by Barry Eisler
“Good luck, Rain-san,” he said, and walked off into the gathering darkness.
CHAPTER 22
I love Tokyo at night. It’s the lights, I think: more than the architecture, more, even, than its sounds and scents, the lights are what animate the city’s nocturnal spirit. There is brightness: streets alight with neon, with the urgent blinking of constellations of pachinko parlors, streets where the store windows and the headlights of a thousand passing cars illuminate the pavement as brightly as the halogen lamps of a night baseball game. And there is gloom: alleys lit by nothing more than the fluorescent glow of a lonely vending machine, left leaning against the worn brick like an old man who’s given up on everything and wants only to catch his breath, streets lit only by the yellowish pall of lamplights spaced so widely that a passing figure and his shadow seem to evaporate in the dim spaces between.
I walked the gloomy backstreets of Ebisu after Tatsu departed, heading toward the Imperial Hotel in Hibiya, where I would stay until this thing was over. For near-suicidal audacity, what I was about to do would rank with any of the missions I had undertaken during my days with SOG, or with those of the mercenary conflicts that came after. I wondered if Tatsu’s bow was some kind of epitaph.
Well, you’ve survived missions before that ought to have been your last, I thought, letting loose a memory.
After our rampage in Cambodia, things had started going bad for my unit. Up until then the killing had been pretty impersonal. You get into a firefight, you’re just aiming at tracer rounds, you can’t even see the people firing back at you. Maybe later you’ll find blood or brains, maybe some bodies. Or we’d hear one of the claymore booby traps we’d laid go off a klick or two away, and know we’d nailed someone. But the thing we did at Cu Lai was different. It affected us.
I knew what we had done was wrong, but I rationalized by saying hey, we’re at war, wrong things happen in wars. Some of the other guys got morose, guilt making them gun shy. Jimmy—Crazy Jake—went the opposite way. He locked himself even tighter into the war’s embrace.
Crazy Jake was fanatically loyal to his Yards—short for Montagnards—and they responded to that. When a Yard was lost in a firefight, Jake would deliver the bad news personally to the village chief. He eschewed army barracks, preferring to sleep in the Yard quarters. He learned their language and their customs, participated in their ceremonies and rituals. Plus, the Yards believed in magic—the villages had their own sorcerers—and a man with Jake’s killing record walked with a powerful aura.
All this made the brass uncomfortable, because they didn’t command the Yards’ respect. The problem got worse when we were assigned to beef up the fortified hamlets at Bu Dop, on the Cambodian border, because it exposed Crazy Jake to more of the indigenous population.
Frustrated with the rules of engagement set by the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, and with MACV’s inability to root out the mole who was compromising SOG’s operations, Jake started using Bu Dop as a staging ground for independent missions against the Vietcong in Cambodia. The Yards hated the Vietnamese because the Vietnamese had been shitting on them throughout history, and they were happy to follow Crazy Jake on his lethal forays. But SOG was being disbanded, and “Vietnamization”—that is, turning the war over to the Vietnamese so America could back out—was the order of the day. MACV told him to shut off the Cambodian ops, but Jake refused—said it was just part of defending his hamlets.
So MACV recalled him to Saigon. Jake ignored them. A detachment was sent in to retrieve him, and never returned. This was even spookier than if they had been slaughtered, their severed heads run up on pikes. Did they turn and join Crazy Jake? Did he have that much magic? Did he just disappear them into thin air?
So they cut off his supplies. No more weapons, no more matériel. But Jake wouldn’t cease and desist. MACV figured out he was selling poppy to finance his operation. Jake had become his own universe. He had a self-sustaining, highly effective, fanatically loyal private army.
MACV knew about Jimmy and me; they had the personnel files. They brought me in one day. “You’re going to have to go in there and get him,” they told me. “He’s selling drugs now, he’s going unauthorized into Cambodia, he’s out of control. This is a public-relations fiasco if it gets out.”
“I don’t think I can get him out. He’s not listening to anyone,” I said.
“We didn’t say ‘get him out.’ We just said ‘get him,’” they told me.
There were three of them. Two MACV, one CIA. I was shaking my head. The guy from the Agency spoke up.
“Do what we’re asking and you’ve got a ticket home.”
“I’ll get home when I get home,” I said, but I wondered.
He shrugged. “We’ve got two choices here. One is, we carpet-bomb every hamlet in Bu Dop. That’s about a thousand friendlies, plus Calhoun. We’ll just emulsify everyone. It’s not a problem.
“Two is, you do what’s right and save all those people, and you’re on a plane the next day. Personally, I don’t give a shit.” He turned and walked out.
I told them I would do it. They were going to grease him anyway. Even if they didn’t, I saw what he had become. I had seen it happen to a lot of guys, though Jimmy was the worst. They went over there, and found out killing was what they were best at. Do you tell people? Do you put on your resume, “Ninety confirmed kills. Large collection of human ears. Ran private army.” Come on, you’re never going to fit in the real world again. You’re marked forever, you can’t go back.
I went in, told the Yards I wanted to see Crazy Jake. I was known from the missions we had run together, so they took me to him. But they took my weapon first.
“Hey Jimmy,” I said when I saw him. “Long time no see.”
“John John,” he said, embracing me. He had always called me that. “You come to join me? It’s about time. We’re the only outfit in this fucking war the VC is actually afraid of. We don’t have to fight with one arm tied behind our balls by a bunch of no-load politicians.”
We spent some time catching up. By the time I told him they were going to bomb him it was already night.
“I figured they would, sooner or later,” he said. “I can’t fight that. Yeah, I figured this was coming.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Don’t know. But I can’t make the Yards my hostages. Even if I could, fuckers’d bomb them anyway.”
“Why don’t you just walk out?”
He gave me a sly look. “I’m not going to prison, John John. Not after leading the good life here in the Central Highlands.”
“Well, you’re in a tight spot. I don’t know what to tell you.”
There was a pause, then he said, “You supposed to kill me, man?”
I nodded.
“So do it.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I’ve got no way out. They’re going to vaporize my people otherwise, I know that. And I’d rather it be you than some guy I don’t know, carpet bombing me from thirty thousand feet up. You’re my blood brother, man.”
I still didn’t say anything.
“I love these people,” he said. “I really love them. Do you know how many of them have died for me? Because they know I would die for them.”
These were not just words. It’s hard for a civilian to understand the depth of trust, the depth of love, that can develop between men in combat.
“My Yards won’t be happy with you. They really love me, the crazy fucks. Think I’m a magic man. But you’re pretty slippery. You’ll get away.”
“I just want to go home,” I said.
He laughed. “There’s no home for us, John. Not after what we’ve done. It doesn’t work that way. Here.” He handed me a side arm. “Don’t worry about me. Save my Yards.”
I thought of the recruiter, the one who’d given us twenty bucks to pay some woman to sign us into the Army as our mother.
“Save my Yards,” Jimmy said again.
I thought
of Deirdre, saying, Watch out for Jimmy, okay?
He picked up a CAR-15, a version of the ubiquitous M-16 with a retractable stock and shortened barrel, and clicked the selector switch from safe to full auto so I could see him do it.
“Come on, John John. I’m not going to keep asking so nicely.”
I remembered him putting out his hand after I had fought him to a standstill, saying, You’re all right. What’s your name?
John Rain, fuckface, I had answered, and we had fought again.
The CAR-15 was swinging toward me.
I thought of the swimming hole near Dryden, how you had to just forget about everything else and jump.
“Last chance,” Jimmy was saying. “Last chance.”
Do what we’re asking and you’ve got a ticket home.
There’s no home for us, John. Not after what we’ve done.
I raised the pistol quickly, smoothly, chest level, double-tapping the trigger in the same motion. The two rounds blasted through his head and blew out his brains. Jimmy was dead before he hit the floor.
Two Yards burst into Jimmy’s hooch but I had already picked up the CAR. I cut them down and ran.
Their security was outward facing. They weren’t well prepared to stop someone going from the inside out. And they were shocked, demoralized, at losing Jimmy.
I took some shrapnel from an exploding claymore. The wounds were minor, but back at base they told me, “Okay soldier, that’s your million-dollar wound. You’re going home now.” They put me on a plane, and seventy-two hours later I was back in Dryden.
The body came back several days later. There was a funeral. Jimmy’s parents were crying, Deirdre was crying. “Oh God, John, I knew, I knew he wasn’t going to make it back. Oh God,” she was saying.
Everyone wanted to know how Jimmy had died. I told them he died in a firefight. That was all I knew. Near the border.
I left town a day later. Didn’t say goodbye to any of them. Jimmy was right, there was no home after what we’d done. “After such knowledge, what forgiveness?” I think some poet said.
I tell myself it’s karma, the great wheels of the universe grinding on. A lifetime ago I killed my girl’s brother. Now I take out a guy, next thing I know I’m involved with his daughter. If it were happening to someone else, I’d think it was funny.
I had called the Imperial before the meeting with Tatsu and made a reservation. I keep a few things stored at the hotel in case of a rainy day: a couple of suits, identity papers, currency, concealed weapons. The hotel people think I’m an expat Japanese who visits Japan frequently, and I pay them to keep my things so I don’t have to carry them back and forth every time I travel. I even stay there periodically to back up the story.
The Imperial is centrally located and has a great bar. More important, it’s big enough to be as anonymous as a love hotel, if you know how to play it.
I had just reached Hibiya Station on the Hibiya line when my pager went off. I pulled it from my belt and saw a number I didn’t recognize, but followed by the 5-5-5 that told me it was Tatsu.
I found a payphone and input the number. The other side picked up on the first ring. “Secure line?” Tatsu’s voice asked.
“Secure enough.”
“The two visitors are leaving Narita at zero-nine-hundred tomorrow. It’s a ninety-minute ride to where they’re going. Our man might get there before them, though, so you’ll need to be in position early, just outside.”
“Okay. The package?”
“Being emplaced right now. You can pick it up in an hour.”
“Good.”
Silence. Then: “Good luck.”
Dead line.
I reinserted the phone card and called the number Tatsu had given me in Ebisu. Whispering to disguise my voice, I warned the person on the other end of the line that there would be a bomb on the undercarriage of a diplomatic vehicle visiting the Yokosuka Naval Base tomorrow. That should slow things up in front of the guardhouse.
I had showered at Harry’s before meeting Tatsu, but I still looked pretty rough when I checked in at the hotel. No one seemed to notice my sleeve—wet from fishing Tatsu’s package out of the fountain at the park. Anyway, I had just flown in from the East Coast of the United States—long trip, anything can happen. The attendant at the front desk laughed when I told him I was getting too old for this shit.
My things were already waiting for me in the room, the shirts pressed and the suits hung neatly. I bolted the door and sat on the bed, then checked a false compartment in the suitcase they had brought up, where I saw the dull gleam of the Glock. I opened the toiletry kit, removed the rounds I wanted from a dummy can of deodorant, loaded the gun, and slipped it between the mattress and the box spring.
At nine o’clock, the phone rang. I picked it up, recognized Midori’s voice, and told her the room number.
A minute later, there was a quiet knock at the door. I got up and looked through the peephole. The light in the room was off, so the person on the other side wouldn’t know whether the occupant was checking to see who was out there. Leaving the light on can make you a nice target for a shotgun blast.
It was Midori, as expected. I let her in and bolted the door behind her. When I turned toward her, she was looking around the room. “Hey, it’s about time we stayed in a place like this,” she said. “Those love hotels can get old.”
“But they have their advantages,” I said, putting my arms around her.
We ordered a dinner of sashimi and hot sake from the room service menu. While we waited for it to arrive, I filled Midori in on my meeting with Tatsu, and told her the bad news about Bulfinch.
The food arrived, and, when the hotel employee who brought it had left, Midori said, “I have to ask you something a little… silly. Is that okay?”
I looked at her, and felt my gut twist at the honesty in her eyes. “Sure.”
“I’ve been thinking about these people. They killed Bulfinch. They tried to kill you and me. They must have wanted to kill my father. Do you think… did he really have a heart attack?”
I poured sake from the ceramic flask into two small matching cups, watching wisps of steam rise from the surface. My hands were steady. “Your question isn’t silly. There are ways of killing someone that make it look like an accident, or like natural causes. And I agree that, based on what they learned of your father’s activities, they certainly would have wanted him dead.”
“He was afraid they were going to kill him. He told me.”
“Yes.”
She was drumming her fingers on the table, playing a furious tune on an imaginary piano. There was a cold fire in her eyes. “I think they killed him,” she said, nodding.
There’s no home for us, John. Not after what we’ve done. “You may be right,” I said quietly.
Did she know? Or did her mind refuse to go where instinct wanted to take it? I couldn’t tell.
“What matters is that your father was a brave man,” I said, my voice slightly thick. “And that, regardless of how he died, he shouldn’t have died in vain. That’s why I have to get that disk back. Why I have to finish what your father started. I really…” I wasn’t sure what I was going to say. “I really want to do that. I need to do it.”
Warring emotions crossed her face like the shadows of fast-moving clouds. “I don’t want you to,” she said. “It’s too dangerous.”
“It’s less dangerous than it seems. My friend is going to make sure the police who are there know what’s going on, so no one is going to take a shot at me.” I hoped.
“What about the CIA people? You can’t control them.”
I thought about that. Most likely, Tatsu had already figured that if I got killed on the way in, he would use it as an excuse to order everyone out of the car, search for weapons, and find the disk that way. He was a practical guy.
“Nobody’s going to shoot me. The way I have it set up, they won’t even know what’s going on until it’s too late.”
“I thou
ght that in war nothing goes according to plan.”
I laughed. “That’s true. I’ve made it this far by being a good improviser.”
I took a swallow of sake. “Anyway, we’re about out of alternatives,” I said, enjoying the feeling of the hot liquid spreading through my abdomen. “Yamaoto doesn’t know Holtzer has the disk, so he’s going to keep coming after you if we don’t get it back. And after me, too.”
We ate for a few minutes in silence. Then she looked at me and said, “It makes sense, but it’s still terrible.” Her voice was bitter.
I wanted to tell her that eventually you get used to terrible things making sense. But I said nothing.
She stood and wandered over to the window. Her back was to me, the glow through the window silhouetting her. I watched her for a moment, then got up and walked over, feeling the carpet taking the weight of my feet. I stopped close enough to smell the clean smell of her hair, and some other, more exotic scent, and slowly, slowly let my hands rise so that my fingertips were just touching her shoulders and arms.
Then my fingertips gave way to my hands, and when my hands made their way to her hips she eased back into me. Her hands found mine and together they rose up, covering her belly and stroking it in such a way that I couldn’t tell who was initiating the movement.
Standing there with her, looking out the window over Tokyo, I felt the weight of what I would face in the morning drift slowly away. I had the exhilarating realization there was nowhere, nowhere on the whole planet, I would rather have been right then. The city around us was a living thing: the million lights its eyes; the laughter of lovers its voice; the expressways and factories its muscles and sinews. And I was there at its pulsing heart.
Just a little more time, I thought, kissing her neck, her ear. A little more time at an anonymous hotel where we could float untethered from the past, free of all the things I knew would soon end my fragile bond with this woman.
I became increasingly aware of the sound of her breathing, the taste of her skin, and my languid sense of the city and our place in it faded. She turned and kissed me, softly, then harder, her hands on my face, under my shirt, the heat from her touch spreading through my torso like ripples on water.