Fishing for Stars (40 page)

‘I will remember that,’
Fuchida-san
said, nodding his head. ‘You are right, we Japanese are too respectful of authority. We have our own old saying: “The nail that sticks up will be hammered down”. We respect authority, and that is precisely why both sides have agreed to this particular third party taking custody of your partner. He is an outstanding citizen and is known and respected throughout Japan and is not identified with any side or faction. He is the principal of the Kyumeikan Kendo Dojo.’

I laughed. ‘
Oyabun
Saito! Of course, who else?’ I exclaimed, smiling broadly.

‘
Duncan-san
, you know too much. I did not tell you about his involvement with the kendo institute, did I?’

‘You give me too much credit.
Kinzo-san
used this fact in the hearing this morning.’

Fuchida nodded. ‘
Saito-san
is not known to be
yakuza
and is only used by us very occasionally when we need a secret weapon . . . or a silent assassin. He is not only a kendo grand master but also Japan’s most famous exponent of the
katana
, the sacred sword. His name is known and respected by all. He is exactly right for this job. He brings both sides – the Shield Society and Konoe Akira – the correct prestige. At the same time they will know he leaves no footprints in the dust and cannot be crossed.’

‘More and more I find myself in your debt,
Oyabun
Fuchida. If Anna is brought back safely, I cannot imagine how I will ever be able to repay you.’

‘We will remain friends, and it is my experience that, over the years, there is always something that needs to be done. Friends are not made for personal gain, but neither are they free of obligation. Friendship involves loyalty and support for each other.’

Finally I asked, knowing already that it was not a very bright question, ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

‘Nothing. Everything is in place,’ the
yakuza
boss said. ‘Now we can only wait until
Saito-san
brings
Anna-san
to the office of
Kinzo-san
where you will be waiting, having arrived back from Osaka and the World Exposition. In the meantime you must stay here in the penthouse.’

‘I hesitate to ask, but I need another enormous favour,
Fuchida-san
,’ I said.

‘What is it,
Duncan-san
?’

‘Anna will be in withdrawal – three days at least without heroin. She will be in a bad state. Is it possible you could arrange . . . ? I will pay the street price, of course.’

‘How much will she need? Once, twice a day, more? Sufficient for a week?’ he asked.

‘Yes, a week will be plenty. Will you let me know the cost, please?’ He could see my acute embarrassment at having to ask.

Fuchida-san
sighed. ‘The cost of being a heroin addict is already too much. In the end, this woman will let you down; they always do. I know from personal experience. When I was young and recruited by the great Yoshio Kodama, who, you will remember, united the
yakuza
after the war, he made me one of his
wakagashira
, his lieutenants. He was still a drug lord and many of us became addicted to heroin. It took me nearly ten years to get clean. None of the other
wakagashira
managed to give up and I watched them lose their integrity and honour.’ He smiled. ‘But, as you wish, it will be delivered this afternoon. There is no cost.’

I kept forgetting that the
yakuza
boss had never met Anna and I was forced to conclude that he must have scant regard for her, questioning the wisdom of my involvement with a junkie. It was even more remarkable that he hadn’t thrown his hands up in despair and left us to stew in our own juice. This was particularly true when I tried and failed to think of anything we could do for him, or any use we might be to him or the
yakuza
in the future. All we had in common was butterflies! It was hard to imagine that insects alone might constitute an enduring bond between us. If he had any plans for me to pay him back in the future, they were beyond my imagining.

The
yakuza
boss rose. ‘I must go out and will be back very late. The
mama-san
will show you your room and attend to your dinner. It has been a difficult time for you,
Duncan-san
. You must rest now. Is there anything else you might need?’

‘You have been a gracious host and wonderful friend, honourable
Fuchida-san,
and I, in turn, have caused nothing but trouble for you. I am eternally grateful and require nothing more except a toothbrush and a razor.’

‘
Duncan-san
, trouble is how we make our living. I must say, I can hardly wait to meet your Anna; you have endured a great deal on her behalf. This junkie of yours must be really something for you to have persisted with her!’ He chuckled. ‘You Westerners have strange attitudes to women.’

Later, resting on a futon in the room set aside for me, I realised that, if I had done absolutely nothing, bugger all, to find Anna, she might have long since been back with me and, to boot, not much the worse for wear. Konoe Akira would have refused to pay the ransom and the Shield Society would have realised she was of no worth to them and, furthermore, that kidnapping a
gaijin
did nothing for their cause.

Also, Anna wasn’t the sort to sit in a corner hugging her knees with her bottom lip trembling. She would have negotiated and paid for her own freedom. But, of course, she couldn’t do this without contacting me to arrange the ransom money and I had been in a police cell nursing my wounds along with my pride. She wasn’t to blame for any of my various predicaments. It had been my own lack of patience and inability to think things through, big-noting myself by involving the
yakuza
. Now she would carry a fresh set of scars for the remainder of her life. Even more bizarre and reprehensible, Konoe Akira would once again be responsible for them.
Whatever possessed you to come to Japan, Nicholas Duncan, world-class bloody idiot?!
I recall saying to myself before I fell into an exhausted sleep.

Let me declare at once that I did not witness what happened next. Anna described everything to me, except for the incident at the gate with the two guards, later recounted to me by
Fuchida-san
, who had seen some of it and heard the remainder from
Saito-san
.

Arrangements were made for
Kinzo-san
to receive a call from the kidnappers to tell him the place at which Anna would be handed over. He would then contact
Saito-san
and give him the address, then wait the hour it took for
Saito-san
to reach Anna by motorcar. Upon arrival and after ensuring Anna was present and unharmed,
Saito-san
would call him and give him an address the Shield Society had given him that was close enough to
Kinzo-san
’s offices for him to deliver the ransom. After
Saito-san
received an all-clear phone call, he would then take custody of Anna and return her by motorcar to Tokyo. Simple enough.

But, as it turned out, what in fact happened was that
Kinzo-san
, having received the call from Anna’s captors with the address at which she was being held, called
Saito-san
who was waiting with
Oyabun
Fuchida at the helicopter terminal in Central Tokyo. They immediately boarded a waiting three-passenger Bell Jet Ranger. Five minutes later it set down in a vacant lot in an industrial site close to the Bay area just three minutes’ walk from the address the Shield Society had given. They had arrived forty-five minutes before
Saito-san
was expected by motorcar.

Saito, a man in his late forties, was dressed cheaply in the ragged clothes of a poor old man or a bum. Wearing a straggly grey false moustache and a dirty brown felt hat pulled down hard onto his eyebrows, he gave the appearance of a witless alcoholic. He affected a limp and carried a walking stick made from the ebony core of the persimmon tree, a dense, fine-grained timber that is incredibly strong. Fuchida had encouraged him to wear a bullet-proof jacket, as he himself did, but he’d refused. ‘It will slow me down,’ he’d argued.

They stopped about a hundred metres from the address they’d been given – a small double-storey warehouse set in the centre of an industrial lot and surrounded by a high steel-mesh security fence about twenty metres from the building. Fuchida waited out of sight while Saito, pecking his way with the stick, limped drunkenly towards the padlocked wire gate, behind which he could see two guards with submachine-guns slung over their shoulders.

Swaying and staggering, singing drunkenly, mumbling and shouting to himself, often gripping the cane with both hands to keep his balance, Saito approached, then outside the gate fell backwards onto his bum, toppling over, his legs flung in the air and the stick flying. Laughing helplessly, he lay for a moment, then rolled over so that he was on all fours from where he tried to get up, failing several times, his arms collapsing under him. Finally he managed to crawl towards the walking stick and use it to climb painfully to his feet. He swayed, waving his free arm and shouting incoherently, then staggered up to the gate where the two bored guards stood watching.

Reaching the gate, Saito leant on his walking stick, grinning, and beckoned drunkenly to them, fumbling in his ragged jacket for a stack of what appeared to be postcards. He hooked the stick over his arm so both hands were free and removed the top photograph from the stack and held it up. ‘Only one hundred yen,’ he slurred, attempting unsuccessfully to push the postcard through the gap between the gate and the steel gatepost. Both guards moved forward to take a closer look at what proved to be a high-definition, colour, full-frontal photograph of a young big-breasted blonde woman with her legs spread, about to insert a large dildo between them.

‘
Phiff!
You ask too much, old man,’ one of the guards laughed, pulling the postcard through the gap, examining it briefly then handing it to his companion with a grin, who in turn examined it closely.

‘We’ll give you two hundred yen for the lot,’ the second guard offered, pointing to the stack Saito held.

Saito frowned drunkenly and, shaking his head in exaggerated denial, quickly returned the remaining postcards to the inside pocket of his ragged jacket, grabbing the walking stick just in time to avoid losing his balance. He brought his forefinger up and waved it reprovingly at them, then held it still. ‘No . . . no . . . one . . . (hic) only one, one hundred yen!’ he stammered. ‘Look, very good
gaijin
fucking! Very dirty picture!’ He propped the walking stick against his leg and once again withdrew the stack from his inside pocket and removed the top one, holding it up against the wire. It showed two young blondes, sexually entwined in the ‘69’ position. It would have been obvious to the two guards that at one hundred yen each the high-quality photographs were a veritable bargain.

‘Let’s see them all, Grandpa,’ the first guard demanded, indicating that he should pass them through the small gap between the gate and the fencepost.

Saito cackled merrily, shaking his head, indicating that even though he was inebriated he wasn’t a complete fool. Then, apparently forgetting he wasn’t holding the walking stick, he took a step backwards and lost his balance, flinging the cards in an arc as he attempted to snatch the walking stick. Further off balance, he tottered then fell, striking the back of his head against the roadway, the pornographic cards spread around his motionless body, the walking stick somehow ending up between his sprawled legs.

‘Shit! He’s knocked himself out!’ the first guard said.

‘Good! Open up!’ the second guard said gleefully. ‘The photos are ours!’

The first guard reached into his trouser pocket for the padlock key and moments later the gate swung open. Reaching down they quickly gathered up the photographs. The second guard, seemingly the more dominant, took those his companion held out and placed them all in the back pocket of his trousers. ‘We’ll share them out later,’ he decided. ‘Show them to your girlfriend – they’ll make her horny. Women deny it, but they love hard porn.’

The first guard grinned. ‘I don’t think so; not mine anyway.’ He pointed to Saito. ‘What about him? We’ve got someone coming in less than an hour to collect the foreign bitch.’ He paused, then grinning lewdly added, ‘Now that’s a piece of quality tail. I wouldn’t mind having a piece of her!’

‘Their slits are too big; you wouldn’t touch the sides!’ the second guard laughed, then pointed. ‘There’s a deep ditch across the road. Here, give me a hand. We’ll dump him.’ He unslung his submachine-gun. ‘You’re right, the six of us should have gang-raped her. These foreign bitches are hot. They can’t get enough cock.’ He placed his automatic weapon against the gatepost.

The first guard did the same. ‘I thought you said
gaijin
pussies were too big for us.’