At the Sharpe End

by Ashton, Hugh

  “That’s one way of describing it.”

  “So we are permanently deprived of the charming company of Mr Jonathan Campbell, may the Devil bugger his immortal soul? Good riddance to bad rubbish, is what I say.”

  “I’m not going to comment on that. Will you make the official identification for the record as soon as we finish up here?” Kurokawa asked him. “I think it will make things easier if you do it, rather than anyone else from the embassy.”

  “Fine. I don’t see Consular wanting to touch it, anyway. I can always bring in the Official Secrets Act or some such bullshit. What’s the inquest going to conclude as the official cause of death?”

  “Death by misadventure,” replied Kurokawa.

  “Can you really fix the result of an inquest just like that?” Sharpe asked.

  Kurokawa and Barclay looked at each other and laughed. “We can do a bloody sight more than that, Ken lad,” replied Barclay. “So what really happened?”

  Sharpe gave him a brief summary of events, and Barclay chuckled appreciatively. “Hit on the head with a stick and fell into the water? You have to admit that ‘death by misadventure’ sounds a bit more respectable, don’t you think? So the little shit killed Big Al, you think?”

  Sharpe and Kurokawa both nodded. “I know so,” Sharpe said. “He as good as told me all the gory details.”

  “And who did for Kim?” asked Barclay. He and Kurokawa looked at Sharpe, who answered.

  “He claimed that wasn’t him. A family squabble over the money.”

  Barclay sighed theatrically. “Aren’t they always? Over money, I mean.”

  “Apparently, despite what you told me, Tim, Kim actually did seem to have some sincere interest in reforming North Korea. Quite a lot of the gold would have gone to doing that. Tomiko wanted it all, and there was an argument.”

  “Pull her in?” Barclay asked Kurokawa.

  “We’ve no proof, and she might even have done Japan a public service by getting rid of him. I don’t care what she thinks, but our boys in the organised crime side of things don’t seem to think that she’s going to last very long, and that the gang’s going to fall apart anyway. Let her go. With looks like that, and the proof and evidence we don’t have, she’d walk anyway.” He shrugged. “Some things are better left untouched, and I think this is one of them.”

  “I’m truly sorry about your boss, though,” Barclay said to Kurokawa. “I liked him and respected him. We were friends at Cambridge, you know, and I feel a bit ashamed of myself for not having done more to get Jon out of the way. Truth to tell, I really didn’t think he would go as far round the bend as he did. But I really had hoped to have got him out of the country before he could do any damage to anyone.” Sharpe looked up. “No, I never told you, did I? I knew he was up to no good right from before the first time that you and I talked. I had pretty good evidence that he was using some kind of drugs – cocaine or amphetamines or something – maybe not enough evidence for conviction, but suspicious enough to get him sent home. Problem was that the little bastard then went ahead and muddied the waters with all that crap about my alleged insider trading, and the stupid idiots in London would have thought this was just a revenge hatchet job. Which it would have been, I suppose,” he reflected, “but I really wanted him out of the way before he did something stupid. I have no wish to be accused of harbouring druggies in my organisation. I have enough problems as it is without that sort of thing.”

  “I’d say that killing Ishihara in that way was worse than stupid,” Sharpe said.

  “Please, Ken, like Humpty Dumpty, when I say ‘stupid’, it encompasses a whole multitude of sins. It doesn’t just refer to intellectual incapacity.” He turned to Kurokawa. “I really am so sorry about this,” he repeated. “I feel that it was my responsibility to have made sure that he was never in a position where this could have happened.”

  Kurokawa was saved the embarrassment of replying by yet another knock on the door. Shimamura let himself in.

  “No sign of anything in the boat. Sorry.”

  “OK.” Kurokawa sighed. “Have you instructed the fishermen what they should say about all this?”

  “Yes, sir. They’ve been told to say nothing at all.”

  “And if they forget and do start talking?”

  “We found two empty shōchū liquor bottles in the boat. They were drunk and didn’t know what they were talking about.”

  “Good, good,” said Kurokawa. “I don’t think we’re going to have any problems in that direction. So,” turning to Sharpe. “Where is the original disc and the hardware?”

  “My guess is that they’re at the bottom of the sea.”

  “Which I see no point in dragging, with the tides and currents being what they are in that area. Even if we did discover it by some miracle, almost certainly the electronics would be damaged, and probably unusable. And that was the only example?”

  “As far as I know, yes.”

  Barclay swore. At least, that’s what it sounded like, as it was somewhat under his breath.

  “May I ask,” said Sharpe to Kurokawa, “if you do— did find it, what would you do with it?” He had a feeling that he wasn’t going to like the answer. He didn’t.

  “It would belong to the Japanese government, of course,” replied Kurokawa.

  “Why ‘of course’?”

  “Invented by a Japanese citizen—”

  “A self-confessed murderer, living outside Japan, who did most, if not all, of the work in the USA.” This from Barclay.

  Kurokawa waved a hand. “Details. You didn’t really think we were going to let Sharpe keep it, or hand it to you British, did you?”

  “I suppose not. I might have expected some compensation, though, don’t you think?” said Sharpe.

  “It’s a dead issue,” replied Kurokawa.

  “Damn it, that thing’s worth billions, if it’s worth half as much as you say it is,” complained Barclay. “Even if you spent two weeks – two months – dragging the ocean floor, and a year reconstructing things from what you discovered, you’d still come out ahead.”

  “You’ve missed the point,” said Kurokawa. “We’d want to bury this thing so deep that you’d never see it again. Something like this in professional hands – no offence to you,” turning to Sharpe, “wouldn’t just feed off the market. It would influence the market to such an extent that it would become a disruptive force. I’m guessing there would be non-linear equations involved, and the whole global economy would be completely disrupted.”

  Barclay shrugged. “That’s hard to believe.”

  “Not at all,” said Sharpe. “I’m beginning to see what you mean. If we were hedging not just the delta, but the theta by shorting through a third currency … I haven’t worked it all out in my head yet, but I have a gut feeling about what you mean. There’d be an awful lot of stuff feeding back on itself, wouldn’t there?”

  “I’m very happy to say, dear boy, that I haven’t the faintest bloody clue what you’re talking about.” Barclay grinned.

  “I’m not convinced I do, really, either,” said Sharpe. “But I have a glimmering of what Kurokawa-san’s talking about. I’m not sure if I can think of an analogy off the top of my head, but for now, forget any idea that the markets are efficient. They’re not. It’s all herd mentality and mob psychology, and the market’s not much more than a positive feedback loop, whose next set of parameters are driven by the results of the previous event, meaning that we’re really talking chaos theory, and …”

  Barclay covered his ears with his hands. “Please don’t,” said. “I’m just a simple soldier boy.”

  “And I am Marie of Romania,” retorted Sharpe. “You don’t have to understand every little last thing. I think you get the drift. I had a feeling that this might be the case and I actually raised this very point when we started out. Meema is pretty damn smart, after all, but she’s not a whole research department. If we’d been trading in any kind of real volume, and using some fairly smart tra
ding algorithms, it’s conceivable we could have done some real damage there.”

  “I’m glad you see it that way,” said Kurokawa. “It really could be a dangerous toy if the wrong person got hold of it.”

  “Like North Korea?” suggested Sharpe.

  “Exactly. Maybe they don’t have the financial wizards that exist in other countries, but they could certainly make a mess of the world’s economies by being only a little more sophisticated than your trading operations. Of course, they’d need a lot more money to start with than you were using, but they could always use their gold reserves.”

  “Are you seriously telling me that this thing could fuck up the global economy worse than the current gang of Wall Street morons have done?” asked Barclay.

  “Almost certainly,” replied Kurokawa. “Want to see the dollar drop down to 50 yen? I have little doubt it could be done.”

  Sharpe considered an objection. “If we’re talking chaos theory, which we are, aren’t we, surely the Katsuyama gadget would also be a factor in the market, and it would fail to predict its own effects?”

  “Want to try and prove that?” asked Kurokawa.

  “I’m assuming that’s a rhetorical question? Maybe it could predict itself if it was a large enough factor to affect the market on its own. I don’t know. You’d probably have to be a genius along the lines of Katsuyama to know for sure.”

  “So you’re saying that, to use my phrase earlier about Jon Campbell, we’re saying good riddance to bad rubbish? The wonder gizmo is in fact the destroyer of worlds?” Barclay sighed.

  “A bit poetical, but not at all wrong. Now, we have things to do. Our colleagues here in Fujisawa must be appeased, and I am going to have to smooth some ruffled feathers, not just here, but at the Kanagawa prefectural headquarters. Mr Sharpe, you are going to have to stay here for a day or so. Sorry. I’ll make sure you get good treatment.”

  “No more coffee from these people, please.” Sharpe smiled.

  “Seriously, I’ll make sure you’re looked after OK. And I’ll make sure your lady and your friends are informed.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate it.”

  “Major, I am going to need an official note from the British Embassy demanding Mr Sharpe’s release. I leave the how and who to you. Also, I can trust you to sweep things under the carpet when it comes to the untimely demise of your colleague?”

  “I think so. He went swimming early in the morning, got cramp and got into difficulties. His head hit the causeway as he struggled to get out of the water, causing him to lose consciousness and drown.”

  “Perfect,” said Kurokawa. “So let us get on with our appointed tasks, Major, and leave Mr Sharpe to enjoy the hospitality of Fujisawa’s finest.”

  They left. As they did so, Sharpe could almost have sworn that he heard Barclay singing an old hymn to himself: “The trivial round, the common task …” Sharpe grinned to himself. For all his faults, Barclay could be amusing at times.

  -oOo-

  Chapter 21: Tokyo, Narita

  It was two weeks after Sharpe’s final encounter with Jon Campbell. Despite Kurokawa’s breezy assurances, he had spent over a week in police custody before being released. However, while his accommodation fell short of the “luxury cell” he had experienced in Seoul, it was far from being as unpleasant as he had feared. Obviously Kurokawa did have some influence. He’d even managed to get decent coffee sent in from a coffee shop for Sharpe’s benefit.

  At the end of his stay, Kurokawa had come in person to release him.

  “I am sorry that you had to stay in there so long. It took a little more time than I had hoped to get it all sorted out.”

  “So what’s the situation? Officially, I mean.”

  “As we agreed, Jon Campbell died while swimming in water that was far too cold for him. He got cramp and died after hitting his head on a rock.”

  “Did anyone believe it?”

  Kurokawa shrugged. “Who knows? They accepted the story, anyway. Major Barclay informs me that there are several in the British Embassy who aren’t shedding too many tears about his loss. He was cremated here in Japan, of course, and the ashes have been flown back to the UK. The likelihood of your facing any charges based on exhumation are slim, to say the least.”

  “Where have I been?”

  “Well, of course I told your friends, as we agreed. Sorry they couldn’t come to see you, by the way, but we decided that this would attract too much attention. Hope the phone and Internet connection allowed you to keep in contact, anyway.”

  “Yes, they did. Thank you for that.”

  “Anyway, it’s taken this long, I’m afraid, for us to create all the official documents, and then lose them.”

  “Why did you have to create them in the first place?”

  “Bureaucracy. Someone would probably have felt it was their duty to create them at some time. But since there’s a record that it’s been done, there’s no need. And if the same nosy-parker should start looking for them,” he shrugged, “they’re nowhere to be found. But that, as you can probably guess, is hardly an uncommon state of affairs in the Japanese civil service.”

  “So nothing’s happened?”

  “Officially, nothing’s happened,” Kurokawa confirmed. “So let’s go. I have a car waiting outside for you.”

  -o-

  “And so he drove me back to Tokyo and dropped me back home.”

  Sharpe was sitting in a café in the departure area of Narita Airport, explaining to Vishal and Meema, who were flying back to India in a few hours, what had happened to him.

  Because of all the problems that Sharpe had encountered over the past week, and because Vishal and Meema had been busy packing up to go back to India, he’d hardly had a chance to fill them in on all the details.

  “And so here you are back with us,” said Vishal.

  “But only for another,” he checked his watch, “fifty minutes at the most before you start boarding.”

  “Weren’t you scared?” asked Meema. She was looking more relaxed than Sharpe had seen her for a long time, and happy, leaning comfortably against Vishal.

  “Scared? When? When I was facing Jon Campbell? I certainly was. I defy anyone not to be scared if they have a maniac like that waving a bloody great knife in their face.”

  “I am wishing I could have seen his face when you hit him, though.” Vishal smiled.

  Sharpe shook his head. “You wouldn’t want that, believe me. I killed someone—”

  “You didn’t kill him, Ken-chan,” Mieko told him. “From what you told me, he dived into the sea of his own accord. We’ve been through this so many times over the past few days,” she explained to the others.

  “He wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t hit him. I’ve been waking up seeing that bloody face in my dreams every night.”

  “He attacked you, though. It was self-defence.”

  “Even so. I know he was a psycho and out to kill me, but it makes it no easier to live with the memory.”

  “Poor Ken,” said Meema. She reached out and held his hand, squeezing it a little before letting go.

  “So what are they going to be doing about Tomiko?” asked Vishal. “It seems to me that she is the most guilty person left in Japan. You say she killed her father, and she is partly responsible for this Jon fellow being what he is. Are they not going to do anything about her?”

  “And what about Katsuyama?” asked Meema.

  Sharpe held up his hands. “One at a time, and keep your voices down. I don’t want to be telling the whole of the airport about what’s been going on.” Meema and Vishal apologised. “They’ve let Katsuyama know exactly how much they know and what sort of prison sentence he’ll be facing if he comes back here. They seem to be seeing him as a kind of mad genius, with the emphasis on the ‘mad’. I don’t think it’s going to bother him too much if he never sees Tomiko or any of that family again. And according to the police, without the money, Tomiko’s not going to be able to hold the gang together. T
hey don’t see how they could ever get any kind of conviction, anyway.”

  “So do you think Katsuyama’s just going to stay in Vietnam?”

  “Why not? Goodness knows what his business is going to end up doing, and who’s going to be in charge, but he’s smart enough to get by, whatever happens.”

  “And what are you going to be doing, Ken-san?” asked Meema. “No bank’s are going to be hiring contractors like you for a while.”

  “I know. But you did save enough money for me to be able to take stock of the situation for a few months at least. I’m not completely helpless, you know. Still,” he stretched, “it was strange being a millionaire for a few weeks.”

  “And you will be again,” said Vishal. “When you are joining us later.”

  “What’s this?” said Sharpe. Meema and Vishal burst into giggles, and Mieko seemed amused. “What on earth has got into you?”

  “Kenneth-san,” said Vishal. “While you were enjoying your holiday in Fujisawa, we were thinking. The market’s going to settle down. We can use Katsuyama’s technology from Mumbai. As soon as my sister’s had her operation, and she’s feeling well enough to come home, I am thinking that will be the time that we should be starting up the business again.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Sharpe. “All of Katsuyama’s great ideas are at the bottom of the sea. Do you want me to take up scuba diving or something?”

  “Remember, my friend, I have the safety copy of Katsuyama’s disc that I made so long ago. And a copy of the USB memory.” He fished in his pockets, and a look of sheer horror spread over his face. Eventually, after much frantic searching, he came up with a USB stick. He gave a gale-force sigh of relief. “Here you are. And it even contains all the documentation you wrote.”

  “One little thing,” Sharpe reminded him. “We need the DSP array that Katsuyama put together. Without that, there’s no way you’ll be able to make real-time calculations.”