John Rain 08: Graveyard of Memories (2 page)

I turned left under the elevated tracks just as a JR train went by overhead, its roar rattling shop windows and obliterating the din of the crowd. Seconds later, it was gone. The crowd was thinner here,
pachinko
parlors and ramen shops and other such indoor attractions more prevalent than stalls. I passed a cutlery shop and slowed to examine the offerings displayed in its window.

Someone slammed into my shoulder hard enough to spill what was left of my watermelon juice. I looked up. A
chinpira
, low-level yakuza punk or wannabe, was glaring at me, the rolled-up sleeves of his black tee shirt showing off a weightlifter’s muscles. “
Oi,
” he growled, “
koryaa, doko mite aruitonen, kono bokega!
” Hey asshole, watch where you’re going!

If the same thing were to happen today, I would apologize regardless of who was at fault, while taking a step back, blading my body slightly to offer a reduced target profile, and raising my hands palms-forward in a gesture ostensibly placating, but in fact tactically sound. I would convey with my tone, my posture, and my attitude that the aggressor was in fact fortunate I was being reasonable, while at the same time offering him no challenge, no insult, and no hostility, nothing but apparent respect and an opportunity to move on with no loss of face. I would do all this while simultaneously being intensely aware of what was happening at the periphery of the action, and never assuming the aggressor was alone. If he turned out to be too stupid to take the hint, I would act suddenly and decisively—no warnings, no posturing, no gradual escalation. And I would leave the scene the moment the threat was neutralized, keeping my head down and avoiding the eyes of potential witnesses.

But that would be today. Back then, I was fresh from combat, poisoned by testosterone, and filled with inchoate resentment at the world. After what I’d seen and done and survived, I didn’t have to take shit from anyone, least of all some street punk who thought he could woof me into submission.

So rather than doing anything sensible, I took a step toward him and said, “
Urusei na, omae koso kiotsukero yo!
” Loosely translated, Go fuck yourself, asshole!

The
chinpira
’s eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared. “
Oi!
” he bellowed. I thought he was yelling at me, but then I saw movement beyond him at the entrance to the
pachinko
parlor—two buddies, similarly attired, similarly bulky, and now looking at me with malevolent intent.

Three against one, and each of them bigger than I was. The first guy raised his right arm and began to jab a finger in my chest. Apparently thinking this was going to be just a fight, or better yet, a simple beat-down. But I had already clicked into combat mode.

My muscle memory was built on wrestling then, not yet judo. I parried the incoming right arm with my left, caught him under the triceps with my right hand, swept his arm through and past, and simultaneously scooted behind him—a circle drag, a setup I had favored on the mat in high school. He tried to spin, but I trapped his right arm against his side, my hands circling his waist, following his movement so that we were facing his buddies, who were now moving in from only a few meters away.

What I did next was all stupid reflex. I dropped my hips, got my weight under him, and exploded up and arched back in a suplay, another wrestling move that had served me well in teenage competition. The
chinpira
’s body rocketed over me like the last car on an off-the-tracks roller coaster, one arm still secured to his side, the other flailing crazily. I saw the world sail past in my peripheral vision, the ground looming, and then there was a shock up my arms as the back of the
chinpira
’s head smashed into the pavement. I heard his skull split from the impact, followed an instant later by another
crack
—his knees hitting the ground as his legs continued to accelerate over and past his ruined cranium.

I rolled to my side and scrambled to my feet just as the other two reached me. I might have been able to escape, but stun-and-run wasn’t yet part of my close-combat toolkit. My default was continuous offense. So I closed with the guy to my right, a tough-looking punk as ugly as a gargoyle, absorbing a punch to the cheek on the way in and going for his eyes. The other guy grabbed at me, got ahold of the shoulder bag, and hauled me back with it. I turned toward him, slipped an arm between the strap and my body, and bent forward. The bag came free and he stumbled away. The gargoyle jumped on my back. I tried to roll him but lost my balance. We both went down, but I twisted en route and managed to plant an elbow in his side so he took most of the impact. I scrambled on top of him, not yet experienced enough to know the importance of getting clear when there are or could be multiple attackers, grabbed his head, and sank my thumbs into his eye sockets. He screamed and thrashed and I bellowed back, an engine of destruction, gripping tighter, trying to force my thumbs through his eyes and into his brain. Then his buddy was back, throwing punches—I was lucky he didn’t have a knife, or even a pipe—and I released the gargoyle and trained my attention on the more immediate problem. Whatever he saw in my expression, he decided he wanted no part of it. He turned and sprinted away. I almost went after him, the combat switch much easier to flick on than off, but somehow got hold of myself. I glanced around. A cluster of people had gathered in a circle around us, ominously quiet amid the background noise of Ueno. The first
chinpira
was lying still; the second was writhing on the ground, clutching his face and screaming.
Shit.
Instinctively I looked down and shouldered through the onlookers.

I circled back to the crowds of Ameyoko, drifted along for a few minutes while discreetly checking my back, then made my way to Okachimachi Station, where I caught a JR train. My heart was racing and my hands were shaking and I felt like I must look guilty of something. But none of the afternoon train riders, mostly uniformed schoolchildren and a few pensioners sweating in their shirtsleeves, seemed to take any particular notice of me.

I got off at Tokyo Station and made my way to the street. It didn’t even occur to me that someone might be trying to follow me and I was lucky no one was; I was just putting distance between myself and the incident. Once outside, I started to think.

How badly had I screwed up? I wasn’t sure. I realized I hadn’t handled the whole thing well. I wasn’t a civilian; I couldn’t afford to take civilian risks or indulge civilian impulses. I’d already done the exchange when the whole thing happened, yes, but I was still part of something covert, and I had to accept the discipline that came with that. I couldn’t be discreet “when it counted.” I had to remember, I had to know, that it
always
counted.

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.