Zero Sum

by Barry Eisler

  I smiled. “When you put it like that, it does sound far-fetched.”

  He nodded, and I knew we were past the tension of a moment earlier.

  “All right,” I said. “I seriously doubt Victor wants Sugihara dead for his own reasons. So it’s really a question of, who hired Victor to do it?”

  “That is indeed the question.”

  “Wilson, maybe? Whoever it is, they want to keep their fingerprints off the job. You see that, right?”

  “Of course. Why else would they hire you?”

  That actually stung a little, just on the level of professional pride. But what was I going to do, argue with him that, no, my track record of killing for hire was actually pretty good? The whole conversation was already as close to the line as I’d ever come with Tatsu. So close I wasn’t sure we were still on the right side of it.

  “Not just me,” I said. “Also Kobayashi. Think about it. If Kobayashi had killed Sugihara, they probably would have killed Kobayashi immediately after. And then you’d be wondering why the hell the Gokumatsu-gumi killed a Diet member. And if I’d done it . . .”

  I had intended just to recite my previous thinking, about how I was deniable, too. But now something was nagging at me.

  “What is it?”

  “Victor knows about my background,” I said slowly, trying to see it from a fresh perspective. “MACV-SOG. All that. And he wanted to hire me anyway. And I was thinking . . . it didn’t matter to him. That the main thing from his perspective is that I’m not connected to him. So I drop Sugihara, his people drop me, and whoever I was, there’s no way to connect me to Victor.”

  “That seems a reasonable inference.”

  “Yeah. But now I’m wondering—”

  “Whether you were focusing too much on Victor, and not on who is behind Victor.”

  I looked at him. “Yes. That. Exactly.”

  Suddenly, I could see it. All at once. What I’d been missing before.

  I leaned forward. “I mean, okay, picture this. Victor gets rid of Kobayashi because Kobayashi fucked up. He hires me to take his place as designated hitman/fall guy. Now someone, maybe Wilson, checks in. ‘What’s going on with Sugihara. He was supposed to be dead last week.’ And Victor says, ‘No problem. Have new guy. Very good. Highly recommended. Former American Special Forces. MACV-SOG. Vietnam combat veteran. And half-Japanese, so knows Tokyo and can get close to man.’ You get it?”

  He nodded quickly, which was about as visibly excited as Tatsu ever got. “And when the person who checks in hears the new contractor is former US military, he is unhappy. Because a connection to the US government is a problem.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But is this really so much of a connection? Former military. Discharged a decade ago.”

  “It was a little more than just military—MACV-SOG was into things the US government is still denying, as you know. I seriously doubt the government would welcome anyone shining a light on what we were doing there. And there’s more than just the military connection. There’s the work I was doing in Tokyo with the CIA ten years ago. Imagine I kill Sugihara and get picked up. It’s a disaster for the Agency.”

  He nodded, clearly pleased, and I realized his protest about former military being not much of a connection was merely a probe—a test to ascertain whether I was seeing the larger picture. It was hard to say which gave Tatsu more satisfaction—when I kept up with him, or when he got to treat me like a barely educable student.

  “You seeing it the same way I am?” I said.

  “Yes. It’s not difficult to imagine Wilson in that role.”

  I took another swallow of beer. “There’s one thing that’s not quite right, though. I can see why a guy like Wilson would want me taken off Sugihara—taken off the count entirely, because just from Victor trying to hire me, I already knew too much. But Victor hasn’t tried to take me off. In fact, he’s been feeding me fresh intel about Sugihara. That’s how I knew about the meeting with the semiconductor people. Though I suppose that could all be at least in part a setup, to fix me in time and place.”

  “You’re missing another possibility,” he said dryly, and I realized he was getting both kinds of satisfaction tonight.

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “That Wilson and Victor are at cross-purposes.”

  “You mean Wilson told him to take me off Sugihara, and Victor ignored him?”

  “Why not? Did Victor strike you as especially amenable to close control by his handler?”

  “No, that’s not the first way I would describe him, now that you mention it.”

  “Or it could be that Wilson decided to let you keep going after Sugihara while he directed his own people to go after you. Why not? You already know too much, as you say, so that part of the damage is done. If you get lucky and kill Sugihara, and Wilson’s men kill you immediately after, from Wilson’s perspective that would be perfect. If his men get to you first, the damage is contained. Either way, by starting to track you right away, learning your haunts, your habits, zeroing in on how he can get to you, he’s being efficient. Even if he can’t make his move until later, he’s able to make it more quickly when the time comes.”

  “Which do you think it is?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “The second one. A shrewd man, an experienced man, would do it that way. Mitigate the risk, preserve some possible upside. I doubt he would even have told Victor to stand you down. Why bother? From Wilson’s perspective, the less Victor knows, the better.”

  That also made sense. And it explained what I had wondered about earlier—why Victor hadn’t told me about the wedding reception. I’d been right: he didn’t know. Wilson hadn’t told him, because Wilson was more concerned about discretion than Victor was.

  “So you’re pretty sure my problem is with Wilson.”

  He shrugged. “What do the Americans say? ‘If it walks like a duck, and has feathers like a duck, and quacks like a duck . . .’”

  I smiled. It was rare for me to hear someone talk about foreigners as the out-group, implying that I, as Japanese, was part of the in-group. And while I didn’t like to admit that I longed for that kind of acceptance, I guess on some level I did.

  “I know I’m asking a lot,” I said, giving in to my American urge to speak despite my earlier determination not to. “I’m sorry for that.”

  In response, he grunted, which from Tatsu was an exceptional display of sentiment.

  “And I feel a little bad for pressing,” I went on, “but I’ll tell you, it would be really helpful if you could get me close to Oleg.”

  “I confess I’m ambivalent about doing so. Three homicides in as many days is already bad for Tokyo. Three unsolved homicides is bad for the Keisatsuchō.”

  “I can imagine. Still, no locals. No civilians. And it doesn’t sound like those three gaijin were tourists. So hopefully, the kind of thing that might . . . blow over?”

  “It might. If it doesn’t get worse first.”

  “Are you saying you’ve changed your mind about Oleg retiring?”

  “Where does it end?”

  “You know where. With Victor.”

  “What about Wilson?”

  I laughed. “You telling me you want me to? Or you don’t?”

  I thought that was at least a little amusing, as well as a good point. But he remained impassive.

  “It’s not easy to work with you,” he said after a moment. “I try to make cases. What you make is bodies.”

  I looked at him. “Does that really bother you so much, Tatsu? If they’re the right bodies?”

  I hadn’t meant to put it so plainly. It was the American in me—I lacked Tatsu’s propensity for obliqueness. Especially when a former Spetsnaz psychopath was intent on killing me and I needed information to get to him first.

  A moment went by. Then he sighed. “Oleg has a taste for Japanese girls, it seems.”

  He had something, and had decided to tell me. It was a concession, and I didn’t want to embarrass
him by acknowledging it.

  “Well, then I guess he’s come to the right country.”

  “Not really. The girls he likes are professionals. And most establishments purveying Japanese girls won’t allow gaijin.”

  “Are you serious? What brothel doorman is going to turn away someone like Oleg?”

  “Among other things, Oleg and Victor are businessmen. Forcing their way into establishments that don’t want them would be an insult to the yakuza that control the sex trade. And while Oleg and Victor are obviously more than willing to incur enmity for substantive reasons, they seem smart enough not to do so merely for pleasures of the flesh. Besides, there are at least a dozen Yoshiwara toruko establishments more than willing to entertain gaijin. And Oleg finds the girls at several of them quite to his liking.”

  Yoshiwara was one of Tokyo’s pleasure quarters, first designated as such by the Tokugawa shogunate in the early seventeenth century. Toruko was short for toruko buro, a phrase consisting of the Japanese words for Turkish and bath. But beyond the presence of soap and water, the establishments in question had little to do with Turkish baths, and in 1985, after sustained protests by the Turkish government, the association running the toruko held a contest for a new name. Sōpurando—soapland, the squeaky-clean euphemism that continues to this day—was the winner.

  The information was intriguing. But I didn’t see how it would be actionable. Unless . . .

  “I don’t want to intrude into your sources and methods,” I said, “but are you getting this intel the way I think you are?”

  He shrugged. “As I’ve said, the yakuza are happy to pass information to the Keisatsuchō if they think doing so could damage Victor. Once one of the gaijin-friendly establishments confirmed Oleg’s visits, it wasn’t difficult to get confirmation from others, too.”

  “I would have expected a guy like Oleg to be a little more security conscious.”

  “His behavior is less risky than you might think. There are several establishments he frequents, so a certain shell-game dynamic is in play. He doesn’t make appointments. He always has a man waiting outside. And he doesn’t stay long.”

  “The ladies must love him.”

  “I wouldn’t know. But I doubt anyone he visits wishes he would spend more time.”

  “What does he have against Shinjuku? There are plenty of foreigner-friendly places there, no?”

  “Shinjuku is a stronghold of the Gokumatsu-gumi. Oleg feels less safe there.”

  I considered that. Yeah, Yoshiwara was much less a gangster locus than Shinjuku. Apart from the sex trade, the neighborhood was quiet—so quiet that a visitor could pass through during the day and barely notice what really put it on the map. There would be local muscle, but no more than would be required to handle a belligerent drunk. I could see where Oleg would feel more secure there.

  His mistake.

  “So we’re talking about a window of, what, an hour? With no warning beforehand?”

  “That’s correct.”

  I blew out a long breath. “Going to take some luck. How often does he visit?”

  “That’s the one bit of good news. Several nights a week, at least. Often more.”

  “Guess you weren’t kidding when you said he likes Japanese girls.”

  “But you’re correct, this will take more than a little luck. So much so that I hesitated to tell you. I had a feeling you would take the chance.”

  “No, it’s better you told me. And it’s not as bad as you think. I know what his men look like—they patted me down when I visited their headquarters.”

  “Then they know what you look like, too.”

  “If I do it right, they won’t see me. At least not until it’s too late.”

  “If.”

  “I appreciate your confidence.”

  “I think one of us should be realistic.”

  I thought for a moment. If I knew when, and where, I could do it. But all within an hour . . . that was going to be tough.

  “Can you get me a police radio?” I said.

  He nodded. “I had a feeling you would ask.”

  “How about a gun?”

  “Impossible. A department head would have to sign it out from the armory.”

  “How about a rock or a stick?”

  He shook his head. “The jokes. Not a good sign.”

  “Who’s joking?”

  He sighed. “Well, I suppose the good news is that if you weren’t nervous, it would mean you were stupid.”

  I finished my beer and smiled grimly. “No. The good news is, you’re going to get me Oleg.”

  chapter sixteen

  An hour later, I was wandering the dim and déclassé alleyways of the area now known officially as Senzoku, but in all other respects eternally Yoshiwara. Tatsu had given me the names and addresses of five toruko Oleg was known to favor, and I made a slow run past each of them, assessing the layout, trying to determine where Oleg’s man would set up, imagining my approach, weighing the advantages and vulnerabilities.

  Unlike Shinjuku, Akasaka, and the city’s other, better-known pleasure districts, Yoshiwara had no real attractions other than the mizu shōbai, the so-called “water trade” famously depicted in Japanese woodblock prints known as ukiyo-e—literally, “pictures of the floating world”—and shunga—the explicit depictions of what the floating world offered. There were no corporate headquarters, no government ministries, no embassies, no department stores, no famous eateries, no cinemas or stages. During the Tokugawa shogunate, the area had been a virtual city within a city, enslaving, employing, and attracting thousands, and was still laid out in a grid characterized by old wooden houses and unremarkable concrete buildings, with even the newer structures at most a few stories high. The only restaurants were small affairs—scattered ramenya noodle boutiques and kissaten coffeehouses and the odd izakaya—and the only shops were mom-and-pop establishments and convenience stores. In Shibuya, love hotels were popular as after-dinner destinations for couples enjoying a night out, and on any given evening in Hyakkendana you might pass dozens of lovers strolling arm in arm, seeking almost as a kind of foreplay a hotel that struck their mutual fancy. Here, the hotels were used primarily by visiting clients ordering girls from one of the local purveyors, and the foot traffic was furtive and brief. As a result, despite its long history of baishun—“selling spring”—and dubious renown, Yoshiwara was moribund during the day and subdued even at night, like a secret shopping mall operated by a skeleton crew. There was neon, yes—the toruko entryways were nothing if not gaudy. And there were touts, calling to passersby like me. But there was little noise, no tumult, and mostly singletons rather than crowds. Yoshiwara had locals, and it had visitors making a brief pilgrimage to scratch a transitory itch, and that was about it.

  Not a bad place, I decided, to hunt Oleg. Not a bad place at all.

  I did what I could to avoid approaching too closely as I reconnoitered. I wasn’t worried about touts remembering my face—they saw too many potential patrons, and the area was too poorly lit, for that to be a real concern. No, what was occupying me was the admittedly slim chance that Oleg would be enjoying himself at one of the local toruko this very night, and that I might stumble upon one of the men Tatsu had warned would be posted outside. If a bodyguard spotted me here, Oleg would know I hadn’t come for a bath. He would take countermeasures, and I would have shown my hand without in the process degrading Victor’s forces.

  It was strange to wander Yoshiwara. For whatever reason, I was intently aware that Victor’s mother might have wound up here. If Tatsu’s theory was right, what other options would have been available to her? I tried to imagine a cast-out, pregnant farm girl in wartime Tokyo—how alone and terrified and desperate she would have felt, where she would have searched, how much she would have surrendered to survive and protect the child that had been forced on her before washing up onto Yoshiwara’s unforgiving shores. I didn’t need to have read Sun Tzu to understand the importance of knowing your enemy, and I t
old myself that imagining Victor’s mother was one way of getting into his head. I even visited Jōkanji, a 350-year-old temple in the area where the souls of some twenty thousand courtesans were said to be interred. But if Victor’s mother was among the antique markers, I felt no distinct sign of her, only the sad history of a place that had engraved on its own walls a kind of disclaimer to the generations of women drawn by the hope the gods might bestow some mercy: Birth is pain, death is Jōkanji. The Yoshiwara version of the warning in the Inferno found inscribed on the gates of hell: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

  The next forty-eight hours were uneventful. I called Oleg twice a day from various payphones. He had no new leads on Sugihara. Tatsu gave me a police radio, which he would use to alert me the instant he got news of Oleg visiting a Yoshiwara brothel. And I finally broke down and called Maria. My heart was pounding as I dialed her office number, and I was irritated at myself for being so nervous, but I couldn’t help it. How would she be feeling? Happy? Full of regret? Irritated that I hadn’t called sooner? Irritated that I was calling her at all?

  “Am I catching you at an okay time?” I asked when she picked up.

  There was a slight pause. Then: “Yes.”

  “I mean, can you talk now?”

  “Yes.”

  The short replies were making me nervous. “It’s good to hear your voice, even if it’s only one syllable at a time.”

  She laughed at that, and I felt an embarrassingly large measure of relief.

  “If you wanted to hear my voice, you might have called a little sooner.”

  Damn, but that was a nice thing to hear. “I . . . would have. I wanted to. I just wasn’t sure if you wanted me to.”

  “Ah, so little confidence?”

  “No. Well, sort of, maybe. But more . . . I just didn’t know how you would feel after. I thought you might regret what happened. Or feel guilty. Or even angry at me.”

  “Yes, all of those things, certainly. But not so much that I didn’t want to hear from you.”

  “Does that mean you want to see me again?”