by Barry Eisler
Wilson’s error, though, had been his failure to collect evidence implicating his paymasters. Hilger had been much better prepared. The people who had been greedy enough to invest their money with him had been stupid, too. NSC staffers just couldn’t explain being on the same client list as unsavorables like Manny. They would have to back Hilger, or go down with him.
As for the Agency, he knew the last thing they would want would be another Wilson scandal. Even if they denied Hilger, the press would go into a frenzy over a repeat. All those resultant congressional committees, and questions under oath, examination of finances, new layers of oversight . . . no one wanted any of that, there was so much more important work to be done. Plus, Hilger’s contacts were putting out the word that Hilger had been behind Manny’s death. And if Al-Jib turned up not breathing, that would be attributed to Hilger, too. All, of course, with the understanding that the new director could take whatever credit for the op he wanted. Politicians tended to be as resistant to that kind of opportunity as junkies were to a fix. The Hong Kong police and Hong Kong liaison could be bought off the same way. With the right mix of sense and incentives, the whole thing could be put to sleep pretty quietly.
Of course, the Jim Hilger cover was permanently blown, and at a minimum Hong Kong’s Chinese overlords would declare him persona non grata and boot him out. Hilger had decided to save them the trouble. He already had an established identity, and a presence he had been careful to cultivate, in Shanghai. When the authorities showed up at his Hong Kong apartment, or at his office, as perhaps they already had, he wasn’t going to be there to greet them.
He was going to miss that view from Two IFC, though. Well, it wasn’t like there were no skyscrapers in Shanghai. The city was growing so fast, and had so many foreigners, that he’d have no trouble fitting in there and gearing up again.
He thought of Rain for a moment, and could actually feel his face contorting with rage as he did so. He was surprised at his own reaction. After all, Rain hadn’t acted with knowledge. He’d been hired for a job and he’d done it. Hilger used people like him all the time; it wasn’t personal. So why was Hilger taking it so personally now? It was stupid. Yes, the man had screwed up everything. And in the process, cost Hilger years of effort and unknowingly endangered millions of innocents. But he hadn’t meant it, he hadn’t known. Hilger should just let it go.
Or he should just find the bastard and shoot him in the head. It wasn’t justified, it wasn’t even mature, but it would probably help him sleep better.
And that fucking Dox, too. Someone had nailed him with a chair as he’d hauled ass down the China Club stairs, and he had a pretty good idea of who it was. He had a welt on his back the size and color of an eggplant.
One thing at a time, though. First, Shanghai. Then, probably, more damage control. Then salvaging what he could of his operation.
Then it would be time for Rain and Dox. And God help them then.
TWENTY-FOUR
AFTER LEAVING KANEZAKI at Tsuta, I called Tatsu. I asked him if he felt like an early dinner. He told me that would be fine. I told him I would meet him at Tsukumo Ramen, one of the best noodle shops in the city. Rio’s cuisine is wonderful, but ramen is comfort food for me, and Tsukumo is one of the best. I’d missed it and was glad for the chance to return.
I stopped at an Internet café in Aoyama on the way. There was a message waiting from Delilah. It said:
Dox was right, Gil is dead. I never liked him, and yet I feel so sad. Without men like him, I don’t know what would happen to the world. My government won’t acknowledge his affiliations, of course. Only his citizenship. But at least his family will be able to bury him and properly mourn. One day, I hope to tell them what happened. They should know he was a hero.
My people have transferred your payment in accordance with the instructions you gave them. You’ve been paid in full for Lavi. You have also been paid the same amount for Al-Jib. And there is a bonus.
I don’t know what’s next. There are a lot of meetings going on right now, with me as the subject. For the most part, I don’t care.
I would like to see you again. I hope it will be soon.
—D
I checked the bulletin board I had established with Boaz and Gil. There was a message waiting. It read like an invoice, and matched what Delilah had told me. Next to the amount she had described as a “bonus,” it said:
No hard feelings. With a little smiley face.
I almost laughed. It had to be Boaz.
I checked the account I had given them. The money was all there. I transferred Dox half of everything, then went to meet Tatsu. I would respond to Delilah later.
I took a cab to Hiro and walked. Tatsu was already sitting at the counter when I came in. He got up, shuffled over, and shook my hand. He was wearing a broad smile and it felt good to be with someone who was so happy to see me. Then I realized he was getting the same smile from me.
It was early enough so that we were able to get a table. We ordered marukyu ramen, prepared with fresh noodles and homemade Hokkaido mozzarella over a miso base, and a couple of Yebisu beers. We made small talk throughout the meal, just as we had discussed, and I was almost alarmed at how much I enjoyed his conversation. Dining with company was becoming addictive.
When we were done with the ramen and lingering over a second beer, I asked, “Is everything all right?”
“ ‘All right’?”
“You said you wanted to talk about something personal. Which, as everyone knows, isn’t like you.”
He smiled. “Everything is fine, thank you.”
“Your family? Your daughters?”
“Everyone is fine, fine. I’m a grandfather now, you know. My eldest daughter.”
“Yes, you mentioned she was pregnant last time we talked. A boy, right?”
He nodded, and for a moment there was no trace of the sadness that I could usually see in his eyes. “A beautiful little boy,” he said, beaming.
I bowed my head. “Congratulations, my friend. I’m happy for you.”
He nodded again. “Anyway. The personal matter isn’t mine. It’s yours.”
I shook my head, not following him.
He reached into a battered briefcase, pulled out a manila envelope, and handed it to me. I reached inside and withdrew a short stack of black-and-white photos. Even before my mind grasped the content, I noted the circumstances: from the slightly blurred background, compressed perspective, and shallow depth of field, I knew the photos were taken from a distance through a telephoto lens.
In them, Midori sat at an outdoor restaurant table in what looked like America, maybe New York. A baby stroller was parked next to her. A Japanese child, not much more than an infant, sat on her lap, facing her. Midori was making a face—pursing her lips and puffing out her cheeks—and the child was reaching for her nose, laughing.
My heart started thudding. It always does, when I pause to really imagine her, to indulge the razor-clear memories of the time we spent together. But seeing a photograph, literally a snapshot of the life she was living a world away, heightened the reaction. I tried not to show it.
“She’s . . . married?” I asked, warring emotions roiling inside me.
“No. Not married.”
“Then . . .”
I looked at him. He nodded and smiled, a profound and strangely gentle sympathy in his eyes.
My instincts, so keenly honed for combat, can be almost laughably useless in matters of the heart. The pounding in my chest intensified, my body understanding fully even as my mind struggled to catch up. I looked away, not wanting him to see my face.
I remembered our last night together, in a room at the Park Hyatt in Tokyo nearly two years earlier. We had made love furiously, despite Midori’s new knowledge of who I was and what I had done to her father; despite our understanding that it would be the last time; despite knowing the cost.
I didn’t know what the hell to say. “Oh, my God,” I think is what came out.
> I tried to pull myself together, but couldn’t really manage it. Eventually, though, I was able to revert to some sort of operational default. I found myself asking, “Who took the photo? You?”
There was a pause, then he said, “No. It was taken by Yamaoto’s people.”
I looked at him. My expression was neutral again. Thinking of Yamaoto helped me focus. It put me back on familiar ground.
“Why?”
“She is your only known civilian nexus. Yamaoto has people watch her from a distance, from time to time, in case you reappear in her life.”
“Bastard needs a course in anger management.”
“You defeated him twice. First, in intercepting the disk. Second, in dispatching his lieutenant, Murakami. He is a vain man with a long memory.”
“Is she . . . are they, in danger?”
“I don’t believe so. He is interested in her only as a means to get to you.”
“How did you acquire the photo?”
“A search of one of his affiliates’ belongings.”
“Sanctioned search?”
He shook his head. “Not exactly.”
“Then there’s a chance the affiliate doesn’t know the photos are missing.”
“I can assure you he doesn’t. My men downloaded the contents of his digital camera, but otherwise didn’t molest it. He has no way of knowing his belongings were examined. Yamaoto has no way of knowing you have discovered the existence of . . . your son.”
There was a strange corporeality to those last words. They seemed to linger in the air.
A son, I thought. It made no sense. My father had a son. But not I.
“It’s . . . he’s a boy?” I asked.
He nodded. “I made some discreet inquiries. She calls him Koichiro. Ko-chan.”
“How do you even know . . . how can you be sure he’s mine?”
He shrugged. “He looks like you, don’t you think?”
I couldn’t even go there. I felt confused, and realized I was in some kind of mild shock.
“Why did you show me this?” I asked, feeling like I was groping, flailing. I was thinking, Because I had made my adjustment. It was over, she might as well have been dead and gone, I was consoling myself with memories.
Tormenting yourself, you mean.
“Would you have preferred that I hadn’t?” he asked.
“What’s the difference? Even if I wanted to, even if she wanted me to, I couldn’t contact her while Yamaoto is watching.”
I paused and felt a flush of anger. I looked at him and said, “That’s why you told me.”
He shrugged. “Certainly some of my motives were selfish. Some weren’t. You know as well as I do that you need a connection, you need something to pull you off the nihilistic path you’ve been treading. It seems that fate has taken a hand.”
“Right. To get out of the killing business, all I need to do is kill a few more people.”
“It does seem paradoxical when you put it that way. But yes, I believe you have accurately described the heart of the matter.”
I shook my head, trying to understand. “I can’t see them unless I take out Yamaoto first.”
“Yes.”
“And Yamaoto is smart. He understands this dynamic. Which means he’s probably tightened his security as a result.”
“He most certainly has.”
I looked at him. “For Christ’s sake, why don’t you just arrest this fucking guy? What do they pay you for?”
“Yamaoto is a prominent politician, with many protectors, as you know. If I tried to arrest him, I would simply lose my job. He is inaccessible by ordinary means.”
“I don’t even know if she would see me. Why hasn’t she contacted me?”
“Does she have your address?”
“No. But she could have contacted you.”
He shrugged. “Perhaps she is ambivalent. Who wouldn’t be? True, she didn’t contact you. On the other hand, she had your baby. She is the mother of your son.”
“Oh, my God,” I said again. I felt dizzy.
“It’s a strange thing, having a child,” he said. “It completely alters your most fundamental priorities. When my eldest daughter was born, I realized that I would do anything—anything—to protect her. If I had to set myself on fire to save her from something, I would do it with the utmost relief and gratitude. It’s quite a thing, quite a privilege, to care about someone so much that the measure of the worth of your own life is changed by it.”
“I don’t know if I’m ready for all that,” I said. I felt like I was outside my body, that someone else was talking.
“Of course you’re not. No one ever is. Because there’s a responsibility that comes with the privilege.” He licked his lips. “When my little son died, there was nothing I could do to save him. All the things I would have done, would have been overjoyed to do, were meaningless. You can’t imagine the impact of knowing that the most precious thing over which you have full control—your own life—is useless as barter or bribe to save the life of your child.”
He took a swallow from his beer mug. “You see? For your whole life, you’ve believed the sun revolved around the earth. You are about to discover otherwise. With everything that implies.”
I didn’t know what to say. My head was spinning but I ordered us another round.
We drank in silence for a while after that. At one point Tatsu asked if I wanted to be alone. I told him no, I wanted him there, wanted his company. I just needed to think.
Three rounds later, I said to him, “I can’t figure this out. Not in one night. But there’s one thing I am going to do. And I need your help to do it.”
TWENTY-FIVE
IT TOOK TATSU a few days to manage it, but eventually he was able to discover where I could find Manny’s Filipina wife. I had a feeling that, after what had almost happened to him in Manila, Manny might have sent her to stay with her family outside the city, and it turned out I had been right.
While I waited for the information, I stayed at my suite at the Four Seasons. It was a beautiful hotel and a good base from which to revisit the many areas in the city I had missed during my recent exile. I avoided those areas I had once frequented often enough to be recognized if I were to return, not wanting to do anything that might put me on Yamaoto’s radar screen. But there were plenty of places I had patronized anonymously before, and which I could therefore safely visit again: bars like Teize and Bo Sono Ni in Nishi Azabu; shrines like Tomioka Hachimangu, where the wisteria would be blooming soon; bright boulevards like Chuo-dori in Ginza and dim alleyways and backstreets too obscure to name.
Tatsu had been right, I realized, about the earth and the sun. Everything I saw measured correctly against the template in my memory, and yet the contours were subtly and indescribably different. The thought that I had become a father was overwhelming. I’d never even seen my child outside of a few surveillance photos, never even suspected his existence until just a few days before, and yet suddenly I felt connected to a possible future in a way I had never imagined. And it wasn’t just that I had a son; my parents, a posthumous grandchild. It was the connection the child gave me with Midori, something I intuitively sensed could never be denied, not even after what I had done to her father. I didn’t know if a life to come could trump a death dealt previously, but I wondered at the possibility. It filled me with frightful hope.
I responded to Delilah’s post, telling her that I needed a vacation like I’ve never needed one before. I had some things to take care of over the next few days, but after that I could meet her anywhere. She asked me if I’d ever been to Barcelona. I told her I hadn’t, but that I’d always wanted to go. We agreed to be in touch over the next few days, while her situation sorted itself out and while I tied off a few loose ends of my own.
Every day I checked various news sites, chief among them the Washington Post. I was hoping to see Hilger’s name in the papers. Publicity, as Kanezaki knew, would put Hilger out of business, might even make his prote
ctors turn on him. But so far there was nothing, and I had a feeling there never would be. Hilger was too smart.
The shooting at the China Club and on the Star Ferry got a lot of press in the South China Morning Post and other local English language papers. Witnesses had provided descriptions of various people involved, but so far the only “arrest” had been of a Caucasian man—Gil—who had died of gunshot wounds before he could be questioned. Manny’s body had been identified. His bodyguard had been revived with nothing worse than a horse tranquilizer hangover and a huge lump on the back of his head, and the man had identified his late client for the police. And a body had been fished out of the turbid waters of Victoria Harbor. Police were checking dental records and DNA, but weren’t yet able to say who the dead man was.
I was in an Internet café in Minami Azabu, one of my favorite parts of the city, early in the evening, when Tatsu’s message came. It was brief: an address in Batangas, about a two-hour drive south of Manila. Characteristically, he asked no questions about why I might want this information, but a brief note, at the bottom of his post, indicated that he might already know:
It was very good to see you the other night. I think we should try to meet more often. Neither of us is getting younger.
Let me know how you would like to proceed in the matter we discussed. Obviously you would have the benefit of all my resources to assist you.
Good luck with what you have to do first.
The benefit of all my resources. Well, that was saying a lot. It wasn’t just his position with the Keisatsucho, the Japanese FBI. That would be the least of it. Tatsu had his own loyal cadre of men, along with other assets that would make a grizzled spy-master sit up and beg. I’d have to think about it. But first things first.
I made the appropriate travel arrangements on the Internet, moved money from one offshore account into another, then stopped at a Citibank to make a large cash withdrawal—the full amount I had been paid for Manny. I took the entire amount in ten-thousand-yen notes, which amounted to four bricks, each five hundred notes high, and put it all in the attaché.
