The Typhoon Lover

by Sujata Massey

  “When this picture in the Japanese magazine Lovely Home was brought to our attention, we ran a computer-enhanced analysis of the ceramics in the cabinet,” Colonel Martin said. “And then we brought it to Elizabeth, at the Sackler, for further analysis.”

  The next image was a split screen—a color shot of the vessel in Takeo’s cabinet, and then the black-and-white image of the ibex ewer from the museum in Iraq.

  “It’s too bad that you don’t know the color of the urn from Iraq,” I said.

  “It has that same distinctive reddish slip,” Elizabeth Cameron said. “It’s an ancient slip technique that not many use today.”

  “This vessel is believed to be one of the oldest original ceramics in Iraq,” Colonel Martin added. “The ibex ewer has been visited by every schoolchild who ever went to the museum and ranks among the nation’s most beloved treasures.”

  “So this is why you brought me in. It’s not about my being so brilliant with ceramics, but about my connection to Takeo!”

  Michael Hendricks cleared his throat and said, “Both ceramics and the knowledge of our suspect are items in your favor, but there are other factors as well. We know about your activities here and abroad. You’ve demonstrated an ability to think on your feet. You’ve always been remarkably successful—when you want to get something.”

  “But I don’t want to get Takeo,” I said. Takeo was toxic, I knew from my experience. I couldn’t risk being around him, now that I was semisettled with Hugh, couldn’t risk it for a second—

  “Takeo Kayama may have bought this on the black market, but he is not the suspected thief,” Colonel Martin said. “If we can get back this vessel and find out whether your old friend acquired it from Birand, we will finally have the piece of information we need to apply pressure.”

  I pressed my lips together, then spoke. “I still don’t believe that I can do anything for you.”

  “As Colonel Martin has been explaining, the American forces are in a bind. We have, of course, military police and some investigators present in Japan, but the scope of their powers is extremely limited. Without permission from the Japanese government, they can’t force a search of a Japanese citizen’s home.”

  “I’ve told Mr. Hendricks that we can’t do anything, either,” Mr. Watanabe said in his soft voice. “There is not enough evidence for our national police agency to obtain a warrant.”

  “Why not just ask Takeo to submit his piece of pottery voluntarily to an inspection? Have you even tried to seek out a peaceful resolution?” I asked.

  “We cannot risk creating a situation in which he might alert Osman Birand.” Michael Hendricks pushed a thick manila envelope toward me. “In here, you’ll find a new passport and an itinerary.”

  I didn’t touch it. “What do you mean?”

  “We’d like you to take a short trip back to Tokyo. You’ll have a cover story—that you’re buying antiques—and a new passport with an official visa that shows your affiliation with our embassy. During that time, we’ll expect you to visit with your old friend Takeo Kayama at his family home. Without making it obvious, you’ll find a way to examine the vessel closely and tell us if it’s the item stolen from the museum.”

  “He’ll never let me do that! After the way things ended, he won’t ever want to see me, not in his beach house or anywhere that I can think of—”

  The screen flashed another picture that had once run in a Japanese tabloid. It was taken on a gray afternoon in Roppongi, when Takeo and I were saying good-bye to each other as I was getting into a taxi. You could tell from the way our bodies leaned into each other that we had not wanted to part.

  I felt something clutch deep inside me, and I began to sweat.

  “He’ll let you in,” Michael Hendricks said, a hint of amusement in his voice. “Who wouldn’t?”

  4

  Up-two-three-four.

  Hold!

  The eighteen-pound bar felt more like eighty during this third, most excruciating set of repetitions. I pressed upward, trying to keep the bar level, while at the same time gluing my lower back to the bench.

  I had been insane to undertake a power-lifting class with a hangover, but after my ordeal at the Smithsonian, I couldn’t imagine going home soon. I’d lightened the load I usually lifted, because this time I had a different kind of weight to bear.

  It was my duty to go, each one of them had said. Colonel Martin said it was a chance to serve my country. Michael Hendricks argued that it was important to stand up against international art criminals who robbed the people of all nations. The Japanese consul believed that it was a special privilege to solve a serious international problem. But Takeo—I couldn’t get near Takeo. If I did, I would wind up hurting him, hurting Hugh, hurting myself.

  “Rei! Come on, don’t forget the powerhouse!” Jane, the blond, outrageously muscular teacher, barked at me.

  This powerhouse was not a sandwich, though I could have used one. Jane was referring to the abdominal muscles. I hardened my belly as I pushed up the bar, struggling to keep the left side in balance with the right.

  I couldn’t undertake a classified project that was actually governmental spying, though no one had used the word. When I’d suggested that this might be a job more appropriate for a CIA operative, everyone had reacted as if I’d passed wind. It was as if nobody in government used that acronym, just as nobody in Japan said the word yakuza. And Michael had asked me, completely straight-faced, to work for them for no pay. They’d give me my expenses, but that was it.

  Not quite it, I thought, as I sat up and rubbed away the ache on the back of my arms, still brooding. At the end they’d revealed the carrot, the only reason that the mission really would appeal to me. If I went, I’d get to keep my new passport, with its clean pages and embassy stamp. I now had a legal method of entry back into the country that had ordered me deported because I’d once unlawfully entered a room to find evidence. I’d been caught by the Japanese police, and that was the end of me; greater good to society be damned.

  Since that nightmare a year earlier, returning to Japan seemed akin to penetrating a high-security vault. Now I was being offered the passkey. The question was whether I could live with myself if I spied.

  Hendricks and Martin had hammered into me the classified nature of the operation: nobody, not even Hugh, could know that I was working as an informant. Michael Hendricks had explained the story I’d give people: I’d been hired as a consultant to the Sackler, to shop for some antique Japanese ceramics at a major Tokyo auction taking place in two weeks’ time. I’d spend a week or two in Japan, ostensibly visiting auction houses and catching up with old friends, among them Takeo Kayama, whom I was to refer to by the code name Flowers, Flowers-san, or Mr. Flowers. The code word for the ibex vessel that I was hunting down was Momoyama Period Vase, so it would sound to anyone listening as if I really were after seventeenth-century Japanese ceramics.

  Feeling sick, I dragged myself into the locker room, stripped, and went to the showers. The water pounded down on my hurting head. I knew that my shoulders and arms would be throbbing with new pains the next morning. I didn’t usually do straight weight lifting, just as I didn’t usually go to espionage planning sessions or contemplate lying to Hugh.

  Several women were waiting for showers now, women whose voices were slightly raised in irritation. I turned off the water and grabbed a towel, stepping out of the shower so fast that I slipped. Down I went on the ceramic tile floor, so fast that the women gasped but couldn’t reach out in time to catch me.

  The truth was that nobody could save me. As I struggled to my feet and wrapped the skimpy gym towel around myself, I knew that it was up to me, entirely, to save myself.

  “Good timing,” Angus Glendinning said when I walked back into the apartment an hour later. He was sprawled on Hugh’s leather sofa, an unfolded map covering his chest like a blanket. Around him were scattered the remnants of breakfast: a five-liter bottle of Mountain Dew and some half-eaten bagels.

>   “What’s doing?” I asked dully. I was too upset about my own situation to care about the mess.

  “Do you know the way to Baltimore?” Angus sang in a dreamy voice. “We’re supposed to be playing a live bit on a radio program in an hour and a half—”

  “An hour and a half?” I repeated, looking at him, shirtless and shoeless and wearing trendy thigh-length gray underpants. “And you need to get through the DC traffic and out to the freeway and then to downtown Baltimore?”

  “It’s not downtown. The station’s in an area called Tozen.”

  “What?” I took his creased itinerary and discovered that he was supposed to go to the campus radio station at Towson University. Towson was just north of the city, so the trip would be longer than he’d thought. “You’re looking at a good hour and a quarter, if you hurry.”

  “Sridhar went out to pick up our van. The parking in this neighborhood’s wretched. We had to park a bloody mile away last night.”

  Sridhar had to be the Indian tabla player, I guessed, because he was the only one of the band I couldn’t physically place. The Caribbean bassist was at the dining table, smoking a cigarette and reading Hugh’s copy of the Wall Street Journal. Through the open door to the powder room in the hallway, I could see the blond bagpiper working on his hairstyle. He was wearing a very nice terrycloth bathrobe—mine, I realized.

  “You’ll need to hurry to get there,” I said sotto voce to the Journal reader, deciding he had to be the brains of the bunch. “I’m Rei Shimura, by the way. I hope you were comfortable. I’m sorry I wasn’t here in the morning—”

  “You’re Hugh’s chick. I recall from last night,” he answered in a broad accent that Hugh had taught me was North London. “I’m Nate. And the digs are great, yah? Love the wooden chest over there—is it from Japan?”

  As I answered Nate in the affirmative, Angus interrupted me. “We don’t have to rush anywhere, Rei. People anticipate our arrival. They schedule around us.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. “Is that so?”

  “Yah. In fact, when we go to Japan next month, the promoters told us just to get ourselves there, and then they’d arrange the shows. They already arranged our visas—it’s bloody brilliant.”

  “You’ll be going to Japan?” It struck me as ironic that Angus had free access to the country, his visas arranged by Japanese music promoters, while I had to creep in through the back door.

  “Of course! You know we’ve been signed to a label there, don’t you?”

  “I didn’t!” This was major news. I wondered if Hugh had heard.

  “We’ve got an Asian tour in the works,” said Nate, who’d stood up and was starting to get dressed, pulling on black jeans. “Taiwan and also Singapore.”

  “Angus, I’m embarrassed I didn’t know all this! You’ll have to tell me more after you get back from Towson. I don’t want you to be late.”

  “Right, well, we’ll be talking about this on the radio show. Do you think you’ll be able to hear and tape it?”

  “It might be too far—”

  “You can listen on the web,” Keiffer said, emerging from the bathroom. I noticed that the blond drummer’s hair, which he’d apparently been working on so hard, still looked as if he’d just rolled out of bed.

  “Keiffer, if you’d like a private place to dress, try Hugh’s and my room,” I suggested quickly, when I saw him pick up a pair of red bikini briefs from the dining area. The boys’ underwear styles appeared to be as diverse as their onstage attire.

  “Shug’s still there, in a rather bad way.” Keiffer made a face.

  “What?” I shot a glance at the bedroom door with the DO NOT DISTURB sign I’d tacked up when I’d left Chika there, sleeping, a few hours earlier.

  “Relax, Rei, he’s there by himself,” Angus cackled, as if he’d read my mind. “Chika got up a while ago, woke us all with cups of green tea, actually. Totally gorgeous, that cousin of yours. Why didn’t you introduce me when I was in Japan before?”

  “Chika was away at school,” I said, even though it had been summer when Angus was around. I had done everything to keep my Japanese relatives from learning about the decadent young troublemaker in my apartment. “So where is Chika, then?”

  “She wanted to see the neighborhood, so she went with Sridhar to get the van. She’s attending our gig as well.”

  “Sounds like a good time.” The apartment would be empty for a few key hours, hours that I would use to broach the subject of my return to Japan with Hugh.

  They left thirty minutes later, fully dressed and teeth brushed, after I gave out spare toothbrushes to the ones who’d forgotten. I should be a mother, I thought wistfully, as I watched out the window as they recklessly crossed Mintwood Place, oblivious of the delivery truck that had to brake for their passage. Who did they think they were, the Beatles crossing Abbey Road? They’d kill themselves before the end of the day.

  Only Chika waited demurely in her pink pleather coat at the curb, and looked both ways as she crossed. I found myself hoping that she would be the driver.

  I turned away from the living room window and cracked open the bedroom door to check on Hugh. The room was dark, the curtains were drawn, and a foul smell lingered in the air.

  “Still feeling awful?” I asked as I came to sit down next to him.

  “I’ve been sick all morning,” Hugh said. “I set off for work, but had to return. It could be a virus, I suppose.”

  I looked at him. “I don’t know. Binge drinking is pretty hard on the system.”

  “Oh, don’t be so damn American,” Hugh grumbled.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You go to a pub with Americans, and if you have more than two drinks, they think you’re a lush.”

  “I didn’t keep count of myself last night. That was the problem.” Thank God that I was slowly and steadily feeling better. The exercise had done me good.

  Hugh sighed heavily. “I’m just sorry the band’s landed on us at this point. I’d expected that you’d give them breakfast, but since you were gone, I had to send them to the bagel shop. D’you think they minded?”

  “They seemed to bear no resentment.” Though I did, for his expectations. “Hugh, I had a job interview this morning! I told you last night, and every day for the last week. You knew I had to be out early in the morning.”

  “So, d’you get the job?” he said sarcastically. “And what’s the salary, high five figures or did you push them to six?”

  I shifted uncomfortably atop the duvet. The fact that I made about as much as a salesclerk—despite my education and ambitions—was something we didn’t talk about. Nor did we address the fact that Hugh paid the rent, the car insurance, the grocery bills. I knew there were plenty of married women who lived this way without question or worry, but to me, unmarried and not even engaged, it was an embarrassment. And maybe that was why he expected me to be a short-order cook, at moment’s notice.

  “God, my head hurts,” Hugh muttered.

  “I’ll bring you some Motrin,” I said, picking up the bonsai plant, which wouldn’t thrive in the closed-curtains gloom of the bedroom. I was not a doormat. I was just helping my boyfriend, who was not his usual self. “And then, I think I’ll make some brunch for both of us. Would scrambled eggs suit you?”

  “That’s sweet, but I don’t think I could bear it.”

  “At least try some toast fingers!” I implored.

  “No, no. I could sip some tea, though.”

  Of course, tea healed all Asians and Brits. “Your favorite Darjeeling?”

  “Too sweet; it’ll make me sick again.” He sounded woeful. “I’d better go with green. Chika made a large pot of it earlier, maybe there’s some left to warm up.”

  No proper Japanese believes in warming over old tea, so I put on a fresh kettle of water to boil as I set about reorganizing the apartment. It was a wonder Nate had been able to notice the fine old pieces of Japanese furniture, buried as everything was by opened magazines and new
spapers and discarded clothes. I picked up a can of Mountain Dew that had sweated a ring onto my hundred-year-old tansu and tried in vain to buff its finish back. Then I threw away more old newspapers and cans and put in their place the bonsai plant that I’d carried in from the bedroom. The gift-giver’s card had been lost, so I’d have to guess who had sent the sweet little dwarf pomegranate tree with dark green leaves and reddish orange trumpet-shaped flowers. Whoever had sent it couldn’t have known me too well, because I typically killed house plants through neglect.

  Now I was thirty, I’d have to be more responsible. I pulled out the care instructions printed on a little plastic stick buried in the potting soil. The pomegranate bonsai needed occasional fertilizing, regular watering, and full sun. The card went on to promise ornamental fruit in the fall. Hmm, it was already October. Where was the fruit? As I gently explored the plant’s thick foliage, my fingers touched something inorganic. I drew back the glossy leaves to see a tiny black plastic disk. I’d seen enough spy movies to recognize it as a miniature microphone.

  Happy birthday, indeed. I’d been bugged.

  5

  After I’d put the bonsai straight out of the apartment, I sank down on the sofa and considered the situation. Covert wiretapping had once been illegal, but probably wasn’t anymore, because of the sweeping changes in civil liberties that had arrived with the new century. Someone had clipped the microphone to a plant that I’d brought in myself from the foyer of the apartment building. This was shrewd, a way to get the bug inside without physically entering the apartment. Now I wondered if there was a wiretap on the apartment telephone as well.

  I shivered, because I’d almost persuaded myself to take the job. Despite the creepiness of the work, I was desperate to be in Japan. I could practically inhale the incense at the Yanaka Shrine, and my tongue curled at the memory of the smoky-sweet yams from the best potato-roasting cart. Autumn was the perfect time of year to visit Japan, when the persimmon trees along the train tracks hung heavy with red-orange fruit.