The Man With The Red Tattoo

by Benson, Raymond

  “This way,” he said.

  Bond followed him past several offices and a conference room, and finally to a closed door marked with Fujimoto’s name and title. The card was swiped once more and the door opened. Fujimoto stepped aside and again gestured for Bond to enter first. Bond stepped through the door and a heavy object came crashing down on his head.

  A slap in the face roused him.

  His head was pounding and his eyes were blurry, but eventually he focused on Fujimoto’s face.

  Another slap.

  “I think he’s awake now,” Fujimoto said to someone else.

  Bond took in his surroundings. He was in Fujimoto’s spacious office, complete with a stylish glass-top desk, computer, filing cabinets and bookshelves. There was a portable fan standing next to the desk. A large picture window looked out onto the bright lights of Ginza. There were three other men in the room, all teenagers or very young adults, dressed like yakuza. One of them was Noburo Ichihara.

  “Close the curtains,” Fujimoto ordered, and one of them pulled the cord that shut the drapes.

  Bond saw his Walther lying on the desk, along with the Palm Pilot and DoCoMo phone, but they had left the antacid blister pack and the cigar holder in his jacket pocket. They had placed a plastic painting sheet on the carpet underneath Bond’s chair.

  “Hold him,” Fujimoto commanded. One of the gang went behind Bond, bent down and grabbed their captive’s forearms. He pulled them back tightly and held them in a vicelike grip. Fujimoto nodded at Ichihara.

  The killer slowly slipped on black leather gloves as he grinned, revealing a large gold tooth. Then he stepped in front of Bond and punched him hard in the face. Bond felt a shockwave from his jaw to the top of his skull. His mouth began to bleed.

  “Again,” Fujimoto ordered.

  The angry fist smashed into Bond’s lips a second time.

  “Again.”

  This went on repeatedly for several minutes. When Fujimoto decided that his captive had had enough, Bond’s face was a bloody mess.

  “What do you want, Mister Bond? Why are you in Japan?” Fujimoto asked.

  Bond groaned, barely able to keep his head up. “You … know … why …”

  “Well, officially you are here to investigate the deaths of Peter McMahon, my niece, and their daughters. You are to try to find the wayward girl, Mayumi. We know all that. But what else are you after? Talk, Mister Bond, or this will become very unpleasant.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Fujimoto,” Bond said, his words slurring. He had difficulty enunciating.

  “You are in Japan for another reason, Mister Bond. What is it?”

  Bond had to think. The summit conference? Was that what the bastard was on about?

  Wait … ! How classified was that information? It was a secret G8 meeting, wasn’t it?

  “Nothing,” Bond said. “I just want to find your great niece and get the hell out of this country.”

  “My great niece’s whereabouts is none of your business and it is none of your country’s business. Her father may have been a British citizen, but she is not. This is family business and I shall take care of it myself.”

  “You have taken care of it, haven’t you?” Bond whispered.

  “What did you say, Mister Bond?”

  “You killed them. You were responsible for their deaths. You murdered your own niece and her family.”

  “And why would I do that?”

  “So you could control the company. You were always jealous of your older brother’s success and resented him for not leaving CureLab to you. I would bet that you’re going to sell out completely. You’re going to sell your shares to Yonai Enterprises. Aren’t you?”

  “You are in no position to ask questions, Mister Bond,” Fujimoto said. “Peter McMahon outlived his usefulness. He was just a barbarian foreigner who had seduced the daughter of the company’s chairman. He took over a Japanese company—what should have been my company—and he finally met his karmic destiny.”

  “So you admit killing them?”

  “I admit nothing. Tomorrow is a new day, Mister Bond. Things will be different. Tomorrow, under the eyes of the Daibutsu, CureLab Incorporated will rise to a new level of existence and be entirely controlled by Japanese. CureLab will be under new management. And you, Mister Bond, will be dead.”

  “What is the yakuza paying you, Fujimoto?” Bond spat. “What kind of deal did you make with them?” Fujimoto shook his head and started to walk out of the room. He stood beside a rather large rubbish bin on wheels that janitors used to wheel around the building when they cleaned offices.

  “Ichihara, you know what to do. Try not to make a mess of my office. Put the body in here when you’re done and you can wheel it to the van. Take him somewhere where he won’t be found.”

  “Hai!” Ichihara barked, and then he turned to Bond and smiled.

  The gold tooth sparkled in his mouth.

  ELEVEN

  SMOKE SCREENS

  BOND WAS ALONE WITH THE THREE HOODS. BLOOD COVERED HIS FACE AND clothes and he was dazed from the beating, but he knew that he had to snap out of it and defend himself. Bond willed himself to concentrate, commanding his senses to be alert. Timing would be everything, and if he couldn’t use the element of surprise then all could be lost.

  Ichihara moved towards him, fists ready. Bond clumsily attempted to leap out of the chair and attack the thug but Ichihara easily punched him hard in the face. Bond fell on top of the plastic sheet and lay still.

  “What did you do?” one of the others asked.

  “He’s out,” the other one ventured.

  Ichihara laughed. “Some tough guy. Come on, let’s pick him up and get him out of here.”

  “Shouldn’t we kill him first?”

  “We can have more fun doing that where we’re going.”

  Bond’s body was limp. The three men hoisted him off the floor and carried him to the rubbish bin. One man managed to open the lid and then they dumped Bond inside. He crumpled like a rag doll. They shut the lid and began to wheel their cargo out of the office.

  Inside the container, Bond reached into his pocket and grabbed the antacid blister pack that Major Boothroyd had given him. He extracted two pink tablets and then knocked on the lid.

  “He’s awake,” one man said. “Let’s take him out and kill him!”

  “I told you we should have done that in the first place,” the third man said.

  “All right,” Ichihara replied.

  They closed the office door again and moved the bin back to the middle of the room. Ichihara stood away and reached to open it, just in case the gaijin tried something funny.

  As soon as he saw the fluorescent strip lights on the office ceiling above him, Bond shut his eyes and threw one of the tablets as hard as he could. It struck the ceiling and burst and a dark cloud of smoke quickly enveloped the area. Water immediately shot out of sprinklers built into the ceiling.

  The three men shouted in surprise and moved back, temporarily blinded by the flash. Under the cover of the smoke, Bond climbed out of the bin. He couldn’t see through the smoke, but at least he could discern shapes. One of the thugs was three feet away from him, waving at the smoke in an attempt to clear it. Bond slugged him hard in the stomach. The man went “Ooompf!” and doubled over. Bond clasped his hands together and brought them down hard on the back of the man’s neck. He heard the bones crack.

  One down, two to go.

  “What was that?” Ichihara shouted.

  “He’s escaped!”

  “Get him!”

  Bond moved quickly to the desk and picked up the Walther and his other items. Then he moved around the room in a circle, carefully avoiding the two men.

  The building’s fire alarms went off. Bond knew that they would have company very soon.

  Ichihara, still unable to see, drew a Browning 9mm and pointed it into the smoke. He fired twice, aiming nowhere near Bond.

  “Are you c
razy?” the other man shouted. “What are you doing?”

  Ichihara didn’t listen. He started turning around, firing a bullet every couple of feet. Bond moved to the portable fan that was beside the desk, pointed it towards the centre of the room, and flicked it on. The blades began to whirr, blowing the smoke away.

  The black billows immediately dissipated, leaving the two men standing and rubbing their eyes. Ichihara was pointing his gun in the opposite direction from where Bond was now.

  “I’m over here,” Bond said. It was one of those rare moments when he received utter and complete satisfaction.

  Ichihara turned and the Walther recoiled. Bond performed what was known as a Mozambique shot: “Three shots—two to the chest and one to the head, knocks him down and makes him dead.” Ichihara slammed backwards into a filing cabinet and slid to the floor.

  The other man saw what had happened. His eyes wide with fright, he thrust up his hands. “Don’t shoot!” he cried.

  Bond levelled the pistol at him. “Get inside,” he said, gesturing to the rubbish bin. The man didn’t have to be asked twice. He quickly climbed over the side and got in. Bond put the lid on and snapped it shut. He then pulled the plastic sheet out from underneath the chair and wrapped it around the bin so that the man would be unable to open it from the inside.

  Now he was ready. Bond listened at the door; satisfied that no one was nearby, he opened it. Then two security guards appeared at the other end of the hallway, running towards him. Bond counted to four, then stepped outside the office.

  He threw another pink antacid tablet into the hallway, where it struck the metal wall hard and exploded. Another cloud of black smoke filled the corridor, blocking the security guards’ vision. Bond then inched along the wall as the two men blindly walked right past him.

  As he approached the main reception area he heard the lift bell chime and the doors open. There were several voices.

  Bond ducked into a conference room and shut the door. He heard the rushing footsteps down the hallway, started to open the door but stopped when he saw what was in the room.

  Large anatomical colour illustrations of mosquitoes had been posted on three walls of the room. It was also furnished with a round conference table and chairs, a podium and a computer. The monitor was on and there appeared to be some kind of Power Point slide presentation in progress. Someone had been in the room working on something and had left very recently. A pad of paper and a pen, a mug of coffee and an ashtray full of cigarette ends were next to the computer and a sports jacket was draped around a chair.

  Bond decided to risk taking a look. First he examined the posters. All of the text was written in kanji except for the words “Hokkaido Mosquito and Vector Control Centre” in the bottom corner of each illustration. The posters had been stamped with an address in a town called Noboribetsu. The mosquitoes were of different species, slightly different in shape and colouring. Bond turned his attention to the computer. A Palm Pilot was sitting in a cradle that was hooked up to the CPU; it was downloading the files. The slideshow in operation also featured mosquitoes. There were shots of a female mosquito laying eggs, shots of eggs hatching into larvae, the larvae shedding skins to become pupae and then finally adult mosquitoes emerging from the pupal skins. Some kanji text appeared on the screens, then more pictures of mosquitoes—biting a human arm, mating and alighting on water.

  Finally a slide appeared that featured a miniature bonsai waterfall like the one he had seen at the McMahon home. Bond knew that he had found something important.

  Bond removed the Palm Pilot on the table and replaced it with his own. He quickly pressed some buttons and began to download the entire slideshow onto his device. While he waited, he took the sports jacket that was hung over the chair and used it to wipe off blood from his face, hands and clothes.

  He heard shouts and more people running through the hallway.

  Hurry up! he silently commanded the device. He dropped the nowbloody jacket onto the chair, then took his DoCoMo phone out of his pocket. He punched the speed dial button for Tiger, who answered it after one ring.

  “Bondo-san?”

  “Tiger, I’ve made a slight detour.”

  “Where are you?”

  “CureLab office in Ginza.”

  “Ah, yes, I see the indicator on the map. Your homing device is still working. Do you need help?”

  “Affirmative. I need an escape route quickly.”

  “Can you make it to the front of the building?”

  “I can try.”

  “Give me ten minutes.”

  There was a voice directly outside the conference room door. Bond shut off the phone, quickly moved to the wall beside the door and drew the Walther. He levelled it so that whoever came in would get a face full of lead.

  The door opened and a man started to walk in, but someone called him from down the hall. Bond only got a glimpse of him. He was a Japanese man of about thirty, slight of build, with glasses and a crewcut. Whatever he was, Bond knew that he was no killer: a scientist, perhaps, or a doctor. He looked very familiar.

  “What?” the man shouted back.

  The voice called him again.

  “Hmpf,” the man said, then closed the door without coming in.

  Of course! It was Fujio Aida, the missing molecular biologist! What the hell was he doing at the CureLab office? Hadn’t he been fired for being a spy and traitor? What was the big mystery with him being “missing”? Here he was, alive and well, and apparently working on a project involving mosquitoes.

  How long before he’d be back? Bond wondered. He ran back to the computer and saw that the download was eighty per cent done. Bond glanced at the pad of paper on the table but couldn’t understand a word of what was written on it. He tore the page off, folded it and put it in his pocket.

  Finally the download ended. Bond retrieved his Palm Pilot and then moved back to the door. He listened but wasn’t able to discern how many men were in the hallway. There was no way that he was going to be able to walk out of the room without being seen.

  Time for another antacid.

  Bond palmed a pink tablet in his left hand and kept the pistol in his right. He pushed the button and the door slid open. He looked out and saw several men at the end of the hall near Fujimoto’s office. The other way, in the direction of the lifts, was clear. Bond stepped out and walked swiftly towards reception but someone saw him and shouted.

  “You! Stop!”

  Bond turned and threw the tablet, bursting it against the wall. The dark smoke filled the corridor once again and Bond ran for it. He reached the lift as bullets flew in his direction. He punched the button and pounded on the door. There were shouts in the hallway as the sound of running boots grew louder.

  “Come on, damn you!” Bond said aloud.

  The lift chimed and the doors split open just as the men began to swarm through the smoke. Bond jumped inside, turned and fired the Walther once at a guard who had made it to the lift. The guard jerked back, dropped his weapon and fell back into the arms of another man. The doors closed and Bond was on his way down.

  When he got to the ground floor, he was surprised to see that no one was there. The security guard who had let him and Fujimoto into the building was not at his post. Probably upstairs on the nineteenth floor, Bond thought.

  Bond casually went through the front doors and out to the street. A fire engine was already there, and he could hear more sirens approaching.

  “Bondo-san!”

  Tiger was in the Majesta, which was parked by the kerb nearby. Bond ran and got into the back, then the driver sped away just as another fire engine and police cars swerved around the block and pulled up to the building.

  “Do you need to go to hospital?” Tiger asked, his brow wrinkled with concern.

  “I’m all right,” Bond said as he held a cloth filled with ice to his face. “I’ll probably just look like Frankenstein’s monster for a few days. Nothing’s broken. I can still talk.”

 
; “At least you didn’t let him live to tell the tale.” Tiger handed him a glass of whisky from the mini-bar in the back of the Majesta. Bond took a long, burning drink and gasped with pleasure. “God, that felt good,” he said. “Arigato.”

  Tiger laughed. “Bondo-san, you have the highest tolerance for pain of anyone I know.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “Bondo-san, you must realise that all of these murders involving Abo and Umeki could have absolutely nothing to do with the McMahons. It could very well be yakuza and bosozoku business.”

  Bond pulled out the Palm Pilot and gave it to Tiger. “We have to take a look at what’s on here. CureLab has something going on with mosquitoes, that’s for certain.” He related everything that he had seen in the conference room, including his identification of Fujio Aida.

  “So what is Aida doing back at CureLab?” Tanaka asked.

  “Obviously working on mosquitoes. Tiger, that bonsai contraption was just like the one we found at the McMahons’.”

  “I believe you. I will ask our lab to rush the analysis of it.” Tiger took the Palm Pilot and flipped a switch on the armrest. The back of the driver’s seat pulled down to reveal a laptop computer. Tiger booted it up and placed the Palm Pilot in the cradle.

  “This should only take a few moments.”

  “I also got this,” Bond said, pulling out the piece of paper from the notepad. Tiger took it and gave it a cursory look.

  “It says, ‘Life cycle from eggs hatching to adult mosquito has been reduced to one week. Still need to work on transom-varial transmission.’ What does that mean, Bondo-san?”

  “I’m not sure. Something to do with the female’s eggs. Did Reikosan tell you what Abo told us?”

  “About Yoshida?”

  “Yes.”

  Tiger nodded. “Very worrisome. My superiors are beginning to take all of this a bit more seriously.”