Authors: Sujata Massey
“Nope. It’s still safe and sound in my suitcase at Aunt Norie’s.”
“Great. We can send a courier to pick up the suitcase and bring it to you at the airport. You’ll get your ticket there, too. Now, the question is where you’re going to sleep tonight.”
I’d caught a whiff of something that made me uneasy. “What ticket are you talking about?”
“Your airplane ticket home. As you’ve reminded me ad nauseam, I’ve kept you on active duty too long. You’ll come home tomorrow.”
“No! I know I sounded—stressed—a minute ago, but that doesn’t mean I want to run away.”
“Why wait? As you pointed out, you’re in serious danger.”
“But—” I broke off. It was hard to explain, but the incident with the cop had changed everything. All my old feelings of humiliation at being at the mercy of the Japanese law had come back. But this time, I had the possibility of revenge. If it was true that some government bureaucrat had ordered my abduction, I wanted him exposed and brought down. I wouldn’t be chased out until I knew the answer.
“Rei, can you hear me?”
“Yes, I can. And I’m sorry I snapped at you. I’m not ready to go, not when I’m so close to finding out what happened.” I leaned against the tiled wall for support, because it felt stronger than I did.
“Come on, Rei. There’s a time to exit gracefully. And don’t worry about the mission. We can work on getting a warrant to get into Birand’s shop, Harada’s house, wherever the damn vessel might be. But it’s too high a risk for you to stay in Tokyo.”
“I agree it’s a bit dicey at the moment,” I said, seeking to mollify him. “After I get the money from the embassy, I’ll jump on the first train out. Don’t send a courier for my suitcase. I can get it myself.”
“Out to where?”
“I’m thinking of Kyushu. It’s quiet, and I want to visit a pottery studio. After that, I’ll think seriously about whether I should come home.”
“Kyushu,” Michael said, sounding mystified. “I suppose you want to make the most of your trip and bring home some pottery?”
“Not exactly.” Men could be so dense. “Don’t you remember that I said the Harmonys own a bowl from a Kyushu artist?”
“Yes, but I don’t understand its significance in light of what’s going on.” He paused. “Go there if you want. Get the hell out of the city. I’d say go tonight, but I can’t get the financial arrangements together quickly enough. What I’m going to do is have money wired to you through the State Department. I’ll call the duty officer at the embassy in Tokyo right after I’m done. Where will you sleep tonight, if not at your relatives’ house?”
“I’m going to ask Richard if I can sleep on his spare futon. Right now, I’m at his language school, waiting for them to finish teaching.”
“Your gay ex-roommate?” Michael said.
“Right. There’s no danger that I’ll do anything stupid with him.”
Michael sighed. “If that arrangement falls through for any reason, call me back. I’ll come up with a safe house for you.”
Safe house. Powerhouse. Language House. It all ran together in my head as I clicked off and went back into the reception area, looking for my friends.
While I was talking, classes had ended. Richard and Simone had taken the students on a field trip to Smoke Hose, I heard from one straggler who was still putting on a coat.
A language discussion group in a nightclub? I shook my head at the seemingly unlimited creativity of my friends. What did they really think the students would gain by struggling to hear foreigners shout casual English at each other in a loud setting?
“The goal is to be able to understand lyrics!” Richard shouted in my ear when I arrived at the club twenty minutes later. Smoke Hose was on the fifth floor of one of Roppongi’s quintessential nightclub towers. There was a different club on each of the nine floors. Club Isn’t It had been the hottest dance club in this particular tower three years earlier, but now hardly anyone had gotten out of the elevator on its floor. Richard and Simone had picked the noisiest, most crowded place, the new bar called Smoke Hose. The name was not a misspelling but a reference to the exposed duct-work on the ceiling and walls, and of course to the haze of cigarettes.
The students in the language class were seated at two round tables right at the front. Everyone had the same kind of ruled notebook, a sharp pencil, and a cocktail. Even the cocktails appeared to be the same—cosmopolitans, which by now I’d figured out were the city’s drink of the moment. The goal, Richard explained, was for the students to attempt to transcribe what they were hearing. I couldn’t catch more than the singer’s refrain, “pounding rain and I love you again,” but maybe that was the point. For anybody, this show was a critical test of language comprehension.
“She’s Canadian,” Richard informed me after the interminable performance finally terminated. “It’s perfect for Simone’s students doing French, and mine as well. Though it turns out she’s mostly singing in English, which is pissing off the French students. And then it’s Angus and company, just like you told me.”
“The Glaswegian Hangover?” I caught my breath, trying to remember when Chika had told me the band was going to arrive.
“Of course. You told me they were coming in, and I checked the schedule, and it was delayed a couple of nights because of Nigo. Remember, you wanted to go out and see them?”
“It’s just that I’m—I’m somewhat embarrassed to see Angus after—after Hugh and I haven’t spoken for a while.” I spoke fast and low, because a couple of the students were leaning in to listen, with pencils poised to write down my words.
“What’s going on?” Richard scrutinized me.
“The fact is, I don’t know if I have the stamina to make it through the whole performance. Like I told you and Simone, I need somewhere to crash tonight and I’ll be forever grateful for your spare futon.”
“I can understand you not wanting the news getting around about how you look tonight.” Richard paused, then delivered the bad news. “Like a soccer mom who was left out in the rain—but this business about not talking to Hugh? Please explain.”
I sighed and said, “It all started with a stupid little argument we had on the phone the night you met me at Salsa Salsa…and it kind of continued. I shifted places where I was staying, so, well,…we haven’t been in touch for a while.”
Richard pursed his lips and said, almost primly, “How would you feel if he did this to you?”
“I’d be angry, unless there was a good reason.”
“Precisely. And whether or not you have a good excuse for what you did, you can think one up now. Where’s your cell phone?”
“Did you smoke something tonight? You seem awfully forceful,” I said in a low voice.
“No, I’m not. It’s a casual, every-now-and-then thing. And don’t distract me from the topic of this conversation. You’ve got a phone call to make.”
Richard was right. The time had come to make the call, and there actually was a lull in the noise because the Canadian singer was gone and the roadies were redoing the stage layout for the Glaswegian Hangover to come on. Chika came in, though, and sat down next to me.
“I’m so glad to see you,” I said, giving her a hug.
“Yes, I—I’m surprised to see you. Mother said you were in trouble. She called me about it. And it turns out all you wanted to do was get to the show!” Chika giggled, putting her hand over her mouth.
“That’s not it at all,” I said. “Chika-chan, I am mainly here because I’m hoping to stay with Richard afterward. I can’t stay at your house any longer because someone’s looking for me there.”
“Who?” Chika looked alarmed.
“I don’t know. That’s the problem.”
We’d been speaking in English, and I realized now that the students at the table were listening with interest, some taking notes. Christ. How could I call Hugh in this environment?
When Chika went to the stage, answering Sridhar’s call for help moving a speaker, I made my own move to the edge of the room to escape the eavesdropping students. I punched in the number for Hugh’s office.
When I asked to speak to Hugh, Rhiannon, his personal assistant, sounded surprised. “Rei, it’s such a relief to hear from you! Hugh’s been a real pain for the last week, let me tell you, worried out of his mind. Neither of the phone numbers you gave him worked, and I triple-checked as well, with no luck. What happened?”
Feeling deeply guilty, I mumbled something about the typhoon and moving around.
“Now, if only I can get him. He’s in conference with a gentleman from the Treasury Department, but I know he wouldn’t want to miss you—”
“I could call back in an hour.”
“No, no, he’ll have my head on a platter if he misses this. And I know he’s off to New York for something later on. This is the only time to catch him. Hold on, love, I’ll ring his private line.”
Half a minute later, Hugh was on, his voice sounding as if he were in a tunnel.
“Hi, Hugh! Is your telephone okay? Can you really talk?” I asked by way of greeting.
“I put you on the speakerphone because I have to go through some e-mail while we talk. So what’s doing?”
“Ah, won’t the speakerphone disrupt you and your client?”
“He just left. It’s okay.”
Hugh’s words were reasonable, but his manner put me on edge. He hadn’t called me darling, as he usually did, or given any inkling of the reaction that Rhiannon had led me to expect. He was reviewing e-mail while talking to me, for God’s sake.
“What’s doing, Rei?” he repeated.
“Well, I’m in a new nightclub called Smoke Hose, and your brother is about to take the stage. Right now he’s tuning up his guitar, and my cousin Chika’s helping move a speaker on the stage—”
Hugh interrupted me sharply. “What are you trying to do, establish the fact that you’re in an actual location with witnesses?”
“Not at all. I was just answering your question. Why the interrogation?”
“You’re no longer registered at the hotel where you said you’d be. The cell phone number you gave me was answered by another woman the first time around, and now is disconnected. You were at your aunt’s fleetingly, but not anymore. If this is your idea of a business trip, I can only hope that your client has better access to you than I do.”
Did his words have a subtext, or was that idea just my paranoia? “Hugh, I apologize. I did call you several times, including once in the night when I thought you’d be in bed, close to the phone. But all I ever seemed to get was your voice mail. Didn’t you hear those messages?”
“Of course I did, but you left no information that allowed me to contact you. Anything could have happened, and you’d never know. We had a bomb scare in the building last week, for instance—”
“The apartment building?” I asked, struggling to hear. Angus and the boys were onstage, tuning their instruments.
“No, at my office. Andrews and Cheyne. You didn’t read about it in the papers?”
“Hugh, I’ve been so busy I’ve barely had time to look at the papers.”
“I’m busy, too, but I check the papers every day. The
Post
and the
Times
and also the Japanese papers I can find online, just so I have an inkling of situations that might affect your safety—”
“If you’re reading the Japanese papers, you must realize that the typhoon we had last week affected everything. I never had a phone that worked to call you. I’m just trying to make amends—”
Hugh sighed audibly. “For that to happen, I need you to stop all this evasion. Tell me the truth about why you went.”
“You know it was for the Smithsonian Institution.”
“I was so frantic about you that I called over to the Smithsonian to find a contact. Nobody there knows your name.”
“That must be because the Smithsonian is so large. They can’t keep tabs on every museum’s activities, and the Sackler is one of the smallest.”
“You’re lying to me. Because when I called the Sackler, nobody there knew of you either—”
With an ear-shattering bar of electric guitar, The Glaswegian Hangover were on.
“Hugh,” I shouted, “your brother’s started playing. I can’t hear you.”
“Well, bloody well step outside the club for a minute.”
“If I do that, they might not let me in again, and I have no money.” And if I lost contact with Richard, I’d lose my bed for the night.
“Priorities…mine…wrong place…” I could make out only a few of Hugh’s words. It was like trying to understand the Canadian singer all over again.
“I’ll call you later, Hugh!” I called into the receiver. “I love you!”
“Go to hell,” Hugh shouted in return.
The saving grace, as the night rolled on, was that the music was so loud. I didn’t need to speak; I could just sit there and nod every now and then. I could not smile, though I mustered up an approximation of something like a smile when Angus raised his bottle of Kirin to me from the stage. Even when Chika and part of the language class took to the front of the club to execute a line dance to the song “Loved You Last Night, Hate You Today,” I couldn’t laugh and cheer the way the rest of our group did.
I’d lost Hugh, just as I’d lost him time and time before. We fought as much as we loved each other—if you looked at it objectively, our union had really been one long disagreement broken by spells of remarkable sex. I remembered the last four passionate nights before I’d left. Maybe we’d both been so eager because it was a way of suppressing the lie that lay underneath us. Hugh must have sensed that something was up, but he had not dared to pursue it until I was gone.
Angus and his friends performed two forty-five-minute sets. I went with everyone to Café Almond afterward, and we walked back to Shibuya amid a throng of excited students, drunken musicians, and my two old friends. Chika slipped in beside me and we linked arms, like Japanese schoolgirls.
“Do you want to stay with us?” asked Chika, who was bunking with the band at their hotel, the Roppongi Lily. She’d already called her mother to report that she had found me safe and sound, and the two of us were staying at a girlfriend’s apartment.
“Thanks, but I really do want to stay with Richard.”
Chika cocked her head. Her long, striated black-and-gold hair fell across her eyes, and she pushed it back impatiently. “You’re so lucky you don’t have to make excuses. You can do just what you like.”
“Well,” I said carefully, “I’ve actually found that lying’s worse. I don’t recommend it at all.”
Chika’s pretty face flushed. “My parents don’t want to know the truth. This is easier on everyone.”
We paused, momentarily, because there was an obstacle in our path. A Japanese girl in her late teens, eyes closed, was lying on the damp sidewalk in front of us with her legs and clothes askew. Behind her was the doorway of a nightclub; the bouncers standing there seemed to be jeering at her.
“Drunk. The poor thing!” Chika said, stepping around her.
“Wait a minute. Who’s taking care of her?” I called out so the bouncers would hear. They looked away from me, so I called it out again.
One of the bouncers said, “Who knows? She had too much drink. She just fell down.” He didn’t look at me as he spoke.
“How do you know? It could be an overdose, something really dangerous!” I said, crouching down and adjusting her clothes. Seeing my action, the last remaining students in the group formed a knot around the girl and me and began murmuring expressions of concern.
“Excuse me, but who brought her here? Where are her friends?” One of the female students spoke up.
“She stepped out with a man. He went off to get a cab, I think—”
“Maybe he won’t come back,” someone else in the crowd said in a knowing voice. The others murmured in agreement.
“It’s the way things are,” the bouncer said, throwing up his thick hands helplessly. “This thing happens every night.”
“We could call her parents.” I opened the small Kate Spade bag at her side to look for a piece of identification. There was nothing; just a pack of tissues issued by a loan shark, a Shiseido lipstick, ten thousand yen and change, and a small red pill.
“This! Look at this!” I held it up for everyone to see. “She could have OD’d. She needs to be seen at a hospital—”
“Rei, put that thing away,” Richard interrupted. “You don’t want the cops to take you in.”
It was true that I didn’t want any face time with the police. I let my group carry me along, but not before I’d made certain that the bouncer had called an ambulance.
The sight of the collapsed girl haunted me as I lay on Richard’s mildewed guest futon, trying to get to sleep. I’d been to the bathroom, looking for a sleeping aid but finding nothing on the bathroom shelf except Richard’s amphetamine tablets. I flushed the tablets down the toilet, and left a tiny note inside the foil where they’d been wrapped:
Sorry. But it’s because I love you.
In the dim glow of his clock radio, I stared at the Marky Mark poster on the wall across from me, the famous Bruce Weber shot of him in Calvin Klein underwear, leaning against a pillar, shading his eyes. It was almost as if he didn’t want to be identified, though of course he did; the picture had made his career.
Nobody had known who the girl on the sidewalk was. Nobody had cared. I would have been the same, dead, without a passport to even identify me, if I hadn’t gotten away from the man near my relatives’ house. I really had no safe haven. I had to leave.
The band had a car and driver, so one of the last things I’d asked for, before we parted, was that the driver pick me up at Richard’s address at ten minutes to eight. He was too early to be of use to the boys, but he would be able to offer me a safe passage to the embassy, and then on to Tokyo Station.
The boys had been so giddy the previous night that I wasn’t sure if my request would really make it to the driver, but sure enough, just before eight the next morning the same Lincoln Continental was waiting for me with the same man who’d ferried Chika and the boys off after Café Almond. I told the driver where I wanted to go, and he sped me there quietly. We didn’t break our silence till we reached the huge, boxy gold building that was the U.S. Embassy. When I’d tried to get the cab to wait for me alongside the chancery’s long black fence, a Japanese police guard had come up and refused to let him even stop. It was because of security, they said. As a compromise, I told the driver I’d look for him at Hotel Okura across the street.
Michael had told me to be there at eight-thirty, but a line of about 100 people—Japanese and others—were already waiting for admission. Feeling depressed, I joined the end of the line. When a blond woman backpacker walked straight to the guard post at the front of the line and was instantly waved through, I turned to the Brazilian-Japanese man waiting behind me.
“Did you see how she went ahead of everyone?”
“Americans can go ahead. Even if they don’t have their passports.”
Feeling guilty, I thanked the man for the information and went straight to the front. There, things didn’t go as smoothly as I hoped. For one, because I didn’t have my passport, I had to convince the guard that I was actually American, not Japanese. Of all the times to fit into Japanese society, this was not the time I wanted. I persisted and remembered something Michael had said about a so-called duty officer knowing my name. At last, the guard gave me a long look, then went into his booth and made a phone call. I heard him speaking into it, saying that my English was almost perfect, but my name was Japanese, so he didn’t know. He listened for a minute, then hung up and nodded at me.
“Miss Shimura, you may step through the metal detector.”
I did that and practically sprinted along the short path to the next security checkpoint, which was yet another metal detector at the embassy door. Once I passed through it, my gaze turned from a room packed with visa applicants to a small, intense Caucasian man with his shirtsleeves rolled up, who held out his right hand to me.
“Miss Shimura. I’ve been expecting you. I’m Jim Renseleer, the vice consul. I’m going to walk you through the passport replacement process, and then I’ll bring you on to your next meeting.”
Shaking his hand, I said, “I don’t actually need a new passport. I’m really here about—money.”
“But you didn’t have your passport at the gate.”
“I couldn’t bring it with me this morning.” I wished I could say more, pour out my nightmarish last twenty-four hours to this concerned-looking man, but I knew that I should not.
“All right, then. There’s an army officer here on temporary duty who wants to see you. I believe she’ll be handling whatever transaction the State Department has decided is appropriate.”
He was suspicious of me, I thought, as he led me down a gray-carpeted hallway. I knew that I was a contradiction in terms: the American citizen who looked Japanese, the person without a passport who didn’t want a new one but simply wanted money.
“Here you go. Good luck.” He opened the door to a conference room crowded with desks and computers. I stopped at the threshold and gaped at the officer who was sitting at the conference table.
The woman at the table had tawny skin, hazel eyes, and a commanding manner. This time, she was out of uniform and in a plain blue suit, but I would have known Brenda Martin anywhere.
The colonel inclined her head at me. “Good morning, Ms. Shimura. I see our receptionist hasn’t gotten you coffee yet. How do you like it?”
I remembered our first meeting, when I’d arrived dressed well enough, but wrecked from my night at Club Paradise—I’d sensed she could tell. Today I’d again had a hard night, and I was wearing wretched, filthy clothing. Did I need coffee? Incredibly. But I was not about to admit I was collapsing.
“Oh, that’s okay. I don’t need any coffee.”
“Here, sit down.” She motioned to a chair pulled up on the other side of her desk. “You look exhausted. Michael said you’ve been through a lot in the last few days.”
I wanted to change the subject. “Do you work in Tokyo now, Colonel Martin?”
“Not exactly.” She sipped from her own cup of coffee. “I’m in Army intelligence, though, so I travel quite a bit. I arrived a few days ago, after I’d reviewed the evidence you sent. I’m still getting adjusted to the time—which is why I was glad you wanted to come in first thing this morning.”
“I see.” I shifted uneasily in my chair, knowing I should feel reassured, but feeling only more nervous.
“I have the money for you right here. Do you wish to check the amount before you go? I need you to sign a receipt for me.” She slid an envelope across the polished desk, along with a thin paper slip and a pen.
“Intelligence,” I said, thinking it over. “I had thought this was just—State Department stuff. Does that mean Michael’s in Army intelligence, too?”
“Michael is ex-Navy, remember? And I’d rather have him discuss the specifics of his organization. But he’s a good man to work with, I’ll tell you that much.” She smiled at me.
“Really.” A chill settled over my skin, despite the warm, even heat of the building. If she wouldn’t tell me, that probably meant Michael was part of the CIA. Now I thought about all the things—the monitoring that had been done for me, the ease with which an official passport had been issued, Michael’s insistence on code names, the spontaneity with which he offered me a bonus.
“I love my work.” Brenda looked at me intently. “I’ve been able to combine an interest in foreign relations with justice. And believe it or not—I got where I am starting out in a capacity similar to what you’re doing now, though it was less dangerous.”
“That’s right. My job wasn’t supposed to be dangerous at all.”
Brenda lowered her voice. “I understand there has been a casualty. Michael offered you the option to go home, but said you wouldn’t. We can still get you a ticket, any time you say the word.”
A casualty. She made Emi’s death sound like a small event in a big war. But I wasn’t giving up on that war. Resolutely, I said, “I’m not going until I’ve accomplished what I promised.”
“What if it’s not here, after all? The interviews you’ve done so far have added to the case that the brothers are selling fraudulent merchandise, but not the original we were worried about.”
“Yes, they are selling some new pieces that they’re pretending are old, but why would they sell copies of stolen artworks? That would be utter insanity for their business. It would draw the police straight to them—”
“That’s why our plan is to pass on what you’ve found out to organizations that can better investigate the complexities of suspected art theft. And as I just mentioned, you could return to the United States as early as this afternoon.”
“But what about Emi’s father?” I didn’t mean to interrupt, but I couldn’t help myself. “What did he do during his time in Turkey that got him bounced back here? And how did he get the funds for the world-class art collection in his house?”
“Even if some of his art was obtained through shady connections, it seems clear that he didn’t steal any. Remember the original mission, Rei: it was to locate a stolen work of art that was taken out of Iraq. The mission was not to embarrass the Japanese government, our longtime friends who actually agreed to give you, a persona non grata, a chance to resume life on Japanese soil.”
I listened to Brenda Martin’s words, and I had to admit that she had a valid argument about not wanting to cause unnecessary trouble with the Japanese. But the fact remained that a Japanese man had been lying in wait for me the previous evening. I told the colonel what had happened, and my suspicions about who was behind it.
“I think I know why that incident happened,” she said when I’d finished.
“Why?” I sat up straighter in my chair.
“Your experience last night came about because you blew your cover.” Brenda Martin’s voice was suddenly cold. “You flew to Japan in the guise of a museum consultant, but instead you turned yourself into a one-woman, legal task force asking people too many questions about drugs and their sex lives. Obviously, you teed someone off, and that individual sent an enforcer to find out who you’re working for.”
“I’ve told no one,” I said.
“Good,” Brenda answered. “Now, in accordance with Michael’s wishes, I’m not going to try to force you to leave the country. I do think it’s a good thing that you’re at least going away from Tokyo for a while.”
We looked at each other. I’d won the skirmish, but barely.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Absolutely. That’s why I’m here. Now, I understand that you have a new cellular phone?”
“I do.” I patted my pocket. “One of the few things I didn’t lose yesterday.”
“You’re lucky you got into the building; it’s against the regs,” she said crisply. “Let me give you a few phone numbers where you can reach me, although you should feel free to continue to call Michael. How long do you expect to be away?”