‘What if they don’t?’
Two flutes of smoke came out of Yoshi’s flat nose. ‘If they don’t, there’s a plan,’ he said. ‘And if they do, there’s also a plan. You’ll learn all this.’
‘Where do I join the ship?’
‘At Otaru. It happens fast, before they have time to let anyone know. Actually, they won’t want to let anyone know.’
‘Why?’
‘No. Enough,’ Yoshi said. The minimal nose and the shell glasses gave him the appearance of a tough cat. ‘There’s a lot for you to learn, but not here. In the place set up for you to learn. You stay out of sight there till it’s time for you to move.’
Porter nodded. ‘Yoshi,’ he said, ‘do you know what I have to do at Green Cape?’
‘No. I don’t have to know that,’ Yoshi said.
‘It’s not as healthy as smoking cigarettes.’
‘So?’
‘I am the one that’s going, not you.’
‘If you don’t keep to the plan maybe you can’t go.’
‘If I don’t like the plan,’ Porter said, ‘I won’t go.’
Yoshi looked at him, blinking slowly.
‘What’s wrong with the plan?’ he said.
‘I don’t know,’ Porter said. ‘I’ll find out at Nagasaki.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Yoshi said. His mouth had fallen open and his blinking had accelerated. ‘I told you — you join the ship at Otaru. You can’t go to Nagasaki. You can’t go anywhere. You have to stay out of sight. If there’s anything you want to know, we’ll find it out. What is it you want to know?’
‘What equipment have they got on the ship?’
‘What equipment? I’ve got a man who knows the equipment. He knows the ship. He’ll explain it all to you. Everything is taken care of. I promise you!’
‘Has the man been on the ship during refitting?’
‘He doesn’t have to go on the ship. He’s a — a professional man. He knows these things. I can’t tell you here — it’s confidential!’ Yoshi mouthed over the radio row.
‘Yoshi, I’ve learned these ships have the worst accident record in the world, and a new man gets the shittiest ’jobs. Unless I arrive in one piece at the other end there’s no point in going at all. I have to know about it. Do you understand?’
‘Understand,’ Yoshi said. He was looking troubled. ‘But you can’t get in the yard anyway. We also tried to get in, for information. We got it from the freight forwarders in the end. It’s a private yard, very secure, they don’t let anyone in.’
‘But they have to let them out. Which yard is it?’
Yoshi checked with his paper. ‘Takeshuma. Round the bay, near Mitsubishi.’
‘I know Mitsubishi. You can look into it from the hill. How near there is it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Yoshi said. He took his glasses off, and put them on again. ‘Listen, come back with me,’ he said, ‘and you’ll understand. Leave the cases here, if you want. They can be sent for. Just agree that for now.’
But Porter wouldn’t agree it. He said he planned to rest, and look over the blueprints and his documentation. Yoshi wouldn’t leave the documentation but he reluctantly agreed to leave the blueprints. He unfolded the sheets and carefully scissored off a strip along the bottom, which gave the date and the draughting details. Then he cut off another along the top.
This gave the name of the ship, which was the Suzaku Maru.
Rain was smashing down when he woke.
It was very dark, and the room was chill from the air conditioner. He took a warm shower and went down to the coffee bar. This place he found shut so he crossed the street to the station. Plenty of small cafés were open there.
The rain had stopped but the night was damp and hot, alive now with neon. It glistened in the puddles, and cast a red glow over the enormous city. The station was still crowded, the streets clogged with hooting traffic. He found a sushi bar and picked at his plate, musing.
His Japanese would do. Over the years he had been running there and back; on the last occasion as it happened, to Hokkaido, where he now had to pick up the ship. On that occasion he had been picking up Ainu, from the remaining aboriginals there.
Japanese yes, but his Korean no. On the ship he was going to need Korean. He had brushed up a bit at the camp and more had been arranged for him here. It was the ship that worried him more. As Yoshi had snipped off the details he had noticed the date. The blueprints were thirty-five years old.
He went back and studied them anyway.
He saw there was no provision for containerisation. The ship hadn’t carried containers thirty-five years ago; although evidently it did now. And what of the deck equipment: the derricks, cranes, capstans? Stinking old machinery, for certain, and by now dangerous. A ship that went to ‘places the others don’t’ made heavy use of its own lifting gear, soon worn out. A line like this would either get a cheap repair job or replace it with scrapyard junk. In any case it wouldn’t be where it was on the blueprints — not if container shafts had been put in.
He pored over the sheets, all the same, memorising the equipment and its positioning. He did it until two in the morning when his eyes were closing, and then he phoned Yoshi’s number again. It rang for a long time and then was abruptly answered by a female — very angry, almost in shock. He left a message for Yoshi, and went to bed.
15
The Theosophical Society of East Asia had a beautiful small courtyard, totally secluded, and approached by a long alley ending in a tunnel and solid wooden doors. The doors opened silently after Yoshi had beeped his remote control and received an answering beep.
A little old man with a rake was watching as the car entered and came to a halt. Yoshi nodded to him as they got out and the old man nodded back. He was wearing a conical straw hat and scraping lines in a sand garden, and in addition to the rake he was holding the electronic gadget that had opened the doors.
The morning was very heavy and grey and they had driven for over an hour through back streets to get here. Away from the centre the prosperous city was suddenly in the third world: few pavements, puddled lanes. This area seemed more salubrious but was still a jumble of sheds, factories, small apartment blocks.
The Theosophical Society itself was wedged between a book depository and a tin-roofed works; but inside the gates was another world. A fountain played. Carp swam in a pool.
‘You like this place?’ Yoshi asked.
Porter looked around it, nodding.
A heavily eaved house, evidently ancient and covered with an elegant creeper, it enclosed all four sides of the courtyard, the tunnel and the gates merely set into it.
‘You’ll work well here, you’ll concentrate,’ Yoshi told him. ‘You can rest in the garden. And this is Machiko,’ he said, as a young lady in glasses appeared in the doorway. She was wearing a track suit and an unsmiling countenance.
‘We spoke,’ she said. ‘On the phone. At two o’clock this morning.’
‘Sure. Sorry about that,’ Porter said.
‘It’s okay. It’s just that I like to get out and jog first thing. I didn’t jog too much today.’ The appearance was little-girl Japanese, with black pudding-bowl haircut. But she was not a little girl. And the language was not Japanese but pure Canadian.
‘She does all kinds of voices. She will do regional Korean,’ Yoshi told him. ‘Also your legend. You’ll work with Machiko. on the legend.’
‘What have you got for me here?’ Porter said.