Brook moved over to the Russian. Krylov was showing the gap between his front teeth.
“You catch on quick, Alex.”
“Yes. But I must join the others outside very soon. Volodya is quick, too.”
“He’s got a fire in his back seat to put out. Sorry to damage your car — only way we could do it. You ready to go?”
“I am ready.”
“Next Saturday. Get in the boat race — weather permitting. If not next Saturday, the next time there’s a race. After you round the first mark, while you’re on the reaching leg, capsize your boat. Be sure you’re well away from the others. I’ll be there in a fast launch and pick you up. It’ll look like a rescue. But we won’t take you back to shore. We’ll go out beyond the limit and meet an American submarine there. And you’ll be on your way.”
“So. It is to happen at last.” Krylov looked grim. Brook understood. But there were other things on his mind.
“We’ve still got a long way to go, Alex. I have the feeling I’m under surveillance. Be very careful.”
“I am always very careful. And Kimiko? What did your people say?”
“They’ve bought your conditions. You’ll meet her in Washington. You’ll be going separately, of course.”
“I am taking a chance.” Krylov’s eyes bored into his. “You could be giving me what you call the doublecross.”
“Why should we? You can always refuse to cooperate if we do. We know that.”
Krylov seemed relieved; at least he nodded. “You saw Kimiko? How is she?”
“Blooming. And as beautiful as you said. You’re a lucky man, Alex.” And if you or Holloway ever find out how I put the boot to her the other night, Brook thought, there goes old Pete.
“I am a foolish man, Peter. To be in our trade and fall in love...” The Russian squared his shoulders. “Well. But you must see Kimiko once more. Be certain she is safe until you get her out of Japan. Perhaps you can assign someone to guard her.”
Brook shook his head. “I can’t promise a stakeout, Alex. We just don’t have the personnel available here for a thing like that on such short notice. But she ought to be safe enough. I’ve watched my Ps and Qs.”
“I suppose that will have to do.” Krylov glanced over his shoulder. “We have talked too long. Is there more?”
“That’s it.”
“Next Saturday, then.” Krylov hesitated, and put out his hand. It was warm and firm. He looked into Brook’s eyes again and held the grip for so long that Brook became disturbed. It was as if the Russian were about to say something earth-shaking. But then Krylov’s lips broadened and he let go and strode from the room.
Brook waited three days before visiting Kimiko Ohara again. He told himself that it was because he was so busy — the arrangements had to be confirmed by Benny via the safe radio; Brook had to go through the same dreary motions to meet his cutout for each transmission of information; and he had to keep calling on boat people to hold up his legend.
The real reason had nothing to do with these; it had to do with the battle between his obedience to Holloway and his ever-demanding manhood. FACE held its agents through the thrall of Holloway’s charisma. It was not that they were patriots less than that they hated and feared Holloway more. One of Holloway’s least flexible pronunciamentos was that an agent did not take time out of an assignment to exercise his libido except in line of duty. By no stretch was bedding Kimiko Ohara in the line of this duty; quite the contrary. So the battle raged for three days. At the end of the third day Holloway lost.
Brook’s final rationale was that Krylov had asked him to see her.
That Tuesday night Brook dined late in the main restaurant of his hotel, allowing the spurious French sommelier to recommend a wine suitable to his American-style cutlets that turned out, predictably, to be a Bordeaux ’64 bad enough to arouse even his undeveloped taste buds to criticism. Score one for Megan Jones and her campaign to civilize him. His thoughts about Miss Jones of Washington, D.C. were arrived at by another route as welclass="underline" his guilt over Kimiko, not because of Krylov but because of Holloway. Compared to Kimiko as an appetite-pleaser, Brook ruminated, Megan would turn out a greasy-spoon hamburger. It was in her stars. Megan could hardly escape being a prisoner of the Puritan ethic; the seasoned wisdom of the East in such matters was as far out of her reach as her prospect of becoming Mrs. Peter Brook, her evident goal. But of course Megan did not know that he was a FACE agent, and she was unacquainted with FACE’s handbook on sex. Sex was permitted on duty so long as it did not interfere with or compromise said duty; the judgment was the agent’s own, and if it proved to err with disastrous results to the mission the agent faced Holloway, which in at least one case Brook knew of had been a fate equivalent to death (the man had shortly found himself committed to a mental hospital, diagnosed an incurable schizophrenic). Love was absolutely forbidden. (As Krylov well knew, Brook thought; even not defecting he would have been through at KGB.) Marriage, of course, was the ultimate crime. Instant dismissal was its mildest punishment. Its most drastic was covered by The Rumor.
He decided to stop thinking.
Brook went back to his room, showered, shaved, used the Right Guard, slapped Brut on his cheeks, sipped a short whisky, and spent a few minutes considering what he should wear. He finally decided on a black Italian suit of silk, a maroon tie and socks, and slip-on alligators that had set him back a C-note. Gaudy, but what would you expect from a visiting U.S. fireman out on the town? And to hell with you, Holloway.
It was past midnight when the doorman got him a taxi. The driver wore a short wiry chin beard and a grinful of bad teeth.
“Where you go, sir?” The “sir” came out in a shower of sibilance.
With the doorman standing there and people entering and leaving the lobby, Brook said, “Oh, just drive.”
The cab shot off with an acceleration that slammed Brook back against the cushions. The bearded Japanese began weaving in and out of traffic madly.
“You like go summer festival?”
“Hell, no. Go to Nerima-ku.” Brook added Kimiko’s address.
“Nice festival tonight. On Tama River. Have much firework. All foreigner go there.”
Brook shook his head.
The driver looked disappointed. “You no want see festival?”
“No. Why are you so anxious to take me there?”
The driver grinned. “I like festival—”
“Look out!” Brook yelled.
The Japanese wrenched his wheel within a whisker of an oncoming pair of headlights. Brook was tossed to one side.
“Just watch the hell where you’re going,” Brook growled.
They ran a red light. “No worry. I number-one Tokyo driver. American want hot-shot driver, call Danny Boy.”
“Danny Boy?”
“Japanese name Hideko Dan. Very good Japanese name. English sound like Danny. So you call Danny Boy. I very famous with foreigner. What your name, sir?”
“Auschwitz.”
“You like war, Auschwitz-san?”
“War? No.”
Danny Boy nodded approval. “War no goddamn good. That why I flower boy.” A Japanese hippie! “Read about flower boy in America. They no like war, too.” He gestured toward a vaseful of small chrysanthemums hanging near his rearview mirror.
“Don’t take your hands off that goddam wheel!”
“Sorry,” Danny Boy said. “You no afraid, Auschwitzsan. I best driver in town. I fight in big war,” he continued. “No damn good, that war. Wet my pants all time. My job drive tank.”
“That explains it, all right.” Brook flinched as the cab careened around a corner, just missing a bus. He leaned back and tried to relax. Danny Boy kept pushing his heap at a suicidal pace, still talking. Brook only half listened. Danny Boy was launched on his life story: how he had worked for the American Occupation forces after the war as a driver, until his free-enterprise technique had apparently frightened some general out of his stars; how he had switched to cab-driving; how over the years he had learned intimately every unnamed street, alley, and passageway in Tokyo. His great ambition was to go to San Francisco. There, where the flower people flourished, he, Danny Boy, would take part in peace demonstrations every day.