Power and Empire

by Marc Cameron

  Once the oncoming shift had assumed their posts—leaving a new officer outside the president’s office—Huang walked his second-in-command, Major Ts’ai, to the gate. He wanted to discuss a few last-minute details about the Japan trip. Unlike members of the U.S. Secret Service, even supervisory members of the Central Security Bureau’s presidential protection unit did not have take-home cars. Most, including Major Ts’ai, did not mind, preferring to take the train over paying hundreds of thousands of yuan—the equivalent of thousands of dollars—for parking.

  Two uniformed 1st Squadron, First Group CSB soldiers snapped to attention when they saw the two officers.

  “Tomorrow morning, then, Colonel,” Major Ts’ai said as they reached the gate. “I hope you are able to get some sleep.”

  Huang smiled. “I will sleep when the paramount leader is safely back in Chi—”

  The pop of gunfire outside the gates caused the smile to vanish from Huang’s face. Both he and the major drew their pistols, nodding to the uniformed guards.

  Ever thinking of his first responsibility, the colonel keyed the PTT button on his radio. He ordered the command post to keep President Zhao in his office and double the contingent of uniformed guards, forming concentric rings of protection.

  “A mugging, perhaps,” Major Ts’ai said, Taurus pistol in his hand as he peered around the edge of the employee man-door through the walls of the highly guarded grounds.

  “Perhaps,” Huang said, feeling in his gut that the shots signified something even more sinister.

  Captain Fu Jiankang, another member of the president’s primary detail, spoke in a halting voice over the radio, proving Huang’s suspicions. Even wounded, the man retained his priorities. He gave his position—a location half a block down from the gate—and asked for medical assistance, as the victim of an apparent robbery. He demonstrated remarkable devotion to duty when he reminded his comrades to “see to the safety of the paramount leader first.”

  Colonel Huang’s instinctive and completely human inclination was to rush to the aid of his friend, but training made both him and the major turn immediately and rush back to the president’s office. On the street, gunfire popped and snapped. Another member of the detail called out that he was hit. And then another. Four minutes after the skirmish started, Colonel Huang stood with his back to President Zhao’s door, listening through his earpiece to the sound of his men as they died.

  56

  Japan turned out to be one of those Unless Otherwise Directed situations when it came to carrying a firearm. Lisanne Robertson faxed arrival documents to passport control—along with payment information for the roughly five thousand dollars they would have to pay for the privilege of landing at the facilities, but Japanese officials rescinded permission to land at Haneda Airport nearer downtown Tokyo, instead sending the Hendley Associates Gulfstream to the larger Narita International—almost an hour outside the city. Narita’s Business Aviation Terminal accepted only fifteen planes a day, so they were lucky to get a spot. The Premier Gate was glitzy and comfortable, but it shunted arriving bigwigs over and through the same shoe-disinfecting rug, body temperature scanner, immigration, and customs stations as every other visitor to Japan.

  The Campus operators took the chance of raising a few eyebrows by packing the comms gear and granddad pocketknives in their luggage, but carrying in firearms would have been impossible. The pistols and larger blades remained hidden in the bulkhead compartments of the airplane.

  The pilots and Lisanne stayed at a hotel close to Narita while the team made the forty-five-minute trip from the airport to Tokyo Station. Lisanne had been able to find them rooms at the Marriott near the Ginza—no small feat with attendees of the G20 packing the city. Luckily, all the venues appeared to be on the opposite side of the station—geographically close, but worlds away in a city as densely populated as Tokyo.

  With nothing to go on but the fact that Vincent Chen and his cohorts were in Japan, Chavez told everyone to get settled and stand by to move. Ryan decided to grab a quick shower and change into his last pair of clean clothes. The rooms were small, as business hotel rooms were in Japan, with just enough floor space to turn around in at the foot of the bed. The tub was deep, meant for soaking—and Jack thought he would put it to good use when he had more time.

  With his comms batteries changed and feeling uncharacteristically light without his pistol, Ryan walked through the automatic glass door to meet the other operators in the fourth-floor lobby of the Marriott. Midas read a copy of The Asahi Shimbun, the English-language edition, while Adara looked at their phones. Ryan sat down by Adara, who filled him in on the latest about Clark’s injuries.

  “He’s doing fine,” she said. “Still under guard at a hospital in Fort Worth. This female FBI agent appears to want to arrest Dom, too.”

  “Like to see her try,” Adara groused.

  Ryan sighed. “Nothing from Gavin yet?”

  Midas lowered the newspaper and peered over the top. “Ding’s still in his room, on the phone with him now,” he said. “Hopefully he’ll have—”

  Chavez came over the net, cutting him off. Apparently, he’d just put in his earpiece. “Saddle up and meet me in the lobby,” he said. There was an urgent calm in his voice that a seasoned hunter gets when he first spots his prey. “We’re going to a place called Shinjuku. Adara, jump on your phone and see what train we need to take.”

  “Copy that,” Adara said. “My buds and I blew some of our liberty walking around Kabukichō during a port call in Yokosuka. I could have guessed Chen would end up in a place like that.”

  “So are we going to Shinjuku or Kabukichō?” Midas asked.

  “Shinjuku is the area,” Adara said. “Kabukichō is the red-light district in that area. Scads of pachinko parlors, love hotels. Everywhere you turn there’s some yakuza tout trying to drag you into hostess clubs where girls in baby-doll costumes will flirt with you and charge exorbitant prices for alcohol, among other things.”

  “Chicas peligrosas,” Jack muttered.

  “You’re right about that, ’mano,” Chavez said. “Anyway, the number Dom got from Lily Chen’s phone pinged at a restaurant in Shinjuku three hours ago. It’s quiet now, so he’s either dumped it or turned it off. That’s something. He doesn’t know what we look like, so we may as well go have a look. Jack, you should probably call your new girlfriend and let her know what we have.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” Ryan said.

  “You say so, ’mano,” Chavez said. “Let’s be ready to roll in five.”

  “We’re all in the lobby,” Adara said. “Ready to go, boss.”

  Chavez gave a quiet chuckle. “Copy that,” he said. “I’ll be out as soon as I can figure out the buttons on this Japanese toilet.”

  Jack called the number on the card Yuki had given him. It usually irritated him when he got someone’s voice mail, but he found he was oddly happy to hear Yukiko speak. She gave her number with no name or business affiliation, which was common in this business. There wasn’t much to tell, so his message was short. They were looking for an Asian man in the busiest area of the most populated city in Asia—or the world, for that matter—because his phone said he’d been there three hours earlier.

  The hotel was less than two blocks from Tokyo Station, and the team quickly fell in with the river of Japanese commuters, seemingly going in all directions at once. Ryan was no stranger to world travel but he’d thought the station was busy when they’d come in on the Narita Express at midday. Rush hour started late in Tokyo but was in full swing by six-thirty. The station itself was a sprawling shopping mall with tens of thousands of commuters passing them throughout the day. Women in brightly colored uniforms and young men in large costume hats shouted and cajoled—always in the most polite and deferential tone—inviting the captive audience to try their cake, fruit, waffle, fish, or countless other products.

  Eccent
ric hairstyles and outlandish clothing could be seen here and there—the odd peroxide red, a blue Mohawk, and even a pierced nose or two. But Japan remained a place where you could buy a white shirt and tie at the corner convenience store. Conservative dress and demeanor were lauded, and for the most part, Tokyo Station was a sea of dark hair and dark suits—for men and women alike.

  Adara and Ding both spoke a smattering of Japanese, so they led the way to platform 1, where the team jammed themselves into the 6:38 Chuo Line train for Shinjuku—which arrived precisely on the minute. The car proved to be shoulder-to-shoulder and chest-to-chest. Unlike China and some other countries where Jack and the others had worked, the trains in Japan seemed to have the same rules as libraries or urinals. No eye contact, no talking. And, Adara warned them, if the men were lucky enough to get a seat, under no circumstances should they offer it up to a woman under fifty who was not pregnant. Fortunately, the 6:38 Chuo was so crowded he barely had room to stand, let alone a seat to give up.

  Four stops and fifteen minutes later, the train disgorged the team into a seething mass of evening commuters at Shinjuku, more crowded even than Tokyo Station. Chavez motioned everyone behind a row of coffee vending machines in order to not get run over while he checked his phone for the address Gavin had given him. With a basic idea of where they were going, he navigated them across the street toward a garish red neon sign that ran up the side of a building, reading in English: “I ‘heart’ Kabukichō.”

  “We should have brought umbrellas,” Midas said, looking up at the boiling clouds in the night sky, reflecting red and orange from the neon lights. “Would have given us some weapons.”

  “It starts to rain, umbrella stands will sprout up all over the place,” Chavez said.

  Adara had been right about Kabukichō. Touts ruled the narrow streets, venturing into the lighted streets from the shadows of their covered awnings only when someone promising walked past. On one, the clatter and ping of pachinko machines sounded above the nasal whine of shamisen music. On the next, men in white shirts and black bow ties beckoned anyone over eighteen into curtained “information centers” to the decades-old hits of Olivia Newton-John. Crowds of tourists made the place seemed slightly less sinister than it really was. Ten-foot-tall female robots waved their massive arms, and diminutive girls—many of whom spoke Korean—stood under strobing lights in skimpy costumes, handing out flyers that were written in characters Jack couldn’t understand.

  It was like Vegas in code.

  “We turn right here,” Chavez said, pointing east on the grimy side street past the Robot Restaurant. “It’s supposed to be a couple blocks up that way.”

  “Let me look at that,” Adara said, moving closer to Chavez. “Ah, he was in the Golden Gai. This is making more sense by the minute.”

  The Golden Gai, or Golden District, was roughly one large square block in size, bisected by narrow alleys and dozens of even narrower footpaths that cut between minuscule bars and cafés—most of which accommodated no more than seven or eight, and most of those regular patrons. The maze of ramshackle shanties with dim lights burning in the second-floor flats made it the perfect place to get lost. One sign read THE DOOR TO NARNIA; another proclaimed NO ENGLISH HERE!

  The team split, with Ryan and Midas approaching the target address from the west while Adara and Ding walked parallel to circle around and come in from the east. Ryan and Midas slowed their pace, doing a little gawking while they gave the other team time to get ahead. American and European tourists roamed the shadowed alleys, staring into the tiny bars like they were visiting a human zoo. Ryan was just about to say something about it when he looked to his right and did a double take. Midas noticed and slowed to get a look himself.

  “Is that—”

  Jack nudged him forward. “Come on,” he said. “She’s probably working.”

  At the split pine counter of a cramped place called the Jazz Bar sat Yukiko Monzaki. She glanced up at Jack when he passed, then just as quickly looked away.

  “You think we burned her?” Chavez asked after Ryan filled him in on who they’d seen.

  “Our guy doesn’t know what we look like,” Ryan said, still walking. “Or, for that matter, that we’re even after him.”

  Two Asian men wearing light-colored golf jackets stepped out of a bar ahead, looked up and down the street, then turned down a small side alley to the left.

  Ryan and Midas kept walking.

  The sound of a sliding door and then a soft voice came from up the street behind them.

  “Jack? What are you doing here?”

  Ryan turned to find Yukiko standing in a pool of light beneath a red lantern outside the Jazz Bar.

  Half a breath later, the door to the café in the middle of the block slid open and an Asian couple stepped into the street. It was the same door the two men had come out of earlier, between Yuki and Jack now. The man carried a leather satchel over his shoulder and was in the middle of lighting a cigarette. The burst of flame illuminated the face of Vincent Chen.

  Ryan gave an involuntary start. Yuki took a half-step forward.

  The woman with Chen shot a glance at Yuki and then back at Ryan and Midas before leaning in to whisper something. Chen looked up from his cigarette and hitched up the leather bag, walking toward Ryan. He made it two steps before darting left to disappear between two buildings where the earlier men had gone. The woman was right behind him. Three more men exited the same café before Ryan and Midas could follow. Amanda Salazar came out behind them.

  “Chen and Kim Soo coming at you, mid-block,” Midas shouted into his mic. “Two more Asian males ahead of them. Could be together.”

  The last man out after Chen attempted to draw a long hunting knife from his belt, but Yuki came up from behind and gave him a brutal chop to the forearm with an expandable baton. He dropped the knife but wheeled on her immediately, still very much in the fight. Amanda screamed like a banshee and ran directly at Midas, clawing at his face. The two men came at Ryan in unison.

  It was relatively early and Kabukichō was just waking up, but the few people on the narrow street jumped back, not sure if they should run or pull out their phones and start filming.

  Grateful for the darkness, Ryan sidestepped the lead, moving into the entryway of a nearby bar, narrowing the possible angles his opponents had to mount their attack and forcing them to stack, one behind the other. Ryan faded back a hair, drawing that man in close before driving upward with a wicked uppercut, slamming the man’s teeth together with a satisfying crack and setting him up for a quick left hook to the jaw that turned off his lights and left him sprawled on the pavement.

  Ryan caught the glint of a blade in the hands of the second attacker, upping the ante. Undaunted by the quick defeat of his partner, this one was surely endowed with cold-steel courage brought on by the knife. He bent forward at the waist and rushed Ryan, shoulders stooped, blade out like a fencer on the offense. Ryan stepped sideways again, feeling the sickening scrape as the knife glanced off a rib. He grabbed a handful of golf jacket, taking advantage of the momentum to help the man run past. The man’s head punched straight through the bar’s flimsy hollow-core inner door, all the way to his shoulders. Blades and multiple opponents left little room for mercy. Ryan brought his elbow down on the back of the man’s neck, crushing his throat against the edge of the door and ending the fight—for this one.

  Seeing the mortally wounded man hanging half in, half out by his neck, two Japanese women in the tiny bar screamed and retreated to the far corners of the room.

  Ryan moved his arms, chicken-wing-like, to be certain they still worked after the knife wound.

  The quick snap, snap of fist to flesh came from Ryan’s right. He turned in time to see Midas lift a screaming Amanda Salazar above his head and slam her to the ground. Blood poured from the big man’s nose, revealing that the snapping sound had been Amanda hitting him and not the ot
her way around. She moaned at his feet, writhing on the asphalt and bleeding from her ear.

  Yuki stood over the body of the third man, clutching her expandable baton. She bent quickly and handcuffed him to a standpipe next to the road.

  “You okay?” Ryan looked at Yuki.

  She nodded.

  “I’m fine, brother,” Midas said, hand to his bleeding nose as he started for the alley. “In case you were wondering.”

  “Are you armed?” Ryan asked. He hadn’t told them about his ribs, and hesitated to look down.

  She nodded, producing a stainless SIG Sauer P230. “You?”

  Ryan glanced down at the man he’d knocked out and saw a small revolver in an ankle holster. He stooped and picked it up. “I am now,” he said.

  Yuki stepped in close, touching his side. “You are bleeding.”

  “I’m fine,” Ryan said, rolling his shoulders. “Really.”

  Lightning rent the sky above Tokyo, followed by a crack of thunder. The wind shifted abruptly to the north.

  Adara’s voice came on the radio, garbled and unintelligible. Ding shouted something next, on the net, but loud enough to hear from the next alley over.