Kamikaze

by Michael Slade

  Viv wondered how many soldiers here had also participated in the Rape of Nanking.

  Now, all four Chinese nurses were gone from this bake oven. Was it too much to hope that Japanese soldiers might loathe the thought of touching colonial women?

  No! They’re coming back!

  Off went the first Englishwoman, then she too began to shriek. Each time the Japanese returned, their uniforms were stained with more blood. But nothing unnerved Viv as much as how one of the men was ogling her, as if he could burn the clothes off her body with the intensity of his lust.

  Two more British nurses.

  Then they grabbed Viv.

  Whatever she had feared she was going to see, it was nothing compared to the scene that greeted her from the door to the torture room. So many pieces of bodies were piled on the floor that blood had crossed the threshold and pooled by the opposite wall. Naked and pierced with sword wounds, Viv’s seven nursing compatriots lay sprawled in postures that meant they’d been pinned down and gang-raped.

  On instinct, Viv turned to bolt, but she found herself facing the corporal who’d ogled her in the holding cell and was now undoing his pants.

  “You—” he said as others tore off her clothes.

  Viv lashed out.

  “—mine,” Tokuda declared.

  Heather Stables

  Vancouver

  October 30, Now

  “This is where you work?”

  “Uh-huh,” Jackie replied. “The Heather Stables.”

  “Stables?” said Joe incredulously. “When I asked you over lunch if we were going to see the stables where you work, I didn’t expect actual stables.”

  A sweeping lawn fronted the beamed facade of the Tudor building at the corner of Heather and 33rd. If you didn’t know what city you were in, you might think that you were approaching the front door of Shakespeare’s birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon. The grass on either side of Special X HQ was strewn with autumn leaves.

  “You Mounties sure do treat your horses royally,” said Joe.

  “Actually, it was built as a boys’ school back in the twenties,” said Jackie. “In 1921, we purchased it as a barracks for two hundred redcoats. We tacked on four stables for 140 horses. The mounts are long gone, but the name stuck.

  “Hi Fred,” she said to the commissionaire just inside the door. He was a mounted policeman who’d retired but couldn’t get the red serge out of his blood, so now he secured the door with the Corps of Commissionaires.

  “Good day, Corporal. Who do we have here?”

  “These two hoods are fugitives from New Mexico who’ve come to fleece the vets at the upcoming convention. He’s Joe the Fish—my granddad, I regret to say. And he’s Cut-’em-up Chuck—my dad—from the most wanted list.”

  “Tough-looking hombres,” Fred said.

  “Ha!” barked Joe. “You should see my granddaughter. Evil seed if ever there was one. Beady eyes. Broken nose. Cauliflower ears. And a mouth that knows no respect for its elders.”

  “Sign in, gentlemen. We’ve got a cell waiting.”

  After signing the visitors’ record, Joe and Chuck were issued clip-on passes. They paused for a moment to take in the entrance hall, a vault that soared two stories over their heads. Facing the entrance was the bullpen. It looked more like a museum than it did a squad room. To the left were staircases up and down. Mounted above the descending stairs was a huge bison head, like the one in the crest on Jackie’s peaked hat.

  “Your mascot?” Chuck asked.

  “Yeah. We almost lost him. The trophy was stolen recently, but we got it back. Had him cleaned and remounted, and now he looks like he’s right off the plains.”

  “What’s up there?” Joe asked.

  “The chief’s office. He’s got the front corner.”

  “And down below?”

  “The cyber cellar. Our ViCLAS linkage system, which is like VICAP in the States. And psych- and geo-profilers.”

  “The eggheads, huh?”

  “Yeah,” said Jackie. “But not him. The guy coming up the stairs is Ed Rabidowski, also known as the Mad Dog.”

  “Mad Dog, huh? Times have changed. I can recall when the Mounties had dogs that were actually hounds.”

  “Sergeant Preston,” Chuck said.

  “And his mutt, King.”

  “The Mad Dog’s the main man on our SWAT team. Emergency Response Team, in our tongue. If push comes to shove,” Jackie said, “we sic him on the bad guys.”

  “No wonder,” Joe replied. “He’s got muscles on his muscles. We coulda used him at the airport with those goons.”

  She ushered them across the hall and into the bullpen. This squad room was like none they had seen before. No cops in shirtsleeves and shoulder holsters, working at desks crammed closer than olives in a jar, surrounded by mug shots from the underworld. This was like a sheriff’s office in the Wild West, with frontier firearms decorating the walls and a Maxim machine gun from the gold rush set up on the floor. Mannequins displayed the garb of legendary lawmen. But instead of Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, these pith helmets, Stetsons, and scarlet uniforms had once clothed Bub Walsh and Sam Steele.

  “Red, Dad, this handsome guy is Sergeant Dane Winter. He and I are a team.”

  Winter came out from behind a desk next to a Winchester rifle and shook hands with both Hett men. Sandy-haired and athletic, he was in his thirties. The sergeant wore a uniform like Jackie’s, but with an extra chevron. Joe wondered if Winter was bedding his granddaughter.

  “Dane’s granddad flew in the war, Red.”

  “Oh?” responded the eldest Hett. “When did he enlist?”

  “September 1940. During the Battle of Britain.”

  “I thought of that.”

  “What?”

  “Joining the RAF. For Whom the Bell Tolls. Hemingway’s Robert Jordan taking a stand. We weren’t in the war, and I wanted in. Fighting the Nazis was a good fight.”

  “Something stop you?”

  “My pop,” said Joe. “He knew we were heading for a showdown with Tokyo. He told me, ‘Let the Brits fight that war. You get ready for what’s coming.’”

  “A twist of fate,” said Dane. He indicated the newspaper on his desk. It had been folded back to the Life magazine shot of Joe shooting at the Zero.

  “Your grandpa fly Spits?”

  “Halifax bombers.”

  “So he was one of Bomber Harris’s boys?”

  “From ’42 on.”

  “Where’d he see action?”

  “All over the map. In the Battle of the Atlantic, he took part in the Channel Dash and the destruction of the warship Gneisenau. Over the Third Reich, he was in on the Thousand Bomber Raids. Then he was in North Africa in the months leading up to Monty’s victory over the Desert Fox at the Battle of El Alamein.”

  “I’d like to meet him,” Joe said.

  “He died recently.”

  “Sorry to hear. We’re all dying off, us old vets. That, no doubt, is why they asked me to speak at the con.”

  “Well, you were in on some pretty big stuff.”

  “Dresden?” said Joe. “Did your grandpa fly that raid?”

  “No,” replied Dane. “He missed that. Got shot down in the raid on the V-2 missile factory at Peenemünde in August 1943. He spent the rest of the war in a POW camp.”

  “He was lucky,” Joe said. “That was overkill. No warrior should have to carry Dresden guilt.”

  They were interrupted by the ringing of the phone on Dane’s desk.

  “Sergeant Winter,” he answered.

  The conversation was brief.

  When he hung up, Dane turned to Jackie and said, “Sorry to rain on your parade, but the chief wants us in his office.”

  “Red, Dad,” she said, “these are the keys to the car. You’re on your own for a while. I’ll draw you a map of the scenic route to the convention hotel, and I’ll explain how to get around Point Grey to the airport if you want to check out the plane.”

  “Plane
?” said Dane.

  “The fireworks. Tomorrow night.”

  “Right,” he said. “I forgot. Tomorrow’s Halloween.”

  Hung along the left-hand wall of the wide staircase that angled up to the chief’s office were paintings and photographs that depicted the history of the RCMP from its formation in 1873 through to the present day. The Special External Section of Canada’s national police—Special X, for short—investigated criminal cases with links to other countries. Cops from forces around the world climbed these steps, and the powers that be wanted to leave each one with the impression that—as the unofficial motto goes—“The Mounties always get their man.”

  To be successful, you must look successful.

  Promotion sells.

  “What happened at Dresden?” Jackie asked as she and Dane went up the stairs.

  “I caught that too.”

  “Caught what?”

  “Your granddad is haunted.”

  “He didn’t used to be. He was the ultra-patriot. But he’s lost moral certainty over the years.”

  “Since when?”

  “Vietnam. That was the start. He bought into the government’s lie that we were fighting Communists, and he couldn’t understand why we got our asses whipped. At least, not until he learned that Ho Chi Minh had issued his declaration of independence from French colonial rule in 1945. Red saw then that we had stepped into France’s shoes. The fact that Ho was a Communist was about as relevant as Jefferson owning slaves. The crux was that both men were ardent nationalists. So we ended up trying to suppress an independence movement, just as the Brits did in the Revolution. With the same result.”

  “I think it’s more than that.”

  “It is,” said Jackie. “But that’s part of it. My dad got shot twice in Vietnam. He almost didn’t make it. My granddad’s disillusionment stems from having nearly lost his only son for a lie.”

  “Then Iraq?”

  “Don’t get him started on that! But what really shook him was the revelation that President Truman had kept a secret journal at the Potsdam Conference in 1945. Seven years after Truman’s death, it finally came to light.”

  Having reached the landing at the top of the stairs, they knocked on the chief’s door.

  “Enter,” called out Robert DeClercq.

  The view from the corner office, even on this overcast afternoon, took in the exuberant fall colors of Queen Elizabeth Park. Facing the two window walls was a horseshoe-shaped desk made from three Victorian library tables. In the crook of the U sat an antique chair crowned with the crest of the Mounted Police. The paperwork on the desk was piled around the computer, printer, scanner, fax, and telephone, marching neatly from the In table to the Out. The picture on the wall behind this workstation was Sydney Hall’s Last Great Council of the West, a sweeping canvas of redcoats, their hands on their swords, meeting feathered Indians at Blackfoot Crossing. Command structure is the key to crisis management, and this felt like the office of both a macro and a micro overseer. When faced with a Gordian knot of red tape, this officer, like Alexander the Great, would simply draw his regimental sword and slash through to a resolution.

  This was the office of a man who got things done.

  No bullshit.

  “Mr. Roger Yamada,” DeClercq said, “meet Sergeant Dane Winter and Corporal Jackie Hett.”

  The diplomat who greeted them was in late middle age. He bowed slightly and shook their hands, blending both Japanese and North American cultures. His dark, graying hair matched the color of his impeccable business suit; both had been cut conservatively to suggest a reserved manner. His face was a mix of Pacific Rim races.

  “Mr. Yamada is with the Japanese consulate,” said DeClercq. “As you can see, he was just beginning to fill me in on a yakuza link between our countries.”

  No time wasted.

  Straight to the case on the wall.

  The Strategy Wall was the command center of DeClercq’s office. It stretched from floor to ceiling along the length of the unbroken wall and wrapped around the corner to the edge of the painting. An expanse of corkboard onto which the chief pinned a visual overview of the most important cases being handled by Special X, the Strategy Wall was like the map tables wartime generals used to plot their campaign strategies.

  DeClercq—who was about a decade younger than Yamada—had less gray at the temples of his dark hair and even darker, seen-it-all eyes. Lean and wiry in the blue serge uniform of commissioned officers, he wore the crown and two pips of his rank on the epaulets, the badge of the force as collar dogs on the jacket, and his long-service medal—with three stars known as the Milky Way—on the breast pocket.

  “The yakuza,” Roger Yamada said, “is not what it used to be. Do you know its history?”

  “Educate us,” said DeClercq.

  Jackie wondered where the diplomat had learned to speak English with a North American accent.

  Not in Japan.

  “Yakuza members of old prided themselves on following the code of bushido. Not any more. The gangs are degraded now. This man”—he pointed at a headshot of a young Japanese on the Strategy Wall—“represents the new norm. He reflects the trend toward declining cohesion and obedience among yakuza members. He just sees crime as a way to make himself rich. He controls the odious importation of child prostitutes from China. His name is Kazuya Ochi.

  “Kazuya—I’ll use his first name—flies to Vancouver a few times a year to recruit blonde prostitutes. He was last here four days ago. The Japanese National Police Agency suspects that this is where he deals with the snakeheads, Chinese triad smugglers who traffic in underage girls. When he returned to Tokyo, he was met at Narita Airport by his uncle, Makoto Ochi.”

  From a leather briefcase, Yamada withdrew a second photograph and passed it to DeClercq.

  The chief tacked a mug shot of a tough-looking thug to the Strategy Wall. Makoto’s face was criss-crossed by scars.

  “The national police followed them to a building we know well in the Ginza district. That, I’m sure you know, is the shopping and nightlife mecca of Tokyo. In 1945, Ginza was all but flattened by four firebomb raids. Everything but the outer shells of concrete buildings burned down. Three weeks after the end of the war, the U.S. military arrived to begin the occupation. Soldiers set up headquarters at Hibiya, just northwest of Ginza, in the heart of the city. That’s where the shogun had once built Edo Castle. The Imperial Palace of the emperor now stands on the ruins.

  “The yakuza, after the war, were all but annihilated. Since the 1700s, they had preyed as two groups. The tekiya were peddlers. Snake-oil salesmen who worked fairs and markets. The bakuto were gamblers. Dice men and card sharps who worked towns and highways. The wartime military draft had severely reduced their ranks, and the American occupiers proceeded to sweep away the topmost layer of control in government and business. That created a power vacuum in Japan, spawning a new form of yakuza: the gurentai.

  “The gurentai,” Yamada said, “grew into our version of the Mob. Imagine The Godfather movies cast in Tokyo. Japan’s Don Corleone is Genjo Tokuda. He’s the gangster who built the building to which the national police followed Kazuya and Makoto Ochi.”

  “They went in?” Jackie asked.

  “Yes. But only Makoto Ochi came out.”

  “Is Genjo Tokuda alive?”

  “Very much so,” said Yamada. “In fact, he’s in Vancouver. That’s why I’m here.”

  The diplomat fetched another photo from his briefcase.

  DeClercq pinned it up beside the previous two.

  Jackie found herself staring at an eighty-year-old Japanese face that was half an ugly scar.

  “I know this guy!” she said. “My granddad, my dad, and I just had a run-in with him at the airport.”

  “That’s a good one,” Yamada said, referring to the prosthetic finger that Jackie withdrew carefully—so as not to disturb any forensic traces—from a pouch on her gun belt.

  “My granddad scored this trophy by tussling w
ith one of Tokuda’s bodyguards.”

  “A yakuza wears a prosthetic finger when he’s traveling abroad. Not to wear one is to advertise that he’s a thug. Some are of poor quality and wouldn’t pass scrutiny. They fall off at inconvenient times, like during a customs check. The best prosthetics are crafted in London, but they cost a lot. Discount shoppers get theirs in Hong Kong.”

  “Not a booming trade.”

  “It used to be. By the early sixties, there were 184,000 yakuza in 5,200 gangs. More men than in Japan’s army.”

  “All under Tokuda?”

  “No, but he was the most vicious of the lot. Yakuza cut off their fingers to make amends for mistakes, and he held his hoodlums to an impossible standard of bushido.”

  “How’d he get to the top?” asked Dane.

  “Ginza had to start from zero after the war. The Americans seized six hundred buildings around Tokyo and established PXs in the Hattori clock tower—now the Wako Building—and the Matsuya store in Ginza. The PXs—”

  “I’ve always wondered what that stands for,” said Dane.

  “Post exchange,” replied Jackie. “A PX is a store within a military post.”

  “All of Tokyo became a U.S. military post after the war,” Yamada explained. “The Americans rationed food and liquor, and that spawned an instant black market. In Ginza, shanties were hastily hammered together from salvaged boards, and tent stalls mushroomed along the dim streets. The smart businessmen hung out shop signs written in Roman letters or adorned with pictograms so the Americans would know what went on inside. Soon bars, cabarets, dance halls, and pool halls were crowded with GIs. That’s when Genjo Tokuda—having been freed under an amnesty that released Japanese prisoners of war—muscled in.”

  “What’d he do in the war?”

  “No one knew. His face was scarred beyond recognition. His only ID was the uniform he was captured in.”

  “Where was that?” Dane asked.