Tokyo Enigma

by Sam Waite

  "There were five men. Two I never saw well. I'd recognize the one who told me to stop pretending. The two others I might recognize, but I can't remember their faces well right now."

  I had a question for Yuri. "Do you have your photos of Ito and the secretary?"

  "I'll get them."

  Sayoko looked at the electronic images for a long time, but she shook her head. "Mita koto wa nai." Never seen him.

  That was all right. No reason for her to see the bagman. I needed a picture of the FTC commissioner himself. Protect Agency didn't have any. I called Will. He said he would pull one from Reuters' photo morgue, but he wanted an interview with the girl in exchange.

  "Okay with me, but it's her decision."

  I covered the phone's mouthpiece with my hand. "This is a reporter who will ask you for an interview. Tell him no."

  She did.

  I took the phone back. "She's scared, Will. She has reason to be. Could you help us anyway?"

  He wouldn't send an electronic image by e-mail, but he would show us a picture if we went to Reuters' offices. He wanted to at least meet the girl and see if she'd say anything off the record. On the way to meet Will, I tried to coach Sayoko on what not to say in front of him. It was okay to talk, but it was also okay to refuse to answer a question. Just don't lie.

  Yuri said, "no problem" several times. I couldn't tell if she was trying to reassure me or just wanted me to be quiet.

  Reuters was housed in the Akasaka Biz Tower separated from the street by an expansive tiled plaza in a part of town that was partly trendy and partly old-school hostess bars.

  Will took us through the checkpoints and into an interview room. He chatted with Sayoko for a while. I couldn't understand everything he said, but Yuri didn't look concerned, so no problem.

  Finally Will showed us the photograph. Sayoko made no immediate reaction. After a minute or so, she said she couldn't be sure if she had seen him or not. As soon as she made that decision, I hustled her and Yuri out before Will had a chance to ask any more questions.

  Intellectually, I'd learned long time ago not to trust hunches, but that didn't stop my gut from having them anyway. I was so sure about this one that I'd almost told Sayoko that she must have made a mistake. It didn't prove the FTC commissioner wasn't somehow tied in. It just meant I was disappointed.

  When we got back to Protect Agency's interview room, Sayoko laid her head on the table. Yuri said they hadn't gotten much sleep last night and offered her one of the cots that the company kept for staff who ended up working around the clock. She accepted. After Sayoko went to lie down, I asked Yuri to fill me in on what she had learned from her last night.

  It wasn't much. Sayoko didn't know anything about Dorian specifically, although Hosoi had mentioned a foreign customer. She also knew nothing about the source of Hosoi's sudden wealth. In short, she knew nothing of value to the case. Someone, however, was surely afraid she did.

  "Maybe she knows something she isn't aware of, and we aren't asking the right questions," I said when Yuri had finished.

  "Could be, but I've asked everything I can think of."

  "I saw Dorian this morning. He's holding up all right."

  "Did you go with the lawyers?"

  "No, it was just a hand-holding session with someone from the embassy. Set up by political string-pullers in the U.S. I told him we were getting closer, which seemed to make him feel better."

  "I bet it did, but you ought not lie."

  "I didn't say we were getting close, just closer."

  "All I can see we're doing is collecting puzzle pieces that don't fit together."

  "We just don't have all the pieces yet." I told her about Kuroda and his suggestion to cooperate. "I think it's worth considering, but I told him I'd have to talk it over with you."

  "I think he's trying to jerk you around. Police serve the prosecutors, not the other way. They have a guy they think is guilty. They have a good case. Why would they want to dig up evidence that he's innocent?"

  "He said he wants justice."

  Yuri laughed. "Mick Sanchez came all the way to Japan to locate the world's only humanitarian cop."

  "There might be others."

  "Personally, I think he's just fishing for information, so he can make his own case stronger."

  "What would it do for his career if..."

  "If he single-handedly found evidence to free Dorian and maybe land the real killer in jail? That would make his superiors look incompetent or lazy. It might make him a hero in U.S. news, but it might get him busted to clerk in the department."

  Yuri cocked her head and pressed her thumb against her right eyebrow. "Still, weird stuff happens. You want me to talk to him to get a better idea of what he has in mind?"

  "Couldn't hurt."

  Yuri was still baby-sitting Sayoko, so I had supper alone and made another trip to the Tipness fitness center. When I got back to the hotel, I had messages from Yuri and from Abe. I called Yuri first. She didn't even bother to say "hi."

  "Do you remember the night Sayoko told us about? She said she got sick."

  "Yeah, she walked out on some perverts."

  "She remembered the day of the week, but not the date, until I started asking her about it. We got a calendar and she could relate that night to other events including a national holiday."

  "And she pinned down the date?"

  "Yep, so then I checked the FTC commissioner's schedule. His office said he was giving testimony to a Diet committee that night. I verified it with another source. He wasn't at the villa, Mick."

  "Maybe Sayoko made a mistake."

  "That's not impossible, but she said she was positive."

  Not trusting a hunch is one thing. Having one blow up in your face is another.

  "Thanks for the call."

  "That's all right. I just didn't want you to waste any more energy barking up that tree."

  I wouldn't. There are plenty of other wrong trees to bark up. I called to check in with Abe. It was early afternoon his time.

  He answered on the first ring. "Have you turned on your computer yet?"

  "No."

  "Do it. You've got mail, the Dorian report you asked for. It's encrypted. Any problems, call me back."

  The report was fourteen pages single-spaced. Someone had been busy.

  Kyle Solutions was the seventh company Dorian had worked for. He specialized in overseas operations, especially hard-case situations like takeovers and start-ups in countries where rule of law was not the order of the day. His services came at a premium, which might explain why companies didn't keep him on after the dirty work was done. There might have been other reasons. He'd been charged in the U.S. with bribing officials in a Latin American country to put down a labor movement. The officials had used deadly force, but Dorian's case never went to trial. The charges were subsequently dropped.

  It didn't fit. Japan had its fair share of scoundrels, but in general, the law held sway. Why would Kyle Solutions need a cowboy like Dorian to take over a Japanese start-up that was actively shopping itself? I didn't see anything falling into place yet, but I might if I could answer that last question. The trouble was, I needed help from Lance Allworth right after I'd done my best to scare him off. That was all right. At least now I had a plan.

  Chapter 12

  Spotlights shone on Yuri and Sayoko. They were asleep on a blanket on the floor. The shadows of men drifted toward them, gaining substance as they closed in. Dorian stood in the light beckoning them. Yuri began moaning and writhing in her sleep. I tried to warn her, but couldn't speak. My body was too heavy to move. The bellow of a wounded beast erupted from Dorian's chest.

  I awoke to the sound of my own voice. My pulse raced. A sheet wrapped tightly around my chest and my right arm was damp with sweat. It was 3:30 a.m. With no hope of going back to sleep, I dressed and went downstairs. The hotel was on the outskirts of Yurakucho, a honeycomb of bars, beer halls, restaurants and coffeehouses. Most of the city shut down around
midnight when the trains stopped running, but a few places were still open. In Tokyo's nightlife, the most raucous groups were office parties that generally broke up between 10:00 p.m. and midnight. The few people on the street now were couples or small quiet groups subdued by alcohol.

  A young woman knelt at a curb and vomited in the gutter. Two others squatted next to her. One rubbed her back, while the other tried to keep her friend's skirt pushed down. On another street, a young man was less fortunate. He was alone, lying on a dark sidewalk with his back against a wall, easy game for theft or worse. His eyeglasses lay lens-down on the concrete.

  I rubbed my thumb along a scar on my right hand. It was red and ragged and covered a lump on a knuckle that I'd broken when I was twenty-eight. I had hit a friend in the mouth and remembered none of it. He had lost a tooth, but the greater injury to both of us was emotional. I suffered the worst of that. He had been betrayed by a drunk, who he could write off as undeserving of his friendship. I had betrayed my friend and myself.

  I picked up the man's glasses and put them in his pocket. He was mostly dead weight, but I pulled his arm over my shoulder and dragged him to the entrance of a bar that was still open. I put him next to the door and went inside to tell the bartender. He came out with me, looked at the man and shrugged.

  The bartender went back inside. I continued walking. We left him on the sidewalk, but there was light there. Maybe he was safer. Crime was not rife in Japan, but it was a long way from nonexistent.

  The sun was rising by the time I got back to the hotel. I showered, shaved and had breakfast before I called Yuri.

  "How's Sayako?"

  "She's doing okay. No revelations, though."

  "You remember the Spanish restaurant?"

  "With the charming owner?"

  "Yeah, that one. Do you think you can find out the name of the man he saw with Maho? The one who gave her money."

  "We have the name of his agency. Maybe we could pull off another Nozaka maneuver."

  "What? Call up and ask for the investigator who was paying the girl murdered in the Dorian case. Don't you think that might raise alarms?" It was probably a response to Nozaka's name, but my voice was tinged with anger that I didn't intend.

  Yuri picked it up and snapped back. "I don't know, Mick. Give me some time to think. I'll get back with you, unless you have any more orders."

  "It'd be a good idea to find out what we can about the employee who was killed in the traffic accident."

  "Yes sir, anything else?"

  "Thank you, Yuri." That was a bad note to hang up on, but I didn't have anything else to say.

  I called Lance Allworth and asked him to meet me as soon as he could. He had his secretary clear a spot for this morning. I assured him it was important and hoped he'd agree after he heard what I wanted. We met in a coffee shop instead of his office, so we'd have a bug-free atmosphere.

  "Didn't you advise me to stay out of this?" It looked like he was trying to suppress a smirk. He wasn't successful.

  "At the time, I didn't think you were involved."

  "What does that mean?"

  "Not you personally, your position and the company itself. You know you don't have to talk to me, but if it's any comfort, I'm as constrained by confidentially agreements as you are. I won't repeat what you tell me, unless I'm subpoenaed or you say it's okay."

  Lance looked like my attempt to reassure him was making him nervous.

  "What do you want to know?"

  "First, what exactly are your plans? Is Kyle going to keep this company, sell it, take the technology and run?"

  "It isn't that easy to strip out the technology. It exists only in the minds of the people here. They know that. They're selling systems that only they can produce, assuming we ever get them into production."

  Lance took a long draw of coffee. "If you swear once more not to repeat anything I say from this point on, I'll explain what I'm doing here."

  I swore.

  He pushed his coffee cup aside and spread out napkins in lieu of writing paper. "At first, it looked like a done deal. The company was on the verge of bankruptcy. There were no buyers. Kyle Solutions already had a presence in Japan."

  He drew boxes and connected them with lines as he talked.

  "We were looking for new acquisitions. We made a bid. Somewhere during the negotiations, there was a snag."

  He X'd out a line.

  "Kyle brought in Dorian. He had a reputation for..."

  "Hard cases."

  "That's right. Not long after Dorian arrived here, the acquisition went through."

  "Good man."

  "Yeah, except there are complications now."

  "Do you know about those kinds of complications?" I wanted him to stay focused.

  "Not directly, but there might be a relation. The engineers who started this company had a concept for a robotics system. They made a good one. It could tell the difference between a peach and a baseball the same size."

  He drew two circles. Neither one looked like a baseball or a peach.

  "With the right sensors, it can locate the fruit, determine if it's ripe and pick it with its pincers without damaging it."

  "So can people."

  "I'm not talking about fruit pickers. It's only an illustration. Do you understand the complications of filtering out unnecessary data from stereoscopic video?"

  I didn't.

  "The engineers conceived a system for industrial robots that can reduce costs of manpower in ways that haven't been exploited. Their front end can use stereoscopic cameras and lasers to enable micron-level precision. Lots of robots can do that, but they have to be told exactly what to do. This system does it all on its own. After analyzing its own data, it can independently program triple-axis actuators with no human input. That means, you set a prototype on a pad at the front of an assembly line, push Go and within minutes you've started production. That's unprecedented."

  "I'll bet. What's an actuator?" I couldn't tell from his drawing.

  "It's a robotic arm that supports whatever tool you put on it. Triple-axis gives one tool three dimensions of movement. Anyway, the jewel wasn't the machine tool. It was the software control system. They used a neuro-network and fuzzy logic that had applications beyond what they were trying to sell. There's no programming, not in the traditional sense. With a neuro-network, you teach it rules. The network applies the rules and makes its own decisions. With this system, the robot uses its cameras and lasers to get a precise 3-D image. It can even compare production to the original and learn from its mistakes. Fantastic, right? But you see other implications."

  I shook my head.

  Lance put down his pen and made a circle in the air like he was about to sing, "It's a Small World." Instead, he divided the air into three parts.

  "Think of it in terms of object location, object identification and mechanical control. The input data doesn't have to be visible light. It could be infrared, ultraviolet, radar, sonar."

  I thought I got it. "Military?"

  "Military, undersea exploration, space, remote surgery."

  "That's all being done."

  "The system doesn't have to be breaking ground in concepts to be revolutionary. We have a significant improvement. Very valuable, but the developers didn't see the whole picture."

  "The design geniuses didn't know what they had made?"

  "They were thinking in a narrow aspect. Japan's economy is based on job shops." Lance had his pen back and was drawing little buildings and stick figures. "Whether it's a family factory that makes polyethylene pipe or a global operation that makes the polyethylene. Someone thinks, 'There's a product. Let's make it and sell it.' There aren't many people saying, 'Here's a cool idea. Let's make a market.' There are exceptions, like portable CD players, but basically you don't see that kind of thinking here. These guys set out to make a very smart industrial robotic system. In the process, they made the closest thing I've seen to a thinking machine with scarcely imagined applications. But t
hey were focused on assembly lines. That's all they saw."

  "So what was the problem with the acquisition?"

  "Dorian didn't conduct the initial negotiations. Our first guy let slip how we wanted to apply the system's analytic capability in other areas, military, space, even pharmaceuticals. Kyle thinks you could enter the genome of a disease-creating germ and get an antidote. I guess word got out. Suddenly the buy needed a government go-ahead, which wasn't forthcoming. My guess is that superior technology and foreign money sounded like too much of a threat to local companies who were retrenching and didn't want to take on the risk of buying this company themselves."

  "Then Dorian was called in?"

  "Well, he was hired just for that. The guy's got a reputation. Anyway, he was here two, three months. Boom, the government gave us the go-ahead. He's a magician."

  "You needed government approval."

  "Yeah, you run into that everywhere, US, EU."

  "What Japanese agency had to clear the buyout?"

  "The FTC."

  I was beginning to see implications of my own. "I need a couple of favors. One, I want to bring in a Japanese colleague to check the office of the employee who was killed in the wreck. Have you cleaned it out yet?"

  "No."

  "Don't let anyone touch it until we look at it. Two, I don't know what I'm going to say yet, but I want to leave a personal message for whoever bugged your office."

  "What do you have in mind?"

  "A disinformation campaign."

  Chapter 13

  I was already headed to Protect Agency when I got a call from Yuri.

  "Kuroda just called and said he wants to meet me here in thirty minutes. Can you make before then? He's your friend. I'm not sure why he wants to see me."

  "I'll be there in twenty."

  Either he was early, or I was late. He was standing in front of the receptionist's desk when I walked into the office. He didn't look happy to see me.

  "I'm here to talk to Yuri Taen."

  "We work together."

  "I had expected to see her alone."

  Before I was forced to reply, the door to the interior offices opened.