Rain Fall (16 page)

It was a fifteen-minute walk to her building. I didn’t observe anyone behind us. Not a surprise, given Mr. Bland’s departure from the scene.

When we reached the entranceway of her building, she took her keys out and turned to me.
“Jaa . . .”
Well, then . . .

It was a polite good night. But I had to see her inside. “You’ll be okay from here?”

She looked at me knowingly, although she didn’t really know. “I live here. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

“Okay. Have you got a phone number?” I already knew it, of course, but I had to keep up appearances.

“No, I don’t have a phone.”

Wow. That bad. “Yeah, I’m a bit of a Luddite myself. If something comes up, send me a smoke signal, okay?”

She giggled. “Five, two, seven, five-six, four, five, six. I was only teasing.”

“Right. Can I call you sometime?” In about five minutes, for example, to make sure there’s no one waiting for you in your apartment.

“I hope you will.”

I took out a pen and wrote the number down on my hand.

She was looking at me, half smiling. The kiss was there, if I wanted it.

I turned and walked back up the path toward the street.

She called out after me. “John?”

I turned.

“I think there’s a radical in you trying to get out.”

Several ripostes came quickly to mind. Instead: “Good night, Midori.”

I turned and walked away, pausing at the sidewalk to look back. But she had already gone inside, and the glass doors were closing behind her.

I
SLIPPED INTO
a parking area that faced the entrance. Hanging back beyond the perimeter of light cast from inside, I saw her waiting for an elevator to her right. From where I was standing I could see the doors open when it arrived but couldn’t see inside it. I watched her step inside, and then the doors closed.

No one seemed to be lurking outside. Unless they were waiting in her apartment or nearby, she would be safe for the night.

I took out Harry’s unit and activated her phone, then listened in on my cell phone. Silence.

A minute later, I heard her door being unlocked and opened, then closed. Muffled footsteps. Then the sound of more footsteps, from more than one person. A loud gasp.

Then a male voice: “Listen. Listen carefully. Don’t be afraid. We’re sorry to alarm you. We’re investigating a matter of national security. We have to move with great circumspection. Please understand.”

Midori’s voice, not much more than a whisper: “Show me . . . Show me identification.”

“We don’t have time for that. We have some questions that we need to ask you, and then we’ll leave.”

“Show me some ID,” I heard her say, her voice stronger now, “or I’m going to start making noise. And the walls in this building are really, really thin. People can probably already hear.”

My heart leaped. She had instinct and she had guts.

“No noise, please,” came the reply. Then the reverberation of a hard slap.

They were roughing her up. I was going to have to move.

I heard her breathing, ragged. “What the hell do you want?”

“Your father had something on his person around the time that he died. It is now in your possession. We need it.”

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

Another slap. Shit.

I couldn’t get into the building without a key. Even if someone entered or exited right then so that I could slip inside, I would never be able to make it into her apartment to help her. Maybe I could kick the door down. And maybe there would be four guys with guns standing ten feet away who would drop me before I was half inside.

I broke the connection with the unit and input her number on the cell phone. Her phone rang three times, then an answering machine cut in.

I hung up and repeated the procedure using the redial key, then again. And again.

I wanted to make them nervous, to give them pause. If someone tried to get through enough times, maybe
they would let her answer it to allay potential suspicions.

On the fifth try, she picked up.
“Moshi moshi,”
she said, her voice uncertain.

“Midori, this is John. I know you can’t speak. I know there are men in your apartment. Say to me ‘There isn’t a man in my apartment, Grandma.’ ”

“What?”

“Say ‘There isn’t a man in my apartment, Grandma.’ Just say it!”

“There isn’t . . . There isn’t a man in my apartment, Grandma.”

“Good girl. Now say, ‘No, I don’t want you coming over now. There’s no one here.’ ”

“No, I don’t want you coming over now. There’s no one here.”

They’d be itching to get out of her apartment now. “Very good. Just keep arguing with your grandmother, okay? Those men are not the police; you know that. I can help you, but only if you get them out of your apartment. Tell them your father had some papers with him when he died, but that they’re hidden in his apartment. Tell them you’ll take them there and show them. Tell them you can’t describe the hiding place; it’s a place in the wall and you’ll have to show them. Do you understand?”

“Grandma, you worry too much.”

“I’ll be waiting outside,” I said, and broke the connection.

Which way are they likely to go?
I thought, trying to decide where I could set up an ambush. But just then, an old woman, bent double at the waist from a
childhood of poor nutrition and toil in the rice paddies, emerged from the elevator, carrying out her trash. The electronic doors parted for her as she shuffled outside, and I slipped into the building.

I knew Midori lived on the third floor. I bolted up the stairwell and paused outside the entrance to her floor, listening. After about half a minute of silence, I heard the sound of a door opening from somewhere down the corridor.

I opened the door part way, then took out my key chain and extended the dental mirror through the opening in the doorway until I had a view of a long, narrow hallway. A Japanese man was emerging from an apartment. He swept his head left and right, then nodded. A moment later Midori stepped out, followed closely by a second Japanese. The second one had his hand on her shoulder, not in a gentle way.

The one in the lead checked the corridor in both directions, then they started to move toward my position. I withdrew the mirror. There was a CO
₂
-type fire extinguisher on the wall, and I grabbed it and stepped to the right of the door, toward the side where it opened. I pulled the pin and aimed the nozzle face high.

Two seconds went by, then five. I heard their footsteps approaching, heard them right outside the door.

I breathed shallowly through my mouth, my fingers tense around the trigger of the unit.

For a split second, in my imagination, I saw the door start to open, but it didn’t. They had continued past it, heading for the elevators.

Damn. I had thought they would take the stairs. I
eased the door open again and extended the mirror, adjusting its angle until I could see them. They had her sandwiched in tightly, the guy in the rear holding something against her back. I assumed a gun, but maybe a knife.

I couldn’t follow them from there with any hope of surprising them. I wouldn’t be able to close the distance before they heard me coming, and if they were armed, my chances would range from poor to nonexistent.

I turned and bolted down the stairs. When I got to the first floor I cut across the lobby, stopping behind a weight-bearing pillar that they’d have to walk past as they stepped off the elevator. I braced the extinguisher against my waist and eased the mirror past the corner of the pillar.

They emerged half a minute later, bunched up in a tight formation that you learn to avoid on day one in Special Forces because it makes your whole team vulnerable to an ambush or a mine. They were obviously afraid Midori was going to try to run.

I slipped the mirror and key chain back in my pocket, listening to their footsteps. When they sounded only a few centimeters away I bellowed a warrior’s
kiyai
and leaped out, pulling the trigger and aiming face high.

Nothing happened. The extinguisher hiccupped, then made a disappointing hissing sound. But that was all.

The lead guy’s mouth dropped open, and he started fumbling inside his coat. Feeling like I was moving in slow motion, sure I was going to be a second late, I
brought the butt end of the extinguisher up. Saw his hand coming free, holding a short-barreled revolver. I stepped in hard and jammed the extinguisher into his face like a battering ram, getting my weight behind the blow. There was a satisfying thud and he spilled into Midori and the guy in the rear, his gun clattering to the floor.

The second guy stumbled backward, slipping clear of Midori, pinwheeling his left arm. He was holding a gun in his other hand and trying keep it in front of him.

I launched the extinguisher like a missile, catching him center mass. He went down and I was on him in an instant, catching hold of the gun and jerking it away. Before he could get his hands up to protect himself I smashed the butt into his mastoid process, behind the ear. There was a loud crack and he went limp.

I spun and brought the gun up, but his friend wasn’t moving. His face looked like he’d run into a flagpole.

I turned back to Midori just in time to see a third goon emerge from the elevator, where he must have been positioned from the beginning. He grabbed Midori around the neck from behind with his left hand, trying to use her as a shield, while his right hand went to his jacket pocket, groping for a weapon. But before he could pull it free, Midori spun counterclockwise inside his grip, catching his left wrist in her hands and twisting his arm outward and back in a classic aikido
san-kyo
joint lock. His reaction showed training: he threw his body in the direction of the lock to save his arm from being broken, and landed with a smooth
ukemi
break fall. But before he could recover I had
closed the distance, launching a field-goal-style kick at his head with enough force to lift his whole body from the ground.

Midori was looking at me, her eyes wide, her breath coming in shallow gasps.

“Daijobu?”
I asked, taking her by the arm. “Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”

She shook her head. “They told me they were the police, but I knew they weren’t: they wouldn’t show me any identification and why were they waiting in my apartment anyway? Who are they? How did you know they were in there?”

Keeping my hand on her arm, I started moving us through the lobby toward the glass doors, my eyes sweeping back and forth for signs of danger outside.

“I saw them at the Blue Note,” I said, urging her with the pressure on her arm to increase the pace. “When I realized they hadn’t followed us back, I thought they might be waiting for you at your apartment. That’s when I called.”

“You saw them at the Blue Note? Who are they? Who the hell are you?”

“I’m someone who’s stumbled onto something very bad and wants to protect you from it. I’ll explain later. Right now, we’ve got to get you someplace safe.”

“Safe? With you?” She stopped in front of the glass doors and looked back at the three men, their faces bloody masks, then back at me.

“I’ll explain everything to you, but not now. For now, the only thing that matters is that you’re in danger, and I can’t help you if you don’t believe me. Let me just get you somewhere safe and tell you what all
this is about, okay?” The doors slid open, a hidden infrared eye having sensed our proximity.

“Where?”

“Someplace where no one would know to look for you, or wait for you. A hotel, something like that.”

The goon I had kicked groaned and started to pull himself up onto all fours. I strode over and drop-kicked him in the face again, and he went down. “Midori, we don’t have time to discuss this here. You’re going to have to believe me. Please.”

The doors slid shut.

I wanted to search the men on the floor for ID or some other way of identifying them, but I couldn’t do that and get Midori moving at the same time.

“How do I know I can believe you?” she said, but she was moving again. The doors opened.

“Trust your instincts; that’s all I can tell you. They’ll tell you what’s right.”

We moved through the doors, and with the wider range of vision that our new position afforded me I was able to see a squat and ugly Japanese man standing about five meters back and to the left. He had a nose that looked like a
U
-turn—it must have been broken so many times he gave up having it set. He was watching the scene in the foyer, and seemed uncertain of what to do. Something about his posture, his appearance, told me he wasn’t a civilian. Probably he was with the three on the floor.

I steered Midori to the right, keeping clear of the flat-nosed guy’s position. “How could you know . . . how could you know that there were men in my apartment?” she asked. “How did you know what was happening?”

“I just knew, okay?” I said, turning my head, searching for danger, as we walked. “Midori, if I were with these people, what would I gain from this charade? They had you exactly where they wanted you. Please, let me help you. I don’t want to see you get hurt. That’s the only reason I’m here.”