by Jeremy Bates
I rinsed my hands and left the lavatory.
I scanned the cabin for Okubo but didn’t see her anywhere—and then remembered why I had gotten up in the first place.
Hallie Smith.
The lavatory across from the one I had exited was unoccupied. I counted forty-two business-class seats across seven rows in total—and the two seats that had previously been vacant were now occupied. A Japanese businessman in a snazzy suit sat in one, while another businessman, disheveled and deflated, sat in the other.
The British embassy woman, it seemed, had vanished into thin air.
Chapter 3
The 787 Dreamliner made a firm landing at 5:05 p.m. Japan Standard Time, five minutes behind schedule. The touchdown included a few jarring jumps that made me feel like a stone skipping over water before the pilot deployed the aircraft’s spoilers, thrust reversers, and brakes, dissipating our speed until we slowed to a crawl.
Once we taxied to our designated terminal and the seatbelt sign pinged off, I collected my carry-on bag and stood. The big man next to me did the same. When our eyes met, his lips curled into a sneer before he diverted his attention to his cell phone. The cabin door opened and passengers around me began shuffling to the exit. I joined the queue, thinking one of the most underrated perks of flying business class was your ability to disembark first and quickly.
Okubo and her European counterpart stood in the galley, thanking everybody for flying with Japan Airlines. As I passed Okubo I mouth the words “I will call you” and was pleased to see her smile.
Yet as I made my way to the immigration area, I found myself not so much thinking about Okubo as Hallie Smith. She’d been on my mind for the latter half of the flight. I’d eventually convinced myself her disappearance was a big mix-up. The fat man was mistakenly given an economy-class seat, while Hallie was given his business-class seat in place. This could also explain why she’d seemed so bubbly. She’d thought she’d scored a massive upgrade. At some point during the flight, however, the fat man realized he should have been seated in business class and raised this concern with a cabin attendant, and he and Hallie were reassigned to their proper seats.
A flimsy explanation certainly, but it was the best I had come up with.
Which was why I was keeping my eyes open for the British embassy woman. If we crossed paths, a brief and lighthearted “What happened to you?” would sort out the entire mystery. But I didn’t see her among the other deplaned passengers, and by the time I reached the immigration area, I had no patience to wait for her to arrive. Instead, I flashed my travel card to a uniformed attendant, who gestured me down a special fast-track priority lane to a stern-looking immigration officer in a glass-walled booth. I passed him my disembarkation card and passport.
“Why are you in Japan?” he asked, barely raising his eyes as he accepted the travel documents.
“Business,” I told him.
“Where are you staying?”
“The Park Hyatt in Shinjuku.”
“How long are you staying?”
“Four days.”
He scanned my passport and checked the information that had appeared on his computer screen. He scanned my passport again, then flipped through the booklet’s pages, which were marred with a cornucopia of stamps from East Asian countries. He frowned at the computer screen.
“Is something wrong?” I asked him.
“A moment,” he said, distracted. Then he stood. “Please wait here.” He left his booth with my passport.
I glanced over my shoulder at the queue forming behind me. I always rolled my eyes at people who got held up at immigration, berating them for not having all their documents in order.
And now I was that guy.
∆∆∆
When the immigration official returned, he said, “Is this your only passport?”
I frowned. “Yes, why?”
“Please come with me.”
The man exited the glass-walled booth once again and waited for me to join him. Seeing no other option—if there was one person in the world it wasn’t wise to argue with, it was an immigration officer on his home turf—I picked up my carry-on bag and met him at the back of the booth.
“This way,” he said, beckoning me.
Reluctantly, I followed.
∆∆∆
We didn’t go far. To the right of the immigration booths were a series of Special Examination Rooms. The one I entered was white and windowless and redolent of stale coffee. The immigration officer left me alone, closing the door behind him. I waited a moment, then tried the handle. Locked. I noticed a dome video camera in the center of the acoustic-tiled ceiling. Ignoring it, I took a seat in one of two chairs tucked beneath a small table. For a long moment I simply stared at the floor in perplexed thought before I dug my cell phone from my pocket and sent a short text message to my boss, Stephen Seville, who had replaced Liz Gordon as W. Grant & Sons’ head of sales and marketing five years ago.
I pressed Send and immediately received an error:
Not sent. Tap to try again.
I tapped and got the same error.
“Sacré bleu,” I mumbled, and was about to send another message to a different colleague when the door opened and the immigration officer reappeared.
“One big mistake?” I asked cheerfully.
“May I have your phone?”
“You are confiscating my phone?”
“For the moment.” He held out a hand.
“Are you going to tell me what the problem is?”
“Your immigration status.”
“I do not need a visa to enter Japan.”
“Phone, please.” He shook his hand impatiently.
“Am I a biosecurity risk? You found an apple inside my luggage? If so, I apologize. I will pay the fine.”
The immigration officer’s face remained professionally blank. “If I have to ask you for your phone again, I will summon security.”
“Merde,” I swore, handing him my phone.
He indicated my carry-on bag on the floor next to my chair. “That too.”
“Why—?” I shook my head, knowing I wasn’t going to get an answer. I passed it to him.
“Is there a laptop in here?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Is there a password for it?”
“You are going to search my computer?”
“Do you have something to hide?”
I didn’t. “No password,” I said. “Enjoy.”
He left with my stuff. I glanced up at the dome camera. Was I being watched right then? I settled back into the plastic chair, crossing my legs, trying to get comfortable.
I had an uneasy suspicion I wasn’t going to be leaving this small room any time soon.
Chapter 4
My intuition was right. I called the Special Examination Room home for the next three hours. When the door finally opened, it wasn’t the immigration officer who appeared, but rather two security guards in navy uniforms, peaked caps, and white gloves. One appeared to be in his fifties, the other in his thirties.
I got to my feet. “Who are you men?”
“Your security escort,” the older one told me in a voice like a gravel road. “Do you want dinner?”
“Yes, of course.” In fact, my stomach was yowling from its emptiness.
“Not free. Twenty thousand yen.”
“Two thousand?” I corrected, believing he’d made a mistake.
“Twenty thousand.”
“Twenty?” I repeated in disbelief. That was close to two hundred dollars.
“Do you want dinner?”
I stared at him. Was I being shaken down? Surely not in Japan. Thailand, yes, or Vietnam, or the Philippines. But not Japan. Still, the man appeared dead serious. I decided I was too hungry and tired to argue with him.
I gave the older security guard—whose quick, fiendish eyes never left my wallet—two ten-thousand-yen bills, which I’d exchanged for pesos in Manila.
“Okay
?” I said.
“Follow us,” he said, tucking the money away in a pocket.
I knew the layout of Narita Airport well from my past travels. I expected my security escorts to take me up to the terminal’s fourth or fifth floor, where the shops and restaurants were located. Instead, they led me down an escalator to the terminal’s second floor, past the baggage claim and customs inspections, to the international arrival lobby, which was now mostly empty.
We stopped before a Lawson convenience store.
“Wait here,” the older security guard ordered. He entered the shop.
I turned to the younger security escort. He had a wispy goatee and shifty eyes. “Convenience store food?” I said, unimpressed.
“Quiet!”
I checked my wristwatch. It was 10:34 p.m. “Is Narita open twenty-four hours?”
“Quiet!”
I didn’t think the airport was open around the clock. I always booked my own flights, and I couldn’t recall ever seeing flights arrive after 11 p.m. or before 6 a.m.
Surely I wasn’t going to be held in the Special Examination Room overnight?
The elder security escort returned and handed me a brown paper bag. I peeked inside it.
An onigiri rice ball and some cold soba noodles.
“Do you have some change for me?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “No change,” he said.
“I am not an idiot. This cost a few hundred yen. I gave you twenty thousand. Where is the rest of my money?”
He shrugged. “Service fee.”
I frowned. “What ‘service fee’?”
“For taking you here.”
“For taking me down the escalator?” I shook my head. “Where am I supposed to eat this?”
“Here,” he said.
“Here?” I looked around. “Right here? Standing?”
He didn’t answer. Scowling, I set the bag on the floor. I took out the noodles and slurped them into my mouth with a pair of wooden chopsticks, trying not to splatter any of the dashi dipping sauce on my suit. I exchanged the empty container for the onigiri. An outer piece of plastic covered the triangular rice ball, while an interior piece separated the seaweed from the rice. There was a precise way to unwrap the thing, yet in my haste I tore through the seaweed and broke the rice. Consequently, I had to stuff all the bits into my mouth so I didn’t end up dropping them on the floor.
“Best twenty thousand yen I have ever spent,” I told the security guards sardonically, brushing my hands clean. I picked up the paper bag. “Where are we going now?”
“Landing Prevention Facility.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “What is a landing prevention facility?”
“Follow!”
Sighing, I followed them to a nearby elevator. I dumped my trash in a bin. The older guard inserted a key into a lock and jabbed the Down button. A few moments later the elevator doors opened and we stepped inside the cab. The guard hit another Down button, followed by the Door Close button. We descended to B1, then to B2, before stopping at B3.
The doors slid open. We stepped into a tenebrous concrete tunnel.
“What is this?” I demanded.
“This way,” the older guard barked, steering me by the elbow.
I shook my arm free and walked on my own. From somewhere above me I thought I heard the rumbling of a train. Twenty meters onward we came to a metal door that wasn’t labeled. The older guard opened it with a key and the younger one shoved me inside.
“Hey!” I protested.
“Wait,” the older guard told me. He went to a desk manned by two more security guards, though they were dressed in different uniforms. A conversation ensued. Unfortunately, they were too far away for me to understand what they were saying.
After a minute of this, the old guard returned. He smiled for the first time, revealing nicotine-stained teeth. “You are lucky,” he told me.
“Lucky? Why?” I said, immediately distrustful of this statement.
“Tonight the facility is full.”
“Why does that make me lucky?” My hope surged. “Are you going to release me?”
“Release, no.” He laughed, a grating, arrhythmic sound that could almost be confused for a cough. “We take you to hotel.”
∆∆∆
The hotel was not the nearby Hilton, where I had stayed several times during previous visits to Tokyo, nor was it the ANA Crowne Plaza nor the Toyoko Inn. It wasn’t even the budget capsule hotel located inside Terminal 2.
Rather, it was called the Narita Airport Rest House, a five-minute shuttle ride away. Standing outside the institutional-looking building, the older guard held out his hand. “Thirty thousand yen,” he told me.
I scoffed. Not that thirty thousand yen was an outrageous amount to spend on an airport hotel room. In fact, given how much I’d been charged for the meager dinner, it seemed quite reasonable. Rather, I felt like I was an actor in a bad movie. Who were these two security escorts whisking me around the airport and demanding I pay on-the-go for food and accommodation? Whose authority were they working under? Why wouldn’t they tell me why I was being held?
Regardless, I wasn’t about to deny handing over the money. The airport was nearly deserted and clearly closing up for the night. I lucked out escaping that Landing Prevention Facility in the bowels of the airport, and I had to sleep somewhere. Moreover, once I had my own room, I could make some phone calls, contact my company, or even the Tauredian embassy if I had to. Whatever the misunderstanding was, it would be sorted out by the time I had to check out of the hotel in the morning.
I took my wallet from my pocket and gave the bastard the last of my money.
Chapter 5
The hotel lobby was dated yet clean. A female receptionist was the only person on duty. The older security escort had a few words with her, received an old-fashioned key as opposed to an access card with a magnetic strip, then led me down the first-floor hallway, his cohort trailing closely behind us. We took the elevator to the top floor and went to the room at the end of the carpeted hallway. The guard used the key to open the door, then motioned for me to enter.
I crossed the threshold, then turned around. “I suppose I am not free to leave during the night?”
“He will be outside your door,” the older guard said, indicating his younger counterpart. “You cannot go anywhere. Do not try.”
I closed the door in his face—taking much pleasure in the action.
As I passed the bathroom, I flicked on the light, glimpsing sand-colored tiles and a yellow-hued sink and bathtub that might have been off-white at some point in the distant past. The room itself was your standard Holiday Inn clone decorated in uninspired, muted tones. I drew back the thin curtain from the window. I had to cup my hands against the glass to see out. There was little to look at except the black expanse of the shuttered airport. No balcony, and the windows didn’t open far. Not that I was planning on making my escape down the side of the building Spider-Man style. One, I hated heights. Two, I didn’t have my passport, effectively trapping me in the country. And three, I had no reason to flee. I was innocent of whatever I’d been mixed up in.
A flat-screen TV sat on the end of the long desk, next to an electric kettle and some sachets of green tea. Since my laptop and phone had been confiscated, I had no way of accessing the internet. But the telephone would do just fine for now.
Only there wasn’t one in sight.
After some searching, I discovered a jack next to the bed…but no telephone anywhere. This gave me pause. Had the older security guard asked the receptionist to send someone up here to remove the phone before we arrived?
I went to the door, knocked lightly to announce myself, then opened it. The young security guard was slumped in a chair across the hallway.
He shot to his feet. “Inside,” he said in his poor English, pointing at the room. “Stay inside.”
“Phone?” I said, pantomiming holding a receiver to my ear.
He
shook his head. “No phone.”
“No phone? Where is it?”
“Inside,” he said, stepping toward me, making a shooing gesture with the back of his fingers. “Inside, inside.”
“I just want to use a phone—”
“No phone!” he barked. “Inside!”
I returned inside the room and closed the door. Although I was disheartened that I wouldn’t be unable to get in touch with anybody back home tonight, I didn’t dwell on it. The Immigration Bureau couldn’t hold me without explanation or charge indefinitely. At some point tomorrow they’d have to allow me to make a phone call.
I took a long, hot shower, which did much to improve my state of mind. I didn’t have any pajamas to sleep in, and I wasn’t comfortable passing out buck naked with the security guard sitting outside my door, so I checked the closet. Sure enough, draped on a hanger was a white cotton yukata, a traditional Japanese garment similar in style to a kimono but lighter and more casual. It doubled as both a bathrobe and loungewear, and it wasn’t uncommon to see guests wandering around hotels in them.
I slipped on the yukata, went to the queen bed, and crawled beneath the covers, happy to put the contrary day from hell behind me. I closed my eyes and immediately thought of my boy, Damien. He was four years old now and about as rambunctious as you could get without breaking any laws. He had my golden-brown eyes and maybe my nose too. The rest he got from his mother, including his black hair, skin the color of sandstone, and buttery lips. He was definitely going to break some hearts when he got older.
My ex-wife, Blessica Villainz, had full custody of him, while I had visitation rights only. I never had a chance at attaining anything better. The law in the Philippines dictates that a child under seven years of age should not be separated from his mother due to the basic need for his mother’s loving care. This rule isn’t absolute. But there has to be a compelling reason for the courts to deprive a mother of the custody of her child, such as maltreatment, neglect, unemployment, habitual drunkenness, drug addiction, or plain old insanity. And for all of Bless’ faults, she didn’t check any of these boxes.