Rogue Empire

by William Tyree

  “No, actually. He failed to show for the task force, but you already know that. But unfortunately, we’re all spread pretty thin right now. Nobody has the resources to go looking for him.”

  “So why are you here?”

  The FBI Director stepped into the shadows near the front door before he spoke, his face less than two feet from Speers’. “The Chinese are calling their people home.”

  “Pardon?”

  “The Control Group.”

  “You’ve been in this game two decades, Chad. Sometimes I think I’m still getting up to speed. What the hell is the Control Group?”

  “Twelve hundred very special Chinese citizens in the United States.”

  “Spies?”

  “No. The Control Group members are here for perfectly legitimate reasons, or at least that’s what we think. They are distinguished professors, students of high-ranking communist party members, business executives from Global 100 companies, and so forth. The Bureau has an algorithm that decides who the 1,200 most important Chinese residents are at any time. We use automation to track their movements. Unless, of course, the trail goes dark. Then we put boots on the ground, so to speak.”

  Speers knocked the back of his head softly against the wall behind him. “I see. So the Control Group is a sort of early warning system.”

  “Right. A kind of human barometer, if you will. We figure that if the Chinese were going to attack us in some meaningful way, they would make sure these VIPs were out of the country first.”

  “And this is happening?”

  Fordham nodded. “We noticed the Chinese embassy staff slimming down in a major way about 36 hours ago.”

  “Well can you blame them? We blew up their embassy in Tripoli a few days ago.”

  “That might explain the first exodus, which happened a few nights ago. Students taking redeye flights out of the country. Since it was less than 20% of the total Control Group population, we thought maybe it was just normal skittishness, and not a direct recall from Beijing. Fast forward to tonight. We can’t account for the whereabouts of any of the 1,200.”

  Speers stood up. “None of them?”

  “Not a one.”

  The Green Ghost

  The creature Carver spotted moving out among the bamboo had four legs. The doe made its way around the rock garden, cutting between two shrubs. Carver didn’t know how the deer had managed to get over the fence and onto the property, but if it wasn’t careful, he wagered it would soon find itself on a plate at Sho’s restaurant.

  He put on a shirt and padded downstairs to the den, where Eri had passed out on the couch the night before. A pool table formed the centerpiece of the room underneath exposed beams of white fir. The wood-paneled walls were covered in antlers and vintage skis. A fire burned in a stone fireplace that seemed diminutive relative to the room’s high ceilings.

  Through the window, he spotted Sho Kimura in the garden, dressed in matching indigo jinbei top and bottom, his hand outstretched. The doe Carver had spotted from his upstairs guest room was eating a carrot from Sho’s hand.

  Carver went outside onto the porch. The deer wasn’t spooked by his presence. Sho was stroking its neck.

  “When you said you harvested all your venison, this isn’t quite what I imagined.”

  “This is Aya. Last winter was very bitter. No food in the forest. Aya wandered in the gate one day as I drove in.”

  “Did you reach for your rifle?”

  “Yes. Then I saw how thin she was. I thought maybe I should fatten this beggar up before I shoot her.” He grinned. “Now, as you can see, my plan to cook her was a terrible failure.”

  He released the last of the carrot to the doe, rinsed his hands in a fountain at the edge of the porch, and waved them quickly back and forth to air dry them. “Eri is still sleeping?”

  Carver nodded. Back when they had been an item, he had witnessed a lot of nights like the last one. Her tendency to drink until she puked had been the source of several arguments, especially after she moved to D.C., where public drunkenness was substantially less socially acceptable than it had been in Tokyo.

  Sho turned, squatted on his heels, and pulled a hand-rolled cigarette from his pocket. “You two have a history together?”

  Carver nodded. “Years ago I came to Japan to study kendo. I ended up studying her.” Carver paused long enough to note a competitive glint in Sho’s eye. “But that was a long time ago. And you?”

  Sho took another drag of his cigarette. “Three days after the Kuromaku put the brand on me, I was very sick with a skin infection. I tried not to go to hospital, but I had no choice. I went to sleep in the emergency room. The doctor saw the Rising Sun brand and called the police. When I woke up, Eri’s boss Fujimoto was there, waiting for me. He had many questions.”

  Carver pulled the red passports from his pocket – the ones he had taken off the Kuromaku in Arizona – and handed them to Sho. The chef opened both of them, examining the photos and names of each thoroughly. Then he shook his head and passed them back to Carver. “I do not know them.”

  “They were branded, just like you.”

  “The only Kuromaku I know is the Eel.”

  “Then why did they choose you?”

  “Ancestry. My father was Kuromaku. And very good with a rifle. When dirty jobs had to be done for the party, they looked to him.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He disappeared.”

  Or was disappeared, Carver reckoned. “Sorry to hear that. But I still don’t understand. The Kuromaku put a cattle brand on your back and just expected you to simply take his place?”

  “The Kuromaku hold on to the old ways of living. Membership is not a choice. It is a social obligation.”

  “And your father didn’t warn you?”

  “He had been preparing me, but I did not realize. From a young age, he taught me to pray the old prayers. Then he taught me to hunt. Then, to compete. Shooting very long distances. He was very proud.”

  “But all the while, he was training you to serve the Kuromaku.”

  “It seems that way.”

  Carver sat down beside him. “Eri had told me you were an informant. She didn’t say you were an assassin.”

  “You would not understand. They threatened my mother and my brother. I do what I do for them.”

  “Did you kill Fujimoto?”

  “No. He was my only way out. Now, my only hope is Eri.”

  Las Vegas

  Nico Gold slept on the chaise in the living room, his toga welled up around his waist, now swollen with wine and pasta. The only light came from the blue glow of his computer and the neon glow of the Vegas strip.

  He was dreaming again. Before a pagan priest, he and Madge were reciting their wedding vows in Etruscan. They stood in an ancient temple with Roman columns and an elaborate mosaic on the dome overhead. On an altar, the Lycurgus Cup glistened magically in the morning light.

  He woke as his computer chirped with an activation alert. At last! It had been two long days since Jasper Blick had delivered the goods to Zhang Wei, the government worker who was to bring the streaming entertainment devices into Zhongnanhai as a gesture of MassiveStreamz’ goodwill. The alert was a homing beacon of sorts, a signal that at least one of the devices had been activated.

  “Come on,” Nico pleaded, urging the beacon to hone in on a geolocation. “Let’s take a ride on the Orient Express.”

  He sniffed a cup of old coffee on his desk. It was cold, and at least 18 hours old, but he decided to drink it anyhow. It was just fuel.

  This was going to go one of two ways. Either Zhang Wei would do as he was told and install the damn thing on one of 70-some televisions within the central government headquarters, or he was a bigger fool than Nico thought, and he would simply sell them out of his trunk.

  All he needed was one installation somewhere in the compound. That would get him behind the firewall. From there, Nico would be able to infiltrate any connected device in any of the as
sociated government offices.

  A map unfolded. The city of Beijing appeared. But there was no precise location yet.

  Suddenly the map before him crystallized, showing the beacon location within China’s imperial city.

  “Yesssssss!” He was in.

  The Green Ghost

  Carver held a cup of steaming tea as he stood before the kitchen window, watching Sho cut fresh herbs in the garden. His host was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and gardening gloves. Now that was a real renaissance man. Olympic biathlete. Chef. Assassin.

  It was madness. All this was madness. What had he gotten himself into? He longed for the relatively simple reality that he had known just a few days ago. He’d had but one primary objective — extract Kyra Javan from Tripoli before the CIA drone rained hellfire on the Butcher of Bahrain. Now, days later, the U.S. and China were on the brink of war, Carver’s career in intelligence seemed all but over, and he and Eri were being hunted by people that he scarcely understood.

  Sho entered the kitchen with a handful of shiso leaves. He politely acknowledged Carver’s presence before turning his back to wash them in the sink.

  The American needed a favor, and he decided there was no sense in pussyfooting around. “I need a gun.”

  His host pondered the statement for less than a second, as if he had been expecting it. “The Kuromaku give me a clean rifle before each hit. They destroy it after.”

  “You expect me to believe you don’t have another gun?”

  “I am licensed for only a single hunting rifle. That would be a bit awkward for you to carry, yes?”

  “I can pay you.”

  Sho laid the shiso leaves onto a towel to air dry. Then he turned. “It is not a question of money.

  “You must know someone.”

  He shook his head. “The government’s gun control program has been very effective. There is no black market.”

  “Thank God I wasn’t born here.”

  “Only eight people were killed by guns in Japan last year. How about your country?”

  “It was 13,000 last year, thanks for asking. But I’m not here to debate gun control. You’re telling me that if the Eel showed up in the middle of the night, you’re going to fend him off with a deer rifle?”

  Sho exhaled like a man who was tired of fighting. He removed his gardening gloves. “Let me show you something.”

  Carver followed his host upstairs to Sho’s bedroom. Sho opened the nightstand drawer next to his bed, where there was a thick poetry anthology. Or so it seemed. He opened the book cover, revealing a hollowed-out interior concealing a Glock 18 machine pistol. He lifted it from the drawer and popped in an abnormally long clip.

  “Thirty-three-round magazine,” he said.

  Carver took the weapon into his hands. “This is a freak of nature.” He inspected the hollowed-out text, finding a standard 10-round clip. He swapped it into the Glock. “It’s a bit less conspicuous, don’t you think?”

  Somewhere, a phone buzzed. Both men reached into their pockets. The call was for Sho. He answered, spoke only briefly, and hung up. He was pale.

  “The Eel has one last job for me.”

  “Who’s the target?”

  Sho shook his head. “I am always the last to know.”

  The Kuma River

  Crouched behind a dense tree line, and not far from the roaring Kuma River, Carver and Eri watched as the helicopter carrying Sho Kimura lifted off from within a heavily forested valley. Tracking him there had been a huge risk, but considering the circumstances, it was one he and Eri had found it necessary to take. If they had any hope of understanding the connection between the embassy bombing and the Kuromaku, they had to find the organization’s base of operations.

  Carver surveyed the dense terrain, but could not see a clearing, much less a helipad or a building. He didn’t even see a road leading into it.

  Eri stood, watching as the helicopter disappeared over the horizon. “Do you think he’s coming back?”

  “You heard Sho. He said they always take him to a remote shooting range to practice the hit.”

  “I know. But I have a bad feeling.”

  With the chopper now out of view, Carver refocused on the valley below. “How long do we have until they come back?”

  “Two hours. Three max. Ikimasho.”

  They began down a path leading to the valley. The volcanic rock underneath was slippery. Minutes later, they used their hands to navigate a tricky outcropping with a view. At last they saw something through the forest.

  Below them, a mountain spring spewed steaming water into a natural bathing pool. “Look,” Carver said, pointing to what appeared to be a building from a bygone era. It was almost totally concealed by nature.

  They moved on. A pair of monkeys scampered across their path. Down further, the game trail gave way to a narrow canyon surrounded by wet rock. Studs in the surrounding walls suggested there had once been a railing and a well-maintained hiking trail.

  Down further, Eri parted the shrubbery, revealing a rusted sign with two arrows pointing in different directions. The first arrow pointed to the valley floor. SUPA BIWA LAKE RESORT LOBBY: 1.2km. The second pointed to a thicket of dense forest. ONSEN: 1Km.

  “I know this place,” Eri said. “Or at least I did.”

  She explained that the Supa Biwa Lake Resort had been an employee retreat owned by a large Japanese electronics firm. In the 1980s and 1990s, it had served as a weekend getaway for executives, who enjoyed its natural hot springs, mountain air and tennis courts. She and her father had been guests once, long ago, when she was very small. But when the Japanese economy’s bubble burst, the company had been forced to slash spending. The mountain retreat had been among the first things to go. Unable to find a buyer for the immense resort, it had been turned over to a private firm that, for a time, sold onsen packages to travelers bound for Kyoto. The venture failed miserably. Despite the resort’s rugged beauty, the location was simply too far from the ancient sites of Kyoto. It was even too far from Lake Biwa, the massive body of water for which it had been named.

  “Looks like nature took over fast,” Carver said. If there was anything left of the resort, it was completely invisible from the two-lane highway that cut through the mountains. If it hadn’t been for the tracking beacon Eri had sewn into Sho’s pants, they would have never found it.

  They descended further until they reached the valley. They walked through jungle in the general direction of the building they had spotted from up top. Soon Carver tripped over something surprisingly solid, even and long. A six-inch-high concrete barrier now covered in moss.

  “I think this used to be the parking lot,” Eri said.

  At last they came to the thick ring of jungle that separated the resort ruins from the rest of the valley. Carver intended to simply slither their way through it, but at close range he saw a perimeter of densely planted bamboo, much like what Sho had used to fortify the Green Ghost. Without a machete, there was no way in, and no way over. There had to be another path.

  They walked the perimeter to a flat area with grass that was just eight inches high. Carver spotted tire tracks leading from the main highway that seemed to simply disappear into the jungle. Upon closer inspection, they found it – under a cleverly crafted canopy of dense vines, an opening wide enough for even large trucks. Only there was no sentry box, no razor wire, and nobody taking tickets. That was part of the camouflage, Carver supposed. This place was impossible to spot unless you knew what you were looking for.

  Carver pulled the Glock from the ankle holster Sho had given him and held it low as they inspected the entrance. Eri wielded the Krazy Kisser. Beyond was a tunnel that led to a vast underground parking garage. Carver counted no less than 12 black shuttle buses lined up in a neat row. Judging by the smell of freshly burned oil, at least some of them had been driven today.

  Buses? Who was getting bused into this place, and why?

  An open door led to a staircase. At the top, they found th
emselves looking out over a courtyard and what was left of the main resort building, which was half-swallowed by vegetation. Carver scanned the windows, looking for any signs of life. He saw nothing but shattered glass. Damaged, he imagined, by earthquakes or settling earth.

  They entered the former clubhouse through a door that was barely on its hinges. They heard nothing except the crackling insect chatter in the surrounding forest. The only light streamed in from a row of south-facing windows that looked out over a pair of overgrown tennis courts.

  Tree roots had pushed up some of the floor tiles. Vines were growing on the inside walls and ceiling. An entire crystal chandelier was now green with flora. Looking out on the back property, a pair of golf carts had been overtaken by vines. Somewhere out there in the thickets had once been a golf course.

  They pushed on, finding themselves in a banquet room with a view of the spring-fed valley below. The carcass of a long-dead squirrel was stretched out on one of several long tables.

  “Lunch?” Carver whispered. Eri punched him in the arm.

  “Why no guards?” she said.

  “That would attract attention. Besides, you don’t need protection if nobody knows you’re here.”

  Something skittered up the wall behind him. Carver turned. A reptilian tail disappeared into a crack in the wall.

  Those buses had been driven today. Carver was sure of it. So where was everyone?

  They slowly made their way through the complex, room by room, finding nothing of interest except a supply room full of sports equipment that Carver imagined was once loaned out to guests. Racks of rusted bicycles, tennis and badminton rackets, croquet mallets, fly fishing rods and golf clubs.

  They moved into the next set of rooms until they came across a window overlooking another courtyard. Ivy covered a long rectangular building.

  Suddenly, a set of massive double doors opened in the middle of the foliage. Carver and Eri crouched down, clutching their weapons tightly, watching. Two men in black jumpsuits emerged. They were rolling a cart with several black boxes inside. Behind them, Carver could see into the building. On either side of a narrow breezeway, endless rows of storage racks held matching black boxes, each blinking green, red and yellow. A child might have mistaken them for Christmas lights.