Death in the Face

by Craig McDonald

  “Hopefully, we won’t need them more than we have today.”

  “Hopefully we will not,” he echoed softly. “Listen, since you’re clearly not up to the bar, I can have Tiger or Dikko watch over you while Ian and I—”

  “No, I want to come along,” she said. “I’ll be okay. I’ve got another hour to lay here and recover and savor snuggling up tight with you. Just let me have that for a time more, please?” She searched his eyes. “You will grant me that gift, yes?”

  ***

  In the end, Haven was not in fact yet ready for any trip downstairs as she had hoped. Hector left her in the bathtub with a fresh round of aspirin tablets and a generous tumbler of her favored Japanese whiskey over ice. He crossed his fingers the rather risky mix wouldn’t pass her out and result in an accidental drowning. To that fearful end, Hector promised himself he’d keep his time downstairs very short.

  He also left Haven with his Walther for protection before setting off for his rendezvous at the bar.

  Ian, Dikko and Tiger were nursing cocktails at a table in the corner. When they saw Hector, they rose and moved to another available table, taking their drinks with them.

  “Can’t be too careful now, as you’ve made all too clear,” Dikko said to Hector. “Just be sure and speak clearly into the center of that water lily there in the bowl between us, my Yankee friend.” His voice rose, slurring a little, and Dikko said, “We do that for the benefit of any of the cocksuckers maybe panting and hanging on our words in some little cramped sweaty cabinet hidden off the lobby, you goddamn poofter voyeurs!”

  Grinning, Dikko picked up the centerpiece, then, with infinite care because he was fairly smashed, he carried the floral arrangement to the bar where he deposited it with dismissive flourish.

  As the Australian journalist weaved his way back to them, Hector checked and saw the trio of writers was hewing to sake this evening—Ian, particularly, seemed to be an enthusiastic convert to the stuff.

  For his part, Hector ordered another double bourbon. At his companions’ urging, he gave a fuller account of the dire brush he and Haven had endured just a few hours before.

  Ian said, “This villain hiding behind that Noh mask sounds absolutely ludicrous, rather like something Cyril Connolly would say he might expect of me in my cups, but even I wouldn’t jump those rails, not on my weakest day as a writer. And you’ve been very circumspect about the gender of this masked villain. You think it might actually have been a woman?”

  “Just possibly,” Hector said. “I’m coming around to that more recently as I reflect and remember. But only because I got a look at the body in motion, in profile. The silk kimono was clinging to curves a bit more when in fast motion. I think there were breasts under there. . .possibly even substantial ones.”

  Tiger said carefully, leading Hector, “And this masked, barefoot person ran back into the very room where you then found the buxom Haven, quite naked and so also barefoot, obviously, sprawled on the floor. You only heard some unknown number of footsteps pounding away. Can you possibly say how many feet were fleeing?”

  Hector immediately grasped Tiger’s insinuation, of course—that dark theory must already have been thrashed around by the three journalists—or the three paid professional cynics as Hector now regarded the reporters.

  “She really could have arranged her own beating first,” Ian said carefully. “Then, naked under the robes, hidden in that mask but tellingly barefoot, she might have come out to confront you, torturing you with the notion of her own torture presumably underway just through that metal door.”

  It could have happened that way, Hector supposed.

  It was possible, perhaps even plausible.

  And the retreating figure in the mask had moved in this funny, pained way—almost gingerly.

  Perhaps he or she had been moving in agony from a freshly-suffered assault that had left one tender and stiffening with increasing pain?

  Even as he started to entertain the notion, Hector instinctively pushed it away.

  No, this was clearly insane.

  Haven had suffered a beating and been threatened with even worse at this mysterious, masked man or woman’s hands, just as Hector had been threatened.

  At the same time, the seeds of doubt had again been planted by his colleagues and they were already spreading their infernal roots.

  Hector said, “Why do you all insist upon thinking Haven is some kind of enemy?”

  “Because she’s already a proven and self-proclaimed spy, and rather an accomplished operative, one would conclude from her term of service with MI5,” Dikko said. His Australian accent was becoming still broader and perhaps even a shade more bellicose as a result of all the drink.

  “But why do you suspect her now, apart from coincidences and odd bits of timing and the like?” Hector searched each man’s face. “Why this sudden surge of fresh suspicion?”

  Dikko plunked down his flask of sake and pointed a finger at Hector. “Because, you dense Yankee bloke, tonight’s kidnapping comes straight off the heels of our expressing a compelling need for her to ‘prove out.’ That was a call for proof that could have been overheard in Ian’s bugged room. Taking a beating for you contrives to serve that very purpose. Wouldn’t you agree to that, at least in principle?” He arched his eyebrows, then said, “But there’s much more, old boy.”

  Dikko Hughes suddenly stopped there, possibly realizing even through the mists of all the spirits that the bigger and more devastating revelation shouldn’t come from his lips.

  With a sigh, Ian tugged at his bowtie, then looked around to make sure there was still no sign of Haven’s approach. He shook his head and said, “It’s almost certainly like this, Hector,” he said. “Information has now come through about her. Information about Haven’s, well, let’s call them her unfortunate antecedents.”

  Hector squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Define that please.”

  “In this case, I mean her parentage,” Ian said, carefully. “Haven has a dubious pedigree, to say the least. But in this context, and faced with our present set of circumstances, all that also seems downright calamitous, if not outright sinister. It also seems Haven’s own agency is actively investigating her, and with some real haste, all of a sudden. Your lady friend is a hair’s breadth from being ordered out of the field and back to England until this internal inquiry is complete. It happens MI6 is also now looking into Miss Branch and her possible affiliation with certain parties in the East. At the moment, rightly or wrongly, she’s in very real and official jeopardy.”

  Hector mumbled, “Antecedents, pedigrees and parentage. . . Affiliations. What the hell is this all really about, Ian?”

  The English thriller writer presumed to order Hector a second drink. As Ian was doing that, Hector found himself lighting up another cigarette—what would prove to be the first of several over the next twenty minutes of misery and dark revelations.

  When the waitress had left them alone again, Ian said softly, “Hector, have you ever heard of a Scotsman named William Francis Forbes-Semphill?”

  Hector shrugged. “Christ, no.” He thought more about it to be certain, then said again, “Hell, no. Who the hell was he?”

  “Who the hell is he would be more precise,” Ian said. “The man, I’m afraid, still lives, but obscurely now, hiding from the possibility of his true and traitorous nature being revealed.”

  “And again I ask,” Hector said, “Who is this Scot? And he’s Haven’s father, you said?”

  “He is a Scottish Lord,” Tiger piped in. “He was an aeronautical engineer, a pilot, sometimes diplomat, a recipient of the Air Force Cross and also of the Order of the Polar Star. He was stationed over here and fell in love with Japan—perilously so, from Ian’s government’s perspective, and, by extension, your country’s, as well. My country came to love him back, I suppose you might say. He was honored as a 3rd Class of Commander in the Order of the Rising Sun, among other honors bestowed upon him by Japan.”

  I
an’s voice suddenly ran to ice as he cut in: “But he also betrayed many British intelligence secrets to Imperial Japan. He did that over many decades, including the war years. Eventually he was found out.”

  “How did this betrayal not come out?” Hector said, “It should have been all the news, just like Burgess and Maclean. Sounds like you’re saying this fella is still moving around Britain and suffering no consequences for his betrayal.”

  “Essentially, that’s all too accurate,” Ian said. “And it is terribly unfortunate that it is so. But you know how these things sometimes come about. Candidly? Churchill rather protected this man because of the way it would have damaged him politically if the man’s treachery became widely known. It was almost criminal negligence that allowed this scoundrel to betray Britain for as long as he did. Much, if not all, of the blame for that could justifiably fall at Winston’s doorstep.”

  Hector tapped his ash and took another deep drink, his mind racing over all that. He said, “And Haven is his daughter? How exactly is that? I have to think that your government investigates its potential secret agents to within an inch of their great-, great-grandmothers’ dowdy lives. How did it miss this damning alleged connection?”

  “Well, as one might expect,” Ian said, “efforts were made on the part of nearly all parties most immediately involved to obscure Miss Branch’s parentage, at least to most of the world. The 19th Lord Semphill arrived in Japan in 1921. Haven, the illegitimate issue of an affair that began soon after his arrival here, was born in 1922. Her parents-of-record contrived to have Haven actually delivered in England to secure her British citizenship. You know—to make England her legal country of origin, of course. But most of her young life was spent here, in and around Tokyo.”

  Ian began to prep another cigarette. He said, “It’s my belief that as a result, Haven’s cultural and patriotic identification is wholly with Japan—certainly infinitely more so than with Britain. She is very much her birth father’s daughter and managed to spend considerable time with him, more than sufficient to bond with him, so to speak. She shared enough time to acquire his interests and deep and abiding sentiments toward Japan. She assumed her father’s twisted patriotic loyalties. Her father began spying and passing information on to Tiger’s government in the 1920s and continued to do so well into the 1940s. It’s firmly believed now the daughter has resumed her birth father’s odious spying for Japan. It’s believed she’s a double-agent.”

  Hector extinguished his cigarette and promptly got another going. “You confessed that your man Churchill covered this man’s tracks with a backhoe because it was politically expeditious for him to do so. To spare himself embarrassment. That’s just wonderful.”

  “Not just Churchill,” Ian chimed in, getting defensive. “This man has connections to the Royal Family, too. But now, at least, he’s ostracized in the circles that matter most to him.”

  Hector rolled his eyes and said, feigning an English accent, “Ouch. I do so hope that bloody hurts him, and how.”

  Ian had little patience for Hector’s sarcasm. “Oh, do come along now, Hector. We’re both men of the world and hardly vestal virgins by anyone’s standards. Only the good can be really bad. Only the believer can effectively blaspheme.”

  “You’re sure Haven is this traitor’s child? You’re really sure?”

  “Quite certain,” Ian said. “There’s no doubt whatever about any of that.”

  Hector took that in. “And the notion is she’s some sort of double-agent for Japan?”

  “Or at least for someone or some organization faithful to Japan,” Dikko said, “yes, that’s the belief. A downright certainty, actually. Maybe it’s the Black Dragons, maybe it’s something else.”

  “And that someone or something wants the Flea Bomb back for Mother Japan,” Hector said. He considered his nearly drained second drink, then looked to the bar and nodded his assent for a third. It was too much liquor of course—far too much with his blood-sugar issues. But this one last time he wanted to be numb as he used to get during the good old days of this twenties and thirties, when one didn’t care or even think about any potential for consequences from an over-indulgence; like it was in his prime when he could rebound so much more quickly from the dulling wonders of liquor.

  Dikko said, “Is it also conceivable that she injected that Japanese fish poison into the bloke who died on the plane? Might she have done that when she was pitched into his arms by the air turbulence, using that rough ride as cover to get close and give the sorry bloke the lethal shot?”

  “Of course it’s not impossible,” Hector said dubiously, yet letting himself toy with the idea. He quickly ran through every dark thing that happened since the bar in Idlewild and assessed Haven’s possibility for having a sub rosa role in any of all that.

  The results left him at once chilled and conflicted.

  Enough of this, he argued with himself. The terror—the real poison—of course, comes in your not knowing. Well, there was something he could do about that, and right now. Hector ground out his fresh cigarette and stood.

  Ian scowled. “Where are you going?”

  “Heading upstairs to confront her, of course,” Hector said. “I’m not pussy-footing around this anymore. I’m tired of being threatened and I’m too impatient to live looking over my shoulder constantly for the next two weeks.”

  Ian started to rise to follow but Hector held up a hand. “Best I do it alone.”

  Ian squinted at Hector’s left arm. “You are at least carrying your Walther?”

  “But of course,” Hector lied.

  God willing, Haven wouldn’t turn the German automatic lose on him this night if backed into a corner by the confrontation to come.

  ***

  He rapped twice on the door. When that elicited no answer, he keyed himself into the room.

  He said softly, “Haven?”

  Silence, again.

  The lights were on low and the bed was remade. Haven’s suitcase was gone, but her musky scent lingered like a specter.

  On the table by the big window lay the Walther PPK, resting alongside a single pink Japanese rose. Under both of those was a slip of paper.

  Hector tugged loose the note with a sense of fascination and dread: How many times had his future turned on the words left on a sheet of paper by a lover in full flight? All of that really started with Brinke in Paris on a long-ago February night, he supposed.

  Hector pulled out a chair by the window that afforded its dazzling view of downtown Tokyo. He turned the chair around to catch the light of the city—the most garish of light to read by—and sat down. He pulled on his glasses and, bracing for it, he began to read:

  My darling Hector:

  My invisible ears really are everywhere.

  So now you know how it is.

  Like Mishima, I abhor what has become of Japan. I dread what lies ahead for my country of choice under its continued neutering by the West.

  We’ll never have our own nuclear bomb of course, but we can have this—this “weapon” that we created and can use to shape our destiny. We can use this “weapon” to resume our position as a world power and sovereign nation. Japan’s ingenuity created this thing, and Japan should benefit from that effort, however dubious and destructive all that might seem to you.

  With you, Hector, I’m truly quite taken, my darling. Please know that becoming your lover was my idea, and my desired outcome, and it was not done under any orders or for any devious purposes.

  We’ll meet again, of that I’m fairly certain.

  Please, darling, when we do next cross paths, just stand clear and don’t make me do something to you that I would hate.

  In the end, you really don’t have a dog in this fight, to use an American term.

  I firmly believe that Japan would never reduce America, much less the United Kingdom, to some desert, except under conditions of total combat, but I don’t think either side would allow that to happen again—not for several generations to co
me, at least. (China or North Korea, admittedly, might be a different matter.)

  I truly have relished showing you at least a little of the country that I love and willingly would die serving, even if that death should come at your hand.

  Know, too, my love, I would still kill you to see Japan free and back on its proper, imperial path.

  Ever yours,

  Haven

  Well, well.

  Hector looked the note over again. He let it sink in—all its passionate revelations and threats—then he set it on fire with his Zippo and left its remains to smolder in an ashtray.

  He made his way back downstairs, finding his friends still there in the bar.

  Hector’s chair was empty and his nearly untouched, third double bourbon still sat there, now sweating a bit. He slid back into his seat and took a deep drink, very aware of his friends’ eyes studying him.

  It seemed it was Ian’s to at last ask: “Well, where is she, Hector? What happened, for God’s sake?” He looked around, then said, eyes narrowing, “Is there some tidying up to be seen too?” A grizzled and arched eyebrow.

  Hector was appalled that Ian’s mind had gone to that place. Sourly, he sipped his drink, then shook his head.

  “She was already gone when I got up there, so no, there’s nothing to clean up after,” Hector said, voice going to gravel.

  He took another deep drink, then added, “The bitch has fled.”

  Part 2 / “. . .and the journey itself home”

  1 / Into Japan

  That morning, sipping what Hector found to be extremely unsatisfactory coffee while waiting for the hotel shuttle that would ferry them to the train station, Dikko shared with Hector the gist of the letter Ian had written months before, a wrenching epistle laying out Ian’s dreamed itinerary of the queer sites of Japan that might “fire” his “depleted muse.”

  It seemed Ian first wanted to spend a couple of days in Tokyo, just as they had been doing—“acclimatizing,” as he put it. Then Ian wished to hop on a “luxurious modern train” and race southward.