by Steve Bein
The breath came loud through his nostrils, blowing harshly over his phone’s mouthpiece. “Those sissies who poisoned all those people at the hospital, they’re the same ones who took the kids?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Then fuck ’em. I’ll help you bury them.”
“Um … can I ask why?”
Another snort into the phone. “I got a girlfriend. Turns out she was pregnant. I didn’t even know. She never told me; she just went to the hospital to have it taken care of. You understand what I’m saying?”
“Yeah.”
“She came out of there sick. Like I said, I didn’t even know she went in. Now I get this fucking phone call telling me she didn’t make it. Looks like ricin.”
“Oh.” That brought the ricin death toll to twenty-four. No one would even hear about it, not in the shadow of the largest mass kidnapping in history. “I’m sorry, Kamaguchi-san. That’s horrible.”
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he said. “I’m going to help you find these cocksuckers, but for a price. I want the ringleader. I’m going to beat him to death with his own fucking mask.”
Mariko had some experience with that. Unconsciously she ran a finger over the line of stitches Norika had left in her scalp. “You know I can’t make that deal.”
“No? Then there’s no deal. Simple as that.”
“Come on, Kamaguchi-san. You’re asking a cop to turn a blind eye to premeditated murder. You have to know that’s not going to fly.”
His nasal breath roared like an airplane engine over his phone’s tiny receiver. “I’m asking a suspended cop. That’s why you’re calling me: because you can’t call your own people. Am I wrong?”
“No.” There was no point in lying. He had his police connections, just as she had hers in the boryokudan.
“Then we play it my way. I been asking around, seeing if my people seen anything you’re looking for. You want to find a place that’ll hold thirteen hundred kids, neh?”
“Or close to it, yeah.”
“I’m thinking somewhere out of the way—somewhere not too many people are going to notice when those kids start screaming.”
“Yes.” Mariko shivered; his cold logic gave her the creeps.
“Last thing: it’s got to be somewhere that no one will look twice if a bunch of vehicles show up out of the blue—say, a bunch of light trucks.”
“You know something. Tell me.”
“You’re going to love this.” Kamaguchi paused as if waiting for a drum roll. “Haneda airport.”
“What?”
“Some pretty cherry contracts went out for the cleanup and reconstruction. I made sure a Kamaguchi company got a couple of them. Heh. We’re going to make a million yen a day out there.”
“How nice for you. Get to the point.”
“Women! Always so damn touchy.” She could almost hear him shaking his head. “All right, here it is: Terminal 2 is huge, neh? Those bombs really only took out the lobby, but they had to shut down the whole terminal. It’ll be months before anyone can fly out of there again. That leaves plenty of places to hide—big, dark places where no one’s got any reason to go. So my foreman down there, he sees a bunch of trucks running in and out of the south end this morning. He doesn’t think anything of it until I ask him, but then he says yeah, he hasn’t seen them before.”
“It’s brilliant.” Mariko just blurted it out. She didn’t want to think it, much less say it, but Joko Daishi was a genius. He’d taken hiding in plain sight to a new level. First he transformed Haneda into an international symbol for terrorism, then he camped out right inside it. But the Bulldog was right: strange vehicles would be running in and out of there for months to come. No one would think twice about them. And since all the reconstruction efforts were centered on the bomb site, no one there had any cause to explore the rest of the terminal.
“South end of Terminal 2,” she said. “You’re positive?”
“Yes, I’m fucking positive. What did I just say?”
“And you say I’m bitchy and temperamental. Chill out, Kamaguchi-san. I’m just doing my job.”
“Then do it. And when you find that cocksucker, you bring him to me. That’s the deal.”
“I’ll do you one better,” Mariko said. “Kikuchi Billiards, across the street from Kikuchi Park. You know the place?”
“What about it?”
“Joko Daishi’s on his way now,” Mariko said, hoping to hell that she could get cops there too. If not, she had just set up a hit. “You head there, you’ll find him.”
“Done,” said the Bulldog.
He hung up. That brought Furukawa back on the line. “Norika’s churches are a dead end,” Mariko said. “The ‘new church’ is in the south end of Terminal 2.”
“Terminal 2?” Furukawa sounded alarmed. “You don’t mean Haneda?”
“No, McDonald’s. Of course I mean Haneda. He’s using the airport bombing as a smoke screen to hide the kidnapping.”
“Oh, very good. Bravo.”
Mariko rolled her eyes. “You’re disgusting. Look, I have things to do. Figure out what to do about Terminal 2. Whatever you do, only use people you trust; as soon as Joko Daishi finds out we’re onto him, he’ll start killing kids.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll be very careful.”
“You better. One more thing: usually this would go without saying, but with you … look, try to solve this without murdering everyone, okay?”
“As you like, Detective Oshiro.”
He said it as if she’d asked him for extra sprinkles on her ice cream sundae. Mariko shook her head, sighed in exasperation, and hung up. Then she put the BMW in gear and doubled back toward Shinagawa Station.
She called Han along the way. “Hey,” she said, “you find them?”
“Three hundred and sixty-five of them,” said Han.
“Jesus.” Did Joko Daishi plan to kill one a day for an entire year? Or set one free every day? Or did he just want everyone to leap to wild conclusions, and to be perpetually terrified of what would come next? Mariko supposed it didn’t matter. These kids were safe; the Divine Wind wasn’t getting them back. But that still left over nine hundred children unaccounted for. With luck, they’d all be in one place at the south end of Terminal 2. But so far all the luck was blowing Joko Daishi’s way.
“How soon can you get out of there?” Mariko asked.
“Right now, I guess. Why?”
“Come out to the sidewalk. I’m picking you up.” Her engine roared as she gunned it through a yellow light.
“Mariko, tell me what’s going on.”
“I’ll explain everything on the way. How long do you think SWAT’s going to be tied up with those kids?”
Han thought about it for a second. “The area’s pretty well clear. We should leave a couple of guys to watch the train car. Everyone else … I don’t know, fifteen minutes?”
“Too long. We’ll have to call another team.” She downshifted and punched it around a big, slow newspaper truck. “You came in that SWAT van, not a cruiser, neh?”
“Yeah …”
“Damn. My car doesn’t have lights or a siren. We’d get there faster if we could run code the whole way.”
“What? Since when do you have a car?”
Just ahead, she saw Han jogging out from the access road to the rail yard. Mariko jammed on the brakes and the BMW skidded to a stop in front of him. “Holy shit, Mariko, where’d you get this?”
“Long story.”
He ran around to the opposite side and jumped in. “Nice wheels.”
“Thanks.”
Mariko peeled out into traffic. Han grabbed the door for stability, then hurriedly snapped his seat belt shut. “Okay,” he said, “you mind telling me what the hell is going on?”
“We’re going to a pool hall over by Kikuchi Park. You need to make some calls and get a SWAT presence over there, because the Kamaguchi-gumi is sending a bunch of guys with guns.”
“What? Why?”
Han shook his head as if trying to shake off a knockout punch. “Mariko, I know you think we’re on our usual wavelength, but I have to tell you, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Sorry. Here’s the deal. Joko Daishi still has his eye on his demon mask. I’m going to put it right out where he can reach it, and I’m going to hope his obsession with the mask overrules his desire to kill hundreds of innocent children. I think this is going to be our best shot at him.”
“Hell yeah. Nice work.”
Mariko punched it through another yellow light. Then she looked at the speedometer, realized a hundred kilometers an hour was double the posted limit, and released the accelerator. “The thing is, there’s a little bit of a hitch,” she said. “I wasn’t totally sure I’d be able to get enough cops on scene to catch Joko Daishi.”
“Uh-oh. What did you do?”
Mariko winced guiltily. “I may have called the Bulldog. And I might have told him the cult leader who stole his mask is going to be at Kikuchi Billiards.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. So basically, the mask is the cheese in the mousetrap. The Kamaguchi-gumi is the mousetrap. And you and I are the great big human hand that’s going to try to grab the mouse before the mousetrap kills him.”
Han nodded reluctantly. “Major style points for the analogy, but this is pretty risky, don’t you think?”
“Hence the need for you to call in SWAT.”
“Right. Because this situation definitely needs a lot more guns.”
“Exactly,” she said with a laugh. It was nice to be back to their old repartee. “Hey, at least these guns will be on our side, neh?”
“If they get there in time. That’s a major if, Mariko. I already have plenty of SWAT guys giving me funny looks about the last call. Car thirteen oh four, start looking on the north end, it’s the one with the suspect padlocked to it. Remember that?”
“Then do it through Sakakibara. Just make it happen. We’ll be there any minute.”
50
Makoto looked on the faces of the sleeping children and his heart swelled with pride. Their sacrifice was so small in comparison to the truth they would illuminate.
These ones slept in a classroom, drowsing dreamlessly under the effects of a sleeping draft Makoto had developed himself. It was one of many concoctions he’d created for the Wind, some lethal, some not, back when he was still trapped in their clutches. In those days he did not liberate, he merely killed. Today he was glad to have put the Wind’s murderous ways behind him.
He looked in on the next classroom, and was comforted to see dozens of little ones sleeping softly. The deluded soul saw children as the heirs of the future. The truth was that there was no future. There was only the now. Deluded people might fear what the future held in store, or eagerly await it, or be in doubt about it, but fear, anticipation, and doubt existed only in the now. To embrace that was to be liberated from all of them. What a simple thing it was to die, and what a monumental thing to deliver freedom from dread and doubt! The thought of such a noble transformation almost brought Makoto to tears.
Pain speared him in the temples. Any swift change to his emotional state, anything that induced a change in his pulse rate, stabbed sharp icicles through his skull. He’d suffered the headaches ever since the harlot shot his father and took him away. They were not as acute as they had been a week earlier, but they were not pleasant. Makoto had faith that his father could dispel the headaches, if only they could be together again. Until then, he had his chi gung to control the pain.
If only his father could be here, to witness the Divine Wind’s finest hour. This was his father’s vision, greater and grander than any of Makoto’s aspirations. So tragic that they could not realize that vision together.
“Daishi-sama,” a voice called behind him. “A message for you.”
He turned to see one of his disciples, a loathsome man with a scar across his left cheek. Makoto would not have called upon him for this sacred day if he’d had any other choice. Sending all of these children to the Purging Fire was a monumental task, and he needed every pair of hands he could muster. That included this disciple, who first drew Makoto’s ire in the earliest days of planning this sermon. When Makoto nominated the airport as the newest church, this man had the temerity to suggest that the baggage handling system was perfectly suited for moving hundreds of child-sized corpses. “They are heralds of the truth,” Makoto had said. “Divine servants of the Purging Fire. They shall be held in the highest honor, not tossed aside like so much luggage.” Then he’d backhanded the man, breaking a tooth and leaving that scar under his left eye.
The disciple was graceless then and he was graceless now. “A message,” Makoto said. He kept his voice low, so as not to disturb the children. “Now? On the eve of my most important sermon? Use your head, child, and mind your tongue. This is the hour for listening, not speaking.”
“It concerns your mask, Daishi-sama.”
Makoto brightened at that. “Where is this messenger?”
The loathsome disciple kneeled, pulled a cell phone from his pocket, and presented it with both hands, holding it as high as he could manage while also bowing his head.
Makoto took the phone. “Yes?”
“Furukawa is moving the mask and the sword,” said the voice on the other end. “They are no longer in the woman’s apartment.”
“Moving? Why?”
“He fears you are likely to come for them. He says you are more active now than you have ever been—his words exactly—and next you will take back what is yours. Since you know where it is now, he says it must be moved to a safer place.”
“Which place?”
“Kikuchi Billiards. Daishi-sama, I fear this is a trap.”
Of course it is, Makoto thought. The pool hall concealed one of Furukawa’s safe houses. Makoto was not supposed to know the safe house existed. If he hadn’t known of it, then it would have been the perfect place to hide his father and Glorious Victory Unsought. The fact that Furukawa thought it was safe made it all the easier to take what was hidden there. But Furukawa was crafty. If he suspected Makoto thought of the safe house as an easy target, then it was the ideal place to set a trap.
And yet …
Makoto longed for his father. Alone, he was only Koji Makoto. Reunited with his father, he was Joko Daishi, Great Teacher of the Purging Fire. It should be Joko Daishi that liberated these beautiful children. That was only fitting.
But was it worth the risk? Perhaps. Furukawa had not yet discovered the new church. If he had, Makoto would have heard about it. He had a disciple looking over Furukawa’s shoulder. Furukawa was looking everywhere Makoto predicted he’d look. The old man had his agents inspecting every closed school in Tokyo, but he’d forgotten that there were other places with classrooms.
Not many people knew an airport had classrooms. They were not marked on the maps provided to travelers. But the flight crews needed a place to do their training, and Haneda International had designated rooms for that purpose. There were also quiet quarters here for weary crews to catch a little sleep. Every airline had its own accommodations, modest but functional, and all were locked up and left behind after the Haneda sermon. Makoto had found just enough space to house nine hundred and twenty-five children.
Not for much longer. The Purging Fire would claim them soon. Just as the classrooms and break rooms were abandoned, so too were the pumping stations at each of Terminal 2’s gates. These connected via underground pipes to the millions of liters of jet fuel in Haneda’s massive fuel depot. Makoto had a barrel set aside for each roomful of children. Deluded souls found death by fire to be utterly terrifying, but Makoto would show them the truth. Pain and death were merely states of being.
His father would be proud of this sermon. He had the right to see his vision brought to fruition. “It is my holy calling,” Makoto said. “I must retrieve him, no matter the risk. So let us be wary of the trap and move boldly nonetheless.”
“Th
is is Furukawa,” his disciple said. “He has tried to kill you before.”
“He has his ploys and I have mine. What he does not have is a divine mandate. The light of the Purging Fire blinds his eyes. He has no idea how close my servant has drawn to him. When the time comes, faith will rule over cunning. My servant will return my father to the fold.”
“It shall be as you say, Daishi-sama. There is one more thing: you know whose hands the mask and sword will go to.”
“Yes, I know. She must not be allowed to live. Make sure of it.”
51
“This is taking too long.”
Mariko drummed her fingertips on the bar at Kikuchi Billiards. They fell in a steady, galloping rhythm, three beats at a time because the nub of her trigger finger wasn’t long enough to reach the bar. Part of her wished she had a gun. The better part of her was relieved to be unarmed. What she really wanted was a few dozen cops with guns, and then a nice cold beer and a safe place to sit back and watch all the action unfold. The last thing she wanted was to be in the same room with Joko Daishi and a lethal weapon. Fuck fate, she thought.
Han was nervous. He paced between the pool tables, leaving a haze of cigarette smoke in his wake. At one end of each pass, he glanced out the front door and onto the street. At the other end the sunset glow at the tip of his cigarette brightened like a warning light.
Kikuchi Billiards was a lot like Billiards Bagus: low ceilings, few windows, with most of the light coming from electronic dartboards or the boxy fluorescents hanging over the blue-green fields of the pool tables. The front wall was mostly comprised of heavily tinted windows, but at this time of day, steeped in shade, they did more for ambience than illumination.
“This is taking too long,” she said again. “Where the hell is everyone?”
“Seriously?” Han said. “You’re impatient about maybe getting shot at?”
“Well, it’s weird, neh? You called Sakakibara. He called SWAT. The Bulldog probably called a whole damn army—”
“Leaving one big question: who did you call, Mariko? When are you going to tell me how you’ve been working all this magic?”