Rules of The Hunt f-2

by VICTOR O'REILLY

  "So what do you want me to do?" said Fitzduane.

  "Help steer the whole Hodama business toward the Namakas and keep Katsuda in the clear," said Schwanberg, "and keep us informed." He was silent, but clearly he was working toward something of greater significance.

  "One way or another, we'll get the Namakas," continued Schwanberg, "but they are only part of our mutual problem. There is also their tame terrorist organization — the people who shot you. Whatever you may think, these are a group we are not responsible for We didn't make the connection with the Namakas for some time, as so far we haven't been able to do anything about it. But we want Yaibo taken out. The Namakas are the right place to start, but putting them out of business will still leave a very lethal residue."

  Fitzduane nodded. "I see the political logic and I agree with it, but I don't have to like it."

  Schwanberg shrugged.

  "One extra thing," said Fitzduane, "lay off Adachi. Let me worry about him."

  Schwanberg looked uncomfortable. "We influence matters," he said, "but we don't necessarily run them."

  "What the fuck does that mean?" said Fitzduane.

  "The world about Adachi has been passed to Katsuda," said Schwanberg. "I think an operation is already in the pipeline and that it is going to happen soon. Of course, I don't actually know any of the details. And nor do I want to."

  "How soon?" said Fitzduane.

  "I don't know exactly," said Schwanberg, "but maybe today. Maybe it has already happened. Katsuda is the impatient type when let off the leash. Proactive on wet matters, you might say."

  "Nothing personal, Schwanberg," said Fitzduane, "but if anything happens to Adachi, I'm going to break your scrawny little neck. Now open this bell jar and let me out of here."

  * * * * *

  Tokyo, Japan

  June 20

  Fumio Namaka came into his brother's office.

  Kei was swinging the Irish ax he had been given by Fitzduane in much the same casual manner as another executive might fool around with a golf club. Kei was not keen on paperwork and detail bored him. But his interest in the world of martial arts rarely flagged. In his mind, he was a medieval samurai, and the twentieth century an unfortunate error in timing.

  "Kei," said Fumio, "I'd like you to come into the corridor and tell me what you see."

  "I'm busy," said Kei, as he whirled the long-handled ax around his head and then slashed it down in a scything diagonal blow. "I'm trying to get the hang of this thing. It's trickier than it seems. It builds up enormous momentum, but that very force makes it hard to control. If your blow doesn't hit, then the ax carries on and you're vulnerable. Still, I'm sure there is a technique that can compensate for that, If I can just work it out."

  Effortlessly, he brought up the blade again, and Fumio felt both irritation and a rush of affection for his older brother. Kei could be maddening, but his enthusiasm was infectious.

  "It concerns the disposal of this gaijin, Fitzduane-san," said Fumio. "I'm running a small experiment which I think you will find interesting."

  Kei snorted but put the ax down. "Where do you want me to go?" he said.

  "Open the door and look left and tell me what you see in the corridor," said Fumio patiently.

  "Games!" said Kei disparagingly, and marched across to the door, opened it, and peered out. He was back instantly, his face pale.

  "It's the gaijin," he said, "the Irishman. He's here, just standing there at the end of the corridor with his back to the window. What's he doing here? How did he get past security? What's he up to?"

  "I have absolutely no idea," said Fumio. "Are you sure it's the gaijin?"

  "Of course I'm sure," said Kei instantly, and then took in Fumio's expression. "What do you mean?" he said.

  "The man in the corridor is not Fitzduane-san," said Fumio. "Same height, same build, same clothes, same haircut and color — but he is not the gaijin. His back was to the window so his face was in shadow, but if you look again more closely you will see the differences. But the important thing is that he fooled you the first time and you were not expecting to see him. People see what they expect to see."

  Kei opened the door again, and this time went down the corridor a dozen paces until he was much closer to the figure. Now he could tell the difference quite easily, but it was still a good likeness.

  "Remarkable, Fumio," he said to his brother, as he returned to his office and closed the door, "but what is the purpose of this proxy — this doppelgänger?"

  Fumio told him.

  * * * * *

  At least once a week Adachi had reported to Prosecutor Sekine, and this time as he stood outside his mentor's door his heart was heavy.

  Loyalties that he had taken for granted all his life were now in question. Like most Japanese, he had never held politicians or the political system in high esteem, but he had always had a great deal of faith in the basic administration of the country. Now he was beginning to think he had been naïve.

  Political corruption must spill over into the civil administration. Vast sums of money were not paid over to politicians merely to perpetuate an ineffective political system. No, the money was handed over to get a very real return, and the only way that could be done was by involving senior civil servants. To accomplish anything at all, politicians had to work through them. The strings of the kuromakus led directly to these people.

  The logic was unpalatable but inescapable. The cadre of elite civil servants who mainly came from his, Adachi's, social circle, must be tainted. To what extent, he did not know, but that the rot was there he was sure. And he was equally positive that he was already a victim.

  He knocked a second time on the door. There was no reply so he turned the handle and entered. It was the accepted custom that he would wait for the prosecutor in his office.

  Toshio Sekine, the much-respected and loved friend of the Adachi family, a civil servant widely renowned for his integrity, lay slumped back in his chair, his head back and tilted to the right, revealing the gaping second mouth of a slashed throat and severed jugular. Fresh blood matted his clothing from the neck down and stained the desk in front of him. Beside his right hand was the file Adachi had sent him and a blood-splashed, sealed envelope. Adachi looked at it. It was addressed to him. He slipped it into his inside pocket unread and moved to examine the body.

  The carpet beneath the prosecutor's chair was also sodden with blood. The traditional folding razor he had used to cut his throat lay just below his right hand.

  Adachi bent his head as a wave of grief swept over him, and stood there for several minutes in silent sorrow and tribute. Then he summoned help and did what he was trained to do. Whatever Sekine had done or thought he had done, there lay a fundamentally honorable man.

  * * * * *

  Fitzduane found half his convoy — two Tokyo MPD detectives, including the ever-reliable Sergeant Oga — waiting patiently in the corridor outside the miniature offices of the Japan-World Research Federation.

  The other two were in the car below. It did not do much for spontaneity to be trailed around by four men all the time, but there were times when it had its advantages.

  "Sergeant-san," he said urgently, "It is very important that I talk to Superintendent Adachi — now!"

  Oga, a man of few words, blended a brief ‘Hai, Colonel-san,’ he said. Everyone is logged in or out of headquarters, and he is logged out. We checked the building anyway, but with no success. He was last reported at the prosecutor's office — there has been a death there — but apparently he left alone. The dead man was someone he was close to, and he was very upset."

  Bloody hell! thought Fitzduane. The man could be anywhere — drowning his sorrows in any one of Tokyo's tens of thousands of bars or just walking to clear his head. But we are all creatures of habit. What I need is someone who knows his habits. No, fuck it! There isn't time.

  "Domestic accident." Schwanberg's phrase came into his mind. Almost certainly, it had not been meant literally, but it
was a logical angle. You don't kill a policeman at his place of work. You hit him when he is off duty and he is relaxing and his guard is down. A bar or a girlfriend's bedroom or the street would do fine, but who knows when a cop working the lunatic hours of Tokyo MPD would turn up in such a place, and a good, well-executed hit demands predictability. But almost everybody returns home sooner or later, and Adachi, he had gathered, lived alone.

  "Sergeant-san," said Fitzduane. "Do you know where the superintendent lives?"

  "Hai, Colonel-san," said Oga in affirmation. "It is quite near your hotel and no more than twenty minutes or so from here. A lot depends on the traffic."

  "The I suggest we get the hell over there very bloody fast," said Fitzduane, and started to run down the corridor. Sergeant Oga spoke into his radio to alert the driver below to bring the car around to the entrance, and only then headed after Fitzduane. The gaijin was still waiting for an elevator. Oga restrained a smile.

  "Sergeant Oga," said Fitzduane, with a snarl, "you're a good man, but I think you should know I can read your mind. Now listen. When this turgid technology arrives and we get down to the street, I want the drive to break every rule in the book and get us to the superintendent's as fast as he can. Someone is trying to kill Adachi-san, and I think it would be a real good idea if we stopped it. What's your opinion?"

  Oga's internal smile vanished. He swallowed and nodded. The elevator arrived.

  * * * * *

  Adachi stared unseeing into the still water of the Imperial moat.

  He had switched both his radio and beeper off. He needed time to grieve alone and to think his situation through. A gray mood of depression gripped him. Everywhere he turned he seemed to be faced with corruption and betrayal. Even the best of men like the prosecutor was contaminated.

  The bloody envelope had laid out the story. An indiscretion years earlier had made Sekine vulnerable. More recently, the marker had been called in and the prosecutor had been enrolled as part of the move by Katsuda against Hodama and the Namakas. He did not even have to do anything except keep Katsuda informed and push the prosecution forward in his normal, thorough way.

  But then Adachi had upset the plan. Instead of taking the easy way out and working the case based upon the evidence against the Namakas so carefully prepared by Katsuda, he had played the masterful detective. His foolish cleverness had destroyed the case against the Namakas, who well deserved prosecution, and had placed the prosecutor in the position of having to make a choice between his obligations toward Katsuda and his affection for Adachi. And the resolution had been his life. Mistakes or not, he was an honorable man and his death was an honorable death. But what a waste, what a terrible waste.

  There was not a scrap of evidence against Katsuda. Even Sekine's suicide not had avoided the man's actual name. The context was clear enough to Adachi, but the letter would be useless for legal purposes. No, Katsuda would end up as the new kuromaku and there was not a thing that Adachi could do about it.

  The system was corrupt at the top and, subject to some window dressing, that would remain the situation. If he had any sense, he would bend like the proverbial bamboo or else someone was likely to break him.

  The final betrayal was the confirmation that the informant inside his team was his ever-reliable Inspector Fujiwara. The man had been operating under orders of the prosecutor, so he may have thought he was doing the right thing, but his behavior hurt horribly.

  Fujiwara had been implicated by name in the prosecutor's letter. Adachi had already guessed as much since the Sunday of the baseball match, but had pushed the thought to the back of his mind. Of course, it was unlike Fujiwara to by working on a Sunday when the rest of the team were glued to the TV, but that just might not have been significant.

  Unfortunately, it was. Adachi's instincts had been right. The question now: Was Fujiwara merely working for the prosecutor or did the trail lead right back to Katsuda? Did the sergeant have yakuza connections? Adachi was not looking forward to finding out. Anyway, did it matter? He felt drained and bone-weary.

  The gray sky was looking ominous. Adachi turned away from his contemplation of the moat as the first drops rippled into the water. Soon, the warm, oily drops were falling in sheets and every stitch of clothing on his body was soaked. The only dry thing left was the prosecutor's letter in his pocket, tucked bloody but safe into a plastic evidence bag.

  Adachi knew he should call in or at least return to headquarters, but he could not do it. He could not face the pressure and the questions. The DSG would certainly want to talk to him about the prosecutor's death. What could Adachi say? Would the truth serve any useful purpose? Where did the DSG's loyalties lie? No he could not face this kind of thing for the moment. Today was one day he had to be alone.

  He headed away from the grounds of the ImperialPalace and back toward Jinbocho and his apartment. The rain grew heavier.

  * * * * *

  Inspector Fujiwara had had a set of keys to the superintendent's apartment since he had been sent to pick up some things for his boss shortly after the start of the Hodama investigation.

  It had been a simple matter to have an additional set cut, and since that time he had made periodic use of them. There was little risk. He normally knew where Adachi was, and the man lived alone. Even if Fujiwara had been caught, he had a story about arranging a surprise party for the superintendent. It would have been awkward, but it would have worked.

  It was during one of these visits that he had first learned of Adachi's parallel investigation into the Hodama affair. Paradoxically, he had been annoyed at first. The man did not even trust his own men. Then the inconsistency of his reactions had hit him. The truth was that Adachi was a smart cop and an excellent man to work for. And as a smart cop, Adachi had smelled something wrong. But he had not suspected that Fujiwara was the mole. The sergeant was sure of that.

  Fujiwara let himself into the superintendent's apartment and relocked the door. As a reflex he started to remove his shoes and then realized the ridiculousness of the action. Instead, he used his jacket to dry his wet shoes so they would leave no mark on the tatami mats and moved across the living room into the bedroom.

  Inside, he unzipped the flight bag he had been given by his yakuza contact and removed the silenced machine gun. It was a British-made 9mm L34A1 Sterling, curved with a thirty-four-round box magazine inserted from the left side. This gave the weapon a low profile when firing from the prone position. The yakuza was a gun enthusiast and had spelled out the weapon's specification in detail.

  The most important element, from Fujiwara's perspective, was the effectiveness of the silencer. He had been reassured on that point. The silencer, in this case, was integrated into the barrel and was so well-designed it could use standard high-velocity ammunition and still make no more noise than the sound of a person spitting. The seventy-two radial holes drilled into the bore bled off enough of the propellant gas to make the rounds emerge subsonic. This model had been issued to the British SAS.

  Fujiwara had to wonder about the gun's history and how such a weapon had ended up in Japan. Internationalization, he thought. It is not always a good thing.

  He inserted the magazine, cocked and locked the weapon, and settled himself on the bed. It was now just a matter of time. Then one long burst and a second close up to make sure, and he would vanish into the night. His long coat, hat, and glasses were a sufficient disguise if he met anyone on the stairs. Once in the nearby subway, he would be anonymous.

  In the most unlikely event of the subsequent investigation including him among the suspects, he had a foolproof alibi arranged. It would almost certainly be unnecessary. It was more likely that he would be a key member of the team doing the investigation.

  How did I get myself into this situation? he thought as he waited. Very few Tokyo MPD cops are on the take. Money, money, and more money. It was a simple answer, and one he found greatly satisfying. He enjoyed the rewards of his activities.

  The general lack of pol
ice corruption had created its own opportunity. The price of inside information became higher, and then it was just a matter of initiative and displaying an entrepreneurial streak and knowing whom to connect with. Working in an anti-yakuza unit made the last part easy. The coming gang were the Katsuda-gumi, no question about it. Hard men, but they paid well. For this hit, the paid superbly. A double squeeze on the trigger would bring him enough money to retire. Well, it was all a matter of being in the right place at the right time and knowing what moves to make.

  He could hear keys in the lock, and then the door opened.

  * * * * *

  Over the years, Fitzduane had developed an aversion to walking straight into places where something unpleasant might be waiting.

  A planned ‘domestic accident’ certainly put Adachi's apartment into that category. God knows what the Katsuda-gumi might have planned. So far — though he was still learning — the Japanese seemed to favor direct action and edged weapons. Opening the front door and walking straight into a bunch of sword-wielding yakuza struck him as being not a good idea.

  Granted, he could send his convoy of bodyguards in first, but it really did not seem like the decent thing, and explaining a diced quartet of Tokyo MPD detectives to the Deputy Superintendent-General would be embarrassing.

  No, the indirect approach was required here, combined with reconnaissance. Your parents might have done their very best to bring you up direct, honest, and forthright, but there were times when there was a definite role in life for sneakiness. Kilmara was a strong advocate of guile in a combat situation, and Fitzduane had been an apt pupil.

  Adachi's apartment was on the top floor of a six-story building and was reached through a locked front door that was squeezed between a martial-arts store and a bookshop. The locked door looked solid. That was another argument in favor of sneakiness. They did not have any keys, and Fitzduane did not want to alert anyone who might be inside by playing with the bells. Apart from the radio beeper, he had tried phoning Adachi at the apartment, but there had been no reply. A further check revealed that there was a fault on the line. This did not make Fitzduane feel good at all.