Once we got going, it was hard to stop. I realized how much I missed this form of companionship, how virtually nonexistent it had become in my life. And Tatsu was one of the few people, maybe the only remaining one, in fact, who knew me all the way back to the time before Vietnam and war and killing and everything else that eventually came to define me, a time that, on those infrequent occasions when I care to consider the matter, seems as disconnected and remote as a memory from early childhood.
I realized, too, that this was part of what made me so miss Midori. She made me feel like that previous incarnation, made me believe, foolishly, that I might even shed my current skin and be baptized anew in the incarnation’s unsullied body.
Not a bad dream, that one, as dreams go.
When we were done with the meal, and lingering over tea for Tatsu and a second coffee for me, he said, “I thought you might want to know that a gentleman named Charles Crawley, who has U.S. State Department accreditation, was in Tokyo recently. He contacted the Keisatsucho and made inquiries about you. Do you know this man?”
First Dox, then Kanezaki, now Tatsu. Mr. Crawley was now firmly established on my radar screen.
“I know the name,” I said. “What did you tell him?”
He shrugged. “That we had a whole file on you.”
“And then?”
Another shrug. “We gave him the file.”
I looked at him, incredulous. “You just gave him the Keisatsucho file on me?”
He looked at me and said, “Of course,” in his trademark Why do I always have to spell everything out for these people tone, then paused before saying, “The official file.”
I smiled a little at the wily bastard, relief and even some gratitude ameliorating the irritation I might otherwise have felt at him for playing with me. The “official” file would be bereft of the most meaningful information, the items Tatsu wouldn’t entrust to anyone, and especially not to his superiors, the nuggets that might reveal too much about his occasional resort to extralegal methods in his battle with Japanese corruption.
“What does the official file conclude about my whereabouts?”
“That you are most likely still in Japan. Apparently there have been several sightings in major cities-Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, Sapporo.”
“Really,” I said.
He shrugged. “Of course, I have my own notions about where you might have gone instead. But why would I want to clutter up an official file with speculation?”
He was telling me that he had doctored the file. That he had done me a favor. I knew there would be a favor in return. If not today, then another time, soon.
I nodded, thinking. All right, then. “Now, what about that fucking camera network of yours?” I asked.
Tatsu had access to the world’s most advanced network of security cameras, all tied into an advanced facial recognition software system. He had used the network to find me after I had first left Tokyo and relocated to Osaka.
“No one is using it to track you. If that changes, I will let you know.”
“Thank you. Now, tell me about the man I briefed you on through the bulletin board.”
“Belghazi.”
“Yes.”
“I assume you already have plenty of background.”
“I do. Give me the recent data first.”
He nodded. “Belghazi supplies certain yakuza factions with small arms, working mostly through the Russian mob in Vladivostok. Lately he has been inquiring with these factions about you. I gather you did something to irritate him.”
“That’s possible.”
“He doesn’t seem like the kind of man one should irritate lightly.”
“I’m beginning to figure that out.”
“Would you care to tell me what you might have done to cause such grave offense?”
“I think you can guess.”
He nodded, then said, “He is not a good man. He seems to be without loyalties.”
“My detractors say the same thing about me.”
He smiled. “They are mistaken. Your problem is that you are unable to acknowledge where your loyalties lie.”
“Well, I appreciate your ongoing efforts to help me with that.”
He smiled almost demurely. “We’re friends, are we not?”
I thought for a minute. Maybe Belghazi, through his Saudi intelligence contact Mahfouz, sends the six Arabs after me in Macau and Hong Kong, as Kanezaki claimed to suspect. The team gets wiped out. Belghazi realizes the men were handicapped because of the way they stuck out there. Something big is happening on Macau or nearby, and Belghazi can’t leave just yet. Now he feels vulnerable. Vulnerable to me. He decides he needs someone with greater local expertise, someone who can blend and get the job done right. He reaches out to the yakuza.
Yeah, I could see that sequence. See it clearly.
Damn, this guy was real trouble. I was beginning to wake up to the magnitude of the problem I faced.
“Belghazi’s connection to the yakuza,” I said. “Is it close enough for them to help him with a problem elsewhere in Asia, if he asks?”
Tatsu nodded. “I would say so.”
Shit.
I realized I was going to have to take Belghazi out. Not just for the money, but simply to survive. And then I realized, He knows that. He’s putting himself in your shoes, too. Which sharpens his imperative: to eliminate you.
A vicious cycle, then. And winner take all.
All right. I needed to end this, and end it fast. I wanted this guy planted in the ground and no longer giving orders. “Natural causes,” if possible; unnatural, if not.
“How can I help?” Tatsu asked.
I thought for a moment, then said, “You can get me the particulars for my new friend.”
“Your new friend?”
I nodded. “Charles Crawley.”
9
DELILAH HAD SAID Belghazi was off Macau for a day or two, and there wasn’t much I could do for the moment with her in the way, anyway. I decided that my own brief departure would be a small enough risk to justify certain possible out-of-town gains.
I took the bullet train from Tokyo Station to Osaka, a less likely international departure point than Tokyo’s Narita. I checked the bulletin board from an Internet kiosk. The information I had asked Tatsu for was waiting for me: Charles Crawley III. Home, work, and cell phone numbers; work address, supposedly the State Department but in fact CIA headquarters in Langley and therefore unlikely to be operationally useful; and home address: 2251 Pimmit Drive, West Falls Church. Unit #811. Suburban Virginia. Most likely an apartment complex, one with at least eight floors.
I booked a nonstop ANA flight to Washington Dulles for the next morning. Then I checked into a cheap hotel in Umeda for the night. I lay in bed, but sleep wouldn’t come. Too much coffee. Too much to think about.
I got up, slipped into the yukata robe that even the lowest budget Japanese hotels can be counted on to provide, and sat in the cramped room’s single chair. I left the lights off and waited to get tired enough to fall asleep. I could tell it would be a while.
The cheap rooms are always the hardest. A little luxury can numb like anesthetic. Take the anesthetic away, and pain rushes into its absence like frigid water through a punctured hull. I felt memories beginning to crowd forward, agitated, insistent, like ghosts newly emboldened by the dark around me.