Zero Sum

by Barry Eisler

  I was stuck again.

  Call Victor, then.

  And say what? “Hey, asshole, did you hire two guys to kill me tonight?”

  Just report in. You were supposed to do Sugihara tonight, weren’t you? Play dumb. Call in, see how he reacts. Or Oleg, whoever. Read between the lines.

  I thought about that. It made sense. I could see how they reacted. And then . . . Tatsu. For information about this ex-spook Wilson. For all I knew, Mike, or whatever his name had actually been, had made the whole thing up.

  Yeah, first Tatsu. And then Miyamoto, who might be able to help connect the dots, too.

  Three different avenues for intel. A decent chance at least one of them would pan out.

  I didn’t want to think about what I’d be facing if it didn’t.

  chapter twelve

  I took the train to Sugamo and found another love hotel. After a scalding bath, I fell asleep instantly—the postcombat parasympathetic backlash to adrenaline—then woke with a start only an hour later, my mind racing. Too much had happened that night. First, everything I had hoped for, and more, with Maria. And then the shit with the contractors, or whatever they were. Either one by itself would have been enough to keep me tossing and turning. Having the two in juxtaposition was overloading my brain. It was getting light outside when I finally managed a little more sleep.

  I set out from the hotel at a little before nine, checking my surroundings carefully. Nothing remarkable—just a humid, rainy morning. I picked up an umbrella at the station, and called Oleg from a payphone. Rivers of salarymen and office ladies streamed past me, cogs in the vast machine of Japanese commerce, oblivious to the little drama being played out in their midst.

  “What happened?” he said as soon as he heard my voice.

  It sounded more an accusation than a question. Did he know Sugihara was unharmed? If so, how? Did they have people watching him? The same insider they had reporting from the wedding reception?

  And if so, what the hell did they need me for?

  That’s a key question. Come back to it.

  “I couldn’t get to him.”

  “Why not?”

  “No opportunity.”

  “What does this mean, ‘no opportunity’? Man is at club for four hours. Goes for piss three times. Golden opportunity. Where were you?”

  Yeah. An insider. I decided it was time to press.

  “Hey, Oleg. How do you know how many times Sugihara pissed?”

  “You don’t worry how I know. You worry what happens when you are fuckup guy.”

  He knew how many times Sugihara got up to take a leak. And “Where were you?” suggested he knew I wasn’t there. But did he know? Or was he fishing? I needed to find out.

  “Every time it happened,” I said, “there were other people in the bathroom. Witnesses. Not what I call a ‘golden opportunity.’”

  “I told you how. Fast, from behind, and run. You want, what, for guy to wait for you in dark alley all alone? Maybe with face to wall? This is what you need to do simple job?”

  He didn’t know I wasn’t there. Otherwise he would have challenged the lie. But he knew about Sugihara’s bathroom breaks. Which meant . . . what? If it was the same inside man they had at the wedding, that he hadn’t seen me at Moonglow? Yes, maybe that. And if so, I was lucky. Maybe the club was big enough, crowded enough, or laid out in such a way that the inside guy could only report, The man from the wedding? No, I didn’t see him. But it was dark. There were a lot of people. I can’t be sure.

  I almost said something like, If it’s so simple, asshole, why don’t you do it yourself?

  You know why. Now test it.

  “You want me to take that kind of risk with witnesses,” I said, “the price just doubled. Tell Victor.”

  “Price is price.”

  “No, price is too low. Risk is too high. This is your idea of intel? ‘Do him in front of three witnesses in the bathroom, then get past twenty more on your way out of the club’? What kind of outfit are you running?”

  There was a pause. Which way he played it would tell me what I needed to know.

  He laughed. “Victor’s right. You’ve got some balls. Okay, balls guy. We give you more money.”

  That confirmed it. But I had to play along. Keep him complacent.

  “Not just more. Double.”

  “Okay, double. And we give you one more lead. And you get one more chance. And you know how we pay you if you blow next lead?”

  I said nothing.

  “We pay by cutting hole in belly. Not big hole. Just enough for hand. My hand. And I reach inside and pull out intestines. Three feet, five, maybe ten feet I pull. Then wrap around neck. This is how we pay. So. Do job, you get double. Fuck up, I fucking strangle with intestines. We have good understanding now, yes?”

  Oh, yeah, asshole. You’re not going to believe how well I understand.

  “Just get me the lead,” I said, and hung up. Then I shouldered my bag and started walking.

  I wandered in the direction of Komagome, not looking for anything in particular, just trying to process what I’d learned on the phone. I came to Somei Reien, one of the city’s cemeteries and a popular spot for cherry-blossom viewing. It was empty this morning, presumably because of the weather, a small splotch of green in the midst of the insensate gray sprawl around it.

  I found a bench on a grassy slope overlooking the markers and sat. The only sound was the quiet drumbeat of the rain. The solitude, and the feeling of communing with the dead, some of whom had undoubtedly once sat here as I now did, was soothing. I supposed some people might find cemeteries conducive to contemplation of life’s great questions—who are we, why are we here, what does it all mean. For me, the contemplation was typically more tactical—who are they, why are they after me, what did I do to antagonize the wrong people. For whatever reason, I found I did some of my best thinking among the dead, and reflecting on this made me feel for McGraw, who’d been a connoisseur of Tokyo cemeteries, something strangely akin to affection.

  Why? Why had Victor hired me?

  You know why. To be a patsy. And if you don’t see that by now, you deserve the role.

  Yeah. If I’d learned anything from McGraw, it was what it meant to be set up to take a fall.

  Victor’s information on Sugihara was solid. He had a man inside the damn club on top of it. And he had capable personnel. So what the hell did he need me for? Why was he so intent not just that Sugihara die, but that I be the one to kill him?

  What had he said about Kobayashi? That he’d been a soldier with the Gokumatsu-gumi, one of the yakuza clans, and that Victor had given him a second chance after the Gokumatsu-gumi had expelled him.

  Sound familiar?

  Yeah, it did. It sounded like what “Mike” had said about how he’d gotten back in the game on the other side of the pond—Wilson giving him a new role after a dishonorable discharge.

  What’s the common element?

  Deniability, obviously. Victor wanted to put distance between himself and Sugihara’s death. If Kobayashi had killed Sugihara, the trail would have led to the Gokumatsu-gumi. If I killed Sugihara, the trail would lead nowhere.

  You sure about that last one?

  I was reasonably sure. Who was I, after all? I’d been off the grid for a decade. Even if anyone were to look into it, all they’d find would be a mercenary who’d spent the last ten years in the Philippines. A guy who’d sign up for anyone’s cause—if the price were right.

  A guy who’s former US military. Who, before the Philippines, was a bagman for the CIA.

  But Victor had known about the military connection—he’d tried to bait me about it at our first meeting. Miyamoto wouldn’t have mentioned the bagman work, which came later, but even if he had, it wouldn’t have mattered. The point was, Victor knew about my previous connections with the US government. Meaning those connections weren’t a problem for him. The main thing from his perspective, I supposed, was that I wasn’t connected to him.


  What does all that tell you?

  That this whole thing was about insulation. A circuit breaker. A cutout between Victor and Sugihara.

  Yeah. It seemed a lot of people were looking to conceal their role in some nefarious goings-on. Why, though? What was the game?

  I thought about Victor’s man in the club. And the fact that he knew in advance Sugihara was going to be there. It sounded like Victor had a mole in the LDP. But how many people would have known Sugihara’s plans that night? It could have been ten. It could have been a hundred.

  But no, maybe not that many. Someone told Oleg how many times Sugihara had pissed that night. The mole had been there. That meant the field of suspects was, what, five? Ten?

  Still a lot of people, though. I’d tell Miyamoto, but how the hell was he going to narrow down the list?

  By cross-referencing it with another list.

  Holy shit, that was it. I should have seen it earlier.

  They were following Maria. Yet they clearly didn’t want to hurt her, or even involve her. Her only function would have been as a conduit to me. And how had Victor known I’d met her? We’d been making “sexy eyes” at the wedding. The inside guy again.

  I paused for a moment, suddenly feeling doubtful. Because if Victor had an inside guy, why hadn’t he told me about the wedding in advance? It would have been an opportunity to get to Sugihara.

  You already know the answer. They don’t want the wife involved. They didn’t tell you about the wedding reception because they didn’t want the hit to go down there.

  In which case, what, Victor had just been giving me a hard time afterward about not killing Sugihara there?

  Maybe. Or maybe the inside man doesn’t report directly to Victor. And there are divergent agendas in play.

  That seemed possible, and I filed it away for later consideration. For now, it felt like I was getting the broad contours right, even if I still didn’t have the details. The main thing was, there was some kind of inside man. And maybe the list of possible suspects wouldn’t be so unmanageably large after all. We’d be talking about someone who had been at the wedding, and also at Moonglow. Probably someone close to Sugihara. And definitely someone with a sharp eye for the way people connected, because whoever it was, he’d realized that putting a tail on Maria might be a way to get to me.

  I still didn’t know why. But I was getting closer to who.

  And maybe I’d never learn why. But if I could learn who, and then where, I’d have enough to shut this shit down. And walk away from it clean.

  Yeah. I still believed something like that was possible.

  chapter thirteen

  I called Tatsu. The person who answered told me he was out. No, I didn’t want to leave a message, but when could I reach him? Oh, wait, I was in luck—he was just coming in.

  A moment later, I heard his voice. “Hai.”

  “Hey. It’s me.”

  “I haven’t had a chance to check on the status of the information we discussed. It’s been a busy morning.”

  “Double homicide? That kind of thing?”

  There was a pause. “Indeed. Quite a messy one. Two foreigners in Shibuya. The Keisatsuchō hasn’t yet identified the bodies. What do you know about this?”

  “Just a lucky guess. But if you want to learn more, you might look into an American named Calloway Wilson. Goes by Cal. Former CIA, apparently, all the way back to the OSS, purged by Turner, apparently reactivated in some capacity by Casey. Wilson might be involved with Victor. Maybe feeding him intel. For what in return, I don’t know. Could be a wild-goose chase, but . . . I have a feeling there’s something there.”

  “I will refrain from asking you how you came by this information.”

  “I think that would be best for everyone concerned. I have a favor to ask in exchange.”

  “Another?”

  “Hey, what about what I just gave you?”

  “The value of any of that remains to be seen.”

  “Fair enough. But look, if there’s anything there, I need to know who this guy is. Where he is. Why he might have a beef with me. If I can’t figure all that out, there’s a good chance the next homicide you investigate will be mine.”

  There was a pause while he digested that. “Call me this afternoon. I assume I won’t be able to reach you?”

  “Yeah. I need to keep moving for a while.”

  “That’s probably wise. I’ll do what I can.”

  “I know you will, old friend. Thank you.”

  I hung up, found another payphone, and called Miyamoto. I didn’t want to meet him—if someone had known to watch Maria to get to me, they’d know to watch Miyamoto, too. But I didn’t want to tell him about an LDP mole on an LDP office line.

  Which was cause for inspiration.

  “Listen,” I said when he picked up. “I have something for you. It’s important and I can’t discuss it over the phone. If we meet, though, you need to be damn sure you’re alone. I had a little problem in that regard just recently.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Remember where you used to leave the money ten years ago?” The place was under one of the seats on the platform of Gaienmae Station.

  “Of course.”

  “You never told anyone about that, right? No way anyone else could know?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Okay. Meet me there in an hour. Assume you’re being followed.”

  There was a pause. “Am I?”

  “I don’t know. But you have to act as though you are. Use elevators and make sure you’re the only one who gets on. Use the subway, get out, and wait on the platform to make sure everyone else has gone before you get on a train going in the other direction. Have a taxi take you through neighborhoods where there’s no traffic and it would be easy to spot a tail. Remember, think like the opposition. Can you do that? You have to be sure.”

  “Of course.”

  “Okay, good. I’ll see you in an hour.”

  I hoped it would be enough. Countersurveillance is as much art as it is science, and though I knew Miyamoto had been working on it, this would be the equivalent of taking a few swings in batting practice and then stepping into a big-league game.

  I wanted to get to the station early, so I took a cab. Halfway there, I realized I still hadn’t picked up a knife. Victor with his paring blade, Oleg with the rat poison, the two guys in Shibuya . . . Tokyo suddenly seemed to have a surfeit of people who liked sharp pointy things, and, in the absence of a gun, carrying a knife seemed like not a bad idea. But I didn’t have time to create some sort of light disguise so I wouldn’t be remembered, then find a store, and still get to Gaienmae ahead of Miyamoto. I decided the knife could wait. I doubted I’d have a problem so soon after Shibuya.

  Twenty minutes later, I was standing midway down the platform at Gaienmae Station. I waited and watched while successive trains arrived and departed, sucking in and disgorging passengers. No one failed to board an incoming train. No one got off a train and waited. No one set off my radar. But the real problem was less that someone could anticipate Miyamoto, and more that someone would follow him.

  Just ahead of schedule, I spotted him, walking onto the platform from the northwest entrance, struggling with a dripping umbrella. He was sporting a tie as wide as the Sumida River and as bright as a seventeen-year-old’s kimono. He might as well have been wearing a damn beacon. I gave him a discreet nod and kept my focus on whatever was coming in behind him.

  A cluster of middle-aged men in interchangeable suits, one of them working his teeth with a toothpick. Salarymen, probably on their way back from lunch break. Not a hard-looking guy among them. A mother pushing a stroller. Two elderly women carrying groceries in furoshiki—traditional cloths for wrapping and carrying packages, gradually going out of style as plastic bags took their place. That was all. It looked like Miyamoto was clean—

  A burly black guy rolled onto the platform. Shaved head, jeans, button-down shirt with the tails
out, and a dark sport coat. Nice, easy gait. Athletic. Casual. And just the right distance from Miyamoto, and with enough people between them, to keep eyes on the target without being made. His clothes were dry, I noted, though he wasn’t carrying an umbrella. Maybe he’d held one low to obscure his face outside, and ditched it when he saw who was on the platform.

  Maybe because he wanted his hands free.

  My heart started thudding hard. I gave Miyamoto a friendly wave and started walking toward him—exactly the kind of acknowledgment I wouldn’t have given him if I’d known he was being followed.

  He waved back, his expression a little hesitant. I’d already given him the subtle nod. He rightly found it odd that I’d offer such an open greeting under the circumstances.

  It’s not for you, amigo. It’s for your audience. Don’t want him to realize I’ve made him.

  I kept the black guy in my peripheral vision. He was drifting smoothly forward, his hands open, his arms swinging, not overtaking anyone in front of him, trying to maintain the screen of pedestrians. He was doing a pretty good job of imitating a tourist taking in the sights around him—his head moving left and right, his expression open and interested. The problem was, he was looking at everything but me. It’s uncomfortable to make eye contact with a surveillance target, and takes a lot of practice to do it right—to do it without projecting anything that can tip the target off. And absent that practice, most operators default to the next-best thing, which is making no eye contact at all. That’s good enough most of the time. But when it feels like not just absence, but avoidance, it can also give you away.

  As I walked, I drifted to my right, away from the tracks, closer to the wall. Miyamoto naturally mirrored my trajectory. When we were several feet apart and had slowed to the point of stopping, I took a step left. I wanted to be facing the black guy but with Miyamoto off to the side so he wouldn’t be in my way. My heart was pounding combat hard now. I focused on my breathing, on projecting calm and unconcern.

  “Were you followed?” I said, pleased that my voice sounded normal. From far down the tunnel, I heard a train approaching.