Assignment Tokyo

by Edward S. Aarons

  Beyond the wall and in the street lane he heard a car go by. It didn’t stop. He stepped inside.

  It had been Yoko Kamuru’s working studio. Here she had gone modem and practical, using glass in the ceiling for additional light, with a long worktable scattered with tubes of paint, parchment rolls, and silk for her kakemono. She used a shippo vase to hold her brushes. The place was crowded with equipment; it was a place for work and not for dreams, practical except for a sentimental, wooden kokeshi doll hanging by a string from an empty easel, and a grotesque, brilliantly decorated Noh mask mounted on the opposite wall. Even here, the essence of the girl was evident.

  He liked her. He could see how Bill Churchill had fallen in love with her.

  There was no one else in the studio.

  On a long table, where a high stool was located, were several of the scroll paintings Yoko Kamuru specialized in. They were in various stages of completion, some just preliminary sketches, others colored and almost finished.

  There were three major locales in which the artist seemed to specialize. There were the fishing scenes and islands of the Hatashima area in Tohoku; glimpses and vistas of the Japanese Alps; and some recognizable scenes of varied areas of the Five Lakes district of Fuji-Hakone.

  One lake in particular, which seemed to be Yoko’s favorite, was Kawaguchi. Another that he felt was familiar was Lake Saiko. They were depicted through the artist’s eyes, of course, but Durell had visited the area southwest of Tokvo several times, and apparently Kamuru-san had shared his preferences.

  He had learned what he had come here to find.

  Durell snapped off his pencil flash and listened to the rain on the roof tiles. A cold, damp breeze blew in through the open door of the studio. The ornate gutter spouts gurgled and rattled. The wind made the little trees in the garden rustle and hiss softly.

  He stepped out onto the wet walkway again.

  He was ready, but the attack came with such blinding speed, such animal ferocity, that it sent him reeling and staggering off the hexagonal stepping-stones onto the grass of the garden.

  Something exploded against the side of his head. He heard a grunt of exertion, a hissing inhalation of breath. He went down on one knee on the wet grass and came up against a big, shadowy shape that loomed over him.

  He smelled stale saki, soy sauce, and fish on the man’s breath. A pale trench coat flapped in the wind. Durell rammed his shoulder against a solid belly that felt more like oak than a man’s flesh. Another grunt, and something slashed at his head, hammering pain down his spine. Somehow, he clung to his gun; but he did not want to use it. His opponent towered high against one of the square posts that supported the walkway roof. Durell came up a second time, felt a trickle of blood against his temple, ducked the next blow, and slammed his gun against the round, dimly seen face of the big man. He connected obliquely; there was a mumble of surprise, and again a stale waft of fish, soy, and saki in his face. The man staggered slightly—as much as an oak in a summer breeze.

  “Durell-san?”

  It was an Oriental accent. But not Japanese. Durell reversed his gun and snapped, “Hold it. Just like that. Don’t move.”

  The man laughed, and suddenly turned and trotted away across the little garden, disdaining the gun. His gait was deceptive. He was moving fast. Blood ran down into Durell’s eyes as he plunged after the giant. But the other was as agile as a cat, as lithe as a tiger. His big arms went up to the top of the wall, and he swung his body over it with one smooth, efficient movement.

  Durell caught the big man’s ankle and yanked him backward. The man clung to the top of the wall and kicked. There was a ripping sound, the man’s trouser tore, and paper fluttered from the trench coat pocket. The next moment, the man was free, falling over the wall onto the other side.

  Durell picked up the paper that had fallen from the man’s pocket. It was a sketch taken from the studio across the garden. There was an airiness to the lines, even seen in the dim light from the street lamps over the wall, as if the scene had been sketched in a faint sea mist. There was the sea, indicated by a few clever lines, an old torii gate, a jewel-tiny island dotting the horizon. A temple stood atop the island hill, reached by a twisting path up from the shore—

  He had paused for only a few seconds. But then he heard a swift rush of sound behind him near the garden wall. Too late, he realized there had been two intruders, not one. He saw a round face, dimly twisted in the rain, and then there came an explosive blow against the side of his head. He fell, not knowing how long he would fall or what lay waiting in the darkness at the bottom of the pit below.

  10

  "CHINESE," Durell said.

  “What?”

  “They were Chinese. Who put them on it?”

  “I don’t know, I’m sure. Hold still, please.”

  “Ouch.”

  “It’s a bad night for bruises,” Miss Pruett said. She was very adept, even in Shinjo’s car, touching the cut on Durell’s temple. “There. That stops the bleeding.”

  “How is Bill?”

  “Sound asleep. I gave him a fifty milligram Demerol.”

  “He might still wake up. Mind over matter. Yoko is in his subconscious, enough to urge him to his feet again.”

  “I left him a note just in case,” Miss Pruett said. She took off her glasses. Her eyes were large and intelligent and calm. “Are you sure they were Chinese, those men?” “Two of them, both very curious about Kamuru-san’s little house and paintings. What did Al Charles have on the Chicom setup here in Tokyo?”

  “Very little. They were not very active. Mainly, they propagandized university students—the radical Zengakuren youngsters. Agitprop cells did the work, from Peking’s Black House.” She looked at Durell with wide brown eyes that reflected the passing lights of the Ginza area’s streets. Shinjo drove too fast, as always, through the dull rain. “I understand you’ve actually been there— penetrated the Black House, I mean.”

  “That was a time ago,” Durell said. “I wouldn’t want to try it again.” He touched the cut on his temple. Liz Pruett’s profile was very fine, very clean. “If the Chinese are in this, then so are the Russians. Either we’ve been peeped, or the Embassy or Major Yamatoya’s secret police files are not as secret as they should be.”

  “What could they want with the paintings at Yoko Kamuru’s house?” she asked.

  “The same thing I wanted. To learn where she might be.”

  “Were you successful?”

  “I hope so. I’d better be.” Durell leaned forward. “Shinjo, stop here. I’ll only be a few minutes.”

  He had rented a small Japanese house by the month, not knowing how long he would be posted at K Section’s Central in Tokyo. It was nothing as attractive as Yoko’s house, but it offered privacy at the end of a little lane too narrow for Shinjo to get the car into. Since he didn’t know at the moment how long he might be gone from Tokyo, he needed certain personal supplies before he and Liz went to the airport.

  It was past three in the morning, and the nearby houses were wrapped in dark slumber. He used the key in his dark, red door, started inside, then paused and sniffed, took several more steps in, reached for the light switch, and paused again. One surprise tonight was enough; it could have been too much. He stood very still. To his right was the kitchen, a modern contrast to the traditional rooms in the rest of the house. There was a tiny garden, and dim light filtered through the sliding panels and touched the polished furniture, the matting, and some porcelains, and made liquid gleamings on the plank floor. The screens to the bedroom were open. He sniffed again, took his gun from his waistband, and thumbed off the safety.

  It made the faintest of clicks above the drip and rattle of the rain.

  “Boom boom,” someone said in a deep voice. “You are dead, Comrade Cajun.”

  “Not quite.” Durell did not move. “Come out of there, Colonel Skoll.”

  “Comrade Amerikanski, you could not have known—”

  “I’m not
your comrade, Cesar.”

  “I was very careful coming in. How—”

  “I smelled your cigar. And your vodka.” Durell sounded dangerous.

  “I did not smoke or drink in here.”

  “On your breath. On your clothes. Don’t move, Cesar.”

  There came a heavy, burly laugh, a round of ripe Russian curses. “You are very good. Very good indeed. I always knew it. I always said so.”

  Durell said, “I thought I left you to walk home across the Sahara the last time we met, in Morocco.”

  “Da, that was some time ago, my friend. As you see, I managed to—how do you say it?—hitchhike home. It was a very bad time, and I did not love you then either, my friend. The heat of the desert was nothing compared to the heat from KGB headquarters in Moscow.”

  “No more than you deserved,” Durell said, and he snapped on the bedroom light.

  Colonel Cesar Ivanovich Skoll of the M Division of the KGB sprawled like a huge and dangerous bear on the bedding mat on the floor. Durell’s giggling, round-faced maid had prepared the room for sleeping before she had left this morning, rolling out the thick, comfortable floor mattress and hard headrest, and arranging the hibachi heater and tea things on a low table near the wall. Skoll had made himself at home on the bed and with the tea. He held a corked, full bottle of Japanese-type vodka in his vast peasant’s fist and, grinning without malice, pointed the bottle like a gun at Durell. He showed two steel teeth when he laughed. His snubby saddle nose glistened faintly red. Skoll looked big and slow and stupid, but he was none of these things. He was one of the most competent agents sent out by the KBG Moscow headquarters at No. 2 Dzherzhinsky Square. He showed a wide gap between his front teeth when he smiled again and scrubbed knuckles across his gray brush of cropped hair, cut so short he looked almost bald.

  “Cajun, it is a pleasure to meet with you again.”

  Then he grunted and sat up on the bedroll, planted the vodka bottle on the floor with a thump, and looked at Durell’s unwavering gun.

  “We are friends, are we not?”

  “No, we are not,” said Durell. “The last time you asked for friendship with me and a certain Major Chu Li of the Black House, Mr. Chu died of a bullet in the back of the head, and you just missed eliminating me, too.”

  Skoll laughed. “A necessity of that particular operation—and in any case, who can trust the Chinese?”

  “Cesar, you aren’t here for a social visit.” Durell still looked dangerous. “Between us, we’re professionals, and we understand each other. Frankly, I hoped never to see you again.”

  “You and I move in a dark, evil world, American. Sometimes it seems too small, eh, for you and me? But, my Mend, you and I must work together again.”

  “We never worked together before.”

  Skoll spoke earnestly. “But this time . . ."

  Durell put away his gun. Skoll looked neither relieved nor disappointed. He had eyes the color of cold steel. That big, fleshy body was as hard as oak, and he could be faster than a whippet, more dangerous than the bear he resembled. His intellect was as cold and sharp as the Arctic winds that blew across the Siberian taiga. He wore a double-breasted gray suit and brown shoes; the coat looked strained over his huge chest. He uncorked the vodka bottle with his square teeth, spat the cork aside, and poured two teacups full. His hand, like an oak slab, did not waver.

  “To your health, Cajun,” he said softly. “I wish to see you always in the very best of health.”

  “You’re concerned about my health, Skoll?”

  “I know you are competent with fist, bullet, knife, or grenade. I know you speak a dozen languages, act the diplomat or the pirate, and have an astonishing mnemonic training. You can climb mountains, cross deserts, make your way through jungles. But—,” Skoll paused, his coarse eyes admonishing. “But are you immune to little germs?”

  Durell’s face did not change. “No more than anyone else, I suppose.” He turned his back on the Russian and opened his suitcase in the closet as if Skoll were not there. Skoll remained seated, tailor-fashion, on the Japanese sleeping mat. He drained his cup and picked up Durell’s cup of vodka and said urgently, “Come, have a drink. What we are about to face is beyond even your capacities. We are both merely human.”

  “I’m busy.” From his suitcase Durell took an extra box of cartridges for his .38, a long switchblade, two Thermit bombs, a smoke grenade, a packet of plastic explosive, a dark sweater, and black sneakers. Skoll said quietly, “All those weapons will be of no value against Pearl Q, my dear friend.”

  Durell drew a deep breath. “What do you know about it?”

  “No more than you, Cajun.”

  “You have some pretty good wires.”

  “I work hard, as you do. It is plodding work, often boring, but always meticulous. I am not a ridiculous superman, like your fictional James Bond. When I am hit, I ache with pain, eh? As you do. After our—ah— trouble in Morocco when you left me humiliated and empty-handed, I almost crossed over, you know. I saw no future for me in Moscow, except in Lubyanka Prison and a gift from the State Prosecutor of ten years in a work camp and five ‘on the horns’—without citizen’s rights— at the very best. At the worst, I could expect a bullet in the head for treason to the State—a euphemism for failure. Yes, you left me in a very difficult position, Cajun. I admired you for it.”

  “How did you get out of it?”

  Skoll shrugged. “I survived. In Stalin’s period, curse his memory, I’d have been executed. Things are easier today. I convinced the blockheads that my ‘failure’ was merely a clever maneuver to equalize matters between our two countries. I hope you don’t mind, but I took credit for some of your operational success. A matter of dialectics. As for my interest in Hatashima—Skoll waved a hand like a wooden shovel. “Yes, I know all about the plague there. My concern is only for information. Moscow wants a full report. Propaganda wants to know more about the heartless, inhuman, capitalistic, imperialistic, war-mongering CBW Department’s mistake.” Skoll laughed, a deep belly-rumble. “Or was it a mistake? Merely an experiment that got out of hand?”

  “The germ is not ours,” Durell said.

  Skoll belched. “Ah.”

  “We think it might be yours.”

  “No, no,” Skoll snorted.

  “Or Chinese.”

  “What?”

  “The Black House is interested. Peacock Branch. Don’t shiver, Cesar. Maybe they’re planning to use it on your Mongolian frontier, where you and your fellow Reds are having a pretty bloody family fight. Anyway, Black House is in it.”

  Skoll gave a vast, unintelligible Russian oath and gulped the second cup of vodka. Durell thought of Liz Pruett waiting in the car at the end of the alley. It was almost four in the morning now. The city was quiet. The rain was ending. Then Skoll’s face wrinkled like a leathery ball.

  “Comrade Cajun, please let us not deceive each other. This affair is too serious for that. I have been instructed to get information about the Hatashima affair. So I come to you, in honesty, in a spirit of cooperation. To my pleasant surprise, I find you are K Section Central here in Tokyo. A promotion? No, no, I tell myself. My friend Durell detests desk work. He is like me—he wants to move in the field. Then why is he here? Because your government feels guilt and is desperate to cover up its terrible crime of loosing germ warfare on the innocent Japanese people.”

  “Russia has a form of Pearl Q too.”

  Skoll replied flatly, “I could not say.”

  “Obviously, you have your CBW labs too.” “That is not my responsibility,” Skoll snapped.

  “It’s yours and mine,” Durell said. “None of us are innocent when our governments do this.”

  Skoll stood up. He looked massive amid the delicate Japanese furniture in Durell’s room. He waved the vodka bottle and squinted his small gray eyes. “How can I know what Moscow knows? It is not my department. You claim your society is open and mine is closed. But how much do you know of what the Pentagon is
doing? If I am guilty of a crime against humanity, as a willing citizen of the USSR, then so are you, as a citizen of the USA. Perhaps you are even less innocent than I, with your alleged freedom to change governments.”

  “The guilt for the Hatashima deaths rests with all of us,” Durell said. “We’ve made the world what it is.”

  “But I am a pragmatist,” Skoll returned. “I obey orders; I do my job.” Skoll’s big chest inflated as he sighed, and then he rumbled, “Since I’ve narrowly escaped Lubyanka, as I said, you can appreciate how dangerous, politically, it is for me to visit you like this. But I’ve taken the risk.”

  “You were not invited,” Durell said bluntly.

  “But I am a man, nyet? A product of a different social order, true, but between us, as individuals, is there so much difference? So I come to you for help.”

  “Officially? Or secretly?”

  “It is most personal.”

  “Is your government missing some germ cultures from your DLK warehouse and laboratories in Vladivostok?” “Ah.” Skoll belched. “You are well informed.”

  “It’s our business to be informed.”

  The Russian went to the door, then turned. “You are trying to find that girl, the Kamuru woman?”

  “Suppose I am?”

  “I must try to find her too. I give you fair warning, you see. Perhaps, if we pool our information—”

  “Then you can square your personal account with me?”

  Skoll waved his slab of a hand. “No, no. That is now forgotten. But if we can prove this germ is not an American culture, or mine—perhaps blame it on the Chinese— well, we must both look innocent, eh?”