Assignment Tokyo

by Edward S. Aarons

“But it is not an arrest,” Yamatoya said quietly. “Merely an opportunity for quiet conversation. We must not delude each other, sir. I know all about you. I know who and what you are, and you surely know my profession as well. The Nikota Bureau 5 is certainly well documented in your own files, I am sure.”

  “What do you want then, Major?”

  “Ah. That is better. I will be frank and blunt. Have you heard from your people in Hatashima?”

  “I don’t know what—”

  “Please. We agree to be frank? It is the only way to make progress. Our aims are identical. You must cooperate. Have you heard from Lamson or Moka?”

  “No,” Durell said.

  “Or Bill Churchill?”

  “No.”

  “Or Yoko Kamuru?”

  “I don’t know her.”

  Yamatoya sighed. He sat down behind his desk with a lithe, elegant manner. He folded his slender hands on the desktop and looked impassively at Durell.

  “The matter is very serious, Durell-san. Or may I call you Cajun? I understand it is a name reserved for your intimates. From the people who live in your province of Louisiana? Cajun, then.”

  “It’s your ball game. You make the rules here.”

  “I am pleased you realize that. Now tell me about Yoko Kamuru.”

  “I’ve never heard of her.”

  “She—ah—is an intimate Mend of your friend, Mr. Churchill. She is also quite well-known as an artist.”

  “So?”

  “She has been at Hatashima for the past week.”

  “And?”

  “She is not there now.”

  “Is that supposed to mean something?”

  “Durell-san, you know what is happening at Hatashima. It is not a time to play at kendo.” Yamatoya’s black slanted eyes touched his fencing swords on the wall. “She was ill. She was dying. Now she is missing. Your friend and employee, Mr. William Churchill, knew her intimately. They were lovers. He was in the district at an inn nearby. Can you understand the importance of the matter, if she is at large in the country somewhere?”

  Durell said nothing.

  Yamatoya spread his hands. “I ask for your cooperation. Millions of lives may be at stake. The Ministry of Health is alerted and working around the clock. The Prime Minister is preparing a paper to be delivered to your government by midnight tonight. The situation is not simply urgent. It is desperate. It is incredible that such an accident should happen. Unconscionable that the United States should inflict on the Japanese people, deliberately or not, such a plague as Pearl Q-27. You see, I am being most frank with you.”

  “Yes,” Durell said. “But I think you’re jumping to conclusions that could alienate our separate governments for a long time. By Executive directive, all bacteriological and virological warfare items have been recalled and are being nullified. No such items were ever present in Japan. You blame the United States for something you cannot prove.”

  “Perhaps I am premature,” Yamatoya said. His voice grew harsh. “But there is immediate danger of terrible pestilence in my country. The atom bomb was a matter of war. It was understandable, if not forgivable. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not forgotten. But this matter of loosing germ warfare, however accidental or gratuitous—”

  “If you persist in this attitude, Major, we can’t work together,” Durell said quietly.

  Yamatoya unclasped his hands. “May we begin again?”

  “Certainly.”

  “You agree that we must cooperate?”

  “Very well.”

  “You still deny knowledge of Miss Yoko Kamuru?”

  “I do.”

  Yamatoya said, “I have bad news for you, you know. I cannot be gentle about it. Your two men, Lawson and Moka, are dead at Hatashima.” He watched Durell, but Durell’s face did not change. “I could show you their effects, but handling such things would not be safe. Nothing has come in or out of Hatashima for three days. Do you understand?”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Except one thing—or person. Yoko Kamuru. She was ill. She was dying. And she recovered and escaped the quarantine barriers.”

  Durell studied the man’s face. “Are you certain she didn’t die too?”

  “She is missing. She might have gone into the ocean in her fevered delirium. A search is being made. But this matter cannot be contained. It will soon become public. Hatashima is a popular resort. Questions are already being asked. Answers must soon be given. It may prove to be a catastrophe. I am not a politician, however. You and I are in the same business. I am sure you wish to help us.”

  “Yes,” said Durell.

  “Then what do you know about Yoko Kamuru?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “I see. Mr. Durell, do you understand the real situation as it exists? I am trying to save the lives of my countrymen. Perhaps the fate of millions depends on the swiftness of action. If the girl has escaped from Hatashima, she could be a carrier, spreading the disease. I do not place blame for this calamity on anyone—yet. That is for the diplomats. But I know I have not slept for two nights, and do not know when I may rest again.” Yamatoya spoke now in a flat, emotionless voice, his slanted black eyes never wavering from Durell. When Durell was silent, he drew a deep breath and said, “Please wait here for a moment,” and got up and went out.

  Durell was aware of the damp chill in the air and the smell of charcoal from the hibachi heater. After a minute he went to the window. The taxi with its yellow license tag was still parked in the alley. He went to the wall with its ceremonial swords and fencing weapons for kendo. He wondered if there was a TV eye in the room. The steel desk was dustless. It didn’t look as if Major Yamatoya spent much time in this room.

  “Durell-san? Come with me, please.”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “No.” Yamatoya smiled. “Your departure from your—ah—shop has created quite a stir at your Embassy. Your Miss Pruett is efficient. But before I return you, I must show you your friend, Bill Churchill. He has been brought down here from the inn at Hatashima. He—ah— attempted to resist our taking him into custody. You must apologize to him for me. You may take him with you.”

  Durell halted. “Is he sick? Hurt?”

  “A little roughed up. He tried to escape. We flew him back here and interrogated him. He will tell us nothing. I doubt if he can tell you anything either. All he will discuss is the missing Miss Kamuru. And he really knows nothing about that either.”

  They crossed a small Japanese garden and entered the next building through a steel doorway. It was a jail. Prisons smelled the same the world over—of sweat and urine and vomit and heartbreak.

  Bill Churchill was in the fourth cell down from a flight of stone steps leading into the basement. The place was brightly lighted, and the glare picked out bruises, lacerations, torn clothing, and a froth of blood at the comer of Churchill’s mouth. Yamatoya stepped aside from the cell door with a low murmur.

  “As you can see, he resisted arrest and struggled with the police of the local prefecture. Even when he was taken to the plane, he tried to break loose and go back to the barbed wire at Hatashima.”

  “The barbed wire?”

  “The quarantine barrier around the village.”

  Durell shook Bill Churchill’s shoulder. The lanky young man opened dazed blue eyes. He blinked at the ceiling light, sat up with a groan, and shook his head. He touched the bloody comer of his mouth and looked at Major Yamatoya, and then slowly focused his eyes on Durell with a sense of comprehension.

  “Sam? Cajun?”

  “Yo,” Durell said.

  “Am I in Tokyo then?”

  “Yes. You’re going home now, to see a doctor.”

  “I don’t need a doctor. Listen, Yoko is—”

  “Later, Bill. You’re being released in my custody. Think you can walk all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Churchill said.

  They had known each other since their days at Yale, where Bill majored in arc
hitecture while Durell, fresh from the bayous, studied law. Bill was a native New Englander, and they had shared dates with local girls and gone on picnics in the Litchfield Hills, listened to the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood in the Berkshires, sprawled on the grass in the hot sun, gotten drunk together, quarreled and laughed together, and then hadn’t seen each other for fifteen years. Churchill was a brilliant architect, a designer of many public buildings as well as apartment houses. A year ago he had been invited to Japan to work with a progressive Japanese firm in Yokohama. A1 Charles at K Section’s Tokyo Central had recruited him for minor jobs.

  “I’m sorry,” Churchill mumbled. “The local cops up there played rough.”

  “You asked for it,” Durell said. “Come along.”

  Churchill swayed to his feet. He was tall, thin, and wiry, with a homely face that one immediately found likable. His bushy brows, pale blue eyes, and shock of unkempt hair made him look more boyish than he really was. Just now his good humor was gone, and he looked stunned, like a man who has gone merrily about his day’s work only to find that an accident had destroyed everything dear to him.

  “Yoko is—” he began again.

  “Later,” Durell repeated.

  “They told me Lamson and Moka are dead.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Dear God,” Churchill whispered.

  Miss Pruett and the driver, Shinjo, were waiting at the front door of the jail. It was still raining. Shinjo’s black Chevy was parked at the curb. Bill Churchill staggered, and Durell helped him into the car.

  Miss Pruett said, “I hope you’re not angry with me for following you here and waiting.”

  “No. Bill needs medical attention.”

  “I can do it. I’m a registered nurse.”

  Durell was surprised. “Good. It may be more helpful than you think.”

  Her face was beaded with rain. She looked almost pretty, he thought, even with her prim exterior. “Is it very bad?” she asked. “I mean, in Hatashima?”

  “Very bad,” he nodded. “And getting worse.”

  6

  CHURCHILL lived in a Western-style apartment house in the former U.S. Occupation district near “T” Avenue. Shinjo remained in the car while Durell and Miss Pruett helped Churchill into bed. The big windows yielded a view of Tokyo by night with all its neon glitter seen waveringly through the rain, from the brilliance of the Ginza, the Tokyo Tower, to the haze of light across the sprawling metropolitan area that was the largest in the world.

  Liz carried a large shoulder-strap bag and from it, with utmost efficiency, she took a packet of medical supplies, including a hypo and a sedative solution of Demerol. She helped undress the groggy Churchill with no embarrassment. Churchill was in a state of collapse, his long legs flopping helplessly, while he muttered incomprehensible, aggrieved rimes to himself.

  “Yoko,” he whispered. “Oh, no. Yoko!”

  “Take it easy,” Durell said quietly.

  “Can’t, Cajun. She can’t be dead, hear? I kept watching from the inn on the hill. It’s true, they’re all dying there beyond the barbed wire, like laboratory rats. The whole damned village. They don’t have a chance, Sam. And Yoko is caught in there with them.”

  “Major Yamatoya thinks she may have escaped.”

  “I don’t know. I was supposed to meet her at the barbed wire. She was well enough yesterday. She wasn’t worried about herself. You don’t know her, Sam. Serene. A beautiful person inside. We’d been talking lately—of my staying in Japan permanently. Getting married. She wasn’t sure it would work, but—I love her, Cajun. She’s somewhere. Help me find her, save her. Get an antidote. Something. Why aren’t we doing anything?”

  Durell eased the lanky man into bed. Churchill’s sandy hair fell over his eyes and he wept silently, his chest heaving. Miss Pruett got the hypodermic ready with steady, professional hands.

  “He needs this,” she said. “Just a night’s sleep. The police injuries are only superficial. It’s what happened inside him that may be troublesome.”

  Churchill’s eyes were closed as he sprawled on the bed. Durell said, “Bill is tougher than you think.”

  Miss Pruett sank the needle in expertly. “None of us is as tough as you, Sam Durell. And before this is over, you may find out some truths about yourself, too.”

  Durell checked the apartment. He had been here once before, when he first arrived in Tokyo two weeks ago, and now he went over everything efficiently and patiently. The narrow living room was a mixture of Western and Japanese furniture: a drawing board with some drafting plans pinned to it, a Philippine mahogany desk, wall photos of buildings that Chin-chill had designed, a bookcase filled with architectural journals, a fine antique copy of The Tale of Genji in Japanese, two woodblock prints by the modem artist, Saito Kiyoshi, three fine menuki ornaments from old sword hilts, two shotguns of Japanese make, and a small cabinet containing carved ivory netsukes.

  On the walls were several scroll paintings by Yoko Kamuru. They were done with a light, delicate touch, infinitely wistful, fragile, and delicate. The colors were pale, but not weak; the brush strokes were fine, but firm.

  There was a color photo portrait of Yoko on the desk. Yoko, in Japanese, meant sunshine, and there was a feeling of light airiness in the girl’s face. Her black hair was cut in traditional bangs over a rounded forehead, and her large almond eyes held a peaceful inner light that was all her own. She was dressed in a traditional kimono, and her small smile showed white, even teeth. Durell wondered what she had been looking at when Bill Churchill took the photo. He picked up the bamboo frame, slid the picture free, and pocketed it.

  Miss Pruett came in and said, “Are you taking that?”

  “Just to get some copies made.”

  “It’s important to BUI.”

  “He’ll get it back.”

  He spent fifteen minutes more taking the apartment to pieces and putting it back again. In the telephone he found a tiny bug that could transmit any conversation to a tape recorder half a mile away. There was another miniaturized transmitter in one of the lamps. He checked the bedroom windows, dresser, and closet. Bill Churchill was asleep. Miss Pruett had freshened the bed, plumped up the pillows, washed his face and put a Band-Aid on the worst of his facial lacerations. In his sleep Churchill moved and groaned, tormented by his nightmares.

  “What is Yoko Kamuru’s home address?” Durell asked Miss Pruett.

  She looked at him with careful brown eyes. “Didn’t you find it in Bill’s desk?”

  “No.”

  “She isn’t there anyway, is she?”

  “I’d like to look around there—get to know her a bit better,” he said quietly. “She could save us a lot of trouble.”

  Miss Pruett looked doubtful about that, but she shook her head and said, “Yoko fives at Nagata-cho, Chiyoda-ku.” She gave him the number and the street. “It’s not far from here. It’s a neighborhood of all Japanese-style houses.”

  Durell took the picture of the smiling girl from his pocket and looked at it again. He left all the listening devices where they were, turned off the lights, and waved Miss Pruett out before he locked the door and quit the place himself.

  7

  THE LIGHT was dim. The room was semicircular, and had once been used as a War Room by the occupying U.S. Army, and where the slates and maps and overlays had been pinned to the curving wall, there were now arching panels of lime green separated by white pilasters, a modest photo of the President, and another of Capitol Hill. Most of the room was in midnight shadow. The only lamp was on a desk in one of the curved niches, and nobody sat at the desk. There was an absence of sound, too, except for Melvin Cummings’ angry breathing.

  “You took your sweet-assed time getting here, Cajun. What kind of an outfit are you running, anyway? I’ve had priority calls in to you all evening. First you were busy, then you were out. Where did you go?”

  “I salvaged my last operator, unless you count Shinjo, the chauffeur.”

&nbs
p; “You’ve lost your staff?”

  “Yes.”

  “To the plague?”

  “Yes.”

  Melvin Cummings, chief spokesman for State on Far Eastern matters—and some matters that did not concern the Far East, State, or U.S. policy except as it happened to come through his polyphonic, pablumizing sieve—did not offer condolences. He was a plump Establishment man, and he knew all the words and soothing syrup and ways in which to make black seem white, to make victims seem like aggressors, and to imply that State’s policy was open- and even-handed while quietly undercutting small American friends for the sake of the “big picture,” which usually included oil. It wasn’t that Durell merely did not like him; he could not conceal his open contempt for the pudgy little man.

  The other man in the room was from another cut of the pie. There wasn’t much to see of him. He seemed to prefer the shadows of the big, green leather chair away from the desk. Cummings’ shadow made blobs on the opposite wall. The man in the green chair made no shadow at all.

  He was Dr. August Freeling, head of CBW—Chemical and Biological Warfare. Not many people knew him well. He stayed away from public sight and sound. A man without a shadow. CBW was perhaps the most secret of all the secret military agencies. Freeling’s name was known to only a dozen of the top personnel. There had been only one public statement from him, in 1968, when a faulty aerosol container at the vast Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah released some nerve gas that blew twen-ty-seven miles downwind and accidentally killed some six thousand sheep.

  In 1969, he appeared again, when more nerve gas leaked from a shell stored on Okinawa and sickened a score of military personnel and civilians.

  Now Dr. Freeling was here in Tokyo.

  Durell spoke quietly into the quiet room. “It must be bad, doctor, truly bad, if you’re here. The bird of ill omen.”

  The man in the green chair smiled. “I am flattered that you know me, Sam Durell. I have heard of you too, as you see. Yes, it is very bad.”

  Freeling wore gold-rimmed pince-nez and had a lean face with a long, bony nose, and the palest, coldest eyes Durell had ever seen. Something about the man made Durell want to shudder. It was not Freeling’s fault. He did a job he was ordered to do, and did it well. Since the White House had banned most of CBW’s output, he had agreeably and quickly started the wheels taming to put the Executive order into effect. He wore a dark suit, a prim white shirt, and a black tie, and gave the impression of being insectlike, a walkingstick, all penciled limbs and body, angular and brittle. His voice, however, was warm and rich and resonant. It would be most convincing at a Senate Investigating Committee hearing. It convinced Durell of nothing.