by Paul Mceuen
Jake and Kitano got in the Golf. Jake pulled down the visor.
OPEN THE GLOVE BOX.
The glove box was completely empty, save for an iPhone.
Jake picked up the phone, and the display lit up. On screen were driving instructions. The first direction said:
LEAVE THE MONEY
IN THE PARKING SPACE.
“Leave the money”?
Jake got out of the car and placed the backpack containing the money on the asphalt, Kitano watching closely from the passenger seat. Jake got back in, put the Golf in gear, backed out, started down the spiral ramp to the exit.
One hundred tracers were now sitting in an empty parking space.
45
ORCHID WALKED ALONE TOWARD THE CABIN. THE SUN CUT through the trees, the snow bright. The air was cold and fresh, a break from the underground shelter. Soon Orchid would be free of that place—it smelled like something had already died down there. Minutes before, she had left Maggie Connor in the shelter. Tied up, her prisoner was shaking uncontrollably and had been for the last half-hour. The hotshot granddaughter looked just as pathetic as the hotshot grandfather had looked at the end… and Orchid wasn’t done with her yet.
Orchid entered the cabin, carrying with her a laptop computer and a folded white robe. She placed the items in the center of the dusty floor. She unfolded the white cloth to reveal a short tantō sword and a World War II vintage Papa Nambu pistol. She rechecked the pistol’s magazine, then pulled back a loose floorboard and hid the handgun underneath. She carefully replaced the board and arranged the folded robe and the sword to cover the spot.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor of the cabin, she fired up the computer, a Lenovo netbook with a built-in wireless card. The reception was better up here. She logged into her mainframe and checked the GPS reading coming from the Volkswagen Golf. The vehicle had left Boston, and it was heading north, following the route she’d laid out. The mainframe also had a piece of voice-recognition software running that had been monitoring all the police bands, but it had picked up no relevant APBs yet.
So far, so good.
She then clicked on the Zip file, a digital information package revealing everything about the Uzumaki. She scanned through the memos with large letters stamped on them. TS. NOFORN.
They were copies of classified documents collected over the years, at considerable expense and risk, all about the U.S. acquisition of the deadly fungus after the war. Documents proving that Fort Detrick had an aggressive countermeasures program under way, all with the imprimatur of the deputy national security adviser. Documents that made it clear that once the United States had finished developing the cure for the Uzumaki, it would have in its possession a devastating biological weapon.
Orchid hit a key and an audio clip played, the most damning of the evidence. The recordings of Dunne and Kitano. “It’s Connor’s law. The Uzumaki will be the perfect weapon. Once Detrick creates a cure.” Dunne’s voice. The voiceprint was incontrovertible. The son of a bitch was caught.
Then a second voice—Kitano: “Where would you release it?”
Dunne: “One option is Harbin. Like construction stirred it up. Or near one of the Chinese agriculture ministry’s biological research facilities south of there. Make it look like the incompetent fools were working on the Uzumaki, accidentally released it themselves.”
Kitano: “Like the Soviet anthrax incident at Sverdlovsk in ’79?”
Dunne: “Exactly.”
That would seal it. The Chinese government would go ballistic.
She typed in the private email addresses of the ambassadors of China and Japan, along with the top-ranking military officers at the Chinese Ministry of State Security and the Japanese Defense Intelligence Headquarters, then attached the Zip file containing the documents.
She hit Send.
46
DUNNE STARED AT THE MAP ON THE WALL. AT THE ONE-HOUR mark, the position signal came in. Center of the garage. Nothing.
The money hadn’t moved.
Now the two-hour mark was seconds away.
Bing! The dot appeared on the map. No one said a word.
The FBI director was first to break the silence. “I don’t get it. The money hasn’t moved. It’s been two hours and the money hasn’t moved. I say we go in.”
“Yes,” the President said. “Do it now.”
Dunne tried to focus but couldn’t think clearly. It’s been two hours. Why should I trust you? … Some moments he felt as though he were above the room, floating, watching the proceedings from a distance. Other times he felt frozen, paralyzed, his thoughts acidic, eating away at the tissues of his brain. What the hell was wrong with him?
The President’s chief of staff entered the room. “Mr. President. Something strange is happening. At the Chinese and Japanese embassies.”
“What?”
“The Chinese ambassador is livid. He says he must talk to you. Immediately. The Japanese ambassador as well.”
“George, we’re a bit busy here. Send somone over to babysit them.”
“Both ambassadors claim we are in violation of the 1972 UN Biological Weapons Convention. With our development of an offensive weapon called the Uzumaki.”
The room went silent. Dunne felt as if his skin was burning.
“They used that word?”
“Yes, Mr. President. Sometime in the last hour, Orchid sent both the Chinese and Japanese governments a message. We don’t know what’s in it yet, but it’s clear she informed them about the Uzumaki.”
The President was silent for nearly a minute, anger and worry etched on his face. “Goddamn it. I don’t understand. Why would she do this?”
“Mr. President. One other thing. A number of the staff from both embassies are said to be leaving work, scrambling to get on flights to Beijing and Tokyo. The rumor is that she’s already set the Uzumaki loose.”
47
JAKE AND KITANO DROVE NORTH. THE IPHONE DISPLAY TOLD them where to go. On its face was a map, with a little circle showing their location. Below it were written instructions, updating as they progressed. Jake put the phone on the dashboard where he could easily see it.
They were approaching the Canadian border now, just east of Lake Ontario, an area called the Thousand Islands. Here, the Saint Lawrence River widened and fragmented, wandering among the eighteen hundred chunks of land isolated by the river, each a moored ship in the slow-moving flow. A light snow was falling. It was still October, but winter was knocking at the door. This far north, snow could come at any time after September.
After leaving Boston, they’d traveled in total silence. The instructions on the iPhone told Jake exactly which roads to take, a series of state and county highways passing through western Massachusetts, cutting the corner of Vermont, then into New York and through the Adirondacks and on to Watertown. Jake had hit the radio a couple of times, tuned to a news station in case anything happened. But Kitano turned it off, without a word, each time.
Four days. Four days since the psychopath Orchid had started her rampage. Liam was dead, Vlad was dead, Maggie was a prisoner, and Dylan was mortally ill.
Four days.
Jake was sore all over, an aftereffect from his near electrocution a day and a half ago. His right ear still ached, his hearing still bad on that side. Roscoe said it might never come all the way back.
Jake had his game face on, but he was weighed down with worry and guilt about Dylan. It killed Jake how brave Dylan had been, running from Orchid, risking his life to get rid of the Uzumaki. It broke Jake’s heart that Dylan’s bravery had been repaid in such a horrible fashion. Jake felt responsible. He’d filled Dylan with ideas about being brave and conquering fears. And now Dylan was paying for it. A nine-year-old kid. Their last meeting had been tough, right before Jake had left for Boston. Jake had stood outside Dylan’s containment room, looking through the glass, phone to his ear. “I don’t feel right,” Dylan had said, his voice thin. “I can’t think right.”
Jake had promised Dylan the moon. “I’ll get your mom. I’ll bring her back. We’ll get through this.” He tried to believe it as he said it, so that Dylan would believe it, too. “Hang in there, little guy.”
The doctor was ready with a hypodermic. They planned to sedate Dylan as soon as Jake left. It was the only thing they knew to do. It took all Jake had to hold back the darkness. He had never in his life felt so powerless.
Jake was haunted by a truth he’d been circling for months. More than anything he’d wanted since the war, he wanted a life with Maggie and Dylan. He couldn’t picture any other future. But his fantasy was shattered before it came close to coming true, replaced by a reality where Maggie was Orchid’s prisoner, Dylan was gravely ill, and all Jake could do was chauffeur an old war criminal to his death.
He tried to shake it off. He was beat up, adrenaline-burnt, but itching for action. The combination of frustration, anger, and anxiety made him dangerous, possibly prone to mistakes. Every soldier knew that danger the way he knew his rifle. Unreleased pressure ate at you, chewed you up. Jake had seen it, the slow, creeping toll of unreleased pressure. Months in the desert, staring across the sand, waiting to kill or be killed, putting on the damned bioweapons suits, taking them off again. It was a relief when the final orders came down and they were moving. Once that happened, the air changed. Everything was sharp, like a knife, the contrast suddenly turned up. You could do anything.
“THERE IS A CRISIS,” KITANO SAID SUDDENLY, JUST AFTER they left the town of Hammond, a few miles from the Canada border.
Jake jumped so hard he swerved. The back wheels slipped before catching the road again. The road was empty, nothing but forest on either side. He hadn’t seen another car for a couple of miles. “What’re you talking about?”
“In Japan. A crisis with the men. Approximately two-thirds of the young men. They have become soshoku-danshi.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Soshoku-danshi. Herbivorous males. Grass-eating men.” Kitano shook his head. “They are soft. Weak. No longer interested in war. They are not even interested in women. They garden. And buy trinkets for their homes. A marketing report from Matsushita maintains that forty percent of them sit down when they piss.”
Kitano went silent. Jake glanced over. The old man’s face was drawn, eyes narrowed. His hands scratched at his skin. Kitano said, “The Japanese defense ministry is calling it a crisis. The grass-eaters are taking over, and soon there will be no men left to fight. The ministry is forced to spend billions developing robots that will fight to defend Japan.” He glanced at Jake, his jaundiced eyes dark. “I am ashamed to be Japanese.”
Jake turned back to the road. An old police cruiser sat in the driveway of a shuttered bait shop to his right, unoccupied. He felt Kitano’s gaze like a shadow on him. “It’s a phase. A fad. Next year they’ll all be taking up kickboxing.”
“No. You are wrong. It is not a phase. It’s the war.”
“What war?”
Kitano smirked. “What war? The only war. Not these skirmishes you have now. They are children’s games.”
The sky overhead was slate-gray. Everything was old, the houses, the cars they passed. A cellphone tower peeked above the trees on a nearby hillside, the only evidence that they were not in some kind of time warp, taken back two decades.
The only war. World War II. The last full-on, all-out, winner-take-all struggle for survival. A war where the most powerful nations in the world fought for their lives. Not a strategic skirmish. No arguments about dominoes or oil. A war of survival. The world had seen nothing like it since.
The war had left its mark on America. Given America the swagger, the confidence to rule the world for more than half a century. Japan had experienced the other side, what it felt like to be conquered.
Jake pulled up to an intersection with a four-way stop sign. No other cars were in sight. “That was a long time ago,” he said.
Kitano shook his head. “A few decades are nothing for Japan. We are a nation that does not forget easily. We are held together by our memories.” He closed his eyes. Jake could see stains growing around the armpits of Kitano’s shirt. The guy was scared to death.
“After the war,” Kitano said, “we were nothing. The Americans emasculated us. They defiled the emperor, made him a man. They imposed their laws, re-created Japan in America’s image. They even confiscated our fighting swords. To keep our traditions alive, we fought with blunt, dull metal.” Kitano smirked, spat on the floor. “They would have us be children.” Kitano returned to his scratching, hands working furiously. Red streaks appeared on his arms. If he scratched any harder, he’d draw blood.
“Take it easy,” Jake said. “You all right?”
Kitano stopped suddenly, tilted his head, listening carefully. “Do you hear that? The sound? Like a steady knocking?”
Jake listened. The road was two lanes, poured concrete laid down in sections, with seams between the sections. The tires made a repetitive knocking noise as they passed over. “What about it?”
“How much did they tell you about me?”
“Enough.”
“I was no great warrior. I was a technician. An engineer. Like you, Jake. You drove bulldozers, correct?”
Startled, Jake asked, “Who told you that?”
Kitano ignored the question. “There is a story I will tell you. Not my own. A tale told to me by one of the other Tokkō. He said he would hear a sound. He even described it as the sound of tires on a road. Regular. Thump, thump, thump. The Tokkō. They were to travel to the United States, carried by some of the last remaining submarines in the Japanese fleet. They were to attack with the Uzumaki. These were the most important men in Japan, proudly serving the emperor. They were selected from existing Tokkō squads. Chosen for their dedication. Do you understand?”
“No.”
“Seigo Mori and I were both from the University of Tokyo. Almost all of the kamikaze were from the University of Tokyo. The best and the brightest. The soldiers would come and line us up. ‘Who will volunteer?’ they would ask. ‘Who will sacrifice for Japan?’ Seigo was a French literature major. He was a romantic. He stepped forward.
“Seigo was assigned to Tokkō Squad 232. His kamikaze squadron was ordered to attack the Americans at Okinawa. They were all young, flying dreadful planes, dregs left over after everything valuable was shot down. He had on his senninbari, a belt stitched by the hands of a thousand women. His mother sat on a street corner for days to get the necessary hands. He also had his hanayome ningyo, his bride doll.”
Jake tried to follow what Kitano was saying, but he kept jumping around, barely making sense.
“Seigo left a letter addressed to his older sister, describing his last day. I read it later, in 1954. She showed it to me. His squadron, the letter said, had spent the previous night at a tea house, drinking and smiling and laughing. In the morning they faced their hometowns and sang patriotic songs. Though they all had been racked with doubts, all uncertainty vanished as they taxied their planes down the runway. The local girls came out, waved cherry blossom boughs. Sent them on their journey. They were to die, they were proud. They were the only hope.
“Seigo said he was happy. He said he was alive in a way he had never been before. He longed to fly into the arms of death, on a mission to save his country. ‘To save my father and mother, my sister from the white devils.’
“They took off after dawn. Then Seigo heard it, coming from the front of the plane, the thumping. His heart sank. It was the engine. He’d been carefully attending to it for a week, trying to make it run on the terrible fuel that they were given. He tried, but in truth he was doomed from the beginning. The plane would not make it the last hundred and fifty miles to the target. It would be lucky to make it back to the base.
“He told me that he cursed and screamed, beat his hands against the controls. His fellow Tokkō pilots began to pull ahead, disappearing into the clouds. These men were the closest brothers he’d ev
er had. They were to die together. The thought of leaving them behind was too much. But he had no choice. So he returned.
“After he landed, he ran to his barracks. Thankfully, no one was around. He was alone with his shame. It was the worst moment of his life. He had let down his family, his country. And most of all, his fellow Tokkō. He said that he felt as though he were already dead. His family thought that he was dead. The only idea that brought him comfort was that soon he would be in another airplane, pointed toward another American warship. But that was not his fate. Instead he was called to Harbin. Do you understand now? Why he was chosen?”
“No. I don’t.”
“He had proved he was willing to die. He was very brave, Seigo Mori. He wanted to get in a plane and attack right away. But as a Tokkō, he was willing to wait, to be one of the walking dead for as long as was required. He was no soshoku-danshi. No grass-eating man.”
A NARROW ASPHALT ROAD BRANCHED OFF TO THE RIGHT, and the arrow on the iPhone told Jake to take it. A few more turns put them onto a gravel road. Jake didn’t like the way Kitano was talking. He felt the menace coming off the old man, in addition to the smell of sweat, a pent-up aggression that might boil over at any moment. And the scratching—he was going to tear through his skin.
Kitano was starting to panic, Jake reasoned. Cracking up. Jake would have to keep a close watch when they got out of the car. He might try to run, or even attack, as preposterous as that seemed. Jake didn’t blame him. Orchid had viciously tortured Liam. She’d killed Vlad and Harpo, murdered Maggie’s housemate. She’d tried her best to kill Jake. What would she do when she got her hands on Kitano?
Kitano was distracting Jake with his anger, his stories about the war. It was dangerous, keeping Jake from focusing on his real adversary. Orchid was his target. He needed to keep his mind on Orchid, not on Kitano. Another hundred miles north and they’d enter a huge swath of nearly uninhabited wilderness and into what was known as the “north hole” in GPS satellite coverage. Satellites were predominantly over the equatorial regions: coverage got worse and worse the farther north you went.