Exposure

  His voice seemed to come from a long way away.

  “It seems to me that when a merc starts getting religion, it’s time for him to get out of the game. You can’t have that sort of conflict going on in your head because then you’ll start to doubt yourself and if you do that, the game’s up and you’re dead, or wishing you were.”

  The words came out in a rush, then he paused and sighed softly.

  “If the guy was doing a Buddhist chant,” he said at length, “we’d head for Nepal, I suppose.”

  Helene followed his train of thought. She was trying very hard not to think about Bill and the scene in the bedroom – it made her palms sweat and her heart begin to gallop. She pulled her mind back to Charlie’s summing up. It made sense. Sort of.

  “I need to get online to check something,” he said suddenly. “Can I use your laptop?”

  Helene was taken aback by the eagerness in his voice.

  “Of course,” she said. “But is it safe? Won’t they be able to use it to find us?”

  He shook his head. “I added a programme to it that will make it untraceable. Didn’t I mention that?”

  There was the hint of a smile in his voice.

  “No. You didn’t mention it… I’d have remembered,” she said, amused and slightly annoyed. “What are you going to look up?”

  “I’m not sure, but there’s something about the chant that Bill mentioned: he said he didn’t think it was Buddhist, right? I need to check something…”

  Helene scrabbled behind the toilet to locate the loose tile. Wrinkling her nose slightly she felt behind the U-bend and pulled out the laptop and handed it to him.

  He leaned back on the bed, the laptop balanced on his crossed legs.

  Helene returned to the window, gazing out, while he checked a number of websites. She thought of Jenny back at the party: you don’t have to be 18 to feel lost and alone.

  “Bingo!” he said, excitement evident in his tone. “Here it is: I knew there was something at the back of my mind. It wasn’t a Buddhist chant; I think it was Shinto – the Japanese religion. Listen to this:

  ‘Shinto teaches that certain deeds create a kind of ritual impurity that one should want cleansed for one’s own peace of mind and good fortune. Those killed without being shown gratitude for their sacrifice will hold a grudge and become a powerful and evil that seeks revenge.’

  Helene listened intently, her eyes on Charlie.

  He continued thoughtfully.

  “Maybe the Number Two felt he needed rather a lot of purification.”

  He paused.

  “So… what does that tell us?” said Helene. “It could mean he went to a Shinto temple…”

  Charlie shook his head.

  “They have shrines: I think the temples are Buddhist, although it’s not too clear. They seem to share a lot.”

  He frowned in confusion.

  “So he went to a shrine,” Helene continued, “and got purified. That doesn’t help us much unless we go to every shrine and find out if any westerners have prayed there lately. How many Shinto shrines are there in Japan?”

  Charlie scanned the website.

  “Eighty thousand. Or more.”

  They were both silent, both thinking the same thing: We’re fucked.

  Helene pulled off her wig and pushed damp hair out of her eyes.

  “Okay, let’s think. We’ve got to narrow this down. Let’s assume that if this person, this mercenary,” she glanced at Charlie, “if he feels he’s got to ‘purify’ himself, is praying at a shrine going to be enough? What is an Anglo-Saxon mercenary, who’s grown a Japanese conscience, going to do? What if he feels so bad that he decides to do it properly: renounce his lifestyle, renounce the world? I mean, it seems to me that if you start praying in the middle of a… er… job, then, like you say, he’s got big issues. He’s going to try to pay his penance, not just by praying, but by becoming the holiest priest ever, right? So my question is: how does a westerner become a Shinto priest? It can’t be that easy…”

  She took over Charlie’s seat in front of the computer and flipped through a couple of search engines.

  “Look,” she said, “there’s a place here that helps people train to be Shinto priests. God, I love the internet!”

  She read the words carefully:

  “‘You would already need to have a long established relationship with the Jinja in question – that’s the place where priests worship – before being allowed to take their training programme. So while the programme itself may be short, it may take a few years of being associated with the Jinja to be allowed into the training programme. The programme through the Kompira Jinja in Shikoku is comprised of a minimum of two five-day long sessions held a year apart. The interim year is intended to be used by the student to go back to their home Jinja and practice what was taught. The programme is held annually in May.’

  “Damn, we’ve just missed it.”

  Charlie shrugged. “It’s still a place to start. If he is training to be a priest, he’s not going to exactly blend in so we should be able to find out pretty quickly. Where did you say this Jinja is?”

  “Shikoku: it’s an island in the south west of Japan, Kagawa Prefecture. It says here that about a thousand years ago it was a holy place.”

  She sighed.

  “So, another one of our long shots.”

  “Hmm,” he said, “it’s pretty thin.”

  “Bordering on anorexic,” she agreed, “but what else do we have?”

  “There is one other lead,” said Charlie. “We could look for this shack in Carmel. I should be able to find the place where we landed and we can use Bill’s map after that – try to work out who the mark was. Knowing that could help a lot.”

  Helene looked hopeful, but Charlie’s face was puckered with distaste.

  “Trouble is, we’d be in the NSA’s backyard and that could make things a lot harder. But either way, it’s information that’s three years old.”

  Helene’s diaphragm felt like it was being squeezed, the breath leaving her lungs in a sharp rush. She definitely didn’t like the sound of pitching up on the NSA’s or CIA’s doorstep: that was like tempting fate… or tempting fate even more than they already had. It felt like a lose-lose situation.

  Charlie was watching her eyes carefully. Then he reached into his baggies and pulled out a quarter.

  “Heads we go to Carmel, tails we go to Japan.”

  He threw the coin up in the air and caught it. He looked down then grinned at Helene.

  “Looks like we’re going to Japan.”

  “Darn,” she said, “I didn’t pack my kimono.”

  Chapter 9

  Helene lay awake as the soft dawn light grew stronger. Her eyes burned with tiredness but her mind whirled, leaping from thought to memory to idea to confusion once again. Her mind constantly returned to Bill no matter how hard she tried to push the memory away. She could picture the malice in his eyes when he’d hit her; the perverted enjoyment he’d felt in watching her pain and the fear that had blossomed in her eyes. And then she saw him writhing on the floor with Charlie standing over him, his expression that of one who was barely in control of his desire for blood. A shudder ran through her. She turned her head to look at him.

  He lay close by her side breathing softly and evenly, his chest rising and falling rhythmically, his lips slightly parted.

  Carefully she propped herself on one elbow and looked down at him. His skin glowed golden in the early light, his face younger and more innocent than she’d ever seen it. She studied the planes of his cheeks, the curve of his mouth, the gentle puckering of his forehead as his dreams raced behind his fluttering eyelids.

  She let her eyes rove over the pale scar on his shoulder and the satisfying muscles of his chest and arms. But when she looked back to his face, the wide, blue eyes were open, watching her thoughtfully.

  “Hello,” he said quietly.

  Helene was embarrassed that he’d caught her gawking like this.
But there was nothing triumphant about his face, just a puzzled question in his eyes. She felt herself flush, her cheeks and neck becoming hot.

  She swung herself out of bed abruptly, heading for the bathroom next door, feeling exposed by the briefness of the T-shirt she’d slept in.

  “Helene,” he said.

  She stopped and turned round.

  He was still lying in the bed, but leaning up now, staring at her, his left hand stretched out towards her in invitation.

  Helene’s stomach lurched and she felt a delicious warmth begin to spread through her. But her trained, rational mind protested.

  “No, Charlie,” she said in a low voice.

  She heard him sigh softly and lie back. She clenched her teeth as she left the room.

  Before they left Hawaii Helene insisted that there was one more thing they had to do. She bought an envelope and put in $1,000 and a first class open return ticket to Cleveland in Jenny’s name.

  Then they stopped at Bill’s place and a sleepy looking girl promised faithfully to give it to her.

  Later that morning, Jenny opened the envelope, her eyes wide with wonder as she read the brief message: ‘From your Hawaiian fairy (god)mother’.

  There was no signature.

  She shoved the envelope into the pocket of her jeans and didn’t show it to Dylan.

  This time Helene and Charlie travelled steerage. There was no point trying not to stand out when there was 6 foot 3 of newly re-blonded hair and blue eyes at your side among a cargo of five foot five Japanese with dark eyes and black hair.

  So they sat together: two Australians travelling tourist class – David Hunter and Stella Liddle.

  “Couldn’t you have chosen a name for me that Japanese people are going to actually be able to pronounce?” complained Helene.

  “Well, I did think of calling you ‘Stella Rimmington’,” he said, smiling wolfishly.

  “Very funny,” she snorted. “We are trying to avoid detection by the authorities. You do remember the bit where men with dark intents came to my house?”

  “You can’t blame them for that,” he said, his teeth very white in his tanned face. “I’ve had some thoughts about dark intents when it comes to you... But I did gallop in on my white horse to save you, didn’t I?”

  “You’re in a very good mood for a man on a wild goose chase,” she said.

  “And there was me thinking you’d win the Little Miss Sunshine Award,” he shot back.

  “Yes, you bring out the best in me,” she said rather sarcastically.

  He smiled broadly. “I’ve always suspected it: I have that effect on women.”

  She didn’t bother to reply.

  He kissed her suddenly on the cheek.

  “What’s that for?” she said in surprise.

  “Just so,” he replied, the corner of his mouth twitching as if he was trying to hold back a smile.

  Landing at Narita International Tokyo, was a shock. After the laidback Hawaiian Islands the noise and flood of people was bewildering. Plus, the gentle warmth of Hawaii had been replaced by a humid fug of heavy, damp air. Tokyo in the summer was going to be unpleasantly moist outside of any air-conditioned building.

  Helene had spent years in the Middle East so she could just about read Arabic but the spider’s web of Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji was beyond her. She bought a phrase book and traveller’s guide for an exorbitant price at the airport shop. Charlie had found a map in English and Romaji at the tourist office and worked out that they could get the Shinkansen bullet train to Osaka and then local trains to Kotohira, the nearest town to the Kompira Shrine. Neither of them felt confident enough to try driving: especially as there was little chance of them being able to read the road signs the further they were from Tokyo – it would be more hit and miss than either of them liked. Besides, the train was more democratic and less likely to draw attention to them.

  Helene purchased some ongiri rice balls wrapped in seaweed from a smiling Mise no Hito who spoke a type of English that was almost incomprehensible: although still better than Helene’s non-existent Japanese. She gathered that one set of rice balls was stuffed with tuna and the other pickled apricot, but she had no idea which was which. Lunch was going to be a lucky dip.

  Charlie came back with the train tickets and a new baseball cap. His face had a pinched look about it and Helene recognised that he was on edge.

  “What’s the matter, has something happened?”

  He gave an irritated twitch of his shoulders.

  “Too many CCTV cameras. Too exposed. Too easy to get picked up.”

  Hence the baseball cap.

  It might hide his hair and cast a shadow over his face but there was no way he could disguise 6 foot 3. Helene was finding it easier to blend in, having bought a dark brown wig that was cut into a sharp bob. From behind she would be unremarkable on any CCTV images. A pair of heavy sunglasses helped to mask her face. She was slight enough to blend in with the majority of Japanese.

  Helene was worried: she’d never seen Charlie so strained – not even when he’d been holding a gun to Bill’s head.

  “Come on,” she said. “There’s something else – tell me what’s up?”

  “It’s nothing, I’m fine,” he snapped.

  “You’re not fine: you’re as fine as a man with two broken legs. Just tell me, will you, or I’ll go bonkers trying to guess.”

  He turned to look at her.

  “I think we’re being followed – I think...”

  Her stomach lurched and her hand flew to her mouth.

  “Are you sure?”

  “No. I just thought I saw someone tailing us when I went to get the train tickets: an Asian, Japanese, I guess.”

  He rubbed his eyes tiredly. “I paid cash so they won’t be able to trace us through credit cards and I didn’t see the guy again but...”

  Helene didn’t know what else to say. If they were being followed it made their job a lot harder – and more dangerous – but there was nothing they could do but go on.

  “Maybe it was just coincidence.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Okay,” she said, trying to use words to quell the rising panic. “We’d better get out of here then. Tokyo’s a big place: we ought to be able to disappear.”

  He nodded, his eyes flickering, checking out faces in the crowd, looking for warning signs.

  Helene wanted to take his hand, but was worried the gesture would be unwelcome.

  “I booked the first train I could,” he said, “but it’s not till tomorrow morning: everything was booked up – some festival or something.”

  Helene felt panicky.

  “What do we do?” she said, trying to sound calm.

  He looked down at her briefly.

  “We’ll head for the city: keep your head down and don’t look up or the cameras will see your face. They’ve got facial recognition software that could find us in minutes. Keep the sunglasses on, too.”

  Helene tried to remember if she’d looked up at all without her sunglasses on in the last 40 minutes since they’d landed, but Charlie didn’t give her time to think: instead he hustled her away from the arrivals area.

  Luckily there was a sign in English for the train into the city: the Narita Express. Helene kept her head down and tried to avoid walking into the person in front of her.

  The train was busy but not overwhelmingly so: it wasn’t like the pictures Helene had seen where uniformed train officials shoved people onto overcrowded carriages using hands clad in immaculate white gloves. Maybe that was just in rush hour.

  This was altogether more relaxing, although Charlie was on edge the whole time.

  He waved away her offer of a rice ball, but Helene was feeling hungry. An orange juice and cereal bar on the plane several hours since, was no substitute for a proper breakfast.

  She chewed thoughtfully on her rice ball while the Express rocked rhythmically from side to side. The ongiri’s seaweed wrapper acted as a convenient way of holding th
e soft, sticky rice together – a bit like the folded crust of a Cornish pasty, now she thought about it.

  It was tasty and not too stodgy, despite the starch. She’d got the tuna.

  She opened a box of fruit juice that she’d bought at the same time. It was a dark purple like red grapes, but according to the colourful translation, it was made from ‘devil’s root’. Helene wondered if that meant it was mandrake, but who knew.

  It tasted okay: not too sweet.

  She offered the juice to Charlie but he shook his head and continued to stare out of the window. If he wanted to sulk, best leave him to it.

  Helene began to wish they were back in Hawaii: everything had seemed so much more possible then.

  “So,” she said as a conversational opener.

  He didn’t reply.

  “So,” she said again, feeling a little desperate. “Our train isn’t for 24 hours: any idea how we’re going to spend them?”

  Still no reply.

  “There are some reasonably priced hotels listed in this guidebook?” The words sounded like a question.

  He shook his head.

  “No hotels: too easy to find us in a hotel.”

  She opened her eyes wide.

  “Do you really think so?”

  “I know so. We have to stay on the move.”

  Helene sighed. That sounded tiring. She’d have given anything for a comfortable hotel room and a hot shower. Well, not anything perhaps; certainly not life and liberty.

  “Okay,” she said, carefully, “how about we do some sight-seeing – we are supposed to be tourists after all.”

  As he didn’t contradict her, Helene took it that he approved of this plan. She turned to her guidebook and tried to find some inspiration. She was appalled to see that her hands were shaking ever so slightly.

  They changed from the Express onto another over-ground train that circumnavigated Tokyo’s key tourist areas. The JR Yamanote line was thronged with people who, as Helene’s mother might have said, were in their Sunday best. They were certainly dressed for a Saturday night out, and instead of the neatly coiffed salarymen and women, there were Teddy Boys with enormous quiffs, Elvis look-alikes, and gangs of Lolita Goths playing to the crowds with their brightly-dyed hair, bizarre costumes and outlandish make-up. They were certainly more colourful than the whey-faced, misery merchants and emos familiar in British cities.