Life for Sale, page 5
She passed through an old gate that bore the “Nakajima” nameplate to find a long sandy path leading to the house. A Western-style home surrounded by pines came into view. The large garden was in an unkempt state and the damp sea wind blew hard and strong through it.
She pressed the bell. To her surprise a fat ruddy-faced foreigner wearing a loud plaid sports jacket came to the door. The foreigner’s level of Japanese was excellent—to such a degree that it rather unsettled her.
“Thank you for your letter. We’ve been waiting for you to visit. Please, come on through.”
He led her into a room where there was another foreigner, this one as skinny as a stick insect. He got up from his chair and greeted her courteously.
She had come fully prepared to make her escape if things got nasty. The set of heavy American-style rattan chairs placed directly on the tatami mats of this large, uncarpeted room strongly suggested that this was a temporary residence. There was no other furniture of note, though a color TV had been placed in the alcove traditionally used for ornaments. It was not switched on, and the television screen brought to mind the bluish-black surface gleam of a swamp.
The paper sliding doors had been left open, and along one side of the corridor, its floor all sandy, were some ill-fitting glass doors that rattled endlessly in the wind. She noticed they were unlocked, and felt confident she could get away through any number of open doors.
The thin man offered her alcohol, which she declined, so a glass of lemonade was placed before her instead. The thought that they might slip her a sleeping potion before their business was concluded so worried her that she did not touch it despite being parched.
The fat foreigner who was fluent in Japanese offered her a chair, but he said nothing further. No mention was made of the illustrated beetle book. She placed on her lap the shopping bag that held it and patted it ostentatiously.
Still no response.
The two men continued to whisper in English, ignoring her. She did not understand a word of what they were saying but, judging from their expressions, they seemed to be discussing something serious. Her impatience grew.
Just then, the doorbell rang.
“Oh, maybe, Henry…” The fat foreigner had suddenly switched to English as he hurried to the door.
An elderly foreign man, quite dapper, dressed for the outdoors, entered, preceded by a dachshund with lank ears, its fur oily-looking, rather like a seal. From the attitude of the other two men, it was clear that this man was their boss. The pair introduced him to her in a very deferential manner. She was not at all pleased when the dog proceeded to give itself a good shake.
The man appeared to speak no Japanese, and offered a few quick pleasantries in English. The fat foreigner acted as interpreter.
“Henry expresses his thanks that you kindly came as agreed, and he offers you his deepest respects.”
That’s going a bit far, she thought to herself. But he continued: “I see you brought the book.”
Finally, he had broached it. She felt relieved. She took the book out of the bag. “The money, please, the mo-nee. Don’t forget.”
She had expected the fat foreigner to interpret, but this was ignored. The thought that they might get something out of her for nothing caused her throat to tighten.
The elderly foreigner flicked through the book’s pages numerous times. The glow on his face indicated satisfaction.
“What a relief !” said the fat man. “All the copies of this book we’ve obtained so far have only been about thirty pages long, with whole sections missing. You will know that the Japanese police used to censor passages in books at the time that this was published. This is the first unabridged version we have seen and, as you can observe, Henry is delighted. He was checking it through before he paid you the cash…Here is the two hundred thousand yen. Go ahead, please confirm the amount.”
Dimples formed in the fat man’s cheeks, shiny white like enamel, as he handed over the money. The dog came up to sniff the bills.
She was relieved to count out twenty crisp ten-thousand-yen bills and, seeing no reason to stay any longer, rose from her chair with the intention of taking her leave there and then.
“Oh, so you’re leaving?” the fat man said. The thin man also stood up to bar her way.
“Since you’ve been so kind as to come all this way, won’t you at least share something to eat before you depart?”
“I’d rather not.”
Now that she was about to take her leave, she felt she didn’t have to mince words. She could see herself getting into some frightening scenario otherwise.
The fat man suddenly lent over and whispered in her ear: “What about another five hundred thousand?”
“Eh?” She stood there wondering if she’d heard correctly.
13
Hanio’s curiosity was piqued. Nothing about this woman drew him to her as a member of the opposite sex, but her tale thoroughly engrossed him.
“Hey, that is quite an adventure. So did you manage to come away with that extra money?”
“The money didn’t interest me. I managed somehow to slip out of their clutches and make my way home. Though no one seemed actually to be tailing me, I ran so fast I was soaked through with perspiration by the time I arrived at the station.”
“And did you ever go back?”
“Well, actually…”
“So you did receive another call?”
“No, I was just intrigued to know what had happened next, so one Sunday in July when the weather was sunny and I had some time on my hands, I went back to check. There was clearly someone in, so I rang the bell, but this time a Japanese housewife came to the door. I was surprised and asked what had happened to Henry. She told me she’d rented the place to a foreigner for a brief two or three weeks in the spring, but she had no idea of what had become of him afterward. She was quite unfriendly, so I came straight back home.”
“Well, this is all very interesting, but what has it got to do with me?”
“I’m just getting to that part.”
She bummed a cigarette off him and lit it. There was nothing flirtatious in her action. In fact, she was like an old woman in a lottery booth who persuades someone to buy one of her tickets and then has the effrontery to ask that same customer for a smoke.
“After that, I didn’t hear a thing. I kept my mailbox as before, but no one contacted me. And then I saw your ‘Life for Sale’ ad, and that set me thinking. It occurred to me that the five hundred thousand yen might very well have been an inducement for me to act as their guinea pig in an experiment. It made a lot of sense. I thought then that if they saw your ad, they would be certain to communicate with you.”
“But I’ve had no such contact. And anyway, don’t you think foreign crooks would have taken themselves straight off to Hong Kong or Singapore?”
“Only if they were in the ACS,” she said.
“What?” Hanio was dumbfounded.
14
So this woman knew about the ACS too!
That Asian mobster had described the ACS as a mere fiction, the stuff of thriller mangas, but Hanio started to wonder whether the organization was in fact real and had something to do with Ruriko’s death. Having heard what the woman in front of him had to say, he now felt that everything was being woven together into a single tapestry. Hanio started to suspect that his willingness to sell his own life had turned him into an ACS pawn.
But there was no way this woman was part of the ACS. Surely no one who was affiliated with such a masterly organization would mention it so carelessly. She had simply given an honest report of her meeting with the foreigners in Chigasaki—there was nothing more to it than that.
“So what is the ACS?” he asked.
“You mean you don’t know? The Asia Confidential Service is a secret organization said to be involved in narcotic drugs smuggling.”
“How do you know about it?”
“A foreigner who turned out to be a drug dealer used to be a visitor to the library. He came in every day, and we thought to ourselves, ‘Wow, he studies hard!’ But he was also sociable and handsome—I heard it said that he was an assistant professor at C— University in Los Angeles. Every day he seemed to come in to do his research, into Japanese history, so we all assumed he was a renowned specialist in his field.
“Pretty soon, I started to notice that a Japanese man, clearly unemployed, had become a frequent occupant of the seat next to the foreigner. The two of them seemed to strike up quite a friendship, and the Japanese man began to borrow book after book, all on the subject of Japanese history. It got to a point where a young female colleague of mine remarked to me: ‘What a funny state of affairs! He’s Japanese, and yet he’s being taught about Japanese history by that foreigner, who clearly has a much deeper knowledge than he does.’
“It wasn’t long before the foreigner became friendly with the girl at the reception desk, and the subject came up of going out to a nearby coffee shop. But unfortunately for the girl, the foreigner seemed keen to observe propriety and he insisted that she choose another friend to accompany them. The girl was pretty miffed when he asked us both out. I wasn’t particularly bothered, but I went along for the meal.
“It must have been May last year. I remember the evening vividly. The library had just closed and the bright afternoon sunshine was all around us as we walked along the avenue of beautiful trees that leads from the library to the main road. We decided to take him to one of our regular coffee shops, and all three of us felt buoyed up by a mixture of pleasure and competitiveness.
“So we sat down and started a conversation about various things. Of course, his Japanese was quite good, and he certainly had the gift of the gab.
“ ‘Sitting here with two beauties, drinking this foreign-made tea, which after all was imported into Japan by early European traders, I feel just like a Tokugawa shogun must have felt, sitting with his harem of ladies in the inner sanctum of Edo Castle.’
“We all laughed merrily. If you took it the wrong way, it might have seemed rather crude, but coming from Mr. Dodwell—that was his name—well, it was charming. His Japanese wasn’t perfect, if anything rather lacking in finesse, and there was something about him that was a bit too glib—he reminded me of a machine that is rather too well oiled. In the course of our conversation, I remember, he suddenly paused and then asked, quite amiably: ‘I wonder, have either of you heard of the ACS?’
“ ‘Is it the name of a TV station? Mmm, I haven’t heard of any such channel in Japan. Perhaps an American TV station?’ my friend asked. ‘Or maybe the name of a company that makes TVs? I’d say it was an international agricultural cooperative organization. “Agriculture Cooperative System,” something like that.’
“She was just showing off what little education she had, so I glared right at her.
“He listened, smiling broadly. ‘You’re getting warmer with that last answer. It does appear to be an international organization. A secret one, by the name of the Asia Confidential Service. It’s a little scary, actually. And it’s closer than you’d think.’
“We listened to him intently, slightly disturbed now.
“Mr. Dodwell continued: ‘You’ve seen the Japanese guy who sits next to me in the library all the time, asking me questions about history? You rarely get that kind of pest in a library, and I’ve found it a real pain. To top it all, his questions have all been utterly inane. One day he asked me, completely out of the blue: “How many children did the fourteenth-century samurai Masashige Kusunoki have?” I hadn’t the foggiest, so I just pretended I knew the answer and told him ten—whereupon his face suddenly lit up. Knowing what I know now, I’m pretty sure that my reply may just happen to have been the correct reply to some sort of secret password.
“ ‘Even then, he didn’t come clean, and he didn’t let down his guard. But the day before yesterday, he suddenly informed me he had decided that I wasn’t a member of the ACS after all. I didn’t know what he was on about. I asked what the ACS was. He looked a bit smug when he replied: “Asia Confidential Service…I’m so relieved. I mistook you for someone else, and came within an inch of killing you.” And then he took his leave. The thought that I almost got it in the neck scared the living daylights out of me. To think I’d been under suspicion of being a member of the organization!’
“ ‘Wow, that’s scary. You should have informed the police immediately,’ we both chimed in.
“ ‘Well, sometimes stirring the pot can cause even more trouble.’ Mr. Dodwell spoke with a quiet tension in his voice.
“Mr. Dodwell never came to the library again. But I never forgot the name ‘ACS.’ ”
15
At this point, Hanio broke in. “So maybe Dodwell, if that was his real name, actually was the ACS member.”
“But if that was the case, why would he come out and mention it?” asked the woman.
“Maybe he thought his cover in the library was blown, and he was trying to get a handle on the situation by sounding you out.”
“Who knows?” The woman was thinking about something else.
“OK, to return to the main issue.”
“Yes. The reason I came to buy your life. Seeing as you still haven’t heard anything from that foreigner Henry whom I met previously, we can assume that the offer of five hundred thousand, the one he made to me that time I was about to leave, still stands.
“The moment I saw your ad, I knew you were the right person to test that scarab beetle drug on. A referral fee of one hundred thousand yen is all I need for myself. So could I interest you in selling me your life for a fee of four hundred thousand? I would assume responsibility for sending that whole amount to your next of kin, and, to put your mind at rest, I would do it before your death. Does that sound like a deal?”
“I don’t have any next of kin.”
“In which case, what should I do with the money?”
“Why don’t you use it to buy some large animal—a crocodile, a gorilla, something like that—to lavish your attention on? Probably the best thing for you would be to give up on marriage completely and spend the rest of your life with whichever of those animals you choose. I don’t believe any other partner would make you happier. But don’t even think of making handbags out of it. All you have to do is feed the creature every day, exercise it, and put your heart and soul into raising it. And each time you look into its eyes you’ll be reminded of me.”
“You’re a very odd person.”
“No, you’re the odd one.”
16
The woman drafted a letter to Henry, which she sent to his mailbox address via special delivery. Her message was brief: “Will take part in pharmaceutical test for five hundred thousand yen. Have my own subject.” The response was immediate, with a designated date and location for the test: January the third in the Shibaura warehouse district of Tokyo.
Hanio and the woman arranged to meet beforehand, and together they made their way to the deserted district under a cold sliver of moon that looked as if it was being tossed about by the wind in the wintry night. They knocked on the designated door. On the fifth knock it swung open. They followed a staircase down through numerous twists and turns to a cold metal door.
As they pushed it open, a blast of thick warm air hit them in the face. They entered a well-heated, Western-style room, quite large and laid with a red carpet.
Two large square windows, set side by side, gave onto a polluted seabed scene. Not a single fish swam in the water, which was filled with all kinds of accumulated debris and other odds and ends. Close to one window floated what might have been the small whitish corpse of a fish, but it looked more like a human fetus and Hanio hurriedly averted his eyes.
The room itself was comfortably set out: red electric lighting gave the impression of artificial logs flickering in the fireplace. An electric fire no doubt avoided the need for a vent.
Three foreigners were there, waiting for them. The ageing foreigner with a dachshund on a lead had to be Henry.
The woman was the first to break the ice. “You remember you asked me whether I needed five hundred thousand yen.”
“Yes,” one of the two younger foreigners replied in Japanese.
“I assumed you were asking if I was willing to become a guinea pig for the drug.”
“Your assumption was correct.”
“I’ve brought this man along to be the guinea pig for me. I’ve already bought his life from him, so give me the five hundred thousand now, if you please.”
This caught the foreigner off guard, and he addressed Henry in English. A whispered discussion between the three men ensued.
“So, are you really content with the possibility that you may die?” said the first foreigner.
“Yes,” Hanio replied calmly. “And what are you looking so astonished for? You all know, I’m sure, that human life is quite meaningless, and people are just puppets anyway. What’s the big deal?”
“You have just the right attitude. Ever since we got hold of that book, we’ve collected as many scarab beetles as we could lay our hands on, mixing them with bromovalerylurea to make the drug. We’ve tried it out on a couple of subjects and, as it says in the book, they become susceptible to our instructions. But we haven’t yet got to the point of persuading someone to commit suicide. So we’re still not sure whether the instinct for life will stop someone going through with it when the crunch comes. But now that we have someone like you who’s willing to die, we can finally carry out the test.”
