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Chapter 5

The second man who stood guard with Ito was named Goro. He never said much, simply waited in the background. He was deeply contained in much the same way a bear trap is: stretched to stillness and ready to snap. Ito must have been similar when he was younger, but time and discipline had polished him. It wasn’t that he was any less dangerous, simply that he had grown more comfortable with waiting. He sat easily across from me in a Midtown bar, nodding as I described my activity to date.

“Perhaps your contact can find something we could not,” he admitted. “Lim’s known associates are terribly difficult to locate.” Goro sat at the bar, a few steps away from our table. He glared at me.

“Goro doesn’t seem very happy today,” I commented.

Ito’s eyes tightened in amusement. “Goro’s emotional state is of no concern of mine, Dr. Burke. He serves the Miyazaki family. To the extent that he does that well, he should be content.”

“And you?”

Ito sipped at his scotch carefully. “I serve my government. The Miyazaki family is an important one. The son has a significant position in the diplomatic corps …

“And you take care of your own?”

Ito cocked his head, considering an answer. “Let us just say in this instance, the concerns of Miyazaki-san regarding his daughter are shared by my superiors.”

I sat forward. “And why is that, I wonder.”

Ito took another careful sip of Johnny Walker Blue. Then he set the glass down, perfectly centered on the cocktail napkin. His face was totally empty of expression. “With all due respect, Dr. Burke, the details are no concern of yours.”

He was wrong, of course. The details are everything. Somewhere in that thicket, the devil lurks. But he was also in a business where even he probably never got the full story; someone simply winds him up and off he goes. The sense of honor that comes with unquestioning service is bred deep in Japanese of a certain type. The days of the samurai may seem long past, but the tradition endures.

I tried a different angle. “When we met in the hotel … the elder Miyazaki …” I let the sentence trail off unfinished, fishing for a response.

Ito smiled slightly and shook his head. “That old demon. He is vastly wealthy, Dr. Burke. And deeply connected. But I am not sure how much he shares his own son’s concerns for Chie.”

“She’s his granddaughter.”

“Familial relations with the Miyazaki are,” he paused, seeking the right word, “complex. I believe Chie’s father is truly worried about his daughter’s well-being. Among other things.” I tried to keep my expression blank when Ito said that. It was the tiniest end of a thread I might be able to pull on.

“But the old man?”

“The elder Miyazaki considers her an embarrassment and something of a lost cause.”

“So why not simply cut off the money and let her drift?”

Ito was scanning the room, his eyes moving across the crowd with practiced efficiency. His body language told me there was nothing really to worry about. It was probably force of habit on his part. Or a stalling tactic used while he decided what to say to me.

“The old man would like to see her … go away.” He was feeling his way along in the conversation, no longer as comfortable as he had been at the beginning. His cadence had changed and the words came out more slowly, as if he were screening each utterance.

I lifted my eyebrows. “That has a sinister ring to it.”

He looked at me. “Indeed? The old man comes from another time, when different methods were perhaps more acceptable.” He moved his head to indicate Goro. “He surrounds himself with people who yearn for a return to a more,” he paused yet again, and then smiled, “a more brutal simplicity.”

“Goro’s a headbreaker,” I said. “I know the type. He likes it.”

“He is useful. Nothing more. In this situation my government is concerned that Miyazaki Chie is recovered and reunited safely with her father. He is an important man and needs to regain focus on some critical issues. I will control the grandfather. And Goro.”

Ito slid a large manila envelope across the table. “Funds as agreed upon. I have provided you with copies of the material we have collected on Lim. Background and contacts for Chie.” He paused. “I have also included a USB drive with the electronic files of the correspondence and photos that have been sent to Miyazaki-san by his daughter.” He looked down at his drink. “The fewer hard copies the better.”

“What about the originals?”

“They were all sent electronically, Dr. Burke.”

“That may give us a way to trace them.”

“It may give you a way to trace them, Dr. Burke. I have been instructed to keep my distance from this operation.” There was something in the tone of his voice that suggested irritation. But it was a faint note, subtly pitched, and it faded and was gone, swallowed in the hum of cocktail hour. I wondered about that hint of annoyance.

“And Goro,” I smiled. “Will he keep a distance?”

Ito didn’t smile back. “It would be very dangerous for us all if he did not.”

I sat there, stone-faced. Two could play at this game. Finally Ito sighed. He took out a business card and a gold pen, and carefully inked out a phone number. “Your contact numbers are provided in the envelope, Dr. Burke. But in critical moments it might be best to go through different channels, agreed? My personal cell phone.”

I didn’t pick up the card. “Ito, what’s the deal here? I’m not a complete idiot, you know. This all seems so convoluted. You people could pull some strings, get her tracked down and picked up. But you won’t. Instead you want me to do it. At least some of you want me to. What the old man really wants is anybody’s guess. And you. What’s really your role here? What are you doing?”

He stood up. “I am doing what I can, Dr. Burke.” He gestured and Goro moved away from the bar and headed toward the door. Ito watched him go. “Kekki no yu wo imashimuru koto,” he said and looked at me. “Are you familiar with it?

“Guard against impetuous courage and refrain from violent behavior,” I translated. It was part of the pledge recited at the end of every training session in Shotokan Karate.

“Indeed. Goro says the words, but I am not sure he truly accepts them.”

“Like I said, he’s a headbreaker,” I added, shrugging.

Ito nodded. “Don’t judge him too harshly, Dr. Burke. And don’t underestimate him either.” He moved away from the table but turned for one last comment. “Besides, were we so different when we were young?” He flashed a quick smile.

“You again,” she said. She was as pale as ever, but sporting a new look: long, limp hair, dyed black with neon blue streaks. She still had the nose stud and I wondered whether it bubbled and leaked mucous when she had a cold. Fortunately, the question would remain a mystery. She seemed healthy enough at the moment, although undernourished. Librarians are often less than robust.

The university’s map collection was state of the art and the special section where she worked was state of the art as well: good light, clusters of computer work stations with flat screens, and a smattering of well-stuffed modular furniture. The room was empty except for a student sprawled in a loveseat in a far corner of the room, his eyes closed and mouth sagging open. The quest for knowledge is exhausting.

“Hello, Ann.” I used my winning smile, but she somehow resisted my charm. She had helped me out with a puzzle some time ago, working with me as I placed GPS coordinates on a map of the Southwest border territory. I’d been grateful for the help, but I hadn’t seen her since. Standing in front of the blond wood of the reference desk, I realized this had been a mistake. She was now a dark wraith nursing a grudge.

I noticed there was a strand of fake evergreen garland arranged along the desk’s edge and a small plastic candy cane scotch-taped to it in the very middle of the strand. I gestured at it. “I like what you’ve done with the place.”

Her eyes betrayed a number of emotions, none of them positive. I didn’t remember what color they had been the last time I saw her, but now they were a striking blue. Probably contacts selected to match the highlights in her hair. This was the only hint of color in her gypsy-punk outfit. The little Christmas display seemed out of character for her, but perhaps there were hidden depths to Ann. The decorations were minimalist, but carefully placed. I shouldn’t have been surprised at the symmetry of the desk ornament: she was, at heart, a librarian.

She eyed me skeptically, thinking of some response. “Christmas,” she finally said, “is a crock.”

Ann seemed definitive on that point, and I wasn’t interested in debating it, so I explained to her that I needed some research done on the Miyazaki family. I gave her the general outline of the issues.

“Seems like a hairball,” she said. “I mean, why get in the middle of a family thing?”

“The girl sounds screwed up.”

Ann rolled her eyes. “Uh, yeah.”

“The family’s got some connection with Yamashita, my sensei. There’s a debt of some kind owed.”

“Like what?”

I shrugged. “They were vague.”

Ann made a frown and touched the jeweled stud in her nose with the tip of a finger. Her nails were painted navy blue. She thought for a minute. “Why not ask your sensei about it?”

There was the real problem, I explained: if the story of the debt were true and I told Yamashita, he’d insist on helping. And he wasn’t up to that. A lifetime of injuries sustained in and out of the dojo had taken their toll. He was too proud to admit it. And I cared for him too much to have him confronted with that fact.

“You’re doing this just to satisfy a debt of honor?” Ann said, and her tone rang with the conviction that I was a fool and the concept of honor itself was obsolete.

“I’m doing it to protect Yamashita …”

“I hear an ‘and’ coming,” she told me.

“I dunno,” I said. “They seem so screwed up. The family. Maybe I can do something and help them out.”

“Uh huh.” Ann did not sound convinced. “Help out. The last little thing you went off on? In Arizona?”

“Yes?”

She crossed her arms and hugged herself. “It work out OK?”

I frowned. “I’m not really allowed to say.” I suppose it had worked out: I was still standing. It’s not much of a standard to judge things by, but at least it’s concrete.

“Huh,” she said, more a rush of air than a vocal expression. It might have been my imagination, but I could swear her nose stud whistled slightly.

“Come on, Ann.”

“Why should I help?”

I looked around the sleepy room, my eyes wide. “Yeah. Easy to see why you wouldn’t want a break from all the excitement.”

“Funny.” She was still skeptical.

“Look,” I said and touched her lightly on the arm. “I don’t have many people I can depend on.” I let the statement hang in the air. Gave her my earnest look. Eventually, she gave me a small, grudging smile.

“OK,” she said.

“Wait,” I said, “there’s more!” I used my TV pitchman voice and her reluctant smile got a little bigger.

I explained that I had an expense account courtesy of a mystery client, and this time, I could afford to pay her for her assistance. At that, the neon blue of her eyes seemed to glow with greater wattage.

“Still don’t believe in Santa, little girl?” I teased.

Ann looked down at the information I had written out for her.

“Ho ho ho,” she said.

It was growing dark outside, the air bluing into dusk. Artificial lights grew brighter, and yet details were hard to see. But I felt it. Not a tingle or a chill. Perhaps feeling isn’t even the right word.

There had been something that registered on a subconscious level. It may have been the flash of a face in a crowd, something familiar, or something out of place. Eyes that should have washed over me but instead were looking intently. I don’t know what it was. But I had learned to pay attention to these feelings.

In the days when I still thought I would eventually be some sort of college professor, Yamashita had frequently chided me for living too much in my head. He would sit in front of me after training, an implacable god in swordsman blue, critiquing my latest string of errors.

“Think less,” he often told me. “Be more.”

I sighed. I sighed often back then, especially when Yamashita went into his Master Yoda mode. It was particularly annoying because my teacher was always right.

If I’ve learned anything from him, it’s that conscious thought is not the only way of knowing that is open to us. The mind can sometimes be an obstacle to seeing things clearly. In swordsmanship, we say too much thought makes you “stick”: it slows down reaction time and interferes with accurate perception. A brain in overdrive can drown out the signals your other senses are trying to send to you.

And as he has aged, Yamashita has become acutely focused on developing in me the intuitive awareness of haragei. I work at the arcane exercises he has set for me, but I frequently despair of the effort. Still sometimes, in the slash and stomp of the dojo, time seems to slow down and I see the opponent before me with new eyes. It is as if the light has changed, and I am possessed of a strange acuity and ease of motion. There is no longer any sense of effort, no real awareness of self. Just the flow of breath and the arc of the sword’s blade. At moments like that, I can’t even feel the sensation of gripping the weapon. There are no hands, no arms, no Burke. Just the flow of the sword.

Then, of course, the sensation is gone and I’m left breathless with disappointment. And from across the dojo, my sensei’s eyes bore into me, alive with knowing, aware of what I just experienced. This is what we seek, Burke.

Haragei: there was someone following me.

And that was a puzzle. If the initial efforts by the Japanese to find Chie Miyazaki had jangled Lim’s nerves, he’d have people watching. It’s possible someone tailed Ito and Goro to our rendezvous, but my experience was that the people from the Kunaicho were more competent than that. Ito hadn’t picked anything up at the bar. And even if someone had tailed him there, it was highly unlikely there was more than one person and that the tail would abandon him in favor of me.

So here was a puzzle that needed solving. It meant I needed to take some time in my travels home to find out for certain if I was being followed. It was annoying, because I’m a pretty straight-line kind of person: when I go home, I simply go home. I like to think of it in terms of a Zen-like directness. My brother Mickey claims it’s because I am, at heart, an uptight nerd. But now I needed to make things complicated: start and stop, wander uncertainly, window shop. With a tail, you try to string them out a bit, make them unsure of what you’re up to. They get nervous when you change the distance between you and them. Slow down, and they do too. It makes them stand out in the New York crowd, chugging relentlessly along the cold sidewalks. Speed up and the tail has to break cover to hurry and catch up. Either way—busted.

The library was too thinly populated for a tail to risk coming in, so they must have lingered about at the entrance, waiting to pick me up. I hadn’t registered anything consciously on the way in to see Ann, but now I was sure. As I threaded my way down the avenue, I could sense the focus of someone following me.

If the tail knew me, they would expect me to head home for Brooklyn, to go from Washington Square to the Eighth Street subway station. It was, in fact, my plan. But now that plan had changed. So I chugged uptown, an erratic pedestrian bobbing along the thickening crowds of rush hour. West on Fourteenth Street. North on Seventh Avenue. I was a real pain and more than one impatient person bumped me slightly in their haste. I spent a good ten blocks going at a steady if somewhat sedate pace. No window shopping or pausing now: a man on a mission. It would set up an expectation on the part of whoever was tailing me. They’d grow more comfortable with my predictable behavior.

The chestnut roasters were out at the entrance to Penn Station. It was a smell I always associated with the city in winter. I dove through the doors and threaded my way through the crowd at top speed. The floor was slippery, but I kept it up, heading for the lower concourse and the Long Island Railroad. A bend in the hallway would have put me briefly out of sight of my pursuer. I went faster, using the staircase instead of the elevators, and then jagged left toward track 18. The green panels were flickering and announcing the Babylon Express. People were flowing to the track entrance, a thick river of commuters overheating in their coats as they rushed to make the train. I stood to one side and looked to my right. A figure came pounding down the stairs toward the concourse. He stood out because he wasn’t focused on a destination. Everyone else in that place was moving like a guided missile toward a target. But the man rushing down the stairs was looking all over the place, frantic to catch sight of me.

But I’d already seen what I needed to and I flowed along with the crowd, down to the train platform. I kept walking to the other end of the station, pushing my way up against the flow of homebound commuters. I left Penn on Eighth Avenue and walked across to Herald Square.

I caught the N back to Brooklyn.

If you ride the trains enough, the jolt and sway lulls you into a type of trance. The announcements come; the doors open and close. You hear the whine of the electric motor and the distant screech of the wheels as they take a curve in the tracks. People read, or nap, or stare off into the distance. Eye contact is frowned upon. It’s almost soothing. Or it would be if the molded plastic seats were actually sized for an adult human being.

I thought about the situation. People follow you because you are doing something they want to know about. Ito was going to get a report on what I was doing. It made no sense for him to have someone follow me. Someone might also wish to tail me simply because they didn’t trust me. But again, if Ito didn’t trust me, why contact me in the first place?

The final option: Someone was keeping tabs on me so they would know what I was doing before Ito did. This meant things were a little more complex than they seemed.

The subway rattled through Brooklyn. I got off at Fifty-Ninth Street just for a change of pace. The Chinese would get off at the Eighth Avenue stop. The sights and sounds of the neighborhood were familiar and my feeling of being followed was gone. I had lost my tail back in Penn Station. I thought about the man on the stairs at Penn, frantically scanning the crowd in the train station. I smiled.

Goro, you impetuous devil.