Requiem for an Assassin

13

I CHANGED PLANES in Bangkok and slept most of the six hours to Tokyo. I arrived at Narita at seven-thirty the next morning. An hour and a half later, I was at Tokyo Station. I emerged from four stories underground into a cold, sunlit morning. I stood for a few minutes outside the massive red brick façade of the building, my carry-on bag slung over my shoulder, watching and listening. Truck engines and car horns. Construction equipment, jackhammers. Commuters flowing by me in their nameless thousands, squinting against the harsh morning light, hunched into the wind, briefcases gripped like life preservers. The moment I felt it, I realized how I missed the overwhelming energy of the place, missed it like the perfume of a woman I secretly loved, who slowly crushed me with her indifference.

I sighed. Tokyo was a sad place for me now, the people connecting me to it disappearing one by one, like lights going out at night in the windows of an almost empty building. First, Midori. Then Harry, set up and thrown off the roof of a building. Then Naomi, the sweet Brazilian Japanese dancer I’d gotten involved with while hunting a yakuza assassin named Murakami, and who I’d left in Rio after discovering she’d told the CIA where to find me. And then, only a year ago, Tatsu, my onetime nemesis and then loyal friend with the Keisatsuche, the Japanese FBI, to cancer. After that, Tokyo had become for me just another way station, a meeting venue. And soon, even that would be gone, when Kanezaki was recalled to headquarters or transferred to some other post or left for a career in industry. If I came back then, all I would find would be a graveyard of memories.

I called Kanezaki from a pay phone. “It’s me,” I told him.

“Didn’t take you long.”

“Can you meet?”

“Of course.”

The “of course” was a perfect imitation of Tatsu, right down to the mildly exasperated tone, which was intended to only ill-conceal the vast reservoirs of patience needed in the face of so many stupid questions. Hearing Tatsu’s quirks live on in Kanezaki, whom I knew Tatsu had mentored, and whom he had perhaps in his mind even adopted as a surrogate after losing his own son, caused me a pang of sadness, and a small smile.

“How about breakfast?” I asked.

“An early lunch would be better. I’ve got a few things to do.”

I instantly disliked the counteroffer. It would give him time to arrange things, if…

If what? In the last few years, Kanezaki had a half-dozen opportunities to try to set me up. He never did, nor, as far as I could tell, did he have any reason to. I’d dropped in suddenly. He had things to do, like he said.

Still, I didn’t like it. If I hadn’t needed him so much right then, I might have bailed. Instead, I said, “All right. How about the place we met last time. When it opens.”

That would be Ben’s café in Takadanobaba, at eleven-thirty. A nice, out-of-the-way, neighborhood kind of place that served fresh bagels, quiche, and excellent coffee. I knew the area well. I’d get there early for countersurveillance. Just in case.

“I’ll see you there,” he said, and clicked off.

I took the Yamanote line to Takadanobaba and got to Ben’s a little less than two hours early. I set up just past the edge of the window in a convenience store across and slightly down from the café, my eyes on the street. Japanese convenience stores don’t mind their magazines being used as a lending library, and I took full advantage.

Nothing set off my radar, and Kanezaki showed right on time. He glanced back through the store window as he went by, doubtless seeing me in the corner but giving no sign of it.

Shit, I thought. I don’t like getting nailed, even by a probable friendly. I watched to make sure he was alone, then drifted out of the store and caught him as he went into Ben’s.

“Hey,” I said, coming up behind him.

He turned without any sign of surprise. “Hey.”

“You saw me in the convenience store.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, it was where I would have set up, too. But I didn’t figure you were one for the girlie magazines.”

“What else do people read when they’re loitering like that?” I said, still feeling a little defensive. “I was just being another middle-aged pervert. Blending.”

“I think you were enjoying your work.”

I realized that, not for the first time, I was underestimating this kid, this young man, rather, who was more seasoned every time I saw him. He was getting smarter, and I needed to get smarter about it. He knew my tactics now, knew that I wouldn’t be waiting where I said I’d be. And he was becoming sufficiently tactical himself to know where I’d probably be, instead. I had to stop playing him as though he was still a beginner. He wasn’t, and hadn’t been for a long time.

I smiled. “Maybe a little. I was there for two hours. It wouldn’t have gone by as fast with Car and Driver.”

We shook hands, and I looked him over. I nodded in approval of what I saw: a slim, thirtysomething Japanese American with the kind of serious eyes you get from realizing the world isn’t the innocent place you once imagined it to be, and from suspecting that what you do makes you complicit.

Over sandwiches and coffee, using English and keeping my voice low so as not to be overheard by the other patrons, I briefed him on everything that had happened with Hilger and Dox. I explained that there were three hits, but told him I didn’t yet have any specifics. Given Jannick’s CIA backing, I judged any mention of him too risky. The CIA connection might have been relevant to Kanezaki, for reasons I couldn’t yet understand. He might have felt obligated to warn Jannick, or to otherwise prevent me from carrying out the hit. If protecting Jannick was important enough to Kanezaki, telling him might even have been dangerous. If someone wants to get to you, and he knows who your target is, he doesn’t have to find you. He just has to find your target, and wait for you to show up.

When I was done, he said, “I’m sorry to hear about all this.”

I looked at him. “Sorry isn’t really what matters here. What matters is what you’re going to do about it.”

“What do you expect me to do?”

I felt a flush of irritation. “I expect you to help Dox.”

“I don’t really know how much I can.”

“How many jobs has he done for you? Three? Four?”

“We’ve worked together. But that doesn’t mean…”

“Cut the bullshit,” I said, gripping the sides of the table and leaning forward. “He’s in trouble now, bad trouble, what are you going to do, abandon him?”

I realized I was half out of my seat. The words themselves were fueling my rage. It was the iceman, wanting a reason to hurt someone, anyone, for Dox.

Easy, I thought. Easy. I exhaled sharply and slowly sat back down. I let go of the table and flexed my hands.

Kanezaki was as quiet as a man who turns a corner to find himself face-to-face with a growling attack dog. If he hadn’t been sitting, he would have been backing up.

After a moment, he said, “Dox is a good man. I’m grateful to him professionally and I like him personally. But he’s a contractor. That’s his choice.”

I looked at him, still trying to get a grip on myself. I thought about telling him it was fine, he could do anything he wanted. As long as he understood that if Dox died, so would he.

I shook my head. What was I thinking? Threats were the way I had played things when I was young and stupid. I was lucky to have lived long enough to find more effective means of persuasion. And the kind of help I needed here wasn’t something I could extort.

Back off, I thought, as though actually talking to someone inside me. Back off.

“Look,” he said, his hands up, palms forward, “I’m not saying I won’t help. Just that you’re still on the hook for the toys I got you guys last year.”

He was referring to a tranquilizer gun and some considerably more lethal hardware he had procured for Dox and me in Tokyo. We had used it all to interrupt a drug deal in Wajima and touch off a small war between the Japanese yakuza and the Chinese triads. The war had forced a yakuza enemy of mine, Yamaoto, into the open, finally giving me the opportunity to kill him.

But his comment calmed me down. I realized, as I should have earlier, that his protestations weren’t heartfelt. They were haggling. Irritating, yes, but not a bad sign, either.

“‘On the hook’?” I asked. “Why do you think I just told you about Hilger? You mean knowing what he’s up to isn’t valuable to you? All right, next time I won’t bother you with the information.”

He sighed. “It’s not valuable, really, not without more. Maybe if I knew who the targets were, that would be something. But without knowing who he’s after…?” He finished the sentence by turning his palms up to the ceiling, then dropping his hands back to the table.

Yeah, haggling, like I thought. But at least we were making progress.

“Like I said, I’m waiting on that information,” I told him. “As soon as I have it, I’ll let you know.”

“I have your word on that?”

Well, his former naiveté hadn’t been totally eradicated. I’d spent most of my life killing people for a living. Did he think I was going to lose sleep over a lie?

“You have my word,” I told him. “And then we’ll be square?”

“We’ll be up to date. But if you want something else from me, you’ll have to do something in return.”

Ah, the moment of truth, I thought. At last.

“Yeah?” I said. “Who?”

“Don’t you mean what?”

“I already know what.”

He nodded, conceding the point. “Even if you get Dox out of this, you’re going to take out Hilger, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You know. The only thing that worries me is how patient you are. Look how long you waited to do Yamaoto.”

“I don’t know why you think that was me. From what I read, he got shot, then died in the hospital of a cardiac arrest.”

“Now who’s bullshitting? I know Dox shot him. It was a 7.62 round, same as the rifle I procured for you. And you gave him the heart attack. Look, Tatsu and I were working together more closely than you know. He told me a lot.”

He might have been bluffing. But the relationship with Tatsu was true, I knew.

“Tatsu told me you were doing something together,” I said.

He nodded. “Call it unofficial counterpart relations.”

“Is that what killing Hilger is about?”

“It’s part of it.”

“Why do you want him dead?”

“When did why start mattering to you?”

I shrugged. “It doesn’t.”

“Good. You want my help with Dox? Help me with Hilger. Don’t wait when you find him. As soon as you have the shot, take it.”

“All right,” I said. “It sounds like we’re on the same page. You want me to take out Hilger, and I want to find him. Hard to do one without the other.”

“Good,” he said again, nodding. “Now tell me what you need.”