Assignment Tokyo

by Edward S. Aarons

  Suddenly she sat up straighter, staring at the station sign.

  “We get off here, Sam,” she said abruptly.

  “Oshika?”

  “Yes. I remember it”

  Durell did not question her as she stood up in the compartment Colonel Skoll had drifted off somewhere else in the train. “What is it?” he asked, following her. “What do you remember?”

  “Bill Churchill mentioned Oshika. Something to do with Yoko.”

  “What was it?” .

  “I can’t remember. It will come to me.”

  As Durell followed her, he saw a familiar figure just alighting from the steps of the next coach. It was Skoll.

  “Well, whatever it is, Skoll knows about it too.”

  The air was cooler here, and the scarlet maple leaves made the early afternoon air rosy with their reflected glow, although the sun had gone under a thin overcast. Liz shivered as they swung off the train just in time. The locomotive horn moaned and it started up with a clash of couplings and left the station. A number of other people had gotten off here, too. Durell lost sight of Skoll’s closely cropped head above the crowd of Japanese passengers.

  “The dolls,” Liz said. She was excited by the chase and stood frowning at the row of shops. She had spotted one that specialized in the kokeshi dolls. “You remember, Sam, Yoko was especially fond of these wood carvings.

  Her grandfather lives in this suburb. Right here in Oshika. He’s a wood-carver. Bill mentioned it several times.”

  It made sense, Durell thought. Obviously, Skoll knew this much about Yoko’s background, too. The name on the gilded board over the doll shop, however, was not that of Kamuru.

  “We’ll split up,” he decided. “You find her grandfather’s shop. Use the telephone directories, anything. I’ll have to decoy Skoll out of the way.”

  Liz said, “I don’t like to be away from you, Sam.”

  He looked into her eyes. “Still worried about Po?”

  “I don’t know what it is. I feel—frightened. He—the way he attacked me—like an animal—” She shivered again in the cool wind that blew over the reeds and the nearby lake. The boy fishing was now singing, “Moonlight on the Ruined Castle,” a popular old song. His thin voice lifted plaintively on the wind, and Liz shivered again. “All right, I’ll do what I can. Where shall we meet?”

  He thought quickly. “The Fukisushi, in Sendai. Take a taxi. It’s a good restaurant on Kokubuncho Street.”

  She was surprised. “How do you know about it?”

  “I’ve been here before. A job that finally took me to Manchuria some time ago. In one hour, Liz?”

  “All right,” she said.

  She still looked frightened.

  There was a small taxi stand at the end of the platform. Liz crossed the street toward the doll shop, and Durell walked the other way toward the cabs. Skoll was just getting into one. The Russian KGB man did not turn his head to look back. He seemed unconcerned as to whether Durell had gotten off the train or not. In a few moments Durell was riding a taxi behind Skoll’s, heading into the center of Sendai.

  Tohoku was a less prosperous region of Japan, but Sendai had a population of almost half a million, dominated by the new Dai Ichi building that towered in front of the main rail terminal. Skoll’s taxi seemed to have no specific destination. They went through Ichibancho, passed the Fujisaki department store, where Skoll got out and wandered through the aisles for a time, examining the different local wares; then he settled down in the store grill, crowded by impatient shoppers watching the young cooks at work over the charcoal grills. Durell decided he might as well eat too, and sat quite apart from the big Russian and ordered kanimeshi, crab rice with fried onions, and tea. If Skoll seemed at ease and at his leisure —perhaps he was waiting to make a contact—DurelL himself felt as if he were being watched. It was a sense he had developed through many years in the business. He could not define it. He ordered Akita saki and drank it and looked at his neighbors in the restaurant, but they were all intent on their own business. They were mostly women shoppers, but a few Japanese businessmen were sprinkled in the crowd too. He could not identify anyone who had a special interest in him. And as far as he could tell, Skoll was totally unaware of him.

  No one here, so far as he could determine, was concerned about the horror at Hatashima.

  Twenty minutes later Skoll got up, paid his bill, and walked out into the cool early afternoon air and took another taxi. He almost got away then, when Durell for a moment could find no cab to follow in. For five minutes the Russian was out of sight in the traffic ahead. Then Durell glimpsed the license tag he sought, heading past the glass arcade of the Ichibancho, which ran from the City Hall toward the University. From here, Skoll’s pattern continued to be aimless, apparently, going along the Chuo-dori, past lacquerware shops, pottery and bamboo stores, and then into the delicately landscaped garden of Rinnoji. Skoll got out here, and it began to rain.

  The rain was a drifting mist over the public gardens, and Skoll walked bareheaded across the little bridges, while his taxi waited. Durell hesitated, wondering if he should stay with his cab or follow on foot. His cab driver turned on the radio, tuned in some screeching Japanese version of soul music, and it decided him. He got out and walked down the path after the big Russian.

  Skoll never looked back.

  There was a smell of burning leaves in the wet air. Beyond the bridges was a massive outcropping of rock, and Skoll’s bulky figure vanished behind it. Durell walked faster, crossed the grass to cut behind and beyond the rocks, and came around them to confront the KGB man before Skoll passed.

  “Boom boom, Cesar,” Durell said.

  The big Russian was leaning against the granite. His steel teeth gleamed. “This is a good place, nyet? For our talk, I mean.”

  “As good as any.”

  Skoll took one of his thin cigars and clamped it between his teeth. “You know that I know where to find our little Japanese doll, eh?”

  “It’s a good premise.”

  “Come with me. We shall talk,” Skoll said.

  “Let’s talk right here.”

  “No, I have a place arranged. Are you afraid?” Skoll laughed. “We must always worry about our budgets, I think. Let us share a cab, instead of wasting one for each of us.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “I have a hotel room,” Skoll said. He lit his cigar and looked at Durell with pale, merciless eyes, and said, “Come.”

  The hotel was not too far from the Fukisushi restaurant in Sendai. It was a Japanese version of a Western inn, fairly new, located above four floors of an office building. Skoll’s room was heated and air-conditioned, with a wide bed and Japanese prints on the pale lemon walls, and a view of the wide Hirose River and the tumbled walls and moat of the castle ruins on Aoba Hill. The mountains loomed on the horizon, less than an hour’s drive away, where Durell recalled a number of hot springs resorts.

  Skoll led the way down the hall and into the room. He took off his coat with a shrug of his massive shoulders, and at the moment when his arms were still in the sleeves, Durell hit him.

  The back of the man’s neck was thick and muscular. Skoll made a curious grunting sound and stumbled, his arms still entangled in his coat. His cigar stub fell from his open mouth. He caught himself on the foot of the bed and started to turn, his eyes glazed, and Durell swung again, a karate chop at the side of the thick throat. It was like hitting the trunk of a small tree. His hand blasted with sudden pain. Skoll tried to kick, but the defensive gesture was clumsy. Durell used his left hand, struck again, and Skoll went over backward onto the bed and lay still.

  There had been very little noise.

  Durell picked up the burning cigar and put it out in an ashtray, then took from his pocket a tiny case containing a hypodermic syringe and a small vial of Val-12 tranquilizer, developed by K Section’s lab men. It took only a moment to inject the unconscious Russian with the stuff. Skoll did not stir. He would not move
for several hours now.

  Satisfied, Durell looked at his watch, decided he had a few minutes before he was to meet Liz Pruett, and went to the telephone.

  17

  "WHERE have you been?" came Dr. Freeling’s voice.

  “I’ve been following Yoko. I’m pretty close,” Durell said. “I’m in Sendai now. Her grandfather lives here. Liz Pruett is getting the address. I had to sidetrack, to put Skoll off.”

  “Killed him?”

  “I don’t think so. Hold on.” Durell put down the phone and walked back to the bed in the hotel room. Traffic sounds drifted up from Hibashi-Yobancho. Some Japanese were talking quietly in the corridor just beyond the door. He threw the bolt and chain and turned on the air conditioner to let its rattling hum fill the room. Skoll was breathing heavily, but regularly. Ugly bruises were forming on his thick neck. Durell massaged his own right hand and returned to the telephone. “Skoll will be fine,” he said. “I think I’m going to need Bill Churchill up here, though.”

  “Things are rather chaotic in Tokyo,” Dr. Freeling said quietly. “Your friend and aide, Mr. Churchill, has not cooperated with us. He is afraid of our intentions regarding his Miss Kamuru.”

  “Let me talk to him,” said Durell.

  “He has disappeared. Vanished. Gone off on his own.”

  “Hell. He didn’t say where?”

  “He said nothing.”

  “Is your line clear?” asked Durell. He was annoyed and frustrated. “Can you bring me up to date?”

  “Certainly.” Dr. Freeling’s voice was as brittle as his sticklike, insect limbs. “The Japanese, first, have decided to cooperate. The canister containing the virus that spread at Hatashima has been examined under sterile conditions. I am relieved to advise you that the elements involved are not—repeat, not—Pearl Q or any derivative thereof. In other words, the virus is not one from the U.S. CBW Department. We did not develop it. It is not our canister.”

  Durell exhaled a long, slow breath.

  “Do the Japanese believe you?”

  “Are you relieved?”

  “I’m relieved. But the Japanese—”

  “They do not quite accept our findings. Suspicious, naturally, of a cover-up. Major Yamatoya persists in holding us to the deadline. You have less than a day and a half to find the girl. Actually, it’s more urgent than ever.”

  “I’ll find her,” Durell promised. “You sound pretty sure of your analysis.”

  “I am. You recall our ship, the Sigma Sigma 626, that sailed from Naha to Oregon to deliver certain cultures to Umatilla Depot for detoxification? I am pleased to report that the weather disturbance has passed and the vessel has been sighted and contacted by our Falcon Search Group, some four hundred miles northeast of Muko Jima, in the Parry Group. EMPI-8, our scanning satellite, finally got her position. Nothing has been lost from the ship’s cargo. I repeat, nothing. Her radio and radar equipment was carried away by Typhoon Dagmar, and some damage done to her engines. But the cargo is definitely intact and the vessel is proceeding normally across the Pacific again.”

  “That’s good news,” Durell admitted.

  “Yes. But as I say, we may not convince the Japanese or the rest of the world of our innocence. We could simply pull out of the affair, of course. The plague is definitely not our responsibility.”

  Durell sensed a testing note in Dr. Freeling’s voice. He looked at the bed. Skoll was beginning to snore.

  “Do we pull out?” Durell asked.

  “It is up to you. If you can find the girl—”

  “What, precisely, can you do with her?”

  “Preliminary examination indicates the virus is a bit similar to the Lassa fever plague, investigated by Yale virologists who at one time researched it. Comes from Nigeria. Very virulent. The Yale people saved themselves only by injecting antibodies from the blood of a missionary nurse who had been in Africa and recovered from Lassa fever. The virus induces very high temperatures, pneumonia, skin rash, severe mouth ulcers, infection of the heart, muscular pain, and kidney damage. Very dangerous. The Hatashima virus is similar and even considerably more deadly.”

  Freeling paused. Durell could visualize him with his thin glasses, his dry figure, and his skeletal face, always in the shadows. A cold and detached intellectuality came through his next words.

  “Yoko Kamuru survived, because, luckily, she was infected by a strain that had become attenuated and less virulent by passing through other victims at Hatashima. This is the only conclusion we can draw from the fact of her survival. She has a mutated strain and she developed antibodies to combat it. So she lived. If we find her in time, we may isolate the virus form she has and hopefully develop a vaccine. It is not an unknown process. The influenza virus, for instance, undergoes cyclic mutations that resulted in pandemics such as that of 1918 and again the ‘Asian’ form in 1968. Drug companies constantly update their vaccines because of these mutations.”

  Freeling paused. “The nature of the vaccine that must be developed depends on the subject, ,of course. We could use a live attenuated virus similar to polio vaccine, or one composed of killed—Formalin killed, that is—viruses, such as the influenza vaccine, which is produced by the precipitation of the virus particles. Are you following me?”

  “Yes,” Durell said.

  “Live vaccines are produced by serial passes in appropriate culture media. Viruses only reproduce in living cells. They invade the cell and take over the protein-producing mechanisms of that cell and cause it to produce virus protein instead of the normal metabolic products. Hence, the virus is the ultimate parasite. When the cell breaks down, millions of newly produced virus parasites are liberated.

  “To produce the vaccine, the virus is isolated from blood, urine, or feces, then transferred to a medium such as chick embryo allantoic membrane, and transferred at regular intervals to fresh culture media. The virus thus thrives better on the new medium than it did earlier in its host—that is, it mutates to be better suited to live in the culture than in human cells. When it is reinoculated in humans, it is less virulent and results in diminished clinical evidence of the disease. But the same antibody response recurs in the patient, and immunity is conferred. In other words, it is antigenically similar to the deadly form, and similar antibodies are produced, but the new form is capable of being resisted by the patient’s physiological systems.”

  “Dr. Freeling—,” Durell began.

  “One moment. You must understand this. There is something called Interferon, which is not an immunoglobulin, as are antibodies, but a protein. It inhibits the takeover of cellular metabolism by the virus. The Russians, you must know, have developed Interferon for clinical use as an antiviral agent. Efforts in our own country produced a compound named adamantadine, but it has dangerous side effects and is of limited usefulness. We simply do not know, however, how far the Soviets have been successful in this field.”

  Durell looked at Skoll’s sleeping figure and was aware of dismay.

  “Has Washington contacted the USSR?” he asked.

  “So far, the response has been negative. But you are ordered to cooperate with Colonel Skoll in every way.”

  “It’s a bit late for that.”

  “Truthfully. Have you killed him, Durell?”

  “He’s been disposed of, for the time being.”

  There was a long silence.

  Skoll snored.

  Finally, Freeling said, “Three things, Durell.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ve been cleared to report this to you.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I suppose you are familiar with the terminology?” Durell said, “I’ve been in this business a long time. Sometimes, I think it’s been too long.”

  “Then I suppose you’ve seen the dispatches concerning the USSR’s Storage Lab 26 at Bogozavodsk. Their new Code Whiskey still has not been broken, and our Pebbles Three and Five are confirmed as out of the picture. Taken or dead. Kappa King, your General McFee head of K
Section, has no men to help your Central, coded Blockbuster, in determining why security on the part of the Russians has been so markedly increased there. But that is of lesser importance than the second item.”

  Durell’s face was a mask, empty of all expression. “Go on,” he said again.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m listening.”

  Dr. Freeling made a coughing sound in the telephone. “The second item refers to Sugar Cube’s directive to Water Carrier, dealing with the same Dishwasher Project. Water Carrier got through Peacock’s screen and made it to Kunlun Taktu and confirmed—repeat, confirmed— disabled Peregrine 223 flight. Pigeon, your man out there in the wilderness, sent Water Carrier back in, do you understand? The missile aborted near Hatashima, he says. Peacock is screaming.”

  “Peacock certainly is. Colonel Po is on hand, personally.”

  “But do you comprehend?” Freeling insisted. “I can speak no clearer. Yours is an open line.”

  Durell said, “Yes, I understand. It’s a Chinese bug.”

  “Not for sure.”

  “The Russians are believed out of it.”

  “Not confirmed.”

  “Question,” said Durell. “Colonel Po is head of the Peacock Branch of the Black House at Peking. Our people have word of an aborted Chinese missile firing at Kunlun. Pigeon did good work. So did his man, Water Carrier. All right. What hard evidence do you have for all this?”

  Freeling coughed again. “It is a pity you clobbered Skoll. As I said, we must cooperate with him. The Russians allowed us to fly an SR-71 over the site in Western China.”

  The super-secret SR-71 spy planes, Durell thought, comprised only a tiny fleet, built by Lockheed—a high-altitude successor to the original U-2’s and the A-11’s. They had not proved reliable. Crashes had occurred, and some crew deaths, and the dollar loss was placed at $211.4 million. The SR-71’s made up the Ninth Strategic Reconnaissance Wing, two squadrons, based at Beale Air Force Base in California.

  So one of the swing-wing planes had been used to confirm the faulty Red Chinese ICBM flight. Not much of a victory for Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s thought. Previous satellite launchings by Red China had taken place at the facility at Shuang-cheng-tze, in the deserts of Western Inner Mongolia, about four hundred miles northeast of Lanchow. This one had been different, from the Chinese CBW base at Taktu.