by Ty Patterson
Chapter 31
He went to the Asahi Shimbun’s office in Chuo, in the central part of Tokyo. Asahi Shimbun was one of the largest daily newspapers in Japan. It had a circulation of over seven million, and that was important for Zeb. It reached the far corners of the country.
He was directed to a diminutive saleswoman, who bowed and led him to a cubicle.
‘You want to place an ad, Carter-san?’
‘Yes.’ He gave her the ad’s copy and the photograph of the yakuza. The one who had the prosthetic finger.
She looked up at him when she read the text. ‘He’s dead, Carter-san?’
‘Yes. I think he’s yakuza. I need more information on him.’
She looked troubled and excused herself. He heard her murmuring in another cabin and returned with a bespectacled man.
Probably her boss.
‘Carter-san, you have any identification? We don’t normally run these kinds of ads.’
Zeb presented a business card to the man.
‘You should have said you were from Keishicho.’ The man looked at him in surprise.
‘I’m undercover.’ Zeb smiled faintly. The business card was one of several fakes he had, and stated he was a detective for the Keishicho. I hope they don’t check with Nisihikawa.
They didn’t. ‘Run it,’ the boss told the saleswoman and left.
Zeb visited two more newspapers, the Yomiuri Shimbun and the Mainichi Shinbun. All promised to runt the ads the next day.
* * *
‘Have you seen these?’ Senior bellowed at Junior the next day as Junior practiced in his dojo.
Senior had left his office in a tearing hurry on spotting Carter’s ads. Junior wasn’t in the office building. He had made calls and found Junior in the dojo.
Junior’s face was hard, bathed in sweat, as he drew his katana repeatedly and slashed at bamboo. Each cut was precise. Each move was elegant.
He stopped after a while and wiped his face with a towel.
‘Yes.’
‘Is this one of your killers?’ Senior yelled shrilly.
‘Yes.’
‘When did this happen? Did you make an attempt on Carter?’
‘Yes. In New York.’ Junior gave him a brief outline. Just the superficial details.
‘You never told me!’ Senior stormed.
‘I told you I would deal with Carter.’
‘You call this dealing with him? He’s alive. He’s here. And now he’s hunting us. I presume this guy is from your kill team. If anyone in that team fingers us…’
He waved the newspaper, his anger choking out his words. Carter had not just requested information on the dead man. He had offered a reward. A very lucrative reward.
‘No one will speak.’ Junior came close to Senior, so close that Senior had to take a step back. ‘Now is not the time to panic, brother. Gather yourself. If Papa sees you like this, the contest will be as good as over.’
Senior’s face paled. Junior was speaking the truth. He breathed deeply and straightened his clothes.
‘What now?’ he asked Junior quietly.
‘You go back to work. I told you. Carter is my problem. We are safe.’
Shinoda stepped out from the interior of the dojo once Senior had left.
‘Will anyone talk?’ Junior asked without looking at him.
‘No. No one in our gang has seen my kill team. Even if anyone is captured, there is no way of identifying them. I picked only those who had no tattoos. No records. Nothing.’
Junior polished his katana repeatedly with a soft cloth and sheathed it in its scabbard. ‘How many men you have left?’
‘Six. I had ten. Carter killed four in New York.’
‘How many teams do you have searching for him?’
‘Eight teams.’
‘Call the other yakuza gangs. Take their help. Get them to search as well.’
Junior’s men found Carter in Gotanda.
* * *
Zeb was returning to the hotel in the evening after a simple meal. He had checked messages on the phone number he had inserted in the ad. The number was a toll-free one that was forwarded to an automated voice mail system. It asked callers to leave their name and number and state whatever info they had. Someone would get back to them.
Werner was trawling through those messages to see if there was any truth in any of them. Zeb suspected most if not all messages would be crank calls or hoaxes.
I had to try. Besides, it’s another pressure point on the yakuza.
He entered the hotel and took the stairs instead of the elevator. Standard tradecraft. An elevator was a closed space. It had finite stops. It was a high-risk space. Stairs were always preferable.
He took them two at a time, stepping aside for some hotel staff.
On the second floor’s steps, he came across the yakuza.
There were five of them, barreling down, talking to one another. Commanding the stairs as if they owned them. All of them were in suits. No ties. Hard-faced. Short hair.
They fell silent when Zeb started climbing from the bottom. Two of them stood to one side, three to the other.
Zeb passed through them, murmured, ‘Domo,’ thanks, without making eye contact. His expression didn’t change even though he recognized their type. There was no one other than yakuza who would take the stairs.
Hotel staff would, but they would be uniformed. Hotel guests would take the elevator.
No, these were yakuza, and even as he climbed, he felt their eyes on him.
He didn’t look back.
He entered the second floor and went to the end of the hallway. He jiggled his plastic key in the door, cursed audibly when it didn’t open.
Through the corner of his eyes, he saw the door to the stairs open an inch.
He tried the key again and made a show of shaking his head when the door didn’t open. It wouldn’t, it wasn’t his room, but the yakuza didn’t know it.
He walked back and pretended not to notice the stairs door shut quickly. He jabbed the elevator’s button and, when it arrived, entered it.
He got off on the first floor and took the next elevator to the third floor, his floor.
They’ll wait for me at the bottom. Call for reinforcements. Keep an eye on me.
They’ll be asked to capture me. Time is of the essence for the yakuza. They’ll come back to the second floor. Find that it wasn’t my room. Go back to the reception. Come to the third floor.
Fifteen minutes. He figured he had fifteen minute to get away.
Fifteen minutes was enough.
Backpack went over one shoulder. Check to see if Glock and knife were firmly strapped. They were.
He raised the window and peered out. Relatively empty street. No yakuza beneath, looking up. He couldn’t see far out, but that was a risk he would have to take. Not that I have much choice.
He climbed out, balanced himself on the sill and then let himself drop.
Drop.
Reach out with hands, desperately, grab the ledge. Come to a sharp stop. Crash against the wall. Look down. Still no one below. He couldn’t crane his head to the sides to see.
Drop again. Grab ledge.
He dropped a third time and landed lightly. Thanking his Maker that he was still in one piece.
An old man was looking at him curiously. ‘Is there a fire?’
‘No. My door was stuck.’
The old man nodded as if that explained everything and moved on.
Zeb headed to the mouth of the alley. Took two steps and stopped suddenly.
A bunch of yakuza blocked it.
Chapter 32
He looked behind him. Behind was a dead end. Dark wall against which cartons and black garbage bags were piled up.
There was some street traffic, people coming out of back doors of what seemed to be offices and restaurants. The yakuza stood out, however. There were six of them. Faces that he hadn’t seen before.
Some of them were in suits. Some in jeans and tees. All of them looked me
an. They looked capable of taking him down. They won’t kill me. Their bosses want to talk to me.
No escape routes presented themselves to him. He still walked confidently. Looking them in the eye. So what if it was considered rude in Japan? They certainly weren’t there to invite him for tea. Or perhaps they were. But there would be no tea served.
Only in Hollywood did one man take out three or more men. In real life, an operative could take out two men. Maybe three or four if the odds were in his favor. Like in his New York apartment.
Like this, on a street? No chance.
Zeb didn’t even try.
He grabbed a woman who was passing by. Salarywoman by the looks of her. ‘Gun! They have guns! Call Keishicho!’ he yelled at her, panic on his face.
‘Gun! Help me catch them! They want to shoot everyone!’
People turned to look. The woman screamed and ran back to where she had come from.
More doors slammed open and some young men came out.
‘Guns! They have guns! Let’s get them!’
His speaking in fluent Japanese helped. Three men joined him, running towards the yakuza, who looked startled. Some of them looked nervous and turned to a man in the center.
Their boss.
Zeb headed straight for him, the three youth on his heels. ‘Don’t let them get away! Let’s catch them! Keishicho will reward us!’ He panted and dived headfirst into the waiting yakuza.
A fist smashed in his face. An elbow jammed into his side, but he had reached the leader. He punched the yakuza’s face, a wicked blow to his jaw. The yakuza’s lips split.
And then his three followers piled on. Three enthusiastic young men and one experienced operative against four yakuza.
Fists and legs flew. Bellies were punched. Zeb lost count of the blows he took. He gasped when a haymaker piled into him. Gouged with his fingers when an arm lock went around his neck.
‘Help us! They’re yakuza!’ he roared. He saw men stop and turn. Some of them headed in their direction. And then his vision was filled by angry yakuza. Close-quarters fighting. No room for locks and thrusts and parries. Brute strength reigned. His new friends were still fighting.
He punched the leader repeatedly. Head-butted him, heedless of the strikes raining on himself. Try to make the fight last. The cops will come. Or more people will join in. The yakuza dare not take out their weapons in broad daylight.
A siren wailed in the distance. There was a growing commotion. A throng of people watching.
‘Why are you watching? They’re yakuza! Criminals!’ he exhorted them. A palm slammed into his jaw and he nearly bit his tongue off.
It was the leader who had attacked him. He struck the yakuza in renewed fury and the man fell back on another gang member.
His neck was exposed momentarily, his shirt falling away from skin to expose a tattoo.
Zeb stared at it for a moment. Took a knee to his thigh and doubled over. The yakuza leaped over him, but they were fighting a losing battle as more men joined in.
‘Let’s go!’ the yakuza leader commanded.
‘Let them go,’ Zeb wheezed.
He lay on the street, doubled over, panting, as his friends dusted themselves off and chuckled amongst themselves.
‘That was a good workout. Are you okay?’ one of them said, leaning over him.
‘Yes. Thank you. We should always stand up against the yakuza.’
‘Hai,’ the man agreed.
One of them produced a bottle of water for him. He drained it and rose. He emptied another bottle of water and washed his face.
The sirens were growing. Need to get away. Nishikawa won’t be happy with me if his men grab me.
He bowed to the watching crowd, shook hands with those who had helped and exited swiftly. No yakuza in sight.
He walked for a long while, cutting through streets and alleys, circling, stopping abruptly to check his six. No one following him.
He went to the Ginza station. It would be crowded and busy and any yakuza would find it difficult to spot him.
He didn’t see any yakuza, and on boarding the Hibiya line train, he rode the trains for an hour, switching randomly, exiting at the last moment.
All the while, the yakuza’s tattoo was on his mind. He remembered only parts of its design, but the word stood out. It was a name.
Kobe.
Two of the largest yakuza gangs, Hayagawa-gumi and Hashimoto-kai, are based there. Didn’t the yakuza at the bath say what I was searching for wasn’t here? Did he mean not in Tokyo?
He came out of the subway, finding that he had circled unconsciously and was back at Gotanda.
He walked for more than an hour, thinking, and made a decision.
He stopped at a restaurant, and as he filled himself up with a bowl of rice and a slab of fish, he checked his messages.
The first one was from Meghan.
There had been a breakthrough.
* * *
‘We went to NASA.’ She couldn’t contain her excitement as she bounced in her seat. Zeb was on a video call to his office and could see his crew crowding behind her.
‘They have all these software programs that magnify images, remove noise. Some of those programs are better than ours. We cleaned up the image of that watcher at Susan’s apartment.’
‘And we got a hit in Japan,’ Beth said, coming to the camera and turning her tablet to show Zeb two photographs. One was the cleaned-up image. The other was of a man walking swiftly in a concourse.
‘Is that—’
‘That’s a train station. In Kobe.’
‘Shin-Kobe?’ Zeb guessed.
‘How did you know?’ she asked, startled.
‘I’ve been there. Besides, a lot has happened since we last spoke.’ He updated them on events since his last call.
‘You got more lives than a cat, bro. But you’re using them up quickly,’ Bwana cautioned from behind the twins.
‘The bad news,’ Meghan continued, ‘is we don’t know who he is. We’ve trawled the Japanese police records. Arrest records. Cameras at Heathrow, JFK. Everywhere. We haven’t had any luck.’
Zeb studied the images again. Reasonable height. Lithe. Short black hair. Dressed in a loose shirt and trousers. It was a profile image, and not many facial features were visible. However, it looked like the man didn’t have any visible tattoos.
Zeb burned the image into his mind. Had he seen anyone like that in Japan? He didn’t think so. There’s no shortage of black-haired, lean men in this country. But don’t think I came across him.
‘He’s our lead assassin,’ he said softly.
‘Yeah, what we figured,’ Broker rumbled. ‘It would help if we knew who he was. And who he worked for.’
He ended the call once the twins had promised to look into the trigger.
It doesn’t look like any intelligence agency has made any progress. Meghan had said as much. ‘They think you’re on the right track.’
Zeb’s track led to Kobe.
* * *
Japan was a bunch of islands of which the four major ones were Honshu, Hokkaido, Shikoku, and Kyushu. Bridges and tunnels connected the islands with one another. Tokyo was on Honshu, the largest island. Kobe was on the same island, on its south side, with several transport links to Tokyo.
Zeb decided to take the Shinkansen, the bullet train, which ate the two hundred and sixty-four miles between the two cities in less than three hours. The trains could, and did, reach speeds of two hundred miles an hour, giving travelers a much more scenic option over flying.
The Nozomi train took twenty minutes to navigate through the urban sprawl of Tokyo, and Zeb took the opportunity to call Nishikawa.
The police chief picked up his phone on the first ring. ‘Carter-san, I was meaning to talk to you. There were some reports of a brawl in Gotanda. Several yakuza fighting against some civilians.’
‘Nishikawa-san, I have no knowledge of that.’ Zeb could lie with the best of them when required.
‘Several people reported that there was a gaijin. He was shouting. That the yakuza were carrying guns. He urged people to help him.’ Nishikawa sounded perturbed.
‘Must be a brave gaijin, Nishikawa-san, to take on yakuza.’
‘Brave or foolhardy,’ the chief of police retorted with asperity. ‘Unfortunately, no one could describe the gaijin very well. But many said he had brown hair.’
‘I am sure you have hundreds of gaijin in Tokyo right now who are brown-haired.’
‘But there’s only one gaijin among those who can take out several yakuza. As if it was a light workout.’
‘You overestimate me, Nishikawa-san. Besides, I was nowhere near Gotanda. I am staying near your office.’
‘Yes, I checked that. What’s that noise?’ Nishikawa listened for a while, ‘Are you on a train?’
‘Hai, Nishikawa-san. I am going to Kobe.’
‘You are leaving Tokyo?’
‘Hai, Nishikawa-san. You sound happy.’
‘I am, Carter-san. I am sure my city will be calmer now. All cities tend to be, once you have left them.’
Chapter 33
Shinoda relayed the news of the bust-up to Junior as the two men wiped the sweat of their bodies after a workout in the dojo.
Earlier, Senior had spoken to Daiki Iitsuka.
‘No, he didn’t say anything about where he was going. Or about his investigation. He wanted to know if my men had killed the women.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘The truth. We weren’t involved.’
‘Did he accept that?’
‘I don’t know. But I think he suspects. That we have come together.’
‘Does he know why?’ Senior tried to curb his panic.
‘If he did, he would be doing more than talking, don’t you think?’ There was a mild rebuke in Iitsuka’s words. ‘My man Oyahashi said this gaijin is a tiger. Now that I have met him, I agree. Cage him. Or kill him. Quickly.’
‘He took out four yakuza?’
‘Four good men.’ Shinoda swigged from a bottle of water and toweled his face dry. ‘Not him alone. There were some civilians. He got them to help him.’