Assignment Tokyo

by Edward S. Aarons

  Bill, she thought, I need you.

  She stood alone on the platform after the train left, a small girl with a face like a peach blossom, her large, dark eyes reflecting her fear. She had been hiding at the inn when the Russians came, and later the Chinese. When the old woman told her the police were looking for her, she had thought of Bill, of his occasionally mysterious work aside from his architectural design job, and she had felt more fear for him than for herself. The worst was not remembering what had happened. Had Bill asked for her help? It seemed to her that at some time during the Severed hours, he had come down from the mountain spa overlooking Hatashima and had spoken urgently to her. They had made love on the beach, she thought. He had asked for her help—and her silence. Yoko shook her head impatiently. No, that was all a dream. A part of the fever. Yet it seemed so real, she acted as if it had actually happened. The men who were chasing her were real enough. Her fear came back in a renewed wave that washed her strength away, and she leaned against a post on the station platform until she recovered.

  “Taxi?”

  The sea was cool and soothing. Her flesh was burning. Her mind was in flames. How soft the surf, how grateful she was for the silk of the sea! Life or death, it did not matter.

  “Taxi?” the voice said again.

  She jumped, startled, and saw the cab and the young driver. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, please.”

  “The spa? The Kokusai Ohnaya?”

  “Of course. You are not busy?”

  “Everything has gone dead here,” the driver grumbled. “It’s that sickness in the village. Everybody checked out. But there’s nothing in the newspapers about it yet. I tried to find out through a cousin who is a fisherman in Hatashima, but they said he was ill and couldn’t come to the phone. I demanded my rights, but the police told me to shut up and go about my business.”

  “Please,” Yoko said. “I wish to go to the inn.”

  “You’re not afraid of getting sick?”

  “No, no. Please hurry.”

  Hatashima spa was a series of inns nestled in the wooded mountainside that rose from the beach at Hatashima. The road from the rail station twisted and turned through bright autumnal woods. It was almost noon, and Yoko was aware of an extraordinary hunger, but she tried not to think about it.

  I must get to Bill, she decided, and find out what happened. I’m sure the men who are after me want something to do with Bill. I wish he’d never gotten involved with that man Durell, the one he always talks about.

  She wasn’t sure if she had been ill a day or for several days; but Bill would be waiting for her, she was sure, at the Kokusai Ohnaya in the same room they had used before, with a view of the shining sea and the islands that always seemed to make her heart stop. Yes, he would be there. He would be able to explain everything. He would wipe away this soul-twisting terror she felt with a single, blessed kiss.

  There was a curious emptiness at the inn that she had never seen before. At this season it was usually impossible to get a room; the baths, of varying temperatures and mineral contents, were always crowded. Since the vast Expo at Osaka drew millions to the area south of here, the spa had flourished as a haven from the tourist crowds. But now there was an air of desolation to the delicate buildings, the bathhouses, and the graveled walks that led through the bright woods and hillsides, where small streams made white runnels of water tumbling down the mountain to the sea.

  “Here you axe,” the cab driver said. “Good luck.”

  “Thank you.”

  She paid him and went around the gateway to the side of the main lodge. Despite the warm sun she was chilled by apprehension. Two sweeping-women in white head-cloths were cleaning the path near the tennis courts. The low, curved roofs made soft arcs against the sky and the trees. She heard voices from one of the bathhouses, and was grateful that at least some of the guests had not been frightened away. Then she went up the flight of outer stairs, railed and planked with California redwood, and followed the walkway to the familiar door to the room she and Bill had shared in the past.

  She rang the bell, her heart racing, and when there was no answer, she tried the knob and found the door was not locked. Yoko pushed it open carefully, looked down at the women sweeping the paths, and stepped inside.

  There seemed to be a faint scent in the air from the tobacco Bill used in his pipe. She was always sensitive to his traces. The screens had been closed, and the tiny suite, with a small Japanese-style living room and a bedroom beyond, was dim with shadow. She felt overwhelmed with relief that Bill had kept their appointment and was here to meet her.

  “Bill?” she called softly.

  There was no answer. She went quickly into the bedroom. He was not there. None of his clothing was hung behind the sliding screen of the closet. She checked herself, aware of a quick pounding ache in her temples. Now and then a wave of weakness, a residue from her brief and violent fever, swept over her. She leaned against the wall, helpless. Why wasn’t Bill here? She felt dismay, then a slow increase in her terror. She felt abandoned, filled with questions she could not answer.

  “Oh, Bill . . .”

  Her blank gaze fell on the telephone on a small table near the door. Had Bill given up and returned to Tokyo? She had to find him quickly. She pushed herself from the wall and picked up the phone. There was a long delay before the operator answered, and she asked for long distance and then gave Bill Churchill’s number in Tokyo. His apartment first, she thought.

  A prim, efficient woman’s voice answered.

  “Churchill-san’s answering service. May we help you?”

  “I—I want to speak to William Churchill.”

  “I am sorry. He does not answer. We are authorized to take any messages.”

  “Where is he?” Yoko demanded. “I must speak with him personally.”

  “I am sorry. We do not have that information.”

  “When is he expected back?”

  “I am sorry. We do not know—”

  Yoko hung up in exasperation, bit her lip, and tried to remember the number he had given her—that export-import business he was involved in with that man Durell. For a panic-stricken moment she could not recall the digits. Then they came back to her. She called the operator again.

  “Great Nippon Import Company. Shinjo speaking.”

  “May I speak to William Churchill, please?”

  “Who?”

  “William Churchill.”

  “Not here, miss.”

  “Then let me speak to Durell-san.”

  “He’s not here either, miss.”

  “Can you tell me where to reach him?”

  “Sorry.”

  “But—please—it’s important.”

  “Sorry.”

  The phone clicked and went dead.

  In Tokyo Shinjo put down the telephone, started to walk away, then paused. He was alone in Liz Pruett’s office. Something tickled his memory, bothering him for a moment. Something about a girl Durell-san wanted to find. All that business of last night didn’t concern him, however. He worked for these strange Westerners simply as a chauffeur, nothing more. It was a funny business, all right, and Major Yamatoya of the National Police was paying him regularly, every week, to report everything he could learn about this office. Not that he knew very much. They treated him as a chauffeur, and nothing more. Even when Al Charles-san was here, before he went to the Philippines and got malaria, and Durell-san took over, he was only a driver. His job was to keep the car polished and ready to go at all times. He was good at it. It wasn’t a bad deal. Paid by the police, paid by the Americans. He had no qualms of conscience about it. And yet—

  Shinjo paused again. He tried to remember what Pruett and Durell-san had said about looking for a girl last night, when he drove them about Tokyo’s streets. Very little came back to him. It probably wasn’t important. Anyway, he had a date to meet two friends at the local pachinko parlor, and then go to a sushima restaurant, and then an amusement park for the afternoon. It was
a nice day. He had no orders from Durell-san about hanging around here.

  The phone did not ling again.

  Shinjo went out.

  Yoko drew a deep breath and forced herself to remain calm. From the window of Bill’s suite at the inn, she saw one of the cleaning women climb the redwood stairs and appear at the back door. The woman was startled at seeing her, and Yoko went to her.

  “I am looking for the tenant, a Westerner, an American named Churchill-san.”

  The cleaning woman’s eyes were blank. “Oh, yes?”

  “Do you remember him?”

  “He was here yesterday. You are his woman?”

  Yoko flushed. “I’ve been here with him before.”

  The cleaning woman spoke with glum satisfaction. “I heard he was arrested yesterday.”

  “Arrested?”

  “He went down to Hatashima. It is not permitted. They are all sick down there, in quarantine. He broke the rules, and they arrested him and took him back to Tokyo.” The woman shrugged. “At least, that is what I heard.”

  “Are you sure they took him to Tokyo?”

  “I’m not the police commissioner. I only work here.” She looked at Yoko with shrewd eyes. “Are you all right? You’re not sick, are you? They say the sickness spreads easily. Most of the guests became frightened and pulled out. The management is very upset. They’re losing money every moment, because business is so bad lately.”

  “I—I’m fine,” said Yoko.

  “You look sick.”

  “I’m perfectly all right,” Yoko said defensively.

  The woman pulled her cloth over her mouth, her eyes wary. “There’s a charge for using the telephone, you know.”

  “Yes, I’ll pay for it at the office.”

  “See that you do,” the woman snapped.

  Somehow, Yoko felt better now. There was still one possibility, one number to try. After a short delay her call went through to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo.

  “I want to talk to Mr. William Churchill,” she said in English to the woman clerk who responded.

  There was a long pause. A man answered this time. “We have no Mr. Churchill on our staff, miss. May I ask who is calling, please?”

  She was afraid to give her name. “Then may I speak to Mr. Sam Durell.”

  “One moment.”

  There was another long wait. This time a different voice replied, a man’s. “I am sorry, there is no such person in our employ here at the Embassy, miss. But perhaps we can help you, if you’re looking for an American national—”

  “I know he works for you,” Yoko insisted.

  “If it’s important, I think we may be able to help—”

  “It is important.”

  “May we have your name, please?”

  “Yes, if you insist. I’m—”

  A hand came over Yoko’s shoulder and clamped over her mouth. Another hand caught her around the waist and pulled her away from the telephone. The instrument was taken gently from her and replaced. She struggled to get free, twisting and squirming her small body in the other’s grip. Sudden terror squeezed the breath from her lungs. She heard a man grunt, then laugh softly.

  “Be quiet, Yoko.”

  It was an accented voice speaking Japanese, but she could not place the accent. Her terror suddenly gave her strength again. She let her weight drop, slipped out of the man’s grip, and then twisted for the door. Another man stood there. She had not known there were two of them.

  They were Chinese.

  They smiled at her.

  They seemed very pleased.

  “Miss Kamuru, we do not wish to hurt you.”

  She backed away against the wall. “Who are you? What do you want with me?”

  “Very little. A few hours of your time. Nothing else. We are peaceful men—”

  They did not look peaceful. The one who had stifled her voice and taken the telephone from her was big and stout, with a shaven head and thick, cruel lips. He looked stupid, but she had felt his strength, and she thought of him as an animal, dumb and obedient, to the second man who stood by the door. Her artist’s eye made instant, mental pictures of both Chinese that would never be erased from her mind.

  The second man was terrifying, somehow.

  He, too, was stout, but it was the girth of an oak trunk, the solidity of a sumo wrestler, and under his left eye was a peculiar, inverted triangular scar. It was his eyes that frightened her even more than anything else. She did not know he was Po Ping Tao, head of the Peacock Branch of the Black House intelligence service for Peking. But her instinct told her that behind this man’s smile there was an infinite, dark cruelty she had never imagined in human form, a perversion of intelligence that could support all the myths and fables of a Dark One walking the face of the earth.

  She felt paralyzed, like a bird before a snake, as he stared at her.

  “We will do you no harm, Miss Kamuru,” he said. “Just come quietly with us.”

  “Where?” she whispered.

  “You will be safe. Come, my dear.”

  The second man held a short length of white, silk braided rope in his hands, twisting it over and under and around on his wrists. From outside came the chirping voices of the cleaning women, the sudden twitter of a bird, the smell of sea mist moving up the moutainside from the blighted village on the shore.

  Yoko turned and lunged for the window and drove herself through it, over the balcony and down to the stone path below.

  14

  "IT WAS Yoko! What are you trying to do? That stupid Shinjo didn’t realize who she was, and your man at the Embassy, that officious dolt, refused to help her.” Bill Churchill drew a deep breath. “Here we are, turning everything upside down trying to find her, and when she phones, nobody has the brains to talk to the poor girl!”

  “Take it easy, Bill.”

  “I can’t take it easy. I quit. I’m going to find her myself. Bad enough, Durell had his secretary dope me to the eyes and knock me cold for the night. Bad enough, you people are so damned unconcerned about it. But Yoko is no guinea pig for your laboratory experiments, doctor. She’s in danger, I know it, and I’m finished with all of you.”

  “Bill—”

  “To hell with you.”

  “Have a cup of coffee.”

  “I’m leaving.”

  “If you walk out of here, I’ll have Major Yamatoya pick you up in five minutes.”

  Bill Churchill paused in midstride to the door. His lean, angular face was shocked. “You’d do that?”

  “Certainly,” Dr. Freeling said. “I’ll have you held incommunicado until this is all over.”

  “And when will that be?” Bill asked bitterly. “When all of Honshu is one vast grave of the dead and dying?”

  “Sit down, Bill. Drink your coffee.”

  “I quit.”

  “You don’t quit this business, you know that. Now relax. We need your help. Admittedly, we missed the boat when Yoko called. I’ll concede it is likely to have been her. We’ve traced her already to Hatashima—the spa on the mountain, rather. Our men are on their way right now. Give them some time. She’ll be found now.”

  “She telephoned two hours ago,” Bill pointed out.

  “At least we know she’s alive and reasonably healthy. She recovered from the disease, she’s the only one so far to do so, and she’s the only person who may prove a source of the antitoxin we need to stop the plague. But she doesn’t know all that. She’s been frightened by something and she’s running. It’s up to us to find her quickly. Not just to save lives. To prove the bug isn’t ours.” “That’s all that really concerns you, isn’t it?” Bill asked tightly. “To prove the U.S.A. isn’t guilty of this awful crime against innocent people.”

  “Well, that’s quite important, isn’t it?”

  “Yoko means nothing to you as a human being.”

  Dr. Freeling almost smiled. “Not quite as much to me as to you. You’re in love with her. But emotion is a dangerous element in your business
.”

  Bill sat down. He drank the coffee Freeling poured for him. He was aware of Melvin Cummings, the man from State, hovering nervously in the background. Bill had no use for Cummings, who represented the eternally conservative—and often obtuse—middle echelons of the Department’s bureaucracy.

  The big semicircular briefing room in Tokyo was mostly in shadow. A single lamp shone over the desk where Dr. Freeling sat in one of the curved niches paneled in green between the white pilasters. The air conditioning hummed. Dr. Freeling, head of CBW, leaned back in his leather chair and adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses. His long, bony face seemed to have been carved in wax. His intelligent gray eyes remained fixed on Churchill’s anguished face. It might have been midnight, for there were no windows in the room, but it was only a short time after noon.

  When Dr. Freeling moved, he again gave the impression of a long-limbed, brittle insect in his dark suit and prim white shirt and black tie. His surprisingly warm voice made Bill sit down as directed. The coffee was hot and strong.

  “We have not been in touch with Durell,” Freeling said resonantly, “since the early hours of this morning. I presume he went to Hatashima with Miss Pruett, to locate Yoko and try to identify the canister that presumably held the virus specimens. We were given forty-eight hours by the Japanese Ministry of Health to make a statement. Otherwise, the Japanese government will issue a release to the press. We have thirty-six hours now until that happens, and then the matter will become one of worldwide knowledge. You can imagine what the opposition’s press will make of the affair.”