Power and Empire

“He’s doing fine,” she said. “Still under guard at a hospital in Fort Worth. This female FBI agent appears to want to arrest Dom, too.”

“Like to see her try,” Adara groused.

Ryan sighed. “Nothing from Gavin yet?”

Midas lowered the newspaper and peered over the top. “Ding’s still in his room, on the phone with him now,” he said. “Hopefully he’ll have—”

Chavez came over the net, cutting him off. Apparently, he’d just put in his earpiece. “Saddle up and meet me in the lobby,” he said. There was an urgent calm in his voice that a seasoned hunter gets when he first spots his prey. “We’re going to a place called Shinjuku. Adara, jump on your phone and see what train we need to take.”

“Copy that,” Adara said. “My buds and I blew some of our liberty walking around Kabukichō during a port call in Yokosuka. I could have guessed Chen would end up in a place like that.”

“So are we going to Shinjuku or Kabukichō?” Midas asked.

“Shinjuku is the area,” Adara said. “Kabukichō is the red-light district in that area. Scads of pachinko parlors, love hotels. Everywhere you turn there’s some yakuza tout trying to drag you into hostess clubs where girls in baby-doll costumes will flirt with you and charge exorbitant prices for alcohol, among other things.”

“Chicas peligrosas,” Jack muttered.

“You’re right about that, ’mano,” Chavez said. “Anyway, the number Dom got from Lily Chen’s phone pinged at a restaurant in Shinjuku three hours ago. It’s quiet now, so he’s either dumped it or turned it off. That’s something. He doesn’t know what we look like, so we may as well go have a look. Jack, you should probably call your new girlfriend and let her know what we have.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Ryan said.

“You say so, ’mano,” Chavez said. “Let’s be ready to roll in five.”

“We’re all in the lobby,” Adara said. “Ready to go, boss.”

Chavez gave a quiet chuckle. “Copy that,” he said. “I’ll be out as soon as I can figure out the buttons on this Japanese toilet.”

Jack called the number on the card Yuki had given him. It usually irritated him when he got someone’s voice mail, but he found he was oddly happy to hear Yukiko speak. She gave her number with no name or business affiliation, which was common in this business. There wasn’t much to tell, so his message was short. They were looking for an Asian man in the busiest area of the most populated city in Asia — or the world, for that matter — because his phone said he’d been there three hours earlier.

The hotel was less than two blocks from Tokyo Station, and the team quickly fell in with the river of Japanese commuters, seemingly going in all directions at once. Ryan was no stranger to world travel but he’d thought the station was busy when they’d come in on the Narita Express at midday. Rush hour started late in Tokyo but was in full swing by six-thirty. The station itself was a sprawling shopping mall with tens of thousands of commuters passing them throughout the day. Women in brightly colored uniforms and young men in large costume hats shouted and cajoled — always in the most polite and deferential tone — inviting the captive audience to try their cake, fruit, waffle, fish, or countless other products.

Eccentric hairstyles and outlandish clothing could be seen here and there — the odd peroxide red, a blue Mohawk, and even a pierced nose or two. But Japan remained a place where you could buy a white shirt and tie at the corner convenience store. Conservative dress and demeanor were lauded, and for the most part, Tokyo Station was a sea of dark hair and dark suits — for men and women alike.

Adara and Ding both spoke a smattering of Japanese, so they led the way to platform 1, where the team jammed themselves into the 6:38 Chuo Line train for Shinjuku — which arrived precisely on the minute. The car proved to be shoulder-to-shoulder and chest-to-chest. Unlike China and some other countries where Jack and the others had worked, the trains in Japan seemed to have the same rules as libraries or urinals. No eye contact, no talking. And, Adara warned them, if the men were lucky enough to get a seat, under no circumstances should they offer it up to a woman under fifty who was not pregnant. Fortunately, the 6:38 Chuo was so crowded he barely had room to stand, let alone a seat to give up.

Four stops and fifteen minutes later, the train disgorged the team into a seething mass of evening commuters at Shinjuku, more crowded even than Tokyo Station. Chavez motioned everyone behind a row of coffee vending machines in order to not get run over while he checked his phone for the address Gavin had given him. With a basic idea of where they were going, he navigated them across the street toward a garish red neon sign that ran up the side of a building, reading in English: “I ‘heart’ Kabukichō.”

“We should have brought umbrellas,” Midas said, looking up at the boiling clouds in the night sky, reflecting red and orange from the neon lights. “Would have given us some weapons.”