Hideo Sato stood inside a heavily-vandalized Teleplex booth not far from The Puzzle in London’s Docklands area. The transparent enclosure of the booth had been surreptitiously decorated with small advertising postcards of modified males and females promising to deliver perverted fantasies for a price that would not break the bank. Just like Tokyo, the Yakuza thought to himself, the flesh pits of Shinjuku coming alive in his mind. Half of the booth had been splashed with a liquid that had turned brown with time. Hideo didn’t want to hazard a guess as to what the liquid was. He was still too queasy from the bizarre effects of the sound gun to stomach such speculation. A chilly Union breeze wafted up below the Perspex wall of the booth.

Outside, the Japanese goon with the disfigured face, stared droopy-eyed into the foggy distance as though mentally keeping track of the official-looking black limo that had spirited their quarry away like something out of a Mafia movie. Hideo knew the story of his disfigurement well. A rival gang had used his head as the first pin in a special game of Yakuza bowling. Yet throughout the horrendous ordeal Junichiro Miyagi had not talked. That piece of urban legend had bought Miyagi respect among the Yakuza ranks and tolerance for the sorry state of his mashed-up face.

Sato used the tips of his fingers to hold the grimy headset as close to his ear as possible without actually making contact. These Union states, especially the Brits, were so unhygienic and so backwards. In Japan interactive public telephones with hands-free features, video cameras and life-size holographic renditions of the other party, if they were so equipped, were all the rage. The only reason people still used these public boxes was because of these few extra features which were still not possible on a mobile phone. Unfortunately, his and the goon’s satellite-enabled mobiles had somehow been destroyed by those two idiots from the limo.

Sato listened to the phone ring on the other end of the line and absent-mindedly scratched at caked blood in his right ear. Several hours after the fact, he still hadn’t stopped bleeding but the flow had slowed to a trickle. He had tried to put off this phone call as much as possible but it was inevitable that he would have to report their failure to retrieve the console from the hacker.

“Yes,” a female voice answered in Japanese.

“Hirayama-san,” Sato commanded gruffly. He cocked his head to get a closer look at a girl on one of the cards who had had lizard scales surgically painted all over her body. From the photo, her black fingernails had been sharpened, her tongue elongated and a cleft carved out of the middle. Everything in her pose suggested the reptile she longed to be, arms splayed in a crouching posture, legs flat against the floor like she was in the middle of some exotic Yoga move. Lizard Girl: Man or beast I’ll show you a good time. There was a cell phone number, e-mail, cyberpager and some generic netbase, the kind you got for free with a bottle of washing-up liquid. Hideo felt himself go hard.

“Interesting,” he said to nobody in particular as he committed the e-mail address to memory. He was thinking that he might return a favor in Tokyo by having the girl shipped there for an evening of kinky distractions with his Yakuza cronies. He imagined her shipped out in a cage by her handler and held up by customs in Tokyo to be quarantined. He was jolted from his daydream by the voice of a stressed out Hirayama.

“Good news I hope, for your sake and mine. The oyabun is in no mood for bad news,” Hirayama said gruffly.

“If only. We had this Caldwell kid in our sights. We believe he had the console with him. Then this official-looking car, tinted windows, no license plate, huge fucking satellite dish on the top, came out of nowhere and scooped him up, console and all.”

“And you just stood there enjoying the spectacle? And why the hell are you shouting?” Hirayama asked with bitter sarcasm.

“Have you ever been hit with a sound gun?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“Well it’s not a pleasant experience. This was a professional outfit. I’d say some kind of agency. Unofficial.”

“Takahashi-san is going to be well pissed. Our guys in America failed to retrieve the console too. The girl is missing. The last thing we want is the damn Brits pissing all over this damn stuff. My future and yours depend on you getting the console back and eliminating this Caldwell character quickly.”

“How do you suggest I do that?” sneered Hideo Sato.

“Cut the wise guy attitude or it’ll be your head. Keep a low profile, find a hotel near the airport with a cyberspace console, and we’ll get back to you over the usual channels. We want you to check in ever hour until you hear from us.”

“Keep a low profile? There is a half-guy lying in the morgue with a hole in his head keeping company with a dead publican and you want me to keep a low profile? The cops probably have our mug shots propagating through their “most wanted” databases and will be all over us soon. They probably have an army of analysts figuring out our next plan of action or worse, some low-level AI on the hunting trail.”

“We have AIs too. Did you take precautions?”

“Yeah, I always carry at least one in my pocket for emergencies. There’s this lizard lady ...”

“Against identification by the police, you turtle’s egg. Does everything have to be practical joke with you? Why didn’t you just track the hacker down where he lives and do the job?”

“Because he lived in some computerized capsule hotel that can’t be accessed without Union ID. If we tried to break in forcefully, who knows what conglomerate we would have on our asses? The Glyph guy pointed us in the right direction and let us know he was heading here. I had Miyagi “The Faceless” tail him all the way here so he was firmly in our sights.”

“Then you lost him.”

“Sorry.”

“Save your apologies and your pinkie for the oyabun. I’ll find out what I can and update as usual. Try not to bring too much attention to yourselves.”

“You keep saying that, but I am with Miyagi remember? Not so easy to keep a low profile with him around but I know how to stay out of trouble. They have some interesting looking whores here,” Hideo said, images of the lizard girl flashing rapidly through his perverted brain.

“As long as you are near the airport. Understand?”

“Sure. I can watch while Miyagi scares the lizard girl something silly with his elephant man impression.”

The line went dead.