Red Ice

Halfway through his reluctant enlistment, he realized he liked the life and volunteered for Special Forces, where his bilingual background would be an asset. Despite Army regimentation, he felt freer than he’d ever been in Florida, straitjacketed by the rigorous standards set by desperate, disillusioned émigrés. Ironically, with this sense of freedom came a new pressure, the internal pressure of a growing sense of destiny. It was not that unusual. A haunting sense of destiny was something I, too, could understand. After his second hitch, he left the Army to free-lance so that one day he would have the experience, credentials, and contacts to leave a mark on Cuban history. Castro couldn’t live forever; when the time came, Alvarez would be ready to contribute.

And there was Kruger. It took only one word to set Johannes Kruger trembling: that word was women. He wore a badgered look, a seedy walrus mustache, and no visible muscles. He stammered, too—he had always been that way and it had never mattered—all his troubles emanated from his pursuit by women. Life had been relatively quiet for him as a “recce” corporal with the South African Reconnaissance Commandos. A bit of tracking, an occasional fire-fight with a handful of Cuban-trained Angolans, it was all downright peaceful compared to what followed. After his discharge, Kruger drifted north to Kenya and eventually took a job as a white hunter. He didn’t mind the fact that Kenya had a Kaffir government. After all, it didn’t govern much worse than those bandits in Pretoria, and anyway it wasn’t Marxist. He just didn’t mind. It was the white-hunter job that started it all—this trouble with women. Predatory, continent-hopping socialites who were in the habit of seeking ornamental, absentee husbands stalked white hunters like their male acquaintances stalked wild game. Kruger didn’t mind that, either; conversely, he played it to the hilt. He juggled three transcontinental marriages simultaneously. His expeditions into the bush provided required excuses and much-needed rest during those rare instances when all three wives were in Nairobi at once. It couldn’t last. It didn’t. One night he came home unexpectedly to find wife number two in bed with another man. In a shocking reversal of tradition, and in the heat of the moment, the lover shot the husband. “B-b-bloody fool, if he’d only waited a moment I would have said, ‘Excuse me, I seem to have the wrong flat.’” A battery of lawyers, wives, and girlfriends drove the hobbling Kruger out of Kenya and into the more celibate Brotherhood of Arms.

As the day wore on, the crowd in the next room grew more and more rambunctious. Wickersham and Gurung, its inhabitants, were on a good-to-be-alive high and inviting the others in for beer or hot sake. Their room resounded with the bumps and thumps of the spirited horseplay typical of these get-togethers. I could hear Wickersham organizing “Hokkaido’s First International All-Services Arm-Wrestling Tournament.” Before long, Lutjens, Wickersham, and Alvarez had risen to finalist level. I could hear bets called out and furniture being rearranged.

Dravit was poring over Russian newspapers when someone knocked at our door. “Party’s in the next room over!”

Frazer-san?” The words had a heavy Japanese intonation. We let the man in. It was a ferret-faced, round-shouldered Oriental in his mid-thirties. He kneeled on one knee like a crapshooter. “O-hikae nasutte, o-hikae nasutte…,” he began, giving the traditional self-introduction of the yakuza.

“Thank you for kneeling so quickly,” I said, giving the standard response.

He went on to describe his native province, his clan, its chief, and his connections with the other clans of Sapporo in great detail. None of it meant anything to me, but this was the traditional recitation and it would have been impolite to interrupt. Dravit stood by dumbly, not understanding a word.

“Frazer-san, a Korean acquaintance of mine in Sapporo who makes a business of knowing things…”

One of Kim’s KCIA agents must have sent him.

“…has requested that I relate what information I have gathered about a man who recently met his demise in an alley in Sapporo. This man wore the tattoos of the gamblers’ brotherhood.”

His words were punctuated by a loud crash and a roar of approval from the gang next door. The semifinals were over. Put your money on Wickersham.

“The man’s name was Aoki. He left his clan several years ago after an argument with his oyabun, his clan chief. It was well known that he hired out. The rumor has been that he was recently retained by a foreigner. My Korean friend mentioned an attempted kidnapping. Kidnapping is not a normal yakuza undertaking.”