Toru explained that he’d fooled their system by retarding an outgoing signal and riding piggyback on the return error message.
Narazaki looked astonished. “You’re
inside
their computer?”
“Belly of the whale, man.”
I was equally stunned. Our motley crew had done it. Outfoxed Soga’s hacker. The room buzzed in anticipation.
Narazaki said, “Brodie, why don’t you take this? Computers are a young man’s game.”
“Sure. Thanks.” Feeling my own excitement building, I turned to Toru. “Find out as much as you can without tipping our hand.”
“Will do. Inserting Op-Seven protocol now . . . it’s . . . in . . . and . . . no one’s noticed yet . . . scan going . . . there. Whoa. Firewalls guarding firewalls. More security than the Bank of Japan. See that orange grid?” He pointed at a salmon-colored crosshatch in the corner of his screen. “That’s a highly classified area. Good hunting there, I bet. Want me to poke around?”
I hesitated. “Will it give us away?”
“Could.”
I pointed to a shimmering blue quadrant. “Is that an unprotected area?”
“Open as they come.”
“Can you dive into some basic files without being detected? Maybe find out who they are?”
“Sure . . .” His cursor approached. He read some file names. “Gas . . . electric . . . telephone bills . . . payroll. Looks like I’m in accounting. This is an operating company. Is that what you expected?”
My enthusiasm flagged. “No, just the opposite.”
For three hundred years, Soga had remained a dark shadow on the
fringe of society. Everything they did was off the books, under the table, out of the limelight. They moved undercover. Payroll and accounting were the last things I’d expect of them.
“Hold on, I’ve got a name coming . . . coming . . . here: The Gilbert Tweed Agency? Mean anything?”
I shook my head and shot a look at Noda. He frowned. Another no.
“Looks like another camouflage site,” I said. “Doesn’t fit the profile but check it out anyway.”
I scanned the faces of the Brodie Security staff. They were all thinking what I was: we’d hit a dead end. Dejection weighed on the room. My mood blackened. So much for the blip. We were never going to unearth Soga. They’d eluded their enemies for centuries. We’d been at it for only five days. Who were we fooling? It was over. With no new avenues to explore, our investigation had just stalled. We were dead in the water, while Soga was on the prowl. They could advance at their leisure. How long would it be before they caught me with my guard down?
Noda scowled and turned away. People wandered back to their desks. I headed for my office, calling back to Toru, “If you find anything of interest, come get me.”
“Hold on, Brodie-san. I’m going into general correspondence.” There was a note of desperation in his voice.
I eased my door open.
“Wait,” Toru said. Then: “Try this. ‘Executive Management Recruiters.’ Mean anything?”
“No, sorry.”
From across the room, Noda asked for a translation.
I explained it to him in Japanese.
A low growl emanated from the back of his throat.
“It’s them,” he said.
CHAPTER 52
E
VERYTHING
slotted into place. According to the withered powerbroker, Soga handled two types of deals, business and career, eliminating obstacles for both. Gilbert Tweed must feed the career side, whether catering to top-level executives slipping down the ladder of success, with million-dollar salaries at stake, or ambitious career climbers wishing to advance at a more rapid pace.
An adrenaline charge sent my heart racing. “Noda’s right. It’s got to be them. A legit office attracts clients
to them.
Soga seeds Gilbert Tweed with legitimate headhunters, then sits back and waits. Ninety-five percent of their clients are placed in new positions through accepted business channels, while a couple of Soga people in upper-management positions cherry-pick promising candidates and contact them from an independent source outside the agency.”
“That’s how I’d do it,” Narazaki agreed. “Cast a long line from shore. Keep my distance.”
With mounting certainty, I fleshed out two possible scenarios. “Clients wouldn’t know how the contact got their name. Could be a colleague, rumor, anyone or anything within the industry. Soga removes obstacles above, careers advance. Soga retards challenges from below, or maybe stifles an aggressive board member, and careers and multimillion-dollar salaries are preserved. Either way, Soga makes money. The client makes money or saves money. Kingmaker, kingbreaker.”
And that was only for starters. As their clients rose in power, Soga probably got calls for some business deals. Someone opposes a Soga-backed executive’s European expansion plan, call in Soga, and that
someone dies in a skiing mishap, then the acquisition goes through and the exec pockets ten million in incentives, with Soga taking a cut. An Asian conglomerate meets resistance in its attempt to acquire an Australian clothing firm, call in Soga and the CEO’s plane takes a dive. An ambitious businessman wants to increase his stake in the U.S. car market by picking up prosperous dealerships at a discount, call in Soga and he extends his business. It all fit.
Toru typed. “Here’s your locations. Offices in New York, Los Angeles, and London.”
That stopped my speculation cold. “The States? Can’t be. It’s too big an operation to function in America without someone noticing.”
“Well, I got it on two letterheads.” He read the addresses out loud.
I stepped up to the screen. I’d expected a site in a modest Asia-Pacific city. Someplace central but off the beaten path. Jakarta or Kuala Lumpur. Or even a notch higher, say Singapore or Melbourne. But not London and New York.
Not in my country.
It seemed inconceivable that a band of assassins could operate undetected within American borders for years. Impossible, in fact. With Homeland Security, the FBI, anything the CIA or the NSA might cull from overseas sources, the odds were impossibly high. But the letterhead suggested otherwise. And to top it off, their offices were on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan and Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. You couldn’t get any more entrenched.
“Can’t be our guys,” I said. “The locations are all wrong. Something like this, they stay out of sight and reach out from a distance.”
“Brodie’s right,” Narazaki said. “Too high-profile.”
Noda crossed his beefy arms over his chest. “It’s them.”
Mari said, “Here’s a sample search of periodicals. ‘Gilbert Tweed Agency Quietly Becomes a Force in International Banking,’ ‘Gilbert Tweed Scores Another Coup for CEO Search,’ ‘Gilbert Tweed Top Fortune 500 Recruiter.’ ”
Messaging my temples, I slumped into the nearest chair. “All high-level management positions. Far too public. I can’t see it.”
George scanned the articles. “I know some of these names. This is mainstream corporate management. Six- and seven-figure salaries. Eight
and nine when you throw in bonuses and stock options. A couple of them hit hard times a while back. Made the news again when they resurfaced.”
My ears perked up. In only slightly altered terms, George had just regurgitated the main thrust of Kozawa’s explanation in his sleazy scarlet parlor: execs who hit a brick wall are rescued by Soga.
What if Soga had gone the other way? Decided to play the counterintuitive hand? Setting up on such prime property was an audacious move. Bold beyond measure. Who would ever look for them there? Who would ever suspect? The Soga we’d encountered was aggressive beyond measure.
I turned the idea over from all angles.
It added up.
It could be them.
And there was this: tracing the hacker back to a top-level headhunter seemed too large a coincidence. The Gilbert Tweed setup was too well crafted to be anything but a front for the predators we were hunting. Noda was right. It was them. While observing their centuries-old strategy of sticking to the shadows, Soga had moved its commercial arm brazenly into the mainstream.
Toru sat up. “Shit. Here comes their sysop watchdog.”
Trading looks with Noda, I asked, “What’s that?”
“Systems-op software. We have to bail. Want me to trash them? I love to fry black sites. We got ten seconds.”
“If we pull out now will they know there’s been an intruder?”
“No. Seven seconds . . .”
“Can we get back in later?”
“Yeah, sure . . . four . . . three . . . two . . .”
“Pull the plug.”
“Okay.” Toru hit a button. A yellow flash engulfed his screen and then it went dark. “We’ve bailed.” His head drooped. “I blew it. Just a little more time and we’d have had it all.”
Narazaki slapped Toru on the back. “Not so, son. You reeled in the catch of the day.”
Mari said, “Toru, you better come look at this.”
A neon-orange beam streaked across her screen like a meteor across a black sky.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Damn,” Toru said. “It’s a binary piggyback tracer. We piggybacked their ware in and they piggybacked our piggyback out. Must have disabled our rear guard.”
“So they know someone got inside?”
“Yeah, man. Sorry.”
“But they can’t trace it back here, right?”
“No. I cut the signal.”
“They’ll know anyway,” Noda said.
“Why?”
“They’ll know.”
CHAPTER 53
W
E
hunkered down. Way, way down.
After the kidnap attempt, everything was up for grabs. We had no idea what Soga would try next. The only thing we knew with any certainty was that Soga had no qualms about killing women or children or any other innocent associated even vaguely with the case, so all of Brodie Security slipped into alert mode.
It was time for me to head back to San Francisco. Time for a huddle with Renna. And I wanted Jenny by my side. I wanted her within reach. I wanted to take my daughter home and braid her hair in the morning and cook her scrambled eggs that made her sneeze. I didn’t want strangers protecting her without me around.
Before leaving Japan, I had one more rock to turn over. Early the next morning, I called Hara’s office, and when I learned he was back from Taiwan but booked solid for the next week, I told the secretary I was coming over now. If Hara remained unavailable, I’d camp out on his doorstep with a dozen security people until he became available. We would not be subtle about our presence. She got the point and I got a meeting.
CompTel Nippon occupied the top three floors of a forty-five-story office tower in West Shinjuku, and the maverick businessman’s quarters in a corner penthouse was the crowning touch. Cool postmodern tones of silver and gray dominated his office. Tubular steel chairs were set around a desk of oyster-colored marble the size of a wading pool, and against a far wall was a couch of undulating polyurethane foam sheathed in muted gray elephant hide. Giving the room its only non-monochromatic
coloring was a Jackson Pollock hanging on the north wall above the couch. Warhol’s
Black Marilyn
, with her fine silver coiffure, gazed out at us from the east wall. Floor-to-ceiling plate glass made up the remaining two sides, offering a view of Tokyo Bay to the south and a silhouette of Mount Fuji in the distant west. Near the desk, trying not to look like an expensive ornament, was the bodyguard I’d decked in San Francisco. His presence did not suggest trust and goodwill.
I said, “Keeping vertical these days?”
He watched me with cool eyes that weren’t resentful or apprehensive of our last encounter but got me wondering about him.
Hara sat behind the wading pool, his hands folded. He did not rise when I entered. “Welcome, Mr. Brodie. A pleasure to see you again.”
The mogul’s hair was no longer the snow white I’d seen at my shop. It was black, with a gray fringe, as I remembered from his magazine portraits. This must have been his natural color before Japantown. His regal mane had whitened overnight, but in his rush to get to the States and his family, he hadn’t had time to dye it. Now he had.
“Wish I could say the same.”
Hara raised an eyebrow. “You have a tongue on you. But come to think of it, one of my informants did describe you as ‘regrettably feisty.’ ”
“Helps me keep perspective.”
“I’m sure. May I offer you a drink?”
I felt like vaulting over his desk and wrapping my fingers around his smug neck. Instead, I glared and said, “No. I won’t be staying long.”
“Have you something to report, then?”
“I have questions.”
“By now I had hoped you would have answers.”
“Oh, I have some of those too. Would you like to hear?”
“Yes, certainly.”
“Sending your other daughter to me was a ploy.”
Hara’s face remained blank. “Why would you think that?”
“To attract
their
notice. She knew next to nothing about her sister’s day-to-day activities.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Yes, you did. Just as you knew Japanese paparazzi would follow her to San Francisco.”
Hara’s eyes narrowed at my disrespectful tone. “That is her particular talent, yes. You were well paid, were you not.”
“Not to act as a lure. Not to be set up by a client who thinks nothing of using his only living daughter as a tool. The trip to San Francisco traumatized her.”
Hara rose and turned his back on me, staring at Mount Fuji on the horizon. “Jo, this young man tires me. Throw him out.”
“Jiro Jo?” I asked, and he nodded. The guy Narazaki wanted to recruit. “I’ve heard about you,” I said.
We locked eyes. Jo said, “I underestimated you the first time.”
“I know.”
“An art dealer. Dropped my guard.”
“By a fraction.”
“Won’t happen again.”
“I know that too.”
Hara whirled around. “Throw him out.”
Jo ignored Hara. He continued to watch me steadily, with nothing in his expression one way or the other. But the look told me that the next time he came for me, victory would be harder.
Hara cranked up the volume.
“I want him out of here.”
“I don’t see the point,” Jo said.