Fishing for Stars (33 page)

‘
Fuchida-san
, I have waited twenty years for this moment. Do not deny me now,’ I pleaded, forcing myself to keep my voice and my breathing even.

The
yakuza
boss looked at me steadily. ‘This was not in my original plan. It is a long time since the war, since you were an active warrior. Now you must go into his home in the dark and find him and bring him out alive. It is much too risky,
Nick-san
.’

‘That is what you implied with
Saito-san
, that he was too old, that his footsteps would show in the dust.’

‘
Hai!
’ he expostulated, momentarily caught off guard.

‘I have lived much of my life in the jungle. I am accustomed to measuring my footfall. I will bring him out alive, I promise.’

‘And if you don’t?’ The
yakuza
boss glared at me. ‘Understand, they will retaliate by killing
Anna-san
. Will you take such a risk?’

I hesitated momentarily. ‘If I don’t succeed, then nor will your people. The consequence will be the same. It is my duty and responsibility. My honour will be insulted if you do not allow me,
Fuchida-san
,’ I persisted, playing the ultimate card. I had got myself in a position where Anna’s life was possibly threatened but where there was no turning back:
heads you win, tails I lose, the old Nick dilemma.

Far from pleased,
Fuchida-san
shook his head slowly. ‘
Nick-san
, you make it impossible for me to refuse without dishonouring you.’

I attempted a grin. ‘I have a weapon,’ I said, patting the Browning concealed by my coat. ‘A very good one a friend recently gave me. It will be okay. You will see,
Oyabun
,’ I answered respectfully.

‘We will give you fifteen minutes, then we are coming in.’

‘Twenty?’ I asked. ‘I have to learn the interior of the house.’ I turned to Saito. ‘Did you get a plan of the layout from a servant?’

He nodded and removed a slip of paper from inside his black kendo robe. Then he turned to
Saito-san
. ‘Show
Nick-san
the gate you used to enter.’

‘No gate,
Oyabun
, we used a butterfly cut,’ Saito replied, touching the
katana
. A butterfly cut I was to learn is an X-shaped slash traditionally used by the Samurai to dismember an opponent, but in this case it proved to be a convenient way to make a hole in the high brush fence.

I removed my jacket so that my movements wouldn’t be restricted, revealing the automatic pistol stuck in my belt.

‘Your white shirt makes you an easy target even in the dark,’
Fuchida-san
said. He turned to the tallest of the men. ‘Give the
gaijin
your jacket,’ he ordered. By using the term for a foreigner rather than my name he was expressing his barely contained anger. The
wakagashira
removed his heavy cotton fighting jacket and I put it on. Traditionally a loose fit, it proved not nearly big enough, a fact that seemed to anger the
yakuza
boss even further. ‘You will be a large white elephant and very easy to kill!’ he said.

‘Perhaps not so easy,
Oyabun
. You people have tried without success to do so before!’

‘
Hai!
’ Fuchida exclaimed. Then suddenly his expression changed. He grinned and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Okay,
Nick-san
!’

Saito-san
led me to the fence which, in the near darkness, seemed entirely undamaged. By pushing it inwards it opened up but proved too small for me to enter. He laughed. ‘I will make another larger cut for the elephant,’ he joked.

I pointed to the opening. ‘How did you get the old lady through there?’

‘We didn’t, we took her through a gate.’

‘So why . . . ?’

He realised what I was implying. ‘It is not an honourable entry,
Nick-san
,’ then he added, ‘even for elephants.’

I took out the piece of paper showing the layout of the house and grounds. ‘Where is the gate, so that I can bring Konoe Akira out through it?’

He pointed to the gate on the roughly drawn plan. ‘You wish to enter through it as well?’ he asked.

‘No, we will enter the honourable way,
Saito-san
.’ If all this carry-on seems ridiculous in retrospect, it was not to
Saito-san
and his men, for whom the observation of ritual is essential if the gods are going to be with you in your endeavour.

Removing the
katana
from its scabbard
Saito-san
moved several feet away and in two lightning-fast strokes slashed open the fence. It was hard to imagine how sharp the blade must have been, but, taken together with the precise technique he used, it slashed through the thick plaited twigs like a knife through butter. Very few things in Japan are haphazard or spontaneous, and even this method of entry had become an art and a tradition, perhaps over centuries. Like most things Japanese it was tidy, and when the thick twigs were pulled back into place it was difficult to see where the cut had been made.

‘I will come with you to show you the door to enter. We left it unlocked, thinking we would be returning.’ He led the way along a path composed almost entirely of moss and slate, yet another Japanese contradiction – the path made of moss, and the garden of rocks and raked gravel. It led to a rear door in the large wooden house. ‘It may be best to remove your shoes,’
Saito-san
whispered. He waited until I did so and then slipped away noiselessly into the night.

I took the Browning from my belt and entered the darkened house, waiting a couple of minutes to allow my eyes to grow accustomed to the interior. I realised then that I was standing in the kitchen where I could make out an electric kettle and an electric rice cooker. Not everything in Konoe Akira’s home adhered rigidly to tradition, I decided.

Fortunately the house beyond the kitchen proved to be classical Japanese, the spaces left uncluttered, wooden floors covered with
tatami
mats, low tables displaying vases or other objects, a few embroidered silk screens, cushions and very little other furniture. Unlike the West where quantity matters, a rich person’s house in Japan is defined by the quality and age of the objects and not by their number. Though it was too dark to see anything clearly, I surmised that the furniture and various decorative objects in the central room where I stood would be expensive antiques.

The interior walls were of rice paper so that the direction of any noise was easy to identify. I moved towards the centre of the room and stood waiting. It was not dissimilar to the jungle where at first there is only silence, then slowly you begin to pick up the sounds around you until eventually it becomes a virtual cacophony of clicks, buzzes, hums, croaks, ticks and knocks. Within perhaps thirty seconds I could hear snoring coming from two directions, the first in the northern corner of the house and the second, lighter, from the eastern side, which I surmised must be from the drugged and comatose old lady’s nurse. The other snores were more sonorous, coming fast and in a cadence where every second snore seemed to be at a slightly different pitch. Either Konoe Akira suffered from severe breathing problems or there was more than one person asleep in the northern section of the house. I decided after listening a little longer that this was the case. I was going to have to contend with two people in close proximity to each other.

By this stage my eyes had grown accustomed to the dark so I was able to see objects and doorways quite easily. I returned to the kitchen and, finding a knife, I removed the plugs of the kettle and rice cooker from the wall sockets and cut them off to give me two lengths of electrical cord each approximately two and a half feet long. Then I found a dishtowel, and wiping the handle of the knife carefully, I returned it to the rack and stuffed the dishtowel in one trouser pocket and the flex in another.

I returned to the centre of the house, stopping to listen and ensure that the snoring duet continued before moving in the direction from which it came, padding down a fairly broad passageway, the walls of which were made of rice-paper panels. I passed the sliding doors to three rooms and then saw a dimly illuminated form asleep on a futon at the end of the passage. A tiny nightlight stood on the
tatami
matting beside him. I approached very slowly, pausing after every carefully placed step, realising that I probably only had one chance at surprise. I finally reached the foot of the futon and saw by the nightlight that a high-powered torch and a Japanese Type 26 service revolver lay on the
tatami
inches from the man’s head. He was lying on his stomach with his face turned away from me so that I could see only the back of his head. I noted his hair – grey. Konoe Akira’s nightwatchman was clearly not a young man.

I silently thanked my lucky stars that he wasn’t supine. Lying as he was on his stomach he was going to be a lot easier to subdue. Disarming a sleeping enemy sentry when attempting to get behind enemy lines was fundamental stuff I’d learned in Z Force. Fundamental then, but that was more than twenty years ago. I’d never come across a sleeping sentry in combat conditions and not all that many times during practice. I lowered myself to my haunches and picked up first the torch, the more dangerous of the two weapons, for if it were to be suddenly shone directly into my face I would be blinded for at least thirty seconds. This would be more than sufficient time to empty the chamber of the service revolver at point blank range or to bludgeon me unconscious with the heavy torch. I placed it well out of reach and then took up the revolver and laid it beside the torch.

I was no longer young; at forty-six my breath wasn’t as even as it should have been. Anxiety is the opponent you carry within you, so I waited a moment to calm down, assuring myself that I wasn’t dealing with a
ninja
or any of the other kinds of Japanese unarmed combat specialists, none of whom would dream of using a gun, least of all an ancient and clumsy wartime Japanese service revolver. Besides, if my adversary had been any of these trained killers I would certainly not have been able to approach without his becoming aware of my presence.

What I did next would probably decide whether I succeeded or failed in bringing Konoe Akira out without having to kill him. I placed the Browning automatic down near the sleeping man’s feet so he couldn’t reach it if anything went wrong. Then, taking a short, sharp breath, I straddled the futon and the man’s torso and knelt down hard, my knees slamming into his ribs. Two hundred and thirty pounds of concentrated weight just under the lungs will blow the air out of the Michelin man. I heard a loud exhalation as the air was forced from his lungs and then some strangled gasping as he struggled for breath, unable to cry out. I half rose and turned to face his feet, seated on the back of his thighs so he couldn’t move his legs. In a few moments I had his feet crossed and tied at the ankles, knotting the flex sufficiently tightly so he could not struggle free, but not so tightly that I prevented the flow of blood to his feet.

I turned to face his head again, this time sitting astride his buttocks while I pulled his arms behind his back and tied them with the second piece of electrical cord, again not sufficiently tightly to restrict the circulation. I rose to my feet and stepped to the side of the futon and flipped him onto his back, softly kneading his stomach so he could regain his breath. He did so with a gasp, gulping hard, desperate for more air. Satisfied that he could once again breathe, I used the dishcloth to gag him then rolled him back onto his stomach. I was gratified that my training in Queensland all those years ago had come back to me. I would probably have been a bit slow and clumsy for the likes of Sergeant Major Wainwright, the Geordie Z Force instructor. (‘Clumsy and slow, Duncan! You’ve wakened the whole
fooking
enemy guard room and you’re halfway to hell by now!’)

‘If you attempt to move I will kill you,’ I said quietly to the frightened little man, whom, I now realised, I could probably have knocked unconscious with a single cuff behind the ear, or better still, simply found the right pressure points in his neck. I was also surprised at how rapidly I was breathing. I guess I didn’t have what it takes to be a James Bond.

I thought about clocking the little bloke, a solid tap with the torch, but he was no longer in a position to endanger me, and as the bishop sometimes said, ‘Sufficient unto the day, Nicholas. One shouldn’t overdo things.’

I emptied the chamber of the Japanese revolver into my trouser pocket and wiped it clean using my shirt, stooping and dropping it onto the futon so it didn’t make any noise. Taking up the torch and regaining my own gun I gently started to slide back the door to what I hoped might be Konoe Akira’s bedchamber. It opened with hardly a sound, a credit to the carpenter and
Konoe-san
’s insistence on perfection in all things.

I know this is beginning to sound a bit like a scene from a comic opera, but he simply continued to snore. Remembering that morphine is also a powerful sedative, I switched on the torch, directing the light against my chest then adjusting the glow with my fingers so I could look for the switch that didn’t seem to be beside the door. I scanned the room and discovered the light switch a foot or so above his head. My heart jumped as I saw a cane leaning against the wall beside the switch. I had my man.