The Gentleman from Japan

by James Church

  Luis paused a fraction of a second before whispering harshly in my ear. “Dumplings? Why? Who said anything about dumplings, Inspector?”

  “You did, fragrant morsels of pork, you said.”

  Luis instantly relaxed. “So I did. No need to worry. The motorbikes come up the street in packs every time the traffic light changes. I only have to pace what I’m telling you to match the lights. We can fill in the rest of the time with a fairy tale. If they hear anything, it will annoy them, or amuse them, or baffle them. One never knows with Spaniards. If they were Catalans, I would be sure. They would listen to us for five minutes, then go out for lunch and a bottle of wine. These, however, are tougher boys and girls.”

  “Girls?”

  “Oh my, yes, Inspector. Do you think the long-legged beauties walking past us in the airport in Madrid were sweet pastries, like something you pick out at Pastéis de Belém?” He clicked his tongue. “You’ll make that mistake once, then never again, I guarantee.”

  “Not like Lulu?” Lulu was the woman of Luis’s dreams. She was at least twice his size, and Luis, as far as I could tell when I saw them together, loved every millimeter. She also ran a small restaurant in Macau, where Luis got free lunches.

  Luis looked away. I heard a small sigh in between the roars of motorbikes. “To work, Inspector, to work,” he said finally.

  “I’m listening.”

  “You may remember,” Luis began, “the operation several years ago in Macau.”

  “May remember? Luis, something like that is never forgotten.”

  “This is different, different but similar in that it is also one of a kind. Easier, simpler in some ways, but equally foolproof.”

  “A great relief, though it wouldn’t take much to make this one easier. That Macau operation was the most complicated…” I thought about it. “One of the most complicated operations I’ve ever seen.”

  “You’ll have to go back to Lisboa immediately.”

  “Where? Why are we sitting here if the action is in Portugal? We could have stayed there. Saved a trip, and avoided the bad cheese sandwich on the plane.”

  “No, that wasn’t possible. We had some things to clean up, there and here. I told you, when you landed in Lisboa someone—we know who—flagged your passport and passed it on to the Spaniards.”

  “Yes, so, why travel to Spain, then?”

  “Trolling, Inspector.”

  I could feel my blood rising. “You mean I’m bait?”

  “Not quite bait. Chum, perhaps. And over there in that van are the sharks. This is good.”

  “Good for whom?”

  “Never mind.” He patted my knee. “Barcelona is perfect for what we need, believe me. The local service hates Madrid almost as much as we do. They’re watching the green truck, too. Don’t look around, but they’re here. We use them, they use us, and everybody’s happy. In this case, they owe us a favor. They already know what they need to do. After lunch, God willing, it will be done.”

  2

  Luis put down his fork and patted his lips with his napkin. “You enjoyed the meal, Inspector?”

  “Not much bad you can do with seafood.”

  He looked disappointed. “That’s all you can say? When have you had octopus this good? Outside of Portugal, tell me where you’ve had better, I’ll go there right away.”

  “Business, Luis. Leave the octopus to one side for the moment. You said after lunch that God willing, it would be done. Well, was God willing? Was it done? And what, if you don’t mind my asking, does it have to do with me? You never really had a relative in Harbin, did you?”

  Luis folded the napkin and put it carefully on the table. “More wine?”

  “No wine, Luis. No fruit. No dessert. I want to know what the operation is, because this is going to be a crazy operation. I could smell it a kilometer away, as soon as you gave me that phony story about your uncle in Harbin. That green truck was waiting for us, why? I don’t want to sit here, pleasant as it is, by this window and watch the passing scene. I’m warning you, as an old friend, if you don’t get to business in the next five seconds, I’ll say adeus right now and go back to the airport. And if the Spanish service wants to drag me out of the ticket line and into a fifteenth-century dungeon, they can go ahead. Their training may go back five hundred years; mine goes back a couple of thousand.”

  “All right, Inspector.” Luis looked around for the waiter. “Let’s at least have a glass of port. Settles the stomach.”

  “Luis…” I moved my chair back from the table.

  “Yes, yes, Inspector. I’m getting to the point.” He had long, slender fingers, and they were drumming on the table. It wasn’t a nervous gesture. He was annoyed, but I sensed he was also stalling for time. He wasn’t focused on me. Something else wasn’t where he needed it to be.

  The waiter appeared and handed him a piece of paper. “Ah,” Luis said, “the bill, the tally, the reckoning for this wonderful lunch.” He looked relieved.

  “Luis, there are no numbers on that piece of paper. Do the Catalans write out a bill in longhand?”

  Luis looked at the paper once more, then tore it into small pieces, took out a match, and burned them in an ashtray before lighting up a cigarette. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “If it helps. I have to warn you, Luis, I’ve gone along with this up to now because I needed to get away from China. And I’ll admit it, finding out why you were sent to recruit me became something of an obsession. But right here, right now is as far as I go if you don’t tell me what this about. Burning your instructions does not give me confidence.”

  Luis smiled to himself, a softening around the lips and around his Macanese eyes. “Now it is you who flatter me, Inspector. Do you think I know what this is about? I know this much”—he held up his little finger—“and I don’t care to know any more than that. When we are done here, I’m on my way back home. Nothing else that happens is my business, and that’s how I prefer to keep it.”

  “You go home, and I go where?”

  “Listen closely, Inspector, I’m only going to say this once. There is a castle in Lisboa, high on a hill, a rather steep hill.”

  “What is it with you Portuguese? There was a fort in Macau, as I recall, on the top of a steep hill where you ran the last operation. I nearly killed myself getting there.”

  “But you didn’t, that’s the point. And this will be easier because you don’t have to go all the way up to the castle. It’s not so secure.”

  “Outside the gates is better this time?”

  “For what you need, yes.”

  “No cannons? In Macau there were cannons. I had to count them. It was a painful experience, I’m telling you now, Luis. Let me hear that there are no cannons this time.”

  “No cannons, just benches, and easy enough to count. There are only four of them. Besides, it is a very pleasant place, tranquil, no Chinese ladies practicing with swords. You take the tram most of the way up the hill, get off at the spot where there is a view of the river. You can linger if you like, it would be strange if you didn’t. That’s what tourists do. Take some pictures, listen to the guitarist who sits on the ground, leaning against the fence. Tap your feet and move your hips, get in the spirit of the place.”

  “I assume the guitarist works for you.”

  Luis took a long draw on his cigarette and shrugged.

  “Fine,” I said. “I linger and wiggle. But no dancing, I can’t dance. Then what?”

  “Then you walk up the hill.”

  “I knew it!”

  “As I said, a little steep, but nothing a man in your shape can’t handle.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Not quite. You’ll get more instructions at your hotel.”

  “From whom?”

  “It would be appealing to tell you that I’m not at liberty to say, but I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say because I don’t know. This isn’t how we do things in Macau, but
we’re here, not there, and I can only do as I’m told. I was told to tell you that you would get a message at your hotel, it would be plain to you when you got it, and you would know what to do.”

  “Am I allowed one clue?”

  Luis shrugged. “Socks, I think,” he said, and stood up. He took a final puff on his cigarette. “Time to go, Inspector. We’ll stroll.”

  3

  After landing at the airport in Lisbon, I caught a cab to my hotel, was shown my room, and then went out for a walk. If someone was going to be following me here, I wanted to get a sense of how good they were. Perhaps we could stop to have coffee once we both tired of the game.

  I walked aimlessly for about twenty minutes, then turned a corner and found a tram that was about to leave on its way up a very steep hill. The city, apparently, was full of them. I jumped on. No one pushed in behind me, which meant either no one was following or they had let themselves lag too far behind. At the first stop, short of the summit, I got off and walked briskly down a narrow side street, lined on both sides by old buildings, many of them painted in bright colors. I ducked into one and waited. No one came poking along. Out on the street again, I set my sights on a blue building and slipped through the door. The proprietor, an Iranian judging from his demeanor, looked up from his newspaper. It was a leather store. He watched me closely. A woman, probably his wife, walked over.

  “Nice bag.” She pointed to one on the shelf in front of me. I changed my mind. They were not Iranian. Syrian maybe. “Bring it home to your family.” She started to speak in Chinese, but when I didn’t respond switched to English. “We get a lot of Chinese tourists,” she said. “You’re what? Japanese?”

  I shook my head. “No family. Thanks just the same.” I watched the window. No one walked by. I didn’t think I’d been tailed, but there was no sense in assuming anything. If they were there, they could be waiting up the hill.

  The man pretended to be gazing into space. I knew he was paying attention.

  “You have a back door?” I asked.

  He closed his eyes and nodded slightly.

  “Is it unlocked?”

  He nodded again.

  “Anyone ever use it?”

  He shrugged, his eyes still closed.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Nice bags.” The wife picked up the one on the shelf and murmured something to the man. He shrugged again and went back to reading his paper.

  “Well.” The wife bowed slightly. “Come back when you get a family. Sayonara.”

  From the back door I went down a flight of steps to another street, even narrower than the first. I waited to see if anyone came out the back door after me. Nothing moved.

  When I got to the bottom of the hill, I was in one of the city’s main squares. The sun was setting, and a cool breeze was blowing in from the Tagus River. I found a café and sat at a table next to two young women. They looked to be tourists, well-to-do students perhaps.

  One of them leaned over to me. “Do you know your way around?”

  “Not as much as I should.” I smiled at them. She spoke in English, an Australian from the sound of it.

  “I mean, do you know where the castle is?” She held up a map and then turned it upside down. “I don’t know how to read this. We’re hoping to go to the castle tomorrow afternoon. Have you been there?”

  “Not exactly.” No one else came into the café, and from where I sat looking out the front window, no one seemed to be loitering outside. “The castle was described to me by an elderly aristocrat who claimed to be a descendant of someone who once owned property on the site. He intends to go to court, reclaim the land, and build a condominium up there with an exercise room on the roof.” I smiled again.

  “Oh my God!” The first one turned to her companion. “We have to get up there tomorrow morning.” She turned back to me. “Thanks. Maybe we’ll see you there.”

  “I thought you needed directions.” I pointed at her map. “Never mind that. It’s easy, you can’t miss it. Get on the tram, I think it’s the number 8 just in front of that textile store across the square.” I had no idea what number tram went where, but neither of them did either. “It takes you up to the castle, or very near. Once you get off, you have to climb a hill but don’t worry. There are benches along the way.”

  The next morning, after a roll and coffee and a quick look at a map, I was on my way to the castle. I had given the Australian girls the wrong tram number, which was good because I didn’t want anyone who recognized me showing up in the middle of Luis’s operation. These young ladies didn’t know me, but tourists had a habit of assuming that if they’ve talked with you even for a moment, you’re an oasis in the middle of a desert and they need to stop to chatter.

  There was no guitarist at the overlook, and a fogbank had settled over the river, so no one was standing around taking in the view. A young couple was in an embrace in one of the corners and paid no attention to me.

  4

  When I was most of the way up the hill, I came upon the benches, four of them, about two meters apart. They were placed against what looked to be the outer wall of the castle, just as Luis had described. Two of the benches were occupied, each by an elderly man in a tracksuit. Both appeared to be slightly out of breath. Then there was an empty bench, and next to it was another, with a middle-aged man sitting close to the edge. He was not dressed in any way that would call attention to his presence, nor did his face have anything about it that would stick in the memory. It was almost as if he weren’t there. At his side was a magazine; on top of that sat a bottle of water, Evian, with a yellow cap. The man glanced at me and then looked away. After a moment, he looked back in my direction. He watched me patiently, without expression. Finally, he picked up the water bottle. “You look thirsty, my friend.”

  “We’re due for rain,” I replied, using the phrase Luis had dictated, and sat down beside him. It made no sense for me to sit here rather than on the empty bench. Anyone watching—and surely someone was, even from the second story of the old house across the quiet, narrow lane—would wonder why I should sit next to a stranger when there was an empty bench available. If he had been a pretty girl, it might have been different, but he wasn’t.

  The man waved the water bottle at the empty bench next to us. “You’re right. It’s just been painted and it’s still wet. See the sign?”

  When I looked closer I noticed there was a small piece of cardboard taped onto the seat. The hand-lettered sign said PINTURA FRESCA.

  “That looks like Spanish,” I said.

  The man grinned. “Exactly who we don’t want sitting there.”

  “OK,” I said. Whoever they were, this group of bench sitters seemed to know what they were doing, up to this point anyway. I figured the old men on the other two benches were not there by accident. “I’m listening.”

  The man sighed and picked up the magazine. “You’re late, so we’ll skip the preliminaries. This is what you need to know. Our information is that a restaurant supply business in Yanji is attempting to buy a machine.”

  “You must be joking.” I stood up and turned to go back down the hill. I didn’t really want to see the castle.

  “You’re not interested? You want your nephew to find more dead bodies, perhaps?”

  This caught my attention, as he knew it would. I sat down again. “What do you know about what goes on in Yanji? And what do you care?”

  “More than you might imagine, Senhor Inspector. What if I told you that the supplier of dim sum, the one your nephew has been trying to find, is up to his neck in other things?”

  “Like what?” I hadn’t gone into any of this with Luis, so I was momentarily at a disadvantage. Not knowing where they got their information meant I didn’t know how much they were bluffing. “Poisoned dim sum?”

  “Close.” He turned the pages of the magazine slowly.

  I stood up again and counted benches. This one was the first in line starting from the bottom, so there was no mistake. Luis had been very s
pecific on the operational details, though he had left out the empty bench. He’d given me the code phrase and told me about the bottle. Evian, he said, didn’t have yellow caps. The one thing he hadn’t done was to prepare me for the substance of the conversation. As he’d said, he didn’t know himself. And by now, he was on a plane back to Macau for long, languid weeks of lunch with Lulu.

  “The rain in Spain?” I said softly and examined the old stone wall behind the bench.

  “In Granada a week ago.” The man sounded annoyed to be forced to reply to the second of the two identification phrases Luis had given me after we’d already blasted past the first.

  I sat down again. “And I suppose the real problem is counterfeit red bean buns? Packaged as Japanese but actually sent to, where … let me think. Singapore!”

  “This is not a joke, Inspector. Someone in Tokyo has supposedly ordered five dumpling machines from a Spanish confectionary machine-parts supplier. Or that’s what the invoices say. We know there’s only one, and it’s actually going to Yanji, or at least that’s the transshipment point. It’s probably being shipped in sections.”

  “What a breakthrough! Dumpling diversion on a grand scale! Or don’t you think this is a dumpling machine? What’s the matter, you don’t trust invoices?”

  “No, as a matter of fact, we don’t.”

  “We?”

  “The people who are paid to worry about such things. I personally am only enjoying the morning.” He smiled and looked up at the second floor of the building opposite us. The exterior plaster was cracked and crumbling, exposing the old brick underneath. Vines had grown up almost to the roof on one side. The pale green curtains in one of the windows moved slightly.

  “And you want me to do what about these dumplings, exactly?” I was stalling, and none too cleverly. “Anyone bothered to clear it with my Ministry, by the way?”

  “You’re here, aren’t you? Do you think Luis appeared on your doorstep with plane tickets to Lisboa by accident? Plane tickets which, incidentally, you accepted. It’s a little late to play games with us. Anyway, you don’t have a Ministry anymore to hide behind, or have you forgotten? As a matter of fact, your Ministry of People’s Security would like to get its hands on you, or hadn’t you heard?”