“I understand you lost your partner from Tokyo,” he said in English. “I am very sorry.”
“I am too.”
The waitress came with a tray of drinks.
“I took the liberty of ordering beer for us,” Yamamaru said. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, not at all.”
They were each served a three-beer sampler consisting of large glasses of types of Sapporo beer, displayed in a Lazy Susan carrier that neatly held all three glasses. The Classic Draft Hokkaido Limited and Yebisu Draft were light beers; Bond particularly liked the third, Black Draft, a dark beer that had a strong caramel taste.
Yamamaru insisted on ordering for them and asked for the grilled platter for two.
After the waitress left, he pushed a package across the table to Bond. “From Tanaka-san,” he said. “It is a replacement firearm. A Walther PPK, correct?”
“Yes, thank you,” Bond said as he took the parcel and put it in his pocket.
“Now, Bond-san, how can I help you?”
“I need to find Mayumi McMahon. She is supposed to be in Sapporo, probably the girlfriend of a high-ranking yakuza. One source suggested that she might be working for the yakuza in the water trade.”
Yamamaru nodded. “I have a contact in the yakuza. When Tanakasan first asked me to try and find this girl, I contacted this man. He is usually able to find out some things and will talk for a price. We’ve worked together before. I imagine that the yakuza would keep her whereabouts a secret these days.”
“If she’s still alive,” Bond said.
“Yes. At any rate you are just in time. I have a meeting with my contact this afternoon. He has already indicated that he has some news for me. I would ask you to accompany me, but I am afraid that he would feel more comfortable seeing me alone.”
“I understand.”
The food came and was served on a flat heated grill that was placed on the table. The food was fresh off the kitchen’s barbecue grill and consisted of beef, lamb, shrimp, king crab, scallops and sausage, all complemented with sauerkraut and German style potatoes. Once it was in front of him, Bond realised how ravenous he was. He began to eat with fervour.
“Have you been to Sapporo before, Bond-san?”
“No. I’m not familiar with Hokkaido at all.”
“You must try to visit our Ainu village while you are here. Have dinner, stay the night. We’ll let you feed the bears.”
Tiger had told Bond that the Ainu were animists, that is, they deified certain animals, especially bears. Most Ainu villages had at least one bear kept in captivity to serve as their god, mascot and sightseeing attraction for tourists. Some villages had several.
“Where is your village?”
“South. Noboribetsu. Very near Bear Park, which my people operate. I’m originally from Shiraoi. I have an apartment here in Sapporo, but my family is in Noboribetsu.”
“Do you know where the Hokkaido Mosquito and Vector Control Centre is in Noboribetsu?”
“Sure. It is outside of town. Tucked away in the woods, out of sight. It is interesting that you mention it. In the past several months, unusual things have been going on there.”
“What do you mean?”
Yamamaru shifted his eyes around to make certain that no one was near enough to hear him. “It is a public health facility, isn’t it? It used to be that anyone could go there and walk in. Now they have a high fence around it. Locked gate. Employees need a key card to get inside. Very strange.”
“Can you get me in?”
“Very difficult. Security is very tight there. It is almost as if it is run by a completely different organisation.” Then the Ainu grinned broadly. “But I enjoy a challenge! I will see what I can do.”
Bond was silent for a moment as he relished the taste of a king crab leg on his palate, then said, “Just tell me how to get there and I’ll worry about getting inside.”
“I’ll draw you a map.”
The food was delicious and the beer took the edge off Bond’s emotional fatigue.
“How did you get involved with the Koan-Chosa-Cho?” he asked the Ainu.
“When I did my military service back in the dark ages, when I was a young man, I was posted in an intelligence unit. I met Tanaka-san there and we became friends. He invited me to join later. The fact that I am Ainu is actually very good cover. There are not many Ainu who work in the Japanese government. Most of us operate replicas of traditional Ainu villages for tourists. We are a race that is slowly dying out, or rather, we are integrating more and more into modern society and are losing the Ainu ways.”
“Is there much intelligence work for you to do up here?”
“Oh yes,” Yamamaru said. “Mostly watching the Russians. They are always smuggling stuff in or out. We keep track of what their mafia is doing. There are some Korean criminal elements operating in Hokkaido. We keep an eye on them too.”
“What about Goro Yoshida? Any idea where he is?”
“Hiding somewhere in the Northern Territories. He’s another one who has been causing some trouble. Reportedly he has a small private army with him, and yet our intelligence forces have still been unable to exactly locate him. The Russians don’t make it any easier for us. They don’t like it when we do reconnaissance flights over the islands. Perhaps that’s why I enjoy them! Some of my colleagues tell me that I am reckless. Anyway, I have my suspicions about where he is, mainly from what I hear through the Ainu grapevine. I believe he is holed up on the island of Etorofu. It’s large enough and it’s covered with natural camouflage. Lots of forest. Many Ainu live there.”
After the meal, they left the restaurant, strolled through the beer garden grounds and had a smoke. Yamamaru offered Bond one of his cigarettes, made from tobacco grown by the Ainu. Bond found the taste pleasant but not strong enough.
“What dealings have you had with the Ryujin-kai?” Bond asked.
“Not much. I know Yasutake Tsukamoto. Well, a little. We met at a trade show for chemical engineering suppliers.”
“What do you think of him?”
The Ainu shrugged. “He is a very powerful oyabun. Very rich. Getting old. When we met, he barely looked at me. I have heard from many sources that he can be a very honourable man. For a criminal.”
Yamamaru eventually looked at his watch and said that he had to leave for his appointment. They agreed to meet that night at Bond’s hotel. If all went well with his contact that afternoon, the Ainu would have some information for him.
Bond’s next target was the Yonai Enterprises office in Sapporo. It was located in the city centre in an office building not far from Odori Park, the dividing line between the north and south sides of the city. Unlike other Japanese cities, Sapporo was conveniently divided into a grid, named and numbered according to the points of the compass. The street names reflected how many blocks and the direction they lay from the city’s centre. Yonai Enterprises was on South 1.
It was a shiny twenty-four-storey building that took up half a block. To Bond it looked like any other ordinary office building in Japan: there was no indication that the occupants might be in bed with organised crime. He circled the block and made his way to a loading dock area behind the building. There he found men loading boxes and crates into a lorry.
Two security guards eyed him suspiciously as he approached. Bond smiled at them but they remained expressionless. He came closer to the lorry and stopped to make a show of lighting a cigarette. As he did so, he studied the address labels on the boxes and crates and saw that along with the Japanese characters a legend in English read: “Hokkaido Mosquito and Vector Control Centre.”
That explained why the public health facility had recently added a fence and tight security. This confirmed his suspicions that it was now being run by Yonai Enterprises.
“May I help you, sir?”
It was a woman with a clipboard, standing on the loading dock. She had spoken in English.
“Oh, hello,” Bond said, assuming the role of t
he stupid gaijin. He introduced himself as a tourist from Britain who was lost.
“Please go around the building that way,” the woman said. “There is a tourist information office one block to the west.”
“Right, I’ll do that. Pardon me, I didn’t mean to intrude.”
“That’s all right.”
Bond caught a cab that took him straight to the Sapporo Prince Hotel, where Tanaka had arranged for him to stay.
After he had left the loading dock area, the woman with the clipboard made a phone call to her superior. As she had been instructed, the woman reported that a gaijin had been seen snooping around. Her boss thanked her for her diligence and hung up. This message was then passed on to his boss, who, in turn, passed it on to Yasutake Tsukamoto.
Kubo was extremely nervous. He had disobeyed a direct order from the kaicho. He had deceived the yakuza. He would surely lose a finger or two. Maybe even his life.
As he sat in the small office of the Casanova Club and nursed a flask of Japanese whisky, he went over the various options he had available to him. Unfortunately, there weren’t many.
Why had he fallen for the girl? She was no different from any other soaplands girl in the business. Well, that wasn’t entirely true, he thought. In fact, it wasn’t true at all. Mayumi McMahon was very different. She was an angel, a goddess sent from heaven! Kubo had never mixed business with pleasure before she had arrived at the soaplands but he had been completely bewitched by Mayumi. Perhaps it was her independent streak that had attracted him, something that was uncommon among most soaplands girls. She had come to the Casanova Club declaring with a determined swagger that she was going to be the best soaplands girl in the business. Too bad it hadn’t worked out that way for her. Now the yakuza wouldn’t let her leave. Kubo knew that she was unhappy and was desperate to break away, even though she was making lots of money for the club.
Why did they want to kill her? It was unfathomable! Such an exotic creature and such a good earner too! When Kubo received the order to have her done away with, he couldn’t bring himself to follow it. One day he would pay for his disobedience.
Now he had to hide her somewhere else. She could no longer stay in the upstairs room he had provided for her. She had believed him when he had told her that it wasn’t safe for her to go home to her apartment, but now she was restless. She had been complaining about having to stay there.
Kubo had a lead on another apartment outside of Sapporo. He had just enough time to go out and talk to the landlord and arrange it. Then, later that night after the guards were asleep and the soaplands was closed, he would move Mayumi out.
Her freedom, as well as his peace of mind, was worth a finger or two.
Tanaka had put Bond in the corner suite on the top floor of the Sapporo Prince Hotel Annex, which was newer than the main building across the road and its rooms were the hotel’s best. As Bond waited for his appointment with Yamamaru, he sat and looked out of the window, watching the sunset and the Sapporo lights as they began to dominate the skyline. Mayumi McMahon was somewhere out there.
The phone rang. Bond answered it, acknowledged Yamamaru, and told him to come up.
“Konban wa, Yamamaru-san,” Bond said.
“Please,” he said, “You may call me Ikuo. I like dispensing with formalities every now and then.”
Bond offered him some of the sake that was in the refrigerator, compliments of Tiger, and then they sat around the low glass table and clinked glasses.
“I have some good news,” Yamamaru said. “I found Mayumi McMahon.”
“I was hoping that you would say that. Go on.”
“She is a soaplands girl. In one of the biggest and most expensive establishments in Sapporo run by the Ryujin-kai. Apparently, Ms. McMahon came to Sapporo and changed her name to Tomoko. She was put up in a very nice apartment. She can come and go as she pleases.”
“Then how come she hasn’t been found up until now?”
“Because even though she has freedom of movement, she is guarded. And she has a new identity. The yakuza have men watch her. It took my friend several days to locate her. There is another problem. The girl has not been seen for several days.”
“Does that mean … ?”
Yamamaru put up a hand. “No, Bond-san. She is alive. My friend put me in touch with another girl who works there. She goes by the name of Norika. I was able to speak to her today before she went to work. Norika says that Mayumi is being kept in a room on one of the upper floors and has not been allowed to work for a few days. For 10,000 yen, Norika said she would try to arrange for you to meet Mayumi.”
“Then I had better go to the soaplands to see her.”
“I suspected you would say that. Usually this place does not let gaijin in except for VIPs. Take this card.”
He handed Bond a business card with kanji on it.
“This will get you in. Show that to the man at the front. You have to pay 20,000 yen to get in.”
“What does the card say?”
“It says that you are an important gaijin doing business with Yasutake Tsukamoto. Ask for Norika. Do you know Susukino? It’s easy to navigate. It’s the entertainment district.” He pulled out a map and pointed to the location. Bond could walk there easily. “What do you plan to do with Ms. McMahon once you have found her?”
“If I can get her out, I’m taking her back to Tokyo,” Bond said.
Yamamaru looked sceptical. “She may not want to go. Have you thought of that?”
“Yes, but she may not know that her parents have been killed.”
Yamamaru was silent for a moment, as if considering how much of an impossible task it might be.
“Good luck, Bond-san,” was all that he said.
Susukino was Sapporo’s equivalent of Tokyo’s Kabuki-cho. At night it was yet another spectacular display of neon and noise, and Bond felt that it was a little more “wild west” than Tokyo’s red light district. Here, things seemed looser, more in the open. Billboards and sidewalk placards on major streets prominently advertised the variety of sexual entertainment one could sample, from soaplands to strip clubs to hostess bars. The area was also full of restaurants, bars and pachinko parlours, exhibiting the same level of energy and decadence that Bond had found in Tokyo. Touts were just as aggressive, perhaps more so because Susukino catered to foreigners, especially Russians. A gaijin would probably have an easier time gaining access to some of the establishments here than in Tokyo.
Bond found the soaplands in question, the Casanova Club, and approached the doorman, a bulky strong-arm with a punch perm. Before Bond could utter a complete sentence, the man held up his hand and said, “No gaijin.” Bond showed him the card that Yamamaru had given him. The bouncer studied it, rubbed his chin, and said, “Just a minute.” He went inside and left Bond standing on the pavement. A pretty girl walked by and tried to hand him a flyer. He smiled and refused, but she insisted. When the bouncer returned, she quickly walked away.
“All right, come in,” the doorman said. “You are welcome.”
Bond climbed a set of stairs to the first floor, where he was met by a couple of sleazy-looking yakuza who were all smiles. By now, Bond had learned to recognise the trademark punch perms, the gaudy suits and the swaggering manner. Neither of them spoke English. Bond told them that he had heard about a girl named Norika who worked there.
One of them said, “There is a house charge of 20,000 yen.”
Bond paid it and was led to a lounge area with a velvet-lined sofa, a coffee table with some skin magazines and an ashtray on it and a couple of comfortable chairs. They asked Bond what he wanted to drink. He asked for vodka on the rocks and then lit a cigarette.
“Would you like to see the selection of girls available?” one of the punch perms asked.
“No,” Bond said. “Just Norika, please.”
The man shrugged, handed Bond his drink, and left the room. Five minutes later, a young woman walked in and sat down in front of him. The punch perm was right beh
ind her.
“This is Norika,” the man said.
She was attractive and dressed in the type of outfit that might be worn by a bareback rider in a circus; the topcoat and tails of a tuxedo, very tight shorts, fishnet stockings and high heels.
Bond realised that he was supposed to indicate that she was indeed his choice.
“She’ll do,” he said to the man.
The punch perm nodded to the girl, who rose and gestured for Bond to follow her. She led him to a small room that contained a number of items: a double bed, a Japanese shower area on a tile floor, a bathtub, a vinyl inflatable mat, a cabinet and a locker.
Norika closed the door and looked at him expectantly.
“I’m here to see Tomoko,” Bond said. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out 10,000 yen. “I believe that was the arrangement?”
Norika nodded, counted the money quickly, stuffed it into her shorts, and left the room after taking a look out into the hallway.
Bond sat on the bed and waited. A few minutes later the door opened and a young woman he recognised as Mayumi McMahon came in.
She was stunningly beautiful. Her photo did not do her justice. Bond had seen many lovely women in Japan, but none possessed a face as elegant as Mayumi McMahon’s. The blend of Japanese and European features created an exotic portrait; she certainly looked more Asian than not, but Bond could see hints of Western influence in her genes. For one thing, her almond-shaped eyes were blue, not brown. She had a wide, sensual mouth and a complexion that was as pure and creamy as buttermilk. Her long black hair was shiny and silky and full of body.
She was short, probably about five feet two inches, with a compact, hourglass figure. She wore a yukata over loose silk pants and was barefoot.
“Norika says you want to see me,” she said. “Who are you? What’s this about?”
“I just want to talk,” Bond replied.
She grimaced and nodded. “Oh, you’re one of those. Listen, I’m not working now. The boss—he hasn’t let me work for the past few days. I don’t know why.” There was very little Asian accent to her speech. She could have passed for someone raised in Britain.
The Man With The Red Tattoo Page 18