He sent in Yoshino and Toshiro, and they took the boy without anybody noticing. Crowley was supposed to contact Sennett with instructions for the boy’s release this morning, but so far I haven’t heard of any developments. Crowley will catch him, I am sure of that. Sennett isn’t the kind of man who would risk his son’s life, not for anything.”
“Is that what you think?” asked Kappa. “Then what if I were to tell you that Sennett has been to see Nancy Shiranuka?”
Mr. Esmeralda stared at him, at that hideous, nearly smiling mask. “Sennett has been to see Nancy Shiranuka? But how? He doesn’t even know her.”
“I do not understand how, I can only surmise,” said Kappa. “Either Sennett knows more about us than we think; or else somebody in this little group of ours has betrayed us. According to the Oni who watched Nancy Shiranuka’s apartment last night, Sennett arrived there late yesterday evening and stayed until the early hours of the morning.”
“Was Gerard Crowley there?”
“No, although I do know who spent the night with Gerard Crowley’s wife.”
Mr. Esmeralda asked, “You’ve been watching me, too?”
“Of course. You don’t think that you’re exempt from my suspicion, do you? Nobody is.”
“But Gerard Crowley was supposed to go to Nancy Shiranuka’s to brief her about the attack on Rancho Encino Hospital, and work out new plans for Doctor Gempaku.”
“Crowley didn’t arrive,” said Kappa. “One of my men went to check Crowley’s apartment, where he was fortunate enough to see you arriving; then he checked the Bonaventure Hotel, where Crowley has been keeping a room; and the house on Packard Street, where Crowley’s-mistress lives. No Crowley. No mistress, either.”
“I’ll check on it myself,” said Mr. Esmeralda. All the time he was thinking: My God, not Crowley, too. Crowley had already threatened to go to the police and try to plea-bargain his way out of trouble. Why hadn’t he gone to Nancy Shiranuka’s, as he was supposed to? And what had Jerry Sennett been doing there? The treacherous group that Mr. Esmeralda had assembled to carry out Kappa’s “bodyguard” project was proving even more treacherous than he had ever imagined. Kappa was right to bring the Day of Fate forward to the soonest date he could manage. And even so, Mr. Esmeralda was beginning to wonder if they could pull it off before the police discovered what they were up to. There was no honor among entrepreneurs.
Kappa said harshly, “I want you personally to drive Doctor Gempaku to Rancho Encino so that he can perform the necessary rituals. Then, I want you personally to make sure that Sennett is snared, and that both he and his son are killed. You can leave Crowley and Nancy Shiranuka to me–and Commander Ouvarov, too, when we find him. They have all been useful in their way.
They have enabled us to bring into America all the people and all the equipment we needed. But now, they are growing restless; and restless servants are dangerous ones.”
Mr. Esmeralda asked, “I can go now?”
“Yes,” whispered Kappa. “But don’t think that I have forgiven your mismanagement and your carelessness. You will only be able to purge your errors by making sure that the rest of my program is fulfilled without a single mistake. And, to make certain that you have the necessary incentive, I have already taken your Chinese chauffeur as a hostage. You will have to drive yourself from now on, until this mission is successfully accomplished. We will take the girl on the boat with us when we sail to San Francisco, and we will release her only when the atomic sun rises in the southern sky.
Otherwise, she will die. My Oni have many diverting ways of killing women, some of which take several days.”
Mr. Esmeralda felt as if cold leeches were sliding down his back. There were a dozen angry things he could have said. If he had been younger, fitter, and more reckless, he might have tried to seize Kappa and throttle him. But he had been surviving for too many years, staying alive in cities and situations where more impulsive men had died violent deaths, and he had lost the instinct to do anything rash.
“Promise me that you will release her when the power station blows,” was all he said. “Promise me on your honor.”
“I promise,” said Kappa, and his eyes glistened behind his mask like the eyes of a hermit crab peering through the shell of a long-dead host.
CHAPTER SEVEN
David was dreaming about sunbathing on the beach at San Luis Obispo when the screen door slid back and Doctor Gempaku stepped in. Just behind him stood one of the black-masked Oni with an oblong lacquered tray, on which there was a bowl of oshi-zttshi, pressed rice with ham and prawns and cucumber. Doctor Gempaku bent over David, shook his shoulder, and said, “Breakfast, young sir.’’
David blinked, rubbed at his eyes, and then sat up awkwardly. He was naked, covered only with a thin gray blanket, and there was no sign of his clothes. He said, “Has my father called yet?”
“You must have patience,” said Doctor Gempaku. “Your father does not yet know where you are, or what we are expecting of him.’’
“You’re out of luck if it’s money you want,” said David. “Dad’s practically bankrupt.”
“Oh, no, we’re not after money,” smiled Doctor Gempaku. “We’re looking instead for silence.”
“Silence? What’s that supposed to mean?” David watched out of the corner of his eye as the Oni adept set down the breakfast tray, and then retreated to the doorway. The Japanese went no further, though, and it was obvious that he intended to keep a sharp watch on David until Doctor Gempaku’s visit was over and the door could be locked again.
Doctor Gempaku said, “Your father knows about things that ordinary men like him should never really have had the misfortune to discover.’’
“This is something to do with Japan?” queried David. “Something to do with the war?”
“You’re a bright young fellow,” said Doctor Gempaku. “If you had been born Japanese, you would have gone far. But, well, things must be different. A very great pity.”
“You’re not going to harm my father?” asked David.
Doctor Gempaku reached across to David’s breakfast tray, crumbled off a piece of oshi-zushi, and began to nibble at it. “Do you know what your father did in the war? Do you know why he still has to have psychiatric treatment?”
“Sure,” frowned David. “He was on a mission for Naval Intelligence, and all his friends got killed by the Japanese, right in front of his eyes.”
“Do you know what the mission was?”
David shook his head. “Something to do with–I don’t know–spying out landing sites for American aircraft to invade the Japanese mainland. That’s what he told me once.”
Doctor Gempaku took out a clean handkerchief and industriously wiped his hands, and then his mouth. “Your father has been lying to you; or, at least, not telling you the whole truth. Under the direction of a special Naval Intelligence task force, a task force of only fifteen men and yet a task force which was considered so important by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff that it was put under the direction of an Admiral–Admiral Knut Thorson–your father was parachuted into Japan to detect, with a high-powered radio, the exact location of a very special Japanese military training center.”
“What’s so special about that?” asked David.
Doctor Gempaku ruffled David’s hair. “You do not understand at all, do you? That military training center was devoted to the creation of a special kind of Japanese soldier; a soldier who would be religiously as well as patriotically inspired, to the point where he would no longer feel pain, no longer feel fear. It was one of several attempts to protect thejapanese^homeland. As futile as all the rest, perhaps; as futile as arming women and children with sharp bamboo sticks.
But you cannot blame any nation, when it is isolated and afraid, for seeking to survive.”
“What happened?” asked David. He was hungry, but he still hadn’t touched his oshi-zushi.
Doctor Gempaku shrugged. “The usual American over reaction. A fierce and unreasoning desire t
o avenge Pearl Harbor, perhaps. Something like that: who can understand the American psychology? The American mind is a mixture of cloying sentimentality and hideous brutality.
Who can possibly reconcile the contradictions of Los Angeles, a city in which nearly eight hundred people are murdered every year, a city in which there are nearly two hundred rapes every month, and yet a city which can gleefully produce The Great Muppet Caper and On Golden Pond. You smile?
Perhaps you find it amusing that a nation can publicly exalt the human spirit while at the same time wallowing in the deepest slough of moral degradation in civilized history.”
David said, “I don’t really understand what you’re saying.”
“Let me tell you what your father did in Japan. Then you may grasp what I am trying to get into your head. Your father located the training center at Hiroshima, and sent back to the American high command a signal which he knew was the go-ahead for the dropping of the first atomic bomb. Although he was quite aware that his signal would lead to the instant and horrible deaths of thousands of civilians, he said, “Do it”; and they did it. You know that your father goes to a psychiatrist, of course. Well, now you know why.”
David stared at Doctor Gempaku in disbelief. “That’s crazy,” he said. “They wouldn’t have dropped the atomic bomb just to wipe out one training center.’’
“They considered it necessary,” said Doctor Gempaku. “By their own lights, they considered it worthwhile.”
“But they dropped the atomic bomb to shorten the war. Japan was never going to surrender.
They were going to fight until the very last man. I mean, the war could have gone on for years.’’
Doctor Gempaku helped himself to some more of David’s breakfast. “How readily the young absorb the lies of their parents,” he said. “By May of 1945, Japan was already defeated, and even the most fanatical of her leaders knew it. The Japanese merchant navy, on which the whole country depended for food and supplies, had been reduced from ten million tons to one million.
Over forty percent of all of Japan’s sixty major cities had been destroyed by bombing. Her navy and her air force were shattered; what remained of her fleet was immobilized for lack of fuel. In May, we attempted to discuss peace with the Americans, using the Russians as mediators. But the Americans relentlessly insisted on unconditional surrender, unconditional, and failed to make it clear to the Japanese people that our Emperor, who is divine, would not be treated as a war criminal, and would be allowed to remain as Emperor under any Allied occupation force. This failure by the Americans to understand even the simplest fact of Japanese life and religion was what prolonged the war beyond the early summer of 1945. And through the hand of your father and his military henchmen, it was this failure that eventually led to the dropping of the first atomic bomb.”
David was silent. Doctor Gempaku stood up straight, then walked across to the window. “I am sorry if I have been lecturing you. But you should know why you are here.”
“Do you want to kill my father?” whispered David.
Doctor Gempaku made a face. “I do not want to kill him,” he said.
“But you’re going to?”
“Almost certainly. And you, too.”
David stared at Doctor Gempaku, shocked. He felt as if all the blood had drained out of his body; he was ice-cold and empty.
“They’ll catch you,” he said unsteadily.
“Who will?”
“The police. The Los Angeles police.”
Doctor Gempaku turned around. “By tomorrow night, there will be no Los Angeles police.
More than that, there will be no Los Angeles.”
David couldn’t think of anything else to say. He chewed nervously at his lip, and looked at Doctor Gempaku against the diffuse light of the window.
Doctor Gempaku said, “It will be interesting to see how brave this man who killed so many thousands of Japanese during the war can actually be.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Gerard Crowley looked unshaven and tired as he pushed his way between the crowded tables of Zucky’s deli-restaurant a little before noon. His tie was loosened, and his shirt was crumpled and dirty. He was halfway through his second cigar of the day.
Jerry, in spite of his anxiety and his nervousness, had felt hungry when he had arrived at Zucky’s, and had ordered himself a turkey sandwich and a cold beer.
Gerard Crowley, when he arrived, stood a foot or two away from Jerry’s table with his hands in his pockets, his cigar between his lips, an expression on his face that was half cautious and half apologetic, like a man who has cornered a wounded Doberman and doesn’t quite know whether he ought to try to bind the dog’s foot or run for his life.
“Listen,” he said, “I’m sorry about what happened. I’m sorry about all of it.”
Jerry couldn’t think what to say to that. The last thing he had expected from Gerard Crowley was an apology. The waitress came back with Jerry’s sandwich and asked Gerard, “You’re eating, sir?”
“Just give me a Scotch for now,” said Gerard. He took the cigar out of his mouth and sat down next to Jerry, tugging the sleeves of his jacket down to cover his grubby cuffs. All around them, the deli was noisy with talking and laughter and music. Gerard said, “I don’t suppose you want to shake hands.”
“I just want to know how to get my son back,” Jerry told him.
Gerard said, “The last I heard, an hour ago, your son’s safe. You know why they’re holding him, don’t you? It’s you they want. It’s you they wanted right from the very beginning. Sherry Cantor died because they wanted you.”
“The Tengus?” asked Jerry.
Gerard nodded. “They were afraid you’d guess. It looks like you did.” Jerry said tightly, “What’s this all about? What the hell’s going on? Nancy Shiranuka said something about bodyguards.”
“That’s a blind,” said Gerard. He crushed his cigar out in the ashtray and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I don’t know what they’re really into, but I can’t believe it’s anything to do with bodyguards. When they first approached me, they said it was nothing more than a moneymaking scheme for protecting rich Arabs and nervous mafiosi. Killer bodyguards, each one worth a million dollars of anybody’s money. That’s what they told me. They offered me the kind of money that nobody in his right mind would possibly turn down; and they backed up the carrot with a big stick. They knew about some contraband business I’d been involved in, and they said that if I didn’t help them, they’d fix me up.”
“Because of that, you agreed to murder?” asked Jerry. He tried to keep his voice as level as possible, but he was seething with frustration and anger at David’s kidnapping, and at Gerard Crowley’s impossible weakness. He was weak himself, he knew it. He still hadn’t been able to find a way to face up to his own past. But Gerard’s weakness was of an even more insidious variety: Gerard’s weakness was a steady and unstoppable corrosion of the spirit. In Gerard’s life, there was no hope of redemption, only meaningless apology.
Jerry thought it was ironic that their names were so similar: Jerry and Gerard. They were like the two faces of Dorian Gray, the unspeakably corrupt and the falsely innocent. They were different victims of the same human problem: an inability to cope with the utter immorality which was the prerequisite of success or even survival.
Gerard said, “The hits didn’t seem like anything very special at first. They were a way of trying out the Tengus, proving that, as a market commodity, they worked the way they were supposed to. I know you find that difficult to swallow, but you haven’t been working for twenty years in the import-export business like I have. You can believe me–anything that turns a buck gets sold. Drugs, fertilizers, chemicals, guns, surface-to-air missiles, tanks, mines, spirits, tobacco, pornography, girls, animals, boys. If you have enough money, you can buy anything, from anywhere. Let me tell you something, my wife thinks I’m a cold fish, unreachable. But if you’re going to keep yourself alive and moderately wealthy, you h
ave to keep your soul under lock and key, and that’s what I’ve been doing. They told me to hit you, and that’s what I arranged to do. They told me to kidnap you, take you out to the mountains, and dispose of you; so, I found that you weren’t at home, I took your son instead.”
“It was you?”
Gerard nodded. “I arranged it. I was told to flush you out, and that seemed like the best way.”
Jerry was dumbfounded. “So now what?” he said. “I’m supposed to forgive you, or something?
Now what? I want my son back, and that’s all there is to it.”
‘‘Would you give up your life for your son? If I said you can have him back, but only if you allow me to kill you, what would you say then?”
Jerry stared at him. “Are you serious? Are you asking that as a serious question?”
Gerard didn’t even blink.
Jerry put down his turkey sandwich. His throat was drier than ever. “If that’s the way it has to be
... then yes. If that’s the only possible condition for David’s release.”
Gerard smirked, and then let out a grunt of a laugh. “You’re even more innocent than I imagined,” he said. “Do you really think that anybody who wanted to kill you would actually honor this agreement, and release your boy? Your boy’s being kept alive for one reason only: you’re still alive. Once you’re dead, why should anyone bother? Your boy will be knocked off, too. You’re not likely to come back from the grave and argue about it, are you? And your boy will be far too damning a witness for us to let him go.”
Jerry was silent for a long time, staring at Gerard in hopeless anxiety. Then he said, “You’ve come to meet me for a reason, right? Either to have me killed, or to put up some kind of a suggestion.”
“That’s right,” said Gerard. The waitress brought his whiskey, and he paid for it with a $20 bill.
“You see, everything was fine until yesterday night. Then, they sent out a Tengu to kill Admiral Thorson, who is the only other man apart from your good self who might have jeopardized the Tengu project by recognizing what the Tengu actually are and by helping the police to trace them back to where they came from.”
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