Unless, of course, you’re the one doing the setup. That would require an early arrival, too. But I was confident McGraw’s tactics were primarily defensive, not offensive. I hadn’t yet developed the paranoia, or call it wisdom, of experience.
“Beer?” he said.
“Sure.”
He signaled the waitress for two, then looked at me. “What happened to your face? Looks worse than usual.”
I’d learned to ignore McGraw’s gibes—or at least to try to—by reminding myself it didn’t matter if he liked me as long I got paid. The substantive part of his question was about my left eye, which was partially closed from one of the punches thrown in Ueno, the area around it purplish and swollen. Not quite a classic black eye, but in the neighborhood. I could have passed it off as a judo injury, but there was no point in lying—I was here to tell him the truth. Mostly.
“I got jumped in Ueno today,” I said. “After the exchange. That’s why I called.”
This was the first time I had contacted him to set up a meeting. Ordinarily, it was the other way around. We used payphones and a preset code to keep our connection secure.
He studied my face, frowning. “What do you mean, ‘jumped’?”
I told him what had happened. He listened carefully, asking for a detail here, a clarification there. The waitress brought our beers, but I didn’t touch mine, wanting to get the story out first. From his patient demeanor and probing questions, I sensed McGraw would be a good interrogator, and I was glad I wasn’t trying to lie. Though I was downplaying the way I’d gotten in the
chinpira
’s face.
When I was done, he looked away for a moment, drumming his fingers on the table as though contemplating something. “You’re sure this was a coincidence?” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“When I hand it over to you, that bag has a lot of cash in it. Don’t tell me you’ve never peeked.”
Better to neither confirm nor deny. I said, “It happened after the exchange.”
He looked at me for a long moment as though wondering how I could be so dumb. “Maybe these three geniuses didn’t know you’d made an exchange. The bags are identical, remember?”
I hadn’t thought of that. I said nothing.
He took a swallow of beer. “You’re being as discreet for the exchanges with Miyamoto as I am for the exchanges with you, right? Turn a corner, stand next to him on a train, nice and casual, bam and you’re done, right?”
I decided his characterization was close enough for government work. “Right.”
“Then maybe they were following you, they missed your discreet exchange, so they thought you still had the original bag. You said the third guy ran off with it.”
“He did, but…it felt like he was just grabbing at me to pull me off his friend.”
“Why’d he run off with it, then?”
I had trouble articulating it, but I tried. “In fights…people repeat things. Whether it’s working or not. When they grab something, they hold on. They don’t think to drop it. Even if it’s useless to them. That’s what this felt like to me.” Although, I had to admit to myself, it could also have been what McGraw was describing.
He nodded slowly, looking at me as though he could see right through me. “You do a good SDR after the exchange?”
SDR
was Agency-speak for Surveillance Detection Run. A route designed to force any surveillance to either reveal itself or lose you.
“Of course,” I said automatically.
But the truth was, I hadn’t. I’d done the exchange with Miyamoto, and yet not only did I not do anything afterward to make sure I hadn’t been picked up by anyone who might have been following Miyamoto, I didn’t even leave the scene. I didn’t game out whatever vulnerabilities the exchange might have created; I took no steps to mitigate; I just assumed I was done for the day and could wander among the Ueno street stalls as clueless and carefree as a civilian. It was sloppy, it was stupid, and it was nothing I was going to admit to McGraw. I’d learned my lesson. He didn’t need to know how.
He took a long swallow of beer and belched. “Tell me again…what did you say to this guy?”
I shrugged. “It was all in Japanese.”
“Translate for me.”
“More or less, ‘You’re being annoying and you should watch where you’re going yourself.’”
He laughed. “That’s the literal translation?”
I took a sip of beer. “Pretty much.”
“Son, don’t bullshit a bullshitter. I’m not asking what you said, I want to know what it meant.”
The first time he’d called me “son,” I made the mistake of telling him to knock it off. Maybe it was just what he called everyone younger than, say, forty, but I didn’t like it. In response, naturally, he’d made a habit of it. As I had made a habit of suppressing the urge to punch him in the throat in response.
“Maybe…‘Go fuck yourself, asshole,’” I said quietly, imagining I was saying it to McGraw.
He laughed again. “You do realize that ‘Go fuck yourself, asshole’ does not constitute de-escalation, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why’d you do it?”
“I wasn’t thinking.”
“Is it going to happen again?”
I didn’t like being talked to like I was a stupid child, even if in fact I had behaved like one. But I needed the damn job. And getting irritated at him now, I realized, would be the most elegant demonstration possible that it
would
happen again, or at least that it was likely. What I needed to demonstrate was the opposite.
“No,” I said evenly. “It was stupid mistake, I shouldn’t have let it happen, it won’t happen again.”
He nodded and took a swallow of beer. “Look, I don’t want to make too big a deal of it. It sounds like no harm, no foul. Though we better hope you didn’t kill that one guy, and that there’s not a serious investigation if you did. But I can monitor all that. The more important thing is whether I can trust you. You have a little bit of a reputation, did you know that?”
I looked at him, tamping down the anger. First, talking to me like an adult chastising a child. And now, bringing up this shit. I reminded myself again that he might have been testing me—trying to get a reaction, or to determine whether I had sufficient self-control to prevent one.
I sipped my beer, deliberately casual. “I know there are people who might want you to think that, sure.”
He smiled, seemingly pleased at the response. “Yes, there are. But why?”
I started to answer, then stopped myself. I didn’t have to answer his questions; he was just making me
feel
like I had to. Probably deliberately. I had the sudden and uncomfortable sense that as deadly as I had proven myself in combat, in other contexts I was naïve. And part of my naïveté lay in my assumption that the people I was dealing with were no more cunning or sophisticated than I was. A mistake I never would have made in the jungle.
So instead of answering, I said, “Why don’t you tell me?”
This time, he didn’t smile. “Don’t be coy with me. Your Agency contact with SOG. William Holtzer. You had a problem with him and you broke his nose. Don’t tell me it didn’t happen—two army officers saw the whole thing and filed a report. And don’t tell me the guy was an asshole and deserved it. I’m sure he was and I’m sure he did. That’s not the point, any more than it was the point with these punks you fucked up, or maybe even killed, earlier today.”
I’d had enough of his condescension. Who did he think he was talking to? I imagined myself grabbing him by the hair, dragging him out of his chair, putting fear into him and maybe leaving some bruises to make sure the lesson took. But I willed the image away, knowing if I didn’t, it would come to the surface.
He looked at me. “So what
is
the point, son? Why are we having this conversation?”
It’s a test. Don’t let it be personal. Don’t let him push your buttons.
It wasn’t easy, but I managed. I said, “The point is, I have to use better judgment and better self-control.” I paused and looked at him. “Even when I’m dealing with assholes.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “Yes. That is the point, exactly.” He extended his glass. Reluctantly, I picked up mine. We toasted and drank.
He set down his empty glass heavily and wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. “Well, the good news is, from what you’ve told me, it sounds like it was just one of those things. I’ll monitor the police reaction to make sure and let you know.”
I nodded. “Thanks. And…I guess we’ll need a new bag.”
He stood and threw some yen on the table. “I’ll get you a new bag, hotshot. But don’t lose another one.”
chapter
three
T
he following night, I trained at the Kodokan as usual. I was in a good mood. There had been no word from McGraw that day, which I took to mean I was probably safe. Whatever had happened to the guy I’d dropped, however much the police might be looking into it, none of it was being connected with me.
The
daidōjō
, where free practice was held, was massive—four tournament-size mats, high ceilings, stands for spectators, room for a hundred or more
randori
sparring matches. There was no air-conditioning, and in the summer the great hall was thick with the smell of decades of sweat and exertion. The
kangeiko
—ten consecutive days of hard training in the winter—was held early in the morning, when the air in the
daidōjō
was cold enough to fog the breath, and the tatami were as forgiving as cement. The summer equivalent was held in the afternoon, when Tokyo’s scorching days were at their hottest. Making things harder as a way of fostering
gaman
—perseverance, endurance, fortitude—was a Japanese fetish, and I loved it. I rotated through a variety of partners, my
gi
soaked with sweat, the hall around me alive with grunts and shouts and the impact of bodies hitting the tatami.
I was taking a break on the sidelines when a tough-looking black belt—about my age and height, though at least ten kilos heavier—nodded his head at me and gestured to the mat where he was standing. He had thick lips, eyes too small for his face, and patches of dark stubble on his cheeks. There was something about him I instantly disliked. Maybe it was the curt way he’d gestured, as though he was summoning me and I was bound to obey. I wondered what he wanted. It was a rare black belt who would invite a white belt to spar with him—most likely it would be boring, and what glory was there in beating a beginner anyway? I looked back for a long moment, thinking of him as Pig Eyes and doing nothing to prevent the thought from surfacing in my expression, then walked over. He offered the faintest of bows and started circling to my right.
We came to grips, and I attacked with what at the time were my favorite combinations—
kouchi-gari
to
ouchi-gari
to
osoto-gari
;
ouchi-gari
to
uchi-mata
;
tai-otoshi
to a sneaky little standing strangle and back to
tai-otoshi
. I couldn’t make any of it work. He was strong, and that was part of the problem, but it was more than that. I sensed he was using his greater experience to anticipate my combinations, and was subtly adjusting his stance and his grip to shut down my throws in the instant before I launched them. Occasionally, he would chuckle derisively at my futile efforts. I started to get angry, and therefore sloppy.
We circled counterclockwise, each of us right foot forward. I shot my right arm out, looking for a high grip, but Pig Eyes intercepted me, snaking his left arm inside mine and reaching around for a sleeve grip just above my elbow. I didn’t like the grip he had taken and tried to jerk back, and as soon as I did, he punched his right hand forward, grabbed me high around the collar, and exploded into the air off his left foot. His right leg smashed down between my shoulder and neck as his head dropped back, and before I even knew what he was doing, his weight had dragged me down and I was crouching over him, my right arm and head trapped between his scissored legs, his back against the tatami as he looked up at me, bridging his hips, his ugly face twisting into a smile. I strained backward, my line of sight passing the stands as I did so, and I saw one of the guys who had jumped me in Ueno, the one who’d run off with the bag, leaning over the railing, watching us intently. He was smiling, too.
Before I could process any of it, Pig Eyes was pulling my right arm across his body and yanking me forward and down with his legs. I felt his left leg slide forward to figure-four his right ankle—
sankaku-jime
, a triangle strangle. My neck felt like it was caught in a vise, which effectively it was. I tried pulling his right knee down and circling counterclockwise to ease the pressure, but the strangle was too tight. I heard a dull roar in my ears like the crash of waves on the beach, and knew my brain wasn’t getting oxygen—in seconds, I would pass out. I tapped his shoulder with my free hand, the traditional judo signal of surrender.
Many judo techniques, especially joint locks, are so dangerous that judoka develop a conditioned reflex to the feel of a tap, instantly releasing a submitting opponent rather than risk breaking an arm or separating a shoulder. The reflex can be so strong that judoka interested in judo for combat applications, and not just for sport, should take measures to guard against its accidental triggering in a real-world setting.
But not only did Pig Eyes not release his strangle in response to my tap, he actually tightened it, smiling while he did so.
Fear shot through me. I couldn’t speak, but I tapped again with my free hand, harder this time. Pig Eyes looked at me, his smile intent, sadistic, and in that instant, understanding shot through me. The nature of the connection with the guy in the stands, how they’d found me, how they planned to get away after leaving me on the tatami…none of it mattered then and I gave it not one second’s consideration. What mattered was that he was there to kill me, and that suddenly I was fighting for my life.
Which meant he was now fighting for his life, too. The difference was, he didn’t know it. I did.