by Barry Lancet
“Sure thing.”
A minute later the phone was picked up. “Hi, Brodie,” Tad Sato said in Japanese.
“Hey, Tad,” I said in the same language. ‘You holding up?”
I’d met Tad twice since he and Naomi married, once at a show opening of her father’s and once when I visited the Nobuki home in Kyoto. Tad was short for Tadao. He shared the same enthusiasm for Japanese ceramics as Naomi’s father, which was a source of bonding between Ken and his son-in-law. It gave the two of us plenty to talk about as well.
“You know me and flying,” he said.
“I know you’d rather shoot yourself in the foot. What changed your mind?”
“My mother-in-law. She’s lost both her sons and wants her daughter with her in Kyoto until this thing’s over.”
“How’d Singapore enter the picture?”
“Naomi’s too embarrassed to go home empty-handed.”
“That doesn’t help your mother-in-law.”
Tad’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Japan’s only a short hop from Singapore. Once we get there, I’ll work on Naomi some more.”
“Can I talk to her?”
“You got it.”
His wife came on next. “Hi, Brodie.”
“Hi, Naomi. I’m glad you’re leaving DC. Under the circumstances it’s the right thing to do.”
“Yes, of course. I appreciate everything you’re doing for us.”
“Don’t mention it.” Because I failed with your brother. Abominably.
Naomi said, “I know Akihiro must have been impossible. He’s been that way since his early teens.”
Somewhere in the darker reaches of my being, a lightness stirred. Not much. But a fraction.
“Thank you for that,” I said.
“You needed to hear it from one of us. Here’s Stockton-san again.”
She passed me over to the security man. “You want me to send someone with them?” he asked.
“Absolutely. I’ll set up a changing of the guard on the other end. Your man can pass them on to our affiliate in Singapore. Until then, make sure he stays close.”
“Consider it a done deal,” Stockton said.
Which it was. Until it wasn’t.
DAYS 10 TO 12
TUESDAY TO THURSDAY
WHAT THE DEVIL PUSHED OUT
CHAPTER 50
THE Singapore affiliate called right on schedule.
“Brodie, is that you?”
“Yes. All’s well, I presume.”
“Only if you like magic tricks.”
Goosebumps peppered the back of my neck. “What have you got for me?”
“Nothing. And that, my good friend, is the problem. Your people didn’t get off the plane.”
My heart lurched. “That can’t be.”
A disconcerted sigh reached my ear. “You’ve just answered my next question. They really were supposed to be on the aircraft?”
This couldn’t be happening. “Yes. Is everyone off?”
“My people are confirming as we speak. Are you absolutely certain someone along your chain of command did not make any changes in the schedule at the last second? Some additional precaution not passed along to you, what with the time difference and all? Say, while you were asleep.”
“I’m sure.”
A second sigh escaped his lips. “Then I’m sure we have trouble. We’ve had binocs on since deboarding. They did not slip by us. They were not ushered through a VIP entrance. No one has been whisked away by a preemptive police escort.”
“When will you have confirmation on remaining passengers?”
“Five minutes, tops. You want to wait or should I call you back?”
“Call me back.”
We hung up and I thought, Let this be a mix-up. Maybe someone did call and pass on a change in itinerary I’d yet to receive. Which was a wild idea I clung to but into which I funneled no hope. All I knew was that I could not lose Ken’s last living offspring.
I had Mari get Stockton on the line. What our Washington affiliate told me only heightened my apprehension. He had personally watched Naomi, her husband, and his own operative step onto the plane, his firm’s status allowing him security access into the boarding area.
“When was the next planned contact?” I asked.
Stockton’s man had confirmed arrival at Los Angeles International Airport, where they were to change planes, and sent a text message just before takeoff from LAX. The final communiqué was set to occur as soon as the airplane touched the tarmac in Singapore. Which was now, if not earlier.
“And you have nothing?”
“Nada,” Stockton said.
“Deboarding looks to be over.”
“Then we’re screwed. Jeremy should have called or texted on touchdown in Singapore while the jet was taxiing to the gate, and long before he and the clients left the craft. No one else here has heard from him.”
“Okay. Double-check to make sure nothing’s been missed on your end and get back to me ASAP.”
Clearly, something had gone down along the way. If there was no sighting in Singapore, that left Southern California.
Napa. San Francisco. Kyoto. Tokyo. And now LA.
Nowhere was safe from the Steam Walker.
CHAPTER 51
THE Singapore affiliate had rung me twice while I was on the phone with Stockton. When I called back, he confirmed that all passengers had disembarked.
It was official. Naomi and Tad had vanished. If the last of the Nobukis’ three children ended up dead on my watch, I’d probably have to throw myself under a bullet train.
Stockton had promised to start working his end immediately, but I held little hope of an answer emerging from his side.
“What does it mean that you haven’t heard from your man?” I’d asked him.
“Nothing good.”
“How bad?”
“This long? He’s either restrained or dead.”
“Your guess?”
“Dead.”
“Why?”
“Jeremy has three black belts. Real ones. He’s fast, and very aware. There’s only one way to stop him.”
I was afraid of that.
And it was unlikely Naomi and Tad would fare any better.
* * *
Noda, Mari, and the auxiliary players on the case crammed into my office.
After informing them of the situation, I was rewarded with half a dozen possible scenarios, from kidnapping to murder, and an equal number of routes to explore. The upshot was, we sent a half a dozen detectives in a half a dozen directions in three different cities in a frantic attempt to track down the missing couple.
Soon only Noda, Mari, and I remained. Noda fumed in his seat, his scar blazing. Then he sprang up, grumbling something Mari and I couldn’t decipher, and disappeared out the door.
Mari turned a worried look in my direction. “We can’t let anything happen to Naomi Nobuki and her husband. She’s the last one.”
“I know.”
“The papers will get hold of the story and that will be the end of Brodie Security.”
“I know.”
An invisible hand clutched at my throat. Mari’s eyes dropped to her lap. Sitting in my father’s old office, I gazed at his mementoes. Next, my eyes tracked to Jenny’s photograph. She looked out from the frame with her broad, gap-toothed smile. I found her unabashed grin endearing, all the more so because it was less than perfect. It would fill in soon. Brodie Security might not be around when it did.
Mari looked up. “So I need to leave for a while. Is that okay?”
“Sure.”
“To make some calls.”
“Sure.”
She had a germ of an idea she wasn’t yet willing to share. Everyone else involved in the case was scrambling. None of us expected anything from Brodie Security’s newest and youngest field agent, but at least she was giving it the good fight.
Mari trotted out the door in Noda’s wake.
Naomi and her husband had fall
en down a black hole. The Steam Walker had been on these shores, so either he had an accomplice or the puppetmaster pulling the Walker’s strings had another operative on the line.
Where had Naomi and Tad gone? And were they alive or dead?
CHAPTER 52
RENNA called from San Francisco with tidings.
“Man, I’m sorry to hear about the daughter and her husband. Snatched right out from under.”
“I know. If I lose Ken’s third kid . . .”
“Don’t do that to yourself, Brodie. This case is off-the-charts insane. We have how many countries involved now? Eight?”
“Including Indonesia and the US, yeah.”
“We’re both slammed, so let me give you the latest on my end, then we can get back to the hunt.”
Renna’s summary was brief. They’d eliminated the Tea Party politico only because he could barely organize a sit-down lunch for two, let alone an operation involving a professional assassin. And that was without bothering to consider his campaign platform, which revolved around ridding San Francisco of all tech workers since they were secretly creating a robot race to commandeer the city, starting with the mayor’s office.
As for the others, Renna’s squad was tracking three priority suspects, nine other primary leads, and one new target courtesy of Gail Wong, the mayor’s attack shark.
The three chief contenders were the mayor’s former business partner, who, out of spite, was funding a third-party challenger and had the connections to pull off the sniper attack; Mayor Hurwitz’s main political rival, whom many considered an anything-goes slime bucket; and the former soldier who had written a hate letter. The fighting man, it turned out, was ex–Special Forces, with access to dark connections. He also struggled with mental issues that either put him in or out of the running, depending on which expert the SFPD consulted. The most recent addition was a popular city assemblyman with mayoral ambitions Gail Wong wanted investigated.
“Plus,” my police lieutenant friend said, “the number of suspects is on the rise.”
I stifled a groan. “How seriously should I take your list?”
“Very. Except for the last one, which is Gail playing gutter politics, we can’t discount any of them.”
“This investigation is going in the wrong direction.”
Renna’s grunt embraced the frustration we both felt. “Problem is, there’s too many vampires on my end. I’d kill to narrow the field.”
“So would I. Let’s hope we don’t have to.”
* * *
I underestimated our newest field agent. She came through with a message as startling as it was brief:
Naomi and her husband passed through passport control at Narita Airport fifteen minutes ago.
I had Mari on the phone thirty seconds later. She was sitting with a hacker friend who had access to the Japanese immigration and passport-control computers. I could not mention the fact to anyone else at the office other than Noda.
I said fine.
Mari’s energy level plunged with her next words. “But it’s too late, right? They’ll be gone by the time we get out there.”
“Not necessarily. They still have to pick up luggage, clear Customs, and find transportation into town or make a connecting flight. A company near the airport we deal with may be able to intercept them.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I’ll move on Narita and fill in Noda. See if there’s a connecting flight. I bet there is. That’s top priority. Then get back to the office. I’m here now.”
“Okay,” she said.
“And Mari?”
“Yes?”
“Great find.”
We disconnected. Sometimes I forgot how well plugged in our keyboard jockey-slash-cosplayer with the face of a teenager was.
I put the Narita affiliate on the missing couple, then leaned back in my chair and tried to work out how the hell Naomi and husband had ended up back in Japan.
* * *
An hour later, Mari showed up dressed in Goth black, perhaps a reflection of her mood. She’d discovered that our charges had flown into Tokyo on a JAL flight from Los Angeles, holding a connecting voucher for a shuttle to the Osaka-Kyoto area. The tickets had been purchased at LAX.
I assembled the Brodie Security brain trust in the conference room. We brought them up-to-date, then coordinated with my expanding team of watchers, which now numbered six, in eight-hour shifts. If this kept up, I’d have a whole army trailing behind me.
We whipped through old business, then swung urgently into new.
Which focused exclusively on the Steam Walker.
One after another, detectives and researchers submitted the names of hired killers and known bagmen they’d run across. Each was disqualified by one or more members of our in-house conclave. Next we went through the roster of local crime syndicates, then national, then known independent gangs who might employ the Walker. We perused the police wanted list and sifted rumors of any new professionals we’d heard of with the skill set displayed in Napa, San Francisco, and Kyoto. We arrived at the end of our inquiry empty-handed.
Not a single match.
Not a single contender.
Which confirmed what Noda and I suspected. We had ourselves an assassin flying so far below the radar he might as well be on another planet. Among law enforcement ops on all levels, he was a nonentity. A true ghost. The legend from which even Japan’s top mafia enforcer insisted on keeping his distance.
We were up against a killer far more cunning than any of us could have imagined. The attempted poisoning was only the latest example of his work—Rie and I had been saved because of a kitchen mix-up. Naomi and Tad’s disappearance in transit reeked of the Steam Walker’s touch, even if he had orchestrated the vanishing act from these shores. Nearly every day brought a startling new gambit. If we couldn’t stop him coming for me, all was over.
For me. For Brodie Security. For everyone at the office.
The mood in the conference room nosedived. No one moved or spoke or looked at his or her neighbor. The stillness grew alarming. My breath caught in my throat.
It was as if I were previewing my own wake.
Finally, Hiroshi “Tako” Kawabata, a veteran detective with a good solve-rate, broke the silence.
CHAPTER 53
TEN years ago I followed a lead out to the Japan Sea coast.”
Groans rose up around the room. Kawabata was a good detective, with one major fault. He was a notorious babbler. His nickname, Tako, means “octopus,” because he’d entangle you in his stories and never let go.
“Not now, Tako,” someone said.
“This is the first I’m hearing of all this,” he fired back, which only served to increase the grumbling because no one believed he had anything meaningful to add. “I’ve been in Hawaii for two weeks. But even after taking so much time off, I’m ahead of all of you. I’ve actually heard of the Steam Walker before, out in Niigata City.”
As swiftly as the griping had erupted, it ceased. Niigata is a port town on the other side of the country. The Japan Sea side. Distant and isolated. Which meant fresh territory. Which meant a fresh source. Which meant, possibly, a fresh direction.
Rubbing his belly, the elderly detective said, “This is slim and only a rumor, but since we’ve got nothing else I thought I’d mention it. One evening me and a Niigata detective killed three bottles of saké in a back room of HQ, comparing notes on the ones that got away. He had a case where a local couple disappeared. Never found a clue. Never recovered the bodies. He attributed it to someone called the Steam Walker. You want more?”
“Yeah,” I said, “but make it quick.”
Tako’s nod was solemn. “The detective passed away five years ago but he told me one memorable thing about the Steam Walker. The name of a place. Tsumagoi.”
I sat up, startled. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“What is it, Brodie?” Mari asked.
I could barely get the words o
ut. “Kiyomi Komeki again. The fashion designer.”
“What about her?” someone asked.
My heart racing, I said, “Tsumagoi is a township spread over a large area near Mount Asama. Most of it is open land. It’s a cluster of farms and villages. Kanbara—where Komeki was born—is right there. It’s one of the villages.”
The logo was pointing the way. I didn’t yet know what it meant, but the Steam Walker had definitely slipped up.
We ran with it.
CHAPTER 54
MOST Japanese have never heard of Kanbara—Japan’s Pompeii—nor of Tsumagoi.
I knew of both because they had appeared in the caption of an old ukiyo-e, aka Japanese woodblock print, depicting the eruption of Mount Asama.
We set to work. Joining Noda and myself, a handpicked team combed through the earlier report Mari had assembled on Komeki. At the far end of the conference table, Mari listened to our chatter but focused on her screen—and a new assignment, which she tackled with great reluctance.
There were ten pages of material, some typed, some downloaded. Ten pages sounded like a lot, but it wasn’t. I’d read through them a half a dozen times on the first go-round. Now I simply stared at the file after skimming the pages once more. Most of the facts had been rattling around in my head since Mari first pulled the information together. I found nothing new. But one item floated to the top.
Seven retail outlets. One each in Osaka, Kyoto, Karuizawa, Sendai, and Sapporo. Two in Tokyo—Ginza and Aoyama.
The list of locations had bothered me from the outset, but I hadn’t been able to pinpoint why.
Now I zeroed in on them. One of the shops, the Karuizawa branch, was near Tsumagoi.
“You know,” I said, “Karuizawa is an oddball location. It doesn’t fit.”
“The owner comes from the area,” one of the staff pointed out.
“Yeah, but every other store is in a district known for its high-end boutiques. Extreme high-end. The Karuizawa site sits in an outlet mall.”