Zero Sum (A John Rain Novel)

by Barry Eisler

  “Were you followed?” I said, pleased that my voice sounded normal. From far down the tunnel, I heard a train approaching.

  “No. I did what you told me.”

  There was no question about his truthfulness. If Miyamoto had wanted to set me up, he would have had people waiting at the station. He wouldn’t have hired a foreigner to follow him onto the tracks while I watched. He was just new and clueless. Not his fault. Not his world.

  “Okay, good.” I didn’t want to tell him about our problem. He’d probably look, or tense up, or otherwise signal to our friend that I was onto him.

  “So . . . where should we go?” He seemed a little less certain than usual. Probably all the cloak-and-dagger had unnerved him.

  “Here’s what you need to look into,” I said. “Listen carefully because we only have a few seconds. Someone in your organization knew Sugihara was going to be at a Ginza hostess club called Moonglow last night. I’m pretty sure the same person was there. And I’m pretty sure the same person was at the wedding reception, too. You need to cross-reference those three things. Can you do that?”

  The salarymen walked past us.

  Miyamoto waited until they were out of earshot, then said, “You think this person—”

  “Is feeding information to Victor, yes. And maybe to the CIA.”

  “What?”

  The mother with the stroller passed us.

  “Listen. We only have a few more seconds. Whatever you find, don’t do anything about it. Don’t tell anyone. For now, this is just between you and me. Do you understand? That is very important.”

  “I understand.”

  The old women passed us. The train was louder now, and I had to raise my voice over the sound of its approach.

  “Good. I need to meet you tonight. Can you do that?”

  “Yes. But why tonight? What about now?”

  “Just listen carefully. You once told me about a bar. A place with biishiki. Bar Radio. You know it, right?”

  “Of course. I’ve been going there since Ozaki-masutaa opened it.”

  “Be there tonight when it opens. Outside—don’t go in. I don’t care how you get to Jingumae, but I want you to walk to the bar from the corner of Omotesando-dori and Aoyama-dori.”

  “What? Why?”

  “You’ll understand soon, I promise. Now, one more thing. In a few seconds, something crazy is going to happen. As soon as it does, walk away. Keep your head down. Don’t try to help me. Don’t look back. Just walk away quickly and smoothly. And button that jacket. Your ties are way too memorable.”

  “What?”

  The black guy was twenty feet away now. Fifteen.

  It was an effort to keep my tone even, my posture open and relaxed. “You heard what I just said, right? That’s all that matters.”

  He shook his head, plainly bewildered. “Yes, meet you tonight, walk from the corner, and something crazy. But . . . I just don’t understand.”

  I shrugged and raised my hands palms-up in a whatever gesture. I wanted my new friend to see my empty hands. And to be comforted by them.

  Eight feet.

  “I don’t want you to think about it. Just do it.”

  Four feet.

  “All right, but . . . what is this crazy thing you’re talking about?”

  “Trust me,” I said, smiling as though enjoying some harmless joke. “You’ll know it when you see it.”

  The black guy was just about beyond the range of my peripheral vision now. I forced myself to wait, not to turn too soon, to make sure he thought he’d gotten behind me. At the limit of my view, I saw his right hand floating toward a back pocket.

  A civilian would have waited. Maybe he was reaching for his wallet. A map. A tissue. You couldn’t have known, a civilian would argue. You couldn’t be sure.

  The problem with all that is the civilian would have died collecting his proof.

  I braced with my right foot, spun, and shot in, left foot forward, watching him turning, turning in my adrenalized slow-motion vision, his right foot planted, his left leg coming around counterclockwise, the right hand on the verge of accessing whatever was in his pocket. I drew back my left hand and drove it forward, slamming the heel of my palm into his skull just behind the ear. His body jolted from the impact, but he was still turning, still in the game, and I grabbed his right sleeve in my right hand and jerked him violently toward me, dragging the arm high, far from his pocket.

  We struggled like that for a moment, his jacket sleeve wrapped in my fist. He was bigger than I was, and strong, and twice tried to jerk his arm free. But a judoka who couldn’t keep a sleeve grip wouldn’t be worthy of the name, and I would have had to be dead to let his arm go and give him another chance to access a weapon.

  He tried to hit me with a left hook, but I danced clockwise away from the blow, bringing my left hand in and grabbing his right hand with it, yanking him in short convulsive jerks, keeping him from regaining a good base or balance. I wanted to slip behind him, but he was reacting to my attempts to drag his arm past by pulling the opposite way.

  So I reversed direction, jamming his hand in toward his chest as though I was looking for some sort of wristlock. He might not have understood my feint, but by instinct he tried to obstruct it—by pushing into me.

  The instant he did so, I shot in, spinning counterclockwise, stretching out the arm and coming in low under it, rotating his hand thumb-out as I did so. He sensed his elbow’s vulnerability and tried to pull back the arm, but it was already too late, and as the arm straightened and his palm turned fully up, I exploded upward, my shoulder catching him just above the elbow. Somehow he managed to lean forward and dilute the impact, but still I felt and heard a loud pop! from his elbow as it extended past its natural range of motion. He cried out and tried to yank his arm free, and I keyed on the sound of his yell and snapped my head back into his face with a satisfying thud. And again. I felt him straining back to avoid a third shot, and knew in that instant his concern had shifted from his injured arm to protecting his face. I dropped again, yanked the arm forward, and came up under it with everything I had. This time, the elbow didn’t just pop. It snapped, the sound as loud as a log breaking even over the roar of the approaching train.

  He howled and went up on his toes to take whatever pressure he could off his ruined elbow, and I dropped again, popped my hips back, and straightened, pulling the arm and throwing him in probably the ugliest seoi-nage ever attempted. He flew over me and slammed into the platform on his back.

  At the last instant, I released my grip to ensure I didn’t get tangled up with him. He managed to roll to his stomach and get his good arm under him, but he was shaking now, slow, and I had all the time in the world to step in and kick him soccer-style full in the face. His head snapped back and blood shot from his nose, and his arm went out from under him.

  I looked up. The train was in the station now, slowing, not twenty feet away. Some more people had drifted onto the platform. I flash-checked them—civilians. Not backup.

  He planted a hand on the ground and pushed himself up again. I gauged the distance, saw it would work.

  I closed and kicked him in the face again. He spun away from the force of it, his head now facing the tracks, and before he could collect himself, I stepped to his right, grabbed him by the back of the collar with my right hand and the back of the belt with my left, and yanked him violently up and forward, sending him screaming and flailing over the edge of the platform and onto the tracks. A second later, the train rolled slowly over him, and his scream abruptly ended.

  I dropped my head instantly and moved quickly along the platform. Miyamoto was on his own; all I could do was hope he’d had the presence of mind to do what I told him. I knew all the attention would be focused on me, with luck affording him a moment to slip away undetected, undetected in this case meaning no witnesses remembering his fucking tie. A description like that could have led the police right to him.

  I could feel people looking at me,
could hear voices crying out in distress. “Stop!” someone shouted. But I was already heading up and out. I hit the street, my head sweeping back and forth as I moved, looking for another attacker. I didn’t see anyone, but how could I be sure?

  I got off the main street and onto quieter ones, moving southeast, looking for a weapon of convenience. The best I could find was a loose curbstone. I swept it up and kept moving.

  Idiot, you should have kept the knife from the guy in Shibuya. Or bought a new one. Idiot.

  What difference did it make that what I’d taken in the alley had been a murder weapon? I should have been armed with something. A kitchen knife. A fucking corkscrew. Something.

  As I got farther from the station, I let myself move faster. Actually, “let” wasn’t quite the right word—I was so overloaded with adrenaline, I couldn’t help it. I needed to do something to burn it off. I felt like running, sprinting, just to put distance between myself and the train station. But that would draw attention. So I managed to keep at about the pace of someone who was a little late for a meeting. Quick, but not markedly so.

  I made a few aggressive moves and still detected no one behind me.

  You’re okay. You’re okay. Slow it down. Relax. Relax. Relax.

  I ducked into a neighborhood shrine in Akasaka just as the shakes started—the effect not only of what had just happened, but of having fought so hard beforehand to stay calm, to project no awareness of what was coming. I breathed in and out deeply, trying to slow my heartbeat. After a few minutes, I started to feel a little steadier.

  Damn, but it had been a close call. And that awkward sleeve grip. I resolved that if I survived whatever the hell this all was, I would train judo at least one day a week with nothing but unconventional grips. Positions you’d never expect to find yourself in. Until it actually happened and you almost died from it.

  Yeah, it was close. But mission accomplished with Miyamoto. Plus, the other team is now down by three.

  That was true. And not a bad feeling at all.

  An image of Maria flashed into my mind—under me in the hotel room, my arms around her legs, gripping her, holding her, fucking her as hard as I could—and I was instantly, monumentally hard. Extreme horniness is a reaction to combat. Civilians don’t like to talk about it because it seems sick—as though killing is some kind of turn-on. I didn’t really care about the psychology. I just knew it was real. And it was so overwhelming that, for a second, I actually considered going to Ueno to see her.

  No. Business first.

  Right. I set aside the longer-term and started focusing on next steps. Miyamoto, of course. But that wasn’t until tonight. What about Tatsu?

  I thought about calling him, but decided to wait. Probably he was already out, examining a body on a train platform. That was fine. The main thing was, it wasn’t mine.

  chapter fourteen

  I went to a love hotel in Akasaka and passed out for a couple hours. Parasympathetic backlash again.

  Afterward, I called Tatsu from a payphone. “You wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had,” he told me. “Or maybe you would.”

  “Another homicide?”

  “If you keep this up, I’m going to think you’re clairvoyant. Or arrest you, one or the other.”

  I chuckled. “You have anything for me?”

  “Yes. And you?”

  I appreciated that he answered without asking me to go first. He was a tough negotiator, but also a good friend, and he knew I was in a tight spot.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Was the information I gave you earlier useful?”

  “It was interesting. Though so far, inconclusive.”

  “Can you meet tonight?”

  “I think we should, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. Same place as last time? Say, eight o’clock?”

  “I’ll look forward to it.”

  “Listen, one more thing. There are people trying to get to me. And they seem to be doing it through people I know. It’s hard for me to imagine they’ve infiltrated the Keisatsuchō, but . . .”

  “I’ll be certain not to bring any company.”

  That was reassuring. Miyamoto had a good heart, but his tradecraft was practically nonexistent. Tatsu was another story altogether. If he said he’d be there alone, he’d be there alone.

  “Okay. Good. I’ll see you at eight.”

  I had a little time to kill, it seemed. I badly wanted to call Maria. And not just because the thought of meeting her at a love hotel was overwhelmingly appealing. I felt like I should warn her. But warn her of what? And how?

  I wandered along Akasaka’s backstreets until I reached Hikawa Jinja, a small shrine I liked. I sat on a bench in the corner of the mossy grounds, listening to the birds in the trees, finding the quiet and solitude calming.

  I considered what it was that had tipped me off about the guy in the train station. Whatever it was, I wanted to be sure I never made a similar mistake.

  Well, he was a foreigner, of course. That’s an instant disadvantage in Tokyo.

  But that only made you notice him. It wasn’t what made you decide.

  That was true. But what was it, then? The rigid posture, the athletic gait. And that his clothes were dry, but he didn’t have an umbrella, as though he’d tossed one away to be ready for action.

  All those things. But something else, too, underlying all of it. The essential element. The thing that made you decide.

  Intent, I realized. That’s what it was. I could feel his intent. He had been aware of me, intensely aware. So aware that the best he could manage was to pretend not to be aware. But pretending not to be aware is at best a simulacrum. For someone with the right sensitivities, the pretense can be distinguished from the real thing.

  Okay. But weren’t you doing something similar in reverse, pretending you hadn’t noticed him?

  Yeah. That was true, too. Maybe I was just a slightly better actor. Or he was a more gullible audience. Or both. Regardless, it wasn’t enough. I needed something better. I needed to find a way to wall off my awareness so it wouldn’t be visible. Not just to hide my intent, not just to create an absence of intent, but to create the presence of some other thing. I had to know down deep what was happening, while simultaneously feeling something completely different on the surface.

  It sounded difficult, but how hard could it really be? Wasn’t it just an exceptionally high-pressure version of what actors did every time they performed? “Mike” himself had described the Agency’s urban-ops course as being like acting school. As I thought about it, I realized that acting was exactly what I’d already been doing. I just needed to practice and get better at it.

  No, not just better—the best. So I could fool the best. And spot the best, before they fooled me.

  I thought of Maria again. It was killing me not to call her. Maybe she could slip away. An hour. Just an hour.

  What part of you is going to help you survive this? Your brain, or your dick?

  I sighed. Not much arguing with that framework.

  At a little before six, I made my way back to Zenkō-ji Temple in Omotesando, where I’d been so overcome by ardor with Maria that I hadn’t realized a couple of guys were lurking nearby, refraining from killing me only because, for whatever reason, they wanted to leave her out of it. This time, I waited in the shadows near the street, watching the corner where I had told Miyamoto to go before he walked to Bar Radio.

  He showed up right on time, getting out of a cab on the south side of Aoyama-dori and walking northeast before making a right on the tiny, nameless street that led to the bar. I waited in the shadows, watching, for ten minutes. No one followed in his wake. Okay. This time, it seemed he was clean.

  I crossed the street and headed straight to the bar. Miyamoto was waiting outside, as I’d directed.

  “Are you all right?” he said, walking toward me as I approached, his hands open in supplication or relief. “I wanted to help at the train station, but you’d told me not to. And honestly, I’m afr
aid I was never very capable in such matters, not even when I was a soldier. But I was worried.”

  He was talking unusually fast, and I realized the thing on the train platform had shaken him. “I’m fine,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. “You did exactly the right thing. Let’s keep moving, though, just in case. I’m pretty sure you weren’t followed, but let’s make certain.”

  We started walking southeast toward Nishi Azabu. These were quiet streets, ideal for spotting surveillance. I kept a brisk pace to make it a little more difficult for anyone who might have fallen in behind us. It was only a precaution, but it didn’t cost anything, either.

  “My sincere apologies,” he said, struggling to keep up. “I thought I had been so careful before. I did everything you said to do.”

  “I’m sure you did. Don’t worry about it. It turned out okay. But tell me, did you see any foreigners behind you before you reached the train station?”

  “No. None that I noticed.”

  I considered that. “They might have had locals on you. If they had enough to rotate, they’d be hard to spot. And maybe they brought the foreigner in at the end.”

  My theory was possible, of course, but I judged it unlikely. The black guy had been reasonably smooth. With an umbrella to obscure his features, and Miyamoto’s lack of experience, he probably could have done the job without a local team. But there was little to be gained in making Miyamoto feel worse than he already did.

  Ten minutes later, we were inside the gates of Chōkokuji, a Buddhist temple in Nishi Azabu, wandering among the markers of its small cemetery, the dim grounds within the walls still and silent.

  “Were you able to cross-reference the information I gave you?” I asked.

  “Indeed.”

  “And?”

  “I’m saddened to report that the mole seems to be . . . my immediate superior.”

  I could see how it might be sad for Miyamoto. But I was nothing but excited at the possibility of turning the tables on whoever was coming after me.

  “You’re certain?”

  “Positive.”

  “Tell me how you know.” It wasn’t that I doubted him, exactly. But given that my continued longevity was now likely a function of the quality of his information, I wanted him to show his work, not just his conclusions.