Assignment - Tokyo Read online

  For Karen and Doctor Bill

  with many thanks

  1

  THE LIGHTS came on early in Tokyo that October afternoon, and the drab hodgepodge of General Grant, Danish modern, carnival, and crackerbox wood-and-stucco buildings was transformed. The sprawling city daily performed this magic. The neon tubes and electric bulbs, mostly forming Japanese characters, made a gaudy fairyland out of the maze of streets and alleys in the Asakusa district, ten minutes west of the Ginza. The suicidal traffic rush began. The lights went on at TBS, Tokyo’s largest TV station, and the Club Yuribon, at 3 Hinoki-cho, a favorite of the television people.

  Miss Pruett came in and closed the blinds and turned on the lamps for Durell.

  “It’s raining harder,” she said. “Are you going to call Mr. Cummings?”

  “No.”

  “You said you would, at five o’clock.”

  “Let Melvin stew a bit longer.”

  “Al Charles always cooperated with the Embassy.”

  “I don’t,” said Durell.

  “Mr’ Melvin Cummings flew all the way from Washington on a high-priority Air Force plane—”

  “He doesn’t know this address, does he?”

  “No, Mr. Durell.”

  “Call me Sam,” he suggested.

  Miss Pruett flushed. “Business is business,” she said. “If Melvin Cummings, assistant-assistant sub-secretary of the Department of State, liaison officer to the Defense Department, known by the press as the Sound of Syrup, doesn’t know where to find us here, then I’m safe to get on with more important work.”

  “It is urgent,” said Miss Pruett.

  “Everything in this business is urgent,” said Durell.

  Miss Pruett just stood there, adamant, a Rock of Gibraltar. Her first name was Elizabeth. Durell had taken over Tokyo Central a week ago as emergency Control Officer, when Al Charles was invalided home with acute malaria, and he was still reluctant to call Miss Pruett by her given name. She was too devoted to routine and paper work, he thought. In this business you had to be flexible, learn to bend a little, accept surprise, flanking maneuvers, and knives in the back at the most unexpected moments. Melvin Cummings, from State, could be such a knife.

  He looked up from the desk at Miss Pruett. “How friendly were you with my predecessor?” he asked.

  She pushed her glasses higher on the bridge of her fine nose. “I really don’t see how that is relevant—”

  “You referred to him as ‘Al.’ ”

  She pinked again. “Well, yes, sir. We worked together for four years. Mr. Charles was a fine Control man. One of the best for K Section. If he hadn’t ventured off into the Philippines last month and contracted malaria—”

  “Al Charles had no business down there. Manila has its own Central office for K Section.”

  “He said he had to—”

  “Were you having an affair with Al?” Durell asked. She looked furious, then embarrassed, and then went cold with contempt. “You are everything they said you are, Mr. Durell.”

  “Not all of it good, I hope.”

  It had the effect of getting rid of her.

  Miss Elizabeth Pruett was a tall girl of about twenty-five, with thick and glossy raven hair tied in a prim, tight knot at the nape of her slender neck. Somewhere under the rather shapeless shifts she wore—which made the hinted, fluid movements of her body more sexual than she supposed—she had a rich figure and long legs. She was efficient, adept at Japanese, the daughter of a retired Naval captain, who had been attached to the Embassy until a heart attack during a student demonstration made Elizabeth an orphan. She had chosen to remain in Tokyo, working for Embassy Security, until Al Charles drafted her for the business. She was a cliche, Durell knew, hiding a suppressed passion under her prim exterior. In other circumstances he would have been intrigued to peel away her inhibitions one by one, to explore her true nature. But he was too busy for that.

  He had been handed a rotten apple here at Tokyo Central, stepping into Al Charles’ shoes for an interim of desk duty instead of field work. He hadn’t asked for it. He didn’t want it. But General Dickinson McFee in Washington had ordered it, and you didn’t ever argue with the little gray man.

  The doleful rain tapped on the two grimy windows of the office. Tokyo’s lights splashed alternately red, green, yellow, and purple against the closed blinds. It was not quite five in the afternoon. Durell spent the next ten minutes slashing impatiently through the paper work on his desk. Central had to be all things to all men. There were industrial reports, configurations of the projected GNP for this year of Japan’s fantastic economic boom, an extrapolation of the effect of the radical movements in the Japanese universities, a list of dossiers on political figures, a summary of Chinese ideological influences, a TK7 report on Japanese intelligence estimates of anti-American feeling on Okinawa, a copy of Japan’s DS-2 Department’s copy of American military and nuclear strength in the islands of Nippon, a State Department precis of the Prime Minister’s attitudes toward the most recent trade negotiations. And so on and on.

  Durell did not envy Al Charles for this job. He preferred field work for himself any time. He preferred to work alone. Here at Tokyo Central, aside from the prim Miss Pruett, he had two Japanese and two American operatives, a dozen clerks in the front office downstairs,

  running a perfectly legitimate business in Japanese art and gimcracks for the tourist trade, and a scrambler telephone line direct to the American Embassy at 1 Enokizaka-machi, not far from here in the Asakusa district. He also had a priority line through the IT&T office at 5 Ohtemachi 1-chome at Chiyoda-ku.

  Nothing but the best, he thought wryly.

  It didn’t help a damn with whatever was going on up north at Hatashima.

  They were dying like flies up there, those poor innocent fishermen, and in a day or two it would leak—it always leaked—and the world would rise up in righteous wrath and leap to blame the Americans for the plague.

  2

  HATASHIMA enjoyed a cool, damp evening. The wind blew from the Pacific, and mist curled over the wide beaches. The fishing boats and the wooden village houses were silent and dark. There were very few lights visible in Hatashima, but the community was not asleep. It was dying.

  Above the sound of the wind there came the deep, irregular beat of a drum, struck by a Shinto priest, and the sudden keening of a fisherman’s wife. To the north, south, and west, the police had spread rolls of barbed wire, enclosing several square miles of area and reaching up into the wooded, piney hills.

  Up there in the hills were several first-class ryokan, Japanese inns, gathered around the Hatashima spa. The tourists, both Japanese and American, were not permitted on the beach or in the village now. They had been told it was because of a military exercise; but sooner, rather than later, sharp questions would be asked.

  The fishing nets on the beach flapped unattended on their slatted wooden frames. Police patrolled the rolls of barbed wire, wearing gauze masks. There was no hospital in Hatashima, not even a clinic, and no doctors, ordinarily. Now the big communal fishing shed was being used for the dead and the dying. There was never very long to wait. The spiritual gloom was as dark as the night. The terror crawled along the sand dunes, through the picturesque alleys and lanes, and into the wooden houses, like the creeping mist.

  The team of doctors sent urgently from Tokyo had already been decimated by half. Of the four, two were dead. It took about six hours from the onset of the disease to its ugly, convulsive finish.

  The doctors wore gauze masks and white smocks, and washed and scrubbed and disinfected themselves. It did no good. They felt doomed. Everyone in Hatashima was doomed. Another day—two at the most—and it would be over for them. They cursed the wind, which blew inland from the Pacific, and since they already suspected it was an extraordinarily virulent form of airborne pneumococcic virus, they also knew that the barbed wire and the quarantine thrown around the village would have as much effect at containing the plague as a witch doctor’s incantations over a broken bone.

  They had never seen anything like it.

  Sergeant Sumida was counting the bodies. The Shinto priest in his elaborate robes burned incense at the end of the long death shed. Sumida had no patience with the priest. Sumida was as modem as today, an avid baseball and sumo fan, and he had been trained by experts from the old Kampei-tai days. Not quite thirty, he enjoyed the trust and affections of Major Teru Yamatoya. He was slim, superbly conditioned, healthy and handsome, a head taller than his parents, an expert in many fields. He had been a policeman most of his adult life and he enjoyed it.

  Because of his glowing sense of good health, he felt invincible, immune to this mysterious disease, an emotion bolstered by a bottle of said and liberal chasers of Kirin beer, drunk throughout the ghastly day. Yet he was not drunk enough to overlook the bodies of the Westerner and the Japanese who had died on their pallets on the fish-stained shed floor.

  Sumida called to the nurse. “These men. When did they die?”

  The nurse’s almond eyes slid aside over her gauze mask. “One hour ago, sergeant. They are not natives of the village.”

  “I know that. They were—ah, tourists?”

  “An unhappy holiday for them,” the nurse said.

  “They had been visiting from the inns?”

  “I believe so.”

  Sumida glanced at the two doctors and the priest gathered near the big barnlike doors. One of the doctors stood a little apart, scribbling in his notebook. Probably poetry, Sum
ida thought, with a touch of contempt. Hatashima was in an area once made famous by the haiku poems of a contemporary of Bashō in the sixteenth century. The doctor was an amateur poet of sorts, he recalled. The village by the sea was renowned for its quiet beauty, its offshore islands, the Shinto shrines and toriis of exceptional delicacy. The fishermen themselves were simple and hard-working, remote from the world of power struggles, intrigue, and international rivalry. But the world had come to them in a sinister aluminum canister, sealed against the salt sea, washed up by the foaming breakers that had inspired artists as well as poets to express their natural beauty. Yesterday one of the fishermen, curious, had broken open the can.

  And within hours people began to die.

  Sergeant Sumida sent the nurse away and quickly examined the clothes of the dead American and the dead Japanese from Tokyo. He did not like to touch them. He did not want to. But his gauze mask and gloves—along with the saki and Kirin beer—helped him to ignore the danger. He was expert at turning their clothes inside out, looking for clues to their identities. Finished, he straightened and walked to the end of the shed—and stopped in his tracks.

  “Nurse!” he called again.

  She came back, annoyed, her black eyes showing her irritation at being interrupted at her duties. All around them came the gasping, groaning, straining sounds of people strangling to death from flooded lungs and clogged throats, their eyes glazed by the enormous fevers precipitated by the unknown virus.

  Sumida pointed to an empty pallet in the corner.

  “Nurse, where is Kamuru-san?”

  She looked bewildered. “I do not know.”

  “Did she die?”

  “She was doing very well, sergeant!”

  “No one here has done well. They all die, once they’re sick. Perhaps you will die too. Yoko Kamuru was ill. She was dying. Where is she?”

  “She was here.”

  “And now she is not here!” Sumida barked.

  “I cannot explain it.”

  “Was she buried?”

  “The burial detail is not due until six o’clock.”

  “You are sure?”

  “I am sure, sergeant. Sergeant, I think—”

  Sumida looked at her. “What is it?”

  “You look unwell.”

  He laughed at her through the gauze mask. “I feel wonderful. Are you trying to frighten me?”

  “Let the doctors look at you, please.”

  “Nonsense. I have work to do. Find out what happened to Miss Kamuru, please.”

  He did not wait for the nurse to check with the doctors at the other end of the shed. He looked at the peg on the wooden wall and saw that Yoko Kamuru’s clothing was gone. Her shoes, her purse, everything. Sergeant Sumida felt puzzled. He checked the pallet, remembering the girl. Pretty, a visitor to Hatashima too, but a rather famous personage, an artist of some fame who frequently came here, they had told him, to paint kakemono, hanging scroll pictures. He remembered seeing her work once at Heisando’s, the Tokyo art firm. She also did wood blocks in the style of the old days, and he recalled seeing her just two days ago, when the plague first struck the village. She had been sitting on the beach in a yukata, too thin for the coolness of this fall weather, her art tools in a brightly colored silk furoshiki, a square of cloth used for carrying parcels. A delicate, very pretty girl, lost in abstract thought about her work. He remembered, very distinctly, that she had placed a wooden kokeshi doll in the sand beside her.

  He wondered where the primitive doll had gone.

  The nurse came back, her eyes troubled.

  “Yoko Kamuru was very ill,” she said. She spread her hands. “Perhaps in her fever she wandered outside. But actually, she seemed to be getting better—”

  Sergeant Sumida swore softly and pushed past the girl and stepped out on the beach. Night had come. The wind had died, and only the mists remained, curling in from the sea and the tiny, dark offshore islands. Up in the hills above the town the lights of the inns around the spa were bright and cheerful. A fire burned on the beach not far away, beside some of the fishing boats. He trotted there, not knowing why he felt so worried suddenly.

  There was no sign of the little artist.

  He spent fifteen minutes searching among the dunes. There was wailing in the village streets. Two stretcher-bearers jogged down to the fish shed with another burden. Sumida hastily checked the new patient. It was an old fisherman. His wife trotted after the stretcher, wringing her hands, her face a creased mask of anguish.

  The girl was not on the beach.

  She was not in the quarantined village.

  Sergeant Sumida paused and fit a cigarette and coughed. He stood across from the local police prefecture and looked at his expensive Seiko watch. He couldn’t wait any longer. He coughed again and angrily threw away the cigarette, and chose the village’s only public telephone, in a booth acros s from the provincial police station, to put in his call to Tokyo.

  /

  The telephone booth felt very hot after the chill mists outside. He fumbled for change to put in the slots and dropped some on the floor, and when he went to pick up the coins he felt dizzy for a moment.

  Major Teru Yamatoya sounded crisp, impatient, and efficient when the connection went through.

  “What is the matter with you, Sumida? Are you drunk?”

  “No, Major, I swear I’m not. I have just been— searching the village, that is all.”

  “Why?”

  “A girl—a visitor to Hatashima—seems to have vanished. I haven’t put out an alert yet. Maybe she wandered out on the beach in her delirium and died. Or perhaps she went into the ocean surf and the tide pulled her out.” “Was she ill?”

  “Yes, sir, but she seemed to be getting better.”

  “My reports indicate that the virus is fatal to all who contract this disease.”

  “Yes, sir, but she—Miss Yoko Kamuru—she was recovering, and—”

  “Kamuru? The artist?”

  “Yes, Major Yamatoya. That’s the one. I’ll find her— or her body. I promise, sir.” Sumida wiped his brow with the heel of his hand. He was sweating all over, his face, his chest, his belly, and his groin. He took a deep breath. “I also checked the canister, sir. The doctors had put it away. There were some Westem-style markings on it, but nothing to identify it definitely as American, sir. Just numerals, sir. I’ve written them all down and I photographed it from several angles. The fisherman who found it on the beach and opened it is dead, Major. I couldn’t question him. But there’s no doubt that it was a laboratory mechanism, a kind of biological warfare bomb, sir—”

  “A bomb?”

  “Something like that, sir.”

  “I can’t understand you, Sumida. Stop mumbling and speak more distinctly.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir. There were also two other victims who just died. The American, Henry Lamson, and the Japanese, the one you used to infiltrate the American K Section—”

  “Moka. That’s his name. You know it.”

  “Yes, sir. The American, Durell, must have sent them up here to investigate the trouble. Perhaps the Americans know it is all their fault. Perhaps they could identify the bomb. But they died, sir. Everyone here is dying. The doctors say that Hatashima is doomed.”

  “You are sure of Moka’s and Lamson’s identity?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very well. I think you should rest now, Sumida.”

  “Yes, sir. I don’t know what—I don’t feel too well, sir. It can’t be the plague; I’m as strong as an ox, you know that, sir. I wouldn’t fail you by getting sick like the others, but I—I—”

  Sumida began to cough. Something came up from his lungs and clogged his throat, and he choked, bending over, strangling. He dropped the telephone and it dangled, swinging on its cord in the telephone booth. He pushed open the door of the booth for air because it was so stifling inside, and he lost his balance and pitched forward into the street outside. He fell to his knees, clawing at his throat. It was as if two iron hands had gripped him at the back, just below the shoulder blades, and squeezed, pushing the breath from his lungs. Blood came from his mouth when he coughed again.

  Slowly, Sergeant Sumida began to crawl toward the death shed on the beach.

  Halfway there, he collapsed and died.