Headhunters

by Mark Dawson

  He slid the laptop and transmitter into his rucksack, opened the door and stepped out. He crossed the quiet space to the car, opened the doors and slid inside.

  *

  ZIGGY PULLED off the road, rolled down the ramp to the underground garage and pressed his pass against the reader. The barrier was raised and he drove ahead, turning to the right and then parking in the usual spot. Shoko’s BMW was opposite. The grumble of the engine echoed off the concrete floor, bouncing back at him, and, for a moment, it sounded uncomfortably loud. He pressed the button to kill the engine and closed his eyes, assailed by a sudden bout of lethargy. He felt brittle and bone tired.

  The doors to the BMW opened and Shoko and her brother stepped out.

  He did the same.

  “There you go,” he said, indicating the Veyron with a sweep of his hand. “Not a scratch on her.”

  Kazuki went over to the car and stroked his fingertips over the hood. “It is a nice car. Very nice.”

  “For that much, it better be nice.”

  Shoko glanced over at him. Her expression was dismissive, as usual.

  “Who are you going to sell it to?”

  “That is a matter for me. You need not concern yourself.”

  “My money?”

  “We need to talk about that.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about. We agreed—”

  Kazuki shrugged. “I will be honest with you. There is no money for you. Not this time.”

  “We said—”

  “What we said is irrelevant. You disrespect me, Ziggy. You disrespect my sister. I pay no money to a man who treats me with disrespect. And, for a man who disrespects my sister, there must be a reckoning. Do you understand my English? Do you know what I mean by that, you arrogant piece of shit?”

  Kazuki undid the buttons on his jacket and let it fall open. Ziggy saw a shoulder strap and the glint of a weapon holstered beneath his left armpit.

  Ziggy took a step away. “Fine. No money. We can call it quits. I’m through with this. You’ll never see me again. Just—”

  “It’s not as simple as that. Arrogant foreigner, arrogant gaijin, you expect me to let you go? Just like that?” He laughed. “No. No, you need to learn about respect. I give you limp in other leg.”

  Ziggy heard the sound of an engine and saw headlights arrowing down the ramp to pool on the ground just beyond the barrier. He looked up at the gate, but the glare of the headlights blinded him.

  “Who’s that?”

  He looked at Kazuki and felt his stomach turn over as he saw his face. The cocksureness had gone. He looked fearful now.

  “Who is it?”

  The car rolled down the ramp and turned in their direction. It was a Range Rover, big and boxy and intimidating. It stopped twenty feet away from them, the high beams still blazing out and making it impossible to see anything beyond them.

  “Kazuki? Who is it?”

  The man had backed up, his sister falling away with him.

  Ziggy stepped even further away from them.

  The passenger door and then both rear doors of the Range Rover opened. Three men got out. The engine was still running and the headlights still burned; it was impossible to make out any detail.

  The door of the Veyron was still open. Ziggy edged over to it.

  The newcomers stepped forward. They were all dressed in the casual uniform of the Yakuza, all sporting extensive tattoos.

  One of them was at the front, flanked by the other two. He scanned the space, focused on Kazuki, and spoke to him in harsh, guttural Japanese. Ziggy tried to understand it, but his attention was hopelessly distracted and his vocabulary was insufficient. He picked out a few choice words—“theft,” “punish,” and a number of imprecations—and watched as the man pointed at the Veyron. He realised what was happening. This man owned the car. He had an air of authority about him, the impression that he was the kind of man used to giving orders.

  Ziggy joined the dots.

  This new man was Yakuza, too, more senior than Kazuki.

  And Ziggy had been sent to steal his car.

  He had been sent to steal the car of a Yakuza wakagashira.

  The newcomer had a pistol in his right hand.

  The men behind him were armed, too.

  One had a shotgun.

  The other had a cleaver.

  Ziggy took another step in the direction of the Veyron.

  Kazuki dropped the pistol and it clattered to the ground.

  The man spat out angry invective.

  Kazuki raised his hands.

  The speaker advanced, raised his pistol and fired.

  The round took Kazuki in the gut.

  Shoko screamed.

  Her brother took a step back, his hands dropping to his stomach, his fingers lacing across it. He bumped up against the wing of the BMW and stumbled forward.

  The man fired again.

  A kill shot this time. Kazuki’s head jerked all the way back, a mist of blood and bone and brain matter spraying across the BMW’s gleaming white paint. He bent backwards at the waist, his arms splaying wide across the hood before his legs buckled and he slid down to the ground, slumped there on his knees.

  Ziggy hurried the rest of the way to the Veyron, ducked his head and slid into the bucket seat. He closed the door and locked it and then reached into his bag for his laptop. It was just sleeping; he slapped his hand on the keyboard to wake it up. The screen seemed to take an age to illuminate.

  Shoko screamed again from outside. Ziggy looked up for an instant: one of the men had gone to her, penning her back against the wall of the garage. The other two were walking toward him. One of them had the shotgun.

  Ziggy opened his app. The car used a rolling code to start the engine. The software was going to have to break it again.

  He turned and looked into the barrel of the shotgun. It was aimed right at him, separated by the glass in the window, less than five feet away.

  He stabbed at the keyboard over and over, trying to cycle the algorithm faster and faster, but knowing, deep down in his gut, that it was no use, and that he was dead.

  “No!”

  Ziggy cranked his head away from the shotgun to the man who had addressed Kazuki. He was waving his hand as he repeated his warning, and, incredulous, Ziggy understood what he meant.

  He didn’t want the car to be damaged.

  Ziggy reached across and fumbled for the central locking.

  The man with the shotgun left it aimed at him while his friend tried the door handle.

  The lock thunked into place.

  “Open door,” the man shouted in poor English.

  “Come on!” Ziggy stammered as he frantically hit refresh. “Come on.”

  The algorithm cycled through and found the correct code.

  Ziggy activated it, and the engine awoke with a feral growl.

  The man who had shot Kazuki yelled angrily.

  Ziggy put the Bugatti into reverse and stamped on the gas. The tyres screeched and then bit. The car lurched back, the man with the shotgun jumping clear just in time. Ziggy had overcompensated, and, before he could apply the brakes, the rear end crashed into the wall. The body of the car was light, made of a light carbon-fibre composite, and it crumpled in on itself. The small rear window was buckled out of shape, cracking down the middle and then shattering into the interior.

  He heard a wail of anguish.

  Ziggy fumbled the stick, crashing the gearbox into first and stamping down, too firmly again, on the gas. The car shot ahead, the rear end swinging out as he yanked the wheel all the way around, skittishly jerking left and right until he mastered it, pointed the nose at the ramp and let the rubber bite. The car crashed through the barrier, snapping it across the hood, and drew sparks as the underside of the chassis clashed against the abrupt incline of the ramp. Ziggy was dimly aware of the thought that he was wrecking the Veyron and that, therefore, it was more likely that it would cease to offer him protection, when he heard three sharp barki
ng reports and heard the hiss of a round as it passed through the cabin from the rear to the front, punching a neat incision in the centre of the windshield.

  The car hit fifty as it reached the top of the ramp, leaping into the air and then slamming down again with a ferocious din as the chassis buckled and the exhausts clanged against the asphalt. Ziggy tried to swing the car around, but it was travelling too fast and he was a poor driver, not nearly good enough to keep it under control. He stamped the brakes and skidded all the way across the road, carving a fortunate path through two lines of slow-moving cars that heralded his short journey with angry blasts of their horns, and came to a stop with a heavy thud into the side of a parked bus.

  Ziggy was thrown forward. His head bounced off the wheel and then whiplashed back again.

  He sat there, woozy, for several seconds. He was roused by the sound of a car horn and realised, belatedly, that it was from the damaged Veyron. The harsh blare brought him back to himself. He saw his laptop perched incongruously on the dashboard, the screen mangled, and then glanced back at the broken rear window and remembered how it had come to be that way.

  Oh, shit.

  He tried to open the door, saw that it was crumpled and jammed, and shuffled across the cabin to the other side. The door opened and he fell out, his feet scrabbling on the asphalt as he stumbled away.

  *

  ZIGGY HEADED to Roppongi subway station. The concourse was busy with people arriving for a night out, and he had to force his way through the throng to the gate. He pressed his ticket to the reader; it bleeped, but did not open. He looked at the display and saw that the card was empty.

  Shit.

  No time to reload it now.

  He heard a shout of indignation, turned, and saw the man with the pistol shoving his way through the crowd.

  Ziggy gripped the gate, wedged his foot onto a protruding piece, pushed up and hauled himself over it. The effort caused a flare of pain in his bad leg. The guard was in a booth; he saw him and called out for him to stop.

  Ziggy did not.

  The shaft to the platform was encircled by two floors of shops and restaurants, the escalator running straight down the centre. It was scrupulously clean, the brushed steel polished to a high sheen and even the tables and chairs in the food court at the lowest level seemingly arranged in perfect order. The passengers rode on the right-hand side, leaving a narrow space for Ziggy to negotiate to their left. He looked back behind him as he stepped off and saw the three men following him, pushing a similar path down the left of the escalator.

  The corridor was tiled in a dull municipal green and with a black and white floor. It was slick, and Ziggy nearly lost his footing as he barrelled around a corner. A train was waiting on the platform. It had disgorged its last passengers and must surely be about to depart. He ignored the throbbing in his leg and sprinted as hard as he could. The doors bleeped and there came the hiss of their hydraulics as they started to close. He threw himself inside.

  The train jerked as it started to move and then, as Ziggy watched with fearful anticipation, he saw the man who had shot Kazuki smash his fists against the window. Ziggy unconsciously scrambled back until he was pressed up against the opposite door, but the train was moving properly now and it wasn’t going to stop. His heart pounding, he watched the Yakuza’s face recede, twisting with fury, as the train picked up speed.

  The carriage was old and in need of a proper clean, the red upholstery of the seating faded in the middle from where hundreds of thousands of passengers had sat. He turned and dropped himself onto one of the empty benches. The carriage was quiet, but the other passengers were looking at him with a mixture of curiosity and alarm. He was sweating heavily and panting from fear and exertion.

  The train slowed as it drew into the next station. It was Hiroo. He had ended up on a westbound train. He started to think. He could ride it to Ebisu, then change onto the Yamanote line and head south to Osaki, Shinagawa or Tamachi. He could disembark there, pick up a taxi and then head back to his apartment.

  They wouldn’t be able to follow him, but he would do a full surveillance check to be absolutely sure.

  *

  HE ALLOWED himself to exhale, closing his eyes and putting his head in his hands.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  He only had himself to blame for getting himself into this mess and he had been very lucky that he had been able to extricate himself from it. He chided himself again. It was his own stupid greed. He had been doing perfectly well for himself by restricting himself to the opportunities he could find online. He didn’t have to leave his apartment to sell a list of credit card details. Car theft? What was he thinking? No, no more of that. He would keep to what he knew best, what he was good at, what was safest. That was what he would do from now on. He knew how to be careful, how to avoid detection.

  Goodbye, Tokyo.

  Goodbye, Shoko.

  The train passed through Shinagawa. A handful of people got off, a handful got on. An old woman, a young couple, a man who was very plainly the worse for drink. None of them looked as if they were the sort to be involved with the Yakuza. Ziggy allowed himself to relax a little.

  The train reached Tamachi and Ziggy disembarked. The station was configured with two island platforms that allowed for interchange between the Yamanote and Keihin-Tohoku lines. A train was coming in and, in an abundance of caution, he took it. The carriage, this time, was empty, and, when he disembarked at Hamamatsucho, he was as sure as he could be that he had eluded his pursuers.

  The station was directly beneath the World Trade Center and, he remembered, a short walk from the Pokémon Center. He flagged down a taxi and told the driver to take him to Yoyogi Park. It was ten kilometres, and the driver took them along a route that was clogged with traffic. It should have taken thirty minutes, but it was nearly an hour later when they finally arrived. Yoyogi was one of the more exclusive places to live in Tokyo. It was close by the large municipal park and in prime position between Shinjuku and Shibuya. The salarymen in those districts often chose to live here so that they could walk between home and work. Ziggy had always pitied them. The bland man in the apartment next to his got up at six every morning. He heard the shower at six ten, and the sound of the door closing at six twenty. Ziggy was usually bringing his own working day to a close then, and, when the man returned at seven, he would be waking from sleep to start working once again.

  He told the driver to skirt his apartment block, staring intently out of the window in an attempt to see anything that might have been out of the ordinary. Shoko had never been to his apartment before, but he was too frightened to cut corners.

  He had chosen this area carefully. It was homogenous and dull, and there were enough wealthy international students here that his Western looks did not stand out. There was nothing unusual outside tonight. It was quiet, with few people around—just a few cars and buses going about their business. The driver pulled up outside the entrance. Ziggy paid him and stepped outside into the humidity. His block was twenty storeys high with a communal area on the roof that allowed a splendid vista of the city.

  Ziggy went into the lobby, nodded to the concierge, and took the elevator to the nineteenth floor. He hobbled to his door and put his ear to it. He couldn’t hear anything, save the quiet hum of the oscillating fans that he always left running. He unlocked the door and went inside. It was just a one-roomed apartment of modest size, with a kitchen-diner, a small square bedroom and a balcony that offered a view out over the park. It was, as usual, stiflingly hot. The banks of laptops and tower PCs that he used for his work were on twenty-four-seven, and they pumped out a lot of heat. He always left the door to the balcony open, but, with the temperature outside just as warm, there was nowhere for the heat to go. The fans were just circulating the hot air.

  Ziggy took off his shirt and tossed it over the back of the room’s only chair. He went through into the kitchen-diner. It was furnished with high-end appliances and separated from the din
ing space by a breakfast bar.

  His phone blipped.

  He took it out of his pocket. He had been getting a lot of spam SMS messages recently, and he expected to find another one waiting for him.

  But it wasn’t spam.

  It was a message from a number that he did not recognise. The message, in English, was simple enough.

  WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

  He stared at the screen in horror, the phone vibrating in his hand as a second message appeared.

  GIRL KNOWS WHERE YOU LIVE.

  Ziggy bent over the kitchen sink and vomited, a long retching stream of it that kept coming until there was nothing left to come. It filled the basin, stinging his throat with its acid dregs, and, for a moment, he thought he was going to faint. He pushed himself away from the counter, unable to remember if he had locked the door, and hobbled across the apartment to it, turning the key and attaching the security chain. The door looked flimsy, and the chain was cosmetic, no real impediment to an angry gangster who decided he wanted to get inside. He went over to the single armchair and, roughly clearing away the PC towers that blocked the way, he hauled it across the room and shoved it so that it was flush with the door.

  Maybe that would buy him some time.

  He collected the phone from where he had dropped it and looked at the screen again.

  Maybe the messages were gone.

  Maybe he had imagined them.

  No. They were still there. He hadn’t imagined them. They were real.

  And then, as he stared with dumb terror at the screen, a third.

  WE ARE OUTSIDE.

  He went across to the open balcony door. He was about to go outside when he realised that he couldn’t do that. What if they were outside? Could they have found him? How? He squeezed his eyes shut and racked his brain. What if Shoko or her brother had followed him home? He had always been careful, but what if he had not been careful enough?

  It was possible.

  He scurried across the room to his laptop and opened it. He had hacked the apartment’s CCTV cameras long ago. His first destination was the files that stored all the footage that had been backed up. It was over a terabyte, covering a week’s worth of comings and goings, and, undoubtedly, recording him. It would show him in the lobby, in the elevator, which floor he exited on and which apartment he went into. He triggered a subroutine that deleted it and then wrote over the memory so that it was gone for good.