by KJ Charles
The intercom buzzed, long and loud.
We both froze. “Who is it?” he demanded, glaring at me.
“How should I know?”
The buzz sounded again, twice, urgently. He walked over to the entryphone and picked up the receiver to open the line, but didn’t say anything.
“Yukie? Yukie, let me up, it’s Sonja from the bar. I’m in real trouble, please, let me in. Please.”
The tinny voice was frantic. I took a breath to scream, warn her, but Oguya had already put down the receiver and pressed the button to let her in. He turned to look at me as he did it, and my face must have been white with horror, because the coldest smile I’ve ever seen spread across his face.
“Two for one,” he said. “Great deal for me. My friends will be very pleased. Not so good for you, though. I think she’ll be happy to see me, don’t you? We had such a nice time last night. Such a nice talk.”
I couldn’t breathe. The bravado of rage and hopelessness had all drained out as I heard her speak, and I was left with a bottomless despair. If he had Sonja again—if he hurt her—oh God, I’d tell him anything, I couldn’t watch that. What the hell had gone wrong?
Oguya was fumbling around in a chest of drawers and came out with a little hand towel of the kind you keep in your handbag. “Open wide,” he told me. “I don’t want you making any noise.”
I clamped my mouth shut. He pulled and wrenched at my jaw for a couple of seconds, and then punched me in the stomach. The breath exploded out of me, and he shoved the towel into my mouth, jamming it so far in I thought I might be sick, and if I did that, I’d drown in my own vomit. Panic swept through me. I heaved frantic breaths through my nostrils, and Oguya leaned over with a grin and pinched my nose shut.
Christ, it was frightening. I thrashed on the chair, uselessly fighting to get away from his effortless grip, trying to suck air through the wadded towel and choking on dust and fibres. My lungs were already hurting, caving in, and I was trying to scream or move but I couldn’t—
He released my nose, and I gasped as hard as I could, my heart pounding painfully.
“You try anything, warn her, next time I won’t let go,” he told me. “Understand?”
I nodded hard, still trying to drag in oxygen. He walked over to the door and took the bolt off. Then he took a gun from a holster inside his jacket and screwed on a silencer with a little frown of concentration as his big fingers worked. The gun looked pretty small, but no less horrible for that.
He stood by the door, arms folded over his chest, gun held loosely, confidently. Waiting. The only sound in the room was my strident nasal breathing. And after hours, days, forever, we heard the ping of the lift.
My chair was further into the room, out of the direct line of sight of the door. Could I scream through the gag, alert her in time? I had to try. Surely I had to try. I was dead anyway, but if I could warn Sonja…
But he’d be so much worse if I tried. Or tried and failed. And oh, God, I was frightened of the pain.
The doorbell rang. Oguya glanced through the spyhole, waggled the gun at me in an admonitory manner, and opened the door just a crack, flattening himself on the wall by it so he couldn’t be seen.
“Yukie-chan?” asked Sonja’s plaintive voice. The door was pushed. It swung open to the other side, against the wall, but she didn’t come in. I couldn’t see her, and nor could Oguya. “Yukie?”
Oguya moved. He swung round, going through the open door, reaching out with his left hand, the gun hanging casually in his right. And then in a split second his whole body changed, posture spasming from cruel confidence to violent reaction. He leapt away, raising the gun as he stumbled backwards, and Chanko came through the door after him like murder.
It took him two long strides to reach the yakuza, and in that fraction of time Oguya squeezed off two muted shots, his face contorted with rage, and then Chanko’s huge hand was swatting the gun away, sending it flying. Oguya slammed a roundhouse kick into Chanko’s side, to no effect, and launched a fast, desperate punch, and Chanko caught his wrist and wrenched the whole arm over and behind Oguya’s back with an appalling crack. The yakuza was only just starting a scream when Chanko’s other fist connected with his jaw, snapping his head back, a fine mist of blood spraying from his mouth.
Chanko hit him five times, in the face, chest and groin, with his full weight behind each blow. He was punching upward, the impacts lifting the other man off the floor, and for the last couple I think he was holding Oguya up, because when he let go, the yakuza collapsed bonelessly, and didn’t move again.
Chanko breathed out through his mouth, teeth showing, with a sound like a snarl, and swung towards me. He took in my appearance for a second, then he stepped over Oguya very deliberately, lifted one large, booted foot, and brought it down with all his weight on the yakuza’s face.
Then he was over by me, pulling the towel out of my mouth, kneeling to get a look at my bonds, and breathing deeply and deliberately. I licked my dry lips with a dry tongue, but there were so many things to say that none of them managed to come out, and my throat and mouth felt withered.
“Get a knife,” he said, not to me. “And water. Now.”
I looked up, saw Sonja hovering nervously behind him, and felt my mouth drop open.
“I know,” she said, with unconvincing bravado. “Got a good wigmaker?”
Her hair, her long, beautiful hair, had been hacked off brutally short. There were even bald patches, where the skin looked raw and ugly, and there were cigarette burns along her jawline and neck. She was wearing her high-heeled boots with no stockings, and two plastic macs, black over horrible purple, and it looked like she wasn’t wearing anything underneath them.
We stared at each other. She gave me a little twitch of a humourless smile. “I’m fine. You?”
I nodded, unable to speak.
“Water,” Chanko snapped at her. He looked around, then moved to pick up Oguya’s discarded knife. It seemed to take him some effort to rise from his kneeling position.
Sonja put a cup of water to my mouth, and I gulped and swilled and swallowed. I felt sick and dizzy, and the reaction was making my eyes sting.
“Thanks,” I managed. “Chanko… God, just get me out of here.”
He grunted. “Hurt?”
“No.” His voice had sounded thick and strained, and a cold feeling began stealing up through me. I was looking at him properly when he turned, and what I saw rocked me in the hated chair. “Christ. Chanko!”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
He really wasn’t. He’d ignored Oguya’s bullets so effortlessly that I’d somehow disregarded them too, as if anyone could have missed a target that big from such close range. But his jacket was torn on the left shoulder, and he was holding his arm stiffly, not moving it, and his dull brown jumper was stained with a spreading dark wetness on the left side of his chest. Over the pectoral muscle. Over the heart.
“Get us out of here,” I said desperately. “Get me up.”
Sonja looked between us with wide eyes that stretched further once she realised what was happening. “Oh, shit.”
“I’m fine,” Chanko repeated. “C’mon.” He knelt clumsily and began to saw at the plastic tie around my ankle, his left arm awkward.
“I’ll find something.” Sonja turned to the bathroom door. “Bandages—”
“No! Don’t go in there.”
Chanko looked up at me, and Sonja swung back round. “What is it? Why not?”
“Yukie.” My face felt stiff and painful. “I think—Oguya said—he said she’s in there, and I think she’s—she’s—”
Chanko took a breath that ended in a wince. His hand was warm round my swollen ankle. “Don’t look. I’ll check. This first.”
The patch on the front of his sweater was soaked and sticky-looking. His face was a nasty grey under the bronze, and there was sweat along his hairline and brows.
“We have to get you out of here,�
�� I told him, and he gave a huff of breath that was nearly a laugh.
“She might not be dead.” Sonja was hesitating by the bathroom door. “She might not be in here at all. She might need help.”
“Yeah. Gimme a second.” The plastic was tight round my leg. He used his left hand to tug at it slightly, trying to get some purchase for the knife in his right. The tie cut further into my puffy flesh. We were both gritting our teeth.
Sonja said, “Oh, fuck,” and opened the bathroom door.
The smell rushed into the room. Sonja recoiled, one hand over her mouth and nose, making a noise in her throat. Then she leaned forward, peering into the bathroom.
The plastic tie sprang free, and I felt a surge of agony as the needles of interrupted circulation jabbed into me. Chanko reached over for the other leg. “Shut the door, Sonja.”
“Yukie,” she whispered. “Oh, Jesus.”
“Shut the fucking door.”
She pulled it shut again, hands shaking. “God. She— I think she’s in that rug. Wrapped up, in the bath. Oh God. We have to call the police.”
“Do it.”
Sonja took what looked like Chanko’s phone from her pocket and promptly dropped it. The back sprang off as it hit the floor, and the battery popped out. She cursed, and bent to retrieve it, then froze as we heard the ping of the lift stopping.
“Who’s that?” she said in a thin, tiny voice.
“Get the gun,” Chanko told her. He reached into his jacket for his own gun and pulled himself upright using the chair, which creaked ominously. I could see it cost him. Sonja scooped Oguya’s discarded gun off the floor and gripped it two-handed, in a B-movie stance, hands shaking. My damned ankle was still firmly attached to the chair, as were my hands. Footsteps—several, firm, determined—headed towards us.
“They’re coming to the door,” Sonja whisper-wailed. “It’s not locked.”
“Stay put,” muttered Chanko. He had a chilly, sweaty hand on my shoulder, and the gun levelled at the slightly open door. Sonja edged towards him.
The door swung open, and they came in.
Chapter Sixteen
There were six of them, all in suits, all men. Two of the suits were worth wearing. That made two bosses—probably kanbu, middle-ranking executives—and four goons.
It was all very fast and professional. The goons had their guns out, quick and furious; Chanko snarled a deep-voiced menace; both bosses snapped commands for control, and everyone froze. There were two gun barrels trained on Chanko, one on Sonja, one on me. Sonja’s gun was pointing at the guy aiming at her, but Chanko’s had swung towards the older of the bosses, rock-steady.
“Everyone be quiet please,” said the younger boss. “Nobody move. Well, this looks like a monumental fuck-up.”
“It smells like someone died in here,” said one of his goons, kicking the door shut. “Guy on the floor? No, too fresh.”
His boss didn’t care. “Watch the big fucker, Song, he’s dangerous. If you have to shoot, aim for the head. Kim, keep an eye on the assholes.”
The two soldiers nodded, familiar but respectful.
I blinked, astonished he’d spoken so openly in front of us. I could see the other boss shifting slightly, and above me, in my peripheral vision, Sonja was looking from one to the other, and my tired brain finally kicked in to tell me what had happened.
After the first two sentences, it had all been in Korean. And not Japanese-accented, either. These were real Seoul brothers, and now I’d noticed that, it was obvious, in the cut of the suits, good and bad, and perhaps in infinitesimal physical differences—fractionally darker skin, slightly broader faces, nothing individually noteworthy, but it added up.
To three yakuza, and three Korean mafiosi, and me tied to a chair.
There was a certain amount of jockeying for position among the newcomers, but the Korean boss flicked a glance at the Japanese kanbu when the other men didn’t spread out, and he barked an order. They ended up with each boss flanked by his own guys.
The kanbu glanced around the room with professional thoroughness. He looked to be in his fifties, well dressed and groomed: a thug, but an expensive one. His flat, expressionless face didn’t change as his gaze settled on the crumpled form on the floor.
“Is that Oguya?” he asked Chanko.
“Yeah.” Chanko’s voice gave nothing away, but I could hear the grit.
“You have any idea what you’ve done?” The yakuza’s voice was laden with menace. “You’re a dead man, gaijin. Just too stupid to stop breathing.”
He stared at Chanko for a moment, then turned an assessing look on Sonja, and down to me. I felt suddenly conscious of the gaping tear in my sweater, and Chanko gave a soft growl.
“You’re the hostess.”
“I’m Kerry Ekdahl.”
His eyes went up to Chanko behind me, then back to my face. “You have something of ours.”
“My friends have it,” I said. “They aren’t here. If you kill us, they’ll release it.”
“No,” he said calmly. “You will give me their names and addresses.”
He didn’t add any threats. He didn’t really need to.
I swallowed. “It’s a bit—”
“No. You will give me the names. Don’t waste any more of my time.” He jerked his head at one of his goons. “Perhaps one of my men should make the situation clear. You, shoot her. In the knee.”
I shrieked something, Sonja gave a strangled squawk, and Chanko snarled, “Don’t.” But it was the second boss who slapped out at the yakuza’s gun, smacking the muzzle downward before the man could fire. I stared at them, barely able to breathe, feeling the sweat running through my hair.
“Excuse me, Ii-san,” said the Korean boss in accented but very fluent Japanese. “Let’s not rush into anything.”
His words were polite, and the tone wasn’t rude, but it was undeniably commanding. The kanbu, Ii, looked at the younger man, his face darkening, then he gave a brief nod. “Excuse me, Park-san.”
“After all,” the Korean continued, looking at me, “it’s your big friend who’s bleeding. Rather badly. Whereas we’re in no hurry at all. We can stay here as long as we need to.”
I straightened my posture as much as I could, head up and still, and met his eyes. “Excuse me, but it’s a bit different.” Keep your voice level. No wobbling now. “Please allow me to remind you, there are others of us, and they have the information. And we have already made arrangements—if we don’t contact them soon, they will be sending it out to the police and the gangs and—and everyone. A lot of people.” Come on, Kerry, not good enough. Stop panicking. Sound calm. “I’m afraid you don’t have very much time left, and if we don’t contact our friends, if the information is released, you’re out of time for good.”
“I spoke to Oguya,” said Ii with a cold smile. “He destroyed the computers. He has the disc and the copy. You have nothing.”
He snapped his fingers, and one of the yakuza soldiers knelt down by Oguya’s body, checking his jacket pockets. “Still breathing,” he muttered with some surprise, and then, “Shit.”
He held up half of a silver disc, catching rainbows from the air. There was blood on the broken edge.
“Snapped, sir.”
“Oops,” I said. “I guess that was our fault. So we smashed the disc and Oguya smashed the computers.” I smiled up at the kanbu. “How are you planning to smash the internet?”
“What?”
“Why would we put anything on a disc? We uploaded the lot to a remote server. My friends can pick it up from anywhere in the world. An internet cafe in Shibuya or an office in Sydney or a laptop in San Francisco. It’s the information that counts, not the hardware, and we’ve still got it.”
Ii’s lips drew back with anger, and he was going to move at me, but the Korean boss stepped forward first, holding out a hand, staring down at me.
“So. You think you can bargain with me, using the information—”
“Blackmail,” I s
aid. “Not bargain. We can spread it in seconds. We can take you down with it.”
“I see.” He nodded, turned to his soldier, Song, and remarked, in his own language, his tone quite casual, “What the fuck is this?”
“I don’t know, hyongnim, but look at the asshole. He’s sweating,” said Song equally calmly, and both of them glanced at Ii, who was looking distinctly uncomfortable. I was watching Song. His speech was relaxed, informal; he sounded like a fairly authoritative guy, but he was using an honorific that meant Park was seriously important.
“You are not in a position to make threats—” began Ii to me, his tone a bit too forceful. Blustering.
“You know that I am. The information we have could take down your family. Ruin you both.” I looked at Park as I spoke. His eyes were intently on the kanbu.
“You both know what’s on the disc,” I went on, pushing. “How could either of you afford to let it out when it would destroy your plans?”
“That does not sound like the old guy’s home sex tapes,” Song said in Korean. “No matter how kinky he is.”
“I think someone has been lying to me,” Park said in his own language, then switched to Japanese. “Ii-san, perhaps we could have a quiet word.”
“Excuse me, Park-san. There’s no need.”
“Let’s talk,” said the Korean, his voice still pleasant, and the kanbu’s eyes flickered away and back.
I could feel myself almost trembling in my chair. Not with fear, for the first time in a while, but with something close to ecstasy. The awareness was blinding, blooming, expanding like a mushroom cloud.
It had all snapped into place in far less time than it takes to tell it. After a couple of years in a hostess bar you learn to read situations fast, and the whole thing was spread out before me like a butterflied fish.
The lost disc incriminated the other players in the merger, the Korean mafia group, but nobody had told the very senior Mr. Park that it had been lost, and they’d lied about what the missing disc contained. So if the Koreans were here now on the retrieval mission, the Mitsuyoshi-kai hadn’t invited them: they’d invited themselves to find out what was going on. And Park was higher status than his Japanese opposite number. He didn’t know why the Mitsuyoshi-kai were after me, but he wasn’t pleased with them.