The little man tried to make a joke, making a gun with his fingers. “Sort of like Agent 007 you’re reading about,” he said, feigning shots with his fingers at Hector’s head, then at his heart. “Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang?”
“Sure, just like Mr. Bond.” Hector’s head was spinning.
So who, if either, was the real spy—was it Terrence Hunt or was it Haven Branch?
Or was it maybe both?
Perhaps neither?
The little man pushed his glass a stool over and rose abruptly. “Speak of the devil and she will appear. Miss Branch can’t see me here after the plane. . . Quickly—I know you are planning to meet with Mr. Mishima. Knowing what I’ve told you, I’d like you to question him on these things. Later, I will find you and we will talk about what you learn.”
Listening, Hector glanced into the mirror—indeed, along came Haven, smashing in a long coat and sexy black crushed-velvet dress that accented her faint sunburn. He said quickly, “From your perspective, should I fear for myself from this woman?”
A confused smile. Hiroshi said, “You two are from allied countries. So what could you possibly have to fear, yes?”
With that lingering, sixty-four thousand dollar question left in a dying fall, Hiroshi swiftly took his leave.
Smiling, Haven slid off her coat, unveiling bare, still-bronzing shoulders and an enticing expanse of décolletage.
She deftly scooped up a menu Hector had asked for in order to preview and said, “Hullo there, Mr. Lassiter.” A smashing smile and a kiss on the cheek, then Haven asked, “So Hector, what looks truly scrumptious?”
4 / Safe Haven?
Rather than pay hotel prices, even on someone else’s tab, Haven convinced Hector they should venture out, wandering Soho in the rain to find their own fare.
Under a shared umbrella, Haven squeezed his arm tighter and recited a line of poetry: “When chill November’s surly blast makes fields and forest bare. . . .”
Hector smiled and said, “I will confess on that note that I love the rain, and autumn is my favorite season of all.”
“The so-called season of the witch,” Haven said, “and one to inspire poets.”
“Inspire and depress, which is maybe too often the same thing,” Hector said.
The wind tugged harder at the big umbrella, flinging a spray of rain under its cover, peppering their faces. He adjusted the angle of the umbrella and said, “We should settle on some place soon, before this thing gets turned inside out and we’re left soaked to the bone.”
Haven smiled and nodded at the Windmill Theatre. “Maybe there? Warm up while we muse over some tableaux vivants? Or perhaps you prefer the Colony Club instead? It’s a haven for creative types, I’ve heard.”
“That last place least of all,” he said crossly. “I hope this won’t disappoint you, but I really think I need to eat before we start crawling through all the places Soho is infamous in certain low quarters for offering. What do you say? Dinner before debauchery?”
“I’m starving too,” she said, leaning into him. He fought another sudden and vicious tug at their umbrella.
They ended up in cozy little place sharing grilled sole and a couple of glasses of Pinot Gris. Over dinner, he said, “Did you sample any of Ian’s latest?”
“The first three chapters,” she said. “Oh, I’m hooked, to be sure. But I’d prefer to read something new of yours.”
“That will have to wait for next spring,” he said. “Although, if proofs catch up to me along the road, you’re welcome to read those if you really care too. I’m typically sick of the next book by this point.”
He smiled and said, “Warning, sorry trade secrets lay ahead. You see, by the time an author gets his proof copy in hand, he’s already read the damn thing more times than can be counted. At least that’s so the way that I work. Near the end of the process, you end up reading only what you think you wrote, not what’s actually on the page. Even brazen typos get by you, and far too late in the sorry goddamn game.”
She reached over and squeezed his hand. “Is that what they call an occupational hazard?”
“Real blessing-and-curse stuff, yes,” he said. “What’s your occupation, or are you maybe extravagantly well-off?”
She leaned closer. “If I confessed to the latter, would it change the way you think of me?”
“Well, I am a fulltime freelance writer, after all. Forever living by my wits and white knuckles.”
A sad smile. “Sorry, but I’m afraid I haven’t much prospect of becoming your patron, Hector. Not on a civil servant’s salary.”
Civil servant. Well, here it likely came, at last: Hector realized his fork was poised halfway to his mouth. She stroked a heavy wave of blue-black hair behind her ear. “Now comes his troubled blue eyes,” she said.
“Reassure them—allay my troubled mind and eyes,” he said, fingering the stem of his wine glass.
“Afraid that’s not in the cards, either,” she said. “Of course our meeting was no accident. You’ll surely have gathered that by now.”
A nod, slow and shallow. “Go on, it’s usually best just to put it out there,” he said. Hector certainly wasn’t going to be finessed by a pretty face and body into simply volunteering what he thought he might know from others who’d spoken of her.
“To borrow a phrase from your author friend’s growing oeuvre, I’m on her Majesty’s Secret Service.”
Hector rubbed his jaw. “That is to say, MI6?” He made a gun with thumb and forefinger. “Just like Bond, you’re saying? Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang?”
“No,” Haven said, no more amused than Hector had been when Hiroshi Takahashi had attempted the same joking, 007 reference. “James Bond’s MI6. I’m MI5. And unlike Commander Bond, I enjoy no license to kill,” she said.
“Well, that much is a comfort,” he said. “So why then are you spying on me? What on earth have I done to worry the British Secret Intelligence Service?” His faced darkened. “Or is this a favor for Mr. Hoover?”
She arched a black eyebrow. “You have some trouble with your FBI?”
“Find me an American author who doesn’t,” he said.
“I’m not sure that spying is the right word here,” she said.
“Guardian Angel, perhaps?”
“Maybe closer,” Haven said. “Still, you seem skeptical. Could it be you don’t put much faith in female intelligence officers? Maybe you don’t believe in women engaging in fieldwork? If that’s so, I’m frankly disappointed.”
Here he was, being taken for some sort of a misogynist, and not for the first time. In some ways, that seemed another so-called professional hazard tied to his writer’s life. Thanks to Mickey Spillane, Fleming and some others, there seemed to be an assumption on the part of a segment of the reading public that male crime and thriller writers were inherently women-haters.
But Hector didn’t regard himself as that sort, not a bit. Quite the contrary. It was men he rarely got on with, particularly over any extended period of time. His roster of enduring male friends was astonishingly short.
He said, “I actually married a female spy once, a woman named Duff Sexton. She was more properly OSS than I could ever lay claim to having been.” Hector lifted the bottle of white wine and freshened their glasses. They were pacing the drinks far more responsibly than they had in the airport, or on the plane. “What are you protecting me from, Haven?”
“As I told you, that’s not really quite right, either.” She pulled out a Morland & Co. cigarette and Hector lit it.
“Please try to make it clear to me then,” he said, clicking shut his Zippo.
She nodded, blowing a little smoke from the corner of her mouth over her bare shoulder. “Very well, here we go. We believe the notion of Mr. Fleming’s next book taking place in Japan was suggested to Ian, a seed planted when Mr. Fleming was in Japan rather abruptly and unexpectedly three years ago and just preparing to leave. He was doing some travel pieces for the London Times with an eye toward publishing a l
ater collection of the journalism between hard covers. I believe that book is scheduled for release soon.”
Indeed: Thrilling Cities—Ian had spoken of the coming nonfiction collection to Hector.
He sipped more of his wine, mind racing. If Ian was being lured back to Japan for some dark reason, and this time with Hector calculatedly in tow? Hector had this terrible, sinking feeling taking hold.
Haven Branch deftly sawed off the limb upon which she had maneuvered them at his urging. “I see the angst again in your expression and those striking, pale blue eyes. You’re pulling the threads together and hating what it probably all portends.”
“You tell me what it portends, please.” Once more, Hector wasn’t going to be tricked or eased into offering up observations or admissions tied to that long-ago, secret trip he’d made into Japan just after the war on behalf of the OSS—the trip that had partly confounded his honeymoon with the aforementioned Duff.
“You’re trying to establish that I really know some things,” Haven said. “Very well. You mentioned one of your wives—Duff Sexton was her name. But your first wife was also an author, a woman named Brinke Devlin. Parenthetically—I really am a longtime fan of your novels, and of Miss Devlin’s, too. At any rate, you’ve been enticed to come to Japan by the promise of claiming some of Brinke Devlin’s allegedly long-lost writings.”
Impulsively, Hector said, “Allegedly? You’re saying it’s a hoax?” God, he hoped that was not so. His heart was deeply set on wallowing in all those words of Brinke’s he’d become convinced awaited him in Japan.
“I’m not certain about any of that,” she said. “I’d suspect it’s a ruse, yes. The timing just seems a little too coincidental and too good to be true, wouldn’t you agree?”
“And why would they want to lure me back to Japan?”
“I suspect you well know the answer to that,” she said. “But this probably isn’t the place to have any more of this particular conversation. It’s too quiet and we’re in easy line of sight—all to the good for listening devices or spying lip readers. And, anyway, we have a friend from the plane seated just behind you. You know—the man who was originally seated next to you for the ride here before I got him moved. He’s tried to disguise himself a bit, but poorly so, if you ask me.”
Hector resisted the urge to turn and confirm all that. “And who is our friend from the plane? Any clue about that?”
“Nobody good, nor to be trusted. But again, we should talk someplace where it is less easy to eavesdrop.”
“But we chose this place at random,” he said. “I sincerely doubt there are any wires or microphones taped to the table bottom.” He tapped the surface with his knuckles.
“There are such things as directional mikes,” she said, “and there are those lip-readers I mentioned.”
“Well, I’ve just about eaten my fill, anyway,” he said. “Given where we’re going, I suppose seafood will be a staple meal for the next week or thereabouts. We’ll find another place.”
“Lovely as I’m sure it is, your hotel room is clearly not to be trusted for this talk, either.” A smile. “I am right in assuming you didn’t choose your own lodging?”
“Here on another’s nickel, as I’ve made clear more than once,” he said. “That American magazine is indeed paying for my fancy digs. So I get your drift. The hotel is a known and pre-arranged destination and therefore my pretty room could be bugged to its lovely gills. I’ll settle up and we’ll find a more raucous joint.” He checked his watch. “I also need to call Ian soon. Let him know I’m here now so we can settle our next travel plans.”
“So you’ll go ahead with your trip to Japan?”
“Certainly. I mean, I trust you’ll be following, watching over me?”
“Following?” She reached over, her thumb stroking the dark hair on the back of his hand. “It would all be rather easier, and likely more pleasurable, if I wasn’t simply skulking around the fringes and spying like that dreadful little man across the way.”
“I’m certainly open to suggestions,” he said. Hell, Hector was always open to those from an attractive woman. “What are you thinking?”
“I only have the most obvious notion,” she said. “If we were to travel as a, well, as a sort of couple. . .? I mean, you do have a certain reputation to facilitate all that, after all.”
“That is sadly so,” he agreed carefully. “So you do realize all that that would imply?” A wolfish smile. “Or what it might demand in order to maintain tawdry illusions about me as lady’s man? As you point out, I have a certain regrettable reputation to live down to.”
“We were surely already headed that way, regardless of other circumstances, weren’t we?” She gave him a knowing, decidedly carnal smile. “In my mind, I was already settled. But if you aren’t interested. . .?” Her shoulders gave a sad shrug.
He turned his hand under hers, palm pressing to palm, his index finger on her pulse; he felt it quicken. He reached out with his other hand and traced the sleek line of her jaw with the side of that thumb. He said, “We’ll go elsewhere, now. A place a bit more rowdy where we can talk more without worrying too terribly about being overheard.”
“And after that?”
“After that, bugged or not, my hotel room should be perfectly fine for just about anything or everything other than talking, wouldn’t you agree?”
***
The rain slightly abated and wind dying down, they decided to take in a set or two over drinks at Ronnie Scott’s on Gerrard, before heading back to his hotel’s bar for a nightcap.
After securing their table not far from the stage, Hector excused himself to make his overdue contact with Ian—the phone call that had taken on new urgency and purpose.
Several rings, then that voice—a smooth, cultured English accent delivered in a bonhomie baritone in which Hector could hear the wicked grin: “My favorite Texan,” Ian said. “Dear chap, you’re here at last and you’re well?”
He imagined Ian sitting at his writing desk, likely. Ian, a creature of unwavering habit and firmly fixed rails, would be wearing a powder blue shirt and a black, spotted bowtie. He might even be sporting a suit coat, even in the comfort of his home, and even at this hour.
“Here, hale and hearty,” Hector said. “But I’m also a bit flummoxed, just as you’ll soon be, I’m going to wager.” He gave Ian a quick fill on the past several hours, then said, “You still have connections, both sides of the ocean, right? Can you verify this woman’s alleged associations?”
“I’m shocked she’d confess them to you if she’s on the up-and-up, unless of course it was done under some kind of orders or official sanction,” Ian said. “But, of course, yes, I can make some calls. I’ll need an hour or so, perhaps.”
“There’s one more thing. I met two other gentlemen. One of them is now dead and under very suspicious circumstances. He’d claimed he was with the CIA. According to my other new friend that was a lie, as was the name I was given. Could you ask some questions about these two men from the plane, too?” He rattled off the names Terrence Hunt, Sebastian Keene and Hiroshi Takahashi.
Ian was palpably excited by the simple prospect of even a scintilla of possible intrigue underlying their looming trip to Japan. “Give me an hour, as I said. I also retain copious journalistic connections. So, better make that two hours, Hector. You can contrive to stay alive that much longer, yes?”
“At least for that long, sure. Two hours, it is.” That meant enduring a lot of English jazz, unless they took their party elsewhere. Well, one just had to take the rough with the smooth, Hector consoled himself: He was no jazz fan.
The two authors said their goodbyes and Hector threaded his way through tables back to Haven in the raucous din of the Soho music club.
She smiled and said, “You reached your friend? Probably confided to him everything you know—or at least think that you may know—up to this point?”
Hector smiled, scooting his chair closer to hers and kissing her bare
shoulder. “My friend is out presently,” he said simply. “I’m to call back in a couple of hours. Why don’t you tell me more about that man at the restaurant, the one from the plane whose seat you stole.”
The music started up as a new band took the stage. She leaned into him, whispering into his ear so her mouth was blocked from view by his profile and her dark mane of hair—safely from the sight of any of those potential lip-readers she so seemed to fear might be watching.
Here and there, her lips feather-brushed his ear and throat.
She said, “Hector, have you ever heard of a Japanese-based secret society called Kokuryūkai, or ‘The Black Dragon Society?’”
She didn’t wait for him to answer, rushing ahead: “No? Well, it was founded by a man named Ryōhei Uchida. . . .”
***
Two hours later, his head was filled with dark lore tied to the Black Dragon cabal and its sordid role in attempted trouble-making, even in post-Pearl Harbor America—everything from harassing fellow detainees at the FDR-driven Manzanar Interment Camp, to a flurry of FBI arrests of Dragon fifth columnists in Hector’s beloved San Joaquin Valley.
Despite all the crazy thoughts running through his head after Haven’s dark disclosures, on schedule, Hector made his way back to the payphone.
An eager Ian answered before the second ring this time: “It’s confirmed Hector. She’s very much what she claims to be. But more than that, they wouldn’t tell me, which is slightly disquieting. I was not discouraged from going to Japan, but I could draw no more information about what might happen if we should go there. Your Japanese acquaintance from the airplane remains a mystery for the moment. As to Mr. Terrence Hunt slash Sebastian Keene? He appears to have been the latter, by birth. He had no American intelligence ties that I can find, or at least that my sources care to confirm. I do, however, know what killed him. That was a lethal dose of takifugu.”
Death in the Face Page 4