Marc Olden - Gaijin

Rupert de Jongh is the Gaijin, an English aristocrat who for forty years has controlled the violent, treacherous world of Japanese crime. A cold machine whose power extends into the labyrinth of American politics, into the snaky hands of the Mafia, into the Asian police departments, into the sordid lives of criminals and prostitutes.

Only one person has ever come close to killing him. At the end of World War II, Alexis Bendor was sent to Europe to crack his code and then to murder him. But the Gaijin captured her instead. She was brutally tortured but managed to escape.

Now, several decades later, the two adversaries meet again on the beach of Hawaii. Alexis will track the Gaijin. He will track her. Until the final, bloody confrontation...

Marc Olden has been compared to Ludlum, Van Lustbader and James Clavell. Hes better. More mysterious, more intricate, more dangerous.

GIRl and DAI-SHO (both available in Corgi Books) have established his reputation. Now, in a thriller that in imagination and power goes far beyond those stories, Olden creates a chilling world that we only suspected existed.

Marc Olden is the author of GIRl and DAI-SHO. He lives in New York City.

Critical acclaim for Marc Olden:

GIRl

Keep the readers on the edge of the chair

Washington Post Book World

Ludlum, look out, Marc Olden is here

Walter Wager, author of TELEFON

Anybody who loved SHIBUMI and THE NINJA shouldnt miss it

James Patterson

DAI-SHO

One of the most original and exciting thrillers I have read in a long time. DAI-SHO is fast-paced, erotic and exotic

Norman Garbo, author of SPY and TURNERS WIFE

Fast and furious... an intensely exciting story reeking of cold-blooded violence

Publishers Weekly

GAIJIN

Top-notch thriller mixing yakuza (Japanese Mafia), a doughty ex-spy, and a dashing cat burglar in a spider-web plot... Olden specializes in thrillers with an oriental flavour. Trevanian first cooked up this sub-genre with Shibumi, but Olden seems now to be the master chef. A delicious entertainment

Kirkus Reviews

Also by Marc Olden

GIRl

DAI-SHO

and published by Corgi Books

GAIJIN

Marc Olden

CORGI BOOKS

GAIJIN

A CORGI BOOK 0 552 12662 4

First publication in Great Britain

PRINTING HISTORY

Corgi edition published 1986

Corgi edition reprinted 1986

Copyright 1986 by Marc Olden

Conditions of sale

1: This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subseq ient purchaser.

2: This book is sold subject to the Standard Conditions of Sale of Net Books and may not be re-sold in the U.K. below the net price fixed by the publishers for the book.

This book is set in 10/11 Palatino

Corgi Books are published by Tranworld Publishers Ltd.,

6163 Uxbridge Road, Ealing, London W5 5SA,

in Australia by Transworld Publishers (Aust.) Pty. Ltd.,

1523 Helles Avenue, Moorebank, NSW 2170,

and in New Zealand by Transworld Publishers (N.Z.) Ltd.,

Cnr. Moselle and Waipareira Avenues, Henderson, Auckland.

Printed and bound in Great Britair by

Cox & Wyman Ltd., Reading, Berk.

Diane Crafford for being there;

Richard Pine for a job well done;

George Coleman for being the right editor at the right time

Heiho no Metsuku.

The eyes in combat.

In seeing things, there are kan and ken.

Penetrating the true nature of things is kan;

seeing surface phenomena is ken.

MIYAMOTO MUSASHI,

Gorin no Sho

Alexis Bendor sensed danger.

When she awoke from her nightmare it was almost dawn. She looked through the sliding glass doors of her bedroom at a rain forest of ferns and giant philodendrons. Something familiar. Just the thing to pull her from the horrors of a bad dream.

She heard the cooing of doves gathered under the redwood sun deck. The birds were hiding from a sudden storm, now starting to taper off. These doves were her favorite, small birds called barred doves, which formed couples that remained forever faithful and roosted at each others side by night. Cooing doves and a steady rain. Welcome sounds.

Alexis sat up in bed. Sixty-three years old and getting crackbrained at her age. Of course she was alone.

The nightmare, her worst in years, had been about Rupert de Jongh. Even wide awake her heart wouldnt stop pounding. Her hand shook as it touched the pulse on the right side of her neck. Lord above. It was positively throbbing.

With the back of her hand she stroked the smooth old scar tissue where her right ear used to be. She flinched at the pain. Youd think the wound was still healing.

A shrink would have said, My advice to you, Mrs. Bendor, is to stop dredging up memories from the black storehouse in your mind. I recommended several sessions at $150. Guaranteed to cure what ails you.

The rain stopped. Alexis looked through the glass doors at dozens of birds now rising from the rain forest to soar against a rust-colored sky. Wings snapping, the doves flew from under the sun deck and pursued the flock. Four doves. Four was the number of agents in Alexiss spy team in February 1945, the year the nightmare had begun.

She had been scheduled for a safe war. Do her time in Washington breaking enemy codes and face nothing more terrifying than a run in her seamed stockings. But in 1945, twenty-five-year-old Alexis had come to the attention of the OSS, which was interested not only in her decoding abilities, but in her ability to speak Japanese. And in what she knew about Rupert de Jongh, a rather unusual Englishman.

The tall, blond, and almost pretty Alexis Waycross, her maiden name, knew a lot about Mr. de Jongh. Credit that to her curiosity and love of challenge. During the war, field agents and Allied contacts worldwide had flooded Washington with information on Japan. Some of it, a lot of it, went unnoticed. Too much material and not enough trained personnel to correctly collate and analyze it.

Alexis, born to scrutinize and go mousing, took it upon herself to examine some of the data, particularly anything dealing with Rupert de Jongh. De Jongh was a traitor and traitors fascinated her.

Mr. de Jongh was not your everyday traitor. He was an English aristocrat turned samurai. Absolutely mesmerizing.

He was called gaijin and in him Japan had what could only be described as a blue-chip spy. Reports crossing Alexiss desk compared him to Wilhelm Stieber, the intelligence genius who had served Bismark and who was the most admired of German agents. And to Sidney Reilly, the notorious double agent who at various times had worked for the British, French, Russian, and Japanese secret services.

The gaijin, however, exceeded then in his cruelty, his unrelenting savagery and cold-bloodedness. He had tortured and murdered too many Allied agents, while surviving the attempts on his own life. De Jongh, damn him, had been blessed with either good luck or good judgment.

He was a member of the Kempei-Tai Japans secret police, and had obtained copies of British, American, French, and German cipher machines, which he showed Japan how to adapt for its own use. This was a giant step in developing Japanese cryptography aiding de Jonghs adopted country in closing the distance between it and the Western powers... which had been far ahead of Japan in this area. But even de Jongh couldnt win them all. The Japanese alphabet contained over two thousand hieroglyphics and almost sixty letters, too many to adapt to a cipher system So they sent their codes in Roman letters, a break or Western cipher experts like Alexis.