Dragon Dance Page 10

  The other bout was a different matter entirely. Hasegawa was fast and strong, with a good repertoire of feints and dodges. He had been attending the dojo since high school, and had learned his lessons well. But the cop was good too. She read most of his tricks, and caught him with a few of her own. The sensei watched them in silent amusement, then clapped his hands and called it a draw.

  “Everyone in pairs. Meyer, you go with Miki.”

  So Martine found herself practicing blocks and jabs with the female cop. She was a startlingly attractive woman, with large round eyes and high cheekbones, just the type that Martine would have gone for if she’d been born a man. Her breasts looked fuller and higher than Martine’s own, and she had the creamy complexion and graceful, curving neck that Martine especially envied in Japanese women. Twenty years later, when Martine would be dealing with wrinkles and varicose veins, Saya Miki wouldn’t look much different from the way she did now. Martine wondered what Makoto would think of this woman. On basic male instincts, which of them would he choose? The idea unnerved her, making her lose concentration so that she missed a block and Saya Miki’s fist crashed into her face guard.

  “Sorry, sorry!”

  [73] “My fault,” said Martine, rubbing her cheekbone. “I was thinking of something else.”

  “Work?”

  “Boyfriend, actually.”

  “Ah.”

  “That never happens to you?”

  Saya shook her head. “I don’t think much about men these days.”

  “No boyfriend?”

  “Not any more. But I just bought a dog. He’s very cute—and totally trustworthy.”

  It wasn’t so much what she said as the slow, drawling way she said it. Martine laughed out loud. She realized they were going to be friends. After the practice session was over they sat together in the changing room and chatted. On the spur of the moment, Martine asked her the question she had been asking everyone recently.

  “This Nozawa guy—what do you think of him?”

  “Can’t stand him,” said Saya, tugging a comb through her hair with surprising violence. “I think he embodies everything that’s gone wrong with this country.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “He’s completely empty, just says whatever he thinks people want to hear. There are people like that in every organization. These days they rise to the top, and the good people get left behind.”

  There was an edge to her voice that made Martine think she was talking from personal experience.

  “So you’re not eagerly awaiting his next CD?”

  “I’d rather listen to a CD of my dog barking. At least he’s not faking it.”

  Martine glanced at her watch. She had a busy day ahead of her, so she hurriedly stuffed her equipment into her sports bag, said good-bye to Saya and the others, and left. Outside, the German guy, Schneider, was standing at the side of the road waiting for a taxi. When he saw Martine, he came toward her and held out his umbrella. She could tell he was planning a move by his too-wide smile and the way he was standing there with his chest pushed out. Martine ducked under the umbrella.

  “What happened didn’t surprise me,” he said. “In fact, I should have expected it. That woman is the local champion, I suppose.”

  “She certainly has good technique.”

  In fact there were half-a-dozen women in the dojo who were better than Kondo, but Martine let that rest. Schneider was holding the umbrella in such a way that his forearm was brushing the back of her hair.

  “It is regrettable, but Japanese people are basically quite racist. It runs deep [74] within their culture, from distant times right to the present.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. There was an excellent article in the New York Times recently. It explained the cultural background, why they always try to keep out imports, why they have never apologized for their actions in the war, and so on.”

  “I see,” said Martine, eyeing his hand out of the corner of her eye. His fingers, thick and knobbly, were actually resting on her shoulder.

  “I notice it myself, this mentality. When I take the train, often nobody will sit down in the space beside me. It is almost as if they think I smell.”

  “Well, maybe they’re right.”

  His eyes widened. “What?”

  “You do smell,” said Martine sweetly. “Didn’t you know? Surely somebody must have told you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Martine turned her face toward his armpit and took a couple of sniffs. “It’s rather like a mature gorgonzola, quite strong if you’re not used to it.”

  He let the umbrella slide to the ground and stood looking at her in shock. Then a big smile slowly spread over his face. “This is a joke, yes? Now I understand. Now I am laughing! Ha, ha, ha!”

  Behind him a taxi slid to a halt, and the back door flicked open. Martine slid inside.

  “How about dinner tonight?” Schneider called out as the door swung shut. “What’s your phone number? Who are you anyway?”

  Martine waved a hand as the taxi swished away from the curb.

  Martine got to the office just before nine to find that Charlie’s desk had already been cleared. The photo of his wife and kids had gone from the wall, and his tennis holdall had gone from the lobby. Even his decaf had disappeared from the shelf in the kitchen. “When did this happen?” Martine asked Kyo-san, the office manager.

  “Just now. You missed him by a couple of minutes.”

  That was strange. Charlie hadn’t mentioned anything about an early departure. She had assumed he would be staying around for several weeks.

  “You mean he’s gone, just like that, without saying good-bye?”

  “Sure,” said Kyo-san in her old-fashioned American drawl, acquired in 1960s Los Angeles. “He said it was a condition of his severance package. The story is that he quit on his own initiative, and was keen to get back to the States as soon as possible.”

  “Huh? Whose idea was that?”

  “Head Office’s. It’s part of the new personnel policy.”

  “The Tribune’s new personnel policy is to lie?”

  “You got it, honey.”

  [75] Martine took a bottle of barley tea from the refrigerator, poured out two glasses, and plopped in a couple of ice cubes. Then she put some oatmeal cookies on a tray and took them over to Kyo-san.

  In the long years Kyo-san had been with the Tribune, she had seen dozens of bureau chiefs come and go. She had Watched them arrive full of big ideas, eager to do the Japan story as it had never been done before, to get behind the surface and find out what really made the place tick. She had seen ambitions blocked, marriages dissolve, enthusiasm turn to bitterness. Most of them she had seen leave, like Charlie was leaving, puzzled and frustrated.

  Technically, Martine was Kyo-san’s boss. She was deputy bureau chief, and she earned roughly double Kyo-san’s salary. But Martine was also much the younger of the two women, and it was a Japanese office so she was the one who served barley tea and rice crackers a couple of times a day.

  “So what do you know about this new guy?” inquired Kyo-san, cautiously nibbling at a cookie. Her sweet tooth wasn’t as well developed as Martine’s.

  “New guy? What new guy?”

  “The new bureau chief. Didn’t they tell you? There’s a press release up on the website.”

  Martine shook her head in vexation. But really she shouldn’t have been surprised. The new management regime had already shown that it had no respect for the paper’s traditions. Stories unfavorable to major advertisers were being mysteriously spiked, and the editor of the arts page had been fired after penning a lukewarm review of a movie produced by InfoCorp’s Hollywood studio. As part of the branding strategy, a line of luxury products had been launched, all emblazoned with the Tribune’s logo. You could buy leather wallets and briefcases, electronic knickknacks, baseball caps that sported the slogan “Get Real, Get the Tribune,” and even boxer shorts decorated with
headlines. These were all available to staff at big discounts. Charlie had bought a number of items as part of his doomed attempt to ingratiate himself with the new management. The very thought of Makoto owning any of them—particularly the boxer shorts—made Martine shudder.

  After munching through a couple of cookies, Martine switched on her computer and checked the Tribune’s homepage. As Kyo-san had said, there was a press release announcing the appointment of a new bureau chief. Surprisingly, Charlie’s successor wasn’t a journalist at all, but an associate at some Washington think tank. According to the Tribune’s PR department, J. J. Murphy was “an acknowledged expert on East Asian economic and security issues, with excellent strategic vision and strong leadership skills.” Martine didn’t like the sound of that: who were the strong leadership skills going to be exercised on? Reading further, she discovered that Murphy had a doctorate in political science from Berkeley, spoke fluent Mandarin, and enjoyed fine [76] wine, paraskiing, and scuba diving. This thinking man’s James Bond had testified many times before the Senate Foreign Relations committee, worked as an adviser to American hedge funds, and was responsible for a number of “provocative” op-eds. Right at the end came a few lines about Charlie, who, the world was told, had left the Tribune in order to spend more time with his family.

  Martine tracked down half-a-dozen of Murphy’s op-ed pages, in the archives of the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. They had a common theme: Japan was finished as a serious global player and it was time for the US to switch its allegiance to China, with its huge markets and soaring growth. The Taiwan issue should not be allowed to get in the way, and neither should the massacres in Tibet, the missile sales to fundamentalist regimes, or the breaching of trade agreements and patent laws. These were merely the unfortunate but understandable responses of nervous Chinese leaders to “encirclement” by the US-Japan alliance. If the US would only dump Japan, the situation would change completely. China and the US would be able to build a long-lasting partnership encompassing trade, investment, and military cooperation. It would be a perfect win-win relationship. The combination of US technology and the huge Chinese labor force would usher in a golden era of prosperity and peace for Asia, indeed the entire world.

  Martine took a deep breath. She had a feeling she was not going to see eye to eye with J. J. Murphy.

  “This think tank, the Industrial Security Institute—do you know anything about it?”

  Kyo-san didn’t. On the spur of the moment Martine picked up the phone and rang an old boyfriend, a specialist in intellectual property working for a Washington law firm. His wife answered the phone, her voice turning icy when Martine gave her name. In the background she could hear a baby crying and someone playing the piano. Finally Michael came to the phone.

  “Martine, how on earth did you get my number?”

  “You gave it to me, remember?”

  “Did I? Hmm, maybe I did.”

  Michael sounded hesitant, as well he might. It had been eighteen months ago, when they had bumped into each other at a conference in Singapore on the trade crisis and had spent a couple of hours in the bar chatting about old times.

  “Well anyway, it’s great to hear from you,” said Michael, exaggeratedly breezy. “How can I be of assistance?”

  “I need some information about trade politics, and who better to ask for an unbiased expert opinion than you?”

  “An unbiased expert opinion? There’s no such thing, not in this town anyway.”

  [77] “Well, let’s try our best. Have you heard of an organization called the Industrial Security Institute?”

  “Yes, I have. It’s a new think tank, or rather, a lobbying organization. All of these outfits have an axe to grind, usually one that’s being heavily subsidized by some interested party.”

  “So who’s subsidizing this one?”

  “A handful of Fortune 500 companies, basically the aerospace and satellite communications guys.”

  “And how does it rank? Is it reputable, or not?”

  Martine could almost hear him grinning at the other end of the phone. “Reputable? My God, Martine, sometimes you sound like the Queen of England. The ISI is extremely well funded, it has smart guys, and people listen to them. In that sense, which is the only sense that counts, yes, it is reputable.”

  “So it’s not some fringe organization?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “I see,” said Martine, feeling vaguely disappointed. “Thanks for your help. I may ask your advice again on this subject, if that’s okay.”

  Michael’s voice dropped to a murmur. “Sure, sure—though I’d rather you call my office number. Anyway, what’s happening with you these days? We really must catch up next time you come through.”

  “Yes, we must. I’ll give you a call.”

  When she put the phone down, Kyo-san was staring at her over the top of her glasses. Martine gave a little shrug and turned her attention to the pile of newspapers and magazines on the floor beside her.

  All the Japanese dailies were leading with the story of the chemical plant explosion. Martine didn’t do disaster stories—the news editors could pull the necessary information off the wire services—so she skimmed through the details without really taking them in. A fireball ... a cloud of toxic gas ... five workers and three residents of a nearby apartment block dead ... deepest regrets ... investigations to determine the cause ...

  Each of the dailies dealt with the subject the same way, with almost identical wording. That was no surprise. Whereas the tabloid press—with its conspiracy theories and scurrilous rumors—was getting increasingly hysterical, the establishment papers were duller and emptier than ever. Thanks to the system of press clubs, official information had always been tightly controlled. Now the editorial boards of the major papers had agreed to follow a policy of “self-restraint,” meaning they would avoid “inappropriate” or “irresponsible” stories until the crisis was over.

  Martine had good friends working for the Japanese press. They were intelligent, hardworking, highly knowledgeable about whatever field they were in, and they had been the sources for some of her best stories. But they had to [78] play by the rules, especially in the current economic climate. One mistake, one failure to say the right thing to the right person at the right time, and lifetime employment could become lifetime unemployment.

  Martine browsed through the three big dailies, absorbing a day’s worth of factory closures, bankruptcies, stock price declines, suicides, rapes, and murders. There was nothing that struck a chord with her, nothing that had the shape of a story. She dropped the last paper onto the pile and glanced at the front page again. There was something about that item on the chemical plant explosion that was nagging at her memory, like a piece of gravel caught in her shoe. Then her eyes were drawn to the middle of the second paragraph: “It is estimated that the explosion took place at eleven o’clock last night.”

  Eleven in the evening. She suddenly remembered the mysterious message she had received on her palmtop computer.

  “Kyo-san, where exactly did this explosion happen?”

  “I’m not sure. Somewhere in Chiba, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, I know that. But was it inland, or on the bay?”

  “On the bay, I guess. That’s where most of these places are. They need good access from the sea.”

  Kyo-san was right, as a quick look at the map on the wall proved. So whoever had sent the message was no ordinary nutcase. He or she had predicted the exact time and place of a major industrial accident. Martine didn’t believe in psychic powers, so she was left with two possible explanations. Either the whole thing was an amazing coincidence, or what had happened to the Sumikawa Chemical’s brand-new multibillion-yen chemical facility was no accident at all.

  Martine took her palmtop from her bag and tried to retrieve the deleted message. No good—it had gone, vanished into digital oblivion. She thought for a moment, then called a good contact in the police department.

&nb
sp; “Sato-san, I was wondering if you had any comments about the explosion in Chiba last night?”

  “Comments? What is there to say about an incident like that? The loss of life is very regrettable, and a thorough investigation into the cause is already underway.”

  Martine sighed. “Regrettable,” “thorough investigation”—the standard phrases that were trotted out whenever anything went wrong. You heard them a lot these days.

  “Off the record, what else have you got?”

  Sato sounded offended. “Off the record? I don’t understand what you mean, Meyer-san. This is an unfortunate accident. We’re doing our best to work out how it happened.”

  “What if I said that I know it wasn’t an accident at all?”

  [79] There was no reply from the other end of the phone. Martine thought she heard the sound of a pencil hitting the floor.

  “Perhaps we should meet for a chat,” said Martine sweetly.

  “Impossible.”

  “It would be useful for the article I’m writing.”

  Now Sato sounded worried. “You shouldn’t write about this, it’s too sensitive. But tell me—what are you going to say?”

  “Cover-up, official incompetence, nobody taking responsibility—you know, the usual thing.”

  There was another pause, broken by the sound of Sato sucking air through his teeth.

  “All right,” he muttered dolefully. “How about lunch today?”

  “What a nice idea!” said Martine, winking across the room at Kyo-san.

  EIGHT

  Martine met Sato in a traditional Japanese restaurant famous for its mountain vegetables and homemade bean curd. At the entrance you were greeted by a kimono-clad waitress who led you over a wooden bridge, down a stone pathway, then into a tatami room that looked out onto a charming little garden. It was soothing to sit there, listening to the tinkling of windbells and the creak of the waterwheel, and watching the carp glide through the pond like fleshy orange torpedoes. For a few precious moments it was possible to forget that you were on the eighteenth floor of the Sumikawa Bank building, overlooking one of the most heavily congested intersections in the city.