Guess Who’s Coming to Kill You

Chapter 8

Brook sat in the marina bar of the Katori Spa and sipped a dubious concoction of rum, sugar and tea, served scalding hot. The bartender with the gold tooth had assured him in unarticled English that everyone sipped rum and tea when the weather was bad and there were doubts about sailing.

He looked out the broad windows that showed the sundeck and the sea. Gleeful clouds skimmed the oyster waters; the waves were trimmed in gray lace. Like a thumbed nose, the red small-craft warning flag was sticking straight out from its halyard on the club mast.

Only half the usual number of buffs had gathered in the bar this morning. Brook overheard a conversation about the weather. One man said, “This is the kind of sailing weather, my friend, that separates the men from the lubbers.” The other said, “The damn fools, you mean. Only a Shark would go out in a sea like that.” There were defenders of both viewponts. The race committee was in a huddle trying to make up its collective mind whether to race or not to race.

Brook glanced over at the blackboard listing the skippers and their crews. There were plenty of blank spaces; it would not have been hard to become Krylov’s sailing partner again. But he had already decided against it. He was certain now that his cover was high in the sky; he was undoubtedly under surveillance at this moment. And besides, Krylov had forbidden it at their last meeting.

He did not bother to look over the individuals in the bar; anyone on his tail would be a hard professional, competent not to give himself away. There was even the possibility that his opponents, whoever they were, figured Brook to be aware of his blown cover, and so would disdain to mount a continuing surveillance. They would say to themselves that, his activities already having been circumvented, their purpose in hamstringing him had been achieved. It worked that way more often than not, back and forth, in and out, like a ’coon hunt.

He put the rum and tea to his lips and in the act saw Toby Stark enter the bar with his gander gait. Stark wore a chaotic sports shirt and loose slacks the color of persimmons; the beltline had slipped below the perimeter of his stomach. His face was all balloon geniality as he swapped profanities with the customers.

Behind Stark, a respectful step, trailed the woman Brook had seen in the house on the hill. She was nautical to the topmast: slacks, middy blouse, rakish captain’s hat, in the style you might find in a fashion magazine, clothes for posing rather than sailing. She walked in a fashion model’s walk and she wore a fashion model’s mechanical expression. Some of the men hailed her as she passed and tried to engage her in conversation. But she merely followed Stark.

The fat man barged into a group at the other end of the bar. Jasmine’s eye chanced on Brook. He was making an ocular pass at her to keep up with the Joneses and the Schultzes and the Takahashis, a pleasant enough pastime. He could not be sure, but he thought that she began a smile. It never burgeoned; Stark turned to say something to her and she immediately gave all her attention to the fat manager.

Brook sipped his rum and tea. Had it been a stillborn invitation? He had the curious feeling that Stark’s personal property had been trying to communicate something. That she knew she followed Toby Stark about like a trained bitch but there was an explanation for it and wouldn’t he like to hear it? It would have been more than all right with him. He would love to get to know Jasmine in any sense of the word, especially the Biblical; it was a misfortune that it would interfere with the run. I hope there’s another time, he said to her silently over the cup. Some day he’d take a leave and go on a woman-hunt for the sake of the chase alone, and to hell with the Stars and Stripes. Maybe if he succeeded in bringing Krylov over Holloway would crack a smile and let him loose for a month or two.

He noted the time, set down the rum and tea, and wandered out to the sundeck. He walked over to the end that overlooked the pool and parking lot. There were half a dozen swimmers in the sea in spite of the threatening skies; beyond, near the breakwater, attendants were working at lines and dinghies. Near the edge of the lot a chauffeur waited behind the wheel of a Toyopet sedan. This man turned his head toward Brook, nodded, and raised his hand in a signal.

Brook stepped over to the fat telescope on its pedestal by the rail that was used to watch the racing boats. He swung it toward the Toyopet. Benny Lopez’s face grinned at him. Benny looked remarkably like a Japanese chauffeur. Brook turned the telescope away and for a few minutes scanned the sea. Then he went back into the bar.

He ordered another rum and tea.

A small round sunburned man in a yachting blazer stood beside him. Brook had seen him in the club before. He did not know the man’s name. Chubby was about fifty, his hair was blond and gray, and his watery eyes were floating on watery-looking bags.

“New here, old chap?” the man said, very British. He examined Brook in an almost hostile way. His eyes kept bobbing.

“Yes.” Brook felt like apologizing.

“American?” It seemed to rhyme with “scum.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Thought so. I’m Conrad Ponce-Wilby. Getting to be an American club, y’know. There are so many of you. Wherever one goes.”

“We’re not loved,” Brook said sadly.

“No offense, old boy,” Ponce-Wilby said. He had a rum and tea before him and he sipped at it hastily. “Good enough chaps among you now and then. Just that it all grows so overwhelming. Hot dogs — revolting term! Coca-Cola. Wherever you go. Deepest Africa. Everywhere.”

“You don’t like our best exports?”

“Love them. Just tire of seeing them everywhere.” Ponce-Wilby hiccuped as he pushed back from the bar. “I’m drunk, y’know. Usually am. Ask anyone. Only defense left. What’s your name?”

“Peter Brook.”

“Good English name. You’ve stolen our names and you’ve stolen our language. And what have you done with ’em? Care for a drink, Brook?”

“Working on this one, thanks.”

“I’ve offended you. No tact at all. And Mother wanted me to go to Whitehall. Barman!” Ponce-Wilby snapped his fingers at the bartender and ordered another rum and tea, “Twenty foul years now I’ve been tootling over the damned world for my company. Import-export, y’know. Damascus, New Delhi, Bangkok, Nairobi — all more and more American. D’ye know, Brook, you’ve got the ruddy burden we used to have? Now it’s you hot-dog chaps who must take care of the wogs.”

“Wogs?” Brook said, as if he had never heard the word.

“Anyone who doesn’t resemble an Englishman in important respects, cum color, is a wog,” Ponce-Wilby explained. “Not official policy, of course. Entirely my own. Americans don’t like me. Fact, neither do most of my countrymen. I enjoy it. Rather! Sure you won’t have a drink? Top-hole day for it.”

The Englishman continued his tipsy monologue, and Brook remained patiently by his side.

Ten minutes later Krylov came in. His watchdog, Volodya, trotted at his heels. The Russian agent was in sailing clothes. Once more Volodya found a chair near the door and settled down with a yachting magazine. Krylov ordered a coffee and became involved in the grave discussion at the scheduling board. Suddenly Brook noticed that Stark and his Jasmine were gone. He supposed that they had left while he was on the sundeck.

The Englishman was still prattling. “It’s the damned work ethic, I tell you. Spoils everything. What this world needs is a play ethic. Only reason for working is to wangle the time and money to play. Even the wogs know that. It’s one lesson they’ve learned. Too bloody well, if you ask me...”

A Japanese in workman’s clothes came through the door on a run, calling excitedly to the bartender. Their confused colloquy was translated, and Brook heard someone cry: “It’s a fire in that embassy car!” There was a general rush for the exit, the chauffeur Volodya leading the pack.

Brook caught Krylov’s eye. Krylov nodded.

In thirty seconds the room was clear. Even the bartender was gone.

Brook moved over to the Russian. Krylov was showing the gap between his front teeth.

“You catch on quick, Alex.”

“Yes. But I must join the others outside very soon. Volodya is quick, too.”

“He’s got a fire in his back seat to put out. Sorry to damage your car — only way we could do it. You ready to go?”

“I am ready.”

“Next Saturday. Get in the boat race — weather permitting. If not next Saturday, the next time there’s a race. After you round the first mark, while you’re on the reaching leg, capsize your boat. Be sure you’re well away from the others. I’ll be there in a fast launch and pick you up. It’ll look like a rescue. But we won’t take you back to shore. We’ll go out beyond the limit and meet an American submarine there. And you’ll be on your way.”

“So. It is to happen at last.” Krylov looked grim. Brook understood. But there were other things on his mind.

“We’ve still got a long way to go, Alex. I have the feeling I’m under surveillance. Be very careful.”

“I am always very careful. And Kimiko? What did your people say?”

“They’ve bought your conditions. You’ll meet her in Washington. You’ll be going separately, of course.”

“I am taking a chance.” Krylov’s eyes bored into his. “You could be giving me what you call the doublecross.”

“Why should we? You can always refuse to cooperate if we do. We know that.”

Krylov seemed relieved; at least he nodded. “You saw Kimiko? How is she?”

“Blooming. And as beautiful as you said. You’re a lucky man, Alex.” And if you or Holloway ever find out how I put the boot to her the other night, Brook thought, there goes old Pete.

“I am a foolish man, Peter. To be in our trade and fall in love...” The Russian squared his shoulders. “Well. But you must see Kimiko once more. Be certain she is safe until you get her out of Japan. Perhaps you can assign someone to guard her.”

Brook shook his head. “I can’t promise a stakeout, Alex. We just don’t have the personnel available here for a thing like that on such short notice. But she ought to be safe enough. I’ve watched my Ps and Qs.”

“I suppose that will have to do.” Krylov glanced over his shoulder. “We have talked too long. Is there more?”

“That’s it.”

“Next Saturday, then.” Krylov hesitated, and put out his hand. It was warm and firm. He looked into Brook’s eyes again and held the grip for so long that Brook became disturbed. It was as if the Russian were about to say something earth-shaking. But then Krylov’s lips broadened and he let go and strode from the room.

Brook waited three days before visiting Kimiko Ohara again. He told himself that it was because he was so busy — the arrangements had to be confirmed by Benny via the safe radio; Brook had to go through the same dreary motions to meet his cutout for each transmission of information; and he had to keep calling on boat people to hold up his legend.

The real reason had nothing to do with these; it had to do with the battle between his obedience to Holloway and his ever-demanding manhood. FACE held its agents through the thrall of Holloway’s charisma. It was not that they were patriots less than that they hated and feared Holloway more. One of Holloway’s least flexible pronunciamentos was that an agent did not take time out of an assignment to exercise his libido except in line of duty. By no stretch was bedding Kimiko Ohara in the line of this duty; quite the contrary. So the battle raged for three days. At the end of the third day Holloway lost.

Brook’s final rationale was that Krylov had asked him to see her.

That Tuesday night Brook dined late in the main restaurant of his hotel, allowing the spurious French sommelier to recommend a wine suitable to his American-style cutlets that turned out, predictably, to be a Bordeaux ’64 bad enough to arouse even his undeveloped taste buds to criticism. Score one for Megan Jones and her campaign to civilize him. His thoughts about Miss Jones of Washington, D.C. were arrived at by another route as well: his guilt over Kimiko, not because of Krylov but because of Holloway. Compared to Kimiko as an appetite-pleaser, Brook ruminated, Megan would turn out a greasy-spoon hamburger. It was in her stars. Megan could hardly escape being a prisoner of the Puritan ethic; the seasoned wisdom of the East in such matters was as far out of her reach as her prospect of becoming Mrs. Peter Brook, her evident goal. But of course Megan did not know that he was a FACE agent, and she was unacquainted with FACE’s handbook on sex. Sex was permitted on duty so long as it did not interfere with or compromise said duty; the judgment was the agent’s own, and if it proved to err with disastrous results to the mission the agent faced Holloway, which in at least one case Brook knew of had been a fate equivalent to death (the man had shortly found himself committed to a mental hospital, diagnosed an incurable schizophrenic). Love was absolutely forbidden. (As Krylov well knew, Brook thought; even not defecting he would have been through at KGB.) Marriage, of course, was the ultimate crime. Instant dismissal was its mildest punishment. Its most drastic was covered by The Rumor.

He decided to stop thinking.

Brook went back to his room, showered, shaved, used the Right Guard, slapped Brut on his cheeks, sipped a short whisky, and spent a few minutes considering what he should wear. He finally decided on a black Italian suit of silk, a maroon tie and socks, and slip-on alligators that had set him back a C-note. Gaudy, but what would you expect from a visiting U.S. fireman out on the town? And to hell with you, Holloway.

It was past midnight when the doorman got him a taxi. The driver wore a short wiry chin beard and a grinful of bad teeth.

“Where you go, sir?” The “sir” came out in a shower of sibilance.

With the doorman standing there and people entering and leaving the lobby, Brook said, “Oh, just drive.”

The cab shot off with an acceleration that slammed Brook back against the cushions. The bearded Japanese began weaving in and out of traffic madly.

“You like go summer festival?”

“Hell, no. Go to Nerima-ku.” Brook added Kimiko’s address.

“Nice festival tonight. On Tama River. Have much firework. All foreigner go there.”

Brook shook his head.

The driver looked disappointed. “You no want see festival?”

“No. Why are you so anxious to take me there?”

The driver grinned. “I like festival—”

“Look out!” Brook yelled.

The Japanese wrenched his wheel within a whisker of an oncoming pair of headlights. Brook was tossed to one side.

“Just watch the hell where you’re going,” Brook growled.

They ran a red light. “No worry. I number-one Tokyo driver. American want hot-shot driver, call Danny Boy.”

“Danny Boy?”

“Japanese name Hideko Dan. Very good Japanese name. English sound like Danny. So you call Danny Boy. I very famous with foreigner. What your name, sir?”

“Auschwitz.”

“You like war, Auschwitz-san?”

“War? No.”

Danny Boy nodded approval. “War no goddamn good. That why I flower boy.” A Japanese hippie! “Read about flower boy in America. They no like war, too.” He gestured toward a vaseful of small chrysanthemums hanging near his rearview mirror.

“Don’t take your hands off that goddam wheel!”

“Sorry,” Danny Boy said. “You no afraid, Auschwitzsan. I best driver in town. I fight in big war,” he continued. “No damn good, that war. Wet my pants all time. My job drive tank.”

“That explains it, all right.” Brook flinched as the cab careened around a corner, just missing a bus. He leaned back and tried to relax. Danny Boy kept pushing his heap at a suicidal pace, still talking. Brook only half listened. Danny Boy was launched on his life story: how he had worked for the American Occupation forces after the war as a driver, until his free-enterprise technique had apparently frightened some general out of his stars; how he had switched to cab-driving; how over the years he had learned intimately every unnamed street, alley, and passageway in Tokyo. His great ambition was to go to San Francisco. There, where the flower people flourished, he, Danny Boy, would take part in peace demonstrations every day.

He was still going strong when the cab pulled up at Kimiko’s apartment building. Brook jumped out with gratitude. He paid the fare, added a tip, and was about to turn away when Danny Boy said, “You want I wait for you, Auschwitz-san?”

“No, no. I’ll be here quite a while.”

“Maybe she not home,” Danny Boy said.

“Maybe who’s not home?”

“Girl you go see.”

“How do you know I’m going to see a girl?”

Danny Boy showed his rotten teeth. “Why else man come Nerima-ku this time night? You go see if girl home. I wait.”

Brook shrugged and climbed the outside stairway to Kimiko’s door. There was no answer to his knock. He knocked again, waited again, consulted his watch. It was still early; she probably hadn’t yet returned from The Golden Obi. He supposed he ought to ride around in Danny Boy’s cab for another half hour or so, and come back.

On the off chance he tried the door; to his surprise the knob turned in his hand. He pushed the door open.

Beyond the entryway the lights were on in the living room. He could see Kimiko Ohara lying half on her side on the floor, head twisted toward the coffee table. She was in her dressing gown. The gown was open to her thighs and he saw the curve of one naked buttock.

Brook shut the door behind him noiselessly. He knew what he would find, and he found it.

He stooped over her and touched her shoulder and her face flopped his way. It was a congested blue. Her eyes bulged and that vital tongue was stuck out at him. The gold obi cord was biting into her neck, knotted neatly at the nape.