Evil and the Mask (20 page)

“But even if life is hard, you mustn’t die,” she said quietly. “I don’t know all the details about what happened, but you’ve got to get over it.”

“Get over it?”

“That’s right. Because here and now you’re alive.”

She put her arms gently around me.

“Did you know this?” she went on. “Every year far more people kill themselves in Japan than die through war or terrorism in Iraq. We go on and on about other countries, but I think Japanese society is pretty cruel too.”

She took a deep breath.

“Let’s sleep like this today. From a distance we’ll look like a contented couple.”

“You’re weird, you know that?”

“It’s just that I don’t like the world very much.”

When I woke the next morning, Mikihiko Kuki’s secretary was standing outside my apartment.

WHEN THE DOORBELL rang, I was still in bed and Kyoko was sitting at the table watching TV. The news was reporting on Diet members who’d secretly taken to wearing wigs after JL threatened to assassinate politicians in order of baldness. One guest, a young politician, was calling it pitiful. Another, a self-declared liberal, said that the PM should do the imitation of Hiromi Go, a comment that infuriated the third guest, a member of the conservative party. The directors of a chemical plant where three employees had died of overwork had all suffered food poisoning at a nightclub, and it was suspected that JL was behind it. I ignored the bell but it just kept on ringing, echoing through the apartment. Kyoko, who was laughing at
the news, gradually turned to look at me. I climbed out of bed and looked at the intercom. A tall middle-aged man was standing there.

“Koichi Shintani?” he asked as soon as I lifted the receiver.

“What is it?”

“Mikihiko Kuki would like to meet you.”

I could feel Kyoko’s eyes on my back.

“I don’t know him.”

“Please get ready,” he said, completely ignoring me. “The car is waiting.”

He fell silent. I was a bit unnerved, but I realized that more than anything that I was just weary. The moment I heard the name Mikihiko, my fatigue grew much stronger. I was sure that no matter what I said, this guy would just keep repeating the same message. When I replaced the receiver Kyoko was still watching me. In the light seeping through the curtains her skin looked white.

“I’m going out for while.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Maybe.”

I started to get changed.

“What should I do?”

“If you’ve got things to do you can go home, but you can stay here if you like.”

“But if I stay here, you know I’m going to go snooping around, at your computer and stuff.”

“That’s okay. Anyway, I don’t think you will.”

“You should be more careful.”

When I opened the front door the man gestured for me
to walk ahead of him. I could feel his looming presence. I remembered stories of jailers accompanying prisoners like this, walking behind so they could keep an eye on them.

WE GOT INTO a black car, expensive but tasteless, and drove slowly along the dark road. The streetlights were just coming on. There was a matte cigarette case in the car but I lit one of my own instead. I saw that the smoke bothered him and he opened the window, so I made up my mind to keep smoking until we arrived.

“Why does this guy Kuki want to see me?”

The man didn’t reply. No response at all, not even a shrug.

“What’s he like? Just give me your impression.”

“Mr. Shintani,” he said, still facing ahead and gripping the steering wheel.

I noticed that he had a dark red scar on his neck.

“It’s not my job to answer your questions. Mikihiko Kuki told me to bring you to him, and that’s all I’m doing. I wasn’t told to be polite. Just to deliver you.”

He didn’t overtake any other cars, nor give way to them.

“Obviously we are in close proximity at the moment, but that doesn’t mean we have to establish any kind of relationship. Is that understood?”

What a hard-ass. I just kept blowing smoke at him without saying anything.

WE GOT OUT of the car in front of the Lille Durant Hotel and took the elevator to the top floor. He swiped a card key through a scanner to open the automatic glass doors. “At the
back, on the right,” he said from behind me, and when we reached the room he stretched out an arm and rang the bell. An indistinct voice came from inside. My heart rate, which had been gradually increasing as we came closer, grew even more ragged. The voice sounded exactly like my father’s.

The man opened the door and we entered. I saw a carpet, garish under the dim lighting, a white table with white chairs. The rough, vulgar chandelier was unlit and some potted plants, struggling to grow in the restricted space, glowed pale orange under the indirect lighting. On the wall opposite was a painting, too big for the room, of a lake that looked like a pit. Behind the low table was a black sofa, and sitting on it was a man in a black tracksuit. I thought it was Father. My body went rigid, as though it had tensed of its own accord. He was tall, much bigger than Father, but if my father were fifty years old the similarity would have been remarkable. With a large nose and eyes that slanted down at the corners, he should have been ugly, but somehow his face had a kind of dignified balance. Even from a distance I could tell that his clothes were made of expensive fabric.

“That will do,” he said quietly.

“But—” protested the driver.

“It’s fine. Go home.”

The man who had brought me here bowed low and silently left the room.

For some reason the picture of the lake had really grabbed my attention. The man gazed expressionlessly at me, not saying a word, as I stood in the doorway. The orange lights threw random shadows around the room. I moved slowly
towards him, doing my best to stay calm. The closer I got, the more he looked like my father. I stood before the sofa with the table between us, staring at him. My pulse just wouldn’t settle. I felt I was reliving all those memories of being summoned to Father’s study. A bottle of whiskey and a glass with spiral patterns etched in it cast long shadows on the table.

“What can I do for you?” I asked.

My throat was incredibly dry. His dark form seemed like the wreckage of something huge and soft.

“You brought me here, remember? If we’ve got no business then I’m leaving.”

“It’s so depressing.”

He watched me lazily, leaning back in the couch. He was big-boned but, cloaked in languor, he showed no energy at all.

“Koichi Shintani, eh?”

The corners of his mouth turned up slightly.

“You’ve done well. Nice to meet you, Fumihiro.”

Suddenly I felt like I was suffocating. He didn’t take his eyes off me.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

“That won’t work. Tricks like that, they never work with me.”

Even though I’d half expected this, the strength in my legs deserted me. Confronted with his bland gaze I had no idea what to do.

“Have a seat. Something to drink?”

“I’m fine.”

“Relax. You must be thirsty.”

Slowly he stood and took a beer from the fridge. When he moved, his blurred shadow danced on the wall behind him.

“Everyone who meets me seems to get nervous. It’s not me they’re afraid of. It’s the hell inside me. Especially now. It’s really depressing.”

I sat on the couch and looked directly at him. He wasn’t drunk, but he reminded me of Father when he was intoxicated. His skin was dark, as though the dullness was oozing out from inside, and I couldn’t read the emotion in his clouded eyes. I sank deep into the sofa, feeling uncomfortable. It was like the couch was alive, holding me in place with its strange, soft springiness.

In the quiet of the room I was aware of a faint ringing in my ears. He continued to sip his whiskey without speaking. I opened my beer. He reacted slightly to the sound of the cap coming off, turned his dead eyes on me as though he was surprised. But he still just kept drinking in silence. I lit a cigarette, unpleasantly aware of the sofa subsiding beneath me. Finally he opened his mouth again.

“I’m in the war business.”

His voice was extremely low.

“You’re going to work for me.”

“Why?”

“No special reason.”

He sighed. His muddy eyes were pointed in my direction, but he seemed to be looking right through me.

“Do you know the story of Nayirah?”

“Not really.”

He set his glass on the table. His speech was very slow.

“In 1990, when Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait, the USA called a simple young woman
from Kuwait to testify at the Congressional Human Rights Caucus.”

His face betrayed no emotion, only his thick lips moving.

“She spoke of how cruelly the Iraqi soldiers were acting in Kuwait. She spoke of how they had ripped new-born babies from their incubators in the hospital and left them to die. America—no, the whole world—shook with rage. A UN force led by the US started aerial bombing to drive the Iraqi army out of Kuwait. The Gulf War.”

Slumped on the sofa, he droned on in his low voice.

“But afterwards it came to light that it had all been a lie. Nayirah was really the daughter of Kuwait’s ambassador to the US, and her whole story had been scripted by a PR firm. It turned into a huge scandal, reported all over the news, though it was only discovered after the war was over.”

He sighed again as though he was bored, and slowly reached for the whiskey bottle.

“There are two main ways of making money.”

I couldn’t tell where the conversation was heading.

“One is to develop an attractive product or service and to exchange it for the money in people’s wallets. The other is to squeeze money from the government, money they’ve taken by force in the form of taxes. That way is usually more profitable. Now I’m going to give you a brief lecture about how wars are started.”

Somehow I couldn’t get the giant painting of the lake behind him out of my head. His monologue looked like it was never going to end.

“Imagine a small country in Africa, with copper and
diamond mines. The big powers want the mining rights, but the king refuses, so the big powers scrape together the forces opposed to the king and secretly encourage them to form a rebel army. Then they start a propaganda campaign in their own countries, about how the king is oppressing his people, how he’s resisting freedom and democracy. They might send soldiers in to assist the rebels, or they might send in private companies to do it instead. Lots of modern wars have been privatized. Companies that supply weapons, companies that provide tents and food for the soldiers, companies that provide the rebels with military training and strategic guidance. These private companies are usually set up by ex-officers, so naturally they have ties to politicians and defense officials. They get their financing both from the rebels and from taxes in rich countries in the name of international cooperation.

“Of course the rebels in a small African country don’t have any funds, so how do they come up with that kind of money? How can they get their hands on such high-powered weaponry? They do it by borrowing money from the multinational mining corporations, in return for promising them the digging rights after they overthrow the monarch. With those funds they buy more weapons from private western companies and depose the king. War is big business. Any war has business interests involved in it somewhere—if you look deep enough, you’ll always find someone making a profit.

“Even after the fighting’s over there are plenty of business opportunities. Multinational construction firms get the contract to repair buildings and other stuff that’s been destroyed in the war. Naturally that’s also paid for out of rich countries’
taxes, under the guise of friendship. It’s a conspiracy by the politicians, the bureaucrats and the corporations to grab their own country’s taxes and the small country’s resources.

“I’ll tell you another thing. After the war, western nonprofits go into the country to help the exhausted populace, right? But it’s hard to offer aid in places that are still unstable, and they have no choice but to use guards from private companies to take care of security. Even if their motives are pure, they still generate concessions. No matter which way they turn, they can’t avoid them. Wars are fought in order to create concessions. Throughout human history, killing people in conflict has always stimulated the economy. And for generations the Kuki family has been intimately involved in the war business.”