Consequences Unforeseen

Tokyo, June 1991 - Preparation for the Crimea

Tokyo Narita Airport – Sunday, June 2nd 1991. Preparation for the Crimea

The 747 thumped Bill Douglas back down to land, taxied the obligatory twenty minutes and deposited him into the hustle of Narita Airport just short of nine in the evening. After the laissez faire of Istanbul Ataturk, this place jolted him back to reality quickly and without mercy.

The flight ‘home’ was passed in pleasant conversation with the daughter of Tony Johnson, the British Ambassador to Turkey. She was entertaining and flirtatious for such a young girl and it amused him no end. Bill knew her father well and usually on less time constrained visits would share a beer or two with him and play some golf.

For sure he would have been surprised to hear her angles on certain life issues. She had no idea of his close relationship with her dad and Bill kept it to himself. No particular reason other than it might shut her up and he needed something amusing to pass the hours.

As they served drinks with dinner the crew did a double take at first to make sure she was indeed over eighteen, but a quick check at the passenger manifesto backed up her claim to be nineteen. She drank the Bloody Mary very quickly and asked for another before Douglas consumed even half of his Sapporo beer.

She regaled him with stories of her life of travel as her father’s daughter and the many exploits such a jet setting girl has endured over the years. Too much information for him he felt, on a number of issues, which included the intimate ins and outs of the end of her time as a virgin at the ripe old age of fifteen. Douglas just rolled his eyes and ordered another Sapporo.

She was headed to Hong Kong following a shopping trip to Tokyo, she informed him and was staying at the Okura Hotel. “You’re more than welcome to come stay in my room tonight, since it’s so late when we land,” she proffered, putting her had on his thigh in friendly companionship. “Yeah right,” he thought, but said nothing. It took her ten minutes to take her hand back. Inwardly he was laughing like Hell.

Now on the ground, he managed to shake her off using the gents’ restroom as a excuse. She must have lost patience while he was in there because thankfully she was gone when he emerged. Or did he exit by the opposite side? He wasn’t sure. “Oh well,” he thought, “No harm done.”

No time to think now, he just had to go with the flow of bodies pushing en masse onto the moving walkways towards Customs and Immigration. The progression had the single-mindedness of an ant colony that knows without knowing that there’s a food source somewhere ahead in the distance.

The individual members of this human chain behave with respect to their short term companions with no pushing or jostling, even when someone decides to exit at one of the waypoints but did so from the opposite side of the walkway. Smiles and exchanges of “O-negaishimas and dozo kudasai,” were the only indication that something had disturbed the persistent flow for an instant or two.

High above this orderly chaos on the security walkway, Keiko Matsui watched Bill Douglas become Japanese once more. She was amazed at how well he blended into the ways and culture of her people. “He’s like a chameleon,” She reminded herself, and she gave a half smile and laughed inwardly.

She was quite enjoying this whole episode in her continued learning about this ‘man behind the curtain’ as her father had nicknamed him, and she was smug in her knowledge that she could have given him relief from the ‘Narita experience’ by simply meeting him at the gate and whisking him away into the night.

Perversely she thought, “Fuck it, let him enjoy the pain a few minutes longer. He has me dancing on a string the entire time he’s here. This whole Narita thing pisses him off sooooooo much its funny to hear him go on about it.”