by John Hunt
“Quickly, Khamil, sink the raft.”
Azid began filling the craft with rocks while his stocky friend produced a serrated dagger and expertly sliced through each pontoon of the ill-fated rubber craft. Azid pushed the rapidly deflating craft back off the shore. The two men took pleasure in watching the rubber boat, the source of much physical discomfort for the previous four hours, sink rapidly into the more than twenty meters of water. It would not be discovered.
“It is good to be on land again,” Khamil noted.
“Yes, indeed it is,” replied Azid. “I was never much for the water.”
“I would not have guessed it, since you were the one who insisted we stay inside that malodorous steel underwater prison for six weeks. I can tell you now, I would be happy to never set foot in such a thing again.”
“Yes, however, it may be of use to us again.”
Khamil was always a bit too open to conversation. Azid had occasionally lost patience with this over the years they had worked together. On the cramped submarine, where stress levels were always high, this had occurred more than once. He remembered having to walk away, rudely, in the midst of a long disquisition from his short friend. But the talk had been interfering with his thinking at a time when thinking was critical. He was sure his friend understood.
“I always like these type of suitcases, with the extendible handles and the cute wheels. They make me feel like a — what’s that American phrase? — oh yes, a ‘yuppie.’ Perhaps I should live in New York for a time. I have a cousin there, you know.” Khamil was holding up the black parachute nylon suitcase that he referred to.
“Yes, indeed,” responded Azid. “Now let us change.”
The two men quickly stripped out of their black jumpsuits, which had gotten damp, and began dressing in mildly wrinkled dark gray suits that they had retrieved from within one of the suitcases.
“We are now everyday businessmen. I think I will like this, for a time. How regular and dull we can be.”
“Yes, indeed.”
The men began walking up the steep sand, which quickly became gravel, and then breccia. The angle was almost forty-five degrees, and occasionally loose rubble would slide down the slope under their feet. Khamil slipped once and caught himself just before crashing into Azid.
“Almost ruined my new suit. How would that look at customs?” Khamil paused, then chuckled. “Ah, but we do not have much need for customs or passport control, do we?”
“No.”
Azid threw a Kevlar blanket over the top of a chain fence, and the men quickly climbed over and onto the airport grounds. They were immediately beneath a wide bridge, designed for the frequent trains that shuttled the crowds back and forth from the airport to Osaka proper, and beyond to Kyoto. It was where they needed to be.
Azid had spent some moments looking for a way up the bridgework when Khamil’s familiar tongue clicking called his attention. Khamil was already several meters up the bridge framework, scaling a ladder. This was going to be easier than expected.
“You still need me, you see. Don’t forget all these little gifts I give you, Akheem.”
“I won’t forget,” responded Azid.
The top of the ladder was about thirty meters above the ground, at which point they had only two meters left to climb to get over onto the top of the causeway. Azid carefully pulled himself over and looked down the tracks.
One hundred meters to his right the tracks came to an end in the outermost portion of the main building of Kansei Airport. The tracks themselves were empty. Azid reached down and helped his friend up and over the rail. The two men, suitcases in hands, began walking calmly toward the terminal.
On the platform of the terminal station several dozen people had gathered. The majority by far were Japanese, although several were foreigners as well. Some were in pairs, chatting happily; a few sat astride their luggage, alone. The area was large and well-lit. No one saw the two men approaching down the dark tracks. Azid and Khamil swung themselves up onto the end of the raised platform and waited.
After a few minutes, several young Japanese girls in yellow shorts with suspenders appeared at the far end of the terminal. They walked methodically, pushing carts filled with cleaning equipment, taking up evenly spaced positions alongside the track. Facing down the track, they waited, completely still, for the arrival of the train. At repeating intervals, hidden loudspeakers proclaimed indecipherable statements in Japanese. Occasionally these statements would be repeated in several different languages. Azid cocked his ear as he heard in English, “The Haruka, with stops at Shin-Osaka and Kyoto, will be arriving shortly. All seats are reserved. The second and fifth cars are smoking cars. The sixth car is for first-class passengers. Please stand behind the yellow line.”
In a few moments a light appeared down the tracks. The light approached in complete silence. Without the light, one would have had no warning that the train was entering the station.
The train slowed and stopped, the cars rapidly emptied of their passengers, and the small girls in yellow boarded to begin policing the train in preparation for the return trip. Azid and Khamil stepped aboard car number six, the first-class car.
Looking around, Khamil saw four Japanese men in suits sitting at the far end of the car. One man and one woman, sitting separately and both with luggage, were sitting in the middle. The man was older, with silver hair, small glasses, and a pronounced chin. He looked like a librarian. The woman was young, petite and pretty — sitting daintily with her back straight and her knees together. Perhaps she was a college student. The two Arabic men sat down immediately behind them on either side of the aisle. Nobody was behind them in the car. Khamil stretched out his legs and smiled contentedly. With a sound like a gentle breeze, the train slipped out of the station.
“Well, for a first-class car, this is not all that wonderful. Enough seat space, I suppose.” Khamil continued, “But then it is worth what we paid for it. I very much enjoy traveling with you, by the way. It is always so much fun.”
The train was out on the dark causeway. Azid clicked his tongue twice, and with perfect coordination, each man reached over the back of the seat ahead. Azid briskly snapped the neck of the man. Khamil likewise wrapped his strong stubby hands around the thin neck of the pretty young woman, and twisted firmly.
Then they each stood and quickly slid into the seats next to their victims. The pretty girl stared emptily toward the ceiling, with her head tilted to the side at a grotesque angle. Her mouth was wide open. Khamil reached into her small purse and pulled out a ticket for the train and all the yen she had. He placed his arm behind her back and lifted her out of her seat. He assisted the limp body back to the rear of the mostly empty car, through the automatic sliding door, and out to the rear entryway. Then, as if tossing trash down a chute, he slung her body with all his strength off the train. She fell, spinning, into the darkness of the sea, far below the causeway. Her luggage soon followed her into the blackness.
Azid then performed the same task with the body of his victim. The four Japanese businessmen at the front of the car were completely unaware of the silent homicides behind them. Two people died so their killers could have train tickets.
Khamil sat down next to his friend Azid. “As I was saying, my friend, it is a pleasure traveling with you.”
“Indeed,” replied Azid.
Only a few minutes later, the conductor came through the car to collect the ill-gotten tickets. He was very polite, and bowed respectfully at the two murderers.
Seventy-five minutes later, after traveling through what seemed like one expansive and continuous city, the Haruka pulled into Kyoto Station. The two men quickly disembarked, their small flight-attendant–style suitcases trailing behind.
“I do not see many signs that I understand. Actually, I see nothing that I understand at all,” said Khamil.
The station was still busy, despite it being past midnight.
“Any ideas at all?”
“No. Find a
taxi. Find a hotel. We need to sleep.”
“I need a massage,” replied Khamil. “I do not suppose you see time for that in our busy schedule.”
“Perhaps there will be. Perhaps. But first we shall rest.”
The two men found their way out of the long building to the line of taxicabs that, as at train stations throughout the world, waited outside. They walked up to the first cab in the line and Khamil reached out for the door handle of the back seat. As if by magic, the door swung open before he had even touched the latch.
With eyebrows raised, Khamil politely waited while his friend got in. The driver, hands attired with white gloves, jumped out to lift the bags and place them carefully into a trunk. Khamil noted that the fuel tank occupied much of the trunk. The fuel, liquefied natural gas, was highly flammable. He would remember this. It might come in handy. He clambered in beside his friend.
Azid said, “Hotel, sumimasen.”
The cabby in the right-side driver’s seat turned and shrugged.
“Hotel. Hotel!” Khamil said, also in English, but more loudly.
The driver looked back at Khamil to ask a question in Japanese and then waited for an answer.
Neither Arab spoke Japanese, but for a few choice words. Azid looked around slowly, hoping to find a nearby hotel that they could walk to.
Khamil then said, without expecting a useful response, “It does not matter what hotel. Maybe a Radisson, or Intercontinental, or a Holiday Inn or something like that.”
To Khamil’s surprise, the driver smiled and repeated, “Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn! Hai!” The taxi’s door automatically swung shut, and they pulled out of the taxi line and tore off down the road.
The Holiday Inn was only about nine kilometers from the station. They passed several hotels on the way, but neither man made any effort to stop the cab at these hotels. It seemed safer to go to the American hotel, where the staff would undoubtedly speak English well.
On arrival at the large hotel complex, the cab driver pointed to the number on his meter and said several words in Japanese, no doubt meaning that 2,500 yen would be the fare for the trip. Khamil reached into his pocket and removed some of the money he had taken out of the pretty girl’s purse on the train. He threw some bills at the driver, who smiled and bowed several times at the unexpectedly generous tip. As Azid searched fruitlessly in the dark for the handle with which to open the door, it sprung open on its own.
Nobody spoke any European language at the hotel either, but the receptionist was patient, and extremely polite, and the two tired men settled into a small but well-appointed room for a long rest. They slept soundly for hours.
When morning came, Azid woke first. He grunted to his friend, who sleepily threw a pillow at him.
“We must get to work, Khamil. We have much to do, and we will not be very efficient since we do not speak the language. So let us move.”
“Indeed not,” replied Khamil, mimicking his friend. He rolled over and pulled the sheets over his head.
Azid shook his head and grinded his teeth. It was time to work. He opened his suitcase and produced a map of the city. Under the map was a fresh set of casual clothes. Under the clothes lay several electronic devices, some multicolored wires, and four canisters of blue liquid. Khamil’s suitcase only contained one similar canister; the liquid within it was yellow. Azid smiled faintly as he considered how a security guard at an airport would respond to the image that would appear if these suitcases had gone through the x-ray machine.
Spreading the map on his bed, he quickly located Doshisha University, which had been circled in black pen. They would get to know Doshisha today.
Khamil finally rose, and after showering the two men went to one of the hotel’s several restaurants for breakfast. Afterwards they climbed into a waiting taxi at the hotel’s subterranean front entry — Azid indicated their intended destination on the map, eight blocks south of Doshisha. The cab driver understood without difficulty, and they were off.
They drove alongside a slowly flowing, almost dry, river. Huge cement blocks molded into unusual shapes completely lined the river, giving the appearance of interlocking puzzle pieces. Children waded in the shallow water and fished with their grandfathers. Rods ten meters long and perfectly straight angled off the hips of the old men. The smaller children swept the waters with delicate nets. Intermittently, one child would reach down and splash water at another.
Between the road and the river lay a dirt path, upon which an occasional jogger could be seen sweating while coursing through the hot and humid air. Khamil shook his head.
“All this jogging is so typical of Western society. Why do the Japanese pursue such silliness?”
In an abnormally verbose response, Azid informed him that this city likely had always had its share of runners. “Kyoto was the capital of Japan for most of the millennium. Many of the biggest monastic temples are here. I read that several of the Buddhist monasteries required their initiates to run constantly — several dozen kilometers every day. And for one day every three months, the budding monks would have to run over one hundred kilometers.”
Khamil shook his head again. “Makes one appreciate Allah.”
“Indeed.”
Soon they were at their destination and out of the cab and the two men walked north toward the Doshisha University grounds. It took them less than twenty minutes.
Surrounded by brick walls and tall green trees, everybody considered this a very attractive area to live. With a particularly western appearance, it looked much like America’s Ivy League schools. Students scattered in small groups on the grass. They chatted, and read, and played quiet musical instruments. It was academic serenity.
Azid and Khamil walked confidently through the campus. Despite their distinctive skin tone, they were not especially conspicuous, for more than one hundred foreign students matriculate at Doshisha University each year and professors always visited from abroad. They walked to a large brick building with four white columns rising from the platform at the top of a broad flight of marble stairs.
The flight of stairs led to a wide but dim entryway. On the walls hung a dozen bulletin boards, cluttered with various colored paper announcements in Japanese and English. Advertisements for international conferences, local meetings, and impending tests, and notices of recently posted exam scores, adorned the boards. All the postings concerned physics.
Azid examined a directory board with names of various professors and locations of labs, all written in English letters. He located the laboratory of a Dr. Hiroshi Nakagama, and noted the room number adjacent. He made a reasoned guess about which way to head and walked down a hallway with Khamil in tow. They strode down two flights of stairs and through several twisting and poorly lit hallways until they found the lab they wanted in a remote back corner of the building.
Neither man entered the room; they peered in turn through the narrow window in the door. The well-lit facility with several separate high benches in parallel was arrayed with sinks, Bunsen burners, and multicolored gas outlets. Scattered throughout the room were perhaps a hundred electronic devices. It was cluttered. A half-dozen lab personnel moved about.
In the back left corner, they could just barely see a large kiln: heavy, modern, and designed for baking semiconductor materials. The kiln was wired with high voltage arc welders. In the kiln, physicists and electrochemists created the newest challenge to Middle East oil producers — a new class of photoelectric semiconductors. Based on a molecule made of sixty carbon atoms called Buckminster Fullerene, they created submicroscopic tubes to convert light into electricity and conduct the electricity with remarkable efficiency. The new invention could jolt the solar power industry back to life. No one had not released the details of the invention to the scientific community yet because the university had almost paranoid concerns about patent rights. Thus Azid could stop the project before it was completed. They would blow it up, along with the inventors.
They stepped back from the door and wa
lked out through a new route. Khamil smiled as he stepped out into the bright sunlight. He hated drab and dreary places.
“I must say the world will be better off without that awful place. It feels like a coffin in there. And the people working in the lab look like ghosts. They must never get out in the sun.”
Azid responded, “Yes, it’s amusing that they are working to harness solar power and yet they seem to avoid sunlight. Rather sick breed of people, I think.”
“We will put them out of their misery soon enough.” Khamil smiled.
Born to a poor family in central Baghdad, Khamil grew up concerned only with how to get his next meal. School intruded only occasionally into his daily life, for his parents saw little purpose in it. The family was not poor because it was hard to find a job in the stagnant economy, but instead because both his parents drank heavily. They spent almost all of their meager earnings on black-market alcohol. They also had their own still, which they fed more grain and vegetables than they fed the children. Khamil and his siblings always knew their place in the pecking order.
Their alcoholism led them to violence. Khamil was the last child born into the family, and the routines were deeply ingrained by the time of his first memories. They beat him and his siblings constantly and without provocation. Neither parent protected the children from the other; rather the parents would often come together to beat the children. The two parents shared an interest only in alcohol and a sadistic desire to control.
Khamil never knew love. He heard it mentioned on TV and he read about it when, later in life, he learned to read. But he did not understand what it meant. Once, but only once, he tried to imagine what love was and what it might feel like, but his efforts had come to nothing.
Khamil also did not understand the concept of empathy. He felt nothing for other people. His sensations were external only. He enjoyed the feeling of sex, just as he enjoyed a good massage. But he felt nothing for the women whom he slept with and he made no effort to give them pleasure. He disliked pain, but his brain acknowledged only the most extreme pain, for he had been numbed by years of bruises and fractures.