The Spy Across the Table

by Barry Lancet

  “Won’t work.”

  “Hold on.” I heard her tap her phone screen. “Rats. Our ambassador to Japan is at a conference in Kuala Lumpur until tomorrow, so he’s out. Can you wait until Mrs. Slater is finished?”

  “Not a problem.”

  She tapped some more. “The earliest I can spring her is ninety minutes from now. That will be eleven thirty at night in Tokyo.”

  “That works.”

  “Okay, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Not good enough, Margaret. The first lady told me access twenty-four/seven and this isn’t it.”

  “You got me right away.”

  “Which is great, but I need the rest of the package. I need Joan to call the Tanakas the minute she’s free.”

  “There’s a problem. Mrs. Slater is a stickler for courtesy. It is a big part of her job. Quite likely she will want to call the family in the morning their time, even if it is late for her.”

  “Too late. I guarantee that tonight the Tanakas won’t be going to sleep anytime soon.”

  “I don’t know . . .”

  “It’s got to be now, Margaret. We’re dealing with a gang of hired kidnappers. They were efficient and focused. They won’t waste time passing her along.”

  “To whom?”

  “I have no idea, but the answer won’t be good.”

  “Oh my god, this is unbelievable.”

  “Believe it. The clock is ticking.”

  CHAPTER 32

  ZHOU had selected an oyster bar called Ostrea in Tokyo’s Akasaka quarter, a place with history.

  When the samurai-run shogun government fell in 1868, the newly installed leaders began to frequent the dining streets of Akasaka to unwind. A more affordable geisha district sprang up to accommodate them, competing with the established one in Shimbashi a few miles down the road. Today, office workers unchained from their desks stroll down brick-lined lanes past rows of enticing eateries and Japanese-style gastro pubs.

  Ostrea was one of them. The dining spot had recessed lighting, discreet seating, and petite French etchings on cream-colored walls. Fresh oysters from all across Japan were coddled in a glittering nest of ice at the front, visible to passersby.

  As soon as I entered, waitstaff in black coats guided me to Zhou. The master spy’s secluded perch at the back shielded him from passing pedestrians. He’d posted two men at a table halfway into the restaurant, his first line of defense against an unwelcome intrusion.

  “You come alone?” he asked when I’d drawn within earshot.

  “Yeah,” I said, dropping into the chair opposite him. “But don’t get any ideas. My people know I’m with you.”

  And I hadn’t arrived blind. From the funeral hall, I’d sent staff from Brodie Security to scout the meeting place. They’d learned Ostrea had sixteen tables and seated fifty, inclusive of the eight seats at the L-shaped bar at the front. Zhou’s escape route—or mine, if it came to that—would be through the kitchen, which was long and narrow and funneled into a pantry lined with steel refrigeration units, then out into a service area and a connecting passage bleeding into the next street. In an emergency, freedom was a thirty-yard sprint, with two turns.

  Zhou considered me with narrowed eyes. “No photographers or police?”

  “None.”

  “Good, then let’s get started.”

  The spy raised a warm carafe of saké as a peace offering. He filled my cup, then his, then we drank. Deeply. Sharon’s funeral and her daughter’s kidnapping had depressed my spirits, and Zhou too seemed pensive.

  “Another?” he asked.

  “Keep ’em coming.”

  While my host ordered a large platter of his favorite oysters, my thoughts drifted toward the kidnapping. Maybe the master spy could offer an explanation. He’d known enough to show up, so he knew something.

  Zhou rubbed his hands together. “You’ll like what is coming.”

  “Does nothing discourage your appetite?”

  He shrugged. “Oysters are the cure, and saké is a Band-Aid. A superb one.”

  I couldn’t argue. The brewer had engineered a full-bodied drink that floated on the tongue with a soft mellow feel and offered a faint hint of citrus as refreshing as I imagined the oysters would be.

  I drank some saké. “You have an opinion on the kidnapping?”

  “Looks bad for the daughter.”

  Which said nothing and gave me even less. I watched for a tell but found none. On the other hand, a void can provide nuance. Zhou had spoken softly. Too softly for him. Proactive change-up was his game—badger and boast, coddle then prod, console and jab. A modest Zhou was an evasive Zhou.

  “You anticipated it,” I said.

  An eyebrow twitched but offered nothing.

  It’s going to be that way, I thought. Okay.

  The first round of oysters arrived. A tiny placard embedded in the ice told us the Noto spring oysters hailed from Nanao, on the Noto Peninsula, which was along Japan’s northern shore. A place of cold, pure water. Promising. My first bite elicited a hint of honey from a plump, sea-fresh body, followed by a sweet finish.

  “Good choice,” I said, then nodded at his pair of watchdogs across the room. “My guess is you had men stationed at the temple too.”

  Zhou pushed out his lower lip, irritated. “It is a shame you were not born Chinese. Or refuse to work for me. Perhaps you would like to reconsider. You could eat like this every day.”

  “Maybe in the next life.”

  He frowned, his eyes roaming over my features, soaking up every modulation in expression, body language, and voice. But unlike the last time we’d met, I’d steeled myself in advance. He’d find nothing other than a firm resistance to his probing.

  “Your answer is disappointing, though I am not surprised.”

  “What did your lookout see?”

  “Who said I had one?”

  Zhou lifted a half shell to his lips and let the oyster slide into his mouth, chewing with obvious contentment.

  “You always have one, if not more.”

  He looked bored. “And what if I did?”

  “Tell me what he saw.”

  “Would you really like to know?”

  “Dying to.”

  Zhou shot me a suspicious look I couldn’t interpret, then shook off the thought and opened a photo app on his mobile phone, selected an image, and flipped the screen around. The image rattled me. Zhou’s dejection stemmed from reasons other than the Tanaka family’s misfortune.

  “He dead?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Yes.

  “I see.”

  Sprawled in a distant corner of the temple was a Chinese man. An oblong patch of blood the size of a beach ball had collected around his head.

  The light in Zhou’s eyes dimmed. “Casualties of war.”

  “Is that what you call it?”

  “What else?”

  I stared at him. His expression was grim but I saw no sorrow behind the mask. I wondered again how much Zhou valued the life of our mutual acquaintance—my buffer when dealing with the volatile master spy. I recalled a fragment of conversation from our first meeting:

  “The world needs people like you and Tommy,” Zhou had said. “To protect it from people like me.” A disarming comment. Followed by the return of his thousand-watt smile. “May I be frank?”

  “Refreshing idea.”

  He gave an icy chuckle. “You’d make a fine asset if I could turn you, but we’re on opposite sides.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning we’ll never be friends. But an enemy well regarded is better than a friend you doubt.”

  In his own inimitable way Zhou followed a code. The circles he trolled abroad were treacherous, but he navigated even darker territory back home. In the troubled, churning waters he habitually traversed, I was an island of stability.

  “Integrity is a valuable commodity,” I said now, taking a sip of saké.

  “But is it enough?”

/>   I considered the tightly wrapped bundle of paranoia before me. Outside China, the master spy was functional, formidable, and moved about with relative freedom. Back home, he lived in a shark tank. He was a medium-size predator maneuvering endlessly among larger, more duplicitous Party sharks while fending off countless smaller ones gaining girth and strength with each passing day. With me at least there was no pretense—which, however, didn’t make Zhou’s teeth any less sharp.

  “We have Tommy,” I said. “One of the good ones.”

  “What we have,” the spy across the table said, “is excellent liquor, oysters from around the world, and the remainder of the evening.”

  He signaled the waiter for another flask of saké.

  CHAPTER 33

  ZHOU had exchanged his black funerary wear for a high-end Italian suit in a light-gray summer cotton-and-silk weave and a crisp tailored white dress shirt open at the collar to allow the blue and yellow vertical stripes running around the inside to peek through.

  “You didn’t have to dress just for me,” I said.

  “I have another engagement afterward.”

  And I knew what it was.

  All the tailored elegance in the world could not disguise the retirement plan wrapped around his wrist: a Richard Mille chronometer with a pair of green dragons winding around the open watch works. Diamonds were embedded along the edges in the wide gold frame. The piece was worth three-quarters of a million dollars, minimum. I knew this because I never forget a person, piece of art, or wristwatch with notable craftsmanship.

  I glanced at the encased dragons. “Will you have the watch by the end of the evening?”

  The spy’s jaw tightened. “You are too observant, Brodie. It is why I want you as an asset. But a piece of advice: keep such thoughts to yourself. Under the wrong circumstances your talent will get you killed.”

  I nodded, his retort sobering. But my less-than-discreet comment had a purpose. Pushing Zhou off balance when the rare opportunity arose should not be overlooked.

  “It pays to be a civil servant in the Party,” I said. “But it also requires an insurance policy.”

  He rattled the watch. “This and its cousins are the only insurance I have. When our enemy comes, he will be merciless. Our arrests will happen late one night. My wife and child will never know where I have been taken. Then, on a busy news day, when the whole country is looking elsewhere, we will be blindfolded, marched out into a dusty courtyard, stood up against a forty-foot wall, and shot.”

  “And for no other reason than your boss lost a tug-of-war.”

  He nodded, his gaze drifting wistfully toward the white-hatted chef shucking oysters. “It will happen with little or no warning. To survive, my underlings will turn their face to my replacement. Only my wife and child will be sad. And perhaps you and Tommy.”

  For centuries, shifting winds had been a way of life and death in China. The motivation remained unchanged through the years and regimes—power, money, and, on occasion, love. The tricks grew dirtier, the traps more inventive, and the excuses more complex, but the pattern remained the same.

  “I wouldn’t want your worries,” I said, then shifted back to business. “Except where they overlap mine. You showed up at both funerals.”

  “Just doing my homework.”

  My eyelids dropped to half-mast.

  Zhou sighed. “Okay, you’re not a pushover. What do you have to trade?”

  “Nothing.”

  “That’s not how this works, Brodie.”

  My phone buzzed with an incoming call from Noda. “I’ve got to take this. You mind?”

  “No.”

  “What’s up?” I said.

  “Can you talk?”

  “Hold on.”

  To Zhou, I made a motion about stepping outside so as not to disturb the other diners, then cruised toward the front of the restaurant, past his guards, and out into the concourse, where a flood of pedestrians filled the lane, searching for a last drink or heading home on a late train.

  “You ready?” Noda asked.

  “Give it another a second.”

  On the edge of my peripheral vision, I saw a man step from the shadows of a doorway, look around in confusion, and consult his cell phone as if searching a map for a nearby shop. He paused within earshot and began to swipe screens.

  I turned my back to him and lowered my voice. “Okay, I’m listening.”

  “But still can’t talk?”

  “You got it.”

  Noda grunted. “Tattoo belongs to a yakuza splinter group known for working with the Chongryon.”

  I felt my eyes widen. Bad news. “You got a name?”

  “Sasa-gumi.”

  Gumi meant group and was a common suffix attached to many yakuza gang names, aka the Japanese mafia. The Chongryon was a long-established pro–North Korea association in Japan that funneled money and supplies to the feisty dictatorship. The Chongryon was an old-school political anachronism. With North Korea’s ongoing antics and the early promise of a “utopian socialist society” now in shambles, the Chongryon was composed of die-hard elder loyalists. Young Koreans were no longer drawn to the cause, but the group carried on. It still had bite, if not relevance.

  “What else?”

  “Sasa-gumi’s a splinter group.”

  I exhaled in frustration. “The combination complicates things.”

  Noda grimaced. “A high-level complication.”

  A reference to Brodie Security’s aversion to dealing with clients like FLOTUS because of just such a thorny political mix.

  “I gave my word,” I said, “and I’m going to keep at it. You don’t want to come along, don’t.”

  “Didn’t say that.”

  “I can take a hint.”

  “It wasn’t a hint.”

  “I’m giving you an out if you want it.”

  “I want it, you’ll know.”

  Loyalty had never been an issue with Brodie Security’s chief detective.

  “Good. Thoughts?”

  “We need to talk to the Tanakas.”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “I’m not seeing it,” he said, and disconnected.

  Loyalty with a short fuse.

  I rubbed my eyes, sympathizing with Noda’s discontent. This case was heading in all the wrong directions. Spies, yakuza splinter groups, and the Chongryon. Distasteful and dangerous backdoor North Korean politics.

  I strolled back into Ostrea. I saw Zhou hurriedly shut down his cell phone and set it on the table. How could a shooting at the Kennedy Center in DC possibly be tied to a Tokyo gang with links to North Korea’s underground funding routes? And why was a Chinese spy poking around the edges? Any one of the three would singe eyebrows if you drew too close. Together they were just the sort of inflammatory cocktail the Brodie Security staff avoided with a passion.

  Retaking my seat, I snatched up my saké cup and drained it. “Sorry for the interruption. Where were we?”

  Zhou refilled my glass. “You were going to tell me what you could trade.”

  “Asked and answered.”

  The master spy leaned back in his chair, his eyes gleeful in the soft light. “We both know that has changed.”

  I glanced at Zhou’s phone and he grinned. “My man outside heard enough.”

  “He heard nothing.”

  The grin widened. “Fragments, body language. Inferences were made.”

  Noda’s unexpected find had knocked me off my game and the master spy swooped in without mercy.

  “Okay,” I said. “You’re no pushover either.”

  “So talk.”

  “You first,” I said. “Or you can take your oysters and go home.”

  CHAPTER 34

  BEFORE he could open his mouth, the second round of oysters arrived.

  Zhou’s eyes lit up. “This is the jewel of the menu.” He turned to the waiter. “After we finish these, bring us the oyster risotto to finish.”

  “Certainly, sir,” the waiter said
in Japanese, with a slight bow, then retreated.

  “You were saying?” I asked when the waiter was out of earshot.

  The spy shrugged. “You already know Sharon Tanaka was selected as the set designer for the joint Chinese-Japanese production. What you do not know is she was championed by the president himself.”

  That was a surprise. “Celebrity politics?”

  Zhou reddened slightly. “No, simpler.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “Anna Tanaka went to Harvard with the president’s daughter. They are friends. It was our president’s daughter who pushed for using Sharon Tanaka.”

  The Tanakas seemed to have a talent for latching onto high-powered people. Must be something in the family gene pool.

  “Label me shocked,” I said, polishing off the rest of my drink. “How close are they?”

  The spymaster filled his glass and mine. “Close enough so what I told you before applies. Anna Tanaka’s kidnapping offers low-level leverage. The president dotes on his daughter and she will ask him to help as soon as she learns of the kidnapping.”

  “You’re saying the president might bend Chinese policy over this kidnapping? To please his daughter? I still find that hard to believe.”

  “It is very simple. If the Tanaka girl dies because of inaction on the president’s part, he alienates his daughter. She’s spoiled and stubborn and famous for it. She won’t forget for a long time. Our analysts predict the kidnappers’ demands would not put the president in a position where he could not act. They would be minor but somehow significant to the kidnappers, or whoever hired them.”

  “It’s a slick move, if true.”

  Zhou nodded. “Extremely clever. Except for one thing. We would give them what they want to avoid headlines. But eventually we would find them and, well, they would never be a threat again.”

  Without missing a beat, Zhou reached for one of the newly arrived oysters. This time I was looking at Sakoshi oysters from Ako, in Hyogo Prefecture, on Japan’s southern coast, tucked away on the edge of the Inland Sea. Home of the famed Forty-Seven Ronin.

  Zhou swallowed one oyster, then another. He hummed in pleasure.

  Mulling over all the implications of my tablemate’s answer, I tapped a few drops of red vinegar on an oyster, then slid it into my mouth. The first bite drew a sweet fleshy burst, with a creamy flavor up front and a soft milky wholeness on the follow. A jewel of texture and creaminess. Just the right balance. Which was more than I could say for Zhou’s explanation.