He felt at ease now, sitting back on a plastic chair in a vast air-conditioned coffee shop at Tokyo airport, his small suitcase touching his right foot, sipping iced coffee while he listened to the Japanese with the unlikely nickname, who had appeared from thin air, in the appointed place, exactly as predicted by the precise Mr. Johnson. Dorin, the commissaris thought, a Viking name perhaps. Perhaps the foreign friends this young man mentioned are Scandinavians and perhaps he reminded them of the warriors of those days. There was something of the warrior in the way Dorin carried himself. His body was straight and supple and he was taller than most of the people thronging about their table in the coffee shop. The commissaris noted that Dorin's trousers were tight but the jacket seemed a size too large. A movement of the left arm showed a hard line under the cotton of the jacket. A pistol, most probably, a fairly large pistol, with a long barrel, a weapon that could kill at a distance of say one hundred and fifty feet, under ideal circumstances of course. The commissaris wasn't armed. He wouldn't have been able to carry a gun in an airplane, but he might have been able to obtain a permit to have one in his suitcase. He hadn't bothered.
The CIA had made contact with him in Hong Kong, and he had spoken to Mr. Johnson, once by telephone and once in a museum where they had been admiring the same painting. Mr. Johnson liked working according to the book and his secretive colorless ways had amused the commissaris. In order to please the CIA chief he had visited the company where his cousin worked and he had been briefed on his cousin's routine so that he would be able to use his cover. He hadn't been too diligent about it. The whole scheme was haywire anyway. He knew very well that he was acting as a decoy to lure the yakusa out into the open. All he had to do in Japan was to go about openly soliciting business. He was supposed to be a buyer of stolen art and heroin and a competitor of the yakusa. Would they care about his background? If he could really buy both drugs and art and set the merchandise up for shipment to Holland he would immediately prove that his existence was detrimental to the yakusa and they would try either to kill him or to intimidate him in such a way that he would give up and run. He shook his head. Well, perhaps Johnson was right. If he used the identity of his cousin, a chief clerk of a shipping company in Hong Kong, he might convince the yakusa. A chief clerk can be a member of an illegal organization, especially a chief clerk of a shipping company with connections all over the world.
"Yes," Dorin said, "I trust that you will have a pleasant time in Tokyo. I have been told that there is no particular hurry and Tokyo is an excellent place to get acquainted with Japanese ways. Kobe is a different place, more quiet in a way. Kobe has about one tenth of Tokyo's population. If you can get used to this city you will have no trouble at all in Kobe. Would you like to stay in a Western-style hotel or do you prefer a Japanese inn? Your assistant is now lodged in an inn, but he said he would go to wherever you decide."
"De Gier?" the commissaris asked. "How is he? He must have been here for a few days now, hasn't he?"
"Yes," Dorin said. Dorin's English was fluent but marked by a heavy American accent; the young man had obviously spent many years in the States. His command of the language couldn't just be due to study. "A few days. There's been a little trouble, but everything is all right again. Your assistant is a very able man. He will be an ideal bodyguard and will give you better protection than I could hope to do."
"Trouble?" the commissaris asked and his hands came up in surprise. "What trouble? Surely our friends haven't caught up with us yet, have they? We haven't even started working."
Dorin's head and chest came forward in an embarrassed bow and he almost spilled some of his iced coffee. He rubbed out his cigarette while he tried to think of the right words.
"Trouble," he said hesitatingly. "Hmm, yes. I know most of the details; perhaps you would like to hear them?"
"Please," the commissaris said. "The more I know the better, although he will tell me himself no doubt. I have worked with him for many years. Still, it would be better if I heard the story from another angle as well."
"De Gier-san," Dorin started and the commissaris nodded. He already knew that "san" is a polite addition to everybody's name in Japan.
"De Gier-san was met by me at the airport here five days ago," Dorin said, "and I took him to a Japanese inn on the outskirts of the city. He is a very quiet man, although his English is fluent and we had no trouble understanding each other. I knew he liked judo, so I met him the next morning and took him to my club. We practiced for a few hours. He is very good, you know."
"I know," the commissaris said, "but he could be better. I have often watched him, in play and in earnest. I always thought that he lacks complete control. He is clever and quick, of course, but he overdoes it sometimes."
"I didn't notice that at the time," Dorin said. "My instructors were impressed. 'He is tricky,' they said, but then they weren't used to him of course."
"Tricky," the commissaris repeated. "So what happened?"
"Nothing happened for a few days. I showed him around Tokyo. We spent two evenings on the Ginza; that's a shopping center by day and a pleasure quarter by night. We had some good meals which he enjoyed and he took me to a Chinese restaurant which he had discovered on his own. The people at the inn like him very much. It's only a small inn and it is owned by my uncle. The cat had kittens, and de Gier-san sat up all night, comforting the animal. She is young and it was her first litter. He also played his flute. My aunt plays the piano and they found some pieces they could play together. He is a very industrious and disciplined man, your assistant.
"I found him maps of Kobe and Kyoto, at his request, and he studied the street names and general layouts. He asked me to examine him afterward, and he knew practically everything the maps could tell him. He even memorized the numbers of the streetcars and buses and where they go to, and my aunt translated the notes for him, tourist information-where the stores are and the museums, that sort of thing. He knew it all. Both Kobe and Kyoto are large cities, they each have about a million people; the information he has stored should be very useful. In Kyoto you will find art. I would suggest that I show you some of the famous temples over there so that you can become acquainted with what you are supposed to be interested in. There are also private collections we can see."
"Yes," the commissaris said. "I bought some books on the subject and I have done my homework, but that's a good idea. And what did the sergeant do?"
"We found some priests who will play our game," Dorin continued, sipping his iced coffee. "The buying of stolen art can be set up fairly easily, I think. The heroin connection may be difficult, however. Perhaps we should take the shortest way and talk to the Chinese Communist Commercial Delegation directly. They will pretend they know nothing, but they will send a man around later. We'll have to go to Kobe, I think."
"The sergeant?"
"He has great powers of concentration," Dorm said, and played with his coffee glass, moving it about in a circle on the plastic tabletop; the glass squeaked. "And he is a good companion. But I found him a little unnerving too."
The commissaris sighed. He remembered a saying from a book on Chinese philosophy: Hurry is a fundamental error. He looked at Dorm's hands. Honey-color, not yellow. He wondered why Westerners consider the Japanese a yellow-skinned race.
"Yes?" he asked pleasantly.
"Your sergeant seems to have some rage in him, bottled up and compressed. A great pressure. It shows in his actions. I know that rage, I think. I have some of it myself. You probably know that I work for the Japanese Secret Service. Some of my colleagues show the rage plainly. It is an aggression, white-hot, like melted steel. They are at war, but it isn't clear who the enemy is. Perhaps you know what I mean. I am told you are a police officer and you specialize in crimes of violence."