by Barry Eisler
“There were five people attending both the wedding reception and the Moonglow outing. Four of them have nothing whatsoever to do with the sorts of activities I myself am involved in. That leaves only one.”
“Five overlaps? I was hoping for fewer.”
“As it happens, the Moonglow attendees were the subset of the wedding attendees. So we are fortunate in that only six LDP members, one of whom was Sugihara, were at Moonglow at all. Many of these events have much larger guest lists.”
“Why was this one so small?”
“It was a corporate junket. A visiting American semiconductor trade group. Such meetings aren’t secret, exactly, but they’re not widely publicized, either, following the recent unfortunate revelations regarding Lockheed and the LDP. So they typically involve only senior members.”
He was talking about a bribery scandal of a few years earlier, in which it was revealed that Lockheed had been paying top members of the LDP, all the way up to the prime minister, to ensure that the Japanese defense forces and Japanese airlines bought Lockheed products. I knew all about the Lockheed money, of course. The bag I had once carried to Miyamoto from the CIA was filled with it.
The overlaps implicating Miyamoto’s boss weren’t quite the smoking gun I’d been hoping for. But something else occurred to me.
“Your superior,” I said. “Is this the guy who replaced the previous guy, who Victor killed?”
“It is, yes.”
“What’s his name?”
“Yokoyama. Yoshinobu Yokoyama.”
“Well, your old boss’s murder was a promotion for Yokoyama, is that right? I mean, the fact that his predecessor was killed worked out well for him.”
He looked at me, frowning slightly as though disturbed at the pattern he was newly seeing. “It did indeed work out well.”
I shrugged. “Well, neither one of these things is proof. Not even the two of them together. But . . .”
I trailed off, thinking. I realized I might have a way to confirm. No, better than confirm.
“Just to be sure,” I said. “You never said anything about me to Yokoyama? Or to anyone else, right?”
He looked at me, his distress that I would think so little of him scarcely concealed. “Of course not.”
I nodded. “Okay, apologies for that. I don’t doubt you, old friend. But for information this critical, it’s best to double-check.”
He smiled, more in appreciation for my effort at diplomacy, I thought, than in actual agreement. “I understand,” he said. “But what do we do now?”
This was what I’d been thinking about—a way to both confirm the accuracy of Miyamoto’s intel and, assuming the intel was indeed accurate, to turn his boss Yokoyama without Yokoyama or anyone else even knowing.
“We had a mole in the war,” I said. “He caused a lot of damage. But when we finally identified him, we didn’t expose him. Not right away, anyway. We fed him false coordinates. The ruse didn’t last—it didn’t take too many wild-goose chases for the NVA to figure out what was happening. But in the meantime, we were able to launch some devastating raids.”
“And this is what you propose to do here?”
“Close enough.”
“How?”
“Think about it. Someone who wants me dead is getting intel from your boss Yokoyama. ‘Follow Miyamoto. Follow Sugihara’s wife. They’ll lead you to this guy Rain.’ Okay, fine. But both attempts failed. Now I’m being much more careful because I know someone’s after me. Plus I have an idea about where I was vulnerable—you and Sugihara’s wife—and I’m taking steps to mitigate those vulnerabilities. All of which means they need a fresh lead. Of their two potential sources, they can’t very well ask Sugihara’s wife. Besides, she wouldn’t even know where to find me. That leaves you.”
“You think Yokoyama will ask me? Under what pretext?”
“Does it really matter? He’s your boss, right? I mean, if he just straight-up said to you, ‘I need to know how to find John Rain,’ would he expect you to refuse? Retaliate? Or just cough it up?”
“I see your point.”
“Right. But that said, my guess is, he’ll try something like . . . ‘Oh, we have a new matter, very sensitive. And this man you’ve used successfully in the past, I understand he’s in town again, and I need to meet him personally. Where can I find him?’ Something like that, does that sound plausible?”
There was a pause, during which he nodded to himself as though imagining. Then he said, “Quite plausible.”
“Okay, good. I’m pretty sure he’s going to approach you, and sooner rather than later. When he does, I want you to tell him how we set up meetings.”
“Which is how, exactly?”
“Just tell him the truth. When I want to reach you, I call your office. When you want to reach me, you call the answering service. The best lies are always as close as possible to the truth.” Another pearl of wisdom courtesy of the late Sean McGraw.
“And then . . . you think he’ll ask me to set up a meeting?”
“I think he’ll tell you to. But listen—you need to be reluctant. Make him work for it. Make him drag it out of you. That’ll make him feel like it’s real. If you give in too easily, he’ll suspect a setup. You understand?”
He smiled. “I’ve spent more than twenty years in this sewer. Do you not think I know a bit about how to get the rats to go down the proper tunnels?”
“You’re right. It’s just—”
“Please, no need to apologize. I understand your concern. And as you said, it’s better to double-check. But yes, if, or when, he comes to me, I will display the proper level of discomfort and distress. Before reluctantly giving you up. Now, where and when is this meeting of ours?”
“I’ll tell you that when you call me, same as always. I have a feeling your boss will instruct you to choose the meeting place. You just tell him I’m the one who always decides that, and that if you try to decide it instead, I’ll know something’s wrong. He’ll back off.”
“But what if it’s not my boss, and I really need to meet you?”
“Yeah, that was the next thing I was going to say. If it happens the way I’m expecting, and Yokoyama has directed you to set up a meeting, start the conversation with some sort of small-talk reference to the weather.”
“Why can’t I just say to you, ‘It’s not Yokoyama’ unless it is? Why the code?”
“What if he insists on being right there while we’re on the phone?”
“Ah. That is a good point.”
“And if it’s not Yokoyama—if it’s just you, same as always, and you want to meet—then, obviously, don’t say anything at all about the weather. You’ll be able to say anything you want, in fact, just not that.”
He smiled gently. “Has anyone ever told you that you have a tendency to micromanage?”
“Not exactly, but if someone did, I’d have to admit he might have a point.”
He laughed, but it quickly died away. “So you think . . . what? My boss will send someone to kill you?”
Not exactly, I thought. Better than that.
But all I said was, “What do you think?”
“I think . . . it’s possible, yes. But how do you know?”
I smiled grimly. “I’m still learning about nen, my friend. And biishiki. And a lot of other important things. But if there’s one thing I do well, it’s putting myself in the shoes of the opposition. Asking, ‘If I were trying to get to me, how would I do it?’ So yeah, I don’t know it like I know the sun is going to come up tomorrow, but I know it well enough to expect it. And to damn sure be ready when it happens.”
chapter fifteen
Later that evening, I was back at the Yūrakuchō izakaya. I was confident no one would be able to follow Tatsu without his knowledge, but still, I made sure to get there early and set up across the street so I could watch him arrive and see what might be trailing in his wake. Some years later, President Reagan would popularize the Russian proverb Doveryai, no proveryai:
Trust, but verify. At the time, I might not have known the phrase, but I knew to live the concept.
Having detected no problems, I went inside and joined him at his table. “Ah, you’re late,” he said as I took the chair ninety degrees from him. This way, both of us had a view of the entrance and were close enough to talk without being overheard by the patrons around us, who in any event were sufficiently drunk and boisterous that being overheard probably wasn’t a major concern. “Ordinarily, you’re early.”
There were two mugs of beer already on the table. We touched glasses and drank.
“You know me. Never want to get boring and predictable.”
“Indeed. Did you know there was another homicide of a gaijin in Tokyo today?”
“Really? That’s three, right?”
“Yes. Which, for Tokyo, constitutes an epidemic.”
“Have you been able to learn anything about the deceased?”
“Not yet. None of them was carrying identification, and no one has stepped forward to claim the bodies.”
“No ID? What do you make of that?”
He looked at me, and I couldn’t tell whether he was enjoying the game, or tiring of it.
“The two in Shibuya might conceivably have been robbed. The one today, at Gaienmae Station, was thrown onto the tracks in front of an oncoming train after what witnesses described as a struggle.”
“Well, you know better than I do, but with Tokyo’s low crime rates and the overall circumstances, my bet is they were spooks of some sort, traveling sterile while operational.”
He grunted. “Yes, I believe that is a sensible theory. In which case, it was their misfortune to encounter someone opposed to whatever it was they were doing.”
“A connection with Wilson, you think?”
“Possibly.”
He was going to make me ask directly, so I did. “You manage to learn anything about him?”
He nodded. “You were right in the particulars—former OSS, then CIA. He has operated all over the world and speaks a half dozen languages—English, of course, and also French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Russian.”
“Russian sounds pertinent, under the circumstances.”
“Perhaps. But let’s first stick to what we know.”
I smiled. He sounded like an avuncular version of McGraw.
“Please,” I said. “Let’s.”
“Wilson parachuted behind enemy lines during World War Two to organize partisans against the Nazis. Perhaps ironically, he was then involved in Operation Paperclip—the recruitment, rehabilitation, and resettlement of top-ranking Nazis in the United States following the war in exchange for their scientific knowledge or intelligence value.”
“‘Paperclip’?”
“So named for the practice of clipping together intelligence files documenting actual atrocities and new, whitewashed identity documents for resettlement in the United States.”
“Ah.”
“Wilson was also part of Operation Gladio, involving ‘stay-behind’ militias intended to harass Soviet forces in the event of a Soviet takeover of Europe. Operation Mongoose in Cuba, including the use of the American mafia for assassination attempts on Fidel Castro. Operation Chaos, targeting various American media and dissident groups. Project FUBELT, which led to the ouster and killing of Salvador Allende in Chile. And most notoriously, the MKUltra program of mind control and human experimentation.”
“Impressive that something in a list like that could distinguish itself on grounds of notoriety.”
“Indeed.”
“But Allende . . . I thought he committed suicide.”
In response, he only looked at me.
“Right,” I said. “Good point.”
He took a sip of beer. “Following revelations of these activities, and others, by the Church and Pike Committees, men like Wilson were considered tainted. Part of a period the Agency wanted to consign to the past. When President Carter appointed Stansfield Turner as Director of Central Intelligence, Turner fired some eight hundred such operatives.”
“Well, with eight hundred disaffected experts in sabotage, subversion, and assassination suddenly on the loose, what’s the worst that could happen?”
“What happened was, many of them offered their expertise to foreign governments. Others, to criminal organizations. Wilson was one such. He has a reputation for gunrunning and money laundering. And for training the security services of various unsavory governments in Africa and Latin America.”
“Unsavory enough to engage in sabotage, subversion, assassinations, and mind-control experiments? Those governments are the worst.”
He tilted his head and peered at me as though studying the contours of some curious organism. “I won’t pretend to understand your sense of humor,” he said. “But I do know what it indicates.”
“Yes?”
“Nervousness.”
“Don’t tell anyone. I’d prefer people to think I’m funny rather than nervous.”
“Thank you for making my point.”
I lifted my glass in salute. “You know, Tatsu, sometimes the quality of your information is almost scary.”
“I’m glad you find it so. For me, it rarely feels like enough.”
“What about the notion that Casey has somehow brought this guy in from the cold?”
“Plausible, but unproven. Certainly Casey has been at pains to rebuild the CIA’s roster of practitioners of the dark arts. Bringing back former operatives would be an expedient way of doing so.”
“While maybe keeping some of them at arm’s length, for deniability.”
“Also plausible, but unproven.”
“All right, what do you think? A connection between Wilson and Victor?”
“Possibly. In favor of this proposition is the fact that Mr. Wilson is currently visiting Japan.”
I smiled. “I told you. Almost scary. And might I inquire as to the location of Mr. Wilson’s lodgings?”
“It seems he entered the country as Carl Woods. But no one by such a name is checked in to any of the major Tokyo hotels. My guess is that he uses a different name for air travel than he does for hotels. Standard operating procedure for a man like this.”
“You can’t dig a little deeper?”
“It’s one thing for me to have a trusted man go through immigration and customs records,” he said, a slight sharpness in his tone. “Laborious, but discreet. It’s quite another to requisition resources sufficient to comb through the guest lists of a half dozen or more hotels—many of which are frequented by dignitaries, diplomats, and celebrities. At a minimum, I would have to explain myself to my superiors.”
I held up my hands in apology. “Got it. Sorry for asking. Any way to know whether, or when, he’s been here before?”
“My people already checked travel by Carl Woods. There’s nothing earlier than the current trip.”
“Meaning he hasn’t been here before, or—”
“Or that he has been here, but under a variety of aliases. My sense is, the answer is the latter. But I have no evidence to support that sense.”
It was frustrating—we had so many pieces, but I still couldn’t see how to assemble them.
“Any idea what he’s doing out here?”
“No. If not for the information you provided me, we wouldn’t even have known of his presence. Unsurprisingly, given his credentials, he’s adept at keeping a low profile.”
I took a swallow of beer. “Well, you’re welcome, then.”
He leaned back and crossed his arms. “What you’ve told me has led to more questions than answers. What you’re holding back about your own involvement with Victor is likely what I need.”
I almost made a weak crack—something along the lines of Holding back what?
But I knew he was right. He’d held up his end. And given me a lot. It would have been unworthy not to respond in kind.
And worse than that, it would have been stupid.
“That job Victor hired me to do,” I tol
d him. “I’m not going to do it. You need to understand that before I go on.”
“All right.”
“The target is an LDP guy. Koji Sugihara.”
He looked at me for a long moment, his face worryingly expressionless. Finally, he said, “Have you ever pondered this talent of yours for getting mixed up in things that are far above your pay grade?”
“I haven’t had time to ponder. Too many people trying to kill me.”
He shook his head in what for Tatsu passed for an ostentatious display of exasperation. “What did you think would happen if you were to kill a ranking member of the LDP?”
“I told you, I’m not going to do it.”
“That you would even consider it is giving me great pause about your judgment.”
“Look, I told Victor no right away, at which point he told me if I didn’t, he’d kill my friend. All I’ve been trying to do since then is play for time—and a chance at Victor.”
In response, he merely shook his head again.
I knew he was doing a lot, and that I was putting him in a difficult and possibly even dangerous position, and all at once I felt bad about pushing him. I wanted to tell him that, but thought it would all come out in some foolishly wordy American way. So I said nothing, hoping he would recognize some solicitude in my silence.
“Let’s . . . back up,” I said after a moment. “Who benefits if Sugihara dies?”
He shrugged. “When a politician dies, there are always beneficiaries. This is true of any cataclysmic event. The pieces on the board are rearranged, creating openings and opportunities where before there had been blockages and stagnation.”
“Yes, but specifically.”
“This is my point. When the benefit is so diffuse, it’s difficult to work backward to infer causality.”
“Is Sugihara known for anything in particular? Some . . . I don’t know, trade-industry activities or something? My understanding is that recently he was out with some American semiconductor people.”
“He is popular among Japanese farmers, whose domestic rice sales he protects with significant levies on imports. But he’s hardly unique in that respect. His death would do nothing to pave the way for, say, a surge of imported rice.”