by Ryder Stacy
“Why?”
“They will drug us with the Q-14 formula—the one they use for long-term inmates. It makes you like a zombie. We must escape now. And as for how,” Morimoto added, “I’ve been thinking of how for a month. All I needed was an accomplice. You have mismatched eyes, so you are undoubtedly a mutant. Are you double jointed, as most mutants are?”
“Somewhat—though it hurts like hell. I can disjoint my shoulders.”
“Then, please remove yourself from your straight jacket by that method—then undo me.”
“Then what?”
“There is a way out. If we can but be free of these damned jackets. Hurry!”
Rock grunted and groaned for five minutes. He then was out of the jacket, badly bruised and sore—but out.
“A regular Houdini,” complimented Morimoto.
The Japanese was freed from his straight jacket by Rockson, and then Rock said, “Okay. Where’s the way out?”
“There,” Morimoto said, pointing up at the top of the right wall. “That small opening. It’s a grating.”
“Too small to crawl through,” Rock said, his heart sinking.
“Just look through the grate friend. What do you see?”
“It—is a room of some sort,” Rock said, once up on the stretcher peering through the wire mesh grate.
“And on the wall are sets of levers. Do you see them?” Morimoto asked.
“Yes. There are levers,” Rock replied.
“See the electrical wires at the baseboard in this room? What if we make a line-and-hook out of it and snag the lever marked cell three? That’s the lever that opens our door. I learned that by observation on my trips to and from the electric-shock chamber.”
“You’re a whiz, Morimoto! But we need a good hook.”
“There are several on our straight jackets!”
“Damned if you’re not right, Morimoto, my pal. You’re a genius!”
It took over an hour of careful throwing of the makeshift line and hook through the grating to snag the lever. Any second an attendant could have come in and discovered their work, but God, or the demigods that watch over fools, was on their side! Morimoto did the honors, jerking the line. The hook caught the lever and pulled it open before the hook fell.
Their cell’s steel door slid open.
“After you,” the Japanese said. “Just walk down that staircase over there. I’ve seen them take off their work smocks and put on their regular garments, and then they exit there.”
They opened a wardrobe closet and found some doctor’s jackets there, put them on and ran down the stairs. They were quickly out the street door into the steaming heat of the evening.
It was now time for Morimoto to ask questions. “Where do we go?”
Rock answered, “Anywhere! But fast!”
Twenty-One
Killov, who had returned just as they had been scraping his only friend off the sidewalk, spent the whole day in seclusion.
“Why, Nakashima, why?” he kept saying over and over. “Why did you commit suicide?”
Nakashima, Killov knew, was obsessed with death. Indeed, he had wanted to die—by Killov’s hand. He had made the colonel promise to personally kill him. So why the suicide leap? Why couldn’t he wait?
Killov grieved for himself, too. After all, he was alone again. No one except Nakashima had ever understood Killov. Understood that life is inherently evil, inherently bound up with the dark forces; understood that to live is to kill. Nakashima knew that every day man kills to survive. He knew that we eat the bodies of living things, we step on insects as we walk and we destroy their tiny homes when we build our homes. Nakashima knew and appreciated that life was killing. That life and death were inseparable. And the chauffeur knew that to truly live, you have to throw your will behind the forces of death.
Poor Nakashima—such a great person didn’t deserve to die so ignominiously, he thought. And—there was something fishy about his death. Killov, for that reason, had ordered the first men upon the scene be sent to his office.
The officer who had first found the body, the one who had given the report of the Japanese madman being at the scene instants after Nakashima fell, now was sent in. Killov looked up at the nervous corporal’s pock-marked face.
“Kimlovsky,” Killov shouted, “what happened to that madman you found at the scene? Who was he? Did you let him escape?”
“Sir! He was not let go. I sent him to the insane asylum, sir!”
“Really?” Killov said. “That was—insufficient. He should have been held for questioning by me. I suspect that he had something to do with Nakashima’s fall. I sense it!” Adrenaline flowed like an icy river of energy into Killov’s rapidly beating heart. “Quickly—get on the phone to the asylum! Tell them to make sure to hold the man you sent to them for my interrogation.”
Kimlovsky made a hasty scramble to the phone on the boomerang-shaped desk and got the asylum on the line. Killov saw the officer jerk upright and nearly yank the handphone off its wire when he heard what the person on the line said.
Killov rushed over and said, “What? What is it Kimlovsky?”
Kimlovsky’s face was drained of blood. He managed to stutter out, “H-he—the prisoner has escaped!”
Killov wrenched the phone from Kimlovsky’s trembling hand. “I will deal with you later.”
“Attention,” he snarled into the receiver. “This is Killov. What did the escaped man look like?”
“Why—quite Caucasian,” the Japanese doctor on the line said. “Perhaps he was a mutant. He had mismatched light- and dark-blue eyes . . .”
“Rockson! Rockson is here!” Killov gasped, dropping the receiver. It all started falling into place: That other strange event—the destruction of the Pleasure Pagoda! Just like Rockson—rescuing prostitutes!
“Rockson must be the one that killed my only friend!” Killov raged. “Rockson.”
Morimoto and Rockson were at that very moment breaking open the door of a 340X Toyota racing car in the KGB parking lot two blocks south of the asylum. The ignition system, Rock was happy to find out, was the key type. Just a little hot wiring under the dashboard, and the big engine roared to life. The low-slung, wide-tired, red car screeched out of the lot and into the main thoroughfare of New Tokyo, Rockson at the wheel.
A guard ran alongside the car and grabbed the windowsill. Rock found the automatic window control and pushed it, quickly raising the window on the man’s fingers. With a howl of pain, the guard fell away—minus a few fingernails.
The whole city was full of traffic. They were soon immersed in the mass of cars. The 340X was a four star general’s personal sports car. Aside from its speed, it had one other bonus—an R.P.G. was lying right there on the back seat! Rock drove slowly, hoping to get across the city and onto the swamp road without being spotted.
All was well until the general that owned the car happened to be in a jeep rushing back to the lot to get his sports car. When he saw it rush by him, he yelled the Russian equivalent of “Shit, that’s my wheels!” From that moment on, it was to be a wild shoot-em-up chase. The kind of action Rockson revelled in!
“Hold tight,” he yelled, and bounced the low-slung model onto the sidewalk, scattering shoppers in front of the Takamaya Department Store. He saw the jeep and the glint of a pair of .45s—or the Red equivalent-bound into his rearview mirror. Then there was a series of pops.
“Down,” Rock exclaimed, as the rear window shattered and bullets whizzed by to duplicate the damage on the windshield. He twisted the wheel, and the car rolled into the street again. He roared through a red light, sending other cars careening to avoid him. “Get that R.P.G. up Morimoto. You know how to fire it?”
“Can do,” the Japanese said, lifting the grenade shooter and shouldering it. “It’s loaded!”
“Well—let ’em have it; I have my hands full.”
As the sports car bobbed and weaved, Morimoto sighted through the broken rear window. Finally, he pulled the trigger. Thei
r ears popped, and the car filled with smoke, forcing Rock to brake to a halt.
But the occupants of the pursuing jeep fared worse. The shell scored a direct hit, blasting them to incendiary bits, which rained down blood.
Rockson, hearing sirens everywhere, turned a half dozen corners, roared through an underground garage, cut down yet another sidewalk, and then spun the smoking 340X onto a quiet side street. He slowed down and made a good guess which way to go. Shortly, they reached the vicinity of the home of Chimura. Rock said, “It’s just across that swampy area. Can you see the house over the reeds?”
“Yes,” Morimoto replied, “we leave the car here?”
“Yes—get out. I’m ditching it.”
Rock started the car backward to the other side of the road, at the same time he clicked the driver’s side door open. Taking careful aim, he put the pedal to the floor. At the instant the car leapt from the road toward the reeds, he leapt out and rolled. The vehicle touched the top of the nearest cattails, then fell splashing into the reeds. A flock of birds took wing, startled. The sports car slowly sank until there was hardly a trace of its passing.
“Well, that’s that,” Rock said. “Come on—”
They waded through the shallower part of the swamp, and then climbed up the embankment to the bamboo walls of the compound. They went through the open gate and came to the door.
“Wipe your feet,” Rock said, and knocked.
Killov, as the search for Ted Rockson expanded throughout the city, stood silently by the sheet-covered body lying in the middle of his office floor. Everyone he had ordered to be there was silent; no one dared to even clear his throat. The KGB colonel finally lifted his lowered head, turned to Major Bukrov, officer in charge of the funeral, and said softly, “Summon the best surgeon we have—and some of his assistants. Have him suture up Nakashima’s wounds; make my friend look nice. Have the body cleaned off. I don’t want blood. After that, wrap the body in a gold sheet and return it to my suite. I will make further preparations. Have the body sent back in half an hour!”
The officer blurted, “B-but he’s dead. Why suture him?”
Killov’s eyes narrowed. “I command, and you don’t question!”
Killov was truly mad, the officer realized, but he still had to be obeyed. He saluted, and he and the five other KGB pallbearers started to lift the body.
Killov turned to the window. Once the door closed, he lifted a handkerchief to his eyes for a quick moment, dabbing away two tiny droplets. Tears! What was happening to him? Never had Killov wept for any man—until now!
He replaced the handkerchief in his pocket and sat down to wait, brooding behind his black marble desk.
Exactly a half hour later, the silver elevator opened, and Nakashima’s body was wheeled back into the suite on a roll table. As ordered, the body had been sutured and placed under a golden cloth.
The colonel went to the golden sheet and pulled it back. He smiled, for the surgeons had done a good job. Killov bent and kissed Nakashima’s still-soft cheek. As he did so, he whispered, “I will now do as I promised you.”
Killov stood back and held out his arm. “Romanov, bring me the seventeenth-century sword from the trophy room.” Shortly the jackbooted KGB officer, who had gone to fetch the sword, returned. He goose stepped forward and held the samurai sword out. Killov solemnly took it from him and turned to the body and raised the sword. “As I promised you . . .” Killov said, almost inaudibly.
As the other “mourners” stood in aghast wonder, Killov swung the blade down violently and lopped the dead man’s head off!
Nakashima’s head rolled on the floor.
Killov, mumbling what sounded like a lullabye, picked the bloody head up by the hair. Cradling it in his arms, he put it back on the table, on the body’s chest. Then Killov himself wheeled the stretcher to the center of the room, to a position right in front of his desk.
The metal plate located in the floor in front of Killov’s desk had been perplexing to the officers, and they had noted a similar plate above it on the ceiling. They had all surmised it was a metal detector of some sort, something that showed Killov if the person before him had hidden weapons.
But it was not a metal detector—it was an execution device, one of the many ways the colonel guarded himself against would-be assassins!
“Stand back, if you value your lives,” Killov intoned to the six pallbearers. He took the seat at his desk and said, “Now for the cremation.” He flipped the far right switch located on his intercom unit.
Huge bolts of electricity suddenly coursed between the floor and ceiling metal plates and through the gold-swathed body of Nakashima. Soon the gold sheet and then the body and head burst into a fiery incandescence. The heat, fed pure oxygen by hidden fans in the floor, turned the area before the desk into a convection-microwave oven, quickly incinerating the body and the stretcher. Soon all that was left was a small bubbling mass of motley cromium and some white-glowing dust.
The pallbearers had backed off until they had banged against the wall. They had never expected this sort of madness, even from the leader they knew was demented.
Killov said, switching off the killing device, “When it cools off, remove the remains on the floor and place Nakashima’s ashes in that vase.” He pointed to an ancient green urn—an early Chin dynasty vase sitting on a table in the corner.
No one said a single word. It would be done.
Rockson sat with Morimoto in the cavern speaking to all the Freefighters, explaining the events that lead up to Morimoto and himself returning to Chimura’s house. Chen then reported that he had monitored the bugs Rockson had planted in the tower and found out that Killov would have the crystal weapon operational at midnight that very night!
“Then,” said Rock emphatically, “we act now to prevent its use! Morimoto—we’ll need your Bushido swordsmen.”
Morimoto set down his tea cup and bowed slightly. “I will go and summon my men, Rockson.”
“How? The KGB troops are in a state of maximum alert. The streets are—”
Morimoto said, “They will be looking for you, not a short Japanese man with a peasant’s garb. I will meet you in an hour—back here—with the best men I can gather! This will be an excellent place to launch our attack from.”
Togamatsu, an utterly bald, thin man of sixty years of age, squatted on a polished wood floor with a group of students clustered in a semi-circle around him. Togamatsu was putting the last spiral twist on the third “astral” twig in his flower arrangement. It had taken ten hours to reach this point in the spiritually fulfilling process. During all of the time, his seven disciples watched Togamatsu work with intense rapture.
Ikebana, the sacred art of flower arrangement, was very ancient. No one knew when it had begun—perhaps in prehistoric times, with the Ainu mystics. Ikebana was known in its present form—and unadulterated—since the 8th century when it was practiced in the Imperial Court by a Flower General. The arrangements of the flowers were difficult and exacting, inspired by aesthetic and philosophical principles of several dojos, or schools. In Togamatsu’s lineage—the Ikenobo school dating from the fourteenth century—the prime object of the design meditation was to symbolize in the arrangement of the flowers and twigs by the law of TEN CHI JIN. This was the arrangement of heaven: the firmament on top, the earth at its foot and man in between.
But now, a gentle knock came on the door. Heads turned. Togamatsu withdrew his scissors. “Come in.”
The doorknob turned. The students held their breath. The teacher had interrupted his long work. Was the knock at the door some spirit?
“Morimoto-san.” The teacher smiled and bowed. “Many thought you dead.”
The students put their heads down to the floor. Such an honor it was to see Morimoto, the man who mastered all the seven meditative and martial arts of indescribable beauty—Ikebana being one of them—was here.
“How is it that a man we thought dead yet lives?”
“Later,
Togamatsu-san! I come with news—the time has come! We rise in revolt! We Bushido have now been unleashed by the council!”
Togamatsu said, “It is good,” and went to his sacred wooden chest. The students filed out of the room. This was something only another Bushido Master could witness. Togamatsu lifted the lid and took out a magnificent sword. He bowed to his family’s shrine and put the sword over the flickering candles before his grandfather’s picture. “This sword, which was owned by our fallen great great grandfather who died in battle at Okinawa, I rededicate to the emperor of—death! It has been carried by each successive senior male member of the Togamatsu clan in honor. Let me be so worthy!”
With that, Togamatsu put the sword in a scabbard and, standing, attached the belt-linked scabbard to his waist. The movements caused a wavering in the incense smoke. He smiled at Morimoto. “The ancestors are happy.”
Together with the seven—now armed—students, Togamatsu left with Morimoto to rouse the other Bushido.
Morimoto and Togamatsu appeared at the home of the Sumie-e watercolor painter Geiden and summoned him in mid-brushstroke. He too rushed to a sacred chest and put on a war outfit of chain mail. With reverence to his ancestors and their shrine, he took up his ancient samurai sword. He added twelve more stout lads.
Then the three masters roused the ceramic potter Ahurmaki, who was decorating a jade urn. “Come,” Morimoto implored, “we fill many funeral urns today!”
Then they went to the Zepanai theater, interrupting, a Noh-play, a days-long performance of spiritual significance—one that was, fortunately, concluding.
Though he had acted for the last twelve hours straight, the lead actor, Fukamura said, “I am not tired in the face of enemies. Always ready, that is my family’s motto!” He too gathered his students. The group moved on through the darkened alley, separately, and reconvened at Harumotu’s house.
He was asleep, but there was his most magnificent woodcut ever. Harumotu was over sixty years old—like the other venerable Bushido men—but age only sharpens the sword and skill of a Bushido master! Harumotu was roused, and the master was quickly informed of the situation.