Enzan: The Far Mountain (11 page)

Chapter 11

Trundled into another van, I sat there, shivering under a space blanket while the last of the men in black scrambled out of the basement. They zipped their weapons into black duffels. They yanked their hoods and goggles off and split up, some piling into the van, others into a battered SUV. Sirens wailed in the distance. Nobody said a word. The van was moving before the doors slammed shut. I looked around through the windows: cinderblock walls with graffiti tags, dumpsters, and broken wooden loading pallets. The van’s tires crunched on the gravel and crud on the roadway of a weary-looking industrial park.

Part of me was expecting a crowd from Alphabet Land: FBI, NYPD, HSA. Or some group nobody knew about, a subdivision of a bureaucratic offshoot from a post–9-11 garden, buried deep in an organizational chart with an elastic budget and murky purpose.

What I got was Alejandro and a group of solid-looking Latinos who didn’t say much at all. They had the thick necks and easy moves of the well conditioned. Short haircuts. No tattoos. Some were shorter and some were taller, but they all seemed the same somehow. I thought for a moment and nodded. I was picking up a familiar vibe: these guys had been trained, and trained well. It was revealed in the way they sat, almost motionless but humming with extreme focus. The only movement I could see was their heads swiveling, scanning the passing buildings and vehicles and pedestrians with a relentless precision. I could almost hear their eyeballs clicking as they shifted and quartered the visual field, alert for signs of the next threat.

Alejandro turned to look at me from the front passenger seat. He grinned and thumbed a small earpiece into one ear, cocking his head and listening. He gave quiet instructions to the driver, who nodded. We made some smooth turns, gunned down an avenue. The sound of sirens faded.

I squirmed into a more upright position. The space blanket crinkled around me. “
Que sorpresa
,” I said.

“Not what you expected?” His smile was wide. He had very even teeth.

I shrugged. I was recovering some of my composure and wanted to keep up a good front. “Yah. What you expect and what you get are two different things.” I paused because my teeth were still chattering slightly. I worked to get it under control before I continued. “But I’m happy for the help. Glad to be out of there.”

Alejandro nodded. “
Claro
. Who wouldn’t be glad?”

I sat forward. “The Koreans again?” The minute they had snatched me, I figured it had to be somebody connected to Lim.

Alejandro pursed his lips. “Freelancers from Sunnyside. They were probably hired by Lim’s people, but we’ll never be sure.”

“You could ask them … the ones who were down there in the basement.” I remembered the raid—the explosions, the sounds. “The survivors, I mean.”

A baleful look from Alejandro. “There were no survivors, Dr. Burke.” He saw the expression that must have crossed my face. “Ah, my friend,” he chided, “you disappoint me. These were not people who were easily subdued. And in a situation like that, speed and force provide the best outcome. There was little time for hesitation. Besides, they wouldn’t have known anything of real value.”

His voice was matter of fact and his logic was cold. But I knew he was right. Most people don’t realize just how difficult it is to take someone down without hurting him. And in a situation where guns are involved, it gets even trickier. Alejandro probably knew what he was going to do before he blew the door in. He had two goals: one was to get me out in one piece; the other was to protect his people. That meant getting in and taking everyone down who even looked like he might resist.

Besides, Lim or whoever hired those people was using them as a cutout. They’d have little knowledge of what was really going on. The people who grabbed me had been given a target, some instructions, and probably a decent amount of money. But in the end, Alejandro was right. Any way you looked at it, they were expendable. I understood the logic of it, but it chilled me just the same.

We rode along for a time. I sighed. “Now what?” I finally asked.

They got me cleaned up and into some dry clothes. I was sitting with Alejandro in the deserted basement dining room of a small Mexican place in Bay Ridge. They told me it probably wasn’t safe to go home. Whoever was after me would be watching: my house, my car, the dojo. They’d have them staked out, ready to snap me up again if I showed my face.

A waiter came by and set two cups of espresso down in front of us. He stood there, hands folded on the apron that stretched over his belly, watching Alejandro, who scrutinized the placement of the coffee cups, the small yellow rind of lemon on each saucer. He picked up the small spoon and examined both sides, then nodded. The waiter scurried away.

“He seems worried,” I told him.

Alejandro waited for the man to be out of earshot. “He should be. I’m part owner.”

We sat for a quiet minute. “So I’ve ruffled some feathers with this Lim thing,” I began.

He nodded. “It was why I decided to keep my eye on you.”

“I didn’t know you cared.”

He sipped at his coffee and looked at me. “Unfortunately, my career choice does not involve a great deal of feeling. Let’s make that clear. Mr. Osorio hires me to promote his interests. And that’s what I am doing.”

“You went to a lot of trouble to spring me,” I said.

He shrugged. “An unanticipated benefit of ten plus years in Iraq and Afghanistan—lots of well-trained young men available for a certain type of work. The economy being what it is, I do what I can …”

“Still doesn’t explain why.” I sipped at the coffee. Dark, bitter, hot. The dining room was dimly lit. I could hear muted voices from the kitchen as they prepared for the dinner trade, the clanking of dishes and the rush of water. The liquid sound made me feel cold once more. I wanted to hunch into a small ball and get warm, but I made myself sit back and look at Alejandro. I waited until he answered the question.

“Why?” he began. “It’s fairly easy. Your Japanese friends want a woman found. But the way they’re doing it seems far too complex to me. And another group of people don’t seem to want her found. Interesting. And then there’s her boyfriend Lim. There’s more going on there than what’s on the surface. I think this is interesting as well. There are secrets here. Things being hidden.”

“And?”

“People hide valuable things.”

“The girl is valuable?”

Again the shrug. “I’m not sure of that. Whatever is really being hidden, that’s valuable.”

“I don’t see it.”

He smiled. “Of course you don’t. This is not your world. But when someone wants something hidden, it’s fairly easy to make money.” Alejandro saw that I wasn’t following him. He sighed. “You can make money by finding the valuable thing, but this is doing it the hard way. I’ve found it much easier to go to the people who want something hidden and simply threaten to find it. Or threaten to tell others where it is.”

“Extortion.”

He wagged his head from side to side. “I prefer to think about it as a type of service. I learn something and I offer to keep it secret. Surely all my hard work should be compensated, yes?”

“So why help me?”

He smiled. “Dr. Burke. You are doing the hard work of trying to find this girl. I am happy to let you do so. In the process, I am sure you will uncover the real reasons everyone is so interested in her. And that knowledge will be valuable.”

“Why would I tell you?”

Alejandro finished his espresso and dabbed at his lips with a napkin. He sat back and looked at me coldly. “You’re an honorable man, Burke. This Don Osorio has told me. You will tell me because you owe me. Because I freed you from that basement.” He took a last sip from the tiny cup of espresso.

I sat there, and for a while, I wasn’t really seeing Alejandro. I thought of Mickey and Art telling me to walk away from the Miyazaki, of Osorio’s wolflike eyes, of the strong sense I was getting in over my head. Above all, I thought of Mori’s journal and the secret it contained. I came back into focus and looked at the confident, contained man sitting across from me. My stomach sank. I knew he was right. If this was the price he demanded, I would pay it. Honor binds us. But not always to the things or people we want.

The clock was ticking; that much I knew. The crew from Sunnyside had nabbed me well before noon and whoever hired them would be expecting a report, but probably wouldn’t worry too much if it took a while. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded one hundred and eighty-three times and still didn’t crack. So someone might assume I could hold out for a while. But not forever. Which meant I needed to get moving.

But where? Alejandro had tabs on all of Lim’s likely hangouts and there was no sign of Lim or Chie Miyazaki. His folks would continue to watch known locations and likely associates, but we both assumed she and Lim were somewhere else. I probably had the rest of the day and night to discover their location. Sometime tomorrow, word of the scene in the Sunnyside basement and the bodies lying there would hit the news. And then law enforcement would be all over things, gumming the process up.

I was still a little shaky. One wall of the dining room had a mirror running the length of the upper half of the wall. I looked at my reflection, taking inventory. My hair was mussed and there were dark rings under my eyes. I was slumped, lost in the folds of the limp tracksuit they had given me. I think I had seen Al Sharpton wear it years ago. Alejandro had retrieved my wallet. He had probably gone through it looking for cash as a reflex action. I couldn’t even remember if there was any money in there. I did still have an ATM card, however, which meant I still had access to the money Ito had provided me. I took a deep breath and sat up a little straighter. Faced with a challenge, I did what any real American would do.

I went shopping.

I got some cash, ditched the tracksuit for some real clothes, picked up a cheap cell phone, and loaded it with minutes.

Owen Collins picked up on the first ring.

“Where are you?” I asked.

It took him a minute to recognize my voice. “Burke? Where ya been? I’ve been trying to get hold of you.”

“Someone else did.”

“What?”

I rubbed a hand over my face.
Leave it. Get a grip
. “Not important. Do you have any information for me?”

“Yeah.” His voice grew increasingly animated. “Me and Annie have been working this thing and we’ve come up with some interesting stuff.”

Annie?
“Where are you now?”

“At school.”

It took me almost an hour to get to him—there are over twenty stops on the R train between Bay Ridge and Fifty-Seventh Street in Manhattan. My stomach ached with frustration as the train rocked its slow way under the city. It was a relief to finally get out, and I rushed west toward Columbus Circle and then to John Jay College. It was a lurching, shambling version of a sprint; I was still disconnected, not only from the world, but also from my own body.

Owen stood up when I reached his office. “You don’t look so good,” he said.

I shrugged.
Better than the guys Alejandro left in the basement
.

Owen looked concerned, but pretty soon forgot how I looked as he relayed the story of the research he and Ann had done.

“We did some basic background on the family,” he began.

“The Miyazaki.”

He nodded. “Yeah. Very well placed—ties to the Japanese finance and industrial elite. The old man is on the board of any number of big companies. The son is in the diplomatic corps—has a long and distinguished record of service, blah, blah, blah.”

“Any hint of scandal?” I was fishing.

Owen had a ream of printouts in a file he shuffled through. “Not anything that popped up. The old man doesn’t seem to be well liked.”

I thought of the old lizard, his wide mouth wet with spittle and fury as his son wheeled him out of the meeting room. “For good reason,” I told him.

“Son’s a straight arrow, well thought of in the diplomatic community.”

“What’s he do?”

Owen scanned a sheet of paper. “He’s the Washington liaison in support of the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security.”

“Can you say that in English?”

He grinned. “Signed in 1960. Establishes a commitment by the U.S. to support and defend Japan. They get our military umbrella. We get bases for our troops.”

“It’s a point of contention for many Japanese,” I said.

“Chinese aren’t crazy about it either. But yeah, it’s a hot issue. There are more than eighty U.S. installations of one type or another in Japan. More than thirty-five thousand military personnel.”

I thought about that for a minute. Any military base is both a benefit and a bane to a local community. Saturday night off-duty young people, freed from the restriction of military discipline, money burning a hole in their pockets. Booze, drugs, sex, assaults. Be all that you can be. Aim high. Bound to be some need for diplomacy. But it didn’t seem like anything that would draw the attention of the Koreans. I left it.

“Wife?”

“Old-school. Stays at home. Appears with him at functions but spends most of her time studying
ikebana
.”

Very old-school. Dutiful wife, pursuing the art of flower arranging, floating along in the traditional upper-class Japanese lifestyle where men and women largely spend their married lives apart. I almost asked if the marriage was a happy one, but stopped myself. In this tradition, marriages are valued if they are successful. Happiness is irrelevant.

“The daughter?”

Owen nodded. “Pretty much like the briefing you got: a wild child. She got her mother’s good looks and her father’s money. There’s not much hard data, but she’s clearly staking out her own path …”

“One way to put it.”

“Yeah.” Owen shuffled through the papers. He turned to his computer screen. “I did some analysis on the photos that were sent to her father, just to be sure.”

“Whattaya mean? Sure about what?”

He rolled his mouse around, clicking here and there. Windows opened, expanded, shrunk. I got some fleeting images of Chie Miyazaki: pale flesh, dark glistening eyes, sheets, and tangled limbs. Owen minimized them and pulled up an itemized spreadsheet. He tapped the screen.