The Japanese Corpse (26 page)

"So how do you know you have caught him when you raid his castle?" the commissaris asked.

"We'll raze it. I'll bring in special troops, the Snow Monkeys of my own regiment. We don't have a standing army anymore, but there are still warriors in Japan, volunteers, hand-picked, well trained."

"Snow Monkeys?" the commissaris asked.

Dorin smiled. He looked much better now. The bags of flies stood leaning against the table, forgotten. His eyes were sparkling.

"Snow Monkeys, the monkeys of Hokkaido, our big island in the North. They are macaques, short-tailed monkeys that can live anywhere. In Africa they are short-haired, but our variety has grown fluffy gray coats, and they walk in single file through the snow. When they get too cold they warm up by bathing in the hot springs, and while their bottoms are almost boiled the snow still sits on their heads. They survived even during the times that we hunted them, and they can act in groups and on their own. Japanese have never been known for their individual strength. The American soldiers would try to shoot our officers, for they knew they could pick off the soldiers one by one afterward. But the Snow Monkeys can make their own decisions, although they are disciplined enough to obey orders. And they have retained some of the old samurai values. They won't surrender."

"What do they believe in?" de Gier asked.

Dorin shrugged. "I don't know what my fellow officers base their guidance on, but I have never encouraged any idealism in my own men. I try not to believe in anything myself. Ultimately there is nothing, and it is better to believe in nothing from the start. But it takes great courage not to believe. My own life is continuous proof. Anything upsets me, even dead flies. But I try."

"And so do the Snow Monkeys," the commissaris said. "If they attack the palace they will destroy it completely, I imagine, and the daimyo with it, if he happens to be in. What sort of weapons do your men use, Dorin?"

"They are familiar with most weapons, but their main training is with the American M-16 automatic rifle, the Uzzi submachine gun and the Walther pistol. I would like them to use tanks or machine-gun carriers when they attack the castle, but the roads are too narrow and the yakusa will see them coming. I think I'll have them flown in with helicopters and supply them with jeeps. They can use small mortars for blasting the compounds of the castle, and the helicopters can gun anyone down who shows his face. There will also be a bit of bombing, and the men can rush the place once the bombs have exploded. It should be over in half an hour at the most. The palace may have escape tunnels, but they will have to come up somewhere, so I can have roadblocks at various strategic points. There aren't too many roads and we have good maps; the maps show the mountain paths too. Some of the Snow Monkeys are in the Rokko Mountains right now, disguised as tourists. So there is really no need for you to take any more risks. Maybe it would be foolish to go further. The yakusa haven't guessed who we are, but they may one day, tomorrow perhaps."

"Or today," de Gier said, "while you are sprinkling the dead flies about in their nightclub. I am rather looking forward to my outing on Lake Biwa tomorrow. What do you think, sir?"

The commissaris got up and took off his kimono. He put his right leg in his trousers and almost lost his balance.

"I am feeling peckish. I am going out to have a tempura dinner in one of the stalls of the market. If either of you two wants to accompany me you are welcome. I don't know about going on really. Dorin is our host and protector. We are on loan to the government of Japan, and Dorin is our connection with that government. If he thinks the yakusa should be wiped out in their lair, by short-tailed apes who like to boil themselves alive in hot springs... well... good luck to them, I say. We are only a couple of smelly barbarians from a faraway swamp."

Dorin, whose face had clouded when the commissaris had started his preamble, was grinning broadly.

"But I would prefer to go on for a day or two," the commissaris added, "personally I mean. Maybe we'll have a chance to find out who the daimyo is."

"O.K.," Dorin said. "I am off to sprinkle flies, and we'll discuss our plans for the picnic on Lake Biwa when I come back. You two can eat your tempuras. Get some good shrimps in them, select them yourselves. The restaurant owners like their clients to show an interest in what they are going to eat. And stay away from the green mustard this time. I have a gaijin friend in Tokyo who had to drink milk for a year; the mustard burned ulcers into his stomach. It is full of ginger concentrate and horseradish. It doesn't just make you sneeze."

De Gier sighed, relieved, when Dorin had left the room. "Good thing you put in that bit about smelly barbarians, sir. He didn't like the quote about short-tailed apes. He had said it himself, of course, but you were hurting his vanity when you repeated his own words. Strange that he has any vanity left, don't you think? It's the first time I saw it."

"Our Dorin is a very evolved human being," the commissaris said, still trying to struggle into his trousers, which were weighed down by the pistol strapped to the belt. "He'll be an angel in his next life, or a bodhisattva, as the Daidharmaji priests call them. But angels are vain too, and not only Lucifer."

"Gabriel," de Gier said. "If Dorin gets us to the plane home I will call him Gabriel. We've got too many odds against us."

"Do you mind?" the commissaris asked.

"No, sir. But I have nothing to go back for."

"You have," the commissaris said, "and you should find out about it. Time is short, sergeant. You will be a graybeard soon, doing crossword puzzles in an overheated room in a home for retired policemen."

De Gier looked up.

"Never mind," the commissaris said, "sometimes I get a little depressed."

\\\\\ 23 /////

I
SHOULD BE DRIVING A JEEP, DE GlER THOUGHT, AS HE tried to avoid a particularly nasty pothole, or preferably a tracked vehicle. The car was bouncing along, rattling a little. He had opened and closed the right door a few times, but the rattle didn't go away. Yet it was undoubtedly in the right door. It hadn't rattled when he hired the car a week before. If they can build cars, he thought irritably, why can't they build roads? Roads are easier to build than cars, aren't they? The car hit another pothole, jumped free and slipped on a patch of mud. He screwed the wheel to the left. A truck was coming toward him and it wasn't keeping to its side of the road. Yuiko hissed sharply; there couldn't have been more than an inch between the sports car and the truck. He apologized and she put her hand on his arm.

"You are driving very well," she said. "Isn't it difficult for you to drive on the left side?"

He muttered something in reply. He was getting used to accepting compliments. That morning he had been praised by the inn's two maids. Apparently he had good taste in shirts. They had felt the material and had admired the style of the collar. The innkeeper's wife had congratulated him because of his neatness and the artful way in which he had arranged his shaving gear on the bathroom shelf. It seemed to be compulsory for Japanese women to flatter males and to stress their own silliness and incapacity to deal with life. But it was obvious that they were perfectly able to take care of themselves and that the giggly surface of their little smiles and respectful and exaggerated bows and the shuffling gait designed to make them unobtrusive were no more than a veneer to cover a steel kernel. He glanced at the small shape next to him, the delicate little elf with the full breasts and soft smile and the long flowing hair tinted with a drop of red dye to give it a slight shine, and almost shuddered. A yakusa girl loyal to her gang of ruthless mates, a member of an organization that controlled hundreds of bars, brothels and other places of pleasure, that was probably the main supplier of hard drugs in an area which comprised at least three large cities of over a million inhabitants each, that fully or partly owned a string of legal businesses and ran several art galleries as a sideline. And the ambassador thought he could break this tight cluster of bats which had their fangs in the blood veins of a helpless and unaware society. He shrugged. Perhaps it could be done.

Dorin was part of another cluster of bats and he could make helicopters fly and drop loads of warriors. He wondered how legal Dorin's operation was. If he was prepared to act on the little evidence the commissaris had been able to produce so far... but he seemed to be, and there was no reason to doubt Dorin's ability.

He knew why the commissaris had approved of the Lake Biwa outing. They still didn't know the face and shape of the daimyo, the brain and commander of the troops on the other side of the fence. De Gier knew the commissaris well enough to follow some of his thoughts. The daimyo liked his little jokes and he liked to see for himself how they worked out. He had probably been around when the commissaris was trapped in the temple garden and when de Gier saw his own death on the stage of the little theater. If the daimyo had planned another joke he might be around again. And if he was around he could be seen, and if the daimyo was seen he could be described and eventually caught. Apprehended and taken to court. All he had to do now was spot the daimyo.

The road became a little better, and Yuiko began to tell him a story about her aunt who was a go-between for marriages. He wasn't paying much attention to her detailed account of how her aunt took care of other people's needs. But he grunted at the right times and she prattled on merrily. A flagman waved the car to a stop, and de Gier looked out of the window, preparing himself for a wait of several minutes at least. A convoy of trucks was coming from the other side and he could see more flagmen and laborers and bulldozers down the road. He was parked on the top of a low hill and had a good view. Several three-wheel trucks appeared, jogging along close to each other, driven by elderly stocky men with caps pulled over their eyes to protect them from the sun. The trucks were loaded with small wooden casks.

"Seaweed," Yuiko said. "They are bringing it in from the coast. Seaweed is very nutritious and also very tasty. Would you like me to make you some kelp soup some evening? I think I have all the ingredients, and if I haven't I can always borrow some from the lady upstairs. She is a famous cook and I often go to help her on my off days. Seafood is her specialty, and she sends out meals."

"Yes," de Gier said. "Please. I like soup."

He was looking at a dead cat, lying in a ditch close to the flagman's feet. Yuiko couldn't see the cat. The oncoming traffic missed the dead animal, although some of the trucks' wheels came close. The cat couldn't have been dead long, and the corpse wasn't mangled. It looked asleep but the mouth was slightly open and its small bright red tongue protruded slightly. The fur was still glossy and the thick tail, fluffy and showing faint dark gray stripes, curled across its legs.

The flagman waved and de Gier released the clutch, but the flagman corrected his command. Evidently he had mistaken the next flagman's movement for the O.K., but the man had only been scratching his neck. The sports car stopped again. De Gier couldn't see the cat anymore, but there was another corpse on the road now, a sparrow that was resting on its beak. Yuiko saw the bird too, and smiled.

"Pretty little thing, isn't he?" she said. "It's a male, because he has got stripes on his head; the female is plain. The striped sparrows have an interesting song. They don't chirrup but they make a striking sound, a few short notes and then a long one. You must have heard it, there are lots of them in Kyoto." She whistled the bird's song.

"Yes," de Gier said. "And they drop the last note an octave when they repeat themselves. But why would he be resting on his beak? His legs are well apart, he is in perfect balance. But he is dead."

"I don't know," she said. "Perhaps he flew against a car and was thrown back and the posture happened that way. Oooh."

The sports car had driven off at the flagman's order, and they had passed the dead bird. She had seen its other eye, and so had de Gier. The bird's head was smashed on one side, and the eye had come free from its socket and stared at them, for the split second it took in passing it, with a mixed expression of intense fear and surprise. The eye had, in some strange way, become very large and covered the entire side of the sparrow's head.

"A bad omen," Yuiko said nervously. "Perhaps we shouldn't go sailing today. I wouldn't mind turning back. We can go to a theater and have dinner later on in my room."

"No, thanks," de Gier said. "I have been to a theater and they killed me on the stage. That wasn't a good omen either. It's a good day for sailing. Look at the tree-tops; there will be a stiff breeze on the lake."

But there was more than a stiff breeze. The lake's surface was an endless play of whitecaps, up to the horizon. The other shore was invisible.

Yuiko gasped. "A gale," she said. "I should have listened to the weather report. We must go back now. Lake Biwa is very big, you know. It's like an inland sea. It's easy to lose sight of the shore."

De Gier stretched out his arm so that he could stroke her hair. "It isn't that rough, it just looks bad, but once we're on the water you'll see that there's nothing to worry about. Maybe we can charter a proper yacht, but I've been out in worse weather in my little sloop, and I was only fourteen years old at the time, and since then I have sailed all sorts of boats."

"All right," she said. "I have never sailed before, you see. I have only been in a rowboat and in a canoe."

They took a wrong turn and got lost, and it was over an hour before they had found the harbor. An old man came to the gate, shaking his head.

"Too rough," Yuiko translated. "He advises us not to go. There is hardly anybody on the water today."

De Gier pointed at a small fishing boat tacking away from the harbor. Another boat was visible near the horizon, a small low stripe. "That must be a motor launch," de Gier said. "Tell him I'll pay any deposit he likes. I am an experienced sailor; he won't lose his boat."

The man finally agreed and asked for the equivalent of a hundred dollars, and de Gier gave him the money, shoving the thick wad of notes across the table in the owner's small cramped office and refusing a receipt. "Tell him that I consider it to be an honor to visit this great country and that I trust him completely," he said. The man smiled and bowed.