Kusanagi

by Clem Chambers

  52

  Eating dog in Japan wasn’t against the law, but it was rare. The way he had it prepared, though, was illegal. Tradition held that dog meat was healthy, and Kim enjoyed it, particularly if it was from the right place and was prepared correctly. The dogs were flown in from Korea in small versions of what he used for human cargo.

  To the outside world Kim was a highly successful property tycoon, but the engine of his empire, the business that generated the cash he leveraged into bricks and mortar, was smuggling. His illicit gains from trafficking had funded his property empire. Clandestine money gave him the edge, letting him outbid all comers in the legitimate world and kept him from going broke.

  Japanese business relied on borrowing huge sums of money at negligible interest rates, which made it easy to hide financial realities. Money borrowed at one per cent could be squandered without anyone realising it was gone and would never be repaid. You could repay one per cent of the capital for decades without anyone suspecting the bulk was long gone. Borrowing money at one per cent was a never ending financial merry-go-round. One per cent interest rate loans need never be repaid or shown to be in default.

  In the financial environment when all businesses were addicted to massive levels of debt at low interest, it was hard to see that Kim’s deals didn’t make commercial sense and that other sources of money had to be keeping his sprawling property empire afloat. But, even with his vast illegal earnings, the property still didn’t make financial sense. He was slowly being crushed by the economic Godzilla of Japan: deflation.

  Japan had suffered deflation for two decades. Simply put, prices fell in Japan: every year things got cheaper. Which meant in its turn that every year debt got bigger because the money owed became more valuable. The Japanese economy had been on the rack of deflation, unable to escape its vicious circle, since the asset bubble crash of the late eighties that had seen the land of the Emperor’s palace become, at one stage, worth more than all the real estate in California. It had been followed by a crash from which the economy had never bounced back.

  Kim’s property empire had been crumpled by cycles of deflation and he was indebted to such an extent that even the proceeds of his global crimes couldn’t bail him out of an impending commercial implosion. He smuggled people, money and now, as his financial pressures worsened, drugs and animals. The drug trade was profitable but the lynch pin of his operation was still smuggling people to and from North Korea. He ferried in people and shipped out the fake dollar bills and euros that the North Koreans printed.

  Smuggling rare animals had started as a sideline, a symptom of his desperation for cash. But it had also become a hobby – then an obsession. Exotic animals and their body parts were highly prized and Kim shipped them wherever they needed to go. Meanwhile it allowed him to indulge himself with his zoo. The animals were his only passion. People meant nothing to Kim: they were like puppets to be bent and twisted to his plans. His masters, North Korea, always needed a fresh supply of people to teach languages. They especially needed Japanese but they also needed Europeans and Americans. North Korea needed kidnap victims to teach its spies their languages. It was of utmost importance to know exactly what the enemy was saying and be able to transplant agents with fluent local language skills into the countries it wanted to monitor.

  Foreigners never lasted long in the North: before they could acclimatise enough to have a hope of escape they were done away with. Because of this, Kim was tasked with providing a constant supply of new tutors. This meant he had to capture and smuggle more than a hundred people every year to North Korea. It was a huge task, paid for in gold, fake money and in kind.

  He had run the operation ever since he was a young man sent to Japan to spy on Tokyo and now, thirty five years on, he could not stop. For sure, he didn’t want to: he had to make his empire financially solid again. He had delivered living flesh into North Korea for most of his life. He wasn’t scared of that business. It was the drug running he feared. There were many clever enemies to confound him in that business and at some point they would make a breakthrough.

  His edge was that his operations were manned by North Koreans. Back in North Korea, his workers’ families lived or died on his command. So while his smuggling ring spanned the globe, his security was absolute. Now if he could capture the Imperial regalia he could buy his way out of his predicament and perhaps, at last, disengage from his more dangerous activities. One day, bad luck would catch up with him and destroy the façade. With the risks he was now taking, that moment could not be far away. This might be his last opportunity to escape the noose of his karma.

  The dog tasted good.

  Before it had died, it had hung by its broken legs, trussed up in his restaurant’s kitchen, for two days. It would be tender and have the special taste that only animals that die in torment develop. The thought of its suffering gave him comfort and peace.

  53

  Yamamoto stood in the door of his office as the police guard marched towards Akira. Sweat pricked his brow. After all these years of being almost straight, he had police in his office. Something terrible was happening.

  Jim looked up from his screen. There was no reason to get excited, he thought. The policemen were extremely respectful. One handed the professor a package with military precision and bowed low. They saluted and marched out. ‘What was that about?’ he asked.

  ‘My carte blanche.’

  ‘Maybe you could get the government to pay Yamamoto-san his hundred million instead,’ said Jim. ‘This is getting boring.’ He grinned at the professor. ‘Only joking.’

  ‘How is it?’

  ‘Er… two million dollars.’ Jim waved his palm back and forth. ‘Ish.’

  Yamamoto was on the phone, jabbering away. He hung up, ‘Now I’m in trouble. That was my wife. The trading company has been on to her. They want to know if she is OK. She wants to know what I’m doing.’ He was sweating heavily. ‘I told her not to worry. She will be hard on me.’

  ‘Do we have any news from your sources?’ asked Akira.

  ‘No,’ said Yamamoto, ‘but I fear when we do, it will not be good.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Akira.

  ‘Let us wait till there is news. I do not want to invent ghosts.’

  ‘Fuck,’ swore Jim. ‘This thing won’t let me put on more than fifty million in a trade. Never mind, I can batter the Swissy as well – that looks choice.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Yamamoto hadn’t understood what he’d said.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Akira. ‘Just a little local difficulty.’

  Kim watched the cage through the closed-circuit TV. The gorilla was grooming the woman’s hair through the bars. Kim was biting his lip, chewing on it almost hard enough to break the skin. A thought sent a shiver through him. He took a pistol from his bottom drawer and went towards the lift that rose straight up to the zoo.

  The animals quietened. Jane heard footsteps on the tiles.

  ‘You,’ a voice said.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Who are you?’ she replied, getting up. The gorilla pushed its arm through the barrier to try to hold her, but she was out of reach.

  The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a pistol. It was a dart gun. He aimed it at Jane but he was not taking a proper bead.

  She cocked her head at him. ‘You should let me go.’

  He lowered the pistol, walked over to the gorilla cage, aimed and then fired. The gorilla grunted, jumped up and ran at him, grabbing the bars. It screamed, then fell silent, staggering back dazed. It sat down, head tilted forwards, breathed heavily for a time, then rolled onto its side.

  Jane saw the man run his wrist across the door and heard a clunk. The cage door opened. He knelt down by the gorilla and began to stroke it gently. He was looking at Jane and starting to strip off.

  You’re kidding me, thought Jane, looking away in disgust. She sat on the tiled ledge and gazed out of the window at Tokyo. She considered
how surgeons violated a patient’s body with their scalpels when they worked feverishly to save a life. The patient would awake from the ordeal none the wiser as to the awful details. The anaesthetic would leave their mind unsullied. She wasn’t worried for herself but for the ape.

  Then she thought about him opening the door with his wrist. Was there a tag in his watch, or a simple band on his arm? Maybe he had an implant, a small RFID under the skin. She would continue to sharpen the plate, and if she could get hold of his hand she would slice it off and open the cage. She wondered what Jim was doing. Had he called the cavalry? Would they come? Would he come for her? She didn’t think so. She was probably alone. That was nothing new.

  Things were going to get even uglier.

  The nose of the Antonov opened and a ramp lowered onto the tarmac. The containers were unloaded and hitched up to trucks, which filed out of the airport gates. High value electronics were constantly being flown into the UK as consumer crazes came and went. One day it would be phones, the next games consoles, then flat screen TVs. Whatever the next big thing was, it would be flown in from the Far East as quickly as possible. By weight, the newest fad gadgets were worth almost the same as a precious metal, but, unlike gold or silver, they went off like strawberries and were soon valueless.

  The containers were heading for an anonymous warehouse in Dagenham. It was run by Koreans who minded their own business and never paid late or broke any rules. It wasn’t a busy warehouse: it shipped three or four consignments a year. Just another mean, grubby building in a zone of such.

  Yet the business of the warehouse was remarkable. The consignments it marshalled were of people, plucked off the streets almost at random. These unlucky souls would be added to the ranks of the missing and were sent to spend the rest of their short lives teaching English in North Korea. This time they were taking delivery of a dozen grey plastic containers, each containing a man.

  53

  ‘Do you mean to tell me there’s not a single television in this mansion?’ said Smith, to Stafford.

  ‘It isn’t a mansion,’ Stafford informed him. ‘It’s a large townhouse.’

  ‘I stand corrected,’ said Smith. ‘Now, about the TV?’

  ‘I’m afraid we do not have one.’

  ‘You must get bored out of your mind,’ said Smith, disgusted.

  ‘Indeed not,’ said Stafford. ‘I have my books and my journal to occupy me.’

  ‘What about Jim?’

  ‘He has his Internet.’

  ‘It’s unnatural,’ said Smith, ‘and very suspect if you ask me.’

  ‘I think not,’ said Stafford.

  Smith sat up and took out his mobile. ‘A RIB,’ he said, ‘coming up the river. Surely they aren’t going to try to repeat the attack. That would be crazy.’ He looked at Stafford. ‘It might be kicking off again.’

  Stafford picked up the machine pistol from the floor by his chair. ‘What is the plan?’

  ‘As soon as an attack starts, hopefully my lot’ll be swarming all over this place. We’ll have to keep them at bay for a bit. Do you have a panic room?’

  ‘Unfortunately not. It is planned.’ Stafford was considering another attack from the river. ‘They won’t be able to get in from the river this time.’

  ‘Why are they coming back?’ Smith answered his phone and listened to the caller. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Good.’ He looked at Stafford. ‘False alarm, Bertie,’ he said, relief in his eyes.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t call me Bertie,’ said Stafford. ‘I might get used to it again.’

  James Dean Yamamoto was dumbfounded by what he saw on the screen. Jim had wheeled the chair back with every appearance of contentment.

  ‘How can this be real?’ Yamamoto asked Akira. ‘How will I explain it?’

  ‘I hope it won’t be too inconvenient.’

  Yamamoto logged off, then back on. The balance remained the same. ‘Evans-san must be very rich.’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘That explains everything.’

  Akira raised his eyebrows. ‘How so?’

  ‘Why Kim has kidnapped his woman.’

  ‘Kim? Basho Kim?’

  ‘Yes. Kim, perhaps. I will know for sure soon.’

  ‘But Kim is a big man, surely not a criminal.’

  ‘A big man, yes,’ said Yamamoto, ‘but very deep in debt. He owes trillions of yen more than he can repay.’ He sat down heavily in a chair that was normally on the other side of his desk. He frowned and appeared to fall asleep. His eyes flickered open. ‘His name may be on much of the Tokyo skyline but he has run out of the means to maintain his repayments.’ He laughed in a single burst of a low toned syllable. ‘It is a trap in which many of us are caught and one he has worked very hard to become ensnared by.’ He exhaled in a growl. ‘He is the lowest of the low. If I would kill anyone it would be him.’

  ‘Kim-san a kidnapper?’

  ‘And worse.’ Yamamoto stared up at the ceiling. ‘So much worse. I suppose I must tell you a story.’ He let out a long snort.

  ‘When I was still young I used to enjoy chasing the ladies. Life was good. I had money.’ He smiled a little. ‘The world was so fresh and finally it was being good to me. Life can be so good. I had a sweetheart, who lived in the Ginza, and I was very much in love.’ He paused to recall. ‘To a rough guy like me, she was a princess, a sweet little bird who sang for me. She lived in this tiny apartment and I made sure she was all right and could pay her rent. Ginza is such an expensive district, as you know. She always made me laugh. I still smile at the thought of her…’ He fell into a reverie.

  Akira watched him remembering.

  ‘Then one day she vanished. Gone like a picked flower.’ His face was twisted in anger. ‘I traced her family, what there was of it, but no one had any word of her. She had not given up her lease. She did not use her bank account. There were fresh groceries in the kitchen the day she went away. Ah, Akira, I was heartbroken. I had not realised how deeply I loved her. She was my happiness.’

  Yamamoto glanced at Jim, who was listening in the way people do when they cannot understand what is being said. He turned back to Akira. ‘I became crazy. I hunted high and low. I hired detectives, two or three at a time. I fired them and hired more. I spent all the money I could to try and find her. Then one day the answer came. She had most likely been kidnapped and taken to North Korea. I was horrified and filled with uncontrollable rage. How could this happen?’

  Jim had given up trying to understand and had returned to the trading screen. Gold looked about to take a dive. He wanted to jump on it. It was a screaming short. A few clicks and he could be on for the ride. He sat back and shook his head. He was like an alcoholic who had fallen off the wagon and bought a nice big bottle of whisky.

  ‘Then I went looking,’ growled Yamamoto. ‘I wanted to find out how people could be kidnapped like that. Korean visitors could not just show up to pick people off, like plums from a tree. It took organisation, money, skill. I would use my contacts and track these people down. Then I would make my play.’ He grunted in disgust. ‘While I was doing this, devoting my time to the search, I was making money like never before or since. My property portfolio was growing and its value was shooting up. This was the beginning of the bubble years. It was a deep irony to me.’ He frowned as if a great sadness had filled him.

  ‘So then one day the secret opened itself to me. A friend of a friend who stole the tax on ships came to me and asked a favour. I told him my puzzle and promised to solve his problems if he solved my riddle. He went pale. I saw this and he knew I saw it and he told me. Basho Kim-san.’

  ‘What did you do?’ asked Akira.

  ‘I reverted to the old way.’ He looked pleased with himself. ‘I sent him a letter with her name on it and the letter was charred. Then I burnt down one of his buildings. I repeated this action every moon and sure enough, after a few months, my sweetheart was returned.’

  ‘Was she all right?’

  ‘No. She was a br
oken woman.’ Yamamoto rose. ‘I still look after her.’ He looked across the city. ‘She’s down there somewhere – she has a husband and children. It’s a happy ending.’ He turned to Akira. ‘That is my story, one of many in my strange life.’ He pushed back his tidy grey hair. It made to puff up in a ghost of a quiff. ‘And now the story continues.’

  ‘When do you think you will know for sure?’ asked Akira.

  ‘I know for sure. It is a matter of where, not who. I guess it will become a matter of how to get her back.’

  Jim’s mobile was buzzing in his pocket. ‘Yes?’ he said.

  ‘Jim Evans?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your lady is very sick. We need the objects in twenty four hours or we cannot be sure she will survive.’

  ‘Prove to me she’s alive.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Who are you?’ said Jane, her voice echoing in a hard space. ‘Are you talking to me?’

  ‘We will organise an exchange.’ The phone went dead.

  Jim looked at Akira and Yamamoto. ‘We’re running out of time.’

  54

  His room in the Grand Hyatt was lovely and the bed was perfectly comfortable, but he was finding it very hard to sleep. It was daytime in London and his body knew it. He lay awake, his mind racing. He had called Stafford three times and all was quiet on the home front. It wasn’t like him not to be able to sleep. Then at five a.m. the inevitable happened: he passed out.

  The phone at his bedside woke him. It was seven a.m. Akira was on the other end.

  ‘Evans-san, Yamamoto-san has news. When will you be ready?’

  ‘Give me a few minutes. I’ll come straight down.’ He jumped out of bed and ran into the shower. The water shocked him with a cold blast. ‘Fuck,’ he muttered, adjusting the temperature. He was out again in two minutes, drying himself.

  Akira met him in the lobby. He looked rough, as if, like Jim, he hadn’t had much sleep or time to shave. ‘Yamamoto’s car is waiting.’