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Authors: Barry Eisler
Tags: Krimis & Thriller
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might be able to scale back on some of the precautions that
posed such a burden to my finances.
Time passed. And, much as I enjoyed it, Rio came to feel like a
way station, not a destination; a breather, not the end of the march.
There was an aimlessness to my days there, an aimlessness that my
focus on jujitsu alleviated but didn't dispel. From time to time I
would remember Tatsu telling me you can't retire, spoken with equal
parts confidence and sadness, and those words, which I had first
taken to be a threat and then understood to be merely a prediction,
came in my memory to bear the weight of something else, something
more akin to prophecy.
I grew restless, and my restlessness proved fertile ground for
memories of Naomi. The way she had whispered come inside in my
ear on that first long night together. The way she would slip into
Portuguese when we made love. The way she had offered to try to
help Harry, who had been not just an asset of mine, but a rare
friend, an offer that had been as sincere as it was ultimately useless.
And the way I had promised her the last time I saw her that I would
find her in Brazil, that I wouldn't leave her waiting and wondering
what had ever happened to me.
The way you did Midori.
I've paid for that one, thank you.
It had been good with Naomi, that was the thing. Warm and
sweet and emotionally uncomplicated. It wasn't what I had with
Midori, or almost had, but I was never going to have that again and
preferred to spend as little time as possible flagellating myself over
it. Going to her would be selfish, I knew, because in Tokyo our involvement
had almost gotten her killed, and, despite the change of
venue and all my new precautions, it was far from impossible that
something like that could happen again. But I found myself thinking
of her all the time, wondering if somehow it could work. Japan
was far away. I was Yamada now, wasn't I? And Naomi was whoever
she was in Brazil. We could start over, start afresh.
I should have known better. But we all have stupid moments,
rationalization, even blindness, born of weakness and human need.
Naomi's Japanese mother had died many years earlier, but she
had told me her father's name, David Leonardo Nascimento, and
had let me know that I could find him in Salvador. Nascimento is
a common name in Brazil, but there was no Leonardo, David, in
the Salvador white pages, to which I had access via a Rio public library.
An Internet search proved more productive: David Leonardo
Nascimento, it seemed, was the president of a Salvador-based company
with real estate, construction, and manufacturing interests.
I could have simply called and asked how I might get in touch
with Naomi, but I didn't want too long a gap between the time
when I contacted her and the time when we might actually meet.
I told myself that this preference was logical, the outgrowth of my
usual security concerns, but I knew at some level that it was driven
also by personal factors. I didn't want to have to catch up over the
phone, to answer questions about where I was and what I was doing,
to explain my long delay in tracking her down. Better to get it
all out of the way in person.
Salvador was a two-hour flight from Rio, and in making my
way through this new city I was struck, as always when traversing
colossal Brazil, by the contrasts among the land's regions. Salvador,
nearer the equator, was hotter than Rio, the air somehow richer,
moister. In Rio, the ubiquitous granite cliffs seem to offer glimpses
of the land's strong skeleton; in Salvador, everywhere there was red
earth, more akin to a soft covering of skin. And the people were
darker-hued: a reflection of the area's African heritage, which revealed
itself also in the baroque carving of the town's colonial
churches; in the blood-pounding beat of its candomble music; in the
flowing, dancing moves of its capoeiristas, with their hypnotizing
mixture of dance, fighting, and
posed such a burden to my finances.
Time passed. And, much as I enjoyed it, Rio came to feel like a
way station, not a destination; a breather, not the end of the march.
There was an aimlessness to my days there, an aimlessness that my
focus on jujitsu alleviated but didn't dispel. From time to time I
would remember Tatsu telling me you can't retire, spoken with equal
parts confidence and sadness, and those words, which I had first
taken to be a threat and then understood to be merely a prediction,
came in my memory to bear the weight of something else, something
more akin to prophecy.
I grew restless, and my restlessness proved fertile ground for
memories of Naomi. The way she had whispered come inside in my
ear on that first long night together. The way she would slip into
Portuguese when we made love. The way she had offered to try to
help Harry, who had been not just an asset of mine, but a rare
friend, an offer that had been as sincere as it was ultimately useless.
And the way I had promised her the last time I saw her that I would
find her in Brazil, that I wouldn't leave her waiting and wondering
what had ever happened to me.
The way you did Midori.
I've paid for that one, thank you.
It had been good with Naomi, that was the thing. Warm and
sweet and emotionally uncomplicated. It wasn't what I had with
Midori, or almost had, but I was never going to have that again and
preferred to spend as little time as possible flagellating myself over
it. Going to her would be selfish, I knew, because in Tokyo our involvement
had almost gotten her killed, and, despite the change of
venue and all my new precautions, it was far from impossible that
something like that could happen again. But I found myself thinking
of her all the time, wondering if somehow it could work. Japan
was far away. I was Yamada now, wasn't I? And Naomi was whoever
she was in Brazil. We could start over, start afresh.
I should have known better. But we all have stupid moments,
rationalization, even blindness, born of weakness and human need.
Naomi's Japanese mother had died many years earlier, but she
had told me her father's name, David Leonardo Nascimento, and
had let me know that I could find him in Salvador. Nascimento is
a common name in Brazil, but there was no Leonardo, David, in
the Salvador white pages, to which I had access via a Rio public library.
An Internet search proved more productive: David Leonardo
Nascimento, it seemed, was the president of a Salvador-based company
with real estate, construction, and manufacturing interests.
I could have simply called and asked how I might get in touch
with Naomi, but I didn't want too long a gap between the time
when I contacted her and the time when we might actually meet.
I told myself that this preference was logical, the outgrowth of my
usual security concerns, but I knew at some level that it was driven
also by personal factors. I didn't want to have to catch up over the
phone, to answer questions about where I was and what I was doing,
to explain my long delay in tracking her down. Better to get it
all out of the way in person.
Salvador was a two-hour flight from Rio, and in making my
way through this new city I was struck, as always when traversing
colossal Brazil, by the contrasts among the land's regions. Salvador,
nearer the equator, was hotter than Rio, the air somehow richer,
moister. In Rio, the ubiquitous granite cliffs seem to offer glimpses
of the land's strong skeleton; in Salvador, everywhere there was red
earth, more akin to a soft covering of skin. And the people were
darker-hued: a reflection of the area's African heritage, which revealed
itself also in the baroque carving of the town's colonial
churches; in the blood-pounding beat of its candomble music; in the
flowing, dancing moves of its capoeiristas, with their hypnotizing
mixture of dance, fighting, and
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