Dragon Dance Read online

  Out on the street the air was warm, filled with exhaust fumes and the roar of traffic. Crowds of people rushed past, nobody looking at anyone. Neon signs were everywhere, flashing with that crazy chicken-feather writing. Jackson felt like a child, following the woman as she turned into a side street, then again into an alley barely wide enough for them to walk side by side.

  She took a cellphone from her bag, and started speaking in a low urgent voice.

  “Who you talking to?” asked Jackson. He couldn’t understand a word, but it didn’t sound much like a party conversation.

  “Talking my friends—waiting eagerly for you to come.”

  “That’s nice.” Jackson had heard the Japanese were real polite, but this was amazing. Some folks he’d never even met were keen to meet him!

  The alley was quiet, empty. On one side was a high wall topped with broken glass, on the other the backs of some shabby-looking office buildings, not a light anywhere. As they passed under a ramshackle fire escape, there was a faint rustling sound just above Jackson’s head and he glanced up just in time to catch a dark shape scooting up to the next floor. It was the skinniest cat he had ever seen, little more than a shadow with fur.

  “What happened to his tail?” said Jackson. “Did someone chop it off?”

  “Not necessary. Japanese people like no tail cat. Tails cause trouble, knock stuff over in narrow house. No tail cat—much better.”

  “But don’t cats need their tails for balancing?”

  The woman didn’t answer. Once more she was talking into the phone, so low this time she was practically whispering.

  They carried on down the alley, her arm locked around his. Jackson felt the heat of her body, the tingle of her hair brushing his arm.

  What kind of people were they going to meet? How was Jackson supposed to behave? He tried to recall what they had been told in the “cultural sensitivity program” the other night. Take your shoes off in somebody’s house. Don’t leave your chopsticks in your food. Don’t piss in the bath. They were ambassadors for their country, the instructor had said. With political tensions [13] so high, they had to be extra careful not to offend anyone. Davis and Hooper didn’t pay any attention, just sat there yawning and scratching. Jackson had listened carefully though, and had even asked some questions at the end. This stuff was important, part of the purpose of the big ship plowing through the ocean.

  At the end of the alley was a gate with a rusty latch. The woman pushed it open and they stepped into a patch of waste ground containing the skeleton of a building, all girders and struts and wooden boards. Behind it was the highway, cars zooming.

  “Here we are,” said the woman.

  Jackson narrowly avoided stepping into a long trench, several feet deep, containing a pipe that glinted in the moonlight like a long metal sausage. He gazed up at the scaffolding, the crane silhouetted in the moonlight, the blue plastic sheets flapping gently in the breeze.

  “Your friends are here?” he asked incredulously.

  “Yeah. They eagerly waiting—other side.”

  She took him by the wrist and together they walked over the ridged mud toward the gaping hole between the boards that marked the doorway. Jackson was getting more and more confused. What would her friends be doing having a party in a half-made building?

  Jackson passed through the hole in the boards to the inside of the structure. It was sticky underfoot, and there was the smell of paint thinner in the air. It took his eyes a couple of seconds to adjust to the gloom, then he made out the outline of a shovel, a cement bag, and a pair of rubber boots half hidden behind a plastic sheet. The boots suddenly took a step backward and disappeared from sight.

  “What’s going on?” said Jackson, glancing over his shoulder. But the woman hadn’t followed him inside, and that was when Jackson got a prickly feeling in the back of his scalp. This was all wrong, he suddenly realized. He shouldn’t be here, had to get out fast. He turned in the squelching mud, lost his balance, and was vaguely aware of a figure coming out of the shadows, something swishing through the air toward him. There was an explosion of pain at the back of his knee, and suddenly Jackson was lying on his stomach, face down in the mud.

  Someone stepped forward and poked him in the side with a metal pole. Jackson twisted around, grabbed the pole, then froze with shock. The face staring down at him was like a dog’s, with slits for eyes and a black plastic snout. Jackson yanked at the pole with all his strength and had just grappled it free when another pole smashed against his hand. He gave a yelp of pain and let go.

  A second dog face appeared behind the first, gazing down at him and [14] nodding. A gloved hand thrust something into his face, a thin rubber tube that made a faint hissing sound. Jackson tried to twist away and bellowed for help, but the only sound that came out was a choking rattle. The muscles of his face felt totally rigid, as if they’d turned to iron. Then suddenly the world was rushing away from him, high into the sky, getting smaller and smaller until it was just a pinprick of light.

  And then the pinprick disappeared.

  It was six-thirty in the morning when the open-backed truck arrived at the building site and the group of laborers jumped out. Ahmed was the only non-Japanese on this job, but after three years of illegal work all over eastern Japan he had a good understanding of the Japanese language and customs. In fact he was starting to feel at home in Japan. He had learned how to play mah-jongg and sing traditional ballads, and had even developed an interest in baseball.

  Every morning at five o’clock, Ahmed went to a small square around the back of the station near his lodging house and waited for the yakuza to come in their trucks. There were usually twice as many men as jobs, but Ahmed almost always got picked. The yakuza knew he was tough and hardworking.

  One of the best things about Japan was the yakuza, he thought. There were many gangsters in Ahmed’s country, but they were unreliable idlers and bullies who double-crossed you at the first chance. These Japanese gangsters weren’t like that at all. They were hard workers themselves, always rushing from job to job. And they always paid the promised money at the promised time. You didn’t need to count it.

  The men pulled the tools out of the back of the truck, then stood in line while Tanaka, the foreman, gave his usual morning speech. The content of it didn’t matter; what was important was the serious way he intoned it and the way everybody listened respectfully, bowing and shouting “Hai” at the right moments. Ahmed liked this too. In his own country, the foremen were almost as bad as the gangsters. They would often take some of the building materials away and sell them, and the workers rarely had helmets or proper tools.

  When Tanaka had finished his speech, the workers picked up their tools. Ahmed took his handsaw and drill and was the first man to reach the building. He pulled up the plastic sheet, ducked inside, then froze in his tracks and let out a startled cry.

  Ahmed had witnessed many horrors before in his life, but this was the most shocking: a monster of a man lying asleep on the ground, his huge chest [15] rising and falling. And next to him a girl’s half-naked body, face down in the mud, arms sticking out at unnatural angles. There was blood everywhere—a huge dark stain on the ground, spattered on the wooden boards, streaking the man’s shirt and trousers. The girl was young, no more than twelve or thirteen. And Ahmed had seen enough to know she was beyond help. This building was going to be bad, he thought. Nobody should live in it, nobody should work on it any more.

  He backed out as quietly as he could and went to get Tanaka.

  TWO

  “Look at him,” growled the taxi driver, glancing at the liquid crystal screen mounted in the dashboard. “He’s garbage, that guy.”

  The taxi suddenly swerved to avoid a truck turning left. Martine bounced back in her seat, one hand grabbing for the safety strap. On the flickering screen she saw a close-up of Jackson being hustled down a flight of steps by two uniformed policemen, his eyes big and scared.

  “A twelve-year-old girl—he cu
t her up like sashimi!”

  “It certainly is terrible,” said Martine, glancing at the traffic.

  The taxi driver shook his head. “It’s time to kick the Americans out of this country and build up our own military. According to Nozawa-sensei, it would be good for the economy too. The unemployment problem would be cured within months.”

  He accelerated toward the next set of traffic lights, which were showing amber. Martine took a firmer grip on the safety strap.

  “You sound like a big fan of Nozawa.”

  The lights turned red. The taxi shot through, then squealed to a halt at the next tailback.

  “Of course I am! He’s the only man with the guts to stand up for Japanese culture. The old politicians are just fools, nobody even understands what they’re saying. It’s no wonder all the foreigners are laughing at us.”

  Martine made sympathetic noises. This was the fifth taxi driver she had met this week who was an enthusiastic supporter of Nozawa. Using taxi drivers as symbols of public opinion was a journalistic cliché, but like all clichés it had some value. The conventional wisdom amongst Japan-watchers—diplomats, financial analysts, and think tankers—was that Nozawa was a political joke, a flaky showbiz character who would never attract serious mainstream support. But Martine had a feeling that the Japan-watchers were getting it all wrong. Again.

  [17] The taxi spluttered forward a couple of yards, then eased to a halt. It was complete gridlock this time.

  On the TV screen a line of police were pushing back the crowd, clearing a way for Jackson to reach the black van. Martine made out the shape of a rightist in combat fatigues yelling into a megaphone. There was shoving and bellowing and women’s voices screaming and a few objects being hurled through the air. Jackson held up a brawny arm to shield his eyes, but something caught him on the back of the head. The taxi driver gave a snort of derision.

  “That thug deserves the death penalty. This idea of handing him over to the Americans for trial—it’s ridiculous. They’ve got so many lawyers over there, if you pay them enough money you can get away with anything, right?”

  “Well, in fact it’s a bit more ...”

  But the taxi driver was in full flow. “There are too many foreigners in Japan these days, they call us yellow monkeys and walk around like they own the whole country. The women are just as bad ...”

  The taxi driver stopped in mid-sentence. Martine saw his eyes blinking warily at her in the rearview mirror.

  “I’m sorry if I was rude,” he muttered. “I said some bad things. It’s just that you speak Japanese so fluently. Somehow I forgot ...”

  “Don’t worry,” said Martine sweetly. “Tell me more about Nozawa. Do you think he can really make an impact politically?”

  The taxi driver was happy to change the subject. He starting talking about Nozawa’s down-to-earth opinions, the fact that he was as tall as most foreigners, how his songs were so moving, his voice so strong and manly ...

  Martine kept one eye on the TV screen. There was a close-up of Jackson sitting in the van, staring ahead blankly, his lips moving. Martine realized that Jackson was actually saying something, articulating the same word over and over again. It was not hard to make out. “Mama,” Jackson was saying. “Mama, mama, mama ...”

  On the never-ending tickertape of daily news, amongst all the manmade and natural disasters, the plane crashes and car bombings and floods and massacres, a few events stand out as stories in the true sense. They have a narrative. They change the way people look at the world, which is to say that they change the world itself.

  The killing of little Mari Yamada would be one of those events, Martine had sensed immediately. At the time the story broke she had been over at Makoto’s apartment. Makoto was cooking linguine in a stainless-steel pot he had mail-ordered from Italy. Martine was sitting on the tatami floor, staring disconsolately at the shogi board. She had been taught the game by a fourth-grade master and prided herself on her skill, but somehow Makoto had beaten her again. For such a straightforward kind of guy, he could be incredibly sneaky sometimes.

  [18] She glanced at the clock and considered whether or not to turn on the TV. She hadn’t heard the news since early afternoon, and these days that made her nervous as too much was happening, none of it good. And since Charlie, the bureau chief, spoke hardly any Japanese, it was up to Martine to make sure they didn’t miss anything important.

  On the other hand, it was Sunday night and the first time she and Makoto had been alone together for weeks. Martine had been busy covering the latest twists and turns in the crisis, chasing down contacts, filing three or four stories a day. And Makoto had been absorbed in his own problems at the brewery, talking to lawyers and bankers. Now at last everything was right—the atmosphere, the food, the fact that Makoto’s son was away on a school trip and his mother had gone to soak her aged bones in a hot spring in the Japan Alps. Martine had the feeling that if she pressed the button on the remote control, the intimate evening they had both been looking forward to would disappear like a mirage.

  She pressed it anyway, keeping the volume down low. And as soon as she saw the newsreader’s face—the agitation in his eyes, the suppressed anger in his mouth—she knew that she was right. Out in the world something big had happened. She turned up the sound, and pulled out her notebook.

  “Hoi!” called Makoto from the kitchen. “What’s going on in there?”

  “Quiet!” hissed Martine. “I’m trying to hear what the guy’s saying.”

  “Huh?”

  She hardly heard him. In her mind’s eye, the story was already forming neat columns, upper left on page five.

  Martine’s instincts proved to be correct. Mari-chan’s murder by an American sailor caused outrage throughout the population. Almost immediately the internet chat rooms were overflowing with angry messages. The tabloids and weekly magazines responded with savage glee, splashing the story over their front pages in huge blood-red characters. On every channel the morning gossip “wide shows” made it their lead feature. Regular programs were interrupted to show press conferences with Mari-chan’s grief-stricken parents. Japanese TV crews descended on the small Alabama town where Jackson’s mother lived alone, and interviewed everyone from the local cops to the barber who used to cut his hair.

  Crowds stood silently in the streets of Ginza and Shibuya, following the events on giant video screens. Two images were shown over and over again. The first, obviously leaked by the police, was of Mari-chan’s naked body half covered by a blood-soaked sheet. The second showed Jackson being pulled from the house by the police, his teeth bared in what looked like a maniacal grin. Only from the angle at which his arms were being levered up could you deduce that it was actually a grimace of pain.

  [19] It was as if Japan had been waiting for something like this to happen. The economic crisis had been going on for too long now and people were angry, frustrated, bewildered by the slow collapse of everything they held dear. The first politician to seize the opportunity was Nozawa. He was bitterly critical of the prime minister, the American military, and the lack of morals in modern society. He even visited Mari-chan’s house to offer his condolences, and organized a demonstration outside the US Embassy.

  Nozawa’s poll ratings rocketed. After just two years as a member of the Upper House, he was now by far the most popular politician in Japan. Of course the competition was weak, since most of the political establishment was despised for its incompetence, lack of integrity, poor leadership, and inability to understand ordinary people. Nevertheless it was remarkable that a middle-aged rock singer with cranky opinions could have such an impact on the national political scene.

  In recent decades, drafting celebrities into the Diet had become common practice. In the last election, seats had been won by, amongst others, a faith healer, a transvestite comedian, a TV chef, and a bronze-medal-winning synchronized swimmer. These minor celebrities were not expected to have any real political influence, nor did they. In fact no sooner did
they enter the political world than their own popularity generally began to slump dramatically.

  Nozawa was proving to be the exception. He was a major star, and was burning brighter than ever, using the political stage as skillfully as he used the stage at the Budokan.

  The serious Japan-watchers were confident that the Nozawa phenomenon was strictly temporary, an aberration that had cropped up while the establishment was paralyzed by the UNG scandal. After the sudden collapse of the United Nippon Group, Japan’s largest bank, dozens of senior politicians were under investigation for corrupt dealings. Even so, it was unthinkable that Nozawa would have a lasting effect on domestic politics, let alone on international relations. After all, Japan was a highly controlled, stability-obsessed society. There couldn’t possibly be a place in the power structure for a man who had been dismissed by one of the Tribune’s star columnists as “a cross between Bruce Springsteen and Benito Mussolini.”

  But the problem with serious Japan-watchers was that they spent too much time in conferences and seminars, and not enough time talking to taxi drivers. And they underestimated the power of a story, the way it can develop its own momentum, converging with other stories into a churning, tumbling tide that sweeps away everything in its path.

  Martine’s taxi continued its crawling odyssey through the traffic. Even in the pre-crisis days, getting around had needed a lot of patience. Now with the roadblocks and random searches, it could take as much as an hour to get the [20] four or five miles from Otemachi to Shinjuku. The trains weren’t much better either. However long you thought it was going to take to get somewhere, it always took longer.

  Martine took out her palmtop computer and sat back in her seat. Two messages had appeared. One was from Charlie, asking her to get back to the office as soon as possible. Apparently there was something urgent to discuss. Martine gave a sigh of annoyance. In all likelihood this “urgent” discussion was a pretext for checking up on Martine’s activities.