Laughter in the Shadows (7 page)

An hour later, Bing Aldren and his crew, the Steve Canyons I had seen at the bar when I first arrived, drove up in a jeep looking bleary eyed and hung over. We followed the captain and crew into the plane and laid Ming’s body on a canvas tarpaulin. When the cargo door slammed shut, the odor of Ming’s formaldehyde and the crew’s alcohol combined to leave the plane smelling like a cross between a drunk tank and a morgue.

The plane taxied down the runway, yawing from side to side, sparks flying as the wingtips scraped the tarmac until it finally lifted off. Once the plane had leveled off, Algren’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “Twenty minutes to Edo Bay Memorial Cemetery. Prepare for burial at sea!”

Fifteen minutes later, the yellow warning light began blinking. We unhinged the door, and a welcome blast of cold air suddenly emptied the plane of the fumes that had almost overpowered us since takeoff. Sparks from the engine flashed by as we pushed Ming’s body until his feet stuck out in the slipstream. When the green light flashed, we gave Ming a final shove just as the plane banked sharply, sending him and his pallbearers crashing against the plane’s metal rib cage on the other side of the plane.

Algren’s voice came over the speaker. “Sorry about that. Unexpected turbulence. We’ll go around again for another pass.”

The green light flashed again, and we gave Ming another shove. We could see the foamy whitecaps on the black swells of the sea, but again the plane banked sharply to the left. This time we grabbed onto the cargo rings to keep from crashing back onto the fuselage, but one of the straps of the body bag got caught on a cargo ring, leaving him dangling halfway out the door, his body buffeted like a rag doll in the slipstream.

We decided not to wait for Algren to make another pass, crawled over to Ming, and cut the strap to his shroud, while at the same time giving him a final shove. Ming’s body, like a ghostly apparition, levitated upright for a moment and then dropped out of sight. We crawled over to the door and peered out to see Ming’s body dropping end over end until it finally splashed into the bay. We then threw out the sprigs of cherry blossoms his “uncle” had asked us to scatter over his grave.

Requiescat in pace
.

PM Librarian

In the weeks that followed, I was given odd jobs such as stuffing balloons with leaflets. Unpredictable wind currents blew most of the leaflets back over Edo to the delight of its citizenry, who were badly in need of toilet paper.

I was still unassigned, so when there was an opening for an assistant librarian, I swallowed my paramilitary pride and took it.

The position of librarian was a sinecure for the widow of a base case officer who died after eating a poisoned fugu (blowfish). Ruth drowned her grief with gin and tonics and rarely showed up in the library. She was happy, however, to learn she would have an assistant so she could devote more time to her Beefeaters.

The library consisted of a
Webster’s Dictionary
, a set of
World Book Encyclopedias
, Erick Ambler’s
Epitaph for a Spy
, James Michener’s
Sayonara
, and a biography of Richard Sorge, the famous Russian spy who operated in East Asia during World War II. I persuaded Ruth to authorize me to buy more books to fill the library shelves.

I scoured the numerous kiosks of Edo’s Seiki district, which were lined with book kiosks displaying woodblock erotica, cardboard color comics of
The Legend of Momotaro the Peach Boy
and
The Tale of the Genji
, and English-language hard covers and paperbacks. I also purchased an album of erotic woodprints. The library shelves were almost full when the first case officers came in to browse.

I persuaded several case officers to take advantage of the library’s newly created Intelligence Coordination Section (ICS). Research was the word I hoped would attract case officers, who found research dull and onerous at worst and a distasteful distraction at best. I figured that if I could provide them with background pieces to fill out and enliven their dispatches, they would be grateful and I would gain access to that operations fraternity from which I was still excluded.

My first client was a case officer who wanted background material on the Sons of Samurai, a little-known fledgling ultranationalist organization. I sifted through embassy telegrams, newspaper clippings, and magazine articles and put together enough material for a report, adding footnotes from the Edo Warrior’s Code and
the Samurai Code of Conduct. I signed the report, “Deputy Director, Intelligence Research Section (IRS),” a title of my own invention.

The case officer must have liked the report, because I became inundated with requests from other case officers for research papers. And when the next Table of Organization appeared, there was a box for the Intelligence Coordination Section with dotted lines leading to the Operations Sections. My nose was under the operational tent.

Several months later, the Sons of Samurai case officer alerted me to an opening in the Political Action Section. I applied and was accepted. I turned in my badge as deputy librarian for that of a junior case officer.

Case Officer

Man is too addicted to the intoxicating mixture of adolescent buccaneering and adult perfidy to relinquish it entirely.

—P. D. JAMES,
The Children of Men

The case officer is the Agency’s foot soldier. His primary role is recruiting and handling agents, who range from chambermaids to cabinet ministers, office clerks to tribal chiefs.

Case officers, covert professionals, should not be confused with caseworkers. The latter are overt professionals who can openly take pride in their profession. Case officers have to remain anonymous and cannot publicly declare their profession except to other case officers. Society has no respectable niche for the spy. His profession is regarded at best as sinister, at worst as ignoble.

Case officers and caseworkers do, however, have one thing in common: unusual clientele. Their “cases” range from unsavory, paranoid, and congenital liars to renegades and patriots, each requiring special handling.

The Agency case officer fits no standard profile. He can be Peter Pan, Peck’s bad boy, Walter Mitty, or John Smiley. He plays a variety of roles, depending on his target: the anticommunist evangelist excoriating the “Red Satan,” a Fagin trainer of thieves, or a recruiter of scavengers to pick through nuclear trash bins.

The case officer blends in with his surroundings and, like the chameleon, can change covers quickly. His tasks range from sticking pins in Khaddafi dolls, slipping aphrodisiacs to unsuspecting Soviets, or persuading foreign leaders to take a lie detector test.

Case officers are expendable. If a case officer is “burned,” the Agency will deny him, although it may later reinstate him after a cooling off period in Registry’s catacombs. The case officer can also be fired, or terminated, with or without “prejudice.”

As a junior case officer, I reported to George, a senior case officer who spoke fluent Bushidan. He liked to sprinkle his guidance and directions to his junior case officers with Bushidan proverbs. He wasn’t a good recruiter, because he found it difficult to bring himself to corrupt the “pure Bushidan soul.”

George was chief of the Political Operations Section, but he didn’t have anyone to cover the Bushidan labor organizations leading the charge against the presence of American military bases in Bushido. He directed me to cover the Bushidan labor movement.

George gave me a series of tasks. First, study the Bushidan labor movement. Second, establish contacts and elicit information. Third, recruit an agent in the labor field. This was the sum of my direction and guidance. No manuals to follow, no case studies to read over. There was one primary rule of engagement: don’t get caught.

The headquarters of Carbo, the coal miners union, at #75 Hirotsuki-cho, was hard to find. Address numbers are in order of their construction date, #1 possibly a hundred yards from #2 if a number of other shops had been built in between. Since I didn’t know the chronology of the buildings on Hirotsuki-cho, I stopped at the nearest fire station for directions. Most of the firemen were outside climbing up their ladders to practice juggling acts for the coming cherry blossom festival, but I finally found one who wasn’t busy and who escorted me to #75.

Carbo headquarters was in an old warehouse with a large red and white banner over the door. I knocked, didn’t get an answer, and knocked again. Finally, I pushed the door open, went inside, and found myself standing in front of fifty or sixty Bushidans wearing red headbands. They were all sitting cross-legged, busily painting placards, probably for the next anti-American demonstration. When I came in, they looked up, stopped painting, and stared open-mouthed at the foreign intruder. No one moved to welcome me or ask what I wanted. They just stared as if I had dropped in from outer space. I was about to turn around and leave, but since I had come this far, I wasn’t going to be put off by their stares and silence. I decided to try to break the ice:
“Ohayo!”
Good morning!
“Gomenasai!”
Excuse me.

No response. They continued squinting and staring at me so I tried again.
“Ohayo, gomenasai!”

Finally, a few heads turned toward the back to look at one of the sign painters. The painter in question uncrossed his legs, stood up, and walked to where I was standing.

“What you want?” he asked.

I was taken aback by the brusque tone of his question. Bushidans are normally reticent and polite, especially with foreigners. I figured his question sounded brusque because of his limited English. Perhaps if I articulated and spoke slowly, he could understand me better and then interpret for the rest of the group. I began
with the cover story I had prepared earlier. “I am writing a book about Bushidan coal miners. I came here because I wanted to learn about coal mining in Bushido and to ask you to arrange a visit to a coal mine where I could talk to miners and their families.”

As a cover story, it was short, simple, and direct. I paused to give the spokesman enough time to think and try to interpret what I had said. He hesitated, fingered his headband, and looked around the room. Finally, he began to interpret what I had said. When he paused, I continued my story.

I said I came from a coal-mining region of America (a half-truth, because I lived for three years as a boy in West Virginia) and that my father had been a coal miner who died of black-lung disease (a fiction, because my father had been an army officer).

When I mentioned the black-lung disease, the scourge of miners everywhere, I heard sympathetic sucking “ah-so’s” from the audience. The mention of the black-lung disease had apparently broken the ice. I decided it was a good time to stop and bowed to indicate I had finished.

My bow at the end of the story prompted someone to call out for cha-yo: tea. I was led to a long table in the back of the room. I wedged myself in between two sign painters and was served a steaming cup of green tea by a bowing, gold-toothed mama-san in a red and white flowered kimono.

I tried to make small talk with the Bushidans sitting next to me, but their responses were limited to nods, smiles, burps, and sucking noises. When the tea break was over, the hall became quiet. The sign painters were apparently waiting for me to make an “after-tea” speech. I had already exhausted my cover story, so I had to think of another diversion. I thought back to a night in a Shinbaku bar when a group of giggling kimono-clad barmaids tried to teach me the Carbo Buki, the “Coal Miners’ Dance.” It was simple enough even for an awkward American, a series of “dig-dig,” “pick-pick,” and “shovel-shovel” motions. I hoped I could remember them.

I got up from the table, stepped back, and bowed to the miners who were still sitting around the extended table. I took out my red bandana handkerchief, folded it into a headband, and tied it around my forehead. I walked over and took a broom that was leaning against the wall and began shuffling around the room making picking and shoveling motions with the broom and scooping up imaginary lumps of coal.

I was beginning to feel foolish dancing solo around the hall with my broom shoveling and picking, and then I heard the sound of clapping. Several sign painters had gotten up and had fallen in behind me, imitating the pick-pick, shovel-shovel motions, and soon I found myself leading a conga line as the rest of the
sign painters fell in behind me. I led them around the hall twice and then stopped, bowed, and sat down.

Suddenly, everybody started clapping and a large jug of rice wine was brought to the table. A healthy portion was poured into my cup, and I toasted to “coal miners around the world.” After more clapping and toasts to the
gansin
, the foreigner, I was convinced my bona fides had been established. It was a good time to leave.

The spokesman walked with me to the door. When I thanked him for the warm welcome, he replied that I should come back the following week. And “bring suitcase for trip to coal mine.”

Owata

When I returned a week later, I was greeted with shouts of
Carbo-bushi-san
! The spokesman introduced me to Kanto, the interpreter who was to accompany me on the trip to the Shiba Owata coal mine in southern Bushido. Kanto, who spoke good English, was the younger brother of the secretary general of Carbo.

The overnight train trip took ten hours. We arrived in Owata as the sun was coming up over the island of Shuku, home to the world’s largest undersea coal mine. Its black anthracite veins stretch like tentacles for several miles out under the sea, the veins providing charcoal for hibachis all over Bushido and livelihoods for eight thousand miners.