“You mean this is part of the plan? For me to discover your secret workshop?”
“I don’t wish to be braggadocious, but it hardly makes a difference. This whole floor does not exist. You couldn’t convince anyone that we’re really here. Even if you had some electronic device, you can’t get a signal here. If anyone gets wind of what we’re doing, we could just move. There are no records, there is nothing for anyone to store or use against us. If you don’t exist digitally, you don’t exist”
“I exist.”
“Are you sure about that?”
He stands up. He stubs his cigarette out underfoot and puts the mask back on his face. And as the light falls on him, I recognise him. He’s the masked man in a pinstriped suit. He stares at me. I stare back at him. His mask is neither a flu nor a hay-fever mask. It’s a round heavy-duty one.
“Why are you wearing that mask?”
He doesn’t respond. But he doesn’t stop staring at me and makes no move to look away. He just stares at my face. I can’t tell what he’s thinking behind his mask. It’s completely round with a steel clip over the bridge of the nose. The last time I wore one was to keep out the stench of rotting fish and much worse after the tsunami in Ishinomaki.
His eyes crease and I can’t tell if he’s smiling or scowling. Then he springs forward. I feel his hand grab for my wrist, and I’m too slow to react.
The masked man holds my hand in a vice-like grip and yanks me closer to him. A pain shoots though my shoulder as he twists my arm. I wheel around and shove my free hand out above me where I think his head is, but my hand flies harmlessly into the air.
Then he has an arm around my neck, and is squeezing me close to him, lifting my feet off the ground. I smell sweat and blood. I wriggle my arms and legs desperate to find something to rest my weight on, but I can find nothing. I don’t know how long he holds my neck, but I can see stars and my hearing drifts in and out of focus. Then it stops. I can’t breathe. I feel faint. Then I’m free and gasping for air. I smell something rotting. Something spicy. Then I’m falling to the ground. The masked man is standing over me. I can’t make out his features. Everything is a blur. I see a mask. I feel a hand caressing my hair, then I can’t move; a great weight is on my back and chest. Something covered in cloth is in my mouth. It tastes salty. It’s wriggling about in my mouth. His finger in a glove? The last thing I remember is latching my teeth onto the cloth and trying to break it off. If it was his finger at least I could leave some teeth marks if not any permanent damage.
Then nothing.
CHAPTER THIRTY
I’m lying on something hard and cold. It feels like an overturned fridge, or the steel counter of a restaurant kitchen. My vision is hazy, five bright lights bear down on me. The room is white. Metal knives hang from the ceiling and walls, glistening in the light. But there is no smell of cooking, no onions simmering or garlic frying like with Aunt Tanaka’s house special ramen. There’s no smell at all, but my nose is burning. And there’s a numbness in my throat like someone has scraped it out with sand paper. I have a headache. My right wrist hurts. I have no idea if it’s day or night. It’s bright. I’m under a spotlight. The masked man is talking. I try to tune in to what he’s saying. He’s wearing a different mask. A surgical mask. He has a metal tray like a dentist, but there are no drills, just a selection of knives, needles and syringes.
“You’re having trouble with your deliverables.”
“My what?” I manage.
“Your deliverables. Don’t you speak English? Your deliverable outcomes. You thought you would be streamlining the funnel, not entering a bottleneck.”
I can turn my head from side to side. I can’t see very much around me but I try my best to focus on my surroundings. Perhaps it’s a kitchen after all and not a hospital. No matter how I move my head I can’t see any funnels or bottles.
I try to sit up but can’t move. My legs and arms are bound. He watches me squirm.
“You have a lack of depth in that space.”
“What space?”
“The escape space. I’m afraid we’ll have to decline to proceed along that avenue.”
“Are you speaking in code?”
“Code? Ha! You don’t even recognise your own language. We are speaking the language of business, are we not? Isn’t English the language of international trade and commerce? The language of the globalised international community? I’m just running the idea up the flagpole and seeing who salutes it.”
“Nobody speaks like that.”
“Really? I must have a word with my teachers. Perhaps their textbook is out of date.”
I strain my neck and look down the length of my body. My arms are bound with the kind of tape Aunt Tanaka uses to pick up cat hairs from the sofa. My shins are taped to metal clasps on the edge of the steel table. Like the handles on a flat iron pan that Aunt Tanaka uses for frying yaki soba noodles. So, it’s a kitchen, not a surgery? But what are the syringes for?
“There is no flagpole in this kitchen,” I say.
He laughs.
“You are having problems leveraging your downsides, thinking outside the box. Use blue-sky thinking.”
I don’t even bother looking for a box. I have a pretty good idea that there is no blue sky in this room. Anyone who thinks so must be either drunk or crazy. The masked man does not appear to be drunk. He’s laughing a lot, but he’s not really having a very good time. And even doctors who own their own surgeries can’t show up to work drunk.
So, I’m pretty sure now I’m dealing with a madman. Uncle Kentaro says if you try to reason with a crazy person, you’re the one who goes crazy and the crazy one just enjoys the attention. Though he’s usually talking about Aunt Tanaka. He says the best approach is to agree to everything she says, let her think that what you want to do is her suggestion and get as far away from her as possible. This seems like the best advice for my situation. But getting away from this mad man is not going to be easy.
“Yes, I will salute your flagpole if you want me to. But I can’t move my hands. Or legs.”
”A regrettable synergy. We’re a bleeding-edge environment, and decisions had to be made...”
He talks a while more like this. I have no idea what he’s on about, but he gets quite excited about something he calls solutions clustering. While he’s getting excited I manage to loosen my left leg. Beside it are the metal trolley, the syringes and knives.
“What are you talking about? Please speak simply. I’m easily confused.”
He laughs again.
“For one who gets easily confused, I have to admire your razor-sharp dedication to your goal. You never wavered in your search for Aoi. You never doubted the rightness of your cause and you are closer than you’ll ever know to finding her. Only you are 20 years too late. She has served her purpose and so have you. There will be a bacterial infection travelling through your veins very shortly. It’s deadly to all Caucasians. The ultimate in viral marketing.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
He laughs.
“No, of course you don’t. It has taken me many years to come up with a weapon to level the playing field. It’s not perfect, but the Korean race has a chance to even the score. We’ll see the truth of that when you take your medicine. The H1Jongolia strain is nonlethal to Asians, but to those who carry the marker DNA for white skin, well, they’re in trouble, I’m afraid. The H1J strain latches on to the pigmentation gene and spreads through the body. But allow me to demonstrate. Drink this.”
He holds a vial of something white. He holds it under my nose. It smells of bleach.
“I’m not drinking that.”
“Oh, but I insist.”
I scrunch my mouth and eyes up. I try to kick out and scratch with my hands, but I’m as helpless as ever.
He chuckles.
“Say ‘ahh’.”
The bitter taste of plastic is in my mouth. His gloves are around my mouth and jaw. He yanks my face forward. My pa
lms are sweating. I know this is the end if I can’t think of some way to fight back. But what?
Then I feel a finger and thumb close in a vice around my nose. I can’t breathe. But if I open my mouth, he will pour the stuff in my mouth. I hold my breath. But it’s not like holding it when you dive under water. For one thing, I hadn’t taken a deep breath beforehand and for another, when you go swimming you can touch the bottom of the pool and kick yourself free. I try, I really do, but I see black shapes even though my eyes are shut. My chest is stinging, and I can’t move my arms and legs, no matter how hard I push, even the leg I thought I had freed. I don’t have much choice. I don’t know how, but I decide here and now that I will not let him get his way. He will not succeed, even if it means I have to take my own life. I will not let him take it for me.
I feel my mouth open and my lungs fill with air, at least they start too, then the liquid goes in my mouth. It’s as thick as a milkshake, but has no taste. That’s the worst thing about it, an alien presence. It doesn’t belong in my body. I gag, but I can’t breathe through my nose. I can’t spit the stuff out, I have no spit left. All I can do is swallow, gulp it down and hope there’s time to breathe later. I still can’t breathe. My eyes are open but I can’t see through my tears. I swallow and swallow. I’m losing it. Every last bit of energy is being snuffed out of my body. Now I can’t move even if I wanted to. I have nothing left. This is it. I don’t fear the end. I’m calm about it, just assessing my part in life up to now. My body is coming to the end of its usefulness and there isn’t long for my mind either. And it doesn’t really matter. I’m just sorry that I failed. I got close to something, but in the end I wasn’t fast enough, big enough, smart enough to do what I needed to do. I can’t stop this madman anymore than I can move my legs. Any more than I can save a missing girl. I don’t even know where or how she died. Was she strapped to a cold table and forced to choke to death on some doctor’s secret poison? Did she suffer? It doesn’t seem to matter much to me now. If she’s dead. But what if she made it through? There’s something bothering me even now, as I take my last breath, that makes me wonder. What does he mean closer than I’ll ever know to Aoi? I’m filled with rage and frustration that I’ll never find out.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I gasp and my life returns. The gunk passes down my throat and air rushes in my lungs. I retch, but it’s a dry heave and still the oxygen comes in. My mind knows I’m as good as dead, but my body doesn’t know that. It’s alive.
“Ah, back with us? I thought you had declined the opportunity to facilitate a head-to-head.”
He keeps talking like that. But I know I’m the equal of him. Better actually: I don’t tie girls to tables and fill them full of nasty stuff.
“What is this in my body? What did you force into me?”
“For you, it’s not so good. But for me, it’s life. My salvation. A living juche monument. And you are to be the one to carry it to the four corners of the world.”
“What?”
“Well, if you live long enough. You are carrying bacteria so contagious, so deadly, that it will spread one person at a time, through touch...”
I wonder how I can get free of this nutter and force the stuff down his throat.
“You’re probably wondering how long you have left and what hope you have? You have little of either, actually. Your lungs will fill with mucus and you will find it harder and harder to breathe. It’s really quite beautiful, in fact. It’s not so much the infection that will kill you, but your own body’s reaction. Within a few hours you are choking to death. It’s hardly a win-win for you, but it’s an elegant solution to our problem. And of course, when the medical examiners come here they will be infected from touching any of the surfaces here. I could go on, but I really don’t want to be around when you’re coughing your guts out. It’s a real shame you can’t be around to see how you’ve shaped world history, but you should know that you are at the Ground Zero of the new era. The Korean Era. Goodbye, Hana, and thank you.”
I want to keep him talking as long as possible. The longer he talks, the longer I have to wriggle free. I wonder now if acting dumb is the best way of getting information; it certainly works for Detective Watanabe.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to kill so many people. What did they ever do to you?”
“That’s a good question, Hana. But a better one is, what did the Korean people ever do to you? Did we do anything other than defend ourselves?”
I think about defending myself. The binding on my left wrist is loose. I wriggle and try to stretch my hand. I have two centimetres of movement. I have to cover my actions so I fake a coughing fit.
“Aha, the onset of the infection. That was quicker than I thought. You must have more white pigmentation than I thought.”
He looks at his watch.
“Well, I’d best be on my way. I should call the police to pick up your body. What we need is a white person who comes into contact with lots of other white people to spread the disease. Someone like a white fiancé. Shame.”
I cough some more. This time, it’s not deliberate. But my arm has maybe four centimetres of movement now.
“Well, I could call that nice young man you’ve been knocking around with, Firefly, but there is the race thing. It would hardly be helpful him coming to discover your body. It’s not like he’s the sort to meet white people. He hardly meets any people at all. But he is a loose end and we need to tie that up before the police get involved. We should let him come to your rescue. I’m sure he will. We have his phone number. Shall we send him a text to come meet you? But he might not. He might misunderstand you. There’s only one way to be sure.”
For his sake, I can’t bring him into this trap.
“Never. He won’t come. He doesn’t care about me.”
“Let’s test that hypothesis, shall we? A girl with a bad cough is not much of an attraction, even one strapped, helpless, to a table. A man could do almost anything.”
“Do what you like. There’s nothing between Firefly and me.”
He rummages around on the tray. There’s a tinkling of metal on metal. He holds up the syringe.
“Careful you don’t prick yourself on this one. It’s my favourite.”
He brushes the needle playfully over my arm.
“The key is to find a vein and not get an air bubble that would cause a heart attack.”
He pulls the plunger back and pushes it causing a little liquid to spurt out.
“That would kill you, the air bubble, if the dosage doesn’t later on. The bing-du addict can take 100 times the dosage of a first-timer, but that would kill you off before you had a chance to do your bit for the new world order. Unless you’re a speed addict? It would be an interesting way to go, but, sadly, not to be.”
A bead of sweat runs down his forehead.
“No, it can’t be this.”
He puts the syringe back on the tray. But then he picks up something large and shiny.
He holds it loosely in his hand, balancing the weight of the stainless steel and the black plastic handle.
“This knife is made in Japan. It’s designed for slicing through a fish. Though, despite the depth of its blade, it can not only crunch through bones, but see here?”
He runs his gloved hand over the tip of the blade.
“It’s not very sharp, but you could use it to gouge out eyes. Fish eyes, of course. Anything more intricately connected would still be possible, but would make a much bigger mess.”
“Stop it. I don’t like this. There’s nothing between me and Firefly.”
“As you say, but just to make sure. You see, I think there still is such a thing as a gentleman. Shall we see? You always wanted to be a journalist. I suppose the world has one-eyed journalists, even a few blind ones.”
He holds the blade in front of my eyes.
“But it would be such a shame to lose those green eyes. You really are quite beautiful. And it would be quite, quite painful. And ve
ry messy. I have far more compassion than the Japanese do. You should be thankful that a Korean has you and not one of the Japanese.”
“Unit 731?” I say.
“Yes. Very good. We learnt a lot from the Japanese. Would you be able to move your pretty left arm if it was in your right socket? What would that be like?”
He scrapes the blade along my shoulder without drawing any blood.
“They used to remove prisoners’ stomachs and reattach the oesophagus to the intestines. But their genius was their work with chemical weapons. And that data was a win-win for the Imperialists and the Americans. The Japanese war criminals got their freedom and the Americans got their data.
“Just imagine what they could have achieved if history had taken a slightly different course. Imagine if they had exploded a bomb in New York or London; Japan could have won the war. But listen to me! You don’t have to imagine, you have me and my programme to carry on the work. Imagine a world without the white scourge. It’s easy to do if you try. We can start again. Only this time, I have the advantage.”
He laughs.
“I’ll be revered as the saviour of the revolution, the world’s first scientific revolutionary.”
He holds my hand.
“My, my. Your palms are sweating. Don’t worry, I’m not going to blind you. But I’ve never heard of a journalist with no fingers, how would you type? How could you use one of these?”
He holds up a smartphone. It’s mine. Where did he get it? He goes through my contacts. He finds Firefly’s number. And hits dial.
“Let’s hope he answers.”
Then I feel the cold steel of the blade sliding between my fingernail and my skin.
“It hurts me more than it hurts you that we have reached this stage in our relationship.”
“Moshi moshi? Hana?”
He puts the phone beside my head and holds the knife above his head. He grins and watches my eyes for a reaction. If I scream, he has won. Firefly is dead as well as me. If I don’t scream, I lose my fingernails and experience more pain than I can possibly imagine. And scream anyway.
Year of the Talking Dog: A Hana Walker Mystery (The Hana Walker Mysteries Book 2) Page 15