“You don’t want the final report on the training?” I thought I knew the answer, but wanted to be sure.
He waved his hand, “You can mail it in to us.” He reached over to put the car into gear and I stopped him.
“You were never really interested in my help with your training, were you, Ashby? You were just hanging on to me until you did your final checks.”
He turned his head to look right at me, his eyes flat and noncommittal. “I told you, Baker wanted to check you out himself.”
“I don’t like being jerked around like that.”
Ashby grinned tightly. “Welcome to my world, Burke. Yours too, now.”
“What do you mean?”
“You ever hear of the king’s shilling, Burke?” I shook my head. “Old English military recruiter’s trick. You send a soldier in to a bar to talk with a bunch of guys; he tries to sell them on the glory of a soldier’s life. But they think they’re too smart. So the soldier keeps talking and then offers to buy them a drink. Well by now, they’re all feeling pretty smug, so they say sure. And after they finish the soldier calls in the rest of his guards and drags them away.” Ashby leaned slightly toward me and with a twinkle in his eye, he continued. “When they accepted the drink, they were really taking the king’s money and were now legally obligated to serve. Same thing with you, Burke.”
I felt a jet of alarm. “Whattaya mean?”
He laughed then, and slipped the car into gear. “Relax. You’re only a consultant.” His tone was condescending and I quelled a surge of resentment. “Guys like Baker have made the big commitment. They dedicate their lives to the greater quest. They don’t get tricked into taking the king’s shilling, they go in search of it. You got tricked, Burke, and the king calls the tune. But the nice thing for you is that you can take the money, go home, and forget about what you saw. ”
I swallowed my guilty relief.
The jerking was subtle, but ominous, because I knew what it meant—the heaviness in my limbs, the blackness, the roaring in my ears. Whoever he was, he was working the hold in tighter, trying to cut off the blood flow to the brain. Once the minute jerking adjustments start, you know you’re in trouble. It means that the chokehold is almost in. You’ve got maybe five seconds to break it before you lose consciousness. But while you struggle, the hold is tightening and the flow of blood is starting to slow. If you struggle too much, you use up the last of the oxygen and you black out. But if you don’t get free, they’ll crimp the carotid arteries and you slip away, spinning down to a place you may never come back from.
And I thought that I had left it too long. I couldn’t move. The roaring in my head grew stronger. I tried to break free, but couldn’t.
Then the chime sounded and Art reached across the aisle and nudged me until I opened my eyes.
“Wha’?” I asked thickly and brought the seat back up.
“We’re making our approach. Should be landing in ten minutes or so.”
I was still groggy, half in the dream world where someone was choking me to death. Life slowly came into focus: the sound of jet engines, a slight pressure in the ears, the stewardess slowly walking down the aisle, gently trailing a manicured hand over seat backs as she made sure her first class passengers were strapped in and ready. Her nails were painted the color of blood.
The plane bounced a bit as we came down through the thermal layers—it must have been what I felt in the dream. The stewardess was all smiles. My heart was pounding—in some ways I was still back in that dark place where someone was trying to kill me. Micky came down the aisle and squeezed past me to his seat. I looked from Art to my brother, and took a few deep breaths. I rubbed my face, remembering where I was. And why.
It didn’t make me feel any better.
The Army had said goodbye without much fanfare. Ashby had met me at the car before I left Fort Bragg and handed me another envelope. Inside was a black laminated ID card. It had my name, picture, and the logo of the Special Operations Command on it. The back of the card had a paragraph identifying me as a consultant and listed two different phone numbers and an e-mail address, indicating that the bearer was entitled to use these numbers to make contact with the training cadre, USASOC. Any and all government employees were, upon receipt of the card, to provide communication assistance to the bearer.
“So what’s this, Ashby?” I had asked. “A get out of jail free card?”
He smiled. “Colonel Baker thought that you might have some additional insights on that video. You come up with anything —a hunch, a guess, anything—he wants to know. Anytime. Anywhere.”
“Yeah. But why this?” I asked, and held up the little card.
“Colonel Baker moves around, Burke,” Ashby told me. “The numbers there will route you to a comm center that will know where he is and can get you in contact with him within a few hours.”
“My tax dollars at work,” I said. I slipped it in my pocket, but didn’t figure I’d ever use it. I was glad to be getting away from these people and didn’t think I wanted to talk to Baker again.
The commuter flight back north to New York was so brief that they barely had time to give out the tiny bags of snacks they use to distract you from the tedium of flying. I opted for the cute little blue potato chips. So good, and so good for you. But I figured Yamashita would sweat it out of me within a day or so. Any time you miss practice for a while, he tends to ratchet things up a notch. Just his way of saying welcome back.
I was eager to talk with him about the video. About the techniques and body movements. Part of me wondered why Baker didn’t just ask my
sensei
to look at the video in the first place. But I thought of the men from CIA. They weren’t crazy about me seeing the thing, and that was after they had a run a security check. Imagine how they would have felt with a Japanese national in the room.
I had scarfed down the chips and was trying to brush the tiny crumbs and salt off my shirt when one of the attendants came by. His nametag read “Geoff.” Perhaps he was named after Chaucer, but I had my doubts. In the neighborhood where I grew up, I had known a few people named Jeff. Anyone spelling it G-E-O-F-F would have been in for a severe pummeling.
He had a manifest in his hand and glanced up at the seat number to make sure. “Dr. Burke?” he asked.
“That’s me. What can I do for you?”
Geoff wouldn’t make eye contact. “Oh nothing, sir. Merely double-checking the flight manifest.”
I nodded. “It’s a post nine-eleven world, isn’t it?”
He nodded back but moved on and checked a few more seats. He seemed a little nervous. Then again, I imagine the airline people don’t like you mentioning major air disasters while in flight.
Geoff eventually got back to his station just behind the cockpit. He picked up a phone and spoke into it. I didn’t look directly at him, but I could see him glance at me as he talked. Something was going on.
I sat there and felt the steward’s energy pulse down the aisle toward me. There’s a type of vibration people give off when they’re focusing on you. And it doesn’t matter whether they’re actually looking at you or not. It feels like you’re a target. At least that’s how I interpret it. The martial arts training hall is a place where the psychic flow of energy related to aggression and fear makes the air pulse. You have to be pretty thick not to notice it eventually. But once you start registering feelings like that, you eventually start to pick up on other, more subtle variations. My teacher Yamashita encourages it, believing that a warrior needs as much sensory input as possible to stay alive.
But what I was picking up on this flight was still a mystery to me. Was it anxiety? Fear? Certainly not aggression. Geoff did not strike me as a major threat. They still tend to recruit smaller people for jobs as flight attendants, and he was no exception. He was young enough to tussle, I suppose, but his neat hairdo and the immaculate light blue windowpane uniform shirt did not project the image of someone eager to mix it up. I didn’t imagine that lifting little serving baskets filled with potato chips did much for muscle tone, either. But he was clearly watching me.
I tried to figure out what I had done. The government had paid for the plane ticket, and those checks don’t typically bounce. I hadn’t tempered with the smoke detector in the bathroom. I kept my seat belt on during the whole flight and had refrained from using unauthorized electronic devices. I felt the vindication of the truly innocent.
But it wasn’t much of a surprise when we landed and two of the beefier types from the Transportation Security Administration came on board and escorted me off the plane and down the boarding ramp. They didn’t say much, just asked me my name and requested I accompany them. Nobody slapped the cuffs on me right away, so I figured things would work out. We squeezed by Geoff on the way out the door. He looked like he was going to faint.
Then I saw who was waiting for me at the gate and my stomach gave one quick, tight lurch.
“Is it Mom?” I asked my brother Micky. Since my dad died, she has developed into an increasingly fragile thing. Feisty, but brittle. Someday, time will snap her in two.
“No,” Micky said tightly. He looked around at the flow of people. Announcements bounced off the poured concrete walls of the round terminal. It was a no-frills carrier and the departure area looked like the inside of a cement silo. You could see Micky’s mind working and deciding that this was no place to have a conversation. “Come on,” he told me, and headed out without looking to see whether I was following or not.
My brother has been a cop for almost sixteen years and it shows. He was always an intense kid, and the life he’s chosen has proven to be a good fit. He has the hard look some cops get: eyes that see everything, even the things you don’t want seen. As a result, people tend to shy away from him in crowds. He steamed through the terminal at JFK like an icebreaker and nobody got in his way.
There was a black Lincoln town car idling in the pick-up zone. A uniformed Transit Authority cop was standing by as well. The TSA guys brought my luggage and the trunk lid popped up, seemingly by magic, and they tossed my bags in, looking vaguely pleased at a mission accomplished. It was probably the most excitement they had all day and beat sifting through people’s unmentionables.
The car gleamed. I looked at Micky. “Nice ride, Mick,” I said. “Not really your usual style, though.”
He squinted at me. “Yeah, well, it’s not. Get in the back.” He opened the passenger door next to the driver, gave the TSA cop a nod of thanks, and got in.
I opened my door and caught a glimpse of a pair of pinstriped-clad legs in the back. They belonged to a youngish Japanese man whose dress shirt was so white it almost glowed in the subdued lighting of the town car.
“Dr. Burke,” he said as I got in, “allow me to introduce myself. I am Kenjiro Inouye, second undersecretary for intergovernmental relations at the Japanese Embassy here in Manhattan.” His English was faultless. I don’t think that I could say intergovernmental without doing a far poorer job. Inouye extended his
meishi
, his business card, to me with both hands. I bowed and took it as etiquette required.
“
Hajimemashitte
,” I said automatically. Then I looked at my brother, sitting stolidly up front next to the uniformed chauffeur. “Where’s Art?”
“He’s home. With his family.”
“Oh.” I could tell Micky was annoyed.
“Yeah,” my brother said. “You may recall, before I was diverted into a new career running a car service for you, that I had one, too.” Micky gave Inouye a look of pure malevolence.
“Your assistance is very much appreciated by my government, Officer Burke,” the Japanese man said smoothly. Micky’s glares tend to unsettle most people. Inouye seemed totally at ease. “We may go,” he told the driver, and the Lincoln rolled out into traffic, smooth as melting butter.
“What’s going on here, Mick?” I asked. My brother didn’t say anything, just jerked with his chin toward Inouye and waited.
I sat back and looked at the second undersecretary. He reached down to the floor and withdrew a file folder from a leather briefcase. He set it on his lap and began talking.
“Nine days ago,” he began, “a young graduate student doing research was kidnapped . . . ”
“Research?” I asked. I had a hard time equating research with danger. Most libraries are only dangerous if the shelves fall on you.
“She was working on her dissertation research in anthropology,” Inouye explained, “studying the hill tribes on the island of Mindanao.” I nodded and he went on. “Hatsue Abe,” he slid an 8½ × 11 picture across the seat, “is the daughter of one of our leading industrialists.” Inouye looked at me. “She is a child of privilege, Dr. Burke, reared in luxury, educated at the best schools in Tokyo. Graduate work at Harvard . . . ”
I looked at the picture. It was professionally done, a posed shot. Hatsue had delicate features and an expensive haircut. She had the look of someone who was very self-confident, someone who was accustomed to a world where the systems worked very smoothly, a meshing of gears that would propel her along life in comfort. I tried to imagine what the expression on her face would have looked like when she was kidnapped.
I looked from Inouye to my brother. “I’m very sorry Inouye-san, but I don’t see . . . ”
“Just let him talk,” Micky said.
Inouye slipped the photo back into his folder and consulted some notes. “A ransom note was received, along with a photograph of Ms. Abe holding up a newspaper . . . ”
“Newspaper?” I asked.
“Proof of life,” Micky said. “The newspaper is there to confirm the date the photo was taken. Shows that the victim is still alive at that point.” He said it very matter of factly. I glanced at Inouye, but he didn’t seem bothered by the discussion.
“Her family was obviously eager to do all in their power to get her back,” the diplomat said. “Given their wealth and connections with the government, they were able to make arrangements rather quickly and collect the funds needed for the ransom payment.”
“Did the cops get involved?”
“The Philippine authorities were working the case, but under the circumstances, I am sure that you can understand that the family’s first priority was obtaining the release of Ms. Abe.”