Headhunters (30 page)

The driver forced his hand between Matilda’s arms and broke her hold. He jerked to the side and, as he reached for the dash to steady himself, Milton was sitting next to him.

His mouth gaped open; his outraged question went unasked.

Milton raised his arm and drilled him in the side of the head with the point of his elbow. His head bounced against the frame of the door and, when it flopped back toward Milton, he elbowed him again. His eyes rolled back as his head was sent back against the door for a second time and, finally, he slumped against it, unconscious.

The passenger was on hands and knees on the road outside the car. He had crawled forward a little so that he was between the door and the chassis. Milton reached over his body for the handle and slammed the door closed against the man’s head. It crunched unpleasantly, the man losing consciousness and dropping down so that he was sprawled on the asphalt, his chin propped up against the sill of the door.

Milton reached over and frisked the driver. He found a Sig Sauer 9mm and placed it on the dash. Then he opened the driver’s door and pushed the unconscious man out onto the road. Matilda took his place and started the engine.

“Well done,” he said to Matilda.

She looked at the two unconscious men and shook her head. It had taken Milton fifteen seconds to put them both out.

Milton stepped out.

“Keep the engine running.”

ZIGGY HAD been watching from the balcony, just as Milton had instructed him to do. He had seen Matilda distract the two men, bending down at the window and saying whatever it was that she had to say. It had obviously worked. Milton had opened the passenger-side door and, a moment later, a limp body had been hauled out and dumped on the sidewalk. Matilda had grabbed onto the driver until Milton had dealt with him, too. And now, with the figures of the two men sprawled out on either side of the car, it was his time to move.

Milton had made it very plain that he wouldn’t have the luxury of time.

He collected his rucksack. It was very heavy. He had stuffed as much into it as he could: two laptops, an assortment of other kit, hard drives and cables. He swung it onto his shoulder and took one final look around his apartment. It had been good to him, one way or another. He would have liked to have been able to stay. Tokyo had been good to him, too. If it wasn’t for his stupid lust and greed, his egotism and his desire to demonstrate just how clever he was, he would have been able to stay here for as long as he liked. Not now, though. He had poisoned the city for himself, and now he was going to have to leave and never return.

He felt naked as he shut the door behind him. The dimly lit corridor, normally so familiar, now looked like it might hide more of the Yakuza who had been sent to find him. There were blind corners, niches and alcoves that would comfortably accommodate someone lying in wait for him…

Come on, Ziggy
, he chided himself.
There’s no one here.

He walked on, into the elevator lobby, and pressed the button to summon a car.

He thought of the man in the lobby. What if Milton was wrong? What if there were more of them, more than just that one man? What would he do then?

He jumped as the elevator chimed and the doors slid open.

There was nothing else for it. He couldn’t stay here forever, and if Milton couldn’t help him, he didn’t know who could.

He stepped into the lift.

Pressed the button for the ground floor.

Closed his eyes.

THE CONCIERGE was a man named Arata. The corporation that owned the building was not a particularly generous employer, and Arata found it something of a slap in the face that he was paid a relative pittance to guard the apartments of people paid a hundred times more than he was. He smiled at them as they came and went, was pleasant and polite at all times, and cashed his cheque on the first Monday of each new month. He did his job. But, at the same time, he didn’t feel any compunction in accepting the ¥200,000 that the gangster had offered him when they came looking for the
gaijin
.

Arata recognised the picture of the man, but he did not know very much about him. He knew that he was a resident, but he couldn’t answer when they asked him what apartment he lived in. He said that he would keep an eye out on the CCTV. There were cameras on every floor and, he said, he would be able to at least tell them which floor the man could be found on. Perhaps he would get lucky and a camera would catch him coming out of his apartment. And he said that he had no issue with them stationing a man in the lobby with him.

There was the money, of course, and that was welcome, but he wouldn’t have been able to say no to their requests even if they had offered him nothing.

They were Yakuza.

You didn’t say no to men like that.

Arata was flicking through a comic book when the door to the lobby opened and a man came inside. Arata recognised him. He had been in and out before, earlier that evening, with a pretty blonde woman. They were both Westerners. The woman, he remembered, was especially pretty. Foreigners were not unusual in the block; it was popular with
gaijin
, the rich ex-pats who could afford the rent to live in a neighbourhood like this. These two didn’t live here, he was confident of that, and he assumed that they were just here to visit someone. He would have stopped them to ask them for their identities, but they had walked quickly through the lobby and were in an elevator before he had started out of his chair.

And moments ago, Arata had watched, his mouth falling open, as the man had reappeared through the entrance and walked straight to the leather banquette upon which the gangster was sitting. The gangster had swung around to look at him, but it was too late by then. The Westerner was onto him, standing over him so that it was impossible for him to get up. He had a pistol in his hand. Before Arata could say anything, he drew back his hand and pounded him in the side of the head with the butt of the pistol. The gangster flopped to the side, his legs jacked up and his head lolling against the cushion.

The man turned to Arata.

The elevator chimed.

A car pulled up outside the building. Arata recognised it. A Range Rover. It was the car that the Yakuza had been using.

The
gaijin
the gangsters had been searching for stepped out of the lift. He recognised him from the picture that the Yakuza had shown him. He was carrying a heavy rucksack over one shoulder.

The second man looked at Arata and put his finger to his lips. He turned away, said something in English to the
gaijin
that Arata couldn’t hear, and then led the way outside to the waiting car.

Arata stepped out from behind his desk and went to the window. The blonde woman from before was behind the wheel, waiting as the first man got into the passenger seat and the other man got into the back. The car pulled away and disappeared around the corner. Arata looked back at where it had been parked and, as he heard the groans of the man on the sofa, he saw the two bodies sprawled out on the road.

MATILDA DROVE them out of town. Milton opened the glovebox and found a pistol and a spare magazine. It was good to know that it was there, but he was confident that it wouldn’t be needed. There was nothing to suggest that the Yakuza had stationed any more men in the vicinity. They would have expected that a crew of three was more than sufficient to deal with a nobody like Ziggy. There was no way that they could have foreseen that he would have been able to call upon reinforcements, and certainly not reinforcements who were as able as Milton.

That didn’t mean that they would just give up, though. They would assume that Ziggy would flee the city. And they would be right. It wouldn’t be safe for Ziggy to stay here. Tokyo was closed to him now. He would have to leave.

Ziggy turned as the car passed the turn-off for Narita airport and kept going, headed southwest. “Where are we going?”

“Nagoya.”

“Why?”

“They’ll be expecting you here. It isn’t worth the risk.”

“And then?”

“You’re going to help me. Like we discussed.”

“We didn’t really
discuss
it, Milton, did we? You said you needed me. That was it.”

“Okay. We’re going on a trip.”

“Where to?”

“Tel Aviv.”

“
Tel Aviv?
”

“That’s right. Israel.”

“I know where it is, Milton. You want to tell me why we need to go there?”

“I’ll explain when we’re in the air.”

“Give me a clue.”

Milton turned and regarded him evenly, and Ziggy’s mouth stopped flapping. “You’re going to hack the Mossad for me.”

He fumbled for a response. “The Mossad? Israeli intelligence?”

“You always said you liked a challenge.”

IT WAS a three-hour drive to Nagoya. They spent most of it without speaking, listening to J-Pop on the car’s Internet radio station. Matilda was pensive and Ziggy was sour; Milton left them to their introspection and ran through the details of what he was going to propose once they reached Tel Aviv.

In truth, he wasn’t absolutely sure what they were going to do. He would make sure that Matilda wasn’t involved; she had already been hauled halfway around the world on his account, and that was more than enough. The actual operation—the reason for their journey—would depend on Ziggy.

They passed through Ina, Komagane and Komaki, finally reaching the airport at two in the morning.

Matilda parked the car in the long-term lot. Milton thought about leaving behind the gun that he had confiscated from the driver of the car, but decided that it would be better to be safe. The men he had disabled would have been roused by now, and they would have reported what had happened. They had no way of knowing what Ziggy would do next, of course, but they would likely assume, at the very least, that he would try to leave the city, probably headed for Narita. Milton knew that the organisation had a long reach and, however abundantly cautious it might seem, he wasn’t in the business of ignoring even the smallest of risks.

He put the gun into his bag and led the way to the terminal building. He paused and scanned the departures lounge but saw nothing to arouse his suspicion, nothing to suggest that the gangsters had been prescient enough to guess how thorough he would be. He couldn’t take the gun any farther than this, so he went into a restroom and dropped it in the trash.

Milton and Matilda were going to pose as tourists when they got to Eilat. A handful of the terminal’s stores were still open, so they bought the luggage and clothes that would be expected for vacationers. They stopped in the cafeteria and removed all of the tags from the clothes. They added bottles of sun cream, dark glasses and books.

They bought tickets and checked in together. Ziggy produced his passport from his rucksack, and the smiling clerk made no reference to it or to any of their documents as she quickly examined them. She asked Ziggy whether he wanted to check his rucksack into the hold, as it was too large to be taken on board as carry-on luggage, and he said no, hugging it a little closer to his chest. Milton calmly told him that he could put the most important items into his empty bag, and, after a little extra persuasion, Ziggy took out a laptop and a portable drive and told the clerk to be careful because the contents were fragile. She smiled indulgently, told him that she would, pressed a sticker onto the bag to denote that it was delicate, and then pressed the button to activate the conveyor belt. The bag jerked away and dropped onto the main belt with an audible clatter that made Ziggy close his eyes and mutter a silent prayer.

THE FIRST leg of their journey was aboard a Thai Air 747, and they had a row of three seats in the middle of the jet. Milton was finally able to relax as the plane hurtled down the runway, launching itself into the air and putting the glowing lights of Nagoya behind and beneath it. The pilot banked them to port and, after a five-minute climb, levelled them out at thirty thousand feet. It would take them six hours to fly to Bangkok, where they would have a nine-hour layover. The connecting El Al flight to Ovda would take another eleven hours. Not for the first time, Milton found himself hoping that the effort to collect Ziggy would be worth it.

And then he reminded himself: he had no other option. Ziggy, for better or worse, was his best chance to eliminate Bachman’s main advantage over him.

Matilda wedged her jacket against Milton’s shoulder and quickly fell asleep. The flight attendants circulated through the cabin with refreshments. Milton took a bottle of mineral water for himself and another for Matilda. Ziggy grinned at the woman and asked for a gin and tonic. She returned his smile with a perfunctoriness that Ziggy missed, because when she moved on, he turned to Milton and gave him a sly wink.

“What’s the matter with you?” Milton asked with exasperation.

“What do you mean?”

“You think she doesn’t have to put up with that every day?”

“Come on, Milton. Just a little fun.”

“How
old
are you?”

“Not as old as you.”

“You’re behaving like a teenager. Look at the trouble you got into the last time. Maybe, I don’t know, maybe give it a break?”

“Whatever, Milton.” Ziggy paused to take a sip from his drink. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

He nodded to the recumbent Matilda and said quietly, “You and her.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“She’s gorgeous.”

“She’s the sister of a friend.” He shook his head. “I’ve got no idea why I’m defending myself to you, of all people.”

He grinned. “Sore point?”

“Shut up, Ziggy.”

Ziggy had recovered his old spirit quickly. It wasn’t that long ago that he had flown to New Orleans to help Milton in his struggle with Bachman, but the intervening months had been long enough for Milton to have forgotten that Ziggy had a particular talent for annoying him. He was always trying to wisecrack, to make a smart comment, to win a point, and it could grow wearying after a while. Milton was no psychologist, but it was obvious, even to him, that Ziggy was driven by the need to find acclaim. He had never spoken of his childhood, but Milton guessed that he had been marked out as different thanks to his geekiness and his intellect. It had not, most likely, been a very happy time for him. He was overcompensating for it all now.