NEVER SAY DIE: Mark Cole Takes On the Yakuza in His Most Thrilling Adventure Yet!

by J. T. Brannan

  ‘You’ve increased protection for Toshikatsu?’ Cole asked.

  ‘Don’t you worry about the prime minister,’ Nakamura said. ‘He is our concern. You just concentrate on your story. The girl.’

  Cole nodded his head. ‘Okay. So tell me where to start.’

  Nakamura smiled broadly. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’

  11

  Cole stood in front of the large concrete and glass building late the next morning, looking up at the edifice in interest and ignoring the pain in his head which stemmed from too many drinks, and too many bouts of randori. Not for the first time, he realized he wasn’t getting any younger.

  He was in the Marunouchi district of Tokyo, a futuristic cityscape of glass-walled skyscrapers sandwiched between Tokyo Station and the Imperial Palace. It was home to the world headquarters of dozens of enormously powerful companies, including Mitsubishi, Hitachi, Nikko Citygroup and Konica Minolta , as well as the Japanese offices of other huge corporations such as KPMG, JPMorgan Chase, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Standard and Poor’s. It was the center of Tokyo’s business district, housing untold billions of dollars in wealth.

  And as Nakamura had told Cole over a shot of Ichiro’s King of Diamonds Malt in the early hours of the morning, it also housed the headquarters of the Omoto-gumi.

  Something Cole had learned was that – in stark contrast to how the mob operated back home – the yakuza were quite open about their business. They had business cards and corporate premises like any other company, and their members even proudly displayed lapel pins on their uniform of dark suits to identify which syndicate they belonged to. Although many yakuza activities were against the law – and perpetrators would indeed be prosecuted if a case could be made – it wasn’t actually illegal to belong to a yakuza group, or for the groups to exist. As such, the Omoto-gumi had as much right to have a headquarters in Marunouchi as Mitsubishi did; the difference in profits was probably negligible anyway.

  What was also interesting was that the Omoto-gumi – small in numbers compared to the large Tokyo gangs of the Inagawa-kai and the Sumiyoshi-kai – had suddenly become able to afford to house its company offices in such an expensive district about six years ago. Not long after Michiko had been adopted by Yamaguchi Mitsuya and moved to Tokyo to live with the Omoto-gumi. A coincidence? Nakamura certainly hoped that Cole would be able to find out.

  His cover was developing even further now, as his new identification – provided by Nakamura – named him as Hank Jowett, resident of San Francisco. To the Omoto-gumi leadership, he would be a middleman for the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist prison gang and organized crime syndicate operating out of nearby San Quentin State Prison; to Nakamura and the cops, he was a freelance journalist impersonating Jowett. He could only hope that nobody discovered who he really was.

  Using such identities never bothered Cole as it did some other people, and he found it perfectly natural to move fluidly from one to another; after all, his entire life was a fabricated construction. Mark Kowalski had been declared Killed In Action in Pakistan years ago, and he had lived as Mark Cole since then; and even now, he worked at the Paradigm Group under the assumed identity of Dr. Alan Sandbourne. He had worked undercover, in countless different identities, for most of his professional life, and two more would make no difference whatsoever.

  He knew who he was on a deeper level than a mere name – he was a killer and a predator who needed to be controlled by his government, an attack dog held by the leash. He was a weapon to be pointed at a target and fired. His name didn’t matter at all.

  Cole approached the building, which was fronted by a noodle bar and an electronics store at ground level, and observed the row of buzzers set up next to a narrow doorway, watched over by two closed-circuit television cameras. All the markings were in Japanese, but he recognized the rose-type crest of the Omoto-gumi inlaid next to one of the buttons and pressed it.

  A gruff voice answered instants later. ‘Hai.’ Yes.

  ‘Ohayo Gozaimasu,’ Cole responded in broken Japanese. ‘My name is Hank Jowett, I represent interests in the United States.’

  There was a blast of staccato Japanese, and then nothing. Had he been sent on his way?

  But then another voice came on. ‘Mr. Jowett?’ the voice said in good English. ‘Do you have an appointment?’

  ‘No,’ Cole said, choosing his words carefully and feeling the scrutiny of the cameras above him. ‘Due to the nature of my business, I thought it unwise to use the telephone.’

  There was a pause, as if the man was wondering what to do, then the voice came back. ‘Eighth floor,’ it said simply. A buzzer sounded and Cole pulled at the door; it opened, and he stepped off the streets of Marunouchi into the lion’s den.

  Cole walked into a marble-lined hallway, a simple yet elegant corridor which led to a bank of elevators at the far end.

  He walked to the elevators and, once inside, pressed the button for level eight. As the doors shut, he noticed that six levels of the twelve story building had the Omoto-gumi crest embossed next to them. He also noticed the ubiquitous security cameras watching him from above.

  When the doors opened again, Cole was greeted by four large Japanese in black suits and ties with white shirts – the yakuza uniform hijacked from American gangster movies of the forties and fifties. Without a word, using just hand gestures, they made him brace against a wall and searched him thoroughly.

  One of them pulled out his wallet and passport, and held onto them as the search was finished. Cole noticed that he didn’t look at them.

  Finally the search was over, presumably to the satisfaction of the four men, and he was escorted down another corridor, this one especially narrow. In fact, it was so narrow that Cole wondered if it was just due to excessive rental prices, or if there was a more practical purpose. Such narrow spaces would be much easier to defend if the building came under attack.

  They turned a corner at the end and came into a well-appointed foyer. The floor was tiled in marble, bamboo plantings were spread artistically about the area, and several paintings and woodblock prints hung on the walls. Against one end of the room was a large reception desk with the huge crest of the Omoto-gumi clan dominating the wall behind it, black on white offering startling clarity to the image.

  Behind the desk sat two men in identical dark suits, and Cole could see that there was no room here for the feminine touch; the men were undoubtedly armed and ready to help repel an invasion.

  Cole approached the men, but then a door to the side of the desk opened and a smiling middle-aged man appeared, hand extended. He was wearing a grey suit and a blue shirt, open at the neck; presumably somebody higher up in the organization.

  Cole took his hand and shook, appreciating the western gesture and wondering if the man was friendly – relatively speaking, at least.

  ‘Mr. Jowett?’ the man said, as the guard who had found Cole’s documents handed them to his boss. Cole answered in the affirmative as the man scanned his papers, nodding his head. Seemingly satisfied, he handed them back to Cole. ‘My name is Asada Kohei,’ he said. ‘Please come through to my office, and we will see what you have to discuss.’

  Cole nodded and followed; according to Nakamura, Asada was the shategashira, the second lieutenant of the entire Omoto-gumi crime family. He was third in command, behind Yamaguchi Chomo as oyabun and Mitsuya as wakagashira. It was an honor to be seen by someone so esteemed within the organization, but Cole was not entirely surprised; whereas larger families had a plethora of bosses and sub-bosses, the Omoto-gumi was relatively small despite its power, and therefore there would be a limit as to who could greet this arrival from the United States.

  It was pleasing, but also not entirely unexpected, that he had been received at all, and the credit for that had to go to Nakamura. As a lawyer for a notorious American gang boss, the arrival of ‘Hank Jowett’ to Japan would naturally come under the scrutiny of the Organized Crime Control Bureau; as such, N
akamura had one of his double agents feed information to the Omoto-gumi that the man had arrived, both to legitimize him, and to smooth the way for a meeting. The leadership might well have been curious to know what a lawyer for Brooke Kayne, the infamous leader of the Aryan Brotherhood, wanted in Japan.

  And now he was in, Cole would have to maximize the opportunity to learn what he could; he might never get another chance.

  Asada had sent out for coffee – he didn’t trust his men to make it right, and preferred it from a takeaway café just up the road – and Cole sipped the hot, bitter liquid as he sat in the rather uncomfortable steel and leather chair across the glass desk from his host.

  The office was modern, clean and impressive, as befit a company headquarters in Marunouchi and – if not for the gun-wielding black-suited gangsters roaming the halls – Cole could have been anywhere in corporate Japan.

  He had been chatting to Asada for some time now, once more performing the ritual small talk before getting down to business. He was getting used to it now, and knew it was time to switch gears.

  He set his cup down on the table and steepled his fingers. ‘Thank you for your hospitality Mr. Asada, but you must be wondering why I am here.’

  Asada leaned back in his chair and smiled. ‘I am all ears.’

  ‘I have been instructed by my client – a man by the name of Brooke Kayne – to arrange a business meeting with the head of your organization.’

  ‘Between our oyabun and Mr. Kayne?’ Asada asked in surprise, but Cole shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he replied, ‘as you might be aware, my client is currently incarcerated in San Quentin State Prison, perhaps indefinitely. The meeting would be between Yamaguchi-sama and myself, as Mr. Kayne’s representative.’

  The Jowett identity had been set up as a lawyer for Brooke Kayne, the leader of the Aryan Brotherhood and a felon who ran the gang from inside San Quentin. The man had plenty of lawyers, so it would be hard to prove otherwise. He also typically ran a lot of his business through his network of legal advisers; lawyer-client privilege meant that conversations wouldn’t be recorded or listened to, even within prison, and so a lot of Kayne’s orders came through his lawyers.

  ‘I am afraid that is impossible,’ Asada responded. ‘A . . . restructuring in in operation at the moment, and our oyabun will not be in Tokyo for the foreseeable future.’

  ‘Ah,’ Cole said, ‘then is Yamaguchi Mitsuya available?’

  Asada shook his head. ‘Not today,’ he said. ‘Perhaps a meeting can be arranged, if I think it would be appropriate.’

  Cole smiled inwardly; it meant there was a chance, he just had to make an effective sales pitch to Asada.

  ‘Okay,’ Cole said. ‘The purpose for my journey to Japan is this. Word got to Kayne about the situation with Aryan Ultra down in Tucson a few months ago. Did you hear about it?’

  Asada nodded his head. ‘Some,’ he replied.

  ‘Well, Aryan Ultra was a radical offshoot of the Aryan Brotherhood, there were close links between them. Clive Haynes, the leader of the AU, had once worked side by side with Kayne. Anyway, he heard about the Japanese girl found at the ranch in Tucson. And that’s when he heard the rumors about certain links to the sex trade here. Kayne’s a businessman first and foremost, and he immediately started thinking about profit.’

  ‘A man after my own heart,’ Asada said with a smile. ‘But I am not so sure it will work. We have tried exporting Japanese girls to the United States before and it’s too much risk, too little reward. I’m sorry that your visit here has been wasted.’

  Asada moved to stand up, but Cole put out a hand. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘hear me out. Mr. Kayne doesn’t want to import girls to America. He is offering to export Caucasian women to Japan. His research indicated that white girls command a high premium over the usual supply from Southeast Asia.’

  Cole could immediately see the interest in Asada’s eyes, the greed, and knew he had pushed the right buttons. Nakamura was a clever man.

  ‘You are talking about a regular supply?’ the shategashira asked.

  Cole nodded. ‘A regular supply, yes. The brotherhood have been doing it for years over the Mexican border, but that money’s starting to dry up now, with the crackdowns on the cartels down there. Kayne is proposing moving the girls south across the border, then flying them to Japan on entertainment visas. We can sidestep a lot of red tape that way.’

  Asada nodded his head, thinking quickly. Suddenly his eyes narrowed. ‘How did you know to come here?’ he asked. ‘Why the Omoto-gumi specifically?’

  ‘Aoki Michiko,’ Cole said evenly. ‘Some of the AU men questioned her at the ranch, and she must have told them all about you. I believe that before Haynes was killed, he told Kayne what he’d found out.’

  Asada nodded in thought. ‘And why did you not prearrange this meeting? Why just turn up on our doorstep, hoping to be let in?’

  Cole smiled. ‘Mr. Asada, I am a legal representative for a man who has been jailed for murder, assault, rape, extortion, burglary, armed robbery and dozens of other charges. My phones will be bugged, my movements monitored. I simply didn’t want to give American authorities any advance warning of my intentions.’

  Asada matched Cole’s smile. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘It makes perfect sense, and I commend you for your circumspection. We appreciate that. And if I can speak plainly, it seems that you are right. The Tokyo police know that you’re here already. Hopefully you weren’t followed.’

  Cole shook his head. ‘I was careful. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t.’

  Asada waved a hand. ‘We have ways of dealing with that anyway.’ He stood, smiling. ‘Mr. Jowett, I think we might be able to do business. As I said previously, there is a bit of an upheaval at the moment – you have no doubt heard about the unfortunate fate of Yamamoto-sama. But I will see what I can do about a meeting with Yamaguchi Mitsuya. Where can I contact you?’

  ‘I’m staying at the Ritz Carlton,’ Cole said. ‘You can leave word for me there.’

  Asada nodded in satisfaction. ‘Excellent. Make sure you do not go anywhere, yes?’

  ‘I will wait for your call,’ he said, relieved.

  The first obstacle had been cleared.

  12

  The small room housed everything that Michiko needed to make money for her adoptive family, the Omoto-gumi.

  Before she left Japan, she had been trusted to work on her own, unobserved – but not anymore. Now, she had four Omoto-gumi soldiers constantly in attendance, watching her every move.

  It was uncomfortable and intimidating, but Michiko had grown accustomed to worse. She had lived as an outcast since arriving in Japan at the age of ten, and had also had to live constantly under the veiled threats of Mitsuya. And her time outside Japan had hardly been much better, again treated as a foreigner, an outsider – an experience which had culminated in her torture at the hands of racist thugs.

  Since the death of her mother, her life had not been her own. She had tried to get it back, but had failed. If she had not seen Mark Cole outside the café in Paris, perhaps she could have lived the rest of her life in peace; but it hadn’t happened that way, and wishing for the past to be different was an exercise only in despair. The past could never be changed.

  The door opened then, and her adoptive father, Yamaguchi Mitsuya, stood there, staring at her. He clapped his hands, and the four men left the room immediately.

  He closed the door behind him and stalked toward her, a mercilessly cold smile playing across his lips, and Michiko wondered, helplessly, how much worse her life could become.

  ‘Looks like the two men who were killed last night worked for the Shimazaki-kai,’ said Nomura Kazuo, the chairman of the National Public Safety Commission. The NPSC was the government ministry responsible for the National Police Agency, and Nomura acted as the prime minister’s adviser on police activity and anything which fell within that remit.

  The men gathered around the conference table in the Cabinet Office Bu
ilding barely managed to control their groans and sighs at the news, and Toshikatsu Endo knew why – a gangland killing might be an indication that a war was about to break out between the varying factions vying for control of the Yamaguchi-gumi. Even outside the criminal underworld, the gang was considered big business and frequently made bigger profits than large multinational corporations. With Yamamoto dead, the desire to become kumicho of the Yamaguchi-gumi was widespread, and quite understandable; the position was one of the highest in Japan, legitimate or not.

  ‘The Shimazaki are just small time, aren’t they?’ asked Nishikawa Sunichi, Minister for Justice.

  Nomura nodded his head. ‘They are, and of course such things happen all the time, so perhaps we shouldn’t get too excited about it; but the timing does seem too coincidental to ignore, and I would like to ask for increased revenue for our police services, in preparation for a potential leadership war. We do not want to wait until it breaks out in earnest, as it will be too late to do anything.’

  Fukuda Yoichi, deputy prime minister and also the minister of finance, spoke up quickly. ‘Kazuo, I understand the need, but you know how pressed we are financially. I’m not sure we could move any funds for the time being.’

  ‘I am talking about emergency measures,’ Nomura argued. ‘We have finance available for times of national crisis, and I think we can all agree that such times might be just around the corner. I’m sure I don’t have to remind people how closely tied to the yakuza are Zen Ai Kaigi, who at present are ahead in the polls.’

  Toshikatsu noticed that Nomura didn’t mention the death threats that had been coming thick and fast recently, and he was glad; he didn’t really want to think about it. After Yamamoto’s head had been thrown over the wall, it was all anyone wanted to talk about, the media especially. Questions were already being asked about his own yakuza connections, and it was all he could do to keep such suggestions out of the newspapers.