Diane Joplin sat in the van listening to the discordant melee of the voices. The voices were not in agreement. One of them had risen above the din and instructed her to slide open the doors of the moving van and jump out. Yet, the other voices, her mother’s and one that sounded vaguely like her father’s, told her to be patient. All the while, she kept her eyes trained on the man with the smooth long face who had saved her from the Yakuza. There was a pretty girl driving the van and from the way she was switching lanes she looked like an excellent driver. Diane wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard the man refer to her as Seven, which she concluded was an odd name even for a girl. It had to be a code name, she figured. They’d dropped the two identikit heavies off not far from Kabukicho and then the van had driven up one of those flyovers.

The man, who had told her that his name was Fouler, had tried hard to reassure her that she was safe. He was now trying to make a phone call from the van but seemed to be having trouble connecting. He was on speaker phone and she could hear the phone ring, make a screeching noise and then end in a series of beeps. The man was getting exasperated. He’d turned out to be English although his accent wasn’t the same one she’d heard English people use in America.

Diane turned her attention to the consoles lining one side of the van. Next to the equipment sat a gray box with a label that read “Fuel Cells. Handle with Care!” It looked like the box was providing power for all the computer equipment but Diane wasn’t sure. It looked too small. Some of the monitors showed various maps around the world, some of which she recognized, and there were these blinking dots on them that she could swear she saw moving but she couldn’t be certain because they didn’t really move much. The smell of the van reminded her of her father’s den in Boston. It was that not unpleasant smell of hot components and plastic. The English man called Fouler seemed to have made a connection.

“Hello, Director Ryan, please,” Fouler said, giving her a knowing stare. Diane had no idea what that was all about.

“I am afraid Director Ryan is on the other line,” a middle age-sounding female voice said.

“Tell him this is Bruce Fouler. Believe me he’ll take my call.”

“OK, hang on a second.” The voice sounded hesitant but Fouler was placed on hold. Advertising messages about the FBI started coming from the speaker of Fouler’s phone. He was calling the director of the FBI. The voice that had asked her to jump from the van started whispering things to Diane. She would be handed over to the FBI and she would go to prison for a very long time. Were these guys FBI? Diane had never heard about English FBI agents yet the van and the equipment fitted the mould. Then the FBI ads stopped.

“Bruce, it’s been a while. What can I do for you?” The voice sounded jovial, nothing like the way Diane thought FBI agents sounded like, especially in the movies.

“The Professor Joplin case that the CIA is all excited about but seems to be getting nowhere with might be about to draw to a close. I have something that will give the FBI the upper hand,” Fouler said.

“Oh, that. They found out that it was the work of the Boston faction of the Japanese Yakuza. Their DNA was all over the professor’s house and we have extensive files on these guys. We pulled them in yesterday and after a bit of coaxing they spilled the beans. It seemed the professor was on some Yamaguchi-gumi hit list. For what, we don’t know. These guys just took orders from Japan. The missing daughter was taken off the suspect list today although we have yet to find her. But we are close. Agents are picking her up at her hotel right now. So what do you have for me? I know you don’t call my special line to keep me up to date on cases that sell newspapers for the tabloids.”

“I am in Tokyo. I have the Joplin girl here. Would you like to talk to her?” Fouler said simply. There was a pause on the line. Then the FBI director spoke.

“Always one step ahead Fouler. I don’t know how you do it. Diane there are a lot of worried people here. Your maid was sure that you had been kidnapped. And for a while, a whole lot of folk thought your disappearance suggested you’d done something wrong.”

“Sorry, I was upset and needed to get away for a while,” Diane explained, wondering if the FBI director would understand.

“All the way to Japan?”

“I thought I would find answers to my father’s death here in Tokyo,” Diane said. She was relieved that it seemed she was no longer in trouble and the most liberal of the voices were now reassuring her of that. The other voices screamed incoherently, generating a whole lot of background noise but if Diane tried really hard she could ignore them. Yet there was one, the isolated voice of a scared little girl, which she found hard to block out.

“You’ll make a fine FBI agent, young woman. It took our agents several days to trace this case back to Japan and you did it in what, a split second?” There was a forced chuckle on the other side of the line and Fouler was giving her this look, like she had done something he was impressed with. The girl’s whiny voice in her head was suggesting that it was a trick to make her feel comfortable. The FBI was going to arrest her and charge her with the murder of her father.

“Thanks,” she said simply over the speaker phone. The cynical voices erupted in cackles of disappointment.

“Well, I guess an FBI salary wouldn’t mean much to you. You are a very brave and very rich young woman. Your father left you a lot of money. You probably would never need to work again, if you invested wisely.”

He is trying to deduce from your reply whether you want your father’s money. Can’t you see that? It’s all one big trap.

“Thanks,” Diane said again. She had no idea how else to respond to that.

“You’ll need to come back home and sign the papers of course but that’s something to sort out with your father’s lawyers,” the man called John Ryan said.

You see? And that Fouler is part of the plan.

But he saved my life.

He did no such thing.

“We’ll get her back to Boston, if that’s what she wants to do,” Fouler interjected, giving her that strange look again.

See.

“Sure. Good luck and thanks Fouler. Those CIA boys will be grated that we wrapped this up.”

“Sure thing. See you next time I am in Washington,” Fouler said, smiling to himself.

“Absolutely. Goodbye Bruce and thanks.”

Fouler hung up just as the van pulled into a driveway. Behind the large Japanese-style wooden building stood a looming snow-capped mass that Diane Joplin recognized from cyberspace photos as Mount Fuji. A sign in English and Kanji on the building read Hakone Ryokan. A big man wearing a tweed suit stood outside the entrance with an attractive-looking Japanese lady and a handsome Eurasian kid. Fouler explained to Diane as they got out of the van that they would be staying here at the De Witte family’s hot springs ryokan while Agent Jackman and Agent Jones retrieved her belongings from the Keio Plaza Hotel.

“You’ll be safe here,” Fouler whispered as he walked up to the family and shook the man’s hand.

The voices in Diane’s head were strangely silent. All she could hear was the beating of her heart as she stole another glance at the De Witte boy.