by John Lutz
“You cops?”
“Close enough. We’re after the man who shot you.”
“Son of a bitch. He fooled me. Said we were partners. But all he wanted was the code. “
“What code?” Ava asked.
Walker didn’t seem to hear her. “Soon as he got that, he shot me and pushed me out of the car.”
“You’ll be okay. Just rest.” Laker took out his cell phone.
“Am I goin’ to a hospital?”
“Close enough,” Laker said again.
44
“The Shapeshifter finally made a mistake,” Laker said.
“I’ll say. He should’ve made sure Walker was dead.” Mason sounded indignant. He hated it when agents were careless. Even enemy agents.
Laker was at the TSA office in Cleveland-Hopkins Airport, where he’d obtained use of the secure phone line by flashing his Homeland Security creds.
“There were three pieces of the code. Walker explained it to us. He gave us his piece,” Laker went on. “So far we have no idea what it means. It’s a fourteen-digit number. Ava’s working on it.”
“But the Shapeshifter has it, too.” Mason said. “And he has the two other pieces of the code.”
“Yes. We have to assume the Shapeshifter now has all the information he needs to locate the bomb.”
“Shit. Where’s Walker now?”
“In a Medevac helicopter. On the way to our safe house, the Pennsylvania one. He was cooperative at first. That’ll stop, once he realizes the kind of charges and prison time he’s facing. I don’t think we’ll get any more out of him.”
“For now we’ll keep the bastard under wraps. Anybody who wants to talk about the right of habeas corpus can kiss my ass.”
“Walker told us the Shapeshifter said he was an arms dealer based in Geneva, named Brent Armitage, who wanted to sell the bomb on the international market. That could have been calculated to appeal to Walker, but it could be true. Anyway, it’s worth checking out.”
“I wish it were true.”
Laker was confused. “Say again, boss.”
“I wish his plan was to sell to the highest bidder. But it’s not.”
“Wait—you mean you know who the Shapeshifter is?”
“There have been developments.”
“You know what he’s going to do with the bomb? How?”
“We’ve sent a plane for you, Laker. It’ll be on the ground in twenty-eight minutes. Make sure you and Ava are ready to board.”
An aide came on the line to explain to Laker where to find the plane. Laker had to make him repeat it. His brain was teeming with speculations about the Shapeshifter. And Mason’s tone of voice, even more than what he said, had rattled him.
He hung up the phone and left the room. In the narrow, windowless corridor, Ava was sitting on a plastic chair, tapping keys on her iPhone with both thumbs. The leg with the boot was extended in front of her.
“I’ve been a numbskull, Laker. I’ve spent the last half-hour doing fancy stochastic tricks with the code, trying to break it. A complete waste of time.”
In that case, Laker thought, he wouldn’t ask what “stochastic” meant.
“Then it hit me. What I should have realized as soon as I saw it was fourteen digits.”
She looked up at him, saw he was still clueless. “It’s obvious when you group the digits by putting dashes in.” She held up a slip of paper, on which she had done so.
“My skull must be number than yours.”
“It’s an ISBN. International Standard Book Number. I just put it into amazon.com. We’ll have the title in a sec.”
Ava raised her phone and watched the little screen. Her face fell. “Shit. No result. I must have been wrong.”
“Never mind now, Ava. We have to meet our plane. We’re going back to Washington.”
* * *
The plane, a USAF Gulfstream C-37A, landed at Andrews AFB shortly before midnight. An SUV was waiting on the runway to take them to Mason’s house in McLean, Virginia.
Mason held on tight to the handrail as he led them down to his basement. He was looking better, though. The bandages were off, the surgical staples removed. There was now only the intricate tracery of healing incisions on his forehead and cheek. A black patch covered his left eye. Laker asked if the doctors thought he would recover the sight in that eye. Mason shrugged and said he’d always wanted to look like a pirate. He was out of pajamas and robe, into pants and shirt.
A computer with an oversize monitor was set up on the poker table in Mason’s man cave. A technician was tapping on the keypad. Mason said that he was setting up a secure Skype connection. When he was finished, he nodded to them, went upstairs, and shut the door. They were alone.
Mason said, “Ava, this is going to be kind of hard for you to take.”
Her eyes widened. She didn’t say anything.
“The man who murdered Tillie was her grandson.”
Ava shut her eyes tight in disbelief. “You mean my brother? One of my cousins? That’s crazy!”
“A cousin, yes. But one you never knew about. Sit down.”
Three chairs had been lined up facing the monitor. The screen showed a desk with an American flag on a pole behind it. Portraits of the President and Secretary of State on the wall. Laker said, “Where is this?”
“Our embassy in Tokyo.”
He heard voices and noises offscreen. Then a woman appeared. As she sat down behind the desk, he recognized the stout figure and untidy gray hair of Joanie.
“Joanie!” he said. “I thought you were in Honolulu.”
“She’s been busy,” Mason said. Turning to the screen, he said, “Joanie, I want you to go over it all again for Laker and Ava. From the beginning. But first I want to apologize for my stupidity. I kept you at the reception desk for too long, rebuffing ordinary citizens who wandered into the Outfit. When you return, you’ll have a position better suited to your abilities.”
Joanie gave her grandmotherly smile, crinkling the corners of her hazel eyes. “Thank you, sir.”
“Last time we heard from you,” Laker said, “the Episcopal archbishop’s office was stalling you. They’d taken custody of the records of the orphanage where Tillie’s daughter had been placed in 1942 when it closed.”
“Right. The archbishop’s assistant was a stickler.”
“But you found a way to get around him.”
“Hung around the office and made friends with the secretaries. Bosses have no idea what really goes on in an office.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” said Mason dryly. “Tell Laker and Ava what you found out.”
“Tillie’s daughter Kiyoshi—”
“Kiyoshi,” Ava echoed.
“Yes. There was a mix of races at the orphanage, as in Honolulu itself. They named children based on how they looked, and Kiyoshi apparently took after her father. She lived in the orphanage for only a few months. She was adopted by a Japanese immigrant couple named Tashiro. Once I had that name, the records search was straightforward. After the war, the Tashiros moved back to Japan. In 1970, Kiyoshi married a man named Chosuke Mishima, a worker on the Honda assembly line. In 1972, they had a son, whom they named Akiro.”
“The Shapeshifter?” Laker said.
“Yes.”
Laker glanced down at his lap. His hands had balled into fists. He opened them, flexed the fingers. Akiro Mishima. Now the adversary had a name and an age. He was a just a little older than Laker. “How about a recent photo, Joanie?”
“She’ll get to that,” Mason growled. “Stick to chronological order, Joanie.”
“I lucked onto a juvie court file that provided a lot of information on Mishima. At eleven, he assaulted an Okinawan schoolmate. Beat him up quite badly, apparently just for not being Japanese enough. The court-appointed psychologist did a sympathetic report. He said Mishima had endured a lot of bullying from schoolmates for being of mixed race. He has East Asian features, but blue eyes.”
Laker glanced at
Ava. She murmured, “His grandmother’s eyes.”
“Mishima knew it, too,” Joanie continued. “Knew that his mother had been abandoned by her mother, who was a Westerner. The psychologist said that his way of coping was to turn into a Japanese superpatriot. He hated the West.”
“Was the report enough to keep Mishima out of juvie jail, whatever the Japanese call it?” Laker asked.
“No. He was behind bars for years. But he seemed to rehabilitate himself. He got into Tokyo University, where he earned top grades. His IQ was off the charts, apparently. But there were more violent incidents. Mishima was expelled. He joined the Ground Self-Defense Force.”
“The what?” Ava asked.
“It’s what the Japanese call their army. So everybody will know that they don’t do offense. Again, he did well. Got into the elite Special Forces Group. Rose in the ranks. But somewhere along the line, he was recruited by a secret society of officers. Patriotic hardliners who thought the Japanese armed forces were too dominated by America and too anti-militaristic, and that they’d done more than enough apologizing to their neighbors for World War II atrocities.”
“I’m guessing they did not remain secret,” Laker said.
“Right, Tom. They went public in a big way. Did you get the video I emailed, sir?”
“Yes. I’ve watched it five times,” said Mason grimly. “Hang on while I show it to Laker and Ava.”
His hands went to the keyboard. Joanie disappeared from the screen, replaced by an inset video window with the BBC logo. “This incident took place August 6, 2009, at Hiroshima. It caused a lot of commotion in Japan, but didn’t get much coverage in Western media, except for the BBC.”
Mason clicked the dart and the video began. It showed the skeletal Genbaku Dome, the Cenotaph, children’s monument, and other buildings of the Peace Memorial Park. Paper lanterns drifted in the river. Multicolored origami figures were displayed in gardens. The Peace Bells were rung. A narrator was speaking in Japanese. English subtitles said that this was the annual commemoration ceremony, when the Japanese mourned the dead and prayed for world peace. Its main focus was the moment of silence at 8:15 A.M., the time the bomb was dropped.
The video showed hundreds of people stopping what they doing, folding their hands, bowing their heads. The image blurred as the camera was whipped around. Its operator had seen something. The camera steadied and zoomed in.
It focused on men in front of the blasted brick wall and empty windows of the Genbaku Dome. The men unfurled a colorful poster. It showed a single gigantic flower. The subtitle said it was an oleander, the symbol of Hiroshima. One of the men set down a box and another jumped on top of it. He was wearing a full-dress military uniform, complete except for the cap. In his hand was a long-bladed dagger.
“Is this Mishima?” Laker asked.
“Yes,” Mason said.
The camera zoomed in again as Mishima began to speak, and Laker leaned forward to look into the real face of the Shapeshifter. The piercing blue eyes he recognized. He’d looked into them before, in Dupont Circle, an instant before Mishima threw the punch that knocked him cold. Mishima’s thick black hair was close-cropped and bound in a hachimaki, a white headband with Japanese letters painted onto it. He had high cheekbones, a long aquiline nose, a wide mouth with a heavy underlip. It was a distinctive and memorable face. Laker was amazed at the Shapeshifter’s skill in altering everything about it.
Mishima had a cordless microphone. In a deep, resonant voice, he began to harangue the crowd, waving the dagger in his other hand. The subtitles said, “Japanese, the Americans said we must turn away from violence. After what they did to us. Hypocrites! They said we must be ashamed of our past. But only violence can take away our shame. The fault is not with us but with the Americans. We have been wronged, and we must take revenge.”
That was as far as he got. A roar went up from the crowd. The image shook as the cameraman was jostled. People were rushing at Mishima. Ordinary people, not police. Many hands grabbed at him. The microphone and dagger fell to the ground. Mishima was dragged down from his makeshift platform. He disappeared from view as more people surrounded him. Some were holding up their cell phones to take pictures. Uniformed police were arriving now, wading into the crowd.
Mason stopped the video. Joanie reappeared. “Wrap it up for us, Joanie, please.”
“The dagger was a wakizashi, or samurai short sword. Mishima was planning to commit seppuku after his speech. Instead he was court-martialed and spent three years in prison. The Japanese were outraged. They saw what he’d done as desecration of the dead.”
“And then?” Laker asked.
“It gets murky. The Tokyo Police think he became an enforcer for the Yakuza, misusing his Special Forces skills. He was a suspect in several homicides. But this was when he started using disguises, and the cops found it impossible to track him. Six months ago, he vanished completely.”
“Okay, Joanie. Catch the first plane home. We need you.” Mason broke the connection, and the monitor went blank. Slumping in his chair, he rubbed his scarred brow.
From the door at the top of the stairs came a knock. A voice said, “Sir, can I come down?”
“Not now, Harpring,” Mason called back. He looked at Laker, then Ava.
She spoke first. “Obviously Mishima was obsessed with his parentage. He must have dug into it. Somehow he found out that his grandfather was a traitor to Japan, and his grandmother was an American spy. We can imagine the effect it had on him.”
Laker said, “His quest for revenge became personal. He wanted to prove his loyalty to his homeland. Strike back at his grandmother and her country.”
“Anybody have any doubts about what he’s going to do when he gets hold of Bobby Soxer?” Mason asked.
“No,” Laker said. “He’s going to turn our bomb against us.”
There was another knock on the door.
“Harpring, just wait,” Mason called.
“Sir, I think you’ll want to see this,” said the muffled voice from behind the door.
“Come on down, then.”
Footfalls descended the stairs. Laker turned to see Harpring, a thin young staffer with marmalade-colored hair and a freckled face, approaching with a parcel in hand. He grinned excitedly at Ava. “You were right, Ms. North.”
Ava’s face was pallid, her eyes clouded with shock at all she’d heard. She said, “What are you talking about?’
“The code. It was an ISBN. But the book’s so old and obscure, Amazon doesn’t carry it. The Library of Congress had a copy, though.” He set the parcel on the table.
Mason gazed at it balefully. “Thanks, Harpring. Go away.”
Harpring looked crestfallen as he turned away. He’d thought he had a breakthrough that would please them. They waited in silence for the door at the top of the stairs to close. Laker was feeling the same bleak premonition as Mason. This was not going to be good news. It was Ava who reached for the parcel and unwrapped it.
The book was a road atlas, titled Praeger’s 1979 5-Boro Atlas New York City. She opened it at random, looked at a map of South Brooklyn. She said, “The other codes, the ones Orton and Lester had, are a page number and a grid reference, I suppose.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Laker said. “They’ll lead Mishima to the bomb’s hiding place.”
“The man’s luck is holding,” Mason said. “Transporting the bomb would be a real problem. But he won’t have to do that.”
Ava looked at him. “You mean, New York is the target?”
Mason nodded. He was staring at the map, but it wasn’t streets and parks that he was seeing. “Eighty thousand people died at Hiroshima,” he said. “Seventy thousand at Nagasaki. Mishima will get his revenge. He’ll more than even the score.”
45
Akiro Mishima arrived in New York as himself. Almost.
He was portraying Tadamichi Esaki, a senior executive from Tokyo, meaning that his own face needed only minor modification. He’d added ye
ars and pounds, a little gray at the temples, a bit of flesh under the jaw. The usual tinted contact lenses. To establish his wealth, he had a pair of eyeglasses with fashionable, squared-off frames from Prada, as well as a blue suit, well-tailored to minimize his paunch, white shirt, peach silk tie from Ferragamo.
As he followed the bellman carrying his suitcase, he was pleased to see other men who looked very much like him in the lobby of the Hotel Katabano. The boutique hotel on Park Avenue attracted wealthy Japanese who wanted to enjoy the luxuries of home. Which was what Mishima had in mind.
At the desk he exchanged bows and greetings in his native tongue with the polite staff. They were eager to comply with his requests. Yes, despite the late hour, the sento, or bathhouse, was still open. It was equipped with the denki buro he preferred. The masseur was off-duty but would be summoned. Yes, he was trained in shiatsu. Yes, a full breakfast would be brought to his room early tomorrow: miso soup, tamagoyaki, nori, and a variety of kobachi.
The bellman showed him to his suite on the top floor. It was traditionally furnished with wood floors, tatami mats, and shoji paper screens. Mishima expressed satisfaction and refused the bellman’s offer to unpack for him. Once he was alone, he sat in a zaisu and folded his legs. His briefcase rested on the table in front of him. He opened it, and took out a well-worn copy of Praeger’s 1979 5-Boro Atlas New York City.
P17 was the code number he’d extracted with such difficulty from Theo Orton. As he flipped to page 17, he frowned. Each grid square of the maps covered several blocks. A large area to search. He hadn’t anticipated difficulties at this final stage. When he reached page 17, he found that most of the map was blue, indicating the waters of upper New York Bay. Along one edge of the paper was a wedge of Manhattan, on the other a longer slice of the Brooklyn waterfront. In the middle was Governors Island.