by Ashton, Hugh
“Maybe nothing,” repeated Sugita. “And then you got collared while you were smoking a cigarette?” He seemed to be slightly amused by this.
“That’s right. I was keeping a watch for Eric to come out again – if I saw anything, I was to call his phone, and so when I saw Mr Sharpe’s wife go in, I called him, like I said.”
“So why were you still there?”
“I was waiting for my money,” replied Osaki. “Eric had told me that I would get the rest of the money if I waited there for him after the job had finished. Well, I saw the police car come up, and I thought to myself that Eric wouldn’t be coming back while the police were around, so it would be a good time for me to have a cigarette. But it’s an odd thing, I could have sworn there was someone else nearby watching.”
“Did you see this other person?” asked Sugita.
“No, like I said, it was more of a feeling than anything else.”
“Well, that’s all very interesting. We’ll be asking you to sign a statement about all this soon. Understood?”
Osaki nodded. “May I speak to Mr Sharpe, please?” he asked Sugita. Sugita signalled his assent.
Osaki lifted his head and looked into Sharpe’s eyes. “I’d like to apologise for my part in this,” he said in his Australian English. “When I came into your flat last night, I really had no idea what a mess it was going to be. I didn’t know that it was going to be this kind of thing. Of course I knew that it was going to be a robbery, but not that kind. I mean, if I had known what kind of job it was going to be, I wouldn’t have … I mean, I’m bloody sorry about it all.” He voice tailed off as he knelt on the floor and bowed.
“Get up and shut up,” said Sugita, but his voice was not unkind.
Sharpe added, “Thank you for the apology.” A slight bow in return.
“OK, take him away for now,” Sugita said to Kurokawa, who’d watched this little comedy in silence. “And no need for the cuffs,” he added, as Kurokawa reached for them.
“Well?” he asked Sharpe in English as the door closed. “Do you want us to keep him in jail? Charge him with being an accessory? We can keep him for a long time, you know, before we charge him with anything.”
Sharpe had never been put in a position like this before. “I really have no idea.”
“OK, then. What do you think of his story? Do you believe him?”
“Do you?” Sharpe countered.
“I’m sorry to say that I do,” replied Sugita, shaking his head. “Usually I would never have believed Ben would do such a thing. But I do know that his agency is very concerned about the Katsuyama case.”
Sharpe thought the matter over for a while, “Can we reach a compromise?” he asked. “I’m not going to excuse that kid everything, of course. But at the same time, he’s not really guilty of anything serious, is he?” Sugita shook his head in agreement. “So how about keeping him in the cells for tonight, and then letting him out tomorrow morning? Tell him I don’t want to press charges or anything?” Sharpe reckoned this might save Sugita the embarrassment of his complicity with Ben and his agency. Much as he liked the idea of Ben getting his comeuppance in public, he saw no point in unnecessarily provoking Sugita and his group of whatever they were. He was sure by now that they weren’t the regular police.
Sugita nodded. “I like that idea. It would be a waste of time and trouble for us to take him to court. That’s what we’ll do, then.”
-o-
Sharpe was on his way home from the police station, and was just pulling out his mobile phone to call Mieko and let her know where he was, when he heard a voice behind him.
“Here, mate!” Sharpe turned. To his dismay, he saw the Australian who’d been telling him on the train about the Isle of Mantids the other day. One of the last people he wanted to see. “Here,” his unwelcome companion panted as he caught up with Sharpe. “Let me buy you a coffee or something. Put you straight for me bending your ear with that load of bollocks the other day.” He grasped Sharpe’s elbow and firmly steered him to a nearby branch of a national chain of cheap restaurants. There was no wriggling out of it without making more fuss than the occasion seemed to warrant, so Sharpe submitted with a bad grace.
When they were seated at an isolated table, the Australian ordered coffee for two from the waitress, a plump moon-faced girl who looked as though she’d be happier doing anything other than her current job. Maybe it was the unflattering absurdly short skirt that formed part of her uniform that was depressing her. While they were waiting for the order to arrive, Sharpe sat with his arms folded, feeling sulky. He hoped it showed. His companion kept him company in his silence. Maybe he’d got the message, Sharpe thought.
The coffee came, borne by the miserably mini-skirted waitress, and the Australian pulled the sugar bowl towards him.
“Sorry about this,” he remarked, spooning sugar into his coffee. His Australian accent and attitude was gone, replaced by a British upper-middle-class accent. It didn’t go particularly well with the shabby black T-shirt with a fluorescent koala design. “Can’t be too careful where Sugita’s concerned.”
Sharpe tried to keep a straight face, but failed. “How the hell do you know about Sugita?”
“My job, old boy.” He reached in an inside pocket and scaled a laminated plastic card across the table. His photograph was printed on it, with a name, Jonathan Campbell, and impressive-looking lettering identifying the bearer as an employee of Her Britannic Majesty’s Government.
“MI5? Or 6?” asked Sharpe. “I can never remember which is which.”
“Don’t be silly. Nothing as grand as that. British Department of Trade and Industry – we don’t like to advertise our presence too widely sometimes. I’m not James Bond, I don’t have any kind of license to kill, and I don’t have a cigarette lighter hidden in my micro-camera. Or even the other way round. Cheers.” He lifted his cup, swigged the coffee, and made a face. “That stuff is bloody awful. Wonder what they put in it.”
Sharpe looked suspiciously at the contents of his cup, and sipped gingerly. It tasted much the same as always to him. “Seems OK to me.”
“You’ve been here too long, that’s your trouble. What’s it now, fifteen years ago that you came here?”
“About that,” Sharpe agreed.
“Now me, I’ve only been here a few months, and I can still remember the taste of Seattle coffee. That’s where I was before. There and Silicon Valley.”
“Chasing Bill Gates and Steve Jobs?”
“Something like that,” the other admitted. “Why did you come to this benighted part of the world in the first place, anyway?”
“Came here as an English teacher after I lost my job in the UK. I was also running away from a rather painful divorce. The pay was reasonable, and it sounded exotic in England at the time, but the reality is actually incredibly boring and frustrating. So I got out of that as soon as I found a company that could use my UK experience in the technical field, and then I started working for myself about seven years back.”
“Why did you start working for yourself? Why not for a company? I’d have thought it was incredibly risky, setting yourself up as any kind of consultant in a country as weird as this.”
“I’m not a joiner,” Sharpe confessed. “I don’t want to get too deeply involved.” It was true, he told himself. He tended not to become a full member of anything he was associated with, preferring to stay on the outside and observe with what he hoped would be taken for cynical detachment. A fear of getting too deeply involved and then getting hurt, if he rationalized it to himself. Maybe that’s why he had stayed in Japan – he could be a perpetual outsider, with no chance of getting sucked into the mainstream of society. His English divorce had hurt him more than he wanted to admit to himself.
“In any case,” he responded, “what and who the hell are you? Technology police or something?”
“That’s a lot closer to the truth than you might imagine, you know.” He took another sip of his coffee and called the
waitress over. “Put simply, we keep an eye on technology developments which could be of interest to HMG.”
“Officially sanctioned industrial espionage, then?”
“That’s about the size of it. We don’t actually steal trade secrets or anything, but we do give discreet little nudges behind the scenes to make sure that deals go the way we want.” He studied the large glossy menu, and eventually pointed out a picture of a plate of miniature doughnuts to the depressed waitress, who seemed to have just discovered yet another reason why life was not worth living.
“To British companies?” asked Sharpe, watching the rotund backside and chubby thighs move slowly towards the kitchen.
“Where possible. But often it’s just a case of making sure the deal doesn’t go the wrong way, rather than making sure it goes the right way.”
“Atomic secrets to North Korea?”
“That’s an extreme example, but yes, that’s the sort of thing. Remember that deal where the maglev technology was going to go to the Frogs and then didn’t?” Sharpe nodded, remembering how the French had been interested in purchasing superconductor magnetic levitation from Sumitomo to make their next-generation high-speed train, the UGV. The deal had fallen flat, and the license had gone instead to a Singaporean company developing a rapid transit system in Brunei.
“Well,” continued the other, accepting the doughnuts from the waitress, “that was me making sure that the deal didn’t go through. Or rather, not me, but my boss here.”
“I thought we were friends with the French?”
“Friends, sure.” He laughed mirthlessly. “Come off it. Anyway, us poor bloody infantry in the trenches just do the pushing. The owls in Whitehall give me the direction to push in.” He bit into a doughnut. “Jesus Christ! What’s in this thing?” holding it out towards Sharpe.
Sharpe inspected it. “Anko. Bean jam.”
“If it’s been jam, what is it now?” Sharpe sat silently. “Don’t bother laughing. It’s not that funny in any case. Want one?” gesturing to the plate. Sharpe shook his head. “Don’t blame you. How do you stand this bloody country, anyway?” Sharpe continued to sit in silence. “Don’t bother answering that one, either.”
Sharpe stirred in his seat. “Actually, I do have a question or two for you to answer. Why the hell were you following me around the other day, and what was that load of crap about the island with those insects?”
The other took another bite of the doughnut, winced, and put the uneaten half on the plate. “I wasn’t really following you, if you want to know. I was following Katsuyama, who, as I am sure you have found out, is no longer around to be followed, and I needed to talk to someone in the train that he was in. You didn’t notice him there? I don’t think you were meant to. You were the only other Westerner in that carriage that day. You turned up in almost every public place that he visited since we started trailing him, so it was pretty obvious who he wanted to talk to. He was just waiting for the moment. Like it or not, your name and face are quite well-known round this town, and it’s fairly easy to get hold of basic information such as where you live and so on. And as for the Isle of the Mantids that I was talking about, it’s basically bullshit. Sort of entertaining, but still bullshit.”
“Well, thank you for the explanation or confession or whatever you want to call it. Now I feel much better, and I’m sure you feel better as well for having got all that off your chest. Now go in peace and sin no more. Go on. Piss off.”
“What’s eating you, then?”
“Can’t you bloody guess? First thing is I find I’m being tailed by a mad scientist with North Korean connections, who falls under a train the same evening I meet him. Then I get grilled under the bright lights by the Japanese police and the CIA playing tag-team. Then my place gets worked over and trashed and my stuff is stolen. Then I have to sit and watch the Japanese police beat up some poor sod who’s only involved by accident. And then James Bond comes crashing into my life telling me that he’s been following me around as well, and now he wants me to play on his team. All right,” as the other held up a warning hand, “you’re not James Bond. You can be Austin Powers if you prefer,” referring to the James Bond parodies. “But if it was you, wouldn’t you feel a little pissed off at this stage of the game?”
“OK, OK, you have a point. Several points, I suppose. Let me explain a few things to you. Want to stay here, or walk outside?”
“Walk and talk? We can’t be bugged outside, right?”
“Oh, don’t be so bloody stupid. No-one’s bugging us.” Sharpe let the other collect the bill and pay for it. After all, he’d ordered the uneaten doughnuts.
As they were leaving the restaurant, Sharpe asked, “What’s your name? What do I call you?”
“Which?”
“I assume there’s a difference between your name, and what I call you, then? Like Ben?”
“We’ll come to Ben in a moment, if we’re talking about the same person, which I am pretty sure we are. Call me Jon. Without the ‘H’. It’s the name on my card, if you didn’t notice, and actually happens to be my real name, if it makes you feel any better.”
They walked side by side, with Sharpe taking the lead in determining the direction. After five minutes of silence they arrived at a line of trees flanking a small stream, deep-set in its concreted banks. “Great in April when all these cherries are out in flower,” remarked Sharpe. “Not so wonderful right now, but let’s walk along the bank anyway. We come to a station in about a kilometre, and you can take the train back to the embassy from there – I take it that’s where you’ll be writing up your report?” Jon said nothing. “Oh, please yourself. Now tell me whatever it is that you think I’m entitled to know. Need-to-know – isn’t that how you people work? Well, I need to know quite a lot.”
“OK, what do you know about Sugita for starters?”
“Inspector in the police who’s a nice guy, or likes to be seen as one, anyway,” leaving it vague as to whether it was as a police inspector or a nice guy that Sugita liked to be seen. “Plays good cop in the good cop, bad cop game.”
“Let’s start with him. First, his name’s not really Sugita, as you might guess. It’s Ishihara – and yes, there is a very vague family connection to the Governor of Tokyo, but it’s not a strong one. I think we can ignore it in this case. He certainly doesn’t share his relative’s xenophobia. Next, he’s not really a police inspector any more. You’d probably worked that out. You don’t think that the police would let an inspector appear in a uniform fitting that badly, do you? I’ve seen him in it a couple of times, and nearly wet myself laughing whenever he bends over, waiting for his trousers to split.”
“Go on.” Sharpe wasn’t sure if was better to be questioned by a fake policeman or a real one.
“He’s actually sort of my opposite number, I suppose. Employed by the Ministry of Justice – in one of their special departments which actually aren’t their departments. It’s complicated. There are quite a few of them, and I don’t know all the ins and outs of how they’re organized. Some seem to be focussed on anti-gang activities, some on military intelligence, some on economic intelligence, and so on. Most of these funny little groups seem to be based out of the police headquarters in Kasumigaseki, and they’re almost always headed by ex-police. Ishihara actually was a pretty good criminal investigator, specialising in things like intellectual property theft and related white-collar crime, and his sidekick Kurokawa is an impressive performer, too. Went to Quantico as joint liaison with the FBI at one time.”
Sharpe remembered the way Kurokawa had backhanded the lookout man, and thought “impressive” might be the wrong adjective to describe him.
Jon went on. “You know that Japan has no intelligence service worthy of the name?” Sharpe shook his head. “What they have instead is a collection of pretty amateur agents in every ministry and department, as well as the military intelligence arms. And of course, a lot of the work is effectively outsourced to the large conglomerates, who pass o
n to the government some of their industrial and other interesting material that they pick up, as a patriotic duty. But there’s no central co-ordination – silly buggers. Anyway, your Inspector Sugita is pretty much the number one man in his field, which is the sort of thing you’re involved with. Technology and that sort of thing.”
“What about the police working with him? I mean the ones who came round last night.”
“Well, the one who came by to ask you about Katsuyama’s death – don’t worry, I know most of the facts, and I’ll explain how in a while – is also one of Ishihara’s men, but he’s one who’s never been in the police. Do you think a real trained police officer would leave his gun behind like that? Come to that, do you think it was a real gun?”
Sharpe thought about it, more than a little surprised and shocked by the knowledge that Jon seemed to have of his actions and meetings over the past few days, but it all seemed to make a sort of sense. “Go on,” he repeated.
“As I said, Kurokawa is Ishihara’s man, of course, and so is Yatabe. In fact, the four we’re talking about make up the mainstay of the team. The other police who came round to your place last night are active-duty bona fide 24-carat police. But they have standing orders to subordinate their activities to Ishihara when he demands it. They hate doing it, of course, but they do it.”
“And Ben?”
“Oh, ‘Ben’? The thing you know as Ben is a real piece of work. Real name is Al S. Kowalski, believe it or not. Ex-spook. Very much ex. He was sent over here about fifteen years ago, and was one of the principal parties in a very nasty scandal involving a teenage male prostitute found naked and bleeding to death in a Roppongi back street one morning. Very nasty place to be bleeding from, as well. Seems like Al likes a bit of rough in his sex life. Japanese police couldn’t touch him – diplomatic immunity and all the rest of the crap, but they were mightily pissed off, I heard. Added to which, Big Al hits the bottle and goes on uncontrollable benders for a couple of weeks at a time. So the Agency kicked him out, and there’s a warrant waiting for him if he ever shows his face in the good old US of A again. Which of course, he never will.”