‘What does it mean?’ Akiko asked.
‘This confirms Suzuki’s transfer to the Chosa Besshitsu, and notes his area of expertise as radar and signals. He retired a sergeant first class. What do you know about the Chobetsu?’
‘Enough. It gathers and analyzes radio and signals transmissions. Today, it spies on North Korea. In the Cold War, its chief target was the Soviet Union. It was, and still is, affiliated with the American National Security Agency.’
‘Yes, all true. You know, you are a surprising young woman,’ Watanabe said.
Akiko noted a sheen on Watanabe’s forehead as he licked his upper lip, which deposited a fleck of saliva on his mustache. There was something other than business on his mind.
‘I have been thinking,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we could come to some kind of accommodation on my bill.’
‘Perhaps,’ she said, wanting his cooperation for a little while longer.
Akiko had taken all her reference books and scrapbooks out of storage and her small apartment now resembled a ransacked library. There was very little in the public domain about KAL 007 that she didn’t know about. There was, according to her research, a Chosa Besshitsu radar station in Wakkanai, on the very tip of Hokkaido, not fifty miles from the point where the Russians claimed the plane had crashed into the Sea of Japan.
‘Did you manage to access the roster for Suzuki’s shifts for the second half of 1983?’ Akiko asked.
‘No. So sorry. That information is still top secret. Perhaps it can be obtained through the right channels. I tried, but could not get confirmation.’ Watanabe shook his head.
He sifted through the folder and handed Akiko another couple of forms, his forefinger stroking the top of her hand. It could have been an accident. Akiko doubted it.
‘His discharge papers,’ he said.
She scanned them. ‘He left the military in 1986.’
‘Yes. He found employment in the computer industry, working for Toshiba. When he lived in your building, he also kept a home in Sapporo.’
‘Why did he move to my building?’ she wondered aloud.
‘One can only speculate. Perhaps he felt a special bond with you. Perhaps he came to spy on you. Perhaps you’re not telling me the whole story.’
Watanabe held her eyes with his for a long moment, a cold smile lifting a corner of his mouth.
The private detective was right. She had told him nothing about KAL 007, nor had she shown him Suzuki’s letter. Akiko wanted information. She wasn’t giving it away.
Watanabe gave a small capitulating shrug. ‘He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer nine months ago and it claimed him at the age of sixty-one.’
‘Any relatives?’ she asked.
‘No. Yuudai Suzuki was an only child, as were both his parents. Mother, father, grandparents, all deceased. He did not marry.’
Akiko nodded. The man she remembered had been comfortable in his loneliness, or had seemed to be.
‘The folder is yours,’ said Watanabe, closing it and pushing it toward her.
Akiko was far from satisfied. Yuudai Suzuki had been with the Chobetsu, as claimed in his letter. He had also more than likely worked at the facility at Wakkanai in 1983. But what of the meat of his declaration? Had he been on duty on the morning of September 1, 1983? Had he seen her mother’s plane fly on after the missile strike, rather than crash into the sea? If what he said was true, then why had the Soviet Union contrived such a lie? And how could Moscow have pulled this off without the complicity of Japan? Or America? And if the plane had landed safely, what had happened to all the passengers; to her mother, Nami?
Akiko was suddenly aware that Watanabe was standing behind her. His hands were on her shoulders and they were working forward, down toward her breasts. She shrugged them off angrily and leaned forward to gather up her bag.
‘That won’t be necessary,’ she snapped, feeling around among wallet, lipgloss, tissues and other items for her checkbook. ‘I will pay you now, and in full.’
There was really only one other place she could go for answers. On the way back to her school, Akiko ducked into an internet cafe and booked a seat on a plane.
January 13, 2012
Orlando, Florida. The Otter required an engine overhaul, and exceptionally cold weather up north had pushed an unseasonal number of tourists south to the Keys. The combination of these two factors had made it impossible for Ben to fly up to Orlando sooner. But the delay had given him time to think. And mostly what he thought was that this whole business was just an attempt by Curtis Foxx to purchase himself a clear conscience before he died.
The money bequeathed to Ben, the best part of a hundred grand, had landed in his bank account as Bourdain had said it would, and he was going to use it to pay off a big chunk of the Otter. Whatever that bullshit about embracing the truth meant, Ben had no idea, but he was more than happy to embrace being virtually debt free.
He stood across the road from the bank and took it in. With its expanse of concrete, glass and steel, the branch exuded wealth and permanence. It was difficult associating a building like this with his father, but then he’d felt the same about the offices of Kayson Bourdain. Ben trotted across the street, dodging traffic, and went through the revolving door. He approached the enquiry section of a long granite counter where a thin white male, his tie as thick as a noose around his neck, looked particularly bored. ‘Can I help you, sir?’ he asked.
‘Safe deposit boxes, please,’ Ben replied.
‘To rent or open?’
‘Open.’
‘Just head on down the stairs, sir.’
Ben took the two flights to the basement, the air temperature falling with each flight. In the basement, another granite counter overlooked by several surveillance cameras greeted him, this one occupied by a fat white teenage woman with blackheads trailing across her high forehead. A nameplate on her substantial chest informed him that her name was Petulia, if he cared to use it.
A black security guard with tight salt-and-pepper curls and bags like blisters beneath tired eyes stood in the corner with his hands behind his back. He rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, staring at nothing.
Ben gave Petulia a smile and put the key on the counter.
‘Can I see some ID, please, sir?’ she asked.
‘Driver’s license, social security card?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
Ben handed over both.
The woman shuffled through them a couple of times while she glanced at Ben, perhaps having difficulty getting past the ‘Sex Addict’ T-shirt he was wearing. She went to a computer terminal to check his details and returned with a more accommodating attitude.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Sign here, sir.’ She handed him a stylus and he scribbled on the screen. The formalities handled, she heaved herself off the stool. ‘Follow me, please.’
Ben followed Petulia down a hallway scanned by more cameras, the cheeks of her large bottom bouncing like kettledrums slung over a horse’s rump. A highly polished heavy steel and brass door featuring several large spoked wheels was open halfway on massive hinges. Inside, lit with bright halogen overhead lamps, boxes were set into numbered shelves from floor to ceiling.
‘Box number 007,’ Petulia repeated to herself.
It was located in the first row inside the vault, seventh box from the floor, secured in place by two locks. Petulia produced a key on a thick chain, inserted it into the lock, and waited for Ben to do the same.
‘On the count of three, turn counterclockwise,’ she informed him, stifling a yawn. ‘One, two, three.’
The keys turned and the box sprang from its shelf half an inch, enough for Ben to grip it between thumb and forefinger and pull it all the way out. It was a couple of feet deep, twelve inches wide and six inches high—long and thin.
‘The second viewing room on your left is vacant,’ Petulia told him, pointing down the hall. ‘Just let me know when y’all’s finished.’
Ben tucked the box under
one arm, said thanks, and left her inside the vault. He found the empty room, went in and shut the door. There was a table and chair, but no cameras. The walls were painted green and hung with prints of the city of Orlando 100 years before Disney and technicolor had come to town—wide dusty streets, more horses than cars, and everything in black and white.
Ben gave the box a gentle shake. Nothing rattled. He lifted the lid and found a legal-sized envelope taped to the bottom. He pulled away the tape and tore open the envelope. Inside was a smoky brown plastic spool of tape about the size of a beer mat, no label or markings of any kind on it.
‘Tequila Sunrise’ by the Eagles was playing on the car radio when Ben drove through the parking lot at Key West International. The sun was a velvet yellow button in a cool afternoon sky. The Eagles song gave way to the station ID, and then a familiar ad came on. The announcer sounded like he was bursting out of his skin with excitement: You’ve got Key West surrounded by water, we’ve got seaplanes that land on water. What’s all that telling you? Yeah. You need to come on over to Key West Seaplanes. We know where the deserted beaches are hidden, where the big fish are biting. Wanna see something special? Take a flight out to the Dry Tortugas . . . The guy went on in that vein for a dozen more hyped-up seconds and then the ad concluded with the sound effect of a seaplane roaring overhead, a couple of testimonials, a musical sting and a phone number. Ben was sick to death of it. Cecilia had it piped into reception and playing on the phone when the caller was on hold. But the ad gave him an idea. Instead of turning left out of the airport, he took the exit heading east.
The girl at reception looked at the spool of tape in Ben’s hand and weighed the request. She knew that the guy standing in front of her worked for Key West Seaplanes, a regular advertiser on the station. He was also cute.
‘Okay, Ben. Take a seat and I’ll see if anyone can help you. Can I get you something to drink, a Coke or something?’
Ben said no thanks and sat on the couch. He heard her try a couple of extensions until she located the technician and gave him a brief explanation of the situation. A minute later, a pale skinny guy with dyed black hair, black eye make-up and tight black jeans strolled into reception.
The girl gestured politely. ‘This is Ben from Key West Seaplanes,’ she said.
‘Hi. I’m Omar,’ he announced. ‘So what you got there, Ben?’
Ben held up the tape. ‘Thought you might be able to play this for me.’
‘What’s on it?’
‘That’s why I’m here. Haven’t got a clue.’
‘Let’s see what we can do.’
Ben followed Omar through a door that warned ‘Staff Only Beyond This Point’.
‘So you’re from Key West Seaplanes,’ Omar said as they walked.
‘Yeah.’
‘I did your ad.’
‘Really.’
‘Yep. Wrote it, produced it. That sucker’s on my resumé.’
‘It’s a great little ad,’ Ben agreed, slipping into diplomacy. ‘So, do you use reel-to-reel tape decks here much?’
‘Occasionally. We’ve still got sound effects left over from the old days that we haven’t digitized. Tape is better than disk, you know—better quality, more information. You lose something in the transfer. I thought it would be best just to keep the tape, but management didn’t agree.’
Omar pushed through another door into a room no bigger than a closet and filled with electrical equipment—black panels, cords and blinking lights. A tape deck with a sleek black facing and one large brushed-aluminum spool mounted on it sat on a shelf among a nest of twisted black and blue cabling. The technician swapped around a few leads, unplugging some, plugging in others, then stabbed the deck’s power button and a small red LED standby light glowed.
‘Okay, you got that reel?’
Ben handed it over.
Omar ripped out a length of tape, threw the spool onto a spline, wound the tape around various rollers and secured the end in the large aluminum spool.
‘The sound will come though this,’ he said, tapping a speaker propped beside the deck.
He turned the control lever to play. The spools turned, the rollers flexed, but the speaker was silent even though the levels needles on the front of the deck were dancing into the red.
‘Hmm,’ Omar said to himself. He replugged one of the leads and the small room was suddenly filled with 120 decibels of hissing and screeching. Ben winced and Omar’s hand darted for a knob on one of the boxes.
‘Oh, sorry about that,’ he said as the noise dropped rapidly away.
‘What’s that?’ Ben asked.
‘The sound? Beats me.’
Omar fast-forwarded the tape, stopped it and again switched the lever to ‘play’, but the hiss and static continued. He sampled the tape in several other places, but more of the same resulted.
‘You’ve got something on here, but whatever it is, it’s ruined. Where’d you get it from?’
‘Long story,’ Ben said.
‘Well, analog stuff doesn’t last forever and this is definitely an antique.’ He rewound the tape, removed the spool and handed it back with a shrug. ‘Sorry, dude.’
So much for tape being the best way to store sound, Ben thought. He thanked the guy and left, shaking his head at the waste of a day. When he reached his car, he tossed the spool into the glovebox and slammed the door shut. ‘Hey, fella,’ he said to himself, ‘I know what you need.’
Captain Tony’s was a saloon on Greene Street. Outside, a giant jewfish was mounted above the front door, a model of the monster fish supposedly caught by Captain Tony himself. Tourists flipped coins into its mouth for good luck. Ben wasn’t sure why. The fish had sure run out of luck to end up stuffed and hanging over the door. Inside, the place looked like the bedroom of an adolescent who’d raided a Victoria’s Secret warehouse. Bras, more than a thousand of them, were pinned all over the walls and ceiling. In the middle of the joint grew a tree that had been used by vigilantes in the eighteenth century from which to hang a bunch of pirates. There was also a gravestone in the floor for someone’s daughter who had died back in 1822. But the clincher for Ben, making Captain Tony’s his favorite watering hole, was that some of the best-looking lager maidens in the whole of the Conch Republic pulled the beers here.
‘Lock up your daughters,’ Marsha called out from behind the counter when she saw him walk in. ‘Ben Harbor’s about to land.’
‘Why don’t you grab the microphone and announce it proper, sugar?’ Ben said, mimicking her southern accent as he occupied a stool.
‘Haven’t seen y’all for a while,’ she said, pouring him a Sunset beer without having to be asked. ‘What’s up?’
‘Family stuff,’ Ben explained. ‘What’s new with you?’
She gave him a shrug and placed the beer in front of him, the glass frosted, a lick of foam sliding down the side. ‘My damn ride got boosted the other day right out of the Wal-Mart parking lot. And I caught my boo red-handed with that blonde skank who worked for his old man.’
‘Ouch. You okay?’
‘Yeah. My car was a pile of junk anyway,’ she said, with a smirk. She leaned toward him across the bar, her breasts pressed against the wood. Her skin glowed with health. The bad luck and detritus of life that stuck to other people just seemed to slide right off her. She was wearing pink lipstick and her blue eyes sparkled. Even after twelve months, the picture of their one night of lovemaking, along with her personal preferences, were still vivid in Ben’s mind.
Marsha cleared her throat. ‘Think I’d better go serve someone else.’
‘Yeah, you’d better.’ He grinned.
‘Give me a holler when you want to go another round,’ she said ambiguously. Ben watched her move down the bar, swinging a runner’s ass.
He glanced around. The band was setting up. The afternoon crowd had left and the night-time crowd was drifting in. Several old guys and their wives were having a quiet drink by the front window. A couple of tourists—a roided-u
p guy and his hyper-attractive girlfriend—were playing pool against a couple of older pro fishermen, one of whom Ben had taken on a charter flight to meet up with a cruiser that was fishing the Gulf Stream’s deep blue waters out beyond the reef.
On the flatscreen over the bar, a debate between the front-running Democrats in the upcoming presidential elections had supplanted sports. Ben couldn’t hear the sound but he didn’t need to. They were both no doubt two-faced and untrustworthy, like all politicians, and probably neither deserved the Oval Office.
‘Yo, Marsha!’ Ben called out. ‘Can we change the program here?’
She gave him a nod, found the remote and aimed it at the screen. NASCAR highlights took over.
Ben thought about calling a few friends to meet him for a drink, but decided against it. He had some thinking to do. He pulled out the picture of Curtis Foxx standing in front of what was probably the reconnaissance plane he’d flown and gazed hard at the man who looked so familiar, hoping to find a clue. The guy was young, he was smiling, he was a pilot and he was married to Nikki.
‘So what happened to you, Curtis?’ Ben asked out loud.
A hand suddenly slapped hard onto the bar beside his elbow.
‘I believe you’ve been coined,’ said a woman’s voice.
Ben turned. It was the woman who’d been playing pool. The game was over and the two fishermen were standing around leaning on their cue sticks. The woman was tall and olive-skinned with full lips. Her longish hair had a wave in it and her dark eyes glittered with the effects of maybe a glass too many. She wore tight faded jeans and a blue Abercrombie & Fitch sweatshirt that smelled vaguely of the sea and coconut tanning lotion.
‘You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?’ she gathered from the blank look on his face.
‘No, I don’t. What did you say? I’ve been “coined”?’
‘You’re not Air Force?’
‘No.’
‘Sorry, my mistake. I’ve got albums full of pictures just like that—with my dad and his friends standing in front of planes. I thought you might have been an Air Force brat, like me.’
The Zero Option Page 8
