Fishing for Stars

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Anna, you could be walking into a trap!’ I cried angrily.

  ‘No, Nicholas, he has sent his calling card.’

  ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

  She reached for her handbag. ‘I went to the porter’s desk on my way here, and . . .’ From the interior of her bag she lifted a gold fob watch and chain. ‘He sent me this.’

  I took the magnificent chronometer, weighing it in my hand, the heavy gold links settling in my palm. ‘So you were expecting a message?’ I asked pointedly.

  ‘Yes, of course. They said they would contact me if he responded. When I woke up an envelope had been pushed under the door,’ Anna pointed at the watch in my hand, ‘to say there was a parcel waiting for me.’

  ‘Just this, the watch?’ I asked.

  ‘No, it came with a note.’

  ‘From him?’

  Anna nodded. ‘It’s very friendly.’

  ‘May I see it?’

  Anna hesitated momentarily then reached into her handbag and produced the note. It was carefully written in Japanese on handmade paper, set out in four widely spaced columns of exquisite kanji as if each was a separate message placed on paper after considerable thought.

  Honourable Second Vase,

  I am deeply honoured that you

  wish to renew our acquaintanceship.

  These flowers they want to dance

  and you are making them stand

  to attention. They are not an

  orchestra, they are a jazz group.

  We will meet tomorrow night at

  six o’clock, when it is essential

  that you are alone.

  I look forward to seeing

  the photographs of the

  persimmon trees

  you have planted.

  Sincerely,

  Konoe Akira

  Anna, I felt sure, could see my frown increasing as I attempted to absorb the meaning hidden within the note: the address, Honourable Second Vase; the allusion to the vase of flowers made no sense and was obviously some kind of code between them. ‘The flowers as a jazz group?’ I asked. ‘What’s that all about?’

  ‘It is a small joke about flower arrangements,’ Anna explained, slightly flustered. ‘He is reminding me of the first day we met. It’s meant to tell me that I may come on my own terms and that our meeting will be a friendly one.’

  ‘Oh, you know this, do you?’ I returned the sheet to her and noted how carefully she folded it, holding it a fraction too long and close to her chest before placing it back in her handbag. Anna, I could sense, was excited. ‘I see. A joke about flowers to tell you that you’re safe?’ I said without humour. ‘Well, Blossom, I will nevertheless wait outside Topaz until you return from discussing your mutual flowery arrangements.’

  Anna ignored my sarcasm and the not very clever and needlessly disparaging play on words. She threw up her hands in a gesture of impatience. ‘Ha! I can just imagine! A six-foot three-inch gaijin with his arms folded across his chest waiting outside the entrance like a nightclub bouncer. You are sure to go unnoticed!’ Anna tossed her head, always a sign that she was nervous and thinking on her feet. ‘Nicholas, I’ll be fine, quite safe. Sending the pocket watch . . . the flower joke . . . it’s obvious he wants it to be a cordial meeting.’

  Clutching at straws I said, ‘Yes, but can he be trusted? Didn’t you say he was a heroin addict?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Anna said, indignant. ‘Yes, he uses heroin, or he did. So do I. It doesn’t make us potentially violent or untrustworthy.’

  I didn’t much care for the virtuous coupling of the two addicts. ‘Anna, it’s a trap. I just know it! My instincts in such matters are rarely wrong.’

  ‘That’s total crap, Nicholas! Your instincts are no better than mine. Besides, I’ve made up my mind and I’m not jeopardising our meeting because he thinks I’ve brought along what he’ll see as a personal bodyguard. As it is, he could well believe that I’m the one setting the trap.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Well, for instance, he could be afraid I’ve come to Japan to report him for war crimes.’

  This had occurred to me, but I hadn’t mentioned it to Anna. I should have known the thought wouldn’t have escaped her, although almost certainly a case such as this wouldn’t be reopened. The War Crimes Tribunal might have charged him, but a hearing was unlikely. Konoe Akira was from a leading family and, like so many important families, his had probably allied itself with one of the large vertically integrated industrial groups usually organised around a bank, groups such as Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Yasuda, and many others. The War Crimes Tribunal had finally come to the conclusion that these groups, and the individuals within them, were essential to Japan’s post-war reconstruction. Hearings, unless they concerned the more heinous crimes, were postponed and eventually the charges were dropped. There were few trials after 1950.

  ‘What do you mean? He’ll think I’m some big gaijin policeman from Interpol? You obviously didn’t make any mention of me when you left your calling card.’

  ‘No, I’m afraid I didn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Anna sighed, sipped her drink then looked at me directly. ‘Why? Because I never intended for you to be at our first meeting. I have things I need to say . . .’ Anna shrugged, blue eyes wide. I had seen that look before, her eyes challenging me, telling me her mind was made up.

  My father was right – our argument wasn’t going anywhere good and I’d pushed Anna into a corner, making her explain her motives and, in turn, forcing her to offend me.

  ‘Right!’ I said, getting to my feet, managing, though only just, to keep my voice more or less civil. ‘I need a shower. Will I see you upstairs before you go?’

  ‘Of course . . . I have to change.’

  I turned and walked to the entrance of the bar.

  ‘Nicholas!’ Anna called.

  I stopped and looked back, scowling. ‘What?’

  Anna smiled and held out her hand. ‘The watch, please.’

  I looked down, surprised that I still held the gold watch and chain, the calling card with its unspoken message to her across the years. Suddenly, unable to contain my fury, I hurled it at the bar, its chain trailing through the air behind it and whipping past the barman’s head to crash into a stand of bottles on the counter, the heavy gold chain snaking around a Johnny Walker bottle and preventing it from falling to the ground. ‘Good luck!’ I cried furiously.

  While I instantly regretted my fit of jealousy and the vulnerability it exposed, I lacked the guts to apologise in public. Instead I fled the cocktail bar like a petulant schoolboy, the surprised drinkers no doubt watching my angry departure, then staring at a mortified Anna.

  When I walked from the shower back into the bedroom Anna was seated at the mirror brushing her hair. She was dressed in the Chanel suit, the outfit she’d worn to meet the Mitsubishi executives, and was wearing the two solitaire diamond earrings. ‘I wish to apologise. I only hope the watch can be repaired,’ I said, shamefaced.

  ‘It isn’t broken,’ she said crisply without looking up at me. Then placing the brush on the dressing table with a small, deliberate bang she rose from the chair and reached for her handbag. ‘Well, I’ll be off. The car will be waiting downstairs.’ She glanced briefly at me, her expression deadpan. ‘Blossom mustn’t be late now, must she?’

  ‘Kiss?’ I asked with a rueful grin.

  Anna had already moved several steps from where I stood and now halted and bent over slightly with her derrière facing me, and in a voice far from amused snapped, ‘You can kiss my arse, Nicholas Duncan!’

  ‘Gladly,’ I returned, but by this time she’d reached the door and moments before it swung shut I heard the click-clack-click of her expensive stilettos on the Italian marble foyer leading to the lift. ‘Jesus, what now?’ I said aloud, plonking myself down on the edge of the bed, aware that I’d screwed up big time.

  The ‘what now’ tu
rned out to be another long, vexing and sleepless night as I waited for Anna to return to the hotel. My imagination ran riot – Anna in a silk kimono attending to Konoe Akira’s perverted needs, showing him how much more she had learned over the years, helping him to inject heroin, seated at his feet, her blue eyes fixed on him, drinking in every word he said, even modestly telling of her success and giving him the credit for it. My febrile imagination knew no bounds. I even pictured Anna naked with her worshipful master fucking her, his tiny cock happily accepted, vaginismus free, as she moaned in ecstasy.

  By 7 a.m. I could contain myself no longer. I dressed and went downstairs to hail a taxi. ‘Roppongi – take me to a place called Topaz!’ I instructed.

  The taxi driver hesitated. ‘I don’t know this place in Roppongi, sir. Do you have the address?’

  I pointed to his radio. ‘Call your base,’ I snapped. He did so and moments later the operator answered to say they couldn’t locate a place of that name. ‘Shit!’ I exclaimed in English. Then in Japanese I instructed him to wait. I jumped from the taxi and ran up the steps, entered the hotel and, with my newfound yakuza notoriety, interrupted a clerk on the telephone. He immediately hung up and stood to rigid attention. ‘Topaz, in Roppongi!’ I barked. ‘I need the exact address.’

  ‘Immediately, Duncan-san!’ He reached once more for the telephone and instructed the hotel switchboard to find the address, then waited nervously for the reply. A minute or so later he shouted down the receiver, ‘Look again!’ Finally, his hand shaking, he placed the receiver back into its cradle. ‘Duncan-san, we regret there is no such address,’ he apologised.

  I guess I was exhausted and overwrought. ‘This is bullshit!’ I cried, my fist thumping the desk so that the clerk jumped backwards and brought his hands up to protect his face, anticipating a punch. I shoved my hand in my pocket and withdrew two notes, a thousand yen and a five-thousand yen. Placing the thousand on the counter I said, ‘Here, give this to the taxi driver. Tell him I no longer need him.’ I handed him the second note. ‘For your assistance,’ I growled.

  I returned to my room, then decided on the spur of the moment to have breakfast, realising that I hadn’t eaten since I’d left the penthouse apartment of my butterfly-collecting mate the previous day. I told myself I needed coffee, food and a little time to calm down.

  I couldn’t yet grasp the fact that Anna had lied to me, deliberately concealing the whereabouts of her assignation with Konoe Akira. Christ! What was going on? Was this a conspiracy hatched between the two of them? Our trip to Japan organised long before we’d left? Was my suggestion that she come along with me a carefully cultivated thought planted by Anna, when I’d imagined it was all my own idea? Had I been suckered into the whole thing?

  Over a couple of cups of strong black coffee, toast and a ham omelette – I couldn’t stomach the thought of salted salmon or dried horse – I calmed down somewhat and realised that I was exhausted and not thinking straight, asking myself too many emotionally charged and unanswerable questions. Anna was a big girl, travelled frequently, spoke Japanese fluently – she wouldn’t have needed an excuse to come to Japan alone to sort things out with Konoe Akira. She could have done so by travelling via Japan on one of her trips to Europe and I would never have known the difference.

  I needed to understand Anna’s reason for deliberately concealing the place of assignation with Konoe Akira, after we’d agreed that we’d meet him together. Something must have occurred when she’d gone looking for drugs. Was she attempting to protect me if things went wrong? It seemed unlikely. Did she, as she claimed, want to confront her one-time mentor on her own, believing that this was the only way she could lay the ghosts of the past to rest?

  What was becoming clearer was that she’d gone looking for heroin and, using the letter of introduction she’d brought with her, entered the house of bondage (whatever its name), arranged for a source of heroin and, furthermore, been accepted as a fellow kinbaku bondage mistress by the proprietors. Then having earned their trust, she’d consequently asked about Konoe Akira. Anna was smart enough to realise I would probably insist, as we’d previously agreed, on attending any meeting, and even if she refused to allow me, I would nevertheless follow her to be at hand should things go wrong. So she had deliberately concealed the true name of the establishment. Of course, this was pure conjecture on my part, but it seemed more probable than the phantasmagoria and nonsense that had previously run through my stupid head.

  However, there was one factor I couldn’t disregard, the simplest and only real fact in all these speculations – Anna hadn’t returned to the hotel. I had known her intimately for twenty years and while I realise one can never completely know the mind of another, I felt certain she would, despite our acrimonious parting, have called to say she was safe but delayed and told me when she would be back.

  Anna never neglected even the tiniest details, let alone something as important as this. She had no possible reason to disappear and had much to lose by doing so, for example, the impending McVitty payback that would establish the basis for her fortune. If she had wanted to change her life, this was not the place or the time to do it. Anna, I decided, was undoubtedly in trouble.

  I called the yakuza oyabun Fuchida-san just after nine on the number he’d given me, only to be told by Miss Sparkle, his mama-san, that he was unavailable and that he’d call me back. Just before eleven he called and I explained that I had a problem. I was about to expand on it, saying, ‘Fuchida-san, I think there has been an abduction —’

  ‘No more!’ the oyabun yelled. ‘Hotel telephones are not reliable. There are too many ears listening to foreign guests. I will send someone to fetch you in half an hour and we will have lunch at my apartment.’

  I realised after I’d replaced the phone that I should have volunteered to take a taxi, that another hotel invasion by the yakuza in half an hour would further confirm my fearsome reputation among the staff. However, it also occurred to me that if, as Fuchida-san suggested, phone tapping was commonplace, then his first visit to the hotel would certainly have been reported to the authorities and, as a consequence, the telephone in our suite would have received more than a little attention from the First Intelligence Division, Japan’s equivalent of the FBI.

  To my enormous relief, only a single black Toyota with a driver and two black-suited foot soldiers in dark glasses turned up. But it seemed to make little difference: the doorman turned to cement, the staff at the reception desk froze and the bellboys appeared to be afflicted by rigor mortis.

  Once in the oyabun’s apartment, with the mama-san Miss Sparkle serving us green tea, I explained what I suspected had happened to Anna, or at least enough for him to understand the relationship between her and Konoe Akira. His first question, of course, was to ask the name of the bondage house, and when I shrugged and said I didn’t know, he rose and went to the phone in his office and returned a few minutes later. ‘They are all under yakuza control. We will know soon enough. There are not so many houses of bondage – it is a rich man’s diversion.’ He laughed. ‘The poor can’t afford a rope that isn’t attached to something they are required to pull.’

  ‘Do you think your own people may have been hired to abduct Anna?’ I asked.

  ‘It is possible; the one answer will supply the other,’ he said. ‘If so, our problem is solved. But it is unlikely. Yakuza are not happy to abduct a foreigner. It is bad for Japan and the government, and the First Intelligence Division will not tolerate it. If it must be done then I must know about it, so I can make sure the forces of law will not intervene.’ It was yet another example of the interconnectedness of the yakuza and the formal law-enforcement authorities.

  ‘But what if she’s harmed, even . . .’ I couldn’t complete the sentence.

  ‘Killed? No, that will not happen. She is a foreigner,’ he said with emphasis.

  Lunch was a simple affair. Traditionally, towards the end of April, Japan swaps from warm udon noodle soups to cold soba noodles topp
ed with sesame seeds, grated ginger, dried seaweed, chopped green onions and wasabi served with dipping sauces. Miss Sparkle had been given the task of calling his five oyabun, the senior yakuza who ran Tokyo under his overall control, and throughout lunch my host was constantly being called to the phone. At 1.25 p.m. a call came in to say his men had located the house of bondage that Anna had visited. I couldn’t give her marks for originality; she’d simply switched semi-precious stones. It was called Jade House.

  ‘Have you news of Anna?’ I inquired anxiously.

  ‘This Konoe Akira must be very powerful or very rich, or both. The Jade Mistress will not talk and denies seeing Anna-san.’

  ‘Oh? Then how do we know we have the right place?’

  Fuchida-san grinned. ‘In all yakuza interests there is always someone planted – they are known as “caretaker’s eyes and ears”. It is how we know what’s going on and are not cheated of our share of the profits. Our informer says Anna was present last night and that she demonstrated some kinbaku techniques they didn’t know. She says Anna is very skilled and earned true admiration from the other professionals, but later when Anna-san was abducted, she personally was with a patron and so didn’t see who abducted her.’

  ‘How then will we find out?’

  The yakuza boss laughed. ‘I will personally ask the Jade Mistress. Her denial tells me that the abduction is not simply a criminal gang looking to kidnap a gaijin for the ransom money she might bring, but involves either herself or one of her patrons, otherwise she would have immediately reported the incident to our people, to whom she pays protection. We also know she was instrumental in arranging the meeting last night at the Jade House between your partner and Konoe Akira, presumably a valued client and certainly a very powerful and influential person. She would be foolish to risk his retaliation by attempting to gain personally from the abduction. By not informing us in the first place she no doubt hoped to hide the information so that if the police made inquiries she could deny ever knowing your partner or Konoe Akira, which is standard practice in a place such as that. Now that she knows that the yakuza are asking questions she also knows that she has been exposed and cannot deny being aware of Anna. To do so would put everything at risk. So now she will plead loss of face by being asked to inform a mere wakagashira of the incident. This will be her excuse for not contacting us earlier. She will claim that she must be seen to have demanded someone of equal stature to her client in order to inform us correctly, otherwise, if the incident becomes known among her other patrons, the reputation of her establishment and herself will be diminished in their eyes.’