Rogue Empire (Blake Carver Series)

by William Tyree

  “You know I’ve always been a Carver fan, right? There have been plenty of times I stood by him when nobody else would. But this is different, Julian. We’re going to have to bring him in.”

  Tokyo

  The neon signs on the Shibuya buildings were as big and garish as Carver remembered, although some of the names had changed. Much to his amazement, the immense nine-floor Tower Records was still here, having somehow survived the rise of cloud music services. Back when he had lived here, it had been nothing less than a temple of music worship, the likes of which he had never seen since. Now he grazed the building with his fingertips as he walked past, gathering flecks of flakey yellow paint underneath his nails.

  A little further up, he walked west through a neighborhood of fashion boutiques and high-end eateries. The energy was somewhat less frantic over here, but it was no less crowded. The sidewalks were shoulder-to-shoulder, filled with young, carefree Japanese wearing trendy designer clothes.

  Carver was in the same suit he’d worn to see Nico Gold in Vegas, having counted on a quick return trip to D.C. At least he had managed to buy a couple of new shirts at LAX between flights. Soon he would meet with Eri and find out why she had beckoned him here. If this was anything but an overnight trip, he was going to need to get to a men’s boutique that specialized in Western sizes ASAP.

  A black van rolled slowly past. Rising sun flags flew from the hood, and speakers on top blared nationalist propaganda. He’d called the van parked in Jack Brenner’s driveway creepy, but it had nothing on this. His Japanese comprehension was a bit rusty, but he thought the lecture-on-wheels had something to do with the American military bases in Okinawa that had been in place since the end of World War II. To some, they were a much-needed firewall against Chinese aggression. To others, they were proof of a sinister American occupation without end.

  The familiar odor of fishy garbage that was so unique to Asian cities met him at the next street. Sushify – the restaurant he and Eri had dubbed Naked Fish — was still there, all right. But it was no longer relegated to a tiny portion of the building’s second floor. The eatery had since taken over the floor above it as well, displacing a motorcycle bar that had once blasted classic rock every night of the week.

  A familiar voice called out behind him. “You’re late.”

  Carver turned as Eri stepped out from the shadows. He squinted, reconciling the woman who stood before him with the one he had last seen five years ago. She had grown her hair out to shoulder-length and had added some color to it, making it more brown than black. If he had to guess, she still fit into the same jeans that she had the last time he saw her. He stole a glance at her hands. Still no diamond ring.

  “It’s good to see you,” he said, leaning in to kiss her cheek. But she pulled back, leaving him to settle for an awkward hug.

  “We can catch up later. Ikimasho.” She turned, motioning for him to follow her down the alley.

  Carver’s mood plummeted. He hadn’t exactly expected Eri to jump in his arms after all the time that had passed, but he had at least expected basic pleasantries.

  “I’m starving,” he said. “What about Naked Fish?”

  She did not look back. Instead, she led him to a red racing motorcycle with custom spoke wheels that was parked amongst a row of scooters. Since when did she learn to drive a motorcycle? When they had lived together in D.C., she didn’t even have a regular driver’s license.

  She put her helmet on and spoke through the still-open face mask. “You can order food on the train to Kyoto.”

  “Whoa. Who said anything about going to Kyoto? I just got here.”

  “No time to explain.”

  Carver felt his blood pressure rising. The trip to Tokyo from Northern Arizona via Los Angeles had been 18 hours door-to-door. His back was killing him, and Kyoto was another 300 miles away.

  His ex handed him a helmet and scooted forward to make room on the seat. “Dozo. I know you have questions. But we had better go while we still can.”

  Carver heard a screech of tires. He turned. The propaganda van he had seen earlier was rounding the corner at high speed. The voice over the loudspeaker was no longer shouting nationalist rhetoric. Instead, it was telling them to stay where they were.

  “Friends of yours?” he said.

  “Shut up and get on the bike.”

  The van picked up speed. It was coming straight at them.

  “Eri?”

  “Hold tight.”

  Carver wrapped the fingers of his right hand around Eri’s shoulder, and put his left around her still-trim waist. The bike lunged forward just in time to avoid becoming a permanent part of the van’s grill. The van swerved after them like a hungry beast. It flattened a street sign and punted a mailbox, sending hundreds of pieces of mail sailing high in the air.

  The motorbike shot like a bullet down the dark end of the street, and then skidded to an abrupt stop as Eri realized she had driven them into a dead end. They were cornered. Even the storefronts were shuttered.

  The only sign of life was a ramen vendor who was preparing his pushcart for the night shift. The vintage wooden cart would not have been out of place on a Japanese street a century earlier, when ramen had still been called “Chinese soba.” An elderly ramen man stood beside it, patiently stirring an enormous vat of frothy soup. He either did not notice them or did not care.

  Like a wolf that had trapped its prey, the van slowed as it came down the street.

  “Who did you piss off?” Carver said.

  “Long story. Hope I live to tell it.”

  Out of sheer muscle memory, Carver reached for his SIG Sauer. It wasn’t there. The weapon was still locked in his father’s gun safe at the Two Elk Ranch.

  This was all Julian’s fault. Being put on administrative leave meant Carver had been forced to fly commercial. Getting on the plane with the SIG at Los Angeles Airport would have been as simple as checking it into the cargo hold, but the odds of clearing security with a firearm in Japan were all but hopeless. Had he still been with the agency, they would have sent a local outfitter with a small arsenal for him to choose from. Given the circumstances, he would be completely dependent on Eri’s resources.

  “Are you carrying?” Carver asked her.

  She rolled her eyes. “This is Tokyo, not Texas. Not even the Yakuza carry guns now.”

  “What?”

  “Too risky. Life in prison.”

  Now the van came to a stop about 100 feet away. The side door rolled open. Three pear-shaped figures stepped out. It was still too dark to see their faces, but to Carver, it looked as if they were carrying wooden baseball bats.

  He scratched the day-old growth on his chin. “If it’s a street brawl they want, we had better find something to fight with.”

  Eri reached into her purse and pulled out her Krazy Kisser stun baton. With a flick of the wrist, the black weapon elongated to 18-inches in length. A pulse of blue electricity crackled at the tip.

  Carver frowned and shook his head. Although it was better than nothing, it was no match for a baseball bat, which was much longer and heavier. They needed

  He walked over to the ramen pushcart. The elderly vendor’s face glowed red under the lantern.

  “Komban wa,” the ramen man said. Good evening.

  Carver knew what he wanted, and how to say it. He had, after all, learned to read the three Japanese alphabets during his first month in the country, and memorized more than 2,500 words. But his pronunciation was another matter. It had always been terrible, and a fair amount of private tutoring had done little to improve it. For this reason, he thought better of engaging the ramen man in what would surely be a frustrating conversation for both of them.

  Instead he reached into his pocket and pulled out five 10,000 yen notes — the equivalent of about $500 U.S. dollars. He pressed the money into the ramen man’s shirt pocket. Then he put his hand on the cart’s roof, which served as shelter for hungry customers on rainy nights.

  “Okay?�
�� Carver said.

  The ramen man gave him the thumbs up. “Dai jobu!”

  As he walked back to the idling motorcycle, Carver loosened the umbrella coupling and expanded the pole to its full length of about twelve feet. He got on the bike behind Eri, mounting the pole under his right arm as if it were a jousting stick.

  “Ramming speed,” Carver said. He lowered his face shield and curled his left arm around Eri’s waist.

  The motorcycle roared like a lion and shot forth like a slingshot. Eri aimed the bike at the heart of the trio, with Carver’s harpoon-like weapon protruding over her right shoulder. The baffled thugs broke ranks before her, tripping over themselves as they scrambled to get out of the way of the two motorcycle maniacs.

  “Lean left,” Eri said as she swung the bike at the last moment, bearing down on one of the attackers. He dropped his bat as he ran, and the tip of the massive umbrella caught him under his left shoulder blade, dislocating it. He tumbled against the asphalt in agony.

  But as Eri sped toward for the gap between the van and the open street behind it, the vehicle reversed course, blocking their path.

  Eri managed to brake and turn just in time. Carver managed to hang on, but just barely. Then she veered off again in the direction of the other two assailants, who had huddled around their fallen colleague. They straightened, eyes full of panic, as the motorbike bore down on them at a speed that was just barely controllable.

  Carver tightened his grip on the ramen umbrella pole. One of the men took off running in the direction of a grid of fish crates that were stacked several feet high. “Lean right,” Eri said as she guided the motorbike in pursuit. Carver did, but not before the third man swung his bat and let go. The slender end of the 42-inch Louisville Slugger struck the front tire spokes just right. The tire locked up. The bike’s rear end took flight, and so did Carver and Eri.

  Time seemed to slow down. In mid-air, Carver curled himself into a ball, hoping to minimize the inevitable damage to his body. They landed among the stacks of fish crates, the cheap plywood breaking underneath them. Carver’s helmet struck something harder, though, that made him think of melons. He rolled over, seeing the thing that had ultimately broken his fall – the skull of one of their attackers. The man’s head was bashed in. His right eye had popped out of its socket.

  Carver rolled to his knees, then got to his feet. The bike had wrapped itself around a pole that appeared to be holding up enough electrical wires to illuminate the entire neighborhood. The rear wheel was still spinning, but the front wheel was badly mangled, rubber ripped away, snapped spokes protruding at unnatural angles.

  In the distance, he saw the red lantern on the ramen man’s cart as the old man hustled it down the street. Eri, meanwhile, was sprawled among the mess, unmoving. Her eyes were closed, but she was still breathing.

  The last man standing was coming toward them, popping the slugger against the palm of his hand.

  The wrecked bike triggered an idea from the recesses of his infallible memory. A former CIA colleague stationed in Beijing had told him that in China, sharpened motorcycle and bicycle spokes were common street weapons. He put the heel of his boot against the motorcycle wheel and wriggled one of the loose spokes back and forth until it snapped off.

  He tested the jagged edge against the palm of his hand. It was sharp, all right, but had far less reach than a baseball bat. He was going to have to get in close.

  Carver retreated further down the dead-end street, hoping to draw the lone remaining thug away from Eri. It worked. When he was within 15 feet, Carver whipped the spoke back and forth before him, testing its balance.

  Just as he was ready to move in, the van turned its wheels until its headlights were fixed squarely on Carver, temporarily blinding him. He danced to the right, forcing the attacker to circle like a boxer in the ring.

  Soon, his attacker’s face was illuminated. He was just a kid, no more than 21, barely shaving. He was grinning like a fool, but it was obvious that he had never been more scared in his life. But unlike his colleagues, the kid wasn’t actually holding a Louisville Slugger. Close up and in the vehicle’s illumination, Carver could see that it was actually a shinai — a kendo sword made of bamboo. That figured. As Carver had learned during his year abroad in Tokyo, kendo drew disciples from all walks of life, but was particularly coveted by right-wing nationalists.

  Gripping the shinai at the base with both hands, the kid pointed the shinai at Carver’s throat just below the helmet faceplate. The kid was stupefied. Who was this white guy, mimicking his kendo stance, holding this tiny motorcycle spoke?

  In kendo, Carver recalled, every defensive move triggered a nearly automatic offensive response. Sure, there were an infinite number of ways to attack an opponent. But the dojo masters, almost without exception, emphasized tradition and perfection of a set number of actions and reactions until they were second nature.

  Carver decided to use that to his advantage. He assumed a classic defensive position, hoping to induce his opponent into Katate Waza, a one-armed strike to the throat.

  But when Carver lowered his right arm, as if he was going in for a torso strike, his opponent’s muscle memory kicked in. He leaned forward in a classic thrust, aiming for Carver’s jugular. Carver ducked left and threw himself forward in a classic flying lunge from the Western fencing tradition. The spoke entered the soft flesh of the kid’s neck, just left of his Adam’s apple, into his windpipe. Carver withdrew it and sidestepped left, watching as the blood spurt out forcefully in the white gleam of the headlights.

  The kid fell to his knees, palm to his neck, trying to slow the gush of life from his body. Carver also put pressure over the wound, but it was no use. The kid was choking on his own blood. Forget speaking. He couldn’t even breathe.

  The kid caught one rattling last breath before his eyes fixed on some object in the great beyond. Carver turned the kid over and pushed the shirt up his back. As he had suspected, the Rising Sun was branded into the skin above his waistband.

  Up the street, the thug that Carver had maimed with the ramen umbrella limped to the van and climbed inside. The vehicle made a hasty U-turn and squealed tires as it sped away into the night.

  Carver went to check on Eri. He was relieved to see that she was awake and slowly testing her limbs. “Anything broken?”

  She sat up and rolled to her knees. “I am okay.”

  Carver helped her to her feet. “Suppose you tell me who these people are, and why they’re trying to kill me?”

  She checked her watch. “Ikimasho. We can still catch our train.”

  Shinjuku Train Station

  Tokyo

  The bullet train sliced through the gleaming heart of the Tokyo metropolitan area like a rocket struggling to break free of earth’s atmosphere. At 198 miles per hour, it was astonishingly quiet save for the white noise that seemed to wrap every sound in a magic envelope, lulling its sleep-deprived city dwellers into a collective nap. All except Eri, who had insisted on sitting in the aisle seat so that she could see who was coming and going from the other cars.

  Carver leaned close and whispered in her ear. “This is the part where you tell me why I’m here.”

  “I don’t know where to start.”

  “When was the last time your life was normal?”

  “A few months ago. I was leaving work. It was late, and I stepped into the elevator and found myself alone with Fujimoto, one of the old-timers in the agency. He helped catch the Aum Shinrikyo cult back in the 1990s. Remember them?”

  Carver did. The cult had been responsible for a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system that had killed 12 and injured nearly 5,000. “Yes. Go on.”

  “Fujimoto is a legend around that place. I had never actually seen him in person. Just in old news clips. The rumor was that at some point, he had been moved to a basement office, where his work rooting out domestic terrorism groups continued in secret. Others said he had gone insane, and he refused to retire.”

  �
�Eri, what does this all have to do with me?”

  She snorted dismissively. “Same old Blake. You never had any patience for context.”

  “This is different. I’ve been attacked twice in two days, in two different countries. Can you blame me for wanting answers?”

  “Yes. But I’m going to tell this story my way, or not at all.”

  “Just like old times.” Carver leaned his head back and gazed up at the ceiling, as if he were asking God for help. “Fine. Go ahead.”

  “So I was in the elevator with Fujimoto. I was too nervous to say hello. And out of the blue, he says my name. Eri Sato. Just like that. And he tells me he has been watching my career. And he asks me out for a drink.”

  Carver felt the old jealousy pangs reactivate. “And just how old is Fujimoto?”

  “Seventy-seven. But it wasn’t like that. He said he had a case he wanted to discuss. Of course, I jumped at the chance.”

  “He took me to a noisy place where no one could hear us. He told me he was investigating the Restoration Party. Fujimoto thought they had been fixing elections.”

  Carver didn’t know much about the Restoration Party apart from what he had seen in the news. It was a nationalist movement created by Akira Ito, who had recently become Prime Minister. Ito’s critics called him a fascist, but no figure in modern Japanese politics had ever become so popular so fast. His party had been the first to seriously challenge the country’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in decades. In speeches, the party often referenced Japan’s golden eras, including the Edo Period, in which the country was closed to the outside world, as well as the 20-year period before World War II, during which it was the lone Asian superpower. Prime Minister Ito sought to clamp down on immigration and limit foreign participation in traditionally Japanese sports such as Sumo wrestling. Also, in an attempt to halt the country’s declining population, he had redoubled incentives for couples to marry and have children.