by Barry Eisler
I got on Thanatos and headed to Ueno, where I checked into a cheap business hotel. I wanted to see Sayaka, of course, but it wouldn’t do to have her see me coming and going in the middle of the night. I didn’t want to have to explain myself, and I didn’t want her to be more concerned or suspicious than she already was about what kind of trouble I might be in. Weirdly, I wondered if she would think of me. Probably I was being stupid. Probably she wouldn’t even notice that I had spent the night somewhere else. If something didn’t go right, if I got spotted by Mad Dog or one of the other yakuza trying to collect on the contract, she might wonder about me once or twice, and then probably never think of me again.
And nor, I realized, would anyone else. Unmoored, on the run, in a dim room in a grubby business hotel, and I had to realize something like that. I wondered how I had reached this point.
I didn’t have an answer.
chapter
fifteen
While I waited for the hour to grow sufficiently late, I reviewed the file on Mori. For whatever reason, I’d been expecting an older guy, but Mori was only thirty-five. He cut a handsome figure, favoring Italian suits and slicking his hair back like a movie star, and had a reputation as a ladies’ man. He’d been promoted unusually fast within MITI, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, these days known as METI, the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry. But apparently not fast enough. The impression I got from reading the file was of a guy impressed with himself and disdainful of his superiors, a guy who didn’t want to wait in line for the power and prestige he felt he deserved. I didn’t blame him for threatening his bosses as a way to get what he wanted. But I didn’t blame the people who’d decided he should take early retirement, either.
Apparently, he was a karaoke enthusiast, his singing talents nearly those of a professional. He liked to entertain business and political associates at a hostess bar called Higashi West, in Akasaka, one of Tokyo’s high-end entertainment districts. Higashi is the Japanese word for “east,” so the club’s name meant East West, presumably a reference to the composition of its hostesses, many of whom were from Europe. A decade or so later, gaijin hostesses would be a common theme in Tokyo, but at the time having them on staff was still noteworthy. Many Japanese men were both fascinated and intimidated by foreign women, and apparently Mori believed that mixing with them was a sign of his taste, confidence, and sophistication. Maybe he had a point. I didn’t know—at that age, all women were fundamentally a mystery to me, regardless of where they came from.
I thought about how I would handle him. A gun would be the most obvious choice, but where was I going to get one in severely gun-controlled Japan? McGraw might be able to procure something, I supposed, but being the careful man he obviously was, he probably wouldn’t do it. Too loud. Too much ballistics evidence. Too much possibility it could be traced back to him.
A knife would be the next thing the average person would think of. But a knife involved potential drawbacks, too. I knew from unpleasant combat experience that except in the movies, people rarely die quickly or quietly when they’re killed with a knife. A single well-placed stab to, say, the femoral artery might work—just hit it and keep walking—but if you miss your mark, then all you’ve accomplished for the enormous risk you just took is to alert the target that he’s a marked man. If you want to be sure, you have to stab the target repeatedly and then sit on him while he screams and thrashes and bleeds and dies. You can try to avoid a long and noisy drama by cutting through the trachea and carotid, of course, as I was taught to do in the military, but it takes a hell of a lot of luck with a cut like that not to get a Mount Vesuvius of blood all over you. Not an easy thing to wear inconspicuously in crowded Tokyo. And it’s not just the appearance of being covered in blood that’s a problem. That much blood smells, and people know what the smell is even if they’ve never smelled it before.
But the ladies’ man part of the file…that was interesting. I thought I could make that fit with something other than a knife or a gun. After all, a guy who slept around indiscriminately might have a lot of enemies. If I did it right, I could create something that to the police would seem personal, not professional. There was already a narrative…maybe if I created a few facts consistent with that narrative, it would distract investigators from coming up with an alternative—and in this case more accurate—theory.
Was my analysis cold-blooded? I supposed it was. But with sufficient exposure, you get acclimated to anything, killing included. If you’ve never had that exposure, survived those conditions, lived in those environments, I imagine a clinical approach to killing seems like a horror. But after what I’d seen—and done—in the jungle, it just felt sensible. Even normal. There was a problem I needed to solve, and I wanted to solve it in the safest, most efficient way I could. I thought that was all that mattered.
I shelved my thinking about the Mori hit—Ozawa was the more immediate problem, and that meant I needed to practice with the picks on the door locks I’d bought earlier. Not having a vise to clamp them in, I used a drawer, which I pressed closed with a knee while I worked. This made the job considerably more difficult, but that was good. As the nandemoya had said, from here on it was a matter of practice.
At three in the morning, about as late as it could get before it started getting early again, I rode Thanatos into Kita-Senju, nothing in my bag but the curling iron, the VOM, and the extension cord; nothing in my pockets but a wad of cash and my new lock picks. I parked the bike near the station and walked from there. The last trains had stopped running hours earlier, and the last taxis had delivered the last late salaryman not long after that. The air was cool and moist and utterly still. Other than a lone cat assessing me silently from between two refuse containers, I saw not a living soul.
I approached Daikoku-yu indirectly, first circling it, listening intently, hearing nothing. The front was lit as fully as it had been the evening before, when it had been open for business. I hadn’t counted on that. But unlikely that anyone would be watching from one of the few houses with a view of the entrance. I ducked beneath the noren curtains, slid my lock picks to the back of one of the shoe cubbies, and waited inside the vestibule. If the worst happened and the police showed up now, at least I wouldn’t have any burglar tools in my possession. If I’d been caught lurking outside a bank, doubtless it would be another matter, but I thought the idea of breaking into a sentō would be sufficiently absurd that even if the police did show up, they would probably let me go rather than have to deal with the paperwork.
Of course, if that were to happen, I would still have to figure out how to get to Ozawa. I needed this to work.
After ten uneventful minutes, I felt it was safe to proceed. I knocked on the door and waited. Nothing. I knocked again, louder this time. Unlikely as hell anyone was in there, but better to blurt out some bullshit about having left my wallet earlier that day than to be caught red-handed working the lock. Still nothing. Okay. I retrieved the picks and got to work. There was more light than I could reasonably have hoped for—an uncomfortable amount, in fact, despite the partial privacy afforded by the vestibule and the noren—so at least I didn’t have to work entirely by feel, which was a skill I wouldn’t acquire until much later. Between the oyaji’s quality instruction, the time I’d spent practicing afterward, and, to be fair, the low quality of the lock itself, it took only a minute to get inside. I kept my shoes on, violating Japan’s stringent customs about such matters, but if things went sideways, I sure as hell wasn’t going to have to hoof it back to Thanatos barefoot. The lights were off inside, but there was enough indirect light coming from the windows and skylight in the bathing area for me to get by. I used a shirtsleeve to wipe down the doorknob and other surfaces I’d touched, then retrieved a towel from a hamper and cleaned my soles carefully, less out of respect for custom than to be certain I wouldn’t leave any dirt on the immaculate floors, which would certainly be noticed.
I padded silently into the bathing area, the s
pacious room ghostly now, light from outside shimmering off the still waters of the ofuro. I heard water rhythmically dripping from somewhere and the faint hum of a fan, but other than that, the room was silent.
I walked over and checked the door I had noticed the day before, the one next to the mineral-water baths. I was pleased to find it locked. Pleased, because if they kept it locked it wouldn’t occur to them that someone might have gotten inside. And it might also suggest that they didn’t access the room often themselves. Otherwise, having to lock and unlock it would have been more of a hassle than it was worth.
I opened the lock so quickly that for a moment, I was afraid I’d broken it. But no, it was simply old and the tumblers were just unusually forgiving. The room was windowless and dark. Shit, I should have brought a flashlight. I closed the door and flipped on the light switch. A dangling incandescent bulb came on overhead, revealing a tiny room, not much more than a closet, really. The walls were lined with shelves on which were set various tools—a hammer, a saw, a power drill. There were buckets of tile grout and cans of paint. The tools, I noted, were rusty, the paint cans collecting dust. There was nothing of an everyday nature: no cleaning supplies, no neat stacks of towels. It smelled slightly musty, too, as though the door hadn’t been opened in some time. As I had hoped, this room was used to store things that didn’t need accessing very often. The everyday stuff, apparently, was kept somewhere else. Good.
I knelt, scanning under the shadows cast by the shelves. There was an outlet on the wall adjacent to the mineral-water baths. I smiled.
I was going to plug in the extension cord I’d brought, but then thought of that electric drill I’d just noticed. And sure enough, on one of the higher shelves, I found a heavy-duty extension cord. I was about to pull it down when I remembered I had to be careful about touching things. Damn it. I should have brought gloves as well as a flashlight. All right, I was learning. Afterward, I’d review everything to figure out what I could have done better, and then implement it all going forward—what the military called an after-action report. For now, I’d have to improvise.
There were some old rags alongside the paint cans, and I used them to retrieve the extension cord and plug it in. I was about to connect the curling iron when something occurred to me—was there any chance the outlet would be governed by the light switch? Unlikely in a storage room, where no one would plug a lamp into an outlet, but still I didn’t want to take the chance. I connected the curling iron and flipped off the light. Within seconds, the iron began to get hot. Okay, the outlet was live, and with or without the light. I flipped the switch back on, went out to the mineral-water bath, and hooked up the VOM, putting the leads in near the drain. I came back, grabbed the iron, took a deep breath, and tossed it into the far end of the tub.
I waited a moment. No flickering lights, no electrical shorts, nothing. Excellent. Not a perfect experiment because during business hours they might be running some appliances that were off now, but another amp or so of draw on a system that was already handling, say, a washing machine and air conditioner would represent a trivial amount of extra load. The iron itself, I noted, white and with a white cord, wasn’t particularly noticeable against the background color of the bath. Of course, it would be easier to see during the day. But I thought I might have a way around that.
I unplugged the iron and fished it out, then checked the VOM. Fifty-eight milliamps—much higher than I’d gotten at the hotel, I supposed due to a higher concentration of salts than what I’d managed to duplicate in my practice session. The materials I’d read at the library claimed 100 milliamps was the lower end of the fatality range. But that was for point of entry. What really mattered was what happened in the chest cavity, and there, 6 milliamps was considered fatal. If I put nearly 60 milliamps into the water at the same moment Ozawa grounded himself by gripping the faucet, I was reasonably confident that a sufficient portion of the electricity would travel straight through his heart.
I left the extension cord plugged in and turned off the light with a knuckle. I pulled the female end of the cord across the threshold and carefully closed the door over it. There was a good-sized gap at the bottom of the door, and I was able to wedge the female end in the crack just under the hinges. I shoved it back an inch or so with the toe of my shoe, then stood examining it for a moment. It was practically invisible, and I didn’t think it would be any more noticeable during the day, either. Who pays any attention to the crack at the bottom of a storage room door, the same door that’s been there day in and day out for years if not decades?
I locked the door, wiped it down with my shirtsleeve, and left the building, repeating the process on the way. I walked quickly back to the station, giddy from adrenaline. I was going to do this. I was going to make it work. I didn’t consider anything more than that, didn’t even pause to consider the potential cost of what I was buying.
chapter
sixteen
I woke up the next morning and the first thing I thought was, Today I’m going to kill a man.
It was a strange thought. Every morning I woke up during the war was a day I might kill someone. But in the war, I had never known whom. And anyway, of course I was supposed to kill someone, even a lot of people—after all, it was a war. As Patton said, the point was to make some other dumb bastard die for his country. This was different. This was specific. And it wasn’t sanctioned. But did that make it worse? Killing someone specific was worse than killing someone generic? Killing someone for my own reasons was worse than killing someone for reasons I was told by some politician?
It might have been another rationalization. But I couldn’t argue with the logic, either. And in the end, I was going to do it anyway.
I bought more locks that day, and killed time practicing on them. Each, I discovered, was a little bit different, varyingly tough or vulnerable, loose or tight, easy to work by feel or unyielding. But there could only be so many types, and I imagined there would be broad principles. With enough practice, I’d learn by feel what type I was up against and defeat it more easily.
The hours ticked by excruciatingly slowly. I saw on the news that President Nixon had announced the last U.S. ground troops had been withdrawn from Vietnam. He didn’t mention Cambodia. Nobody questioned him about it. I supposed they preferred to be lied to. Anyway, it didn’t matter. Any idiot knew the war was lost. I was glad I’d gotten out, that I could accept it was over. Earlier in the year, a Japanese Imperial Army sergeant, Shōichi Yokoi, had been discovered in the jungles of Guam. He thought the war was still on, and that he was still fighting it. Hazukashinagara, kaette mairimashita, he had famously said upon arriving back in Japan. Though ashamed, I have returned. I was glad I wasn’t like him. Any fighting I did from now on would be for myself.
Late in the afternoon, I set out on Thanatos for Kita-Senju. I wore a shirt, pants, and shoes. Nothing else—no socks, not even any underwear. My bag was slung over my shoulder, but I’d stowed my personal effects and the money Miyamoto had left me under the mattress at the hotel. Not the most creative place in the world, but I didn’t have to worry about maid service until the next morning, and I was reasonably confident it would all be safe there. I had already burned the file on Mori. The hotel room key I taped to the back of a toilet in the train station. I was traveling as light and sterile as I could under the circumstances.
I parked two blocks from Daikoku-yu, in the direction of the train station. If I had to tear ass out of there, I wanted a little head start to gain some distance before firing up the bike. I used a coin to unscrew the license plate. I doubted anyone would notice the absence on a parked bike. Anyway, I was less worried about that than about anyone remembering the plate number later.
I meandered the area in a slow loop. By overshooting Ozawa’s house on one end to the limit of my vision and doing the same with Daikoku-yu on the other, I managed to stretch out each lap to a good twenty minutes, giving people fewer opportunities to wonder who was strolling in their neighborho
od and why. Now that I knew he limped, I was betting Ozawa would consistently use the shortcut to the sentō rather than the main road, which made anticipating him easier. I hoped I wouldn’t have to do this day in and day out. Even with the various steps to reduce my profile, strolling this way wasn’t exactly inconspicuous, and though I doubted anyone would pay much heed on any given day, over time the behavior would start to attract scrutiny.
After two hours, a dark sedan with curtained windows turned onto Ozawa’s street. It had to be him—I couldn’t imagine another person with a car and driver in this neighborhood. All right, he was home. Now I just had to hope it was his habit to visit the sentō every evening. I used the moment to duck into an alley off the path I’d been following and urinate. I had deliberately dehydrated myself, knowing I wouldn’t have many such opportunities while waiting for him, but now that I’d seen him I was nervous, and I knew from combat experience that dehydration or no, it wouldn’t be long before I would need a toilet.
As it turned out, he kept me waiting only for an hour, probably enough time to eat dinner or at least to exchange pleasantries with his wife, maybe his in-laws. It was just growing dark and I was on the heading-back-toward-Daikoku-yu portion of my loop when I saw him approaching, limping slowly along in a bathrobe and slippers, a small plastic bucket and towel in one hand. I turned into an alley so he wouldn’t have a chance to make out my face, and waited three minutes. Then I headed in, opening up the laces of my shoes wide so I could pull them on in a hurry if necessary, and placing them in a waist-level cubby where I wouldn’t have to stoop to retrieve them.
This time, I had brought my own toiletries and towels from the hotel, and only had to pay the entrance fee. It was the same mama-san, though she didn’t seem to remember me. Of course, if this went well, it wouldn’t matter either way.
