All right, a good lesson. But what had it cost me to learn it? Maybe…not too much. With luck, the one I took down with the suplay would be all right. But even if I’d killed him — and I knew from the sound his skull had made when it smashed into the pavement that I might have — how could anyone connect it with me? It was a random encounter in a random place. Even if the police were interested in investigating the death of some street hood, and they probably wouldn’t be, witnesses wouldn’t be much help. The only thing they got from me was the bag, which was presumably as anonymous and widespread a model as the Agency had been able to procure. Maybe my fingerprints were on it. But would the punk who fled with it share it with the police? More likely he had already ditched it. And even if he did share it with the police, and even if they could get a print, would they be able to match the print to me? No. They wouldn’t. I was all right.
But the bag. Something about it was nagging at me. And then I realized.
There were three bags, all identical. The procedure was, I would pick up a full bag from McGraw and hand him an empty. I would then repeat the operation in reverse with Miyamoto. Someone always had an empty bag to exchange for a full one. So I had to have a bag for my next exchange with McGraw.
All right. Not such a big deal. I could just tell McGraw I had lost the empty bag.
But no, that wouldn’t work. If I’d been careless enough to lose the bag while it was empty, I might be careless enough to lose it when it was full. I didn’t want to seem like a screw-up, even though — or actually, because — right then the description felt pretty damn accurate. I liked the job and I needed the money. What else was I going to do? In those days, there was no contractor industry for spec op veterans. I’d just been run out of the military and knew there was some kind of cloud hanging over my head. By luck, I’d landed a plum job, one of the few of them, and I didn’t want to risk it.
All right, then, I could just buy a new bag. No one would know the difference.
I suddenly realized I couldn’t recall quite what the bag looked like. It was black, and made of leather…or was it vinyl? I hadn’t really taken that close a look. It was about two inches wide, it had a zipper top…a brass zipper. Or brass color, anyway.
Shit. I headed back into the station and checked in several stores. There were numerous models like the one we used for the exchange, but I didn’t see one I was sure was an exact fit.
I went out again, frustrated and angry at myself. I’d learned in the jungle to pay obsessive attention to my environment. Sounds and smells. Shapes and shadows. A broken branch, a displacement in the elephant grass. Birdsong, or its absence. It all meant something, and often what it meant was the difference between living and dying. And you had to learn to see the patterns in advance because when a silent foe is trying to kill you, you don’t ordinarily get a second chance.
I suddenly understood this was all equally true in urban environments, and that I’d just been too stupid to realize it. Cities had their own rhythms, their own patterns, their own details that counted. I had to learn to pay attention. I had to educate myself.
All right, another good lesson. But what to do about the situation at hand?
I saw only two choices. I could buy a bag and, if McGraw noticed a discrepancy, just tell him it was the bag Miyamoto gave me — and then hope he didn’t have a good way to check with Miyamoto. I could even buy three bags and swap them in one at a time until all the bags we were using were once again identical.
But if McGraw noticed anything amiss, I’d look like worse than a screw-up. I’d look dishonest, too. They might cut me loose for screwing up. But if they caught me lying to try to conceal it, I didn’t know what would happen. What I did know was, getting cut loose might be the least of it.
That left only one real choice. Get in touch with McGraw and come clean. It wasn’t such a big deal, was it? I hadn’t really done anything wrong. At least, nothing I’d have to own up to. I mean, what were they going to do, kill me?
CHAPTER TWO
I contacted McGraw, who told me to meet him that night at a bar called Kamiya in Asakusa, one of the oldest districts in the city. I was curious about the choice of venue. Asakusa was in eastern Tokyo, and, apart from the Sensō-ji Temple complex and some related tourist attractions, presented a somewhat out-of-the-way district for foreigners and anyone else who favored the more cosmopolitan airs of the city’s west.
After the evening’s training at the Kodokan, I rode east on my motorcycle, a 1972 Suzuki GT380J in Roman Red and Egret White I couldn’t afford but had gone ahead and bought anyway. I loved that bike, loved everything about it — the way it cornered, the growl of the engine, even the temperamental gear shifts. I called it Thanatos. Heavy-handed in retrospect, but it felt appropriate after what I’d done during the war.
It was near dark as I rode past Asakusa Station, the western sky holding some last lines of pink, the wind a welcome counterpoint to the heat still radiating from the pavement. I looked around, not sure exactly where the place was, and immediately saw a dense-looking concrete building, at the top of which KAMIYA BAR was emblazoned in impossible-to-miss red neon.
I parked the bike, crossed the street, and headed into a bright, spacious room with a half-dozen large communal tables and seating for maybe seventy-five people. Most of the vinyl-covered wooden chairs were taken, and the clientele seemed exclusively composed of blue-collar edokko, the salt-of-the-earth sons and daughters of old Tokyo, mostly middle-aged and older. The moist air seemed composed of equal parts oxygen, cigarette smoke, and the smell of draft beer, and the walls and low ceiling reverberated with laughter and boisterous conversation.
It took me a minute to spot McGraw. He was sitting with his back to the wall at a smaller table in a kind of alcove to my left, the one location in the otherwise open room that offered a modicum of privacy. He was the only non-Japanese in the place — a tall, meaty Scots-Irish, mid-forties, auburn hair going to gray. Not exactly inconspicuous in Tokyo, especially back then, when there were fewer foreigners, and I assumed he chose the out-of-the-way local place to lower the chances of anyone who mattered observing us together. He was already looking at me when I saw him, and waved me over.
I took the chair across from him. Even then, I wasn’t comfortable sitting with my back to anything but a wall, but he hadn’t left me a choice.
“Been here long?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Don’t like to keep people waiting.”
McGraw struck me as someone who would keep the pope waiting without particularly giving a shit, and I wondered about his response. I noticed wet ring marks on the wooden tabletop — too many and too thick to have been made by the nearly empty single glass set before him now. Had he been here long enough to drink several beers? I sensed he had. And was immediately pleased that I had noticed the revealing detail. It was exactly the kind of thing I knew I needed to improve at — and maybe I was already doing so. But why arrive so early? Getting the tactical seat, I decided. And ambush prevention generally. If someone is setting up for you, you preempt him. The same principle for the city as for the jungle.
Unless, of course, you’re the one doing the setup. That would require an early arrival, too. But I was confident McGraw’s tactics were primarily defensive, not offensive. I hadn’t yet developed the paranoia, or call it wisdom, of experience.
“Beer?” he said.
“Sure.”
He signaled the waitress for two, then looked at me. “What happened to your face? Looks worse than usual.”