Laughter in the Shadows

by Stuart Methven

  Case officers and caseworkers do, however, have one thing in common: unusual clientele. Their “cases” range from unsavory, paranoid, and congenital liars to renegades and patriots, each requiring special handling.

  The Agency case officer fits no standard profile. He can be Peter Pan, Peck’s bad boy, Walter Mitty, or John Smiley. He plays a variety of roles, depending on his target: the anticommunist evangelist excoriating the “Red Satan,” a Fagin trainer of thieves, or a recruiter of scavengers to pick through nuclear trash bins.

  The case officer blends in with his surroundings and, like the chameleon, can change covers quickly. His tasks range from sticking pins in Khaddafi dolls, slipping aphrodisiacs to unsuspecting Soviets, or persuading foreign leaders to take a lie detector test.

  Case officers are expendable. If a case officer is “burned,” the Agency will deny him, although it may later reinstate him after a cooling off period in Registry’s catacombs. The case officer can also be fired, or terminated, with or without “prejudice.”

  As a junior case officer, I reported to George, a senior case officer who spoke fluent Bushidan. He liked to sprinkle his guidance and directions to his junior case officers with Bushidan proverbs. He wasn’t a good recruiter, because he found it difficult to bring himself to corrupt the “pure Bushidan soul.”

  George was chief of the Political Operations Section, but he didn’t have anyone to cover the Bushidan labor organizations leading the charge against the presence of American military bases in Bushido. He directed me to cover the Bushidan labor movement.

  George gave me a series of tasks. First, study the Bushidan labor movement. Second, establish contacts and elicit information. Third, recruit an agent in the labor field. This was the sum of my direction and guidance. No manuals to follow, no case studies to read over. There was one primary rule of engagement: don’t get caught.

  The headquarters of Carbo, the coal miners union, at #75 Hirotsuki-cho, was hard to find. Address numbers are in order of their construction date, #1 possibly a hundred yards from #2 if a number of other shops had been built in between. Since I didn’t know the chronology of the buildings on Hirotsuki-cho, I stopped at the nearest fire station for directions. Most of the firemen were outside climbing up their ladders to practice juggling acts for the coming cherry blossom festival, but I finally found one who wasn’t busy and who escorted me to #75.

  Carbo headquarters was in an old warehouse with a large red and white banner over the door. I knocked, didn’t get an answer, and knocked again. Finally, I pushed the door open, went inside, and found myself standing in front of fifty or sixty Bushidans wearing red headbands. They were all sitting cross-legged, busily painting placards, probably for the next anti-American demonstration. When I came in, they looked up, stopped painting, and stared open-mouthed at the foreign intruder. No one moved to welcome me or ask what I wanted. They just stared as if I had dropped in from outer space. I was about to turn around and leave, but since I had come this far, I wasn’t going to be put off by their stares and silence. I decided to try to break the ice: “Ohayo!” Good morning! “Gomenasai!” Excuse me.

  No response. They continued squinting and staring at me so I tried again. “Ohayo, gomenasai!”

  Finally, a few heads turned toward the back to look at one of the sign painters. The painter in question uncrossed his legs, stood up, and walked to where I was standing.

  “What you want?” he asked.

  I was taken aback by the brusque tone of his question. Bushidans are normally reticent and polite, especially with foreigners. I figured his question sounded brusque because of his limited English. Perhaps if I articulated and spoke slowly, he could understand me better and then interpret for the rest of the group. I began with the cover story I had prepared earlier. “I am writing a book about Bushidan coal miners. I came here because I wanted to learn about coal mining in Bushido and to ask you to arrange a visit to a coal mine where I could talk to miners and their families.”

  As a cover story, it was short, simple, and direct. I paused to give the spokesman enough time to think and try to interpret what I had said. He hesitated, fingered his headband, and looked around the room. Finally, he began to interpret what I had said. When he paused, I continued my story.

  I said I came from a coal-mining region of America (a half-truth, because I lived for three years as a boy in West Virginia) and that my father had been a coal miner who died of black-lung disease (a fiction, because my father had been an army officer).

  When I mentioned the black-lung disease, the scourge of miners everywhere, I heard sympathetic sucking “ah-so’s” from the audience. The mention of the black-lung disease had apparently broken the ice. I decided it was a good time to stop and bowed to indicate I had finished.

  My bow at the end of the story prompted someone to call out for cha-yo: tea. I was led to a long table in the back of the room. I wedged myself in between two sign painters and was served a steaming cup of green tea by a bowing, gold-toothed mama-san in a red and white flowered kimono.

  I tried to make small talk with the Bushidans sitting next to me, but their responses were limited to nods, smiles, burps, and sucking noises. When the tea break was over, the hall became quiet. The sign painters were apparently waiting for me to make an “after-tea” speech. I had already exhausted my cover story, so I had to think of another diversion. I thought back to a night in a Shinbaku bar when a group of giggling kimono-clad barmaids tried to teach me the Carbo Buki, the “Coal Miners’ Dance.” It was simple enough even for an awkward American, a series of “dig-dig,” “pick-pick,” and “shovel-shovel” motions. I hoped I could remember them.

  I got up from the table, stepped back, and bowed to the miners who were still sitting around the extended table. I took out my red bandana handkerchief, folded it into a headband, and tied it around my forehead. I walked over and took a broom that was leaning against the wall and began shuffling around the room making picking and shoveling motions with the broom and scooping up imaginary lumps of coal.

  I was beginning to feel foolish dancing solo around the hall with my broom shoveling and picking, and then I heard the sound of clapping. Several sign painters had gotten up and had fallen in behind me, imitating the pick-pick, shovel-shovel motions, and soon I found myself leading a conga line as the rest of the sign painters fell in behind me. I led them around the hall twice and then stopped, bowed, and sat down.

  Suddenly, everybody started clapping and a large jug of rice wine was brought to the table. A healthy portion was poured into my cup, and I toasted to “coal miners around the world.” After more clapping and toasts to the gansin, the foreigner, I was convinced my bona fides had been established. It was a good time to leave.

  The spokesman walked with me to the door. When I thanked him for the warm welcome, he replied that I should come back the following week. And “bring suitcase for trip to coal mine.”

  Owata

  When I returned a week later, I was greeted with shouts of Carbo-bushi-san! The spokesman introduced me to Kanto, the interpreter who was to accompany me on the trip to the Shiba Owata coal mine in southern Bushido. Kanto, who spoke good English, was the younger brother of the secretary general of Carbo.

  The overnight train trip took ten hours. We arrived in Owata as the sun was coming up over the island of Shuku, home to the world’s largest undersea coal mine. Its black anthracite veins stretch like tentacles for several miles out under the sea, the veins providing charcoal for hibachis all over Bushido and livelihoods for eight thousand miners.

  The Coal Mine

  That he should be lowered … into those subterranean zones from which no one returns without having their view of life on the surface modified.

  —GRAHAM SWIFT, Ever After

  We were met at the station by Carbo officials, who drove us off in a battered old Studebaker with a Pontiac hood ornament. After paying a courtesy call to the mining company director, we went directly to the mine. I was outfitte
d with baggy pants, an oil-stained jacket, sloth-toed sandals, and a miner’s helmet and headlamp. Kanto and I were then squeezed into bucket-shaped coal cars hooked behind a miniature locomotive.

  The train gave several jerks and then clanked off down into the mine. It became pitch black, and it seemed as if the tunnel was closing in around us. Water began dripping on my helmet, and I knew we were out under the sea. We went down past honeycombs of mineshafts braced with wooden posts that creaked and groaned, their echoes reverberating along the tunnels and bouncing off the mineshafts. We had descended into an underwater mausoleum. The train gave a series of jerks and stopped. When we got out, I could see miners kneeling and lying on their backs, chipping off shards of coal. Figures trotted along the shafts scooping up the shards and then dumping their buckets into the empty coal cars.

  Interviewing miners under the sea was not going to be easy, but for my cover story to hold up, I had to try. I duck-waddled along the nearest shaft until I found a niche next to a miner with enough room for me to squat alongside. The miner glanced over his shoulder at his unexpected visitor, nodded, and went back to chipping off shards of coal.

  I had been there about ten minutes when he turned and pointed to the empty bucket behind him. If I was going to share his space, I should make myself useful. I nodded and began scooping up shards and dumping them into the coal bucket. I actually welcomed the task, because it took my mind off the cramps and my knotting leg muscles.

  I scooped up shards for almost an hour before a bell rang for the lunch break. I leaned back and stretched my legs. The miner offered me one of his rice balls wrapped in seaweed and some of his tea. I thanked him and then asked him about working in the mine, his home and his family. He said he had a wife and four children, liked beer and baseball, and was tired of working in the mine.

  Author with Bushido coal miners.

  My interview was cut short when the bell rang and we went back to work. The cramps had begun to come back when Kanto came by and said it was time to go. I thanked the miner for sharing his lunch with me. He smiled and nodded, then reached in his pocket and handed me a “souvenir,” a black lump of coal sparkling with silver mica chips. My first operational keepsake.

  Going back up was easier than coming down. I forgot my fear of being interred under the sea, and by now my eyes had adjusted to the dark, allowing me more clearly to see the Lilliputian figures chopping away in the narrow mineshafts. I sympathized with these miners whose trade union I was trying to penetrate. One miner had even shared his lunch and presented me with a token of friendship, and for the first time I felt uneasy about having traded on a bogus black-lung father to gain their confidence.

  When the train came out of the tunnel into the sunlight, I realized I had to put these misgivings aside and concentrate on the task at hand.

  Agent

  Since this story is based entirely on facts, the author feels it is his duty not to overstep the bounds of the verifiable, to resist at all costs the perils of invention.

  —PAUL AUSTER, The New York Trilogy

  The agent is the soul of an operation. The intelligence agent, unlike the travel, insurance, or real estate agent, is not paid on a commission basis. He carries out missions on behalf of his case officer, who is also his paymaster unless the agent is working for the cause pro bono.

  There are no standard criteria for an agent, unlike West Pointers, whose physical measurements ensure symmetry on the parade ground. Agents are a mixed bag of unemployed and professionals, chambermaids, sailors, cabinet ministers, shipping magnates, guerrilla leaders, mistresses, and musicians.

  Even blue-blooded and aristocratic agents are not socially acceptable. They see themselves working for a noble cause, but their self-esteem is not shared by outsiders except in the Soviet Union, where spying is an honorable profession.

  The intelligence agent has to be continually vetted. When one agent submits a report, another agent is often tasked to steal a document to confirm the information or plant a “bug” to corroborate it. A political action agent may be assigned to write an editorial for an “agent-of-influence” to act on. Meanwhile, another agent, a counterspy, keeps on the lookout for “doubles” and hostile penetrations.

  For most, an agent’s life is dangerous and often life threatening, but he normally is not entitled to social security or a pension. In exceptional cases, however, an agent may be given the option of early retirement or granted “resettlement.” But the latter is a rare exception.

  Kanto was an ideal agent candidate. He had “access,” because his brother was the secretary general of the target organization. He was dedicated to democratic ideals and opposed to fascism or communism. Most important, he was unemployed, a university graduate, and needed money.

  The trip to Owata would last two weeks, long enough to work up a “soft pitch.”

  Kanto and I spent most of our time calling on local union officials, talking to miners, and visiting families. At night we stayed in small Bushidan inns, ryokan. Breakfast was a foul-smelling fish soup, lunch was rice balls and seaweed, and for supper we ate squid. Kanto taught me the proper way to belch and end the meal with a kotowaza, a Bushidan proverb. My favorite was, “Bushi wa, kuwa nedo, taka yoji.” Even if the samurai’s stomach is empty, he holds his toothpick high.

  After supper we soaked in a hot bath until a blind masseur came to knead out our knots and cramps. Then we talked. I took mental notes as he told me about his childhood and early youth, education, and friends. I probed as deeply as I could, trying to dissect his psychological id without intruding into his Bushidan gestalt.

  By the end of our trip, I was ready to risk a “soft pitch.”

  The Soft Pitch

  Dissimulating means drawing a veil composed of honest shadows, which does not constitute falsehood but allows truth some respite.

  —UMBERTO ECO, Island of the Day Before

  Although I was convinced I had elicited enough data about Kanto to risk a soft pitch, I knew that I had to be wary. A foreigner can rarely plumb the Bushidan soul, and I had to tread carefully not to upset Kanto.

  After dinner I began by telling Kanto how much I had enjoyed our trip together and that I regretted that it had to come to an end. Kanto agreed, saying he too was sad our time together was almost over. Having provided the opening I was looking for, I asked Kanto if he would like to continue our association after we returned to Edo. I wanted to finish my project and needed someone to help me cobble together more material for the book, which would be hard to obtain on my own. I added that I would insist on paying him a stipend for his services.

  By offering to pay him, I had peeled off one layer of my cover. Kanto recoiled as if I had slapped or insulted him, and I wondered if I had misjudged the depth of our friendship. I knew Bushidans don’t like mixing money and friendship, but at some point I had to push the money button to move the operation forward. I tried to sugarcoat the offer of money by telling Kanto I couldn’t ask him to work for me without offering him a “stipend,” stipend being less offensive than “pay” or “salary.” Kanto visibly relaxed when I explained the distinction between stipend and salary but stiffened again when I added that the stipend wouldn’t be coming out of my pocket but would be paid by my “sponsor.”

  “Sponsor?” Kanto was on his guard again as I peeled off another layer of my cover. If Kanto would accept a stipend coming from an unidentified sponsor, it would edge him one step closer to recruitment.

  I explained to Kanto that a sponsor was necessary to fund research on my book about the coal miners. Kanto scratched his head and shifted uneasily. He looked around the room as if trying to find an answer to his dilemma. He must have decided, because he finally stopped fidgeting, looked at me, and said, “Daijobu desu. OK.” He would accept my offer of a stipend, because he wouldn’t be taking my money and we could still remain friends.

  He was right. We would remain friends. I would, however, also be his paymaster. He had accepted the soft pitch. The first hook wa
s in.

  The Recruitment

  After returning to Edo, Kanto began working for me full time. I asked him to prepare papers for me on the history of the Bushidan labor movement and an analysis of Bushidan labor laws, both nonsensitive tasks. To break him out of his research cocoon, I slipped in a request for a list of labor unions and their officers.

  He balked at this request, asking why I needed that kind of information for a book about coal miners. I said something about our leaders needing good information to make wise decisions, information that wasn’t always in libraries or archives, information that would provide better understanding about motivations behind the protests against our bases.

  It was too much of a stretch for Kanto, and he left the office without saying whether or not he would prepare the report.

  We were to have lunch later in the week at a noodle restaurant in Shibuya. I had gotten Kanto used to “clandestine” meetings outside the office and persuaded him to use an alias (he selected Momotaro, the Peach Boy). However, I wasn’t sure he would to show up, because he hadn’t been happy about providing the list of names and had left the office in a bad mood. He was at the restaurant there, however, when I arrived. He slurped down the last of his noodles, nodded briefly, and handed me an envelope. He then got up and left the restaurant. The biographic sketches were inside the envelope. The second hook was in.

  The following week I gave Kanto his stipend and asked him to sign a receipt.

  “Receipt? First I give you information about my friends. Now you want a receipt for my stipend. Why?”

  This was the toughest hurdle, asking a prospective agent to sign for money. I tried to soften the request, saying it was purely an “administrative detail.” Since my sponsor’s funds came from the government, he had to account for his expenditures. Nothing personal.

  I had peeled off the last layer, revealing that Kanto would indirectly be working for the U.S. government. To my surprise, he didn’t protest or even react. He reached over and took the receipt, scratched something at the bottom, and handed it back.