by Adrian Smith
While the tablet loaded the manuscript, he looked at the grainy image of the woman in black.
Could it be her? His Cal?
Ryan shook his head in disbelief. Anything was possible. His tablet pinged, telling him the file was ready. Sighing, he shoved the photo into his pocket and turned his gaze to the tablet, hoping to make some sense of the past few hours. He scanned the PDF of the codex, ignoring the words and diagrams. Someone had highlighted the code hidden within. He scrolled to the end and stared at the jumble of words and numbers.
His tired mind scrambled to make sense of it, but the events of the past few hours forced him to shut down his tablet. Something about the code niggled at him as he mulled it over. Something he had seen before. Maybe read. But for now, he let it go.
Six
Nagoya, Japan
Ryan reached for his gun as the door clicked open, but it was only Chihiro. She smiled and let in their mutual friend—Haku, a doctor specializing in trauma.
Years ago, Ryan had helped both Chihiro and Haku out of a sticky situation with a nasty woman—a yakuza member who had loaned them both money. He had freed them from a debt they would never have been able to pay. Ever since, they had stayed friends, helping each other out when they could—Chihiro by giving him a place to hide, Haku by patching him up when he didn’t want any questions.
“What have you got yourself into this time?” Haku tutted and placed his bag next to Booth.
“Just the usual. Bad guys.”
“I assume your injury is less than your friends?”
“Yes. I just need stitches.”
“Oh, so you’re a doctor now too?” Haku said, muttering something inaudible.
“I’ll leave you to it. I can’t stand the sight of blood,” Chihiro said, letting out another nervous giggle.
The doctor unbuttoned Booth’s shirt and began cleaning away the congealed blood.
“Haku. Booth,” Ryan said.
Booth nodded and Haku gave a quick bow.
“Can you patch him up?”
“Why do you think I came all this way? To listen to you state the obvious?”
Haku set about stitching up Booth. “Well, aren’t you going to tell me what happened?”
“We annoyed some yakuza in Tokyo, they shot us, end of story.”
“That’s it?”
Ryan turned away from the doctor and glanced out the window, watching the dark rain clouds roll away over the mountains. He hesitated to tell Haku much. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust him, but he wasn’t sure himself. Until he knew more, he was going to keep his cards close to his chest. But there was one subject he could ask the doctor about.
“You hear anything about a new yakuza clan? German speakers and weapons?”
“German?”
“Exactly. They were shouting orders in German.”
“They can’t be yakuza. In all my years dealing with those criminals, I’ve never heard of a German clan. It’s not something we tolerate here, foreigner crooks.”
“That’s not the only weird thing. We ran through at least a dozen territories, and they followed.”
“No one intervened?”
“Not once.”
Haku shrugged. “Mr. Booth, please roll onto your side. I want to stitch the exit hole. You are as lucky as Connors. The round went straight through, missing everything. Well, everything vital.”
Booth rolled over, wincing as he held a hand to one temple, rubbing it with his thumb.
“Do you have any other pain?”
“Yeah. I feel like there’s a sumo match in my head. The light makes it worse.”
“Nausea?”
“A little, not bad though.”
Haku opened his bag and grabbed a stethoscope. Ryan stepped back and let him work.
“What do you think, Doc?” Booth said. “Am I going to have a nasty scar?”
“Hard to say. I’m a trauma doctor. Good at patching people up. You need to see a specialist.”
“Plastic surgeon?”
“Maybe. Come into the hospital. I can recommend you one of my colleagues.”
“We can’t, too risky.”
“So be it. Take these. Two, three times a day.” Haku rattled a pill bottle. “Antibiotics. And two of these as you need for the pain.” He rattled a second bottle.
“Thanks Doc,” Booth said.
Haku smiled, looking at Ryan. “Your turn.”
After Haku left, Chihiro brought up some takeaway bento boxes. They ate in silence. Ryan gazed out the window at the sky as the pinks of dawn broke through. Thankfully the rain had petered out, leaving a wet sheen on the buildings and roads. He loved the smell that followed rain. It seemed to wash away the rotten stench of civilization, giving the world a fresh, natural scent for a while.
“Can we trust the doc?” Booth said, eating the last of his sticky rice.
“Haku’s an old friend. I helped him a couple of years ago. Chihiro too.” Ryan raised an eyebrow. “So yeah. I trust them.”
“I suppose I’m just worried after what happened. This whole case, man, it's been a friggin’ nightmare.”
“What’s really going on, Booth? I haven’t heard a peep from you guys in three years. Nothing. Then you show up, walking out of the rain. Keiko’s missing and you dump this on me.” Ryan slid the USB across the table and held up the grainy photo. He kept the silver pendant Sofia had given him tucked away. He was playing the game now too. “Then some new yakuza try to kill us and take it back. Well, I assume that’s what they want. Is Keiko even missing?”
“Of course!” Booth raised his voice. “You know me, Connors. Why would I lie about that?”
“Okay. I just had to be certain. There’s just a lot of weirdness going on. I think it’s time to call Lisa.”
“I can’t. This is the blackest of black, Connors. Total off-the-books operation. Her final instruction to me was to cease all communications until we had concrete proof.”
“Proof of what?”
Booth sighed and shifted on the bed. The food and painkillers seemed to have picked him up. The color was coming back to his skin too.
“We believe that ReinCorp and YamTech have been buying up satellites, launching new ones, and buying codes. When that fails, they steal them. Not only that, but telecommunications companies worldwide have been reporting strange outages. We think it’s connected somehow,” Booth said. “And here’s the kicker: along with Zizer Pharmaceuticals, they all merged into one company a few months back. They’re just ReinCorp now—but you already knew that, didn’t you?”
“I may have read that somewhere, yeah.”
“Is that why you’re in Japan?” Booth asked.
“Partly. Initially it was to escape. Be just another foreigner in Tokyo. Read and forget.” Ryan reached across the table and picked up his tablet. “I looked at that code hidden in the Voynich manuscript.”
“And?”
“And, why me? You know I’m not a numbers guy. Words, puzzles, sure, but numbers? All of these are numbers. Thousands of them.”
“That’s why Lisa sent me. She believes it was sent, with the girl, for us. That we would understand it. It doesn’t make sense to you?”
Ryan shook his head. “Why would she think that? I saw no indication in the code that it was for us.”
“I wish I knew, Connors. Someone sure wants it back.”
“And the photo?” Ryan said. “Do you think that’s Cal?”
“Yes. We believe so. The nerds ran it through their facial recognition software. Seventy-three percent match.”
“Seventy-three percent? That’s not conclusive. If there’s a photo, where’s the CCTV footage?”
“No access,” Booth said.
“This just gets weirder, and we’ve had plenty of weird over the years. Koya next?”
“That’s the last place anyone saw Keiko, and I’ve got a sneaking suspicion it’s where Sofia is now. It all points to that location. It’s a starting point. Before coming to you, we se
t up a contact. The friendly who promised information about the codes.”
“Can he be trusted?”
“As you know, we’ve investigated YamTech before. The number crunchers combed through their accounts. Our contacts in the Japanese Inland Revenue Service exchanged information with us. Apart from a few unethical, but legal, practices, we always came up short. There’re some files on there,” he nodded to the thumb drive, “showing shell corporations. Shady stuff. The friendly was the contact who provided that intel. He can be trusted.”
YamTech was a conglomerate of Japanese companies specializing in robotics and medical technology and were world leaders in the advancement of nanotechnology.
“What have YamTech got to do with it?” Ryan said.
“Their name is linked to nearly all the transactions we could see. Time and again. YamTech. Buying up satellites and telco companies like there was no tomorrow. We tried gathering intel and infiltrating. Biggest problem is that they only hire Japanese people—except on foreign soil, of course. Didn’t you try to gain access into one of their buildings?”
“Yeah. Not Yamada Tower. That’s a fortress. An office building.” Ryan made himself a jasmine tea. He offered one to Booth, who declined. “I got into the building no problem. There’s a popular bar and restaurant on the top floor. I tried all the tricks. Posed as a staff member. Maintenance. I even did ‘lost American tourist.’ Nothing. No access panels in bathrooms. No elevators for staff, nothing like that. All the staff have a chip or something in their wrists to get through locked doors. That place is locked up tighter than Fort Knox.”
“Exactly. We tried all their headquarters. Sacramento. Mexico City. Zurich. Sydney. Then we moved on to Zizer Pharmaceuticals. Same thing,” Booth said.
“Not surprising. All corporations like them would be. Military contracts and all that.”
“True.”
The pair remained quiet for a few minutes, each caught up in their own thoughts.
“Sofia and Eddie split. Did you know?” Booth said, breaking the silence. “He’s back here in Tokyo.”
“I may have heard, yeah.” Ryan looked away. The building’s glowing neon sign gave the rain on the glass a pink glow.
Booth chuckled. “Eddie was always jealous of your friendship with Sofia. It drove him nuts.”
“Yeah, I know. He had nothing to worry about. Sofia and I are close, and I love her, but like a sister.”
Nagoya was waking up, its residents emerging from their houses, and tidying up after last night’s storm. Elderly women and city workers swept away the refuse. Men and women in suits hurried past, heading for the train station and their jobs in Tokyo. Already the coffee and tea kiosks were open and selling their wares. The day shift was humming into life.
Ryan stifled a yawn and glanced back at Booth. “What I want to know is why your friendly told you to look under Koyasan University? It’s a religious university. Is there a connection to YamTech?”
“Yup. The Yamada family donate large sums of money, buy equipment, sponsor students. And YamTech has a small research lab in the town.”
“Huh. That’s interesting.”
In his field of work, there was no such thing as coincidence. Connections always meant something. Time and time again, a seemingly innocuous coincidence linked everything together.
“He was a good kid, you know. Holder, I mean,” Booth said.
“Australians are good value. At least that’s my experience. We tease each other mercilessly about sports, but when the chips are down, New Zealanders and Aussies are the first to stand up for each other,” Ryan said. “Like a sibling rivalry.”
“I remember this one time in Alice Springs, there’d been a bit of trouble at Pine Gap. Usual story, power play between the Americans and the Aussies. China up to some espionage, kidnapping one of the computer analysts. LK3 sent Holder and me to find him. You ever been to that area?”
“Once, a long time ago,” Ryan said.
“Right. So you know it. Hot as hell, and the flies. The flies drove me crazy. Anyway. Holder figured it out. Where the Chinese had taken the computer geek. He was a lot like you in that manner. Using logic and empathy. The whole area is a maze of canyons and billabongs. Kangaroos the size of horses. Spiders as big as your hand. I saw a huntsman eat a possum. Scared the shit out of this Mid-western boy. Holder strips down to just his shorts, tells me to do the same. Next minute, these Aboriginals show up and paint symbols on our bodies. Said it was to protect us from the Chinese clever man. We waited until the early morning, slipped in, neutralized the guards, and were back at Pine Gap before sunrise.” Booth shook his head. “Poor Holder. I met his mother. What am I going to say to her?”
“We’ll catch those responsible. We have to.”
“We better. He didn’t deserve that. He was fascinated by that story of you sneaking into Omstead’s quarters and taking a bath.”
“You told him that?”
“I didn’t need to. It’s a legend at the Lodge.”
To complete the training at LK3, the last task was to be blindfolded and dropped miles away from the Lodge. The trainee operatives had to find their way back—and gain access—to the heavily guarded mansion before elite soldiers captured them.
Ryan had taken it one step farther. He broke into Director Omstead’s private quarters and waited for her in the bath, a glass of wine in hand.
Ryan rolled his shoulders, feeling the tension dissipate. “Whatever they’re saying, it’s highly exaggerated.”
“Whatever. You always had to prove you were the best. You used to annoy the shit out of me because of that.”
Ryan winked at Booth. They’d first met during inter-country war games for their respective armies before training to become agents for LK3. “I know. One reason I kept doing it.” He jumped up. “I’m going to take a shower and get some sleep. We’ll head up to Koya after lunch.”
Booth yawned. “Sleep sounds good. Connors?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s good to have you back, man. I missed you being around.”
Ryan couldn’t help but smile. “Get some sleep. Idiot.”
He shut the bathroom door behind himself and turned on the shower. The hot water steamed around him. For three years, Ryan had shut out all memories of his old life. In one night, they had come flooding back. The good and the bad.
Seven
Mie Prefecture, Japan
“Heads up, Connors. We’ve got company.”
Ryan snapped the tablet closed and looked first out the windshield, then checked the wing mirrors. He’d been staring at the strange code for the last half an hour, trying to make some sense of it. Numbers and letters jumbled together in a meaningless pattern. Streams of it. Over and over. Two random letters followed by fifteen numbers.
“Where? I don’t see anything.”
“Motorbikes, at our four o’clock.” Booth gestured with his head. “One wearing yellow. One black.”
Ryan glanced at the other traffic driving along the motorway. A couple of small trucks and a tourist coach, three or four family cars, but no motorbikes.
They had left Nagoya earlier and, thanks to an old connection, borrowed a white Toyota Corolla. Small and nondescript, it blended into the traffic-choked motorway. Well, it should have. Had he misjudged the yakuza’s reach?
“Move the driver’s mirror so I can see,” Ryan instructed.
Booth complied and used the electronics to pivot the mirror. A flash of yellow appeared as the rider maneuvered between the cars, thirty meters behind.
“Could be nothing.”
“They’ve been following us for the last few kilometers. Mostly keeping out of sight. I wasn’t sure before, but they’ve been slowly advancing.”
Ryan kept his eyes on the mirror and observed the rider adjust his path accordingly. The other rider, dressed in black, who’d remained hidden until then, switched lanes and ducked behind a truck carrying drainage pipes.
“How did they find us in this ca
r?”
“Someone ratted us out,” Booth said, shaking his head. “I didn’t like the look of that doctor.”
“No way. I trust him completely, and Chihiro too.” Ryan opened his satchel and grabbed the extra magazines for his Glock, shoving them into his jacket pocket.
“Maybe someone hacked our subdermal implants?”
“I thought that was impossible?”
All LK3 operatives had the implant. It was so they could always be tracked by the agency.
Ryan searched the surrounding landscape. “Take the next exit and see if they follow.” He didn’t recognize the tree-lined mountains whizzing past. Mt. Fuji was far behind, obscured by clouds with only its snow-capped peak showing.
Now that he was oriented, Ryan spent a moment in Google Maps.
“Next city is Iga,” he said. “Lots of narrow twisting streets. An old castle. Plenty of places to hide.”
Booth moved the Corolla behind a lumbering cement truck in the middle lane. To the left was a tourist coach, to the right, a minivan. The driver glanced at him, his expression frazzled. Several children in the back seat explained the look.
Ryan remembered taking Liam and his mates to soccer matches, just like that. With the same expression.
When they had nearly passed the exit on their left. Booth wrenched the wheel, skidding across the lanes and down the off ramp, gathering speed. He earned an angry honk from the coach driver for the maneuver.
The yellow rider was quicker to react than the black and swerved from behind the truck carrying pipes to follow them.
They were never going to outrun the motorcycles; they were too fast, and the bikes had superior maneuverability. All they could hope for was to lose them in the traffic. Ideally, a car park. Lots of similar white vehicles. Or somewhere with plenty of Western tourists. A place where they could melt away. Disappear.
“They still there?” Booth asked.
“Only the yellow bike. I can’t see the black rider.”
“Yakuza?”