by Barry Eisler
“We didn’t say, ‘get him out.’ We just said, ‘get him,’ ” they told me.
There were three of them. Two MACV, one CIA. I was shaking my head. The guy from the agency spoke up.
“Do what we’re asking, and you’ve got a ticket home.”
“I’ll get home when I get home,” I said, but I wondered.
He shrugged. “We’ve got two choices here. One is, we carpet-bomb every hamlet in Bu Dop. That’s about a thousand friendlies, plus Calhoun. We’ll just emulsify everyone. It’s not a problem.
“Two is, you do what’s right and save all those people, and you’re on a plane the next day. Personally, I don’t give a shit.” He turned and walked out.
I told them I would do it. They were going to grease him anyway. Even if they didn’t, I saw what he had become. I had seen it happen to a lot of guys, although Jimmy was the worst. They went over there, and found out that killing was what they were best at. Do you tell people? Do you put on your resume, “Ninety confirmed kills. Large collection of human ears. Ran private army”? C’mon, you’re never going to fit in the real world again. You’re marked forever, you can’t go back.
I went in, told the Yards that I wanted to see Crazy Jake. I was known from the missions we had run together, so they took me to him. I didn’t have a weapon; it was okay.
“Hey, Jimmy,” I said when I saw him. “Long time no see.”
“John John,” he greeted me. He had always called me that. “You come in here to join me? It’s about time. We’re the only outfit in this fucking war that the V.C. is actually afraid of. We don’t have to fight with one arm tied behind our balls by a bunch of no-load politicians.”
We spent some time catching up. By the time I told him they were going to bomb him it was already night.
“I figured they would, sooner or later,” he said. “I can’t fight that. Yeah, I figured this was coming.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Don’t know. But I can’t make the Yards my hostages. Even if I could, fuckers’d bomb them anyway.”
“Why don’t you just walk out?”
He gave me a sly look. “I don’t fancy going to jail, John John. Not after leading the good life here in the Central Highlands.”
“Well, you’re in a tight spot. I don’t know what to tell you.”
He nodded his head, then said, “You supposed to kill me, man?”
“Yeah,” I told him.
“So do it.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I’ve got no way out. They’re going to vaporize my people otherwise, I know that. And I’d rather it be you than some guy I don’t know, dropping a seven hundred and fifty-pound bomb from thirty-thousand feet up. You’re my blood brother, man.”
I still didn’t say anything.
“I love these people,” he said. “I really love them. Do you know how many of them have died for me? Because they know I would die for them.”
These were not just words. It’s hard for a civilian to understand the depth of trust, the depth of love, that can develop between men in combat.
“My Yards won’t be happy with you. They really love me, the crazy fucks. Think I’m a magic man. But you’re pretty slippery. You’ll get away.”
“I just want to go home,” I said.
He laughed. “There’s no home for us, John. Not after what we’ve done. It doesn’t work that way. Here.” He handed me a side arm. “Don’t worry about me. Save my Yards.”
I thought of the recruiter, the one who’d given us twenty bucks to pay some woman to sign us into the army as our mother.
“Save my Yards,” Jimmy said again.
I thought of Deirdre saying, Watch out for Jimmy, okay?
He picked up a CAR-15, a submachine gun version of the ubiquitous M-16 with a folding stock and shortened barrel, and popped in a magazine. Clicked off the safety so I could see him do it.
“C’mon, John John. I’m not going to keep asking so nicely.”
I remembered him putting out his hand after I had fought him to a standstill, saying You’re all right. What’s your name?
John Rain, fuckface, I had answered, and we had fought again.
The CAR-15 was swinging toward me.
I thought of the swimming hole near Dryden, how you had to just forget about everything else and jump.
“Last chance,” Jimmy was saying. “Last chance.”
Do what we’re asking and you’ve got a ticket home.
There’s no home for us, John. Not after what we’ve done.
I raised the pistol quickly, smoothly, chest level, double-tapping the trigger in the same motion. The two slugs slammed through his chest and blew out his back. Jimmy was dead before he hit the floor.
Two Yards burst into Jimmy’s hooch but I had already picked up the CAR. I cut them down and ran.
Their security was outward facing. They weren’t well prepared to stop someone going from the inside out. And they were shocked, demoralized, at losing Jimmy.
I took some shrapnel from an exploding claymore. The wounds were minor, but back at base they told me, “Okay, soldier, that’s your million-dollar wound. You’re going home now.” They put me on a plane, and seventy-two hours later I was back in Dryden.
The body came back two days later. There was a funeral. Jimmy’s parents were crying, Deirdre was crying. “Oh God, John, I knew, I knew he wasn’t going to make it back. Oh God,” she was saying.
Everyone wanted to know how Jimmy had died. I told them he died in a firefight. That was all I knew. Near the border.
I left town a day later. Didn’t say good-bye to any of them. Jimmy was right, there was no home after what we had done. “After such knowledge, what forgiveness?” I think some poet said.
I tell myself it’s karma, the great wheels of the universe grinding on. A lifetime ago I killed my girl’s brother. Now I take out a guy, next thing I know I’m involved with his daughter. If it were happening to someone else, I’d think it was funny.
I had called the Imperial before the meeting with Tatsu and made a reservation. I keep a few things stored at the hotel in case of a rainy day: a couple of suits, identity papers, currency, concealed weapons. The hotel people think I’m an expat Japanese who visits Japan frequently, and I pay them to keep my things so I don’t have to carry them back and forth every time I travel. I even stay there periodically to back up the story.
The Imperial is centrally located and has a great bar. More important, it’s big enough to be as anonymous as a love hotel, if you know how to play it.
I had just reached Hibiya Station on the Hibiya line when my pager went off. I pulled it from my belt and saw a number I didn’t recognize, but followed by the 5-5-5 that told me it was Tatsu.
I found a pay phone and input the number. The other side picked up on the first ring. “Secure line?” Tatsu’s voice asked.
“Secure enough.”
“The two visitors are leaving Narita at oh-nine-hundred tomorrow. It’s a ninety-minute ride to where they’re going. Our man might get there before them, though, so you’ll need to be in position early, just outside.”
“Okay. The package?”
“Being emplaced right now. You can pick it up in an hour.”
“Will do.”
Silence. Then: “Good luck.”
Dead line.
I reinserted the phone card and called the number Tatsu had given me in Ebisu. Whispering to disguise my voice, I warned the person on the other end of the line that there would be a bomb on the undercarriage of a diplomatic vehicle visiting the Yokosuka Naval Base tomorrow. That should slow things up in front of the guardhouse.
I had showered at Harry’s before going to meet Tatsu, but I still looked pretty rough when I checked in at the hotel. No one seemed to notice my sleeve, wet from fishing Tatsu’s package out of the fountain at the park. Anyway, I had just flown in from the East Coast of the United States — long trip, anything can happen. The attendant at the
front desk laughed when I told him I was getting too old for this shit.
My things were already waiting for me in the room, the shirts pressed and the suits hung neatly. I bolted the door and sat down on the bed, then checked a false compartment in the suitcase they had brought up, where I saw the dull gleam of the Glock. I opened up the toiletry kit, took out the rounds I wanted from a dummy can of deodorant, loaded the gun, and slipped it between the mattress and the box spring.
At nine o’clock the phone rang. I picked it up, recognized Midori’s voice, and told her the room number.
A minute later there was a quiet knock at the door. I got up and looked through the peephole. The light in the room was off, so the person on the other side wouldn’t know whether the occupant was checking to see who was out there. Leaving the light on can make you a nice target for a shotgun blast.
It was Midori, as expected. I let her in and bolted the door behind her. When I turned toward her, she was looking around the room. “Hey, it’s about time we stayed in a place like this,” she said. “Those love hotels can get old.”
“But they have their advantages,” I said, putting my arms around her.
We ordered a dinner of sashimi and hot sake from the room-service menu, and while we waited for it to arrive I filled Midori in on my meeting with Tatsu, told her the bad news about Bulfinch.
The food arrived, and, when the hotel employee who brought it had left, Midori said, “I have to ask you something a little . . . silly. Is that okay?”
I looked at her, and felt my gut twist at the honesty in her eyes. “Sure.”
“I’ve been thinking about these people. They killed Bulfinch. They tried to kill you and me. They must have wanted to kill my father. Do you think . . . did he really have a heart attack?”
I poured sake from the ceramic flask into two small matching cups, watching wisps of steam rise from the surface. My hands were steady. “Your question isn’t silly. There are ways of killing someone that make it look like an accident, or like natural causes. And I agree that, based on what they learned of your father’s activities, they certainly would have wanted him dead.”
“He was afraid they were going to kill him. He told me.”
“Yes.”
She was drumming her fingers on the table, playing a furious tune on an imaginary piano. There was a cold fire in her eyes. “I think they killed him,” she said, nodding.
There’s no home for us, John. Not after what we’ve done. “You may be right,” I said, quietly.
Did she know? Or did her mind refuse to go where instinct wanted to take her? I couldn’t tell.
“What matters is that your father was a brave man,” I said, my voice slightly thick. “And that, regardless of how he died, he shouldn’t have died in vain. That’s why I have to get that disk back. Why I have to finish what your father started. I really . . .” I wasn’t sure what I was going to say. “I really want to do that. I need to do it.”
Warring emotions crossed her face like the shadows of fast-moving clouds. “I don’t want you to,” she said. “It’s too dangerous.”
“It’s less dangerous than it seems. My friend is going to make sure that the police who are there know what’s going on, so no one is going to take a shot at me.” I hoped.
“What about the CIA people? You can’t control them.”
I thought about that. Tatsu had probably already figured that if I got killed on the way in, he would use it as an excuse to order everyone out of the car, search for weapons, and find the disk that way. He was a practical guy.
“Nobody’s going to shoot me. The way I’ve got it set up, they won’t even know what’s going on until it’s too late.”
“I thought that, in war, nothing goes according to plan.”
I laughed. “That’s true. I’ve made it this far by being a good improviser.”
I took a swallow of sake. “Anyway, we’re about out of alternatives,” I said, enjoying the feeling of the hot liquid spreading through my abdomen. “Yamaoto doesn’t know that Holtzer has the disk, so he’s going to keep coming after you if we don’t get it back. And after me, too.”
We ate for a few minutes in silence. Then she looked at me and said, “It makes sense, but it’s still terrible.” Her voice was bitter.
I wanted to tell her that eventually you get used to terrible things that make sense. But I said nothing.
She stood up and wandered over to the window. Her back was to me, the glow through the window silhouetting her. I watched her for a moment, then got up and walked over, feeling the carpet taking the weight of my feet. I stopped close enough to smell the clean smell of her hair, and some other, more exotic scent, and slowly, slowly let my hands rise so that my fingertips were just touching her shoulders and arms.
Then my fingertips gave way to my hands, and when my hands made their way to her hips she eased back into me. Her hands found mine and together they rose up, covering her belly and stroking it in such a way that I couldn’t tell who was initiating the movement.
Standing there with her, looking out the window over Tokyo, I felt the weight of what I would face in the morning drift slowly away from me. I had the exhilarating realization that there was nowhere, nowhere on the whole planet, that I would rather have been right then. The city around us was a living thing: the million lights were its eyes; the laughter of lovers its voice; the expressways and factories its muscles and sinews. And I was there at its pulsing heart.
Just a little more time, I thought, kissing her neck, her ear. A little more time at an anonymous hotel where we could float untethered from the past, free of all the things that I knew would soon end my fragile bond with this woman.
I became increasingly aware of the sound of her breathing, the taste of her skin, and my languid sense of the city and our place in it faded. She turned and kissed me, softly, then harder, her hands on my face, under my shirt, the heat from her touch spreading through my torso like ripples on water.
We tumbled onto the bed, stripping off each other’s clothes, tossing them helter-skelter to the floor. Her back was arched upward and I was kissing her breasts, her belly, and she said, “No, now, I want you now,” and I moved up, feeling her legs on either side of me, and into her. She made a sound like the wind picking up, and we moved against each other, with each other, slowly at first, then more urgently. We were fused together, breathing the breath from each other’s lungs, the sensation arcing from my head to my groin to my toes and back again until I couldn’t tell where my body ended and hers began. I felt a rumbling between us and in us like storm clouds rolling in and when I came it was like a thunderclap from everywhere, her body and my body and all the places where we were joined.
We lay there afterward, still entwined, exhausted as though we had done battle but had failed to vanquish each other with our last and mightiest blows. “Sugoi,” she said. “What did they put in the sake?”
I smiled at her. “You want to get another bottle?”
“A lot of bottles,” she said, drowsily. And that was the last thing either of us said before I drifted off into a sleep that was mercifully untroubled by memories and only slightly marred by dread of what was still to come.
23
I GOT UP just before dawn, and stood looking out the window as the lights came on in Tokyo and the city slowly emerged from its slumber, dreamily stretching its fingers and toes. Midori was still sleeping.
I showered and dressed in one of the suits I keep at the Imperial, an eleven-ounce gray flannel from Paul Stuart. A white Sea Island cotton shirt, conservative blue tie. The shoes were bench made, the well-seasoned attaché from a tragically defunct British leather-goods manufacturer called W. H. Gidden. I was dressed better than most people who are supposed to look the part — again, the details are what make the disguise, or give you away. And who knows? I thought. If this doesn’t go well, you could be buried in this outfit. You might as well look good.
Midori had gotten up while I was in the shower. Sh
e was wearing a white terry-cloth hotel robe and sat on the bed silently while I dressed. “I like you in a suit,” she told me when I was done. “You look good.”
“Just a sarariman on his way to work,” I said, trying to keep it light.
I slipped the Glock into a custom holster at the small of my back, where it would be concealed by the nice drape of the flannel. Then I eased the flashbang up under my armpit above the sleeve of the suit, where the natural compression of my arm held it in place. I moved my arm out a few centimeters and jiggled it hard, and the device slid down into my waiting hand. Satisfied, I put it back in position.
I rotated my head and heard the joints in my neck crack. “Okay. I’ve got to go. I’ll be back sometime in the evening. Will you wait for me?”
She nodded, her face set. “I’ll be here. Just come back.”
“I will.” I picked up the attaché and left.
The hotel lobby was relatively empty of the visiting businessmen who would soon arise and meet for overpriced power breakfasts. I walked out through the front doors and shook my head at the bellman’s offer to assist me with a cab, preferring instead an indirect walk to Tokyo Station, which would give me the chance to ensure that I wasn’t being followed. From the station I would catch the train to Shinbashi, and from Shinbashi to the station at Yokosuka. I could have gone directly from Tokyo Station, but preferred a more circuitous route for my usual reasons.
It was a brisk, clear morning: rare weather for Tokyo, and the kind I’ve always liked best. As I cut across Hibiya Park I saw a small asagao, a morning glory, blooming improbably in the cold spray of one of the fountains. It was a summer flower, and looked sad to me, as though it knew it would die soon in the autumn chill.
At Tokyo Station I bought a ticket to Shinbashi, where I transferred to the Yokosuka line, checking my back on the way. I bought a two-way ticket to Yokosuka, although a one-way would have been marginally more secure. All soldiers are superstitious, as Crazy Jake had liked to say, and old habits die hard.
I got on the train at 7:00, and it eased out of the station four minutes later, precisely on time. Seventy-four minutes after that we pulled into Yokusuka Station, across the harbor from the naval base. I stepped out onto the platform, attaché case in hand, and busied myself making an ostensible phone call from a public booth while the other passengers who had gotten off the train departed.
