Zero Sum

by Barry Eisler

  “How did Yokoyama do it? Some kind of poison your Science and Technology whiz kids cooked up?”

  “Something like that, yes. And precisely the kind of tool you’d have at your disposal if you were to work with me. I could use a man like you.”

  I shut down my thoughts of Maria. I would deal with all of it, and doubtless more, later. I couldn’t afford to get distracted now.

  “What if I don’t like being used?”

  “My apologies. A poor choice of words. What I’m offering is meaningful work. State-of-the-art intelligence and backing. And compensation the likes of which I doubt you’ve ever even imagined.”

  I paused, considering. Whatever he was trying to persuade me of, it seemed he hoped his openness would be his bona fides. I thought I ought to take advantage of that.

  “What did you promise Victor?”

  “Victor was chafing as a foot soldier in one of the Russian crime families because he knew he was capable of so much more. So I engaged him: ‘We have information. You have killing prowess. Two things that go together like strawberries and cream.’ We knew about Victor’s past, and we offered to set him up in Japan. He correctly saw us as his ticket for a hostile takeover of the yakuza. A way of becoming the czar of the Japanese underworld. And all we asked in return for giving him everything he always wanted was that periodically, when we provided him with a name, a photo, an address . . . that person would disappear with no attribution to us.”

  “You think that’s what I want? To take over the Japanese underworld?”

  “No, Mr. Rain. As you said, you’re not like Victor, and I wouldn’t insult you by suggesting otherwise. What I think you want is independence.”

  “I have that.”

  “Do you really? What do you think would have been the result of our encounter here if I had maintained my view that you were a threat, and not decided instead that you were an opportunity?”

  “I guess one of us would be dead. But that might still happen.”

  “Why so pessimistic?”

  Cocky bastard. “Why are you so optimistic?”

  “Because you’re smart enough to know that money always wins.”

  “Funny, you’re the second guy who’s told me that.”

  He chuckled. “Then you keep wise company.”

  “Yeah, I think what he said was, ‘There may be unforeseen circumstances. And frequent setbacks. But in the end, money always wins.’”

  “That has indeed been my experience.”

  “But maybe this isn’t the end. Maybe this is one of the setbacks. From your perspective, I mean.”

  I saw a slight rigidness creep into his spine, and I nodded with satisfaction at the sight of him losing a little bit of that patrician cool.

  He turned and faced me. I knew he was unarmed, but still I took a quick step back.

  “I told you not to do that,” I said.

  “Yes, you did. But if you’re going to kill me, I’d rather you do it to my face.”

  Not just cocky. Funny, too.

  “I understand we got off to a rough start,” he said, his tone extra reassuring.

  Extremely funny. I said nothing.

  “But I told you, circumstances have changed. Why would you want to give up so much upside, and incur so much downside, over something that was never personal to begin with?”

  I shook my head. “You think everyone around you is just a piece on a board, don’t you?”

  “No. There are the players, too. And I’m giving you the opportunity to become one of them. Why do you think I’ve told you all I have tonight? Does my information sound like something I would share with one of the pieces? Or only with a fellow player?”

  “Maybe I don’t want to be either. Maybe I don’t like your whole fucking game.”

  He shifted as though uncomfortable with my response. “I understand how you feel. I once felt the same way. But men like us don’t have a choice. We’re in the game. We can either be players, or pieces.”

  I watched him, knowing there was an angle, still not seeing it. “You knew I would kill Victor, didn’t you?”

  “Well, I couldn’t know, of course. But after what you did to my team, I thought you would, yes.”

  “And you didn’t mind that?”

  “Victor was unstable. Surely you saw that for yourself.”

  “Yeah, you’re right, he had his disagreeable aspects. But you know what? He looked death straight in the face. You think you could do that?”

  “Oh, I have. More times than you know.”

  “I’m talking about tonight.”

  “I came here unarmed. Knowing you might be hostile. If that’s not looking death in the face, what is?”

  Something was wrong. This guy was a survivor. A player, and damn proud of it, too. Tatsu had undoubtedly been right: rather than having Victor call me off, he’d left me just enough slack to see if I might kill Sugihara—right before his own men killed me. This was someone who always managed the odds. Who always had a plan B. But what?

  Something Maria had taught me flashed into my head:

  If you want to tell if a man is really well dressed, look down.

  I did. And, now that I was looking, noticed the welting on his shoes was unusually heavy.

  Heavy enough to conceal some kind of weapon.

  Wilson saw me look. Saw the suspicion in my expression, even behind the goggles. There was an electric instant where each of us understood what the other was about to do.

  I felt a massive adrenaline dump. Wilson stepped in to close the distance, left foot forward, everything silent now, slow motion, and launched a low kick with his right foot. It was nothing fancy, just a straight shot, the kind that might connect with a shin. Painful, perhaps, but nothing beyond that.

  Unless there was some kind of CIA whiz-kid poison involved.

  My stance was off. If anything, I’d been expecting a rush. My weight was on my left foot. There was no time to shift my balance and get out of the way.

  His foot was arcing forward now, a weird contrail of green light tracking it through the goggles.

  I did the only thing I could. Certain I was going to be a second late, I pivoted my hips, moving slowly, terrifyingly slowly, as though the whole thing were the kind of bad dream where you’re trying to move through sludge, and I brought my right knee up, seeing that shoe, suddenly so deadly looking, coming closer, slicing toward me . . .

  I brought my right foot up from the knee and caught his kicking leg in the calf with my shin. His shoe shot past my left leg like a rattlesnake just missing its strike.

  He pinwheeled his arms, having been forced into an unexpected giant step, and before he could recover his balance and come at me again, I snatched a fistful of heavy tweed at the inside of his right knee and yanked it skyward.

  He went down hard on his back. I heard the crack of his head on the flagstones and felt the shock of it all the way down his leg. Keeping the knee, I shot a back kick into his balls. He shuddered, and I knew he’d be out of the fight for at least a few seconds. I took hold of his heel with one hand, pulled open his laces with the other, and yanked the shoe off his foot. Close up, I could see the welting around the toe wasn’t leather—it was steel, honed to a razor edge. And doubtless covered with some kind of exotic, fast-acting CIA poison.

  I stuck my hand inside the shoe and kneeled alongside him. He rolled from left to right, coughing and groaning. When I saw he had recovered his senses, I held the razor edge of the shoe a half inch from his cheek.

  “No, no, no,” he groaned. “Don’t do that. You don’t want to do that.”

  “I don’t?”

  He groaned again. “We can still straighten this out. Just a misunderstanding, don’t you see that? There’s so much upside here, for both of us. Don’t throw all that away.”

  “Why not? Because money always wins?”

  “Just tell me what you want, then. Anything. I guarantee you’ll have it.”

  I thought of Sugihara. Of Miyamoto�
��s former boss, beaten to death to make way for Wilson’s mole, Yokoyama. Even of “Mike,” and the other two operators I’d killed.

  Most of all, I thought of Victor, whose childhood trauma was just a lever for this guy to pull so that money could always win.

  “I want to make you one of the pieces,” I said, and slashed the razor edge of the shoe across his face.

  He shrieked and his hands flew to the wound. And then his body began to shake and spasm. I stepped back and watched in the green glow of the goggles. His mouth was a rictus now, the shaking and spasms intensifying. His back arched so sharply I thought it might break, his elbows twisting in, his fingers dancing frantically at his throat.

  Then his legs kicked once, then again more feebly, and then stopped. A long, gargling hiss went out of him, the sound of a balloon losing the last of its air. And then he lay still, his spine arched like a bow strung so tightly it had cracked at the middle.

  I looked left and right. Zenkō-ji was silent again, no one around me but the spirits of the dead.

  “You can keep your money, asshole,” I said, and walked out.

  chapter twenty-three

  Three nights later, I was back at the izakaya with Tatsu. I’d called him earlier, and postponed our previously scheduled get-together. There were a few things I wanted to take care of first, and for some matters, it’s better to seek forgiveness than ask permission. A bit more wisdom from the late CIA philosopher Sean McGraw.

  We ordered nama beer, as was becoming our custom. When it arrived, Tatsu lifted his glass in a toast. “To Tokyo’s deadly ninja,” he said.

  We touched glasses and drank. I looked at him, feeling an unsurprising affection. Tatsu wasn’t much of a joker, but he was subtle. The ninja crack was his way of telling me he was reluctant to inquire too closely into matters I might prefer to keep to myself.

  “Indeed,” he continued, “I can’t think of any explanation other than ninja for two quite bizarre and identical deaths in the last few days.”

  Reluctant. But not unwilling.

  I raised my eyebrows.

  He waited, probably hoping the silence would draw me out. When it didn’t, he sighed. “Two mornings ago, the body of a white man was discovered at Zenkō-ji Temple in Omotesando. The body was horribly contorted.”

  “Any idea what might have caused that?”

  “Keisatsuchō pathologists believe it was some sort of paralytic agent, administered in a slash across the victim’s cheek. But they have been unable to identify the precise nature of the substance in question. What’s doubly strange—literally so—is that last night, there was another such death, on a rush-hour train platform in Akasaka. An LDP bureaucrat named Yoshinobu Yokoyama, slashed across the arm.”

  “Any leads on the identity of the first victim?”

  “He was carrying no identification, and no one has claimed the body. I’m quite confident, however, that in time we will learn he was Calloway Wilson.”

  “Yeah. I expect you will.”

  “What a coincidence, then, that I gave you such superb intel on that very man. And on several other men who recently took early retirement, such as Victor Karkov and Oleg Taktarov.”

  He was reminding me of how much he’d helped me—and how much I owed him. With some justification. I nodded at the subtle rebuke, then broke down and told him what I’d learned from Wilson.

  By the time I finished relating it all, we were almost done with a second round of beers. We were quiet for a while as he absorbed the information. Then he said, “Do you think he actually hoped to recruit you?”

  I shrugged. “Obviously, I can’t be sure. But my guess is, no.”

  He smiled ever so slightly, and I saw he agreed. “Why?” he said, perhaps not satisfied that I had come to the right conclusion, and wanting to check my reasoning, as well.

  I took a swallow of beer. “He wasn’t wrong about the upside I might have offered him. But he wasn’t wrong about the risk, either. And I think . . . it was probably just his nature to mix a small lie into a lot of truth. That’s why he was willing to share so much intel about the plot. Why else would he have done that, if he didn’t trust and value me?”

  “Well, one reason would be, he was in fact planning to kill you.”

  “Yeah, exactly. But he knew I’d search him, and of course I did. I gamed the whole thing out, and couldn’t see a way for him to get to me. So the idea was, the only explanation for his frankness was that he genuinely wanted me as some kind of junior partner. But the whole time, he was looking for an opening. The truth is, I got lucky. I kept him facing away from me until the end. And when I finally spotted what was coming, it was almost too late. One more second, and he would have connected with that fucking shoe blade.”

  “Yes, I meant to ask about that. Wilson was discovered with only one of his shoes.”

  “That’s odd.”

  “Indeed. If I didn’t know better, I would think it was the same shoe that yesterday killed Yoshinobu Yokoyama.”

  He raised his hand and signaled the waitress for two more beers. Yeah, he was subtle, but not too subtle to employ something as obvious as loosening up a subject with alcohol.

  Obvious, and effective. I told him that Yokoyama had been Wilson’s mole in the LDP—the source of his intel, and of Victor’s rise to power. The man who had likely caused Prime Minister Ōhira’s “heart attack.” And, more recently, Sugihara’s, as well.

  By the time I had finished, we were mostly through with the third round. He said, “I shouldn’t have doubted you about Ōhira. Perhaps if I had taken you more seriously, I could have done something to prevent them from getting to Sugihara the same way.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. It was mine. When I dropped Victor, I thought Sugihara would be safe for a while, at least until I could take out Wilson, too. But of course a guy like him would have had a backup plan. I should have been thinking about that.”

  He shook his head. “I’m a cop. I was the one who should have been thinking about that. At least next time I come across a death by ‘natural causes,’ I’ll know not to take it at face value. Not even if it’s a prime minister.”

  “Especially if it’s a prime minister.”

  “Indeed.”

  We sat in silence for a minute. Then he said, “Yesterday, I interviewed several National Museum employees about the sword found alongside Victor’s body.”

  I kept a poker face. “Yeah?”

  He grunted. “No one has any notion of how it went missing, or why the killer would have left it as he did, given its inestimable monetary value.”

  “Maybe the killer appreciated it for some other value, too. And wanted it to reside at the museum.”

  “I can imagine that, yes. In any event, I don’t expect the sword will implicate anyone in anything. I even interviewed Sugihara’s wife, by the way.”

  This time the poker face was more of an effort. “Yeah?”

  “Of course, I was especially circumspect, given her bereavement. She claims to know nothing of the sword’s disappearance. I have no plans to question her again.”

  As usual, his intuition was damn near terrifying. I said, “I have no plans, either.”

  “Perhaps . . . that is for the best.”

  I knew it was, though I was also having trouble accepting it. I’d spent the last several days tormenting myself with thoughts of what might have happened if Maria and I had met some other way, some way that had nothing to do with her husband. There was some irony involved, of course, because in the end, I hadn’t been involved with his death. Very likely, he would have died one way or the other, even if I had never returned to Tokyo.

  And yet, I had been involved. And Maria, whose intuition seemed to rival Tatsu’s, would sense that. She’d already wondered about me—the military past, the speculation about the CIA, the concern about why I was so interested in her husband. And now there was the sword, which, she had observed—with humor that in retrospect seemed prescient—she would know I’d stolen if
it ever went missing.

  Maybe that was part of the reason I’d taken it. I didn’t need one of Tatsu’s Keisatsuchō psychiatrists to know that much. Maybe I’d wanted something that would cut more than just Victor. And maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that “cut” was exactly the metaphor Maria had used to describe what we were doing to each other.

  It was a shitty way to come to understand what she had meant about the shiniest things sometimes also being the sharpest, but I couldn’t deny she’d been right, either. I was never going to have someone like her. I’d learned that ten years earlier, with Sayaka. And Maria had briefly beguiled me into believing that maybe I’d been mistaken. But I hadn’t been mistaken. I’d just been trying to find a way not to shoulder the weight of the truth. The weight of destiny.

  I shook my head. “You know the worst part?”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “Wilson was right. Money always wins. Sure, he’s dead, but the real players—in the US administration and over here—they’re going to get exactly what they wanted. No, better than what they wanted, because the game is over and even the pieces they used to win are now wiped from the board. It’s a better outcome than probably they’d even hoped for.”

  He nodded. “It is indeed dispiriting, to have fought so hard and accomplished so little. And not the first time for us, is it?”

  I shook my head. “No. It’s not.”

  “But what do we do? Give up? Or keep fighting?”

  I looked at him, unable to resist smiling. I’d wondered when he’d get around to that.

  He finished his beer. “One more?”

  I shrugged. “Why not?”

  We ordered another round, then sipped in comfortable silence for a few minutes. He said, “What will you do next?”

  I hadn’t figured all that out yet. Miyamoto had already been promoted, taking Yokoyama’s position. He’d promptly paid me fifty thousand for Victor, and told me any new jobs were mine for the asking. What Victor had achieved by threats, he said, I had earned as my right. Victor’s dominion was now mine.