Girl in a Box (14 page)

Excellent. I waited till she was out of sight, then slid the folder on the Izu retreat in front of me. I didn't bother trying to decode the kanji on most of the papers, which looked like reports of sales totals. I wanted directions to the hot spring, the agenda for the meeting, and the six pages of graphs and flowcharts relating to the K Team's progress.

Quickly, I photocopied the papers with the directions and agenda, putting the originals back. Then I removed two of the flowchart pages; these would be the “lost” pages. I slid the two pages along with the photocopies of directions into a plastic page protector that I'd tucked into my handbag the night before.

Mrs. Okuma's folder was back where she'd left it just as Miyo Han swung back into the office with a self-satisfied smile.

“Are you finished with Mr. Martinson?” I was determined to keep my normal demeanor, no matter how much she tried to rattle me.

“Yes,” she answered shortly.

“But you didn't bring him back here, for the tax rebate?”

“Mr. Martinson doesn't qualify for a tax rebate, because he's a resident alien.” Miyo looked at me as if I were the biggest idiot on earth.

“Thanks for reminding me. So I guess all the people in this book can't get a rebate?” I gestured toward the K Team's registry book.

“No, but some of them get discounts, because of the credit card. That's what we always tell them. So, who did you call?”

I hesitated to reply. I'd had just five minutes to myself, and I'd been too busy with covert activity to get to the phone calls.

“Who did you call?” Miyo demanded.

I admitted, “I wasn't sure where I should start, so I wanted to ask you for advice. I'd like to know about the personality of some of these people first.”

“Don't waste time on that!” Miyo said sharply. “Customers will be coming in all day, and with Okuma-san so—distracted—over her conference, we have very little time. You'll be busy all day, and I'll have to deal with making more calls on Saturday when you're not working. I am shocked that in all the time I was gone, you have nothing to show for yourself.”

Oh, but I did.

I smiled at my rival, then went back to the K Team's book.

Saturday morning, I awoke a few minutes before my five o'clock alarm went off.

I was so excited that I actually jumped out of bed. This was the day I was going to breeze down to Izu and fix everything. The night before, I'd stayed up watching television and sewing new pockets into the interior of my brand-new white crinkle-cotton Issey Miyake jacket. Today I was wearing that jacket with stone-colored Agnes B cargo pants I'd bought because of the multiple small pockets, which would handily hide the various pieces of equipment used in bugging shoes. I'd practiced last night, on my own shoes, just to refresh myself, and made a trip to the coffeehouse. Sure enough, when I'd come home and checked the recording running on the transmitter, I'd heard myself, and the clerk who drew my latte, in exquisite detail. I could do it. The only question was whether I'd get the chance.

As I waited in line at the JR booth to buy my ticket to Atami, I mulled over the first challenge: explaining my presence. If I told Mrs. Okuma that I'd received a morning phone call from Miyo mentioning a paper found lying on the floor, Miyo would never support my story. So I came up with something a little shakier: I'd say that at the last minute, the night before, I had found Okuma-san's missing pages and, not knowing how to contact the boss at her home, decided to travel straight to Izu.

No employee would do such a thing, Michael had opined when I'd described my plan to him. A Japanese employee might, I said, reminding him that duty was everything.

The greatest challenge was timing. The retreat activities were to start at noon, which meant that people would be traveling in the morning. To be on the safe side, I took a train from Tokyo Station at six in the morning; it would put me into Izu's biggest transfer city, Atami, at around seven o'clock. With luck, I'd be at the
ryokan
by eight, and things would still be quiet enough there for me to discreetly locate a surveillance position. If I had visual access to the
ryokan
's entry, the
genkan,
I'd see the Mitsuyama men arrive. In the
genkan
, they'd exchange their shoes for slippers. When the time was right, I'd slip in, remove the shoes for a few minutes to my hiding place, then replace them.

“Theoretically, the missing papers are your insurance policy,” Michael had said during our last phone conversation. “You shouldn't try to make yourself known to anyone in the party. Just bring up the papers in a worst-case scenario, if one of the managers spots you.”

“But Mrs. Okuma needs the document I have. How can she give a good presentation without it? She's the only female employee there, I'd hate to see her fail in front of all the guys—”

Michael sighed heavily. “If only you were as loyal to me as you are to this boss of two whole days.”

“Three—and don't be ridiculous.” But it was true; I was starting to feel that I really was part of a team at Mitsutan. I felt a great deal of sympathy for Mrs. Okuma, and I admired the store's general manager, Enobu Mitsuyama, for his ambitious vision and personable style. Mr. Fujiwara, the customer service czar, had been very nice to me; and Mrs. Ono, the alterations director, was turning out to be a surprising ally. It was only Miyo Han who remained a thorn, but I wasn't going to take that personally. All of the K Team interpreters before me had quit, no doubt because of Miyo's fierce sense of competition.

As I boarded the train, carefully putting the ticket away in one of my many pockets, I thought about how I could help Mrs. Okuma yet satisfy Michael's desire for secrecy. If all went well with bugging the shoes and I was able to escape without detection by lunchtime, I'd simply fax Mrs. Okuma the missing pages from a convenience store, or a similar place back in Tokyo, and hope that it wouldn't be too late.

The bullet train tracks ran right past Fujisan—a mountain that, for once, was free of cloud cover. I took this as an auspicious sign, though the bright weather would make my own attempt at concealment, in the garden at Okamura Onsen, a little harder. I stretched back against the soft chair, wishing it were one o'clock and my mission were accomplished. But it was six forty-five in the morning. I had plenty of time to kill.

The train raced close to the rocky black coast, where seagulls circled over the choppy waves. A few fishermen were setting up on the beach, getting ready for a day's work. As we neared towns, the smoke from outdoor baths rose skyward. Normally, these scenes of relaxed country life would have charmed me, but I was too tightly wound to enjoy them.

I disembarked at Atami Station. Here, the local women wore unpretentious warm down coats and sensible boots; but still, each held a Louis Vuitton handbag. I had brought a white nylon Coach backpack, wanting to look like a young vacationer, but because it came from Mitsutan's accessories department, it cost fifty percent more than it would have in the United States. I wished I'd thought ahead and bought one in Washington, but I hadn't known, until I'd reached Tokyo, that this was the backpack of the moment: a must-have, if I wanted to appear like a fashionable twenty-three-year-old.

A shuttle bus to the
ryokan
was available, but to arrive so visibly would wreck my strategy. I drank a can of hot Georgia coffee and studied the map at the station exit, which showed a Prince Hotel half a mile up the river from Okamura Onsen. I'd decided that the Prince was large and anonymous enough to make it the perfect starting point for my expedition.

The taxi ride to the hotel took me away from a city loaded with touristy
kissaten
coffee shops and
pachinko
parlors and deep into the country, through tiny hamlets of tile-roofed houses and wild groves of mikan trees, the delicious, uniquely Japanese tangerines that were famous in Izu. The town of Okamura, with its small stucco houses, had signs everywhere pointing to various spas and hotels. Not many people were about at this hour—I saw only locals cycling or walking to their jobs. At the hotel, a boxy modern spa complex, I paid the 2,000-yen cab fare and stepped inside the hotel to visit the women's restroom. I went out by another entrance, being careful to load my backpack with two liters of water and a bag of salty-sweet
sembei
rice crackers, remembering something Michael had once said about being prepared for surveillance that could go on for hours without breaks for food or drink.

I strolled by the river, which had an English-language sign reading,
Keep a River Clean. Don't Throw the Trash.
Little need to worry, I thought, because there was zero evidence of garbage or any other detritus in the clear stream flowing over black rocks. A fisherman and his son waded through the shallow river, scooping for fish with nets, oblivious of my presence as I continued along a dusty path, river on one side and small vegetable plots planted with cabbage and daikon on the other. A farmer had set out bags of tangerines on a rock, with a little can next to them for payment. I dropped 300 into the can and added three tangerines to my backpack.

A slight bend, and then I saw Okamura Onsen, a stately group of cream-colored stucco villas with beautifully tiled roofs that reminded me of temples. Around them were the gardens full of blooming plum trees and aged storehouse buildings.

When Michael and I had been looking at the
ryokan
website, I'd learned more about it. Okamura Onsen's oldest buildings, the great hall and storage buildings, had been the property of an Edo silk merchant called Nario Okamura. In the 1960s, the Okamura family had sold the land and antiquated buildings to a hotel group who had carefully restored it. With only twenty-five guest rooms, it was a very small inn, not the kind of place you'd expect for a typical corporate retreat, unless the retreat was meant to be very intimate and inner-circle.

From Mrs. Okuma's paperwork, I'd learned about the other Mitsutan executives who'd been invited to this retreat. At the top of the list were Masahiro and Enobu Mitsuyama; Mr. Fujiwara, director of customer service; Mr. Yoshino; and the senior manager of the two floors devoted to Young Fashion, Mr. Kitagawa. I knew everyone except Mr. Kitagawa, though I'd seen him moving through Young Fashion, notebook in one hand and Palm Pilot in the other, taking notes. He was a stylish man, with hair long enough to touch the back of his collar, who wore really good suits—Jil Sander and Giorgio Armani, straight from the rack of what was currently selling in Men's Designer Wear.

Mr. Yoshino, the director of Accessories, was more typical of the store's veteran male managers: a balding man in his fifties who wore conservative suits and thick glasses. He reminded me a little of my Uncle Hiroshi, the banker, so it amused me greatly to think of him poring over designs for handbags and necklaces, figuring out what would sell fabulously for spring.

Mrs. Okuma was the only woman in the group; senior managers at the store were mostly male. Many women employees left the store when they became mothers. It struck me that I knew Mrs. Okuma was married, because she wore a ring, but I didn't know if she was a parent. Day care was limited in Japan, so I imagined that it would have been very hard for her to work full time while having a child; I decided that she probably was childless.

I wouldn't leave her in the lurch without her papers
, I promised myself while settling on the far side of a heavy waterwheel that had been erected in the
ryokan
's front garden as a decoration. It was the largest thing I could camouflage myself with. Lounging with my back against it, the latest Banana Yoshimoto novel, in Japanese, in hand, I felt that I must be the perfect picture of a relaxed young Japanese tourist. And the position was great, because I could see through the spokes of the wheel to view all the arriving guests.

Things were slow, so I'd text-messaged Michael: IN IZU AND WAITING. ALL SYSTMS GO.

Within minutes, a message had flashed back: SURE U REMBR DRILL?

YESSIR! I answered fliply. IN PANTS PKT ALNG W/EXTRA JST IN CASE.

I WAS REFRNG 2 YR PLNS IN C/O POSSBL SNAFU. ANY QSTNS?

Despite the 8,000 miles between us, I blushed at having so grossly misunderstood the reference. After a pause, I typed back: I'M GDTGO.

I had to be.

 

The sun was high and I'd been bitten by half a dozen blackflies by the time the Mitsuyama limousine rolled in. I'd already witnessed the arrival of Mrs. Okuma (in the black pumps she always wore to work), Mr. Fujiwara (in tan loafers of indiscriminate origin), and Mr. Kitagawa (in snappy brogues, maybe Paul Smith).

As I'd expected, the boss and heir apparent arrived last. They came in a chauffeured black Mercedes with the kanji characters for “Mitsutan” on the passenger doors. Apparently, the Mitsuyamas thought of themselves as royalty.

I peeped over the rim of the waterwheel and focused on the son, Enobu Mitsuyama, who emerged wearing a white polo shirt, white pleated pants, and—once I'd put my camera lens into close-up mode—blindingly white loafers with a gold G firmly affixed to the front. He walked around to the rear, to stand at attention while a black-suited driver opened the door and assisted his father, Masahiro, out of the rear. The conference was taking place over a weekend, yet the elder Mitsuyama had worn a sober dark blue suit and highly polished black wing tips. I wouldn't need to take a photo to identify these shoes in the lineup later on. He would be the first individual out of the thirty-odd people I'd spotted arriving that morning who had worn work shoes to the resort.

The chauffeur hefted the men's bags—Vuitton, the store's bestselling luggage brand—up to the front as Enobu took his father's arm, leading him at a gentle pace toward the door.

But Masahiro Mitsuyama shook off his son's hand. From my hidden position, I smiled at the show of independence. The store's patriarch was staunchly independent, not even allowing his son to treat him like an old man. With that kind of attitude, and on the basis of what I'd noticed in the store, I was looking forward to some lively commentary once the bugs were in place.