Assignment - Manchurian Doll (3 page)

“Waldo—”

“Please let me go now, Sam. Good luck.” Waldo went to the outer door. His thin frame was no more than a passing shadow. Then all at once he grinned and stuck out a shaking, emaciated hand to Durell. Durell took it. It was like holding a handful of wet twigs. Waldo said: “Give me a minute to mix with the crowd, hunh? And one last word of advice, Sam. You want some advice from me?”

“I’m listening,” Durell said.

“Then forget about Colonel Kaminov. Go after Omaru. He’s the one. Kill him. Smash him. Then go home. That’s all.”

He was gone.

There was a quick glare of light as he opened the door, then the gloom returned. Durell waited one minute, wanting a cigarette, wondering how much of Fingal’s information he could believe. He decided to talk it over with Eliot Barnes and Tagashi at their meeting today.

He heard Waldo Fingal’s scream as he stepped outside into the harsh sunlight.

From the rear pavilion where he stood he could look across the miniature gardens and ponds and small, jewel-like bridges to where the crowd was gathering, like steel filings attracted to a magnet, sweeping along the paths toward Waldo.

The man had moved fast—but not fast enough.

Durell jumped from the pavilion and walked with the crowd. He did not see the old
soba
seller or the Japanese teenage girl who had followed him from his hotel.

He was much taller than most of the Japanese, and he could look down to where the three black-uniformed Japanese police had cleared a space around Fingal. He saw Fingal’s face, teeth bared to the white, bright sky. There was a bone-handled knife up to the hilt between his skinny ribs.

But not much blood. There didn’t have to be. The knife had been shoved straight home to Waldo Fingal’s heart.

He knew the girl was somewhere near. She had not followed him for nothing. He did not know who she was or what she wanted, but he determined to find out. Perhaps she had seen Waldo killed, or had done it herself. One reason for Fingal’s death was obvious—he had been killed by Omaru for talking to him. He would settle that later. He would make up for Fingal’s death, because it was a small death for himself, and Fingal’s life, however mean and hopeless, lessened his own chances for survival when it was lost.

He stopped thinking about it and concentrated on the girl. She had been a clumsy shadow. Perhaps she would be an equally clumsy quarry. Durell slid into the role of hunter with a grim, single-minded ease.

She had used public transportation to follow him, and unless she was part of the affair that tied into Waldo Fingal, and had been picked up by a car as part of that business, she had to use the bus back to Tokyo. He walked with a long stride back across the park, and was gratified to pick her up quickly.

She made the mistake of turning her head, as if looking for him, and he saw she was pale with fright. Her eyes locked with his—a mistake no professional would make—and then she stepped aboard the crowded bus. The bus door slammed shut and she was away from him, the dust churning up under the vehicle’s wheels, heading back to the city.

He could wait for a second bus, but there were a hundred or more stops on the way, and she could get off and vanish before his own bus came in sight. He couldn’t afford that. The single wide-eyed glance she had thrown him had shown him she was acting in panic, running from Waldo’s death, cancelling her own commitment to follow him.

Near the bus stop was a coastal road to a cluster of fishing piers and teahouses. Some cars were parked there. The second one was a taxi. The driver wasn’t around. Durell saw the keys in the ignition and slid inside. The car was a Datsun, and he was familiar enough with it.

The fact that he was a Westerner, if he were caught pinching the taxi, would raise hell with the local police. But he had to risk that. A man going into the teahouse gave him a hard, curious stare, but kept going. The driver didn’t come out. In fact, there was no alarm at all.

Just luck, he thought grimly.

It could turn out to be the sort of luck Waldo Fingal had.

He caught up to the bus before it made its first stop. The girl didn’t get off. She didn’t get off at any of the other stops along the route through Tokyo’s industrial suburbs, either. It was hotter here, and the highway was typically Japanese—poorly maintained and overcrowded. He was aware of fatigue from the long flight over the Pacific that had ended only this morning. Fortunately, he had breakfasted on the jet, and he had long ago learned to snatch sleep and rest under any conditions. He could keep going for seventy-two hours, if necessary.

It was noon when the bus he was following swung past Hibaya Park. The girl got off there. Durell immediately swung the cab to the curb and left it, keys inside, and walked after the girl. She did not look back. She walked quickly, her head high, her small hips swinging insolently in her tight blue jeans, her thick black hair bobbing as she weaved in and out along the crowded sidewalks.

As in every city, wealth lived cheek-by-jowl with poverty in Tokyo, but here there were even greater contrasts. Along the whirling neon signs of the Ginza, which never seemed to be turned off, there were women in kimonos or Western frocks, Indian saris, or assortments of rags. There were old women in coveralls, straw sandals and gumboots, and children in stiffly starched dresses and shirts. Traffic swarmed in rivers of bicycles, crammed trolleys and cars, but the current always made way for Tokyo’s religious personalities—Shinto
kannush
i priests, Buddhists, Catholic nuns. There were proud Indian Sikhs in pink turbans, black students’ tunics, American military uniforms, Hindu
saddhus
and swarms of short, aggressive Japanese businessmen in dark, Madison-Avenue-style suits.

The girl picked up a bicycle out of a rack near the Mitsukoshi department store and then pedaled slowly toward the Babylonian architecture of the Diet Building. Durell followed easily on foot—the traffic was jammed, and her progress was slower than his. Once he had to pause, and he bought a copy of the Tokyo newspaper
Mainichi
and pretended to read it.

He wondered if she worked for the police or the man named Omaru. She wore her silk shirt hanging out over the blue jeans, and he guessed she was not more than twenty. Her glossy black hair was clipped in straight bangs across her forehead and made her look like a souvenir Nipponese doll. He followed her through the cascading balloons that carried advertising ideograms proclaiming the virtues of beer, toothpaste or butter. The afternoon sun was hotter than before.

She turned into a side-street off the Nishi, finally, and Durell found himself in a narrow, cobbled alley that echoed with clattering sandals and the cries of peddlers hawking bean paste, tea, fish and Coca-Cola. He noted many pachinko parlors—the pinball craze that gripped modem Japan. He waved off two painted, simpering pam-pam girls and waited for a procession of yellow-robed priests to pass, holding red umbrellas, and followed by turbulent youngsters dressed and masked as devils and dragons. The girl parked her bicycle against the curb and then stared into a gaudy
pachinko
parlor a few feet away.

Durell had almost forgotten the tremendous crush of people in Tokyo. There were nightclubs, bars, restaurants displaying their specialty of raw slabs of fish rolled into rice balls. You could please every exotic taste and fashion here, he thought.

He did not close in on the girl until she walked on and then paused outside the dim, speckled window of an old-fashioned Chinese chemist’s. The place looked somewhat sinister with its display jars of mummified snakes, vipers and tortoises, and big bottles of poisonous-looking liquids.

Then she disappeared inside.

Durell stepped quickly and pushed open the shuttered door to the Chinese chemist’s and went in. A strange scent of chemicals and herbs mingled with the starchy odor of fresh laundry. There were gloomy cases of ceramic jars, a grinning devil’s mask hanging from the ceiling, an abrupt feeling of darkness after the bright street outside.

The girl was already at the back of the shop, opening a rear door, when Durell jumped across the room and caught her wrist. She gasped and tried to spin away.

“Hold it, honey.”

“You’re hurting me—please—who—”

“You know who I am,” Durell said.

She tried to tug her wrist free. Her bones were small and fragile, though her body was more mature than those of most Japanese girls, and her boyish haircut made her look hoydenish. Her ripe mouth was angry, no longer frightened, and her eyes were tough and cynical. He knew his grip hurt her.

“All right, I won’t run away,” she yielded.

He said: “You followed me all morning, from the airport to the temple grounds. Who are you?”

“My name is Yuki,” she said.

“Did you see who killed Waldo Fingal?”

“No, I didn’t see it happen. I was waiting for you to come out. Please, I’m not your enemy. I’m supposed to take you to my father.”

“And who is he?”

“Tagashi-san—he works for you, doesn’t he?” Her English was that of a schoolgirl, spoken with a sing-song cadence. He eased his grip on her wrist. There seemed to be no one else in the chemist’s shop. “I followed you because he wanted to be certain nothing bad happened.”

“But something did, didn’t it? To Waldo Fingal.”

“I don’t know about that,” she said. She looked sulky, massaging her wrist. “My father got me a position in the Soviet Embassy, as a personal maid for Nadja Osmanovna. You know the name? I’ve been there for a week. He arranged all my papers. Do you understand? I was about to go to my father now. You can follow me.”

“I intend to,” Durell said. “Why did you give up the job of tailing me?”

She hesitated. ‘T saw Omaru’s men at the temple. I wasn’t afraid, but I thought it best to leave.”

She looked like a stubborn, defiant little liar. He did not know if she was really Tagashi’s daughter, but he meant to find out. The girl annoyed him.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s go see Tagashi.”

He ducked through a beaded curtain at the back of the shop, went out into an alley and through a wooden doorway, and found himself with the girl on the grounds of a restaurant inside an area bounded by a high wooden fence. Here the crush and pressure of Tokyo’s streets were abruptly replaced by the calm interior beauty where the Japanese truly lived. Durell followed the girl down a winding path and caught the scent of lemons from her, as if she had been eating citrus fruit.

There were small houses around a carp pond set in a cleverly irregular garden decorated with stone lanterns. The place was busy, crowded with Japanese men attended by waitresses in the light, gaily colored
yukata
kimonos. In a little house that bore the ideogram for Plum Hut, Yuki Tagashi stood aside and gestured impatiently for Durell to precede her.

“You first, honey,” he said, smiling.

“But it is perfectly safe. I am not your enemy.”

“One never knows. Stay ahead of me, Yuki.”

Tagashi and Eliot Barnes were waiting in the small room furnished with foot-high tables,
tatami
mats of straw, and the traditional
tokonoma
, the sacred alcove, in which a small jade vase and a spray of chrysanthemums glowed with economic beauty. Eliot and Tagashi were seated at the table, and Tagashi lifted himself easily, a tall, spare man, to greet Durell.

Durell slipped off his shoes at the entrance and watched the girl slide to one side, bowing to her father.

“Irassahi, Durell-san.” Tagashi had a strong Kansai accent from Western Japan. “Come in, you are welcome.”

Eliot grinned and extended a hand. “Hey, Cajun. Long time no see.”

Durell suspected that Tagashi had once been a member of the dreaded Kempei-tai, the Japanese secret police of World War II. He was sure the man was still operating with the Japanese security bureaus, whatever his job with K Section. Tagashi had cropped gray hair, and he stood much taller than the average of his countrymen. His face was hollow, hard and dangerous. His eyes were tough. Next to him, Eliot Barnes with his straw hair and freckles looked like a youngster fresh from a sand-lot ballgame in a Midwestern town.

“Please be seated,” Tagashi said courteously. “We have ordered lunch.” He looked amused. “You met my daughter?”

“Yuki introduced herself. She works for you?”

“She is a bright child.” Tagashi’s hard eyes touched the girl’s jeans and shirt with disapproval. Yuki stared blankly at Durell. “She gave us some interesting information last night, while you were still flying from the States. But of course, you must give us your own views first. We are at your disposal, Durell-san.”

“Thank you. Is this place secure?”

“Perfectly, Durell-san.”

Tagashi’s looks and manner reminded Durell of his grandfather, old Jonathan, back in Bayou Peche Rouge. The old man lived alone on the hulk of an ancient Mississippi sidewheeler that had been Durell’s boyhood home, and much of his training as a hunter had been derived from the old gentleman’s wisdom. Tagashi had much the same qualities as old Jonathan. He was a gambler, familiar with the hazards of an adventurer’s life. He was professional. He was still alive. And Fingal had been an amateur.

Durell’s briefing was terse and concise. The two other men listened quietly. The girl didn’t move.

He discussed Colonel Alexi Kaminov’s motives and sincerity in sending the message that he wished to seek political asylum in America.

“According to our files, Kaminov was with the MVD, allied to the military. He had a fine record in World War II, fighting around Minsk and Moscow—and at Stalingrad, too. He was only nineteen then, and our own government decorated him. He lost a leg at Stalingrad, by the way. Afterward, he did desk work for the Guard Directorate in Moscow, then was transferred to Peiping in 1958 as a military attache. Never married. Handsome, six feet two, blond, mustache. Trained originally as a ballistics engineer. Now he’s an expert in Sino-Soviet relations.”

Eliot Barnes cleared his throat like a schoolboy. “Sam, SEATO is yelling for help. Southeast Asia is boiling under the lid, and we need dope on Red Chinese troop movements. Getting data is like groping in a dark closet. We can’t put our own people into China, and our people in Hong Kong and Macao are unreliable. Even the Soviets have their problems with their alleged Chinese allies, eh? If Kaminov comes over, he could answer a lot of pressing, urgent questions.”