Eric van Lustbader - Nicholas Linnear 05, page 37
Eventually, a rat would come sniffing around. Okami, who could be subtle when the need arose, had deliberately cut a wide swath through the bar. Subtlety was not the Soviets’ strong side.
One night a little, slight-shouldered Japanese man sat down next to him at the bar and said, “I understand you and I have a similar point of view.”
“Is that so?”
“Maybe not. But it has come to my attention that you have information I could use.”
“I think I hear the rustle of money.”
“In that you may not be wrong. I have a grudge to settle with some wartime officers. I can use your help.”
Okami grunted. “That depends on whether the rustle is far off or close at hand.”
“I assure you it’s very close indeed. Tell me, friend, how did you come by this information about the Americans?”
Okami finished his Scotch, ordered another. “It’s none of your business.”
“It is. It’s going to be my money.”
Okami regarded the man without seeming to try to size him up. “I have my thumb squarely on the SCAP adjutant Jack Donnough,” he half-lied. “What’s it to you?”
“You’re spraying this all over the place. Do you think that’s wise?”
“Who cares?” Okami downed his Scotch and ordered another all in one motion.
“I do, for one.”
Okami cocked his head. “And you are?”
“A friend of yours… maybe.”
Okami nodded. “Okay, friend. Have a drink on me.” He gestured to the bartender, and when the other man had gotten his drink, they went to a vacant booth in the rear of the bar. Of course, it really didn’t matter where they went, Okami’s people were all around.
He knew the Communists’ tactics. They would try to trap him. It wasn’t enough for them simply to trade intelligence for money; they’d insist on their pound of flesh - a sword to hold over his head so that they would be able to control him forever afterward. It was sad as well as frightening, Okami thought as he slipped into the booth opposite the contact. This was how the Communists treated their own people, it was how their ideology had become as intractable as iron.
The man’s name was Iwanushi. He was a factory worker, but more importantly he was a ranking member of Shin’ei Kinro Taishoto, the most virulent of the reactionary groups allying themselves with the nascent labor movement. Uncontrollable inflation, high unemployment, the Yoshida administration’s unstemmed corruption and seeming inertia in trying to overcome Japan’s postwar economic woes, the populace’s general perception that SCAP’s promises of a better life through democracy was a lie - all this was a highly flammable mix. It was tailor-made for Communist infiltration at the worker level, where frustration was at high tide. The Soviets were adept at using unionists and reactionary elements such as Iwanushi’s organization as stalking horses to further their own ends. It was another example of how they used their obdurate ideology as a whip to exhort their disciples into what they so quaintly - and misleadingly - called “revolutionary fervor”.
Iwanushi was typical of his kind: browbeaten, self-righteous, impatient, smug in the security that socialism was the key to a new and better world, if only he were in power. But, as Okami knew, the Iwanushis of the world would never be allowed to gain power. Either the forces they sought to bring down would disperse them or the masters who controlled them now would continue to do so in a new world order. The simple fact was that people like Iwanushi had no clear idea of their own policy once the old guard was disposed of. And, of course, this was just how the Communists had planned it, because they were ready, willing, and all too eager to impose the Communist way of life on Japan.
Okami did not hate Iwanushi; he pitied him. Someone had to. Neither the Communists nor the Yoshida government were in the least interested in the personal plight that had driven him into poverty and anger.
“You are Yakuza,” Iwanushi said when they had settled themselves. “You are a collaborator working with SCAP. You are an enemy of the people so please do not expect me to be sympathetic. Information for money. I wish to engage in a simple business arrangement.” Knowing this would be anything but simple, Okami said, “I commend you for volunteering to get your hands dirty, comrade.”
Iwanushi gave him a hard look. “I wish I had your ability at levity. You who live like a shogun cannot know our hard life. Try not to judge us.”
“It seems to me that a bit of levity would do you a world of good. It would help you step back and evaluate your situation.”
“Food is my situation or, rather, the lack of it. Also, a job. While you get rich and fat in the black market, my family and countless others like mine starve. This is how today looks from my perspective. Is it any wonder that I am; fixated on making tomorrow better?”
“Better for whom? Your family or the Communists?”
“It’s one and the same,” Iwanushi said with such conviction that Okami knew he had him.
The next evening Okami arrived unannounced at Iwanushi’s house. He carried with him gifts of food and drink: fresh fruit, vegetables, and fish that he knew were unavailable to the family. The place was tiny and ramshackle, a row house standing near enough the railroad tracks that the thin walls shook each time a train rushed past.
Iwanushi, glassy-eyed but polite, ushered him inside. It was just before the dinner hour and the entire family was home: Iwanushi’s tiny graying wife and their three children. The place stank of boiled root vegetables.
Iwanushi bowed, accepting Okami’s gifts mutely, but when he took them into the kitchen, Okami saw Iwanushi’s wife throw them into the garbage. There was a brief argument. He heard her speaking in a hiss, could make out the word shameful and the awful epithet futei, which Prime Minister Yoshida had used to describe the unionists in a recently broadcast speech. The word meant “subversive”.
When Iwanushi returned, he said, “Perhaps we should go outside. The children must be fed and my wife cannot serve both us and them at the same time.”
“Yes, of course,” Okami said. “It was thoughtless of me to come at this hour.”
“Not at all. We’re used to inconvenience.”
Okami found himself unprepared for Iwanushi’s implacable discourtesies, but he took them as object lessons. He felt it important that he understand what it was about these people that made them so vulnerable to the influence of a pipe dream like socialism, which had no chance of survival in a world ruled by the human race. Humans were defined by the seven deadly sins. Only saints and ascetics could rise above those flaws, and some of those were themselves frauds. The territorial imperative was bred into humans as deeply as was their need for oxygen and water. The adjunct to territory was the need for influence, status, power. Besides, there was always someone who was certain his way was better - or more righteous - than all the others, and though it had many faces, this was the sole seed of war.
“As you can see, we have nothing,” Iwanushi said. “We need everything.”
Perhaps, Okami thought, this defined him as well as anything else. He was a have-not, and in a way, he reveled in his poverty, using it as both a club and a cloak to manufacture something out of nothing. In a strange way, Okami could relate to this, since as a Yakuza he had no status in the mainstream of society. Whatever prestige he maintained in his community was also formed out of nothing.
“Perhaps the government does not know this,” Okami said.
“I do not think that the government cares one way or another. They exist to feed one another and they are doing an admirable job of it. In times of prosperity their sins would go unnoticed because there would be enough to feed everyone, but now when starvation and unemployment squat like swordsmen of the Apocalypse astride Japan, they appear naked in their gluttony, greed, and sloth.”
“You must be a Catholic to talk in such terms,”
“I have read my wife’s texts, but what of it? There is no God in this world. Look around you. How could there be?”
Spoken like a true Communist, Okami thought. This was going to be a pleasure.
“Since it’s clear we’re not going to be the best of friends,” he said, “I think it would be best if we consummated our transaction as quickly as possible.”
“That will suit me. What about tonight?”
“I don’t know. I have a previous engagement.”
Iwanushi stared at him in that curiously defiant manner people who have nothing conjure up.
“All right. Tonight.” Okami wrote down an address on a slip of paper. “Meet me here at midnight.”
Midnight came and Iwanushi arrived at the betting parlor, that was Yakuza owned - in fact, Okami was the proprietor, but Iwanushi and his crowd wouldn’t know that, no one did except the tightly knit Yakuza circle and the Colonel. Okami was playing karuta, recklessly and losing. While Iwanushi looked on, rapt, Okami lost the equivalent of $10,000. He then proceeded to have a nasty altercation with the manager regarding his ability to pay the debt. When Iwanushi saw that Okami couldn’t pay, his heart was wanned because he had been trained to look for just such vulnerabilities in his contacts. He now had his sword to hold over Okami’s head.
”It looks like you need money more than I do,” Iwanushi said when Okami led him out into the street.
“I’ll pay,” Okami said sourly. “I always manage to find a way.”
“But you are Yakuza. You have power.”
“That man’s oyabun has the power,” Okami lied, “not me.”
“What a revelation! Even outlaws experience the inequities of the downtrodden.”
It took some effort for Okami not to laugh in the face of his naiveté.
Iwanushi appeared to be sunk deep in thought for some time. At length, he said, “What if I could guarantee you enough money to pay all your gambling debts and keep on going?”
Okami looked at him. “That kind of sum would pay for a lot of food for you and your family.”
“Like power, money is an illusion. The future of mankind is more important,” Iwanushi said in the voice of the true zealot. “As a capitalist, you will be doomed with all the rest. My destiny is to help mankind on the proper path to a true classless society.”
“And paying me will do that?”
“In compensation, you will supply me with ongoing intelligence that Donnough provides to you as to the workings of the Gang of Fifteen and any other operation of significance the American SCAP forces are planning to put into action.”
Okami could see that Iwanushi had been a busy boy since the time they had first spoken in the bar. And his superiors had bitten. “What kind of money are we talking about?”
“Ten thousand dollars a month,” Iwanushi said hopefully.
Okami laughed. “You should go gambling with me more often. I go through that amount in a week.”
Iwanushi stood as firmly as he could. “I would have to evaluate a sample of your intelligence. If it proved interesting enough, well, who knows? Ten thousand might be just the beginning.”
Okami was pleased. He now had confirmation that the Communists were directly handling Iwanushi. Only they would have deep enough pockets to provide this kind of monthly payout.
“Do you have the current intelligence on the Gang of Fifteen?” Iwanushi asked, his greed showing.
So much for Utopia, Okami thought. “I could gather it together tonight. I have it in memo form at home. A couple of days -“
“Do you think the man you owe will wait that long?”
“You’re right. The sooner the better. Do you have the money?”
“I want to see the intelligence first”
Okami took him to a small apartment in an affluent section of the city. Iwanushi goggled at how the other half lived, even in postwar Tokyo. Inside, Okami gathered the copies of the intelligence Donnough had provided, showed two of the juicier memos to Iwanushi, who devoured them, goggling some more.
“But this is infamous,” Iwanushi said, echoing Okami’s own words to the Colonel. “It is proof positive that all governments are the same. Saving these war criminals to use for their own ends while public war tribunals are making headlines is the height of hypocrisy. You see? This is what democracy has in store for us. More lies and deceit.”
Okami wished he had an adequate rebuttal to present, but the truth was in this instance he agreed with the socialist. The world was awash in cynicism; only the Colonel’s vision of the future provided Okami with any sense that what he did now would have some positive effect for all the tomorrows that stretched ahead of him. How eerily similar his yearnings were to those of Iwanushi. But he had no time to examine that particular phenomenon.
“Let me see more,” Iwanushi said.
“After I see the money.”
“I can’t authorize payment until this has been evaluated and authenticated.”
“That wasn’t our deal.”
Iwanushi shrugged. “I may be poor, but I’m not stupid. If this material proves false, I’d have paid you for nothing.”
“All right. I’ll give you half the material and you pay me half now. Then we can see if we can trust one another.”
Iwanushi nodded. “That makes sense. I don’t have to like you in order to trust you.”
Within forty-eight hours Iwanushi was back in touch with Okami. His handlers were elated with the material; they wanted to consummate the deal by exchanging money for the rest of the memos. This was what Okami had been waiting for. In among the remainder of the Donnough memos he had slipped one he had created that gave the location of the compound where the Gang of Fifteen was being housed. This was information Donnough would never have committed to paper, let alone delivered to a third party. The location came from another source entirely, and it had cost Okami plenty, not in cash or services but in the weight it had placed on his conscience.
He had discovered that Donnough’s male secretary was a homosexual. He and his Japanese lover had shown up in one of Okami’s late-night establishments that drew people from the soft underbelly of society like flypaper. Okami had only to show this man black-and-white photos of him and his lover entwined in several entertaining embraces for him to break down. Okami had seen numerous Japanese weeping in the throes of clamorous drunks, but this was different. Looking at the naked back of this slender man, Okami saw in his mind the image of his mother, bent over his father, her hand literally filled with his blood as she tried to stanch the mephitic flow from multiple sword slashes.
This disturbing vision did not stop him from using the man to get what he wanted, but the incident did not pass from his memory as many more violent and traumatic events had done. Now it flashed again in his mind as if a spotlight had been cast upon a darkened stage. He could count the vertebrae, see the pale pink pigmentation, the mole on the left shoulder blade. He could smell blood.
“Was the man you owed content with half his money?” Iwanushi asked when they met.
”Content, no. But he’s a realist. On the other hand, if I don’t appear tonight with the remainder, I will be in big trouble.”
“Don’t worry.” Iwanushi handed over a thick packet wrapped in rice paper. “I am giving you your life back. Remember that if you ever think about selling your information elsewhere.”
Okami had no idea why but he felt compelled to follow Iwanushi back to his wood-and-plaster hovel beside the railroad tracks. He watched from the nighttime shadows as Iwanushi trudged to his front door and opened it. His tiny wife bowed to him, and though he came empty-handed into a house that had nothing, still she welcomed him with genuine respect and affection.
Okami stood in the darkness long after the door had closed and the lights had been extinguished. The stench of garbage and urine was very strong. A dog barked, presaging the passing of a tram, and when it came, it rattled the row houses as if they were made of paper and wattle.
Ten days later, the headlines were splashed across the newspapers. A strong bomb blast had rocked a small residential section of the city that the SCAP forces had commandeered. Information was sketchy because the American military was involved, but it seemed clear from preliminary reports that as many as twenty people had been killed, most of them Japanese nationals working for SCAP. Whether the explosion was an accident or had been the work of saboteurs was at the present time a matter for speculation.
Halfway through his breakfast of tofu and broiled fish Okami’s phone rang. It was the Colonel.
“Have you heard the radio reports?” Colonel Linnear asked.
“No, but I’m reading the account in the paper now.”
“The Communists got to the Gang of Fifteen. It seems your problem’s solved.”
Okami did not understand the tautness in the Colonel’s tone. “If that is who was killed, you’re right. It would make me happy.”
“How happy?”
“Excuse me, Linnear-san, but how do you know it was the Communists?”
“How do you know you’ve been bitten on the ass by a hornet?” the Colonel said tartly. “Despite what you read in the papers, the blast was deliberately set beneath the buildings where the Gang of Fifteen lived. Our people are going through the rubble now, but they’ve already found enough to be certain of the signature. It was a Soviet-made bomb.”
“What is the problem with that?”
“Jesus Christ, are you dense this morning? Communists infiltrated a U.S. government facility and murdered twenty people, five of them American guards. That’s the fucking problem.”
Okami was silent.
In another tone entirely, the Colonel said, “How did they know where the Gang of Fifteen was being housed?”
“Why are you asking me?”
“Was I? I was just thinking out loud.”
But Okami knew better. The Colonel had set a very clever trap for him and he had fallen into it.
“I want to see you tonight, Okami-san. My office. Midnight.”
The connection was abruptly severed. Okami did not care for the way in which the Colonel had spoken to him. On the other hand, he felt remorse for the five innocent guards who had been inadvertently killed. On further contemplation, knowing the Communists, perhaps it hadn’t been inadvertent at all. Angry at himself, he shoved the remains of his breakfast away from him. Why hadn’t he thought of this?
