The Typhoon Lover (4 page)

After I’d put the bonsai straight out of the apartment, I sank down on the sofa and considered the situation. Covert wiretapping had once been illegal, but probably wasn’t anymore, because of the sweeping changes in civil liberties that had arrived with the new century. Someone had clipped the microphone to a plant that I’d brought in myself from the foyer of the apartment building. This was shrewd, a way to get the bug inside without physically entering the apartment. Now I wondered if there was a wiretap on the apartment telephone as well.

I shivered, because I’d almost persuaded myself to take the job. Despite the creepiness of the work, I was desperate to be in Japan. I could practically inhale the incense at the Yanaka Shrine, and my tongue curled at the memory of the smoky-sweet yams from the best potato-roasting cart. Autumn was the perfect time of year to visit Japan, when the persimmon trees along the train tracks hung heavy with red-orange fruit.

The thought of fruit returned me to my problem. The plant was outside the apartment now, but was that the right place for it?

I retrieved the bonsai tree and brought it into the study, where I found a place for it on a bookcase for the time being. This was the perfect act of revenge, I decided; the government team would now have the pleasure of listening to the Glaswegian Hangover for as long as they were in town. After that, I’d have to come up with something even more obnoxious.

The kettle whistled, reminding me of my original plan to make Hugh some tea. I poured the steaming water over the fragrant green tea leaves—tea leaves my aunt had brought on her last visit from Japan, a stash that was almost gone, but that I could replenish if I went on the mission.

I watched the tea brew to the right color, poured a cup, and took it to Hugh’s bedside, but he was asleep again. I lay down next to him, intent on bringing up the potential trip to Japan the moment he woke up.

The afternoon stretched into evening, and still Hugh slept. Eventually, I did too. I was in the midst of a dream that I was climbing the moss-covered steps up to the fox shrine in my old neighborhood when I awoke suddenly. The little fox statue had been tumbling over and over, down toward me—I heard it shatter as it hit each step. No, what really was happening was that the telephone was ringing.

I grabbed the receiver and said a sleepy hello.

“Rei-chan, help me!” It was Chika.

“What’s happened?” I asked, the panic in her voice spreading to me.

“It’s a fight. I was just trying to park the van, you see—”

“Where are you?” If they were still in Maryland, I couldn’t do much to help. The clock said that it was two in the morning.

“We’re just around the corner in your neighborhood, on that street with the church. I didn’t know the other car wanted to park in the same space. But some boys came out of their car and started shouting. Before I could do anything, Angus and his friends jumped from the van and started shouting back. Now they are hitting each other!”

“Does anyone have a gun?” I asked immediately. The content of my question finally roused Hugh on the other side of me.

Chika told me no. I shook my head at Hugh, who had staggered out of bed, and I continued talking with my cousin. “Chika, listen to me carefully. Can you get the band to return to the van?”

“No, no! I have tried. The boys told me just to lock myself in and keep safe.”

Next idea. “Okay, I want you to roll down the window and tell everyone that the police are coming. That should slow down the fight. And we’ll be there in a minute.”

I put the cordless phone back in its cradle and explained the situation. Hugh nodded and began hunting around for his shoes.

“I don’t know if you should go out.”

“I won’t let you go by yourself.” Hugh grimaced as he spoke.

“I think we should call the police after all,” I said, taking another look at Hugh. He appeared ill enough to be knocked over by the slightest blow. He’d be no asset to me on the street.

“The neighbors may have done that already,” Hugh said. “We’ve got to get there first. If the police book them, my brother’s tour is as good as over. Not to mention the threat of deportation.”

I scrambled into my Asics. Hugh was having trouble of his own, coming up with only one running shoe and one Italian loafer—paired with his old University of London sweatshirt and flannel pajama bottoms, they looked pretty odd, but there was no time to be fashionable. I gave up on finding shoes and went out in my slippers, throwing a raincoat over my pajamas.

“How two exhausted people over thirty are going to break up a fight, I don’t know,” I muttered as we sped along the dark street. The old, bumpy sidewalks in Mintwood Place had charmed me at the beginning, but were a liability in the dark. Right around the corner, Chika had said. Oh, God, there they were. I could see a police car double-parked in the center of Octavia Street.

“We’re too late,” I said.

“Christ. I’ll have to be their attorney,” Hugh said grimly.

Something strange was happening. A Ford Explorer with an American University decal on its back window was reversing down the street toward us. The driver was a policeman, who pulled it into the no-parking spot in front of the church. He stepped out of the car and rejoined the police cruiser, which moved off slowly in the opposite direction.

Hugh had somehow gotten half a block ahead of me, so I hurried to catch up. The band’s van was parked in a legal spot—I hadn’t seen it before, but I recognized it by the “Scotland Forever” sticker on the back. Now Angus, Sridhar, Nate, and Keiffer were spilling out, their voices high and excited.

“They took ‘em away, just like that!” Sridhar said.

“First time a bloody copper told me to take care. Great city!” Angus said admiringly.

Chika emerged from the driver’s-side door and fell into my arms. She was trembling.

“What happened?” I asked.

“The cops came,” Angus said. “They asked us if we wanted to press charges, but we said no, and they took those college prats off anyway, to issue some kind of citation for—what was it?”

“Disturbing the peace,” Sridhar finished.

“That’s right. The police dinna touch us at all, just told us to go home. Never got such gentle treatment before, not in the brawls we’ve been in!” Angus said, a note of wonder in his voice.

“They just let you go?” Hugh seemed as shocked as I was.

“Wait a minute.” A suspicion was growing. “Angus, are you saying that the police specifically asked which ones were the college students?”

“That’s right. It’s like they could tell the whole story, that Chika was parking, and the others started the whole bloody mess. We dinna have to say a thing.”

“What else did they say to you?” Now I knew for certain that our phone had been tapped. Angus and his friends were off the hook, and the others in trouble.

“Rei, let’s not stand outside any longer,” Hugh said in a low voice. “We’ll get everyone home, that’s the best thing.”

But as we all made it through the apartment door, and it was locked behind us securely, I felt myself still spilling over with questions, which nobody but Michael Hendricks and his friends could answer. The government people listening in had to be behind the bugs, and thus behind this too-quick cleanup of a street brawl. Hugh seemed dazed by it all, and once inside, he turned down the boys’ offer of an impromptu drinks party in favor of going back to bed.

“I’m very sleepy, too,” Chika said, yawning. “But please, Hugh-san, don’t give up your bed again to me. I really don’t need it.”

Now I had the bed problem all over again. “Maybe we can come up with some arrangement of pillows on the floor. But which room?”

“The study,” Chika said. “Already, the boys have offered the futon.”

“I’ll bet,” I said. “You saw how they”—I broke off, wishing I could come up with the Japanese translation for testosterone-driven—” how rude they could be on the street. I hate to think of what kind of misunderstanding might develop, if you slept in that room.” At present, I knew, the boys were mixing drinks in the kitchen, just getting started on their party.

“Rei-chan, you are my cousin, not my aunt.” There was a hint of annoyance in Chika’s soft voice. “But please not to worry. I will share the futon with Sridhar, because his religion forbids him to touch women before marriage. It is the perfect arrangement, I think.”

I bit back any further protests. She was twenty-two. But still, I couldn’t help imagining her mother—my Aunt Norie—shaking her head in horror at the idea of Chika in bed with a tabla player, with the rest of the band crashed out around them, and the pomegranate recording whatever might be said—or sighed—during the night.

“It’s up to you,” I said at last. “But please remember, Chika, the walls are very thin. It’s quite easy to hear things.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Mother mentioned that about the time she visited here.”

That could mean Aunt Norie had overheard me with Hugh. I felt myself start to blush.

“Don’t worry,” Chika continued cheerily, “I shall tell the boys not to practice their songs tonight. We won’t disturb you anymore.”

Senator Harp Snowden had a weakness for good food—good Asian food, especially. His scheduler had said she could squeeze me in during the late morning, so I decided to bring him something to make up for any delays that I might cause. A new specialty bakery had opened near the zoo, and it sold quirky Japanese baked goods like puff pastry packets with curried vegetables inside, and croissants filled with chestnut puree. This seemed perfect for late morning, when the thought of lunch was on the horizon, but not yet a possibility.

Around eleven I carried the beribboned pastry box carefully into the Hart Senate Office Building. After a quick trip through a metal detector and a brisk walk past a huge, inscrutable Calder sculpture, I rode a crowded elevator up to the senator’s office.

A new woman sat at the reception desk. She looked Asian but had features I couldn’t quite place. She also had the same northern California accent as mine, but she mutilated the pronunciation of my name when she announced me over the phone to the senator. “It’s like a ray of sun,” I said to her after she’d hung up. “And Shimura sounds almost like Timor—”

“You can go back there now,” she said, clearly not interested. “But Marianna said to remember he’s got to get over to the Senate in half an hour.”

I nodded and went through the door. Senator Snowden’s office suite was huge, a charmless warren of cubicles and rooms where young people sat with their ears glued to phones and their fingers hovering over keyboards. Nobody looked up as I turned a corner and knocked on the half-open door that led to the senator’s inner sanctum. He was at his antique partners desk, ankles up, with stacks of periodicals around him; he waved me in. I glanced around the room, seeing that a new artistic find—a Hmong quilt—had gone up between an old portrait of him with Bill Clinton and another with Nelson Mandela. Harp was a few years older now than the senator in the pictures, but he was still very handsome, with his patrician features and thick, silver hair. He was what every woman hoped her boyfriend would age into, I thought, as he swung his legs down from the desk and walked over to give me a quick embrace. He walked with a very slight limp that betrayed the loss of one of his feet, many years ago in Vietnam.

“How nice to hear from you, Rei. It’s been too long!” Harp said, smiling at me.

“Well, you were really kind to see me on such short notice,” I said.

“It’s an important reason for us to talk. Michael told me you might be calling,” he said, motioning for me to sit down on one of a pair of chintz-covered love seats near a large window overlooking Constitution Avenue.

“When he dropped your name, I had to follow up,” I said.

“Of course. Actually, I’ve known Michael Hendricks for years. His father’s Owen Hendricks,” Harp said, settling down on the love seat across from me.

“Who’s that?”

“A retired four-star admiral who was once in line to be secretary of the Navy. Shame it didn’t work out. Anyway, our families each have camps on the same lake in Maine. Michael skippered my boat for years. I guess I could describe him as the son I never had.”

“He’s too old to be your son,” I pointed out.

“You flatter me,” Harp said. “He’s in his late thirties, mature enough to have earned a Bronze Star in the first Gulf War, but restless enough to have left the Navy for civilian government service. It turned out to be a good fit for him, with his background in Asia and the Middle East. He’s a rising star over there, Rei. I think you’ll like working for him.”

“How can you say that when you don’t know what the work involves?”

Harp leaned forward and asked, “Has Michael asked you to perform an action that’s illegal?”

“Not exactly,” I admitted. “But it’s—classified, so I’m not allowed to tell anyone about it. And since our meeting, my whole existence seems to have changed. My personal freedoms and even my living space aren’t secure anymore.”

“You mean that someone broke in?” Harp’s eyebrows rose.

I shook my head.

“Aha. So you must mean…they’re monitoring it for sound?”

I paused, not knowing whether I should answer. Maybe I’d said too much already. If he was so close to Michael Hendricks, he might pick up the phone and report that I was too talkative.

“Of course, while you’re on a mission, that’s par for the course. It’s for your own protection, as well as theirs. I can assure you this room is secure, and so is any conversation that we have. We have some serious shared history, Rei. I won’t betray that trust.”

“I just don’t know what I should do. Ever since the restaurant closed, I’ve barely worked. So this would be good, not to mention that it could improve another—situation—in my life.” I was thinking about my visa status.

“How are things with Hugh?” Harp asked.

I sighed, thinking about Hugh’s slow, tortured-looking exit from the apartment that morning. “Hugh’s been under the weather since my thirtieth birthday party the other night.”

“Really? If the party was too wild for him, it’s probably a good thing I had to send my regrets.” Despite his passionate liberalism, Harp was cautious about his image. I’d grown to respect this caution as a sign of real intelligence.

“Hmm. Well, you missed a few spectacular sights, but probably it’s for the best.” I thought about Kendall and her striptease. “But to get back to Hugh, despite his being a little ill, things between us are fine. His brother and the band are here for the moment, as is my cousin Chika from Japan—”

“A full house.” He looked at me sympathetically. “Not that you could talk with him about it, anyway.”

“That’s something I wanted to ask you,” I said. “When people undertake special jobs like the one Michael wants me to take on, why can’t they tell a significant other?”

“Because they love the other person enough to want to spare him or her the worry, and in the long term, it’s for the person’s safety. When I was in Vietnam, things happened that I never told my wife. But now, the dangerous time has passed, and I can be open.”

Maybe—when the ibex vessel was safely back in Iraq—I could tell Hugh. And he might actually be proud, rather than anxious or angry.

“By the way, Rei, I’ve been wondering what’s in that box you brought. That is, if it isn’t classified information.”

“A few thousand calories worth of Japanese pastries from the new shop on Connecticut Avenue. I don’t suppose you’d care to try one?” I pushed it toward him.

“Only if you join me. Delicious!” he said enthusiastically, after the first chew. “You have unerring taste.”

“You’re kind to say that.” I reached for a curry puff.

“Well, my dear, I’m already anticipating the other delicacies you’ll bring me after you get back.”

Harp knew something, I decided as I said good-bye to him, left the building, and walked down Constitution Avenue. He knew that I was supposed to be going on a trip, or he wouldn’t have mentioned delicacies. Michael had told him something, but probably not everything.

And I knew now that I was ready to go. I’d been running hot and cold on the issue for the last twenty-four hours, and there were some things I needed to sort out with Hugh first. But I was going. If I didn’t go, I’d regret it forever.

I dragged myself over to the Washington Mall, past the tourists and joggers, and found a solitary bench. I was just getting out my cell phone to call Hugh, to arrange some sort of outdoor meeting where I could talk, in a limited way, about the situation that lay before me, when the phone itself rang. “Private caller” appeared in the display. I clicked “talk” and heard Michael Hendricks’s voice.

“How did you get this number?” And how, I wondered, did he anticipate that I was on the verge of arranging a meeting to break it to Hugh?

“The résumé you left with us yesterday included this telephone number. I gather that I’ve reached you on your cell?”

“Why even ask? I’m sure your colleagues could clarify the type of phone it is.”

“Oh. So you’re concerned about—privacy?” He sounded cautious.

“I should say so! The little thing that happened last night with the police and the guys in the band. And what about the bonsai you sent me with a strange plastic growth?”

“Oh, I see.” He paused. “You discovered both bugs.”

“I did.”

“You’re good,” he said. “That is exactly the level of observation I expect you to use in Japan.”

“But you’re violating my civil rights! And Hugh’s!”

“Rei, for operational security reasons, we need to know that we can trust you.” He paused. “Come on, didn’t it work out for the best last night? The police were alerted that Angus and his friends all were European citizens to be let go without incident. If that directive hadn’t been issued, the band might have wound up in jail overnight with common DC criminals—a situation that would surely test their fake grit.”

“I’m relieved that they weren’t incarcerated,” I said stiffly. “But let’s return to my point. You bugged a place that isn’t even my apartment. Hugh is the one you’re going to have to answer to if and when he finds out.”

“Once he gets up from his illness, that is,” Hendricks said. “What the hell did he drink at your birthday party, anyway?”

“None of your business, and you’re not presenting a winning case for my joining forces with you—”

“Let me try again, in person. Where are you?”

“Oh, come on now, I’m sure you know where I am,” I answered tetchily.

“No, I really don’t know. What’s the location?”

“I’m on the Mall.”

“Can you be more specific?”

I wondered if he was testing me again. “I’m on a bench near the National Gallery. Tell whoever has the binoculars to focus on the bench near the one with the wino stretched out.”

“Rei, my office is not on the Mall, it’s in Foggy Bottom. I’m going to go out and grab a taxi. I’ll see you in ten minutes.”

“That’s ridiculous, I’m not staying here in the cold—” The temperature was fifty degrees, but weather was the first excuse that popped into my head.

“Then why don’t you go inside the Freer? Let’s meet by the coat-check area so that we don’t miss each other.”

It wasn’t likely that we could miss each other, I thought, as I leaned against the entrance to the coat-check room, which was no longer operational—perhaps because of renovations, or maybe because of fears that a checked coat might hold a bomb. I didn’t know.

Now I waited, sweating in my new fall coat, a pumpkin-colored wool melton, thinking about the good old days when a woman could hang a coat in a museum and not worry about the motives of the person she was meeting.

Michael Hendricks came through the door a few minutes later, dressed in a navy-and-black pinstripe suit, without a tie or an overcoat. He had taken a taxi, I guessed.

“You look irritated,” Hendricks said. “Am I that late?”

“No. It’s just that it’s so hot in here, and the checkroom’s closed.”

“I’ll take your coat. There’s a place we’ll leave it, deeper into the museum.” He held out his hands for the coat, but just as I was about to hand it to him, I changed my mind and kept it draped over my arm. No chance that I’d allow him any opportunities to slide a bug into its lining.

The Sackler’s galleries were subterranean, so we walked down a flight of stairs and were buzzed through the same locked doors to administration. Directly off the hall was a room with a buzzer, which Michael pressed.

“This is storage,” Michael said while we waited. “They’re paranoid about damage, so I’m sure they’re going to ask me to leave my pen. Will you keep it at the bottom of your purse for me, and give it back when we leave?”

The pen looked like Mark Cross, but who knew what kind of pen it really was, I thought as I dropped it into the recesses of my bag and the door was opened to us by Elizabeth Cameron. Behind her stretched a series of tall steel cabinets, which I quickly figured out held all the goodies that weren’t on display. I felt my interest rise, in spite of everything.

“Hello, you two. I can be with you in just a few minutes—I’m in the process of finishing assembling things for the lesson.” Elizabeth inclined her head to the right, and I saw that there was a tall man with glasses doing something with one of the cabinets. Obviously, she didn’t want to work with us in front of him.

“Sure. We wanted to look at the Islamic exhibit, anyway. May I leave Rei’s coat somewhere around here?” Michael asked.

“No, that’s all right. I’ll carry it.” Already, it seemed my impromptu meeting with Michael and Elizabeth had been planned. I was determined not to take any more risks with my privacy.

Michael wanted to go straight to the show’s masterwork, a 600-year-old ceramic platter painted with images of men carrying spears, but I cut him short. I’d been to the show a few months earlier, and it was a piece that I thought attracted more attention than was seemly.

“I’ve seen it,” I said. “And what I find bizarre is that the museum label says that it was owned by a warlord. Warriors traveled a lot, so why would they carry such a huge ceramic item? Brass or gold or silver would be travel-worthy, but this just is unbelievable.”

“Are you saying you think it’s fake?” he said, drawing closer to the glass.

“Because of the cracks and the type of pigments used, I’m sure it’s very old, though not being an expert in Islamic pottery, I can’t tell you how old. In any case, the plate probably was crafted to look as if it had a noble, war-going heritage—as if those two words can be used in the same breath,” I added.

“Given my years at Annapolis, I’d like to think so,” Michael said easily.

“Oh, so you went to the Naval Academy.” I was determined to give him a taste of having his own life on trial, just as he’d done to me the day before.

“Yes, I was there. Harp wrote the recommendation for my application. I believe it was the only time our infamous antiwar senator helped someone join the military.” He smiled easily. “I graduated a few years before you started at Hopkins. It’s a shame, because you certainly would have, ah, enlivened our mixers.”

“Hopkins girls don’t usually socialize with Annapolis boys,” I said briskly. “But getting back to you, before the academy, you must have been at boarding school: Andover, Exeter, somewhere like that—”