Dragon Dance Page 13

  Kubota gave a grunt of annoyance. “Wait a moment. I’ll check what it says in my log.”

  The cleaners came during the afternoon shift and left late in the evening. Most of them were either mentally disabled or well over seventy. They came in and did their work silently, avoiding the eyes of the other workers. From [95] what Kubota had heard, the company that employed them got some kind of subsidy from the government and paid them next to nothing.

  Kubota flipped open the logbook and ran his finger down the page. “Let’s see ... eight people in, eight people out. That first entry must be a mistake.”

  “I suppose so. But there’s a security card missing too.”

  Ueda was new on the job. He worried too much about the little things.

  “That’s nothing,” scoffed Kubota. “Those people are always forgetting to hand in their security cards. Some of them can’t even remember their own names!”

  Ueda gave a nervous chuckle. Kubota put down the phone and turned up the music. For a few precious minutes he leaned back in his chair, eyes closed, listening to the last song on Nozawa’s CD. He waited until the last tremulous note had faded before he opened his eyes and glanced at his watch. It was time for the first patrol of the night. He pulled on his jacket and gloves and picked up the toolbag. He might be able to fix that camera in Cold Area D. He had spent twenty years working with top precision machinery; he understood how these things worked.

  He climbed into the electric car and pressed the start button. Kubota sat with his arms crossed, no need to steer. The car ran along an optoelectronic strip in the floor, negotiating the turns between aisles at the same even speed. When he reached Cold Area B, he stopped the cart and got off. He slid his security card into the reader, spun the lock, and jerked open the heavy door.

  The cold air was like a slap in the face. The temperature was several degrees below freezing, optimal for the “hundred-percent fresh and healthy” ingredients that Starjacks boasted about in its ads. Kubota walked between the stacks of crates, occasionally rapping them with his nightstick, knocking off little clouds of frost. This was a habit of his. He liked the sound it made, a muffled thump which echoed around the metal walls of the room. One he hit too hard, and the front board of the crate slid loose. Kubota reached inside and pulled out a cinnamon bun, as hard as a rock. How could people eat this stuff, he wondered, tossing it in his hand. He had never even been inside a Starjacks outlet himself. The menu was incomprehensible, you weren’t allowed to smoke, the coffee was overpriced, and the customers were silly fashion-conscious people trying to impress each other with their phoney sophistication.

  Kubota stuck the bun back in the crate and whacked the loose board into place.

  There was nothing unusual at Areas B and C, but when he got to Cold Area D Kubota was shocked to find that the metal door hadn’t been properly closed. He gave a snort of contempt. Those Starjacks workers looked so enthusiastic, but actually they were slack and self-satisfied. They wouldn’t have lasted long at DaiNippon Machinery. Kubota went inside and checked the [96] thermostat. Fortunately the temperature was still within the target range. He walked over to the video camera, which was pointing toward him and making little circular motions. Kubota put a metal ladder against the wall and climbed up. As he’d suspected, it was a simple problem: the camera’s constant motion had caused one of the wires to work loose from its socket. It had probably been set up carelessly, thought Kubota. Just a little more give in the wire, and it would never have happened. He took out a screwdriver, unscrewed the side panel, and fed out another few millimeters of wire. He had just finished when he heard a faint click behind him. As he swung round on the ladder, the neon lights flickered and then the whole room was plunged into darkness.

  Kubota cursed and jumped to the ground. He followed the wall around to the door and slid his security card into the reader. But that was dead too. There must have been some kind of power failure. Kubota hammered his fists on the door until the echo made his ears hurt. It was useless of course. He was alone, locked in a pitch-black refrigerated box.

  Or was he? He thought he could hear a rubber sole squeaking on the shiny floor outside.

  “Ueda, is that you?”

  There was no answer. It couldn’t be Ueda anyway, he would never abandon his post at the security gate. Then he remembered the missing security card, and another idea hit him. One of those weak-brained cleaners must be out there, probably wandering around unaware of whether it was day or night.

  “Let me out!” yelled Kubota. “Come on! I’ll explain how to switch on the backup.”

  That would be no easy task, even if whoever it was outside had been prepared to stop and listen carefully. But then Kubota heard something that made his stomach churn as if he had just eaten half-a-dozen Starjacks cinnamon buns. He listened in shock as the low hum of his electric cart moved away and turned the corner, heading toward Cold Area E where the huge tanks of fruit juices and iced tea were stored. Maybe it wasn’t one of the cleaners out there after all—but who else could it be?

  Kubota’s mind flashed with anger and panic. There was some lunatic out there, or maybe even a thief, and he could do nothing about it. He had failed in his most important duty—to keep the warehouse secure at all times. If his boss ever found out, he would be fired on the spot. And what would happen then? How would he ever repay his loan? He closed his eyes and pressed his fingers lightly against the lids. Left or right, which one would they choose?

  His only chance would be if whoever it was out there didn’t make too much mess. Then, if he could somehow sneak out without being seen, maybe the Starjacks people wouldn’t even notice, or at least wouldn’t blame it on him.

  [97] Kubota pulled his collar tight around his neck and shoved his hands in the pockets of his jacket. He started softly humming the words to “Last Train to Kurashiki.”

  TEN

  Martine lies naked on the bed, one arm flung over her face. Her skin tingles to the roughness of the hands cupping her breasts, the heat of his breath on her stomach, moving lower, the silky softness caressing her, teasing her open with the delicacy of a feather. She stretches out a hand and touches his face.

  “Makoto,” she whispers. “Now, please.”

  He rises over her body, crushing her with his force, his glistening shoulders looming over her, his dark silent face ...

  ... his face

  ... something wrong with his face

  ... it isn’t his face

  Martine freezes. She wants to yell, but no sound comes. The face gazing down at her, lips sardonically curled, is not Makoto’s. It is Nozawa’s.

  “Stay quiet,” he breathes, and slides a hand across her mouth.

  Martine shakes her head frantically from side to side. She bucks her hips and thrashes her arms and squirms free and rolls off the bed and sits up on the floor, bathed in sweat, heart pounding, eyes blinking in the shaft of sunlight slanting between the curtains. The bed is empty. The room is empty. The clock tells her it’s five o’clock in the morning. Outside the window the cicadas are screaming like a treeful of dentists’ drills.

  Martine took a shower, then called Makoto’s hotel in New York. He wasn’t back yet so she left a message on the answering machine, nothing provocative this time, she wasn’t in the mood. It would be early evening over there, and [99] she wondered how his first presentation had gone. This was a crucial time for the brewery. Another round of financing was needed to launch the premium beer that Makoto had spent the past year developing, but there were no funds available domestically. The venture capital industry had been wiped out earlier in the crisis, and the banks were only lending to government-approved “strategic industries.” Makoto had no choice but to go overseas, yet it would be a hard sell there too. In the wake of the euro crisis, investors everywhere had become intensely averse to risk.

  Martine and Makoto—it was a strange combination. At least that was the opinion of Martine’s friends, and probably Makoto’s too. She was used to the com
ments by now, even found them amusing.

  “Oh—are you two still seeing each other?” “So how’s your boyfriend, what’s his name again, that guy from the bankrupt trading company?” “You mean he’s a widower living with his son and his mother? Doesn’t that make things rather difficult, technically speaking?” “He runs a brewery? Wouldn’t a vineyard be more your style?”

  The general assumption was that Martine was being typically perverse, probably on the rebound from some major love affair, probably looking for a few months of light diversion. But it wasn’t like that at all. Martine didn’t do light, she only did heavy. And she had known this was going to be heavy right from the start.

  She had been looking into the UNG scandal at the time. The United Nippon Group was a megabank formed by the merger of five of the country’s most prestigious financial institutions, home to tens of thousands of the country’s best and brightest graduates, and it had suddenly gone bust. It turned out that almost the entire establishment was involved in one way or another—arranging bailouts of bankrupt companies, channeling loans to politically sensitive regions, hiding losses, siphoning off profits. The world’s largest holding company had turned into the world’s largest Ponzi scheme.

  The trigger for the collapse of UNG was the collapse of Marumen Corporation, a trading house with a history stretching back to the seventeenth century. Martine was working on a human interest story about Marumen, and someone gave her Makoto’s name. “He was on the fast track to the top,” she was told. “Head of trading in the US, head of project finance in South East Asia. Interesting guy, but difficult to talk to, not the kind to let his guard down.”

  It was fair warning. When she called Makoto, the voice at the other end was brusquely matter-of-fact. “That business is all finished now. There’s no point in digging it up.”

  “I understand your feelings,” cooed Martine. “But surely you want the world to hear your side of the story.”

  “What are you saying? People have lost their careers, their pensions, their [100] homes, everything. This isn’t some story to entertain newspaper readers, it’s the real lives of real people.”

  With this guy, coaxing obviously wasn’t going to work. So Martine went for the direct approach. “That’s terrible. Did many people lose their homes?”

  “It would be irresponsible to discuss such matters with a journalist.”

  Martine swallowed hard. In her time in Japan she had got used to responses that were slippery, evasive, ambiguous, and sometimes downright meaningless. What she rarely encountered was unadorned rudeness.

  “In my opinion, not discussing such matters is even more irresponsible. If everybody just sits there enduring, nothing will ever change in this country. This kind of thing will just keep happening again and again!”

  Makoto’s voice went icy cold. “Look, these are private matters. Can’t you understand that? Don’t you have any respect for people’s feelings?”

  Martine fought back the wave of anger welling up inside her. “Of course I do. My job is to communicate the facts as accurately as possible, and that includes the feelings of the people affected.”

  “Really? I thought your job was to contribute to the circulation of your newspaper.”

  The wave surged and broke. “Well, if that’s your attitude, there’s no point in continuing this conversation!”

  Martine slammed down the phone, and that was the last she expected to hear of the allegedly interesting but definitely difficult Makoto Ishikawa. Except that the phone rang twenty minutes later, and the same Makoto Ishikawa was on the line apologizing and offering to meet whenever she liked.

  “I thought about what you said and found it made sense. I’m sorry if I offended you.”

  Martine couldn’t believe what she was hearing—a man who was willing to admit that he was wrong!

  They met in a yakitori restaurant in Shimbashi. From the voice on the phone, Martine was expecting a sour-faced, self-important businessman in a boring suit. But Makoto didn’t look like a businessman at all. He was wearing old jeans, a heavily creased leather jacket, and a watch that couldn’t have cost more than a few hundred yen. With his sleepy eyes and rumpled hair, he looked as if he’d just got out of bed. Even more surprisingly, he wasn’t at all pompous, but laid-back and amusing in a deadpan kind of way.

  They had saké, plenty of it. At the end of the evening Martine realized that they’d been talking a lot more about her than about him, supposedly the subject of the human interest story. Too much alcohol, she thought, as she got up to leave. She’d been unprofessional, given too much away. But it had been fun, and she felt more relaxed than she had in years.

  He put her into a taxi, and as she turned to wave good-bye Martine [101] remembered the scarf she’d left in the restaurant, hanging from the coat stand. It was one of her favorites, a present from an Italian screenwriter. For a moment she thought about going back for it. No, the waiters knew Makoto well. They would send the scarf to him, and he would have to bring it to her. That was a much better idea.

  The taxi pulled away from the curb. In the mirror Martine saw a waiter appear and hand the scarf to Makoto. Had he known it was there all along? Evidently not, because he stuffed it into the pocket of his leather jacket and started sprinting after the taxi.

  “That guy is following us,” grunted the taxi driver. “Shall I stop?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” said Martine.

  “Are you sure? He’s yelling something.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Keep going.”

  The taxi sped away from the figure in the mirror and crossed a major intersection, before coming to a halt at a red light.

  “He’s still running. Shall we wait for him?”

  Martine shook her head. “I’m in a hurry.”

  Makoto was within a hundred yards of the taxi when the lights changed. The driver made a clicking noise with his teeth, then accelerated away. The taxi swung left at the next intersection, merging into a line of heavy traffic headed for Roppongi.

  “He’s back,” the taxi driver said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “Your friend. Not the type to give up easily when he sees something he wants!”

  He gave a coarse, gurgling laugh that Martine didn’t care for at all. The tiny figure of Makoto had reappeared in the mirror. He was four hundred yards away, but the traffic was only moving in fits and starts.

  “Looks like you won’t escape this time,” gurgled the driver.

  Martine ignored him. She waited until Makoto was within fifty yards, then instructed the driver to pull in.

  She got out of the taxi and waited, arms crossed. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?”

  Makoto walked the last few yards, chest heaving, forehead glistening with sweat. He pulled the scarf from his pocket.

  “Something left—here—this!”

  “My scarf! Thank you very much.”

  Martine waited, but Makoto was in no condition to say anything else. He squatted down and rested his hands on his knees. From that position he looked up at her, his face glowing with triumph. Just like an adolescent boy, thought Martine. Stubborn. Proud. Extreme.

  “Not the type to give up easily”—the taxi driver had been absolutely right [102] about that. Martine smiled, then started laughing, loud enough for people to stop and stare.

  “What’s the matter?” gasped Makoto between gulps of air.

  “Oh nothing. I was expecting you to be such a bore.”

  “What?”

  Martine gazed at him. The taxi door was still hanging open. One of them was going to have to say something sensible, and since Makoto could hardly talk, it was going to have to be her.

  “Look, I was supposed to be researching a human interest story. But I haven’t got enough material.”

  “Yes.”

  “This project is going to need more time.”

  “Yes.”

  “I think we should meet again soon.”

  “Yes.
”

  “Is that a Japanese ‘yes’ or a Western ‘yes’?”

  “Yes.”

  Martine got back in the taxi, leaving him squatting on the pavement. That was two years ago. The story never got started, but the research had been going on ever since.

  Martine did half an hour of yoga exercises, then had coffee and toast and marmalade. Only when her head was clear did she switch on the television. As usual, she split the screen so that she could simultaneously watch the international news on INN and the domestic Japanese news on NHK.

  The INN news anchor had big hair, big eyes, big cleavage, and big teeth inside a mouth that seemed to stretch to the boundaries of her face. She was wearing the same expression of glazed optimism she wore every morning, no matter what tales of death, disaster, and misery she had to deliver. Martine had to remind herself that this woman was actually a colleague, since InfoCorp News Network was the core trophy in the InfoCorp empire that now included the Tribune as a minor appendage.

  The lead item on INN was the Romanian war. The correspondent was standing in front of a burned-out building interviewing a huge bearded man in a flak jacket, a member of one of the local militias. Martine tried to remember if his people were the good guys or the bad guys. It was hard to keep track. There had been so many changes of sides, so many botched ceasefires and peace conferences. The next item was about the economic chaos in Greece, accompanied by clips of rioting crowds storming supermarkets, and smoke billowing into [103] the air above the Acropolis. Then came the summary of an INN investigation into Yamada Motor’s sports utility vehicles, which apparently had a tendency to roll over when cornering at speed in rainy conditions. There was a clip of a sobbing man whose wife and two children had died in a crash. When this was over, the big-haired woman announced euphorically that the Senate Transportation Committee had scheduled hearings for the coming week.

  The other half of the screen was a different world. According to NHK, the most important event of the day was the start of the grape-picking season in Yamanashi Prefecture, with clips of happy families clutching baskets of fruit. The second item was about a kite-flying competition near the Tama River. The third was more weighty—heavy equipment orders were finally on the recovery track, up 5.5 percent year on year. That drew a smile of satisfaction from the newsreader. The government’s decision to pour money into its nuclear energy program was having the desired effect.