by Barry Lancet
He held the gun steady. “After you and Noda ran through a whole team of trainees in Soga, I had little choice. I could no longer protect you. I begged, but Ogi was adamant. Initially, he’d promised to let you pass through the village unharmed, but your showing up in Soga proved a temptation he couldn’t resist and he double-crossed me. When I heard what had happened, I confronted him, but your very success proved his point. Hooking up with Kozawa only increased Ogi’s determination to see you dead. Yanking you off the case and sending you into hiding was my last-ditch attempt to protect you. But you wouldn’t budge. I came here to plead your case one last time with Ogi but it was a lost cause.”
Shock, disbelief, and disgust rippled through me in continuous waves. With our client setting us up and my partner giving away our secrets, we were hemmed in on all sides from the start.
“So you were in on all of it?”
“Yes.”
“The bug at Brodie Security?”
“A built-in excuse should you or Noda ever suspect a leak from the inside. Toru wasn’t supposed to find it.”
“The hacker?”
“Meant as a diversion. A time-waster. I wanted you and Noda distracted in Tokyo. I never imagined Mari and her flaky boyfriend would actually be able to catch our computer guy, let alone tail him to our home ground. Especially after I warned him he was being stalked.”
“You can’t shoot me, Narazaki. You know that.”
Remorse pooled in his eyes. “Until tonight I couldn’t. Now, if you live, Soga will come after me. When you escaped from the village, Ogi accused me of assisting you. In our three-hundred-year history, no one has ever inflicted so many casualties in the village. Because of that, Ogi not only refused my request to leave you alone but also said he’d hold me personally responsible if you lived through the next attack. And you did that when you escaped from the kidnap attempt in Ikebukuro. Ogi thinks I helped you out in both places. He repeated the threat tonight once you broke free.”
His words drained the fight from me. Burned by the man I’d sought to emulate as I stepped into my father’s shoes. This was not the world I knew. “You could still let me go. Pretend you never found me.”
Narazaki regarded me sadly, the gun never wavering. “Even if I did, I wouldn’t be doing you a favor. You’re already dead. By tomorrow every Soga operative in the world will be hunting you. This way, at least one of us lives.”
“Because of the village and Gilbert Tweed? Why press it? They’re exposed.”
Sorrow wrinkled his brow. “No, it’s not either of those. Any chance I had of swinging a last-minute reprieve vanished when you killed the heir apparent.”
“I did no such thing.”
“You don’t know, do you? Casey. He was an Ogi. And next in line to lead.”
For a moment I stood speechless, absorbing the implications. Casey the heir apparent? No wonder he spoke with such a commanding arrogance. Ordered the shooting of Abers with such cavalier abandon.
My old family friend was right. In killing the heir, I’d killed myself.
Narazaki’s finger closed on the trigger. “Now or later makes no difference.”
“Don’t shoot my daddy, Uncle Shig.”
No! My heart plunged. She’d almost made it. Tonight had been all about Jenny. No matter what happened to me, I’d taken immense comfort in knowing I’d removed her from the field of fire. She was safe—my one consolation should I take a fall. Now Jenny would die too.
Exhausted, I shook my head in defeat. Narazaki wouldn’t let her live. With Dermott, Jenny’s timing had been brilliant, but this time I was too far from cover, or Narazaki, to take advantage of the surprise.
He glanced up into the darkness without taking the gun off me. “You hid her in the tree. Clever. Just like Jake. I wish she hadn’t heard our conversation.”
“Forget about it,” I said. “In a week she’ll have blanked out the whole episode. Kids are like that.”
Narazaki frowned. “Can’t do it. Sorry.”
“If not for me, then for Jake.”
“Wish I could oblige, but she has to go. Big shame. If only—”
Without warning, a silenced weapon coughed behind me. Narazaki’s legs buckled beneath him and he sat down with a grunt, an entry wound in his shoulder staining his clothing red.
Noda stepped from the shadows, a gun trained on his boss.
He’d survived!
Narazaki’s resigned smile was tinged with gratitude. “Thank you, Kei-kun. I didn’t want to shoot Jake’s kid.”
“I know,” Noda said.
“If it had to be someone, I’m glad it’s you. Finish what you started.”
Noda hesitated.
“Go ahead, Kei-kun. My life’s over. It’s either prison or Soga.”
Noda stared at his old friend. “Won’t do it.”
“You don’t, I’ll shoot Brodie.” Halfheartedly, Narazaki raised his weapon. From the trees, another shot opened a hole in Narazaki’s forehead and my father’s longtime partner pitched over into the deadfall.
Luke stepped from the foliage.
“Garbage in, garbage out,” he said.
Eyes dark with grief, Noda gazed at his fallen friend for a beat before mumbling a gruff thanks to the CIA man. Nodding, Luke holstered his gun. Noda turned away and Luke stepped in behind him, uttering a single word: “Ogi.”
Brodie Security’s chief detective grunted, and together they slipped through the woods in search of the Soga leader.
CHAPTER 78
I FERRIED my daughter from her roost, and once on solid ground I smothered her in an embrace. Jenny threw her arms around me and squeezed for all she was worth. Neither of us spoke. Despite the lifeless forms at our feet, or perhaps because they bore testimony to how far we had come down a hazard-strewn path, the silence between us was long and full and freighted with a sense of relief and renewal. Everything we had endured, everything we meant to each other, and everything that had unfurled in the last nine days spilled out in the embrace.
After a time, I said, “Let me look at you, Jen.”
Lifting her head, Jenny gazed at me with her mother’s probing brown eyes. They were bursting with questions. For the first time in days, I laughed. A foreign and unfamiliar sound. My daughter was beautiful, and she was mine. The thought swept over me with undiluted joy. We’d get past Ogi. Somehow. Even if it meant hiding out for months.
“Jen, I just want to tell you that no matter what—”
The bushes behind me exploded with movement, then a voice hissed in my ear: “The world’s a funny place.”
Even distorted with hatred, I recognized the inflection.
After all, he was the mayor’s eyes on the scene.
Supportive. By the book. All of us grateful to find a pol without an agenda.
All of us suckered.
With a .22 trained on Jenny, DeMonde circled around the front, stepping back until he was beyond the range of a swift karate strike. The man was well informed. “If your wife hadn’t been at her parents’ house that night, she wouldn’t have died and you wouldn’t have such a hard-on for this case. But she was and you do. Now Soga’s on the verge of collapsing, incredible as that seems, which forces my hand. With all the bodies tonight, you and your daughter will be just two more casualties. I’ve always been lucky that way.”
My mind reeled. What was DeMonde raving about? Had he snapped? Then revelation cleared the mist. Sales yak and self-made millionaire, Renna had told me the first time I’d met the deputy mayor. DeMonde must have sold cars. Owned car lots. That’s what Renna had tried to tell me tonight.
DeMonde had hired Soga to orchestrate the “accidental” deaths of three car dealers whose lots he coveted, among them those owned by Mieko’s uncle.
An all-consuming rage roiled my blood. The man responsible for my wife’s death stood two yards away pointing a .22-caliber pistol at my daughter. I did the calculations. The caliber was small. I could absorb two or three bullets and still take him down
and survive, but a single round was more than enough to kill a six-year-old child at close range.
Inwardly I was incredulous. After running a gauntlet of Soga obstacles—the village, a near garroting, Jenny’s rescue, skirmishes with Dermott and Casey—I was going to die because DeMonde had waltzed in under the guise of an ally. The simplicity of his plan stunned me.
And with Jenny in my arms, I was helpless to stop him.
Another revelation overtook me. DeMonde had worn the wire for Soga during our meet at the hotel. Narazaki knew the basics but not the details of our New York operation, or the words spoken behind closed doors.
I tried laying down a stall. “Renna knows about you.”
DeMonde nodded in sudden understanding. “He does know something, doesn’t he? He was looking at me strangely tonight. But I heard he’s dying. Either way, he’ll never prove anything.”
Jenny squirmed out of my arms. In an instant she wriggled from my grasp and took up a position standing at my side. DeMonde froze. Didn’t shoot. Before he could respond, I stepped in front of her, shielding her and bringing me half a pace closer. I remained parental. Passive. Nonthreatening.
DeMonde shifted sideways, his gun barrel tracking Jenny’s small frame as he tried to reclaim his bead on her. It was an amateur’s reaction. I sluiced forward. Too late did his gun arm swing back toward me, and when his wrist banged against my ribs, I pinned the arm under mine, then pivoted away and to his rear, skewing the barrel away from Jenny and at the same time forcing the elbow against the joint and snapping it. DeMonde howled, stumbling past me with a broken, rubbery appendage. I rammed the elbow of my free arm into the back of his neck. Bone cracked, his neck snapped, and my wife’s killer crumpled to the ground.
Dead.
Just like that.
A pinch of pain and his ordeal was over. It hardly seemed a fair trade for the suffering Jenny and I had endured in the months after Mieko’s death. Hardly fair at all.
But, fair or not, it was finished.
Finally.
CHAPTER 79
IT was only a matter of minutes now.
Noda and Luke had been tracking Ogi for a good quarter of an hour and gaining ground on the unsuspecting Soga patriarch. Earlier, they had missed him by seconds. Having rigged a timer to the explosives that destroyed the boats, the pair was ninety seconds short of the main house when the explosion occurred. From thirty yards back, they saw the Soga commander exit the building at a fast clip under the guidance of a younger fighter. They noted his footprints, watched two other Soga men dash in and out of the manor, then slipped into the house themselves, hoping to find Brodie or his daughter.
They searched every room but came up empty-handed. Back outside, they picked up Ogi’s distinctive tread, lost it, roamed the grounds, and eventually spotted his tracks again, which led them to Brodie and Narazaki. Ogi had lingered in the bushes near Brodie before moving away, probably vacating his position when he heard them approach. Which suggested Soga’s number one was lurking nearby.
So the two had set out after the top prize. Their confidence grew with each passing minute. For some unfathomable reason, Ogi had not left the grounds, and that was about to prove detrimental to his health. In anticipation of a confrontation, both men drew their weapons.
Then the trail vanished.
Disappeared without explanation or a hint of how the feat was accomplished.
Both men froze. A quick exchange of hand signals followed, then Noda headed west into the brush and circled north. Luke turned east and then south. Weapons out, safeties off, they moved through the surrounding woods in concentric circles with consummate expertise, first five yards out, then ten, then fifteen. Then they called it off. They could find no new trail.
“Foxy bugger,” Luck said. “No trace whatsoever.”
Noda nodded unhappily.
Luke said, “Probably circling back. Going after Brodie.”
“No other reason.”
Luke cursed softly, his words indistinct. “He must have heard us and knew one or both of us would come after him, so he set the trail and drew us off.”
“Worked, too. We’re too far away.”
“I got my cell but . . .”
Noda nodded, lips tight, saying nothing. They had found Brodie’s phone abandoned on the nightstand of his hotel room.
Luke said, “He’s taken us out of the game. How good’s your boy?”
Noda’s reply was grim. “Good, but not this good.”
CHAPTER 80
SCANNING the trees for my daughter, I spied her cowering behind a large pine. As I moved toward her, I heard the faint hissing sound of metal over cloth behind me.
Ogi!
At my back, unleashing the garrote.
Too close for me to turn and attack.
Just in time I flattened my palms against my forehead, drawing in my elbows and shielding my face and neck with my arms. A split second later a wire looped over my head from behind, seeking the tenderness of my neck but finding the sinew of my forearms instead.
My defensive move kept the garrote from my neck but didn’t stop it from slicing through the flesh of my arms. Howling in pain, I backpedaled and slammed Ogi into the nearest tree. A couple of his ribs popped and a hot saliva-laced cry burst from his lips, but Ogi clung to the wire tenaciously and it cut deeper. Cold steel razors cleaved raw nerves. My screams rose to the treetops. Unconsciousness flickered before my eyes.
In frenzied desperation, I smashed the back of my head into Ogi’s face. Once, twice, three times I hit him with a reverse head butt until his nose caved and his jawbone cracked. Only then did the tough old warrior’s hold break and the wire grow slack.
Ogi wheezed in pain, his hoarse breath hot and heavy at my ear. Without turning, I rammed the Soga boss against the trunk a second time, then brought my elbows down and peppered his torso with alternating blows from both sides, the killing wire swinging wildly from a gash in my arm.
Another rib snapped and Ogi slumped to the ground. I stepped away. The Soga leader tried to rise but couldn’t. His eyes closed and he was still. No matter how well trained, a man in his seventh decade wasn’t going to recover from a beating like that without assistance.
I was numb all over. Blood streamed down my forearms. The shock to my nervous system from the garrote had sent my body into a stall; it was shutting down. Shafts of pain shot through me. Jagged bolts of white light flashed across the undersides of my eyelids. I fought to stay conscious. I bit down on my tongue to keep from blacking out. The induced pain brought a jittery rush of adrenaline. I grew dizzy with the injection, but the immediate danger of passing out receded.
Gritting my teeth, I extricated the garrote from a bleeding flap of flesh and flung it into the darkness.
Only one or two people at the top know the whole operation.
To live, Jenny and I needed Ogi to die. The Soga leader lay immobile at my feet. His breathing was feeble. Hara’s prophetic words came back to me: Invariably I get what I want. A part of me wanted Ogi tried for his crimes. Paraded in public so his string of victims could get some satisfaction. Another part of me wanted him permanently removed from our lives.
And the sooner the better.
I dug the Soga hood from my pocket and tied it around the cut on one arm, the Soga shirt around the gash on the other. Ogi should have been miles away by now, but pride and revenge had drawn him back.
From behind me Jenny called faintly, “Daddy?”
I looked over my shoulder. Tentatively, Jenny inched forward from her hiding place among the trees. Terror spilled from her eyes. I smiled reassuringly and she ran to me, her arms spreading. I turned and swept her up in a hug, and as a wave of parental relief swept over me, I felt a cold blade snake into my back the way a copperhead slides into an empty sleeping bag. Jolts of white-hot pain spread through my middle regions.
How was it possible? I’d only taken my eyes off the battered Soga chief for a second.
I staggered sideways,
shoving Jenny ahead of me—back into the trees—and opening as much distance as I could between Ogi and myself. The next moment, my legs rebelled and I collapsed to the forest floor, falling forward, conscious of the rod of steel in my back.
I glanced backward. The Soga leader was on his knees, grinning, his jaw hanging at an odd angle. While stabbing me with one hand, he’d extracted Renna’s gun from the small of my back with the other. He’d only feigned defeat, dragging himself forward on his knees once my back was turned.
Now, with the piece aimed at my prone figure, Ogi hauled himself to his feet. When had he moved? I hadn’t heard a thing. It was inhuman. The man had a fractured jaw and three broken ribs. Then I recalled Ogi’s proclamation: This is what Soga does. What we train for our whole lives. What our ancestors have done for three centuries.
With his nose bludgeoned and his jaw disfigured, he looked more demon than human. His eyes flickered in pain, yet they stayed focused on me.
It was then that I noticed the greasy blue streaks running across his palm.
Poison. From the knife in my back.
Ogi would have built up an immunity, but what did it mean for me? I tried to think. The blade of the knife that had felled Renna had been treated but not the handle. Not both. The pattern repeated itself with the knives flung at us when the Soga trainees came through the ceiling of the inn. Handle dirty, blade clean on one. The opposite on the other. For some reason, it was Soga’s practice to treat one surface or the other. I suppose it gave them options. The handle of Ogi’s knife was treated, which meant the blade should be free of poison. But was it?
As Ogi limped toward me, I clawed desperately at the ground, drawing myself forward. Ogi advanced. I thrust with my toes, my progress measured in inches.
Ogi was five yards behind me and closing.
Dense foliage, from where Jenny probably watched, was three yards away and unreachable.