Red Ice

No, little more than a quick look made it all too clear; here was a stiff-necked, hard-nosed, old-school officer who’d taken that duty-and-honor bilge seriously, and it’d nearly destroyed him. It was an easy guess that off watch he would be unremarkable in general—inclination to be cosmopolitan, perhaps; surely culturally adventurous, as that type generally were; occasionally roisterous, under the right circumstances. Study him stressed under the responsibility of command and all those drearily conventional attributes of the classic military officer oozed through the casing, like sweating plastic explosive. Incorruptible, steadfast, selfless, courageous—all that hokum people had once pretended mattered. Here he is, ladies and gents, a bygone archetype, the warrior monk, in modern dress. Sees command as a moral charge, he does, he does. Ready to share the burden of sacrifice with his men at any moment. Step this way, our next exhibit…

In one aspect, however, the display of emotion, he was inscrutable; that element remained locked behind a case hardened will. Sometimes, not often, emotion flickered, accompanied by a subtle tightening of the jaw muscles. This single mannerism betrayed a building anger that might someday flare into white hot fury.

Soon I was bounding down for breakfast at Keiko’s. Its heavy timbers and sophisticated Japanese joinery lent stability to the early morning. She handed me my usual breakfast of fried eggs and misoshiro soup, along with a business card and a smile. It was a lawyer’s card with a note on the back. The lawyer was asking me to visit his office that afternoon to discuss a confidential matter. The address given was an impressive one in the Ginza section of Tokyo, a short train ride away.

As I had just finished the Kamakura Maru job and my next project wasn’t for a week, I dug out a tweed jacket to make my turtleneck sweater more respectable. Then I set course for the Ginza.

CHAPTER 2

Ginza in Japanese means market. The Ginza in Tokyo had evolved into the Far Eastern version of Fifth Avenue. Without the shoppers and signs to give it away, a visitor would be hard pressed to distinguish it from midtown Manhattan or the Market Street section of San Francisco.

Here, however, the constant throng of shoppers is quietly different. The crowds are thick yet without jar or aggression, a reflection on the ingrained courtesy of the Japanese. For some unknown reason you must pack the inhabitants of Tokyo more tightly before they reach critical mass than you can their Occidental cousins.

The law office was nestled in a modern tower of innovative design. There the receptionist greeted me with the proper mixture of cordiality and distance befitting a firm of significance. While I stated my business, I noticed her eyes drifted to the perceptible lack of crease in my trousers. She then announced my name into the intercom and remained unerringly polite and courteous as I cooled my heels in that outer office. Looking around the office, I concluded that this lawyer’s client could afford the best. In salvage, I was neither the biggest nor the best, and under the circumstances this was the type of work I expected.

“Frazer-san, Sato-san will now see you. Please excuse his delay, he is most interested in seeing you,” the receptionist murmured in flawless, inflectionless English, gesturing to the door on the left.

As I entered an office about the size of a small gymnasium, a forceful-looking gray-haired man rose and offered me his hand in firm American style. Sato, the lawyer, had clearly seen something of the world and was used to commanding respect. I sensed the calculating mind of a chessplayer, always three moves in the future, and that this trait fused well with his bearing, which would-have done honor to a Roman senator. Everything about his manner radiated tenacious intelligence.

Another older man—undoubtedly Western—lean, stooped, his beard streaked with white and gray—said something to me in an eastern European language and gave me a Continental dead-fish handshake. On an empty chair next to him lay a pile of outer clothing and a pair of sunglasses. Neither were suitable for November Japan. No, this wasn’t going to be a marine salvage job, after all.

I’d never met either one of them before, but there was something hauntingly familiar about the stooped man and those mournful hound-dog eyes of his.

“Mr. Frazer, I am Kiyoshi Sato. I sent you the business card. Please be seated. This meeting must be kept in the strictest confidence….”

I nodded.

“…for reasons which my client assures me will soon be obvious. The gentleman here on my left, as I am sure you have already recognized, is my client, Sergei Kurganov.”