The Last Assassin

by Barry Eisler

  I took the hottest shower I could stand to get the last traces of cold from my bones and the stench of blood and the Hudson from my skin. I fell into bed, and for a moment, I was outside Midori's apartment again, suffused with beguiling hope. I wasn't yet asleep, but it already felt like a dream.

  10

  I slept until later that morning, then went out to a pay phone and called Tatsu in Tokyo.

  It took him four rings to answer. Ordinarily he got it on the first.

  'Hai,' he said. He sounded tired. Well, it was night out there.

  'Ore da,' I said in Japanese. It's me.

  'Let me call you back from a different line.'

  His voice was really raspy. Must have been a hell of a case of the flu he was fighting.

  'Sure,' I said, and clicked off.

  A moment later the phone rang. 'Sorry,' he said. 'I'm changing phones more frequently lately than I used to.'

  'Not using scrambled?'

  He laughed, then coughed. 'Only when we're trying to get the NSA's attention.'

  I smiled. A scrambled digital signal attracts the NSA the way blood brings sharks. It's as useful as leaning close to whisper in someone's ear: anyone who sees you do it will immediately start listening intently. Better to just move the conversation somewhere else, where no one is looking.

  'How did things go?' he asked. 'Were you able to meet her?'

  'Yes.'

  'And your son?'

  I saw him, too.

  'Just saw him?'

  'No, it was more than that. I…' I paused, the memory seeming to shift something inside my chest. 'I held him in my arms while he slept.'

  'That's good,' he said, and I imagined him smiling.

  'You okay?' I said. 'That flu sounds pretty bad.'

  'I'm all right.'

  'I've got a situation I need your help with. I'll put the information on the bulletin board.'

  'I may not be able to access the bulletin board for a while. I'm in the hospital.'

  I frowned and pressed my ear closer to the receiver. 'What's going on?'

  'Nothing, I'll be out of here soon. Tell me about your situation. It sounds more pressing than mine.'

  'You sure your phone is all right?'

  'Positive.'

  Okay. I told him everything.

  When I was done, he said, 'What are you thinking?'

  'You know what I'm thinking. I can't stop halfway. The only way to finish this is to keep going until it's done.'

  'You mean…'

  'Look, the Chinese are just contractors on this. They don't know me, they don't know what I'm capable of, so they'll believe the obvious explanation for what happened to their people — a junior guy with a history of violence lost his temper, killed his boss, and went into hiding. But Yamaoto is going to know better. And he'll have an incentive to try to persuade the Chinese that I was behind the deaths of two of their people, as a way of getting them personally involved. So all I've done by taking out the two Chinese is buy myself a little time. If I don't finish Yamaoto, too, it'll have been for nothing. Worse than nothing, because if the Chinese figure out what really happened, they could retaliate against Midori and my son. They know where they live, goddamnit. They've been watching them.'

  There was a pause. Finally he said, 'I agree.'

  'Of course you agree. This is exactly what you wanted. Don't think I don't know it.'

  'I had no intention of putting your son in danger.'

  'You showed me those photos to make the baby more real to me, to make it impossible for me to ignore. Otherwise you could have just told me.'

  'Perhaps, but…'

  'You're a manipulative bastard, Tatsu. You know it's true. But I don't have time to argue with you about it. I don't even have time to hate you. I need your help.'

  'You want me to move them?'

  I knew he could do it. He'd moved Midori to New York in the first place, to protect her from Yamaoto. But Yamaoto had found her anyway.

  'I don't want you to do anything,' I said. 'If she gets wind of what's out there she'll never see me again. Just tell me how I can get to Yamaoto.'

  'You can't just get to him. He's afraid of you, you know. Even obsessed. He goes out infrequently. Uses bodyguards. Travels in an armored car…'

  'I've got access to a sniper. All I need to know is where and when.'

  'That's exactly the information Yamaoto now guards most jealously.'

  'What about his headquarters? His residence?'

  'The very locations where he most expects trouble, and where he takes the most precautions.'

  We were silent for a moment. I was so frustrated I was breathing hard.

  'You know,' I said, 'I wish you would just arrest this guy. I really do.'

  'We've been over this before. In addition to his other activities, Yamaoto is a powerful politician, well protected by his network of patronage and blackmail. Moving against him directly would do nothing but get me fired. Believe me, I wish I could.'

  'Fine, then just tell me how to get to him.'

  'I'm trying to. But if something happens to Yamaoto immediately following the deaths of the Chinese, it won't look good for you. It could cause a problem between you and the triads, which you just said you would rather avoid.'

  'How, then?'

  'You have to turn Yamaoto and the Chinese against each other. Make them suspect each other, rather than suspecting you.'

  'I'm listening.'

  There was a pause. It sounded like he was taking a drink of something. He coughed, then said, 'For the last ten years there has been a boom in the manufacture of methamphetamine in China and Taiwan. Chinese triads cooperate with the yakuza in smuggling the drugs into Japan.'

  'Is this the quid pro quo Yamaoto has been offering them in exchange for watching Midori and the boy?'

  'Not the smuggling itself. That's been going on for a long time. What's new, I've learned, is that Yamaoto has switched suppliers. Formerly he bought his product from Korean gangs. Now he has switched to United Bamboo, the triad based in Taiwan, in exchange for UB watching Midori in New York, where UB has a large operation. That's the quid pro quo.'

  'Where's our opening, then?'

  'The new arrangement is unstable. The players are unaccustomed to each other, and suspicious. The bad blood that is always festering and that lately has worsened between China and Japan has infected gang relations, too. Like the countries themselves, the gangs are always ready to think the worst of the other's motives. All they need is a little push, and they'll turn on each other.'

  'What do you have in mind?'

  'Up until now, Yamaoto and UB have been dealing in relatively small shipments of methamphetamine because they don't yet trust each other. But I have an informant who's told me of a particularly large shipment arriving later this week, the largest one yet. The parties are nervous because of the amount of product and cash involved. If something were to go wrong…'

  I thought for a moment. I couldn't be sure the Chinese would buy into my hoped-for explanation for what had happened to Wong and Chan. And regardless of what they believed, if Yamaoto learned of Wong's disappearance and Chan's death, he would draw his own conclusions. If he suspected I'd been in touch with Midori and the baby, he might move against them as a way of flushing me out. I hated to leave them alone and defenseless. But the only way I could see to protect them was to go after Yamaoto.

  'You trust your informant?' I asked.

  'He's always been reliable. It's what's kept him out of prison.'

  'How many principals?'

  'Two yakuza making the pickup. An unknown number of Chinese handling the delivery. But my guess is at least two Chinese.'

  So a total of at least four, maybe more. Too many to handle alone. This wasn't going to be easy.

  I sighed. 'What is it with Yamaoto? Why is he so obsessed with me? I mean, I'm the one who was forced to leave Japan. Yeah, I won a couple of battles, but couldn't he look at himself as the winner of the war?'

&n
bsp; 'I don't think so. It's not just your beating him that rankles. He's also afraid of you. He knows what you can do.'

  'I left the fucking country. Live and let live.'

  'Remember, he killed your friend Harry, even if he didn't pull the trigger himself. He's a vain man, and would insist on avenging such a loss. He assumes you would do the same, and that he is in continual danger as a result.'

  The words stung. Sure, he was just explaining why Yamaoto had it in for me. But he was also reminding me of a debt I'd failed to pay, knowing my shame about Harry would goad me. Tatsu had a way of imbuing his sentences with multiple meanings.

  I'd always known, deep down, that eventually I would have to finish things with Yamaoto. And now it wasn't just about the past. Yamaoto was keeping me from having something, whatever it might turn out to be, with Midori and my son here in New York, right now. Today. I'd been foolish, a coward even, to have waited so long to face up to reality. And now I would have to work on the fly, at an inherent disadvantage.

  Well, there was nothing I could do about that now. Except to tell myself this would be it, the last battle, the last war.

  'Where are you? What hospital?' I asked.

  'Jikei.'

  'It's too late to catch today's flights. I'll leave tomorrow and be there Saturday afternoon your time. You can brief me then.'

  11

  Delilah sat on the couch in her Paris apartment. She tried to concentrate on the book she was reading, but couldn't turn off her conflicted thoughts. She'd come back from Barcelona a week ago — a week! — and still hadn't heard from Rain. Things had always been open-ended before, true, but this time he had told her right at the airport that he would call. And especially after the things they'd said to each other, or nearly said, in Barcelona, what did it mean that he hadn't gotten in touch? Only one thing, she knew: he'd fixed things with his ex and lacked either the courage or the courtesy to tell Delilah. What was she supposed to do, call him, instead? What would she say? 'Hi, John, did you reconnect with your past love and your new family? Is there still any place in your life for me?' Please. She'd said too much already.

  No, it hadn't been a great week, coming as it did in the middle of what was turning out to be an interminable administrative review. Her colleague Boaz had called her to see how she was doing, and when she pressed him he admitted he'd heard the news wasn't good. It seemed they were trying to decide between a formal reprimand, which would be merely humiliating, and yanking her from the field permanently, which she didn't know if she could bear at all. Boaz was a friend and he'd tried to leaven his honesty by telling her how many supporters she had, but what difference did that make? If they decided to hang her, she was going to hang.

  Her mind's eye wasn't being kind to her. For work, she pictured conference rooms staffed by bald, paunchy men stroking their chins and clucking their tongues. For Rain, she envisioned a joyous reunion with Midori in the afternoon; tearful explanations and apologies in the evening; tender, intimate lovemaking all night, with a baby asleep in a crib nearby. Logically, she knew better, but this was a tough time for her and she couldn't control her imagination, only negotiate with it.

  She had fed Boaz the pieces of information she had acquired from Rain. Boaz knew that under the circumstances the request couldn't be operational, but he helped her anyway. The computers returned a single name: Midori Kawamura, thirty-eight, Japanese national, residing in New York City, mother of Koichiro Kawamura, born in New York fifteen months earlier. Jazz pianist. Delilah had looked up the woman's website and the moment she saw the bio photo, she knew it was her. She didn't need an intel report for that.

  The woman was beautiful, Delilah had to admit. She had that thick, shiny, perfectly straight Asian hair, and porcelain skin most women would kill for. And she was obviously talented. But she was a civilian. It didn't make sense.

  Well, attractions could be strong enough to survive long separations. They could even survive much worse, as her own relationship with Rain demonstrated. It hurt to admit it, but maybe it was no more complicated than that. Rain was in love with the woman and wanted to be with her, that was all.

  Or maybe he'd been telling the truth, maybe this was about the baby, not Midori. But the woman had never told him, he'd only found out from some thirdhand surveillance photos. Rain had said he'd screwed things up with her, but what did that mean? Screwed things up so badly that afterward the woman had tried to hide from him the existence of their child?

  Among the collateral information Boaz had supplied was a report that the woman's father had died of a heart attack less than a month before Midori left for America. By itself, nothing more than happenstance. But Delilah knew Rain's specialty was 'natural causes,' that he'd even been planning on causing a heart attack for his target on Macau when he and Delilah had first run into each other.

  Delilah had asked Boaz to check a little further, and had learned that the father, Yasuhiro Kawamura, had been a career bureaucrat with the Construction Ministry, which meant he would have been neck deep in all the corruption over there. A player, not a civilian.

  She moved these pieces around in her mind, and a possible pattern started to form. Rain and Midori's father… It was a little hard to believe, but somehow she felt it was right. But did the woman know?

  If her suspicions were correct, she might have an important tool. But a dangerous one. She'd have to think about how she could use it, or whether she should use it at all.

  Her mobile phone rang. She looked at it. No number appeared on the caller ID display.

  She closed the book, severely irritated with herself at how much she was hoping, and opened the phone. 'Allo,' she said.

  'Hey,' Rain said. 'It's me.'

  She paused, her heart beating hard, and said, 'How did things go?'

  'They got… complicated.'

  'How do you mean?'

  'I can't really talk about it.'

  'Why? I'm listening.'

  'I just can't right now.'

  'Oh, really?' She could hear the icicles in her own voice.

  'Come on, Delilah, don't be this way.'

  'What way is that?'

  Damn it, what was it about him that made her sulk and pout like a schoolgirl? She hated it.

  There was a pause, then he said, 'I'm sorry, Delilah.'

  Her heart beat harder. 'Sorry for what?'

  There was another pause. He said, 'I have to go to Tokyo for a few days to straighten some things out. I'll be in touch after that, okay?'

  She almost said, You mean like you were in touch after Barcelona?

  She bit it off and said instead, 'What's in Tokyo?'

  Another pause. He said, 'I'll call you soon. Bye.' And hung up.

  She stared at her phone for a moment, and it took all her self-control not to hurl it across the room.

  Goddamn him! Tokyo? What was that about, going to meet the family? What? And what was that good-bye? Was it, good-bye?

  He had just let her go, hadn't he? They'd been getting closer and closer, she'd been opening up more and more, but as soon as he'd gotten a better offer, he was gone. What did he think, he could just have her for fun whenever it was convenient and then discard her at a whim?

  And all this after the risks she'd taken to help him in Hong Kong, too, which was exactly what had caused her current troubles in the first place. Damn him. Goddamn him.

  She knew she wasn't taking this well, but at the moment she didn't care. She wasn't going to just sit alone on the other side of the world while the men in her organization tried to figure out what to do with her at work and the man in her heart tried to figure out what to do with her in his life.

  She thought again about what could have made Midori try to hide the baby from Rain, about what Rain could have done that would have precipitated that. Then she thought, The hell with it.

  She went to her laptop and made a reservation on the next afternoon's Air France flight to New York. If he was going to fuck with her, he was going to see that sh
e could fuck with him right back.

  12

  Dox and I met for dinner that evening at a Japanese restaurant called Omen on Thompson in SoHo. It was a good place, quiet and dark and private, and the food was first-rate. Over sushi and beer, I explained the situation in Japan, the risks and the possible benefits.

  When I was done, he said, 'There's something I want to ask you about.'

  'Okay,' I said, thinking there was something serious.

  'Well, in all the excitement, you never did tell me how things went last night before everything went haywire.'

  I realized I should have known better. 'It went okay,' I said.

  'Okay? What is okay?'

  'You know… okay.'

  'I'm talking about your lady.'

  'Yeah, it was good, I guess.'

  'Goddamn, man, what do I have to do, the old Rayovac to the nutsack to get you to talk?'

  'It was good. She didn't throw me out. She let me see… my son.'

  My son. I wondered if the words would ever feel familiar. Just saying them made me feel slightly dizzy, good and anxious and confused all at the same time.

  'Well, how was that?'

  'It was… good.'

  He rolled his eyes. 'John Rain, Captain Eloquence. Did you at least… you know.'

  I looked at him. 'Did I what?'

  'You know… did you get any.'

  'Oh, for Christ's sake…'

  'You got some then.'

  I shook my head in exasperation and said nothing.

  He grinned. 'And here you were just in Barcelona with the lovely Miss Delilah. You slut.'

  'I just called Delilah.'

  'How was that?'

  'I don't know. I told her things were complicated, that I needed a little time to sort them out. She got pretty sullen with me. She does that sometimes. But with the shit I'm up against, I just can't deal with it right now. I can't.'

  'Well, making a woman like Delilah sullen, that's quite a privilege.'

  'Look, let's talk about Japan, okay? Are you interested?'