by Barry Eisler
On the tenth day, I got a call from Harry. He told me it was my friend Koichiro, he was going to be at Galerie Coupe Chou in Shinjuku on Tuesday at eight with some friends, I should come by if I had time. I told him that sounded great and would try to make it. I knew to count back five listings in the restaurants section of the Tokyo City Source yellow pages, making our meeting place Las Chicas, and to subtract five days from the date and five hours from the time.
I like Las Chicas for meetings because almost everyone approaches it from Aoyama-dori, making the people coming from the other direction the ones to watch, and because people have to show themselves coming across a little patio before reaching the entrance. The place is surrounded by twisting alleys that snake off in a dozen different directions, offering no choke points where someone could set up and wait. I know those alleys well, as I make it my business to know the layout of any area where I spend a lot of time. I was confident that anyone unwanted would have a hard time getting close to me there.
The food and the ambience are good, too. Both the menu and the people represent a fusion of East and West: Indian jeera rice and Belgian chocolate, a raven-haired beauty of high-cheeked Mongolian ancestry next to a blonde straight out of the fjords, a polyglot of languages and accents. Somehow Las Chicas manages to be eternally hip and entirely comfortable with itself, both at the same time.
I got to the restaurant two hours early and waited, sipping one of the chai lattes for which the restaurant is justifiably celebrated. You never want to be the last one to arrive at a meeting. It’s impolite. And it decreases your chances of being the one to leave.
At a little before three I spotted Harry coming up the street. He didn’t see me until he was inside.
“Always sitting with your back to the wall,” he said, walking over.
“I like the view,” I answered, deadpan. Most people pay zero attention to these things, but I’d taught him that it’s something to be aware of when you walk into a place. The people with their backs to the door are the civilians; the ones in the strategic seats could be people with some street sense or some training, people who might deserve a little more attention.
I had met Harry about five years earlier in Roppongi, where he’d found himself in a jam with a few drunken off-duty American Marines in a bar where I happened to be killing time before an appointment. Harry can come off as a bit of an oddball: sometimes his clothes are so ill fitting you might wonder if he stole them from a random clothesline, and he has a habit of staring unselfconsciously at anything that interests him. It was the staring that drew the attention of the jarheads, one of whom loudly threatened to stick those thick glasses up Harry’s Jap ass if he didn’t find somewhere else to look. Harry had immediately complied, but this apparent sign of weakness served only to encourage the Marines. When they followed Harry out, and I realized he hadn’t even noticed what was going to happen, I left too. I have a problem with bullies — a legacy from my childhood.
Anyway, the jarheads got to mess with me instead of with Harry, and it didn’t turn out the way they had planned. Harry was grateful.
It turned out that he had some useful skills. He was born in the United States of Japanese parents and grew up bilingual, spending summers with his grandparents outside of Tokyo. He went to college and graduate school in the States, earning a degree in applied mathematics and cryptography. In graduate school he got in trouble for hacking into school files that one of his cryptography professors had bragged he had hack-proofed. There was also some unpleasantness with the FBI, which had managed to trace probes of the nation’s Savings & Loan Administration and other financial institutions back to Harry. Some of the honorable men from deep within America’s National Security Agency learned of these hijinks and arranged for Harry to work at Fort Meade in exchange for purging his growing record of computer offenses.
Harry stayed with the NSA for a few years, getting his new employer into secure government and corporate computer systems all over the world and learning the blackest of the NSA’s computer black arts along the way. He came back to Japan in the mid-nineties, where he took a job as a computer security consultant with one of the big global consulting outfits. Of course they did a thorough background check, but his clean record and the magic of an NSA top-secret security clearance blinded Harry’s new corporate sponsors to what was most fundamental about the shy, boyish-looking thirtysomething they had just hired.
Which was that Harry was an inveterate hacker. He had grown bored at the NSA because, despite the technical challenges of the work, it was all sanctioned by the government. In his corporate position, by contrast, there were rules, standards of ethics, which he was supposed to follow. Harry never did security work on a system without leaving a back door that he could use whenever the mood arose. He hacked his own firm’s files to uncover the vulnerabilities of its clients, which he then exploited. Harry had the skills of a locksmith and the heart of a burglar.
Since we met I’ve been teaching him the relatively aboveboard aspects of my craft. He’s enough of a misfit to be in awe of the fact that I’ve befriended him, and has a bit of a crush on me as a result. The resulting loyalty is useful.
“What’s going on?” I asked him after he had sat down.
“Two things. One I think you’ll know about; the other, I’m not sure.”
“I’m listening.”
“First, it seems Kawamura had a fatal heart attack the same morning we were tailing him.”
I took a sip of my chai latte. “I know. It happened right in front of me on the train. Hell of a thing.”
Was he watching my face more closely than usual? “I saw the obituary in the Daily Yomiuri,” he said. “A surviving daughter placed it. The funeral was yesterday.”
“Aren’t you a little young to be reading the obituaries, Harry?” I asked, eyeing him over the edge of the mug.
He shrugged. “I read everything, you know that. It’s part of what you pay me for.”
That much was true. Harry kept his finger on the pulse, and had a knack for identifying patterns in chaos.
“What’s the second thing?”
“During the funeral, someone broke into his apartment. I figured it might have been you, but wanted to tell you just in case.”
I kept my face expressionless. “How did you find out about that?” I asked.
He took a folded piece of paper from his pants pocket and slid it toward me. “I hacked the Keisatsucho report.” The Keisatsucho is Japan’s National Police Agency, the Japanese FBI.
“Christ, Harry, what can’t you get at? You’re unbelievable.”
He waved his hand as though it were nothing. “This is just the Sosa, the investigative section. Their security is pathetic.”
I felt no particular urge to tell him that I agreed with his assessment of Sosa security — that in fact I had been an avid reader of their files for many years.
I unfolded the piece of paper and started to scan its contents. The first thing I noticed was the name of the person who had prepared the report: Ishikura Tatsuhiko. Tatsu. Somehow I wasn’t surprised.
I had known Tatsu in Vietnam, where he was attached to Japan’s Public Safety and Investigative Board, one of the precursors of the Keisatsucho. Hobbled by the restrictions placed on its military by Article Nine of the postwar constitution and unable to do more than send a few people on a “listen-and-learn” basis, the government sent Tatsu to Vietnam for six months to make wiring diagrams of the routes of KGB assistance to the Vietcong. Because I spoke Japanese, I was assigned to help him learn his way around.
Tatsu was a short man with the kind of stout build that rounds out with age, and a gentle face that masked an intensity beneath — an intensity that was revealed by a habit of jutting his torso and head forward in a way that made it look as though he was being restrained by an invisible leash. He was frustrated in postwar, neutered Japan, and admired the warrior’s path I had taken. For my part, I was intrigued by a secret sorrow I saw in his eyes, a sorrow that, strangely, b
ecame more pronounced when he smiled and especially when he laughed. He spoke little of his family, of two young daughters in Japan, but when he did his pride was evident. Years later I learned from a mutual acquaintance that there had also been a son, the youngest, who had died in circumstances of which Tatsu would never speak, and I understood from whence that sorrowful countenance had come.
When I came back to Japan we spent some time together, but I had distanced myself since getting involved with Miyamoto and then Benny. I hadn’t seen Tatsu since changing my appearance and moving underground.
Which was fortunate, because I knew from the reports I hacked that Tatsu had a pet theory: the LDP had an assassin on the payroll. In the late eighties Tatsu came to believe that too many key witnesses in corruption cases, too many financial reformers, too many young crusaders against the political status quo were dying of “natural causes.” In his assessment there was a pattern here, and he profiled the shadowy shape at the center of it as having skills very much like mine.
Tatsu’s colleagues thought the shape he saw was a ghost in his imagination, and his dogged insistence on investigating a conspiracy that others claimed was a mirage had done nothing to advance his career. On the other hand, that doggedness did afford him some protection from the powers he hoped to threaten, because no one wanted to lend credence to his theories by having him die suddenly of natural causes. On the contrary: I imagined that many of Tatsu’s enemies hoped he would live a long and uneventful life. I also knew this attitude would change instantly if Tatsu ever got too close to the truth.
So far he hadn’t. But I knew Tatsu. In Vietnam he had understood the fundamentals of counterintelligence at a time when even Agency higher-ups couldn’t put together a simple wiring diagram of a typical V.C. unit. He had developed operational leads despite his “listen-and-learn-only” purview. He had refused the usual attaché’s cushy life of writing reports from a villa, insisting instead on operating in the field.
His superiors had been horrified at his effectiveness, he had once told me bitterly over substantial quantities of sake, and they had studiously ignored the intelligence he had produced. In the end his persistence and courage had been wasted. I wish he could have learned from the experience.
But I supposed that was impossible. Tatsu was true samurai, and would continue serving the same master no matter how many times that master ignored or even abused him. Devoted service was the highest end he knew.
It was unusual for the Keisatsucho to be investigating a simple break-in. Something about Kawamura’s death, and what he was doing before it, must have attracted Tatsu’s attention. It wouldn’t be the first time I had felt my old comrade in arms watching me as though through a one-way mirror, seeing a shape behind the glass but not knowing whose, and I was glad that I’d decided to drop off his radar so many years earlier.
“You don’t have to tell me whether you knew about this,” Harry said, interrupting my musings. “I know the rules.”
I considered how much I should reveal. If I wanted to learn more, his skills would be helpful. On the other hand, I didn’t like the idea of his getting any closer to the true nature of my work. He was getting uncomfortably close already. Tatsu’s name on that report, for example. I had to assume that Harry would follow it like a link on the Internet, that he would tap into Tatsu’s conspiracy theories, that he would sense a connection with me. Hardly proof beyond a reasonable doubt, of course, but between them Harry and Tatsu would have a significant number of puzzle pieces.
Sitting there in Las Chicas, sipping my chai latte, I had to admit that Harry could become a problem. The realization depressed me. Christ, I thought, you’re getting sentimental.
Maybe it was time to get out of this shit. Maybe this time it really was.
“I didn’t know about it,” I said after a moment. “This is an unusual case.” I saw no harm in telling him about the stranger on the train, and did so.
“If we were in New York, I’d tell you it was a pickpocket,” he said when I was done.
“I thought the same thing when I first saw it. But pickpocket would be a piss-poor career choice for a white boy in Tokyo. You have to blend.”
“Target of opportunity?”
I shook my head. “Not too many people are that shameless and cold-blooded. I doubt one of them just happened to be standing next to Kawamura that morning. I think the guy was a Kawamura contact, there for some kind of exchange.”
“Why do you suppose the Keisatsucho is investigating a simple break-in in a Tokyo apartment?” he asked.
“That I don’t know,” I said, although Tatsu’s involvement made me wonder. “Maybe Kawamura’s position in the government, the recency of his death, something like that. That’s the theory I’d go on.”
He looked at me. “Are you asking me to dig?”
I should have let it go. But I’ve been used before. The feeling that it had happened again would keep me awake at night. Had Benny put a B-team on Kawamura? I figured I might as well let Harry provide some clues.
“You will anyway, right?” I asked.
He blinked. “Can’t help myself, I guess.”
“Dig away, then. Let me know what else you find. And watch your back, hotshot. Don’t get sloppy.”
The warning was for both of us.
3
TELLING HARRY TO watch his back made me think of Jimmy Calhoun, my best friend in high school, of who Jimmy was before he became Crazy Jake.
Jimmy and I joined the Army together when we were barely seventeen years old. I remember the recruiter telling us we would need parental permission to join. “See that woman outside?” he had asked us. “Give her this twenty, ask her if she’ll sign as your mother.” She did. Later, I realized this woman was making her living this way.
Jimmy and I had met, in a sense, through his younger sister, Deirdre. She was a beautiful, black-haired Irish rose, and one of the few people who was nice to the awkward, out-of-place kid I was in Dryden. Some idiot told Jimmy I liked her, which was true, of course, and Jimmy decided he didn’t like a guy with slanty eyes hitting on his sister. He was bigger than I was, but I fought him to a standstill. After that, he respected me, and became my ally against the Dryden bullies, my first real friend. Deirdre and I started dating, and woe to anyone who gave Jimmy a hard time about it.
I told Deirdre before we left that I was going to marry her when I got back. She told me she’d be waiting. “Watch out for Jimmy, okay?” she asked me. “He’s got too much to prove.”
Jimmy and I had told the recruiter we wanted to serve together, and the guy said he would make it happen. I don’t know if the recruiter had anything to do with it, in fact he was probably lying, but it worked out the way we asked. Jimmy and I did Special Forces training together at Fort Bragg, then wound up in the same unit, in a joint military-CIA program called the Studies and Observation Group, or SOG. The Studies and Observation moniker was a joke, some idiot bureaucrat’s attempt to give the organization a low profile. You might as well name a pit bull Pansy.
SOG’s mission was clandestine reconnaissance and sabotage missions into Cambodia and Laos, sometimes even into North Vietnam. The teams were composed of LURRPs, an acronym for men specializing in long-range reconnaissance patrols. Three Americans and nine Civilian Irregular Defense Group personnel, or CIDGs. The CIDGs were usually Khmer mercenaries recruited by the CIA, sometimes Montagnards. Three men would go into the bush for one, two, three weeks at a time, living off the land, no contact with MACV, the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam.
We were the elite of the elite, small and mobile, slipping like silent ghosts through the jungle. All the moving parts on the weapons were taped down for noise suppression. We operated so much at night that we could see in the dark. We didn’t even use bug repellent because the V.C. could smell it. We were that serious.
We were operating in Cambodia at the same time Nixon was publicly pledging respect for Cambodia’s neutrality. If our activities got out, Nixon wou
ld have had to admit that he’d been lying not just to the public, but to Congress as well. So our activities weren’t just clandestine, they were outright denied, all the way to the top. For some of our missions we had to travel stripped, with no U.S.-issued weapons or other matériel. Other times we couldn’t even get air support for fear that a pilot would be shot down and captured. When we lost a man, his family would get a telegram saying he had been killed “west of Dak To” or “near the border” or some other vague description like that.
We started out all right. Before we went, we talked about what we would and wouldn’t do. We’d heard the stories. Everyone knew about My Lai. We were going to keep cool heads, stay professional. Keep our innocence, really. I can almost laugh, when I think about it now.
Jimmy became known as “Crazy Jake” because he fell asleep in the middle of our first firefight. Tracer rounds were coming at us from beyond the tree line, everyone was hunkered down, firing back at people we couldn’t even see, and it went on for hours because we couldn’t call in air support due to our illegal location. Jimmy said “fuck it” in the middle of things and took a nap. Everyone thought that was pretty cool. While they were saying, “you’re crazy, man, you’re crazy,” Jimmy said, “well I knew everything was jake.” So after that he was Crazy Jake. Outside the two of us, I don’t think anyone ever knew his real name.
Jimmy didn’t just act crazy; he looked it. A teenage motorcycle accident had almost cost him an eye. The doctors got it back in, but couldn’t get it to focus in line with his good eye, so Jimmy always looked as though he was watching something off to the side while he was talking to you. “Omnidirectional,” he liked to say, with a smile, when he caught someone trying to steal a glance at it.
Jimmy had been social enough in high school but got quiet in Vietnam, training constantly, serious about his work. He wasn’t a big guy, but people were afraid of him. Once, an MP with a German shepherd confronted Jimmy about some unruly behavior in a bar. Jimmy didn’t look at him, acted like he wasn’t even there. Instead, he stared at the dog. Something passed between them, some animal thing, and the dog whimpered and backed away. The MP got spooked and wisely decided to let the whole thing go, and the incident became part of the growing legend of Crazy Jake, that even guard dogs were afraid of him.
