprang toward her, his left leg troubling him, his weight uncertain upon it, and hauled the girl up and away from the water toward the shelter of a ledge of gray rock. The girl’s eyes seemed blind. She didn’t recognize him. There was a thin trickle of blood down the side of her face, coming from her scalp. A razor-edge line of more blood made a necklace across her throat. The throat wound was not deep, just slicing the skin. A millimeter deeper and she would have been dead.

  Her clothes were wet and cold, as if she had fallen or bee
n pushed into the stream. There were thumb marks, ugly and blue on each cheek, just under the cheekbones. He saw all this in one instant as he carried her to the rock shelter and knelt beside her.

  “It’s all right, Liz. It’s okay now.”

  Her breath suddenly shuddered in her throat, an ugly sound compounded of fear and pain. Her brown eyes held a glaze of unreasoning terror. He put his arm around her and hugged her shivering body close to him. There was no sound from the slope above. Po Ping Tao would think he had been driven away. He could not attempt just now to reason out why the Chinese had chosen to attack him at this time and in this place. He and Liz were lucky to be alive. One thing was plain. The Chinese did not have Yoko Kamuru with them. She had escaped their search for her—for the moment.

  Liz Pruett touched the thin wound on her throat, then her cheeks, and began to tremble violently.

  “Take it easy, Liz,” he whispered.

  “They—they tried to drown me. First—first he used the knife on my throat. Is—is it very deep?”

  “No. Just a warning.”

  She shuddered. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “My face hurts. What did he do there?”

  “He put pressure on the sinuses. Another warning.”

  The look of shock and fear faded slightly from her eyes, but not entirely. He wondered how long that look of stunned terror would remain there. He glanced at his watch. His belly ached, and his leg would be tricky for a while, where the Chinese had kicked him. Liz said plaintively, “I’m afraid I wasn’t much help to you, Sam.”

  “You’re not supposed to be mixed up in this kind of thing. Not this part of the operation. Can you walk now?”

  “Where?”

  “To the railroad station.”

  “Is it safe?”

  “As safe as it will ever be.”

  She tried to stand, fell, then made it. She said in an intense voice, “I hope to God I never set eyes on that man again.”

  The stark look of fear was an ugly cloud in her previously confident eyes.

  A path led them to the opposite ridge of the valley, and from the summit Durell could see the road glinting through the trees, leading to the little rail depot that served the spa and the Kokusai Inn. He took Liz by the hand and led her down to the narrow highway. Her fingers were icy. He squeezed her hand reassuringly, but her smile was tight and not quite true. A glint of metal and the sound of a car presently came through the bright autumnal leaves. It was a taxi, moving at a leisurely speed toward the station. A train horn sounded distantly to the south.

  “Come on,” Durell urged, and went scrambling ahead down the slope to intercept the cab. “We’ve got a lift.”

  Liz Pruett floundered awkwardly after him. Durell reached the road in time to flag down the cab. The driver saw them and stopped. There was no one else in the taxi. The driver was a round-faced man with a gap in his front teeth, and he looked at them with cheerful curiosity.

  “Sir?”

  “Just a moment.” He waited for Liz to come down through the brush. “You’re one of the regular taxi-men here?”

  “From Kokusai Ohnaya to the station, yes, sir.”

  “Why were you driving so slowly along here?”

  “I was just wondering. It was curious; a most strange thing, sir. This is almost the same place.”

  Durell took a chance. “Where you picked up Miss Kamuru not long ago?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How did you know who she was?”

  “Oh, Kamuru-san is a regular visitor at the Kokusai. An artist.” The man grinned, showing the gap in his teeth again. “Everyone here knows Kamuru-san. You are her friends?”

  “That’s right. Was she alone when you picked her up?”

  “Quite alone. She had lost her way on the mountain, she said, and she was afraid she would miss her train.”

  “So you took her to the station?”

  “Yes, sir. Would you like to go there, too? It seems that everyone is leaving. They say there is a terrible sickness in Hatashima.” The man took out a gauze surgical mask and fixed it over his mouth. It was not unusual; some of the cabmen in Tokyo used masks as a matter of routine. “I am not afraid of the germs, sir, you must believe that,” the cabby said. “I am a very healthy man with a healthy wife and four healthy children—”

  “Take us to the station, please,” Durell said.

  They arrived five minutes before the next local came in from the south. The taxi driver said it was going to Sendai, the same destination that Yoko Kamuru had chosen. Durell bought first-class tickets for himself and Liz.

  “We left our luggage at the inn,” she objected.

  “Never mind.” He returned to the cabby. “Was Yoko’s train very crowded?”

  “Oh yes, sir, many people leaving this region. Very frightened, very superstitious. But I am not afraid. I have never been sick a day in my life.”

  “Did you notice any Chinese gentlemen getting aboard with Kamuru-san?”

  “Chinese gentlemen? No, sir. I did not see any.”

  “Thank you.”

  This train, too, was crowded, almost with the universal look of refugees in panic-stricken flight the world had known so often before. Durell made his way through the pack of people into the first-class coach as the train started up. The air horn moaned as they picked up speed. Durell learned from the conductor that they would be in Sendai in only one hour. There were eight local stops on the way, however. What if Yoko had gotten off at any one of them from her preceding train? If she had, there would be no way to tell. Still, he had the feeling that she meant to go on all the way to Sendai. It was only a hunch, but it was all he could rely on. If he were wrong he would lose her trail beyond hope of recovery. Remembering the time limit given by the Japanese government, he knew he could not initiate a painstaking, by-the-book search. Already, more than twelve of his allotted forty-eight hours had evaporated. His gambling instinct urged him to go on through to the terminal. Within the next hour he had to call Dr. Freeling in Tokyo; he was also anxious to have Bill Churchill join him. But all that would have to wait.

  He opened the train compartment door, then gently moved Liz aside and stepped in first.

  A man growled, “Boom, boom, Amerikanski. You are dead.”

  “Not quite.” Durell showed his gun. “You’re in my seat, Papa Bear.”

  It was Colonel Cesar Skoll. He showed his teeth in a grin. “Ha ha. There is room here for all of us, nyefl”

  “Nyet,” said Durell.

  Skoll sat like a giant Siberian bear, sprawled on the seat next to the window. His round bullet head was outlined against the passing landscape of farms and ponds, seen through the train window. His broad peasant’s face was covered with a fine sheen of sweat. His blob of a nose looked pale and suety. He was smoking one of his thin Italian cigars, and the compartment was filled with the acrid smell of it.

  Sighing, the big Russian put aside the bottle of vodka he had pointed at Durell as a mock weapon. His shrewd little eyes considered Liz Pruett briefly, weighed, estimated, judged, and dismissed her.

  “Sit down, Comrade Cajun,” he boomed. “You have lost our little Japanese doll too, eh?”

  “How far ahead of us is she?” Durell asked.

  Skoll grinned. “You do not know?”

  “How did you get on this train?”

  “I was already on it when you came aboard. But our Chinese friends are using a car, trying to get ahead of us.” Skoll sighed. “I have arranged to delay them, if I am lucky. You should thank me. But the effort cost me the opportunity to make the chess jump, one might say, to block little Yoko’s flight.” He sighed again and relighted his cigar; his big hands looked raw in the light. He looked at Liz once more. “I asked you to be my ally, Cajun. In this matter it is truly necessary that we cooperate. Frankly, I am very worried about Po Ping Tao. More than worried. He makes me fearful. Yes, I am afraid of Po.” Skoll did not look in the least afraid. His eyes were like steel marbles.

  Durell
said, “Do you know where Yoko is going?”

  “Yes, I know,” said Skoll.

  “I think you’re lying.”

  “But you must believe me, what I say, of course. You have no alternative. With Po after that poor young woman, however, I cannot handle the matter alone.”

  “Where is her destination?” Durell asked again.

  Skoll puffed on his cigar and leaned back with a genial smile. “Will you work with me?”

  “No,” Durell said. “I’ve just decided.”

  “And just what have you decided now, my friend?”

  “I think you are bluffing.”

  Skoll laughed. “Boom boom. You are dead, Amerikanski.”

  16

  THE TRAIN stopped. It was only a short run up the coast to Sendai, the capital of the Tohoku region of northern Honshu, and the local had stopped at two other villages on the way. Liz Pruett, aware of a shattering numbness in part of her mind, aware of the image of Po’s scarred face lingering in the shadows of her thoughts, stared for some time from the train window at the station sign of Oshika without really seeing it. Beyond the platform was a row of small shops specializing in dyed cloth, bog-oak souvenirs, tansus—small decorated chests of drawers—and kokeshi, the famous wooden dolls that were a specialty of Sendai. The station stop of Oshika was a suburb of the city. Beyond the shops was a tiny lake formed by a tributary of the wide Hirose River, and the water’s edge had been delicately landscaped with tiny bridges, reeds, and contemplative, exquisite temples. Some young boys were fishing beside the lake. Liz looked up at the distant crown of Sendai, the castle ruins on Aoba Hill, and the lilac-tinted mountains to the north.