Authors: Sujata Massey
“Rei Shimura lived in Japan from the age of twenty-four. Here she is outside the Tokyo American Club, a place where she once socialized with prominent expatriates like Joseph Roncolotta, who still runs a consulting business in Tokyo.”
Next came a shot taken from the
Tokyo Weekender
party page: a picture of Joe Roncolotta lifting a beer at one of Tokyo’s several German beer gardens, surrounded by Japanese businessmen. After that, the screen showed a picture of my antique-dealing mentor, Ishida-san, and then a picture of my Aunt Norie with a prizewinning flower arrangement that had appeared in the Kayama School of Ikebana newsletter. There was even a picture of me with Hugh, back in his days as a lawyer in Tokyo, leaving his old apartment building in Roppongi.
“May I say something?” I interjected. “My personal life really shouldn’t be taken into account if this is about a job. It may even be illegal.”
“Your personal life is what’s
perfect
.” Michael Hendricks’s voice sounded almost reverent. “But don’t worry, Hugh Glendinning is not of particular significance.”
Hugh’s image faded and was replaced by a new man’s. It was another media snap, this one of Takeo Kayama emerging from the doorway of the Kayama School. Takeo, who had been my boyfriend a very long time ago, looked different. He still had the same knife-edge, elegant features, but the long, floppy, rock star hair was gone, cropped to a length perfect for business. He was wearing a long black trench coat open, flapping behind him, giving him the look of a bat. The coat, in fact, cut off half the face of the woman trailing behind him—a young woman, probably his sister.
“Now, here we have Takeo Kayama, the recently appointed
iemoto
—that means headmaster, right, Mr. Watanabe?—of the Kayama School of Ikebana in Tokyo.”
The outside details on the picture blurred as I focused on Takeo’s expression, which seemed harder than I remembered. When I’d decided to return to Hugh, Takeo had been unpleasantly surprised—but I’d heard on the trans-Pacific grapevine that he’d quickly bounced back. Well, men always did, didn’t they?
I listened as Mr. Watanabe, in careful English, described Takeo’s life: the lonely childhood in a luxury apartment, his schooling at Tokyo University, and then the University of California at Davis, the building passion for environmentalism, and his brief passion for me. Or, as Mr. Watanabe put it politely, “the pleasant friendship with Shimura-san.”
A shot of Takeo’s country house flashed on the screen, and I felt a pang. I had spent a whole summer helping Takeo brighten old, stained walls to the colors of sea, sky, and garden. I loved that house, which had been built in the 1920s; it was one of the places I missed most in Japan. Takeo and I had been together at the house, ostensibly restoring it, but in truth spending almost as much time at the beach, or in bed. My friends had harangued me to invite them for a country weekend, but we’d never wanted company. Takeo and I had no need for anyone that summer.
“The friendship with Miss Shimura kindled Mr. Kayama’s interest in antiques. Under her guidance, he began a study of Japanese antiques.” As Mr. Watanabe spoke, the image on the screen changed to a photo that a paparazzo with a long lens had taken of us behind Takeo’s beach house in Hayama. The two of us were lying close together, poring over a comic book. Now I looked at the image of my younger self and felt dismayed by how pin-thin my arms had been. Takeo hadn’t minded, of course—one of his hands rested lightly on my Speedo bikini bottom. With a sudden rush, I remembered the things that Takeo and I had done, within the walls of that ancient, always empty house.
I tried to focus my attention back where it belonged. “That’s a comic book we’re reading, actually. I never taught him anything about antiques. He has no interest.”
“Then why did he spend just over eighty thousand pounds on Asian ceramics at Christies in London last year?” Michael Hendricks said, flipping to a photograph of a sales slip from Christies. “And just before that, ten million yen at Meiwashima Auction House in Tokyo.”
“Really? I’d like to know what he bought.” Ten million yen was about $100,000, and Meiwashima was a high-end auction house, a far cry from the country auctions I usually frequented. It had been a major effort for me to get a membership at Meiwashima, and once I was in, I realized I couldn’t afford anything.
“Vessels,” said Michael.
“Do you mean—like the boat upstairs in the atrium?” My eyes widened.
Michael shook his head, and looked as if he was trying not to laugh. “Containers. Mr. Kayama is after historic containers of all kinds—urns, bowls, vases, anything that could hold water and plant material.”
“Oh, for
ikebana
purposes. Well, I’m glad he has a new hobby. Everyone should have a hobby.” I felt embarrassed to have made the mistake. Of course I knew that ceramics with openings were called vessels—why hadn’t I understood Michael the first time around?
“The problem is that the young headmaster’s hobby may be illegal.” Michael Hendricks cleared his throat. “Colonel, maybe it’s time to give Rei the background on the situation with the National Museum in Iraq.”
“I’m sure Miss Shimura has read accounts of the looting at the museum during the early stages of the war,” Colonel Martin said. “Hundreds of civilians stormed the museum, grabbing whatever was nearby and looked valuable—mostly gold items from the closest open galleries. At the same time, many priceless treasures were actually hidden by the curators, who had anticipated the looting. But there was a third class of museum items that were probably taken by a few insiders who knew their worth. Within this category of missing items is a group of Mesopotamian vessels dating from approximately three thousand years ago.” A grainy black-and-white slide flashed on the screen, showing a rustic pottery vessel shaped like a goat. Its long, curved horn made a handle, and there was room to pour something in at the tail, and then out at the goat’s mouth.
“Our Iraqi colleagues at the museum called this the ibex ewer, because it’s made in the form of an ibex—a wild goat native to the Mesopotamian area, which includes modern countries like Iraq, Iran, and Syria. The ewer vanished during the looting along with about three hundred other objects from the museum.”
“What a shame,” I said. For a country to lose its art was to lose its soul. Legend had it that the Americans had chosen not to bomb Kyoto during World War II because it was the center of Japan’s high culture. But they’d bombed Tokyo plenty.
Next, a photo flashed on the screen of a round-faced man with thinning black hair. He was trudging toward an airplane with an oversize briefcase in one hand, looking every bit like a lawyer going to court.
“This is Osman Birand,” Colonel Martin said. “A millionaire Turkish antiques dealer with a business in Istanbul. He’s suspected to have dealt in antiquities stolen from mosques and museums throughout the Middle East. We believe that he may have been involved in brokering antiques stolen from the Royal Museum, but we have yet to find the evidence, and a buyer who’ll testify, in order to charge him with anything.”
The next picture: Osman Birand, without his briefcase and looking considerably more relaxed with a wineglass in hand, standing on a yacht with a taller, slimmer companion. The photo had been shot at dusk, so I couldn’t see the details very well.
“Osman Birand had a party on his yacht in Hong Kong, just a few months ago. Takeo Kayama, pictured here, was one of his guests,” Colonel Martin said.
I wasn’t at all convinced that the fellow onboard was Takeo, and the situation didn’t make sense. “Why was Takeo there?”
“Fund-raising for an organic flower-farming cooperative.” The colonel raised her thin, arched brows. “He says he wants to apply the kibbutz prototype to help poor Arabs help themselves. Birand contributed the equivalent of twenty thousand dollars.”
Organic flower farming did sound like Takeo, I admitted to myself as the image on the screen changed again, back to the country house. The headline over the magazine spread said “Seaside Beauty!” in the phonetic
katakana
script used for foreign words like these. It was true that the room was beautiful, and one could see the sea through the new, floor-to-ceiling glass windows that formed one wall of the old living room I remembered. When I’d last been in the house, it had been under renovation, so there was no furniture; now I saw it in its restored glory, filled with eclectic Japanese pieces from the early twentieth century, and other things that couldn’t have come from Takeo’s family: a carved dark wood Indian colonial
almirah
cabinet and a low, midnight blue couch that curved with a feeling of art deco. In front of the couch sat a gorgeous lacquered tea table decorated with an animal-shaped vessel with a sinewy hawthorn branch arching up from it.
“When this picture in the Japanese magazine
Lovely Home
was brought to our attention, we ran a computer-enhanced analysis of the ceramics in the cabinet,” Colonel Martin said. “And then we brought it to Elizabeth, at the Sackler, for further analysis.”
The next image was a split screen—a color shot of the vessel in Takeo’s cabinet, and then the black-and-white image of the ibex ewer from the museum in Iraq.
“It’s too bad that you don’t know the color of the urn from Iraq,” I said.
“It has that same distinctive reddish slip,” Elizabeth Cameron said. “It’s an ancient slip technique that not many use today.”
“This vessel is believed to be one of the oldest original ceramics in Iraq,” Colonel Martin added. “The ibex ewer has been visited by every schoolchild who ever went to the museum and ranks among the nation’s most beloved treasures.”
“So this is why you brought me in. It’s not about my being so brilliant with ceramics, but about my connection to Takeo!”
Michael Hendricks cleared his throat and said, “Both ceramics and the knowledge of our suspect are items in your favor, but there are other factors as well. We know about your activities here and abroad. You’ve demonstrated an ability to think on your feet. You’ve always been remarkably successful—when you want to get something.”
“But I don’t want to get Takeo,” I said. Takeo was toxic, I knew from my experience. I couldn’t risk being around him, now that I was semisettled with Hugh, couldn’t risk it for a second—
“Takeo Kayama may have bought this on the black market, but he is not the suspected thief,” Colonel Martin said. “If we can get back this vessel and find out whether your old friend acquired it from Birand, we will finally have the piece of information we need to apply pressure.”
I pressed my lips together, then spoke. “I still don’t believe that I can do anything for you.”
“As Colonel Martin has been explaining, the American forces are in a bind. We have, of course, military police and some investigators present in Japan, but the scope of their powers is extremely limited. Without permission from the Japanese government, they can’t force a search of a Japanese citizen’s home.”
“I’ve told Mr. Hendricks that we can’t do anything, either,” Mr. Watanabe said in his soft voice. “There is not enough evidence for our national police agency to obtain a warrant.”
“Why not just ask Takeo to submit his piece of pottery voluntarily to an inspection? Have you even tried to seek out a peaceful resolution?” I asked.
“We cannot risk creating a situation in which he might alert Osman Birand.” Michael Hendricks pushed a thick manila envelope toward me. “In here, you’ll find a new passport and an itinerary.”
I didn’t touch it. “What do you mean?”
“We’d like you to take a short trip back to Tokyo. You’ll have a cover story—that you’re buying antiques—and a new passport with an official visa that shows your affiliation with our embassy. During that time, we’ll expect you to visit with your old friend Takeo Kayama at his family home. Without making it obvious, you’ll find a way to examine the vessel closely and tell us if it’s the item stolen from the museum.”
“He’ll never let me do that! After the way things ended, he won’t ever want to see me, not in his beach house or anywhere that I can think of—”
The screen flashed another picture that had once run in a Japanese tabloid. It was taken on a gray afternoon in Roppongi, when Takeo and I were saying good-bye to each other as I was getting into a taxi. You could tell from the way our bodies leaned into each other that we had not wanted to part.
I felt something clutch deep inside me, and I began to sweat.
“He’ll let you in,” Michael Hendricks said, a hint of amusement in his voice. “Who wouldn’t?”
Up-two-three-four.
Hold!
The eighteen-pound bar felt more like eighty during this third, most excruciating set of repetitions. I pressed upward, trying to keep the bar level, while at the same time gluing my lower back to the bench.
I had been insane to undertake a power-lifting class with a hangover, but after my ordeal at the Smithsonian, I couldn’t imagine going home soon. I’d lightened the load I usually lifted, because this time I had a different kind of weight to bear.
It was my duty to go
, each one of them had said. Colonel Martin said it was a chance to serve my country. Michael Hendricks argued that it was important to stand up against international art criminals who robbed the people of all nations. The Japanese consul believed that it was a special privilege to solve a serious international problem. But Takeo—I couldn’t get near Takeo. If I did, I would wind up hurting him, hurting Hugh, hurting myself.
“Rei! Come on, don’t forget the powerhouse!” Jane, the blond, outrageously muscular teacher, barked at me.
This powerhouse was not a sandwich, though I could have used one. Jane was referring to the abdominal muscles. I hardened my belly as I pushed up the bar, struggling to keep the left side in balance with the right.
I couldn’t undertake a classified project that was actually governmental spying, though no one had used the word. When I’d suggested that this might be a job more appropriate for a CIA operative, everyone had reacted as if I’d passed wind. It was as if nobody in government used that acronym, just as nobody in Japan said the word
yakuza
. And Michael had asked me, completely straight-faced, to work for them for no pay. They’d give me my expenses, but that was it.
Not quite it, I thought, as I sat up and rubbed away the ache on the back of my arms, still brooding. At the end they’d revealed the carrot, the only reason that the mission really would appeal to me. If I went, I’d get to keep my new passport, with its clean pages and embassy stamp. I now had a legal method of entry back into the country that had ordered me deported because I’d once unlawfully entered a room to find evidence. I’d been caught by the Japanese police, and that was the end of me; greater good to society be damned.
Since that nightmare a year earlier, returning to Japan seemed akin to penetrating a high-security vault. Now I was being offered the passkey. The question was whether I could live with myself if I spied.
Hendricks and Martin had hammered into me the classified nature of the operation: nobody, not even Hugh, could know that I was working as an informant. Michael Hendricks had explained the story I’d give people: I’d been hired as a consultant to the Sackler, to shop for some antique Japanese ceramics at a major Tokyo auction taking place in two weeks’ time. I’d spend a week or two in Japan, ostensibly visiting auction houses and catching up with old friends, among them Takeo Kayama, whom I was to refer to by the code name Flowers, Flowers-san, or Mr. Flowers. The code word for the ibex vessel that I was hunting down was Momoyama Period Vase, so it would sound to anyone listening as if I really were after seventeenth-century Japanese ceramics.
Feeling sick, I dragged myself into the locker room, stripped, and went to the showers. The water pounded down on my hurting head. I knew that my shoulders and arms would be throbbing with new pains the next morning. I didn’t usually do straight weight lifting, just as I didn’t usually go to espionage planning sessions or contemplate lying to Hugh.
Several women were waiting for showers now, women whose voices were slightly raised in irritation. I turned off the water and grabbed a towel, stepping out of the shower so fast that I slipped. Down I went on the ceramic tile floor, so fast that the women gasped but couldn’t reach out in time to catch me.
The truth was that nobody could save me. As I struggled to my feet and wrapped the skimpy gym towel around myself, I knew that it was up to me, entirely, to save myself.
“Good timing,” Angus Glendinning said when I walked back into the apartment an hour later. He was sprawled on Hugh’s leather sofa, an unfolded map covering his chest like a blanket. Around him were scattered the remnants of breakfast: a five-liter bottle of Mountain Dew and some half-eaten bagels.
“What’s doing?” I asked dully. I was too upset about my own situation to care about the mess.
“Do you know the way to Baltimore?” Angus sang in a dreamy voice. “We’re supposed to be playing a live bit on a radio program in an hour and a half—”
“An hour and a half?” I repeated, looking at him, shirtless and shoeless and wearing trendy thigh-length gray underpants. “And you need to get through the DC traffic and out to the freeway and then to downtown Baltimore?”
“It’s not downtown. The station’s in an area called Tozen.”
“What?” I took his creased itinerary and discovered that he was supposed to go to the campus radio station at Towson University. Towson was just north of the city, so the trip would be longer than he’d thought. “You’re looking at a good hour and a quarter, if you hurry.”
“Sridhar went out to pick up our van. The parking in this neighborhood’s wretched. We had to park a bloody mile away last night.”
Sridhar had to be the Indian tabla player, I guessed, because he was the only one of the band I couldn’t physically place. The Caribbean bassist was at the dining table, smoking a cigarette and reading Hugh’s copy of the
Wall Street Journal
. Through the open door to the powder room in the hallway, I could see the blond bagpiper working on his hairstyle. He was wearing a very nice terrycloth bathrobe—mine, I realized.
“You’ll need to hurry to get there,” I said sotto voce to the
Journal
reader, deciding he had to be the brains of the bunch. “I’m Rei Shimura, by the way. I hope you were comfortable. I’m sorry I wasn’t here in the morning—”
“You’re Hugh’s chick. I recall from last night,” he answered in a broad accent that Hugh had taught me was North London. “I’m Nate. And the digs are great, yah? Love the wooden chest over there—is it from Japan?”
As I answered Nate in the affirmative, Angus interrupted me. “We don’t have to rush anywhere, Rei. People anticipate our arrival. They schedule around us.”
I couldn’t help smiling. “Is that so?”
“Yah. In fact, when we go to Japan next month, the promoters told us just to get ourselves there, and then they’d arrange the shows. They already arranged our visas—it’s bloody brilliant.”
“You’ll be going to Japan?” It struck me as ironic that Angus had free access to the country, his visas arranged by Japanese music promoters, while I had to creep in through the back door.
“Of course! You know we’ve been signed to a label there, don’t you?”
“I didn’t!” This was major news. I wondered if Hugh had heard.
“We’ve got an Asian tour in the works,” said Nate, who’d stood up and was starting to get dressed, pulling on black jeans. “Taiwan and also Singapore.”
“Angus, I’m embarrassed I didn’t know all this! You’ll have to tell me more after you get back from Towson. I don’t want you to be late.”
“Right, well, we’ll be talking about this on the radio show. Do you think you’ll be able to hear and tape it?”
“It might be too far—”
“You can listen on the web,” Keiffer said, emerging from the bathroom. I noticed that the blond drummer’s hair, which he’d apparently been working on so hard, still looked as if he’d just rolled out of bed.
“Keiffer, if you’d like a private place to dress, try Hugh’s and my room,” I suggested quickly, when I saw him pick up a pair of red bikini briefs from the dining area. The boys’ underwear styles appeared to be as diverse as their onstage attire.
“Shug’s still there, in a rather bad way.” Keiffer made a face.
“What?” I shot a glance at the bedroom door with the DO NOT DISTURB sign I’d tacked up when I’d left Chika there, sleeping, a few hours earlier.
“Relax, Rei, he’s there by himself,” Angus cackled, as if he’d read my mind. “Chika got up a while ago, woke us all with cups of green tea, actually. Totally gorgeous, that cousin of yours. Why didn’t you introduce me when I was in Japan before?”
“Chika was away at school,” I said, even though it had been summer when Angus was around. I had done everything to keep my Japanese relatives from learning about the decadent young troublemaker in my apartment. “So where is Chika, then?”
“She wanted to see the neighborhood, so she went with Sridhar to get the van. She’s attending our gig as well.”
“Sounds like a good time.” The apartment would be empty for a few key hours, hours that I would use to broach the subject of my return to Japan with Hugh.
They left thirty minutes later, fully dressed and teeth brushed, after I gave out spare toothbrushes to the ones who’d forgotten. I should be a mother, I thought wistfully, as I watched out the window as they recklessly crossed Mintwood Place, oblivious of the delivery truck that had to brake for their passage. Who did they think they were, the Beatles crossing Abbey Road? They’d kill themselves before the end of the day.
Only Chika waited demurely in her pink pleather coat at the curb, and looked both ways as she crossed. I found myself hoping that she would be the driver.
I turned away from the living room window and cracked open the bedroom door to check on Hugh. The room was dark, the curtains were drawn, and a foul smell lingered in the air.
“Still feeling awful?” I asked as I came to sit down next to him.
“I’ve been sick all morning,” Hugh said. “I set off for work, but had to return. It could be a virus, I suppose.”
I looked at him. “I don’t know. Binge drinking is pretty hard on the system.”
“Oh, don’t be so damn American,” Hugh grumbled.
“What do you mean?”
“You go to a pub with Americans, and if you have more than two drinks, they think you’re a lush.”
“I didn’t keep count of myself last night. That was the problem.” Thank God that I was slowly and steadily feeling better. The exercise had done me good.
Hugh sighed heavily. “I’m just sorry the band’s landed on us at this point. I’d expected that you’d give them breakfast, but since you were gone, I had to send them to the bagel shop. D’you think they minded?”
“They seemed to bear no resentment.” Though I did, for his expectations. “Hugh, I had a job interview this morning! I told you last night, and every day for the last week. You knew I had to be out early in the morning.”
“So, d’you get the job?” he said sarcastically. “And what’s the salary, high five figures or did you push them to six?”
I shifted uncomfortably atop the duvet. The fact that I made about as much as a salesclerk—despite my education and ambitions—was something we didn’t talk about. Nor did we address the fact that Hugh paid the rent, the car insurance, the grocery bills. I knew there were plenty of married women who lived this way without question or worry, but to me, unmarried and not even engaged, it was an embarrassment. And maybe that was why he expected me to be a short-order cook, at moment’s notice.
“God, my head hurts,” Hugh muttered.
“I’ll bring you some Motrin,” I said, picking up the bonsai plant, which wouldn’t thrive in the closed-curtains gloom of the bedroom. I was not a doormat. I was just helping my boyfriend, who was not his usual self. “And then, I think I’ll make some brunch for both of us. Would scrambled eggs suit you?”
“That’s sweet, but I don’t think I could bear it.”
“At least try some toast fingers!” I implored.
“No, no. I could sip some tea, though.”
Of course, tea healed all Asians and Brits. “Your favorite Darjeeling?”
“Too sweet; it’ll make me sick again.” He sounded woeful. “I’d better go with green. Chika made a large pot of it earlier, maybe there’s some left to warm up.”
No proper Japanese believes in warming over old tea, so I put on a fresh kettle of water to boil as I set about reorganizing the apartment. It was a wonder Nate had been able to notice the fine old pieces of Japanese furniture, buried as everything was by opened magazines and newspapers and discarded clothes. I picked up a can of Mountain Dew that had sweated a ring onto my hundred-year-old
tansu
and tried in vain to buff its finish back. Then I threw away more old newspapers and cans and put in their place the bonsai plant that I’d carried in from the bedroom. The gift-giver’s card had been lost, so I’d have to guess who had sent the sweet little dwarf pomegranate tree with dark green leaves and reddish orange trumpet-shaped flowers. Whoever had sent it couldn’t have known me too well, because I typically killed house plants through neglect.
Now I was thirty, I’d have to be more responsible. I pulled out the care instructions printed on a little plastic stick buried in the potting soil. The pomegranate bonsai needed occasional fertilizing, regular watering, and full sun. The card went on to promise ornamental fruit in the fall. Hmm, it was already October. Where was the fruit? As I gently explored the plant’s thick foliage, my fingers touched something inorganic. I drew back the glossy leaves to see a tiny black plastic disk. I’d seen enough spy movies to recognize it as a miniature microphone.
Happy birthday, indeed. I’d been bugged.