The Man With The Red Tattoo

by Benson, Raymond

  The meeting broke up so that the technicians could familiarise the agents with the new equipment. Bond took a look at some of the other things on the table that Boothroyd hadn’t presented.

  “What’s this, Major?” Bond asked, picking up a Palm Pilot V. Boothroyd beamed and said, “Ah. Our little electronic organiser. That’s still in the testing stage, Double-O Seven. We haven’t worked out all the bugs.”

  “What does it do?”

  “Besides being a real Palm Pilot, a cross section is filled with a stronger plastic explosive than we’ve seen here today. It has the force of a stick of dynamite. You set it off simply by inputting the data into the Palm Pilot. It becomes its own detonator.”

  “Ingenious. How much memory does it need to do that?”

  “You’re being facetious, but actually that’s the problem we’re having with the device’s other function. Not enough memory. Or rather, not enough of a power source to be truly effective.”

  “For what?” Bond asked.

  Boothroyd turned on a small desk fan that sat on the table. As the blades spun and whirred, he held the Palm Pilot a few inches away from it and pressed something. The fan’s power immediately shut off. The blades slowed to a stop.

  “It’s a fairly weak electro-magnetic pulse,” the major said. “We’d like it to be able to knock the power out of cars at a reasonable distance, but we can’t figure out how to give it a large enough energy supply.”

  “What can it do now?” Bond asked.

  “Oh, just what you saw. Small appliances. Televisions. Perhaps some security alarms. At extremely close range, mind you.”

  “May I have it now? I’ll test it in the field for you.”

  Boothroyd thought for a moment and then nodded. “All right, Commander, I’ll let you do that. I’ll put it on your clearing slip for M. Just make sure that—”

  A loud explosion made everyone in the room flinch. Someone shouted, “Whoa!” and laughed as Instructor Reinhardt cursed aloud.

  “—you know how to operate it properly,” Boothroyd sighed.

  “I think it might have something to do with Japan,” Nigel Smith said.

  Bond winced. “Doesn’t she realise that I’m doing everything I can about this Yoshida business? It’s all that I’ve been doing since we beat the Union.”

  “You and me both,” agreed Nigel, Bond’s relatively new personal assistant, a clear-eyed young man who had been discharged from the Royal Navy due to an injury. Bond had originally bristled at being assigned a male assistant, but Nigel had shown that he was sharp and capable. He also possessed much of the same sardonic attitude towards the job as Bond. And while Nigel made it a point not to be over impressed with Bond, it was obvious that he admired his boss. Taking a cue from the style with which Bond presented himself, it wasn’t long before Nigel upgraded his own wardrobe by buying his shirts from Turnbull and Asser.

  Bond appreciated Nigel’s candour and honesty, especially when it came to intelligence matters. The young man had a knack for reading between the lines and interpreting oblique reports from the field. His opinions were blunt and often gelled with Bond’s. In a very short time the young man had become an ally.

  “It might be about the G8 summit conference,” Nigel suggested.

  “Lord, I hope not,” Bond muttered. He had seen the memo. An emergency session had been scheduled to take place in Japan in less than two weeks. “She probably wants me to babysit the PM.”

  “That’s because you’re the PM’s best friend since that business in Gibraltar a couple of years ago,” Nigel said, chuckling.

  Bond glanced at the digital clock set into the wall, a standard feature in all outer offices. The working day was nearly over.

  “How long ago did she ring?” Bond asked.

  “Miss Moneypenny phoned me about a half-hour before you arrived.”

  “All right,” Bond said. “Surely she was aware of my appointment with Q Branch. Call Penny back and tell her I’m on my way.”

  “Right.” Nigel picked up the phone as his boss turned around and left the office.

  Bond cursed silently as he got into a lift. If it wasn’t about the G8 conference, then it was certainly about Goro Yoshida. He was just as concerned about Yoshida as M was. After all, the exiled Japanese extremist had been the Union’s client for the recent affair that ultimately proved the unmaking of that terrorist-for-hire organisation. It was Yoshida who had put up the money. It was Yoshida who was now at the top of the “most wanted” lists of Japan and nearly every country in the world.

  Just before the lift stopped on M’s floor, Bond gazed into his indistinct reflection on the silver panels of the lift doors. He ran his fingers through the coal-black hair, not bothering to push the comma that hung above his right eyebrow back in place.

  He got out of the lift and strode down the hall towards Miss Moneypenny’s outer office, continuing to run through the precious little new information that had been uncovered since Yoshida’s last venture. All that MI6 and MI5 knew about the terrorist was that he was a wealthy businessman who had hooked up with criminal elements, probably the yakuza, the Japanese mafia, and become a prominent nationalist. At first he was harmless, confining himself to travelling the streets of Tokyo in a green van, as most of the nationalists did and still do, announcing his views through a loudspeaker. He proclaimed that Japan had lost its traditional values and was being poisoned by the West. It was the same rhetoric that dozens of nationalists have spouted since before World War II. But shortly after Yoshida publicly declared “war” on the West, he mysteriously disappeared. He handed over his company to others to run, then left Japan just as several violent terrorist acts were instigated against Western countries. An embassy was bombed here, a fast-food restaurant was obliterated there. Intelligence agencies speculated that Yoshida had been behind the incidents.

  Yoshida, now wanted by the police in Japan for “treasonous views and acts” as well as terrorism, was believed to be hiding somewhere in a remote part of Russia with his own private army.

  Miss Moneypenny was on the phone when Bond walked into the office but her bright eyes held a greeting for him. Before she could mime a message, the door to M’s inner office opened.

  “Ah, there you are, Double-O Seven. I wanted to see you. Come inside.”

  M handed a folder to Moneypenny and walked back into her office, leaving the door open. Bond moved forward as Moneypenny gave him a wink and a little wave.

  As soon as the door had closed behind them Bond said, “Ma’am if this is about Goro Yoshida, I assure you that—”

  “It’s not about Goro Yoshida, Double-O Seven,” M said as she moved around her desk. “Please sit down.”

  Bond did as he was told.

  So what was the score? he wondered. Something new?

  M, who was dressed in a sharply tailored charcoal grey Bella Freud suit, sat down and asked, “You’ve seen the memo about the emergency G8 summit conference?”

  Here it comes, he thought. “Yes, I have.”

  “The Koan-Chosa-Cho is in charge of security but every representative brings his or her own entourage. I’d like you there with our PM. Bodyguard duty. As a matter of fact, the PM requested you. You should be flattered.”

  Bond smiled to himself.

  “Is something funny, Double-O Seven?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “The Japanese are a little worried about security in this day and age, as are we all. Potential threats to representatives of Western governments are a constant concern since the events of September 2001. The Japanese secret service want intelligence operatives from all of the participating governments to accompany the G8 members. I believe you are acquainted with the head of the Koan-Chosa-Cho.”

  “Indeed,” Bond said. He had an old and dear friend who worked for the Japanese Secret Service.

  “Mr. Tanaka was the one who initially put forth your name. The PM, after discussions with the US president, has agreed and made the official request. The J
apanese have received some information that suggests there could possibly be a danger to the summit conference. In light of this revelation, I suppose your earlier comment about Goro Yoshida might not be too far off the mark.”

  “What kinds of threats have been made?” Bond asked. “Do they involve Yoshida?”

  “We don’t know. Tanaka will have to brief you on that. Now.” She reached across the desk, picked up a folder and handed it to him. “There is something else I want you to look into while you’re in Japan. In fact, I’m sending you over ahead of the summit conference so that you can do so. We don’t want your presence to arouse too many suspicions in Japan, or cause undue alarm, so you will ostensibly be in the country to investigate the suspicious deaths of a British citizen and his family.”

  Bond opened the folder and saw photos of a man named Peter McMahon.

  M continued talking. “Two days ago, the Japanese-born daughter of that man died of a mysterious illness aboard a Japan Airlines flight from Tokyo to London. It just so happens that the girl’s parents and older sister in Japan died around the same time that the plane was in flight. I’m waiting for the pathology results on the dead girl, but the examining doctor at Heathrow thought that she might have died from some fast-acting form of West Nile disease. He had never seen anything like it. From what news we can gather from an unhelpful Japan, it appears that the same thing killed the rest of the family.”

  “Had they been together recently?”

  “Yes,” M replied. “At the mother’s birthday party the night before, in a suburb of Tokyo.”

  Bond quietly cleared his throat and asked, “What does this have to do with us?”

  “Have you heard of Peter McMahon?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “A shrewd businessman. Ran a pharmaceutical company called CureLab Inc. in Tokyo. He married the founder’s daughter and pretty soon the old man gave him a job. McMahon turned the company, which was in the throes of bankruptcy, into a business worth millions of pounds. They’re one of the leading firms in the Pharmaceuticals industry. And he has important friends in this country.”

  Bond looked straight into M’s cool blue eyes.

  “I see,” Bond said.

  “The Japanese police have yet to declare whether or not the McMahon family died of accidental or natural causes or if they were murdered.”

  “Murdered? You think this was an assassination?” Bond asked. “Why?”

  “Apparently McMahon had a lot of enemies,” M said. “His father-in-law, Hideo Fujimoto, died three years ago. Ownership of the company passed to Fujimoto’s daughter, as his wife was already dead. I would imagine that in the case of the McMahons’ deaths, ownership would have passed to their three daughters. One of those daughters died with her parents in Tokyo. Another one died on that aeroplane.”

  “Where is the third one?”

  “We don’t know. The Japanese bureaucracy is withholding information about the McMahons. But you’ll have the full cooperation of the Koan-Chosa-Cho, which seems to be taking a more aggressive view of the situation than the Tokyo police. We have a right to look into the mysterious death of a British citizen and they know it. You can begin by going out to Uxbridge tonight to have a word with the coroner who is looking after Kyoko McMahon’s body. His office has been alerted and you are expected at seven-thirty this evening.”

  Bond felt a flicker of fear. Even the thought of going back to Japan after all these years gave him reason to pause.

  “It all sounds very interesting, but with all due respect, I’m really not qualified to be a crime-scene detective,” Bond said truthfully.

  M looked at him hard and said, “That may be true, but that’s not the real reason you don’t want to go.”

  Bond raised his eyebrows.

  “I know you better than that, Double-O Seven,” M said. “I am quite aware of your history with Japan. I understand that you might have certain reservations about returning there.”

  Bond sighed inwardly. The old girl was perceptive. Bond had spent a significant amount of time in Japan, the victim of amnesia, after his pursuit of Ernst Stavro Blofeld. It had happened a lifetime ago, it seemed, but Bond didn’t enjoy being reminded of those dark times.

  “You might think of it as a holiday,” she proposed with a wry smile.

  “A holiday?”

  “Your friend Tanaka is eager to see you.”

  Bond nodded. “It would be nice to see Tiger again. But still …”

  “James,” M said, uncharacteristically referring to him by his fore-name. “I need you there. You have the ability to see the wider picture. I want you to investigate CureLab itself. I want you to find out if Peter McMahon had an enemy who would be willing to assassinate him and his family. Was it really murder? And if so, who was responsible? And I want you to locate that missing daughter.”

  Bond remained silent. He knew that she was giving him an order, but the prospect of facing the ghosts that haunted his memories was daunting.

  “That’s all, Double-O Seven,” she said. “And just to ease your mind, I’m not taking you off the Yoshida case. See what you can learn about him while you’re there. If these threats to the summit conference concern him, well …”

  “I understand.”

  “I know you hate babysitting jobs, Double-O Seven,” she added. “Every Double-O has to do it every now and then.”

  Bond stood and raised his hand to stop her. “I’ll get the details from Miss Moneypenny. You’re right. It will be a change of scenery for me. And I certainly can’t let down my old friend the PM.”

  M couldn’t help but smile as he walked out of the office.

  THREE

  A NIGHT AT THE MORTUARY

  THE SUN WAS ON ITS WAY DOWN AS BOND DROVE WEST ON THE M4 OUT OF London in the decommissioned Aston-Martin that he had purchased from Q Branch a few years back. He had always enjoyed the DB5 and he drove it around London more often than his old much-loved Bentley.

  Bond came off the motorway at the Heathrow exit, turned north, followed the signs to Uxbridge, found his way to Kingston Lane and pulled into Hillingdon Cemetery. The Hillingdon Public Mortuary was in a fifty-year-old single-storey T-shaped brick structure built on a corner of the cemetery, adjacent to a playing field. A Ford and a Range Rover were the only other two vehicles in the car park. Bond parked the Aston-Martin next to them, got out and took in his surroundings. The gravestones in the cemetery were bathed in the dull glow of dusk as the sky was caught between dark navy blue and golden orange.

  Bond entered the lobby through blue front doors. The building was silent and dark, save for a few lights on in the offices. The staff had gone home and the place seemed deserted.

  “Hello?” Bond called.

  A man dressed in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up came into the room from an office on the right. He had the rugged look of someone who might once have been a police officer or perhaps served in the fire brigade.

  “May I help you?” the man asked.

  “The name’s Bond. James Bond. I’m here to see Dr. Lodge.”

  “Oh, right. We’ve been expecting you. I’m Bob Greenwell, coroner’s officer. This way, please.”

  Bond followed him into the office, where another man was looking intently at a laptop computer. The man looked up and stood.

  “Mister Bond? I’m Chris Lodge. I’m the pathologist assigned to this case.” They shook hands. Lodge appeared to be in his mid-thirties, was soft-spoken and had a gentle grip.

  “I hope it wasn’t too inconvenient to see me tonight,” Bond said. “I’m leaving for Japan tomorrow.”

  “I quite understand,” the doctor said. Greenwell sat at another desk, picked up a paperback novel and began to read.

  “The staff usually go home at night,” Dr Lodge said. “I come in when I’m called. Please sit down.” The doctor gestured to an armchair on the other side of his desk.

  Bond got to the point. “Can you tell me about Kyoko McMahon?”

&nb
sp; Lodge shook his head with pity as he sat down. “An ugly and lonely death. We’re still waiting for the toxicology results. We’ve sent all of our information to the Imperial College people at Charing Cross Hospital. There will have to be an inquest, I’m afraid. The coroner has yet to sign my postmortem report.”

  “So it’s a suspicious death?” Bond asked.

  “Downright baffling. We still don’t know what killed the poor girl. To tell you the truth, it’s one of the more interesting cases I’ve ever seen.”

  “Why don’t you take me through the chain of events that occurred after the plane landed at Heathrow. Then I’d like to see your report, if you don’t mind.”

  The doctor frowned. “This is highly unusual, Mister Bond, but as you’re with the Ministry of Defence, I suppose it’s all right. Postmortem information is normally kept confidential and is released only to the family … and to the police if the cause of death wasn’t natural.”

  “I assure you that I’m not a reporter for the Daily Express,” Bond said dryly.

  “Right. Anyway, the pilot radioed ahead to Heathrow; the normal procedure should a passenger die on board. Under international law, when a passenger dies in flight, the death is taken to have occurred at the destination airport. The authorities were waiting for the plane; the Port Health Authority doctor examined the girl and pronounced her dead. The body was removed from the aircraft by an Uxbridge funeral director that we use. A hearse brought her here, where she was identified and tagged. Finding next of kin was quite a performance. I understand her immediate family is in Japan, am I correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anyway, after failing to reach her parents, we finally got hold of her great uncle.” Lodge consulted his notes. “A Shinji Fujimoto. I must say that he was rather uncooperative. He didn’t want us to touch her body at all—just wanted her sent back to Japan. He was informed that it was a matter of law that we do a post-mortem in this country. Permission was granted, reluctantly. I was called in from Tooting yesterday morning, and I performed the post-mortem yesterday afternoon.”