by Barry Eisler
“How does he get his information?”
“An extensive system of wiretaps, video surveillance, and accomplices. Every time he traps someone new, the victim becomes complicit and assists him in furthering his network of blackmail.”
“Why would they help him?”
“Carrot and stick. Yamaoto of course has on his payroll a number of young women sufficiently beautiful to make even the most faithfully married politician temporarily forget himself. Say he has one of his people videotape a member of Parliament engaging in an embarrassing sexual act with one of these women. The politician is then shown the videotape and told that it will be kept in confidence in exchange for his vote on certain measures, typically affecting public-works spending, and for his cooperation in entrapping his colleagues. If the politician has a conscience, he won’t want to vote in favor of these ridiculous public projects, but his fear of exposure is now a much more significant motivator than his conscience would ever have been. As for entrapping his colleagues, there is some psychology at work: by making others dirty, he feels less dirty by comparison. And because elections are decided in Japan not by a politician’s voting record but by his access to money, Yamaoto offers an enormous slush fund that the politician can use to fund his next election campaign. Yamaoto gives generously: once a politician is part of his network, it is in his interest to see that person reelected, to advance the politician’s career. Yamaoto’s influence runs so deep that, if you’re not part of his network, you can’t get anything done and anyway you’ll be defeated in the next election by being outspent by one of his puppets.”
“With all that power, why have I never heard of him?”
“Yamaoto does not reveal the source of the pressure being applied. His victims know only that they are being blackmailed, not by whom. Most of them believe it is the work of one or another LDP faction. And why not? Every time Yamaoto determines that a scandal is in his interest, the LDP becomes the focus of the country’s attention. Ironic, isn’t it? Yamaoto manages things so that even the LDP believes the LDP is the power. But there is a power behind the power.”
I thought of the reports I’d been tracking, of Tatsu’s conspiracy theories. “But you’ve been focusing on corruption in the LDP yourself, Tatsu.”
His eyes narrowed. “How would you know that?”
I smiled. “Just because we’ve fallen out of touch doesn’t mean I’ve lost interest.”
He took another drag on the cigarette. “Yes, I focus on corruption in the LDP,” he said, the smoke jetting down from his nostrils. “Yamaoto is amused by this. He believes it serves his ends. And it would, if any of my reports were taken seriously. But only Yamaoto decides when corruption is to be prosecuted.” There was a bitter set to his mouth as he said it.
I couldn’t help but smile at him — the same wily bastard I knew in Vietnam. “But you’ve been playing possum. Your real goal is Yamaoto.”
He shrugged.
“Now I understand why you wanted that disk,” I said.
“You knew of my involvement, Rain-san. Why didn’t you contact me?”
“I had reason not to.”
“Yes?”
“Midori,” I said. “If I’d given it to you, Yamaoto would still think it was missing, and he would keep coming after Midori. Publication was the only way to make her safe.”
“Is this the only reason you were reluctant to contact me?”
I looked at him, wary. “I can’t think of anything else. Can you?”
His only response was the sad smile.
We walked for a moment in silence, then I asked, “How did Yamaoto get to Holtzer?”
“By offering him what every man wants.”
“Which is?”
“Power, of course. How do you think that Holtzer rose so quickly through the ranks to become chief of Tokyo Station?”
“Yamaoto’s been feeding him information?”
“Of course. It is my understanding that Mr. Holtzer has been notably successful at developing assets in Japan. And as chief of station in Tokyo, he has been responsible for producing certain critical intelligence reports — particularly regarding corruption in the Japanese government, on which Yamaoto is of course an expert.”
“Christ, Tatsu, the quality of your information is almost scary.”
“What is scary is how useless the information has always been to me.”
“Holtzer knows that he’s being played?”
He shrugged. “At first, he thought he was developing Yamaoto. Once he realized that the opposite was true, what were his options? Tell the CIA that the assets he had developed were plants, the reports all fabricated? That would have meant the end of his career. The alternative was much more pleasant: work for Yamaoto, who continues to feed him the ‘intelligence’ that makes Holtzer a star. And Yamaoto has his mole inside the CIA.”
Holtzer, a mole, I thought, disgusted. I should have known.
“Holtzer told me that the CIA had been developing Kawamura, that Kawamura was on his way to deliver the disk to the Agency when he died.”
He shrugged. “Kawamura screwed me. He might have screwed the Agency, as well. Impossible to say, and irrelevant.”
“What about Bulfinch,” I asked. “How did Holtzer get to him?”
“By having him followed until you handed over the disk, of course. Bulfinch was a soft target, Rain-san.” I heard the soft note of criticism in his voice — telling me it was stupid to give the disk to a civilian.
We walked silently again for a few minutes. Then he said, “Rain-san. What have you been doing in Japan all this time? Since the last time we met.”
With Tatsu, it was a mistake to assume that anything was small talk. A small warning bell went off somewhere in my consciousness.
“Nothing terribly new,” I said. “The same consulting work as before.”
“What was that, again?”
“You know. Helping a few U.S. companies find ways to import their products into Japan. Get around the red tape, find the right partners, that sort of thing.”
“It sounds interesting. What sort of products?”
Tatsu ought to have known better than to think a few simple questions would crack my cover story. The consulting business, the clients, they’re all real, albeit not exactly Fortune 500 stuff.
“Why don’t you check out my Web site?” I asked him. “There’s a section full of client references on it.”
He waved his hand in a “don’t-be-silly” gesture. “What I mean is, What are you still doing in Japan? Why are you still here?”
“What difference does it make, Tatsu?”
“I don’t understand. I would like to.”
What could I tell him? I needed to stay at war. A shark can’t stop swimming, or it dies.
But it was more than that, I had to admit to myself. Sometimes I hate living here. Even after twenty-five years, I’m still an outsider, and I resent it. And it’s not just my profession that militates a life in shadows. It’s also that, despite my native features, my native linguistic level, what matters in the end is that inside I am half gaijin. A cruel teacher once said to me when I was a kid, “What do you get when you mix clean water with dirty water? Dirty water.” It took several additional years of slights and rejection before I figured out what she meant: that I’m marked by an indelible stain that the shadows can conceal but never wash away.
“You’ve been here for over two decades,” Tatsu said, gently. “Maybe it’s time for you to go home.”
He knows, I thought. Or he’s on the verge. “I wonder where that is,” I said.
He spoke slowly. “There is a risk that, if you stay, we could learn we have opposing interests.”
“Let’s not learn that, then.”
I saw the sad smile. “We can try.”
We walked again, the sky brooding above us.
Something occurred to me. I stopped walking and looked at him. “It might not be over,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“How?”
“It can’t be copied or transmitted electronically. And it’s encrypted. Holtzer is going to need expertise to decrypt it. Either he has to take the disk to the experts, or the experts will have to come to him.”
He paused for only a second before taking out his cell phone. He input a number, raised the unit to his ear, and waited.
“I need a schedule for visiting American government personnel,” he said in curt Japanese into the phone. “Particularly anyone declared from the NSA or CIA. For the next week, particularly the next few days. Right away. Yes, I’ll wait.”
The U.S. and Japanese governments declare their high-level spooks to each other as part of their security treaty and general intelligence cooperation. It was a long shot, but it was something.
And I knew Holtzer. He was a grandstander. He’d be billing the disk as the intelligence coup of the century. He’d be sure to hand it over himself to ensure that he received full credit.
We waited silently for a few minutes, then Tatsu said, “Yes. Yes. Yes. Understood. Wait a minute.”
He held the phone against his chest and said, “NSA software cryptography specialist, declared to the Japanese government. And the CIA director of East Asian Affairs. Both arriving from Washington tonight at Narita. I don’t believe this is a coincidence. Holtzer must have had them moving as soon as he got the disk.”
“Where are they going? The embassy?”
“Hold on.” He put the phone back to his ear. “Find out whether they’ve requested a diplomatic escort, and if so where they’re going. I’ll wait.”
He put the phone back to his chest. “The Keisatsucho receives many requests for escorts of U.S. government personnel,” he said. “The government people don’t have the budget to pay for sedan service, so they use us on the pretext of diplomatic security. This may be the first time I won’t find this habit annoying.”
He put the phone back to his ear, and we waited. After a few minutes he said, “Good. Good. Wait.” The phone went back to his chest. “Yokosuka U.S. Naval Base. Thursday morning, straight from the Narita Airport Hilton.”
“We’ve got him, then.”
His expression was grim. “How, exactly?”
“Hell, stop Holtzer’s car, take the disk, declare him persona non grata for all I care.”
“On what evidence, exactly? The prosecutors would want to know.”
“Hell, I don’t know. Tell them it was an anonymous source.”
“You’re missing the point. What you’ve told me is not evidence. It’s hearsay.”
“Christ, Tatsu,” I said, exasperated, “when did you turn into such a damn bureaucrat?”
“It isn’t a matter of bureaucracy,” he said sharply, and I wished I hadn’t let my temper flare. “It’s a question of using the proper tools to get the job done. What you are suggesting would be useless.”
I reddened. Somehow, Tatsu could always make me feel like a lumbering, thickheaded gaijin. “Well, if we can’t go through channels, what do you propose instead?”
“I can get the disk and protect Midori. But you will need to be involved.”
“What do you propose?”
“I will arrange to have Holtzer’s car stopped outside the naval facility, perhaps on the pretext of needing to examine its undercarriage for explosive devices.” He looked at me dryly. “Perhaps an anonymous call could warn us of such an attempt.”
“Really,” I said.
He shrugged and intoned a phone number, which I wrote down on my hand, reversing the last four numbers and subtracting two from each of them. When I was done, he said, “An officer will of course have to ask the driver to lower his window to explain.”
I nodded, seeing where he was going. “Here’s my pager number,” I said, and gave it to him. “Use it to contact me when you’ve acquired the information on Holtzer’s movements. Input a phone number, then five-five-five, so I’ll know it’s you. I’m going to need some equipment, too — a flashbang.” Flashbang grenades are just what they sound like: no shrapnel, just a big noise and a flash of light, so they temporarily disorient, rather than kill and maim. Antiterrorist units use them to stun the occupants of a room before kicking down the door and shooting the bad guys.
I didn’t have to tell him what the flashbang was for. “How can I get it to you?” he asked.
“The fountain at Hibiya Park,” I answered, improvising. “Drop it in on the side facing Hibiya-dori. Right up at the edge, like this.” I drew a diagram on my hand to ensure that he understood. “Page me when you emplace it so it doesn’t stay insecure for too long.”
“All right.”
“One more thing,” I said.
“Yes?”
“Warn your people. I don’t want anyone shooting at me by mistake.”
“I will do my best.”
“Do better than your best. It’s my ass that’s going to get shot at.”
“It’s both our asses,” he said, his voice level. “If you are unsuccessful, I can assure you that there will be an inquiry into who ordered that the car be stopped, and under what pretext. If I am lucky, under such circumstances, I will merely have to take early retirement. If I am less than lucky, I will go to prison.”
He had a point, although I didn’t think he would have accepted an offer to trade my risk for his. Not that it was worth arguing over.
“You just stop the car,” I told him. “I’ll take care of the rest.”
He nodded, then bowed with unsettling formality.
“Good luck, Rain-san,” he said, and walked off into the gathering darkness.
22
I LOVE TOKYO at night. It’s the lights, I think: more than the architecture, more, even, than its sounds and scents, the lights are what animate the city’s nocturnal spirit. There is brightness: streets alight with neon, with the urgent blinking of constellations of pachinko parlors, streets where the store windows and the headlights of a thousand passing cars illuminate the pavement as brightly as the halogen lamps of a night baseball game. And there is gloom: alleys lit by nothing more than the fluorescent glow of a lonely vending machine, left leaning against the worn brick like an old man who’s given up on everything and wants only to catch his breath, streets lit only by the yellowish pall of lamplights spaced so widely that a passing figure and his shadow seem to evaporate in the dim spaces between.
I walked the gloomy backstreets of Ebisu after Tatsu departed, heading toward the Imperial Hotel in Hibiya, where I would stay until this thing was over. For near-suicidal audacity, what I was about to do would rank with any of the missions I had undertaken during my days with SOG, or with those of the mercenary conflicts that came after. I wondered if Tatsu’s bow was some kind of epitaph.
Well, you’ve survived missions before that ought to have been your last, I thought, letting loose a memory.
After our rampage in Cambodia, things started going bad for my unit. Up until then the killing had been pretty impersonal. You get into a firefight, you’re just aiming at tracer rounds, you can’t even see the people who are firing back at you. Maybe later you’ll find blood or brains, maybe some bodies. Or we’d hear one of the claymore booby traps we’d laid go off a klik or two away, and know we’d nailed someone. But the thing we did at Cu Lai was different. It affected us.
I knew what we had done was wrong, but I rationalized by saying hey, we’re at war; wrong things happen in wars. Some of the other guys got morose, guilt making them gun-shy. Crazy Jake — Jimmy — went the opposite way. He locked himself even tighter into the war’s embrace.
Crazy Jake was fanatically loyal to his Yards — short for Montagnards — and they responded to that. When a Yard was lost in a firefight, Jake would deliver the bad news personally to the village chief. He eschewed army barracks, preferring to sleep in the Yard quarters. He learned their language and their customs, participated in their ceremonies and rituals. Plus, the Yards believed in magic �
� the villages had their own sorcerers — and a man with Jake’s killing record walked with a powerful aura.
All this made the brass uncomfortable, because they didn’t command the Yards’ respect. The problem got worse when we were assigned to beef up the fortified hamlets at Bu Dop, on the Cambodian border, because it exposed Crazy Jake to more of the indigenous population.
Frustrated with the rules of engagement set by the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, and with MACV’s inability to root out the mole who was compromising SOG’s operations, Jake started using Bu Dop as a staging ground for independent missions against the Vietcong in Cambodia. The Yards hated the Vietnamese because the Vietnamese had been shitting on them throughout history, and they were happy to follow Crazy Jake on his lethal forays. But SOG was being disbanded, and Vietnamization — that is, turning the war over to the Vietnamese so that America could back out — was the order of the day. MACV told him to shut off the Cambodian ops, but Jake refused — said it was just part of defending his hamlets.
So MACV recalled him to Saigon. Jake ignored them. A detachment was sent in to retrieve him, and never returned. This was even more spooky than if they had been slaughtered, their severed heads run up on pikes. Did they turn and join Crazy Jake? Did he have that much magic? Did he just disappear them into thin air?
So they cut off his supplies. No more weapons, no more materiel. But Jake wouldn’t cease and desist. MACV figured out that he was selling poppy to finance his operation. Jake had become his own universe. He had a self-sustaining, highly effective, fanatically loyal private army.
MACV knew about Jimmy and me; they had the personnel files. They brought me in one day. “You’re going to have to go in there and get him,” they told me. “He’s selling drugs now, he’s going unauthorized into Cambodia, he’s out of control. This is a public-relations fiasco if it gets out.”
“I don’t think I can get him out. He’s not listening to anyone,” I said.