To Free a Spy

by Nick Ganaway

  Warfield and Komeito stepped inside the entryway to a wooden stand that served as the superintendent’s station. The super was away and Warfield followed Komeito into the next room, which separated into men’s and women’s dressing rooms. Co-ed bathing had phased-out after the war. The moist, warm air caused Warfield’s shirt to stick to his back. Komeito showed him inside the men’s bath where two or three men soaked. Warfield was struck by a serene mural that covered one wall with a scene of blue sea dotted with islands and pleasure boats. Graceful trees covered the islands and gentle waves brushed a narrow white beach. Warfield made a mental note to return with Fleming when he could savor the Japanese culture.

  The grayed superintendent came around the corner and took his place at the stand. Komeito asked him about two men who came there on a regular basis, one caring for the other who might be retarded. The old man shook his head at first and when Komeito persisted he glanced at Warfield and returned to his duties. Warfield got the message and went to the car.

  Minutes later Komeito ran to the car and showed Warfield the notes he’d made inside. “The men are brothers. Fumio and Jotaro Yoshida. But that’s all the old man would say.”

  Warfield shook his head. It wasn’t enough.

  Komeito smiled. “But when he went to check the water temperature, I found Yoshida’s file. Lucky this place still works out of a shoebox instead of computers like the new ones.”

  “What else?”

  “Birth dates. Fumio Yoshida, 17 September 1940. Jotaro, 3 November 1945.”

  Warfield considered the new information. Jotaro Yoshida was sounding more like the dependent brother Ivan spoke of. If his big brother turned out to be the boss Ivan talked about, he could lead them to Petrevich. Warfield turned to the notes he made from his conversation with Anderson. Fetuses in developmental weeks eight to twenty-five were the most affected. He went to the calendar in his iPhone and calculated backward from Jotaro’s date of birth. Jotaro would have been conceived around 1 February, 1945. Warfield counted forward to week twenty-five. August sixth fell almost three weeks after the twenty-fifth week, outside the window of risk Anderson specified. His best lead yet but Jotaro didn’t fit the formula!

  It was a serious setback for Warfield. Minutes were slipping by and if Yoshida was not his man, he’d blown precious time trying to find him. August sixth drew closer by the minute and, if he was right, something Petrevich was doing was racing toward reality at this moment. If Jotaro’s birth date didn’t jibe with one of the kids in Anderson’s records he would go in another direction. Oh yeah? What direction is that? he mumbled to himself as he dialed Anderson.

  The receptionist said Anderson was having lunch but had told her to put Geering through to him if he called.

  Seconds later, Anderson answered with a mouthful. “Rolf, I got birth dates, city and hospital for all twenty-five. Also got physicians’ reports of the kids’ conditions at birth for some of them. Listed by case number, no names. Want me to send this to you?”

  “Tell me if one of those kids, the severe ones, has a birth date of 3 November 1945.”

  There was silence while Anderson checked the report. Seconds later he said, “How the hell you know that?”

  Warfield’s heart started again. “Tell me everything you’ve got on that one.”

  Anderson summarized as he ran through the report. “Male. DOB 3 November 45, hospital in Miyoshi—that’s not far from Hiroshima. Weighed three pounds two ounces at birth and—”

  “Hold on Anderson. That sounds low.”

  “It is, and according to these records he was born premature, five weeks.”

  Warfield looked at his notes. If the baby was premature, that meant the date of conception was later than the calculation he’d made by counting backwards from the birth date. By five weeks. That put him perfectly inside the exposure risk window!

  “What’s this guy like now?” Warfield hammered.

  “According to his records, this kid—man, I should say—can’t talk, can’t read, can’t write. He can’t live alone. Mother died at childbirth, father in the war—kamikaze it says here. Government raised the kid in an orphanage but on 10 April, 1965, his older brother took him away. Would’ve been…nineteen then. Wish I could tell you more about him, where he lives, for example, but we don’t have those files here.”

  Warfield didn’t need to hear more. Anderson was talking about Jotaro Yoshida.

  He thanked Anderson and started to hang up.

  Anderson said, “Oh, here’s something. A birthmark. Strawberry-like flat mark, size of a half-dollar, right side of his neck.”

  “Okay, John. Gotta go.”

  “See you at the White House next time I’m in Washington,” Anderson said, laughing.

  Warfield hung up and looked at Komeito, who had heard both ends of the conversation on the speaker phone. “He’s our man,” he told Komeito. “We’ve got to find him. Now. Tonight will be too late.”

  Komeito smiled again. “Did I tell you I got Yoshida’s address?”

  CHAPTER 14

  The street address Komeito had for the Yoshidas was five blocks from Tomodachi Sento. TK knew the area, as he did many of the older sections of Tokyo, and five minutes later pointed out the Yoshida home. The modest houses sat close to the street on miniscule plots of ground. August in Tokyo was grueling, the hottest month there, but frequent showers made the landscaping more prominent than the houses it adorned. Cherry blossom and magnolia trees accented the Yoshida yard but, in contrast to others on the street, the Yoshidas’ was a bit overgrown, as if it had missed more-recent grooming.

  Komeito told TK to cruise by, make the block and come back around. On the second pass there was still no indication anyone was at home and TK pulled to the curb in front of the house and stopped. Warfield and Komeito went to the front door and knocked and when no one responded Warfield tried it and was surprised to find it unlocked. He looked back at TK and circled an index finger in the air, and TK drove off.

  Inside, a hard-looking sofa and an étagère displaying a few ornaments and curios lined one wall of the drab front room, and a half-dozen books with faded covers lined the shelves of a corner bookcase. The two men listened for sounds of anyone who might be there.

  Tatami mats covered the floor. Tatami mats, usually measuring three feet by six, served as the standard unit of measure used by the Japanese to describe room sizes. Modern Japanese homes often used Western-style flooring but the floors in older houses like Yoshida’s were covered with the traditional mats, made of a rush straw core compressed down to a couple of inches thickness, with a soft layer of blond-colored reed on top. This picked up the scarce light that eked through Yoshida’s drawn shades and gave even the darkened rooms a soft glow. The black trim that edged the mats showed some wear but the composition was soft and silent to walk on.

  They continued to a small room furnished with a small bed, a straight chair, file cabinet, and small desk on which there was a stack of mail. The postmark was recent but the letters were unopened. Komeito began to thumb through them.

  “Yoshida’s place, all right,” Komeito said, reading one of the envelopes. Warfield walked over and examined a grouping of framed photographs on one wall. Some were old and had a glossy black and white finish and others were more recent color prints. More than half of them pictured a Japanese man standing beside an airplane. Some of the planes had military markings and the man in the picture with them was dressed in military uniform.

  More recent pictures showed the same man in civilian clothes, dwarfed by civilian aircraft. One of the photos included a second person, a smaller man, and Warfield recognized the house behind the two men as the Yoshida home he’d just entered. A picture in brown tones and dated 1951 hung above the desk. It showed four adult women and three rows of children, the front row sitting and the other two standing behind. Komeito read the Japanese caption at the bottom of the picture and told Warfield it was an orphanage group and that two of the names listed were Fumio Yoshi
da and Jotaro Yoshida.

  Warfield opened the desk drawers and had Komeito read file labels to him. In the last one, there were only two files, labeled Jotaro and Harvest. Warfield told Komeito to check them out and began to explore the rest of the house. The kitchen was so spotless it might never have been used. The adjoining room was filled with children’s toys and stuffed animals and a small TV in the corner. Everything seemed too neat, Warfield thought. He moved toward the next room, peeked in and after a second, froze. Someone was asleep on the futon. Warfield watched for several seconds for a sign the sleeper heard him. Tightly drawn shades made the room dark but he could make out a stain on the pillow. He leaned closer and realized it was blood. Dry. He touched the skin. It was cold. He shouted for Komeito.

  Warfield moved the dead man’s hair around until he found the hole where the bullet entered. He figured it was something as small as a twenty-two or twenty-five caliber since there was not much destruction and the bullet had not exited. There was very little blood and no signs of a struggle. Shot in his sleep. A gentle killing, Warfield thought, if there was such a thing.

  Komeito jumped back when he saw the body.

  Warfield pointed to the strawberry birthmark on the corpse’s neck.

  “Jotaro!”

  “Let’s go!” Warfield said.

  As Komeito moved away he tripped over something under the edge of the bed. It was the body of a dog, shot in the back of the head.

  As they hurried to leave, Komeito ran back to the bedroom to grab the files. He’d started reading them when Warfield called him to Jotaro’s room and had seen enough to think they were relevant. They slipped their shoes on, and as Warfield started to open the door someone knocked.

  They stood dead still as Warfield took a second to study the options. After a moment he motioned Komeito to go in front of him. “You’re a real estate agent. Yoshida is selling his house and sent you here to look it over. Introduce me as a prospective buyer if you have to,” he whispered.

  Komeito opened the door and the woman bowed as she and Komeito exchanged greetings. They spoke for a moment and the woman bowed again and left. Warfield stayed out of sight.

  TK returned after the woman left and, as they drove off, Komeito told Warfield the woman lived next door and was checking on things after seeing them enter the house. “Mrs. Tanaka will be a problem,” he told Warfield.

  Warfield acknowledged Komeito’s concern and told him to direct TK to the Narita Airport area. Antonov had said he and Komeito followed Petrevich there before they lost him, and most of the photos on Yoshida’s wall included planes. Petrevich and Fumio Yoshida were linked by Ivan and they would be near an airport. Narita was a good place to start.

  Buildings old and new, large and small lined the route to the Narita area. Thirty-million inhabitants of what was considered greater Tokyo had to be somewhere and Warfield thought most of them were on the roads. The traffic was like the Beltway around Washington at rush hour on a bad day, but here you didn’t get beyond it. Only the uninformed tourist would attempt to drive in this city.

  After riding in silence for half an hour, Komeito said, “Getting worried, Warfield.”

  Warfield was jarred out of his thoughts. “What?”

  “The murders. Antonov, now Jotaro. We near both. If Mrs. Tanaka goes in the Yoshida house and sees Jotaro dead—”

  Warfield cut him off. “Komeito, there’s nothing we can do about that. And tell TK to move it. It’s not a funeral cortege.”

  Warfield continued combing his mind for answers. Minutes later he asked Komeito again the name of the pizza place Snake-eyes liked so much.”

  “Guido’s. Guido’s Pizza. Biggest pizza company in city.”

  “The lead we need is at the place he orders those Pizzas from.”

  Komeito nodded.

  “How many of those Guido’s here?”

  “In Tokyo? Many stores.” Komeito googled Guido’s on his phone and shook his head. “Hundreds!”

  Komeito located all the Guido’s in the airport area on his phone as TK hurried toward Narita. Komeito called three of them and although none delivered to the airport area, an employee at the third call gave Komeito the addresses and phone numbers for several that may.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later Komeito went into the first of them but no one there knew of a Russian customer. It was when they reached the third that their luck improved. As soon as Komeito mentioned the word Russian, Norio, the manager, smiled big. “Ivan! Hai! Borscht man. Calls us often. He is regular customer. Delivery boys like him. He jokes around with them. They are always talking about Ivan.”

  “Delivery address, please.”

  Norio’s smile disappeared. “Privacy, you know.”

  Komeito pulled a laminated card from his wallet that identified him as an employee at the Russian embassy and handed it to Norio. The manager looked at it and frowned.

  “Ivan in trouble?”

  “Has to sign some official papers from the embassy. Tried mailing them but we must be using an incorrect address. Papers were returned. He’ll be in trouble if I don’t find him in time. May be sent back to Russia.”

  Norio opened the computer database. “It will be no problem in this circumstance. The computer will sort the customers by their type of pizza,” Norio said. “You would get a thousand names if I put in cheese, but Ivan likes a special kind of pizza we make for him.” He punched several keys on the keyboard and typed in borscht. One listing showed up on the screen. It was Ivan.

  “That is Ivan’s usual order. Borscht. And this is the information we have for him.”

  “Borscht?” Komeito repeated, frowning.

  “Not really borscht. Ivan requested borscht, so we started keeping beets here. We slice the beets and bake them on top of regular sausage pizza.” Norio shrugged. “Ivan is happy with that.”

  Komeito looked at the address on the computer screen. It was nothing more than a numbered aircraft hangar. “You deliver to hangar?” Komeito asked.

  “Hai.”

  “Ever deliver to his home at night?”

  “That’s it. Can you believe it? He lives in that hangar—Hangar 23, it says here. Three men live there, the boys tell me. All Russians.”

  * * *

  Komeito ran to the car to tell Warfield what he’d learned. While they were talking someone tapped on the car window. It was Norio and a younger man with the name Aoki on his Guido’s shirt. Komeito lowered the window.

  Norio bowed. “Excuse please. Aoki came to work his shift. Knows Ivan, delivers to him all the time. Can show you way to hangar.” Aoki looked about twenty. He was above average height with jet-black hair cut short. He had a sincere smile.

  “Hi,” Aoki said in English.

  Warfield asked what he knew about the hangar.

  “Hangar 23? Well, that big plane in there, they work on it all the time. Mainly up under the open belly of it, you know, in the middle. They’re working on something else at the other end of the building but I take the pizza right to a little office area and don’t go down there. Think they’re through with what they were doing. Last time I went there the plane was all back in one piece again.”

  “When were you there last?”

  “Two or three days ago.”

  Komeito thanked Aoki and the manager and said they might need more information later.

  Warfield and Komeito strategized for a minute at the car and went back into the pizza place to talk with Norio and Aoki again. Warfield asked for their help.

  “I thought Ivan was not in trouble,” Norio reminded Komeito.

  “He may have some information that will help in an investigation.” Komeito told Norio Warfield was from the FBI in Washington, cooperating with the Japanese government in an undercover investigation.

  Norio looked at Aoki. They nodded to each other and then to Komeito and Warfield.

  “Good,” Warfield said. “We need to go to the hangar. Is it necessary to use the main airport entrance?”<
br />
  “No. There is an entrance for service vehicles,” Aoki said. The guards there know the Guido’s car.”

  “Can you draw us a route to the hangar and a diagram of the inside?” Warfield asked.

  Aoki nodded. “I will drive you there,” he said, looking to Norio for approval.

  Warfield shook his head.

  “You can’t get past the gate guards,” Aoki said. “Even with the car, they will look for familiar faces. They don’t ask for my I.D. any more but they stop the car and look inside. And Ivan, he knows me. He will freak if you walk in.”

  Warfield had no intention of walking in like that, but Aoki had a point. “We’ll do it then. Komeito will go into the hangar with you to deliver the pizza and get the lay of everything. Say he’s your boss, riding with you today. I’ll stay out of sight in the car until you come out. Komeito and I will take it from there.”

  Aoki and Norio nodded.

  Warfield said, “But you need a reason to go there. Ivan will wonder why you are there if he hasn’t placed an order.”

  “I surprised him one time,” Aoki said.

  Komeito went to the car and gave TK instructions to follow them to the guard gate. He was to park there and wait. When Komeito got to the delivery car, Norio handed him a green and white Guido’s Pizza shirt and hat to wear and two boxes of pizza. To save time, Norio had added beets to a sausage pizza already in the oven. Aoki got into the front with him and Warfield crawled into the back seat.

  When they were close to the gate Warfield shrunk himself into the rear floor space and Komeito hid him with extra uniform shirts he found in the car.

  When they reached the gate Aoki handed the guard a box of pizza. “Making me fat, Aoki,” he said, patting his stomach. When the guard peered in at Komeito, Aoki said Komeito was new and the guard waved them through.