Zero Sum

by Barry Eisler

  It was a version of how I’d turned the tables on the two men following me in Shibuya: low probability of success, but less bad than the alternatives. He leaped forward, his good hand shooting out, fingers splayed to rake my eyes. I released the attaché case and popped my left arm forward, catching his forearm with mine and deflecting it, at the same time dropping into a half crouch and spearing the end of the bar forward and up directly into his exposed testicles.

  This time he didn’t howl—his knees buckled and he folded forward and he squeaked like a deflating balloon. I slipped behind him, transferring the bar to my left hand and holding it in an icepick grip. He tried to turn with me, but his system was overloaded with shock and pain, and he no longer had nearly the necessary speed or mobility. I planted a knee against his back to stabilize him, jammed the bar across his throat from right to left, crossed my right hand over to the opposite side, took hold of the free end of the bar, and shoved my knee forward, at the same time dropping my elbows and pulling my arms back, the bar and the bones of my forearms crushing his neck from three simultaneous directions like a giant walnut cracker.

  His good hand flew uselessly to his neck, and for a few seconds he scratched spasmodically at the bar. Then his torso twitched and the air suddenly reeked of feces—his body, in extremis, blowing the ballast and diverting all available energy to the fight. But it was useless. He scratched at the bar feebly for a moment more, and then I felt the crunch of his cricoid and thyroid cartilage breaking, and his arms slumped to his side, and he was deadweight in my arms, supported by nothing but the bar across his throat. I took a step back, away from the shit, released the bar, and dumped him. He collapsed to his back, his knees splayed and legs folded unnaturally at the knees, his face contorted and his tongue protruding.

  I looked at the girl cowering by the bath. In the dim light and her own terror, I doubted she’d be able to describe me well. And, like the doorman, the tout, and the host, being part of the mizu shōbai, she’d have every reason to tell the police she’d seen little and could remember less.

  I grabbed the attaché case and walked quickly back into the corridor, controlling my breathing, my heart still pounding wildly. A few doors were open now, prostitutes and patrons alike peeking out to see what had caused the sound of a second door crashing open. I kept my head down and moved to the stairs, where there was a metal roof-access door I had spotted on reconnaissance. If it had been locked, I would have gone out the front, but the less expected route was worth a try, and when I pressed the bar, it swung open easily. There was a walkway just beyond it, littered with cigarette butts. I glanced around to ensure no one was enjoying a tobacco break at that very moment, then proceeded to the fire escape, dropped to the alleyway behind the building, and drifted back into the Yoshiwara night.

  I moved quickly along backstreets, staying in the shadows, and after a few minutes, I was far enough from Super Doll and Oleg’s corpse to start to feel safe. I found a sewer, where I disposed of the dumbbell bar, then paused in a dark parking lot behind an apartment building and breathed steadily in and out, gradually slowing my heartbeat, getting back into character—just a salaryman, on his way home after a late night at the office or an evening out with colleagues, minding his own business, wanting nothing more than to get out of his suit and into his bed.

  I glanced at the attaché case and saw Oleg’s knife, still protruding from its side. For a second, I was horrified that I’d overlooked something so obvious and had been walking around with the handle jutting out for anyone to see. But okay, I’d gotten lucky. I extracted the knife and looked at it. I was half expecting some kind of fancy Spetsnaz weapon, but no, it was an ordinary Ka-Bar military knife—seven-inch serrated blade, worn wooden handle. I touched the edge, and was unsurprised to find that it was razor sharp. Since there was nothing too distinctive about it, I decided it was worth hanging on to. I’d clean it, then find an appropriate sheath at an outdoor store. I’d had about enough of people trying to stick me without having anything to stick back with.

  I put the knife in the case and started walking again. Okay, motherfucker, I thought, smiling in grim satisfaction, you wanted to talk, right? Well, we talked.

  I pushed aside the satisfaction, the exultation of having fought and survived, in favor of a more tactical focus on what the battle I had just won meant for the disposition of the forces still arrayed against me.

  But that made me smile, too. Because as I’d discussed with Tatsu, Colonel Victor had just lost his best soldier. And now he would have to take the field himself. Where I’d be waiting for him.

  chapter seventeen

  The next morning, I called Victor’s office from a payphone in Nippori. He picked up right away. “Yes.”

  “Oleg?” I said, playing dumb.

  There was a pause. Then, “No. Victor.”

  “Where’s Oleg?”

  “Why do you ask this?”

  “He’s the one who always answers the phone.”

  “Oleg is sick today.”

  I didn’t let myself smile. Or even feel what I wanted to feel. It might have come through in my tone.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I hope he gets well soon.”

  “You don’t worry about Oleg’s health. You worry about your health.”

  My effort not to smile faltered. I took a moment to get it under control, then said, “You have that lead you’ve been promising me? Or was that all bullshit?”

  There was another pause. I sensed he was struggling to control himself. Good. When you’re not in control of yourself, someone else is.

  “Yes, asshole, I have lead. From eight o’clock Friday night, man will be at museum where wife works. Someone dies there. You want to know who?”

  He must have been talking about the private dinner and showing Maria had mentioned—the one for her exhibit. Her husband would be there, of course, and probably mentioned it to Miyamoto’s boss, Yokoyama, who fed it to Wilson, who in turn passed it along to Victor. I realized I should have made the connection on my own.

  But I didn’t like that whatever Victor had in mind would happen so close to Maria. Didn’t like it at all.

  “I’m sure you’re going to tell me,” I said.

  “Either man dies. Or wife dies. And if wife dies? Your friend who introduced us also dies. And then you die, too. You want sexy time with wife again, you do your job and not be fuckup guy.”

  I considered his words without allowing myself any accompanying feelings. Why would he have thought he could use as leverage a woman I had merely flirted with at a reception? Plus, after the reception, it had been “sexy eyes,” while now it was “sexy time,” which sounded like more. So if he was using Maria as collateral, he must have known about the bar and the temple and the hotel. And he could only have known all that from the men I’d killed in Shibuya. Either he’d heard it from them directly, or, more likely, from Wilson, to whom presumably they had reported their findings before dying later on the evening in question. This was as close to proof of a link between Wilson and Victor as I was likely to get. Though what kind of link, I still didn’t know.

  “Well,” I said, my tone deliberately mild, “when you put it that way, it seems like a fairly straightforward choice.”

  There was a long silence in response, and I imagined him seething. No more jokes about what a funny guy I was, I noted. Or clinical observations about how I wasn’t afraid of him. I’d engaged his inner psycho, just as I had hoped. I was in his head now. And I was going to stay there until I put his fucking lights out forever.

  “You know,” he said, “I think your friend made mistake recommending you. But for sure we find out Friday night. Remember. Man dies. Or wife dies. And I don’t think you will like how she dies. I don’t think you will like at all.”

  He hung up.

  I stood there for a moment, trying to keep my emotions at bay, forcing myself to think. Was Maria really at risk? They’d obviously been intent on not involving her so far. But that would have be
en for operational reasons, and before I’d pushed Victor to the point where the personal would be overriding the operational. So his threat to kill Maria felt real. In fact, it felt like more than just a threat. Even if he killed me first, I sensed, he would relish killing her afterward as some way of further exorcising me, posthumously punishing me, as well.

  Which meant even killing Sugihara wouldn’t be enough to protect Maria. Or Miyamoto. The only way to finish this was by killing Victor.

  The good news was, I knew how to do that now. Or at least where. He’d be at the museum, Friday night. Waiting for me.

  Just like I’d be waiting for him.

  I called Tatsu, and we met again at the izakaya that evening. I watched him arrive like the last time, then walked in ten minutes later, after confirming that no one was rolling up behind him.

  “It was only supposed to be Oleg,” he said, the reproach in his tone so dry it almost crackled.

  I lifted one of the mugs of beer he’d ordered, raised it in a toast, and drank. “I thought the deal was no civilians,” I said, setting down the mug and belching.

  “I confess I don’t remember our exact words. We had drunk a fair amount.”

  “I think it was something about only cancer, no surrounding tissue, or something like that? I figure a bodyguard is more cancer than tissue. But I concede it’s a bit of a gray area.”

  I sensed he was struggling not to smile. I knew he wouldn’t lose the struggle, and was satisfied just that he had to engage in it.

  “Are you all right?” he said after a moment. “No problems?”

  “No. Your intel was rock solid. Any problems on your end?”

  He shook his head. “Unsurprisingly, no one seems to have seen anything. Somehow, someone managed to shatter the front door, kick in an interior door, beat one person to death and strangle another, and escape leaving no witnesses.”

  “Maybe ninja,” I said. “I hear they’re deadly.”

  This time he actually did smile, albeit with a slight shake of his head. “I’m glad you’re all right,” he said. “But this isn’t over yet. Victor is going to come at you hard.”

  “I know. I want him to. I’ve been goading him.”

  He looked at me closely. “You know, the Keisatsuchō works with several excellent psychiatrists. I could arrange for you to see one.”

  I smiled. “When I’m done with Victor, I’ll see anyone you want me to.”

  “How will you get to him?”

  I told him about the conversation from that morning.

  “You know what this means,” he said when I had finished. “The moment they think you’ve killed Sugihara, they plan to kill you.”

  “What do you mean by ‘they’?”

  “Some combination of Victor, Wilson, and whatever forces they can marshal between them.”

  “Maybe. But look at it this way. Victor knows I killed Oleg. His comrade-in-arms, his best soldier, his right-hand man. That alone would be more than enough to make this extremely personal for him. But on top of it? It’s bugging the shit out of him that I seem to be immune to the fear he causes in everyone else.”

  “Are you?”

  I considered for a moment. “I’m not sure. Maybe I’m just better at hiding it, even from myself. But I think it’s more . . . he needs people to be afraid of him. It’s everything he’s about, and it’s always the advantage he seeks. I understood that the second I first saw him. And I’m just not going to give him that advantage. I’m going to take it and turn it on him.”

  “We have nothing to fear but fear itself?”

  I took a sip of beer. “Something like that, I guess. All I know is, he hates that I’m not afraid of him. And worse, that I’ve been rubbing his face in it. Maybe you’re right that I make jokes when I’m scared. But when I bust Victor’s balls, it’s not like that. It’s straight-up contempt. And it’s been preying on him, more and more. I’m in his head, and there’s only one way he can get me out.”

  “He’s not stupid. He’ll know what you’re doing. He’ll put himself in your shoes the same way you’ve put yourself in his.”

  “That might affect his tactics, but it won’t change his motivation. He needs to kill me himself. My whole existence threatens his self-conception.”

  “Which is?”

  “He’s the silverback. The alpha dog. The apex predator. There can’t be two of those. Only one. He needs to know it’s him, and the only way he’ll be convinced of that is by killing me himself. Do you get it? In his mind, it’s a zero-sum game. For him to win, I have to lose. If he doesn’t kill me, he’s not who he needs to believe he is.”

  “Then he’s willing to die trying.”

  “Yes. And that’s why I know he’ll be at the museum himself. He went out of his way to try to scare me into being there. He threatened to kill Sugihara’s wife that very night if I didn’t take out her husband.” I didn’t mention the threat to Miyamoto—it wouldn’t have added anything to the conversation, and Tatsu had already intuited more on the topic of my LDP contact than I liked.

  He sipped his beer. “I can’t help but ask why Victor would be under the impression that threatening Sugihara’s wife would motivate you to try to protect her.”

  I didn’t answer.

  After a moment, he nodded. “When this is done,” he said, “let’s be sure to connect you with one of the psychiatrists I mentioned.”

  I smiled. “And there’s one other reason I know Victor will be there.”

  “Yes?”

  “Even if he wanted to send someone else—and he doesn’t—who would it be? Oleg is dead. Oleg’s bodyguard is dead. There are a couple of second stringers I saw in Victor’s office, but he’s an outsider, and I doubt he can recruit beyond that fast enough for it to matter. Anyway, this isn’t something he’d be willing to outsource even if he could. He needs to do it himself.”

  “What about Wilson?”

  “What about him? Whatever connection Victor has with Wilson, there’s nothing to draw on now. Wilson doesn’t have an army. His team is down by three, and if he’d had more than that, the extras would have been part of the surveillance he put on me. There’s no junior varsity now. No one left on the bench. Just them. And me.”

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you sounded happy about it.”

  “You’re damned right I’m happy about it. By my count, Victor and Wilson are down six men since they first met me. My odds might not be great, but they’re a hell of a lot better now than before.”

  “Yes. But that’s not quite the source of the happiness I sense.”

  I didn’t answer. Was he right? Did some sick part of me love this shit? I remembered the gangs who’d bullied me when my mother had first taken me to live in America at age eight. How I’d learned to evade them when they were together, and fight them when they were alone. I’d always thought that was all just a learning exercise, my first encounter with guerrilla warfare, my first recognition that I had a talent for it. But did I also relish it? Maybe somehow seek to replicate the experience again and again later in life?

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe you’re right. But does it really matter? Love it or hate it, you know what I have to do.”

  He nodded, and for a few moments, we sipped our beers in silence.

  I thought about Sugihara, and how badly Victor, or more likely Wilson acting through Victor, wanted him dead. What Sugihara represented to Wilson might have been academic at that point—if I could kill Victor, and Wilson, too, I’d be content to leave their motivations a mystery. But it couldn’t hurt to know why this whole thing had been set in motion.

  “Have you given any more thought to Sugihara?” I said.

  “In what way?”

  “Who benefits if he dies. Earlier, we were focusing on what his death alone might mean. But what if other people are also dying, and Sugihara’s death is just a part of what whoever’s behind this is trying to bring about as a result? I mean, we know Wilson’s involved. Meaning probably th
e CIA itself, all the way up to Casey. If it’s bigger than just Victor, it’s probably bigger than just Sugihara, too, right?”

  “That’s reasonable. Unfortunately, other than the recent epidemic of deaths of which you are the vector, there have been no notable homicides of late.”

  “What about the guy Kobayashi killed by mistake?”

  “An accountant. Once you informed me of what actually happened to him, I noted a superficial physical resemblance to Sugihara. An unfortunate case of the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time, coupled with an incompetent assassin.”

  “But there has to be something else. You’re a cop. Don’t you feel it?”

  There was a pause. Then he said, “Yes. But I don’t see it.”

  “Then widen the aperture. Forget about political assassinations. What about just, I don’t know, political deaths?”

  “The only high-profile political death in recent memory that wasn’t of a retiree dying of old age was Masayoshi Ōhira, who died of a heart attack two years ago after a parliamentary vote of no confidence.”

  “Wait a minute. What do you mean, a heart attack?”

  He looked at me. “Are you going to suggest someone caused Ōhira’s heart attack?”

  I happened to know with certainty that such a thing was possible, but I didn’t see an advantage in confirming my firsthand knowledge. “Let’s just assume it’s possible,” I said. “What happened?”

  He looked at me for another moment, as though trying to decide whether to indulge me, or to bring up psychiatrists again. But he must have decided the former, because he said, “You don’t know?”

  “I haven’t really been keeping up with the news.”

  “Ōhira was ousted as prime minister in a vote of no-confidence. But instead of resigning as expected, he called for new elections. After two weeks of frenetic campaigning, he was hospitalized for exhaustion. Twelve days after that, he died in the hospital of a massive heart attack.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  He frowned. “You don’t really think—”