Dying to Tell (21 page)

"So Kiyofumi said."

"He told you about me?"

"He told Mayumi."

"Where is she?"

"I'm not sure you need to know that."

"But you are sheltering her and Haruko?"

"I'm doing my best to protect them, yuh. The question is: do I need to protect them from you?"

"I'm no threat to anyone."

"No? What happened to Kiyofumi doesn't exactly confirm that, now does it?"

"It wasn't my fault. Kiyo was calling the shots."

"Unfortunate choice of metaphor, Lance."

"Look, what I mean is '

"Why are you here?"

' Why? Because the Townleys have to be stopped. Can't you see that? Hiding won't cut it."

"Brave words."

"Desperate ones, actually."

"Yuh. Well, I can see how you might be desperate. But not bereaved. And not betrayed. Mayumi and Haruko are two up on you there."

"I can't change what Rupe did. And I can't bring Kiyo back to life."

"True enough."

"But I can do something to stop the Townleys." (Though God alone knew what.) "And you can help me."

"How exactly?"

"By telling me what this is really all about. Beginning with what's in the Townley letter."

"Didn't Kiyofumi let you in on that?"

"He did not."

"Because Mayumi swore him to secrecy."

"So I gathered."

"Well, it's the same here, Lance."

"For God's sake. We're in this together. Whether any of us like it or not. I think I'm entitled to know what it is that I'm in."

"You have a point."

"Well?"

"It's not my decision."

"Take me to Mayumi, then."

"No can do."

"Why not?"

"Because that might be just what they want me to do." Loudon sighed and cast a glance behind and in front of us. "Has it occurred to you that the "professional assassin" who shot Kiyofumi was almost certainly professional enough to account for you as well?"

"What are you getting at?"

"I'm getting at the disturbing possibility that you were allowed to escape. For the specific purpose of doing exactly what you have done."

"You think I've been followed?"

"Maybe."

"That's crazy. On the plane? Everywhere I've been? No way."

"A professional assassin is a stalker as well as a shooter, Lance. The whole point of the operation is that you don't know it's happening."

"I'd know." (But that was whistling in the wind. Would I really have known?) "Besides, if you're right, why did Erich try to stop me?"

"Disobeying orders, maybe. You and Kiyofumi were putting the squeeze on him."

"All right." I shrugged theatrically, more annoyed by the thought that I could well have been followed than I was prepared to admit. "In that case, what do we do?"

"We go to a little bar I know a few blocks from here and talk it through over a drink." Loudon grinned disarmingly. There are some things I am allowed to tell you."

The bar was a cavernous basement under a dry-cleaner's shop. Custom was thin at just gone five on an autumn afternoon and, apart from us, entirely Japanese. "They don't speak much English here," Loudon told me as we entered, before exchanging greetings with the mama and her few customers in their own tongue. "And any strangers following us in are going to stand out like Mount Fuji on a clear day. This is as confidential as it gets."

Nobody did follow us in. We took a pair of stools at one end of the curving bar next to a papier-mache badger and ordered some drinks. Sapporo and a shochu chaser for me, Coca-Cola for Loudon. A surprise, given that I had him down as a hard-liquor man.

"I'll need to keep a clear head," he explained, without going on to explain why. "So, you're Rupe's boyhood friend come to find him and atone for his misdeeds, right?"

"Something like that."

"Tough assignment."

I smiled less ruefully than I might have done. "Apparently so."

"Kiyofumi did tell you exactly how your boyhood friend deceived Haruko, didn't he? How and why?"

"He made it very clear. So clear I'd have been tempted to give up but for the fact that by then it was too late."

"Yuh. Too late. A bitchy little point in time, that. You never see it coming. I surely didn't."

"When was it for you?"

"When I got too buddy-buddy with Rupe and let him top me up with bourbon till I was ready to spill the beans on the Townley letter. Once bitten, twice shy, Lance. I'll do right by Mayumi this time round if I do nothing else."

"How long have you known her?"

"More than forty years. From my first visit to the Golden Rickshaw, though I can't exactly recall the occasion. I can't recall her taking my picture for the wall either. But she did. That's how Rupe traced me."

This picture?" I took out the wallet of photographs and showed him the one of him with Townley and some other guy as young military men.

"Yuh. That's the one."

"What was the Golden Rickshaw?"

"Just a bar. A popular one, thanks to Mayumi. She was .. . radiant .. . back then. We came like moths to a lantern. And, like moths, one or two of us got burned." He chewed over the past for a silent moment before continuing. "Then again, of course, it wasn't just a bar. Townley and his outfit made sure of that."

"What was his outfit?"

"Something called a DetMIG Detached Military Intelligence Group. Linked with the CIA. Their role was to identify soldiers, airmen and sailors who had the skills and aptitude to perform special duties during and after their military service. They used the Rickshaw as a place to size people up. Evaluate them when they were at their most relaxed, with a view to possible recruitment."

"Did they recruit you?"

"Only as a scout. I was done a few favours and handed a few greenbacks in return for acting as a talent-spotter. I wasn't on the payroll. Not officially. But I was in the loop. You could say I was Townley's snitch if you weren't in the business of sparing my feelings."

"What sort of talent were you looking for?"

"Oh, the grim, dedicated, intensely anti-communist, faintly manic kind, of course. What other kind?"

"To do .. ."

"Dirty work, Lance. Very dirty work. I never asked for the specifics, but I didn't need to. I understood what the object of the exercise was."

"I'm not sure I understand. Exactly."

"Well, you can take it I surely took it that killing people was going to be on the agenda. As part of any undercover work the recruit was deemed fit for. All in the general and noble cause of defending the United States of America against its enemies."

"Is this one of those recruits?" I pointed to the third man in the photograph.

"Yuh." Loudon gave a rubbery grimace. "Reckon he'd have to be counted as such."

"Spotted by you?"

"Ah, actually, no. He came by a different route. But Townley certainly had his eye on him. No question about that." Loudon squirmed in his seat, as if this particular subject made him uncomfortable. "Leastways, I think so. With only the back of his head to go by, I may have the wrong guy." Then he relaxed again. "Look, Lance, it pans out like this. I get drafted in the ranks because I'm too bloody-minded to join the officer cadet corps while I'm at college. I soon realize what a frigging idiot I've been, but by then it's too late. Like we were saying earlier. Anyhow, I wind up here in Japan and Townley and his sinister band of brothers make me feel .. . important, I guess. So, I do a few things for them. I mark a few cards. I oil some wheels. Then I move on. Out of the Army. Back to that privileged existence I should never have left behind as heir to my uncle's furniture business. I forget Townley and his DetMIG. I even try to forget Mayumi. I put it all behind me. I walk away. End of story. Or should be. But.. ."

"Not the end."

"No. Nothing like. Thanks to Rupe."

"He didn't force you to come back here."

"I can't deny that."

"Why did you?"

"Because the country had got its claws into me. Well, the people had. They're a beguiling nation. So gentle, so ... private. I guess the American way of life just wasn't for me. I sure wasn't cut out for the furniture trade. When my uncle died, I cashed in my share of the business and came here to settle. It's more than a little ironic, let me tell you, me living in the old Imperial capital and revering Japanese culture and all, since this gentle race, as I just described them, were responsible for my father's death when I was only six years old. He was killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor, December seventh, nineteen forty-one. But .. . well, I've made my peace with them on his behalf, so to speak. This isn't my home. But it is where I belong."

"Townley obviously didn't feel the same way."

"No. He left as soon as he could and never came back."

"Leaving behind only his face in this photograph, which Rupe spotted on the wall of the Golden Rickshaw," I began reasoning. "He recognized Townley, who he was already interested in because of his connection with Rupe's own family, then '

"I know nothing about that."

"It doesn't matter. The point is that Rupe saw his chance to find Townley by romancing Haruko. And she no doubt pretty soon let slip that one of the other people in the photograph was living here, in Kyoto."

"I got back in touch with Mayumi after leaving the States. And I've stayed in touch since. So, yuh, Haruko mentioned me when Rupe showed an apparently innocent interest in the picture and the history of the bar. Then Rupe suggested a visit. Well, Kyoto's an attractive destination in its own right. Looking me up just seemed to her like a natural add-on to a tour of the temples. It seemed that way to me too. I was pleased to see them."

"Certainly looks like it." I held out another photograph for him to see the snapshot of him with Haruko on the balcony of his flat.

"Yuh. There I am, grinning like the sap he played me for."

"At some point, you told him about the Townley letter."

"I was boasting. That's the truth of it. Making myself feel important and look important to Haruko's future husband, which is what I thought he was by shooting my mouth off about the old days. I can't say more than that without breaking my word to Mayumi a second time. And that I will not do. But, thanks to me and Haruko's blindly adoring trust in him Rupe was able to steal the letter and make his move on Townley. Which put Mayumi and Haruko and me, for that paltry matter in more danger than you can possibly imagine."

"Me too now, I assume."

"Yuh. That's right, Lance. You too. His friends and his lovers and the friends of his lovers. Rupe's done a thorough job of shafting anyone who ever trusted him."

"Not intentionally." (Was I sure about that? I certainly didn't feel it.)

"OK. Inadvertently, then. I'm not sure that doesn't make it worse. He just didn't care what the consequences were. Oh, he put himself in danger too, I grant you. But that was his choice. We didn't get a choice."

"What sort of man is Townley?"

"Hard, calculating, ruthless."

"Why does he need to be?"

"Because he isn't in control of this. It's beyond him. Beyond all of us."

"But you're not going to tell me what it is."

Loudon gave a weary sigh. That's Mayumi's decision, not mine."

"When can I meet her?"

"Not sure. I have to weigh up the risks, Lance. If you've been followed, taking you to her would be the stupidest thing I've ever done. And I've done enough stupid things already. Besides, what sort of help can you offer that would make the risks worth running?"

"Townley is tied in with a murder in England in August nineteen sixty-three. I don't know how exactly. Or why. But if I knew what was in the letter, maybe it would all make sense. Then we might have something on him. The same something Rupe put together."

"And what would we do with it?"

"Go to the authorities. Make a case. Strike back at him any way we can."

"That'd never work."

"Why not?"

"Because Loudon made a swatting gesture with his hand and sipped his Coke. "God, I wish there was vodka in this."

"Don't they sell vodka here?"

"Oh yuh. They sell it. Sometimes to me. But not this evening." He leaned back on his stool and stretched, then relaxed again. "OK. Let's lay it on the line. Everything we do from here on in is risky. Even doing nothing is risky. And a damn sight harder on the nerves than .. . striking back, as you call it. Temperamentally, I'm a retaliatory kind of guy. Not a skulker in corners. I'll speak to Mayumi. She'll decide."

"When?"

"Tonight. That's why I'm off the sauce. It's a long ride."

"You're going to see her?"

"Yuh. And if I'm followed, well, on that road I'll surely know it."

"And if not?"

"Then I'll come back for you in the morning. You can bed down at my apartment. I'll phone Mayumi from there and set it up."

"When did you decide all this?" (It certainly seemed sudden to me.)

"Oh, around the time you walked through the door of my class at Doshisha and introduced yourself."

"Then why have you been giving me such a hard time about risk assessment?"

"Because there are risks. And because I wanted to see what you had to offer in the way of a game plan before I committed myself."

"So, I've persuaded you, have I?"

"No, Lance, you haven't. Not remotely." He gave me the same grin he'd worn in Mayumi's photograph and in Rupe's. "But I'll do it anyway."

CHAPTER TWELVE

Miller Loudon's flat reflected the divided loyalties of its owner. One of the living rooms was a tatami-matted oasis of uncluttered calm, the other a Mexican-rugged chaos of sagging armchairs, bulging bookcases and discarded coffee mugs. Maybe each was a refuge for one half of his soul.

The biggest and saggiest armchair unfolded into a bed. (Manufactured, so a badge on the frame informed me, by the Loudon Furniture Works of Williamsport, Pennsylvania -circa 1950, I'd have guessed.) Loudon showed me how to lock it into place, then phoned Mayumi. He conversed with her in fluent Japanese, thereby freeing himself (whether deliberately or not) to say whatever he liked about me; certainly my name was mentioned several times. All I actually gleaned was the affection in his tone. It seemed probable to me that he loved Mayumi, though perhaps in a way that had never been openly declared.