Girl Rides the Wind (29 page)

R
iding
in the personal jet that her new office seemed to mandate, Gyoshin realized that she was beginning to feel comfortable with the trappings of supreme power. Glancing around the cabin at her retainers – four bodyguards, a personal assistant, and the young man who managed her digital communications, and who always carried a large satchel and a backpack full of electronic gear – she saw how sorry she would be to have to give them up.

The tablet she held in her lap absent-mindedly streamed the latest news. Public unrest in the major cities had been increasing over the past two days, just when Jin-san had promised it would settle down. Around the main government buildings, it took the remarkable form of people lined up in orderly rows chanting. Nothing hectic, nothing feverish, but the size of the gatherings was alarming. This was the way of the older generation. Elsewhere, in the commercial districts of Tokyo and Osaka, young people protested much more raucously, as well as in the central train stations of Kyoto and Nagoya, Yokohama, Kumamoto and Nagasaki, and even further north, around the port cities of Niigata and Akita. Violence and rioting had been minimal so far, but if it didn’t subside soon, Jin-san would insist on sending troops into the cities, and Gyoshin knew this would erode their credibility even further.

A moment of nausea overtook her, and she rested her head against the window, her eyes closed to the clouds slipping past in the distance. Was this airsickness, or something worse? Pinpricks of light flickered under her eyelids, growing brighter and more colorful, until they resolved themselves into a familiar image. Her cousin’s feet in a pair of scuffed Mary-Jane’s hovered just inches from her nose.

“Wait for me, Taka,” she cried in a child’s voice, her fingers scraped raw probing for hand-holds in the castle wall.

“You’ve got to keep up, Go-Go.” Takako giggled down at her, before scampering even higher, too high now to fall safely.

Gyoshin followed Takako’s voice, her fingers finding the gaps her fear had concealed from her a moment earlier. Sitting on a ledge, she clutched her cousin’s hand and hurled sibling mockery on her brother below, until another thought shook her with the force of inevitability. “Great, how do we get down?”

“Who wants to go down?” Her cousin kissed her cheek and pointed to the top. “We’re going higher.”

The young tech assistant, Eiichi-san, cleared his throat and reached forward to pass her the handset of the satphone she now relied on for important communications. “It is Soga-sama,” he said, and then slid back into his seat.

Gyoshin looked at the device in her hand, and let it slip into her lap. She would need a moment to shake the reverie out of her mind. “If only Taka could see me,” she thought. “Have I climbed high enough?” She couldn’t decide if her cousin would laugh her to shame, or help her plot Jin-san’s assassination. Taka would know what to do next. A voice buzzed from her lap and brought her back to the dreary moment.

“Gyoshin-san, did all go well with Colonel Hosokawa?” There was much to admire in the cold tone Jin-san had adopted over the last few days. It was an improvement over the insincere warmth she had become so familiar with.

“Yes. He knows what we expect of him.”

“Good, we may need him. American fighter squadrons have breached Tokyo airspace in the last two hours. The commander at Hamamatsu tells me we cannot get a missile-lock on them.”

“Has there been any communication?”

“No, the ambassador is unavailable, and the American admiral is not currently in residence at Sasebo.”

“That is worrisome.” Gyoshin weighed the significance of the American ambasador’s silence. Given his volubility over the previous two days, and in light of the newly aggressive posture of their Air Force, for him to be aloof now suggested a shift in tactics. Were they looking to manufacture an excuse for military intervention?

“I have directed the southern air bases to be on heightened alert. The next step is to declare a no-fly zone over Okinawa.”

“They are merely testing our resolve, Jin-san. They mean to provoke an over-reaction. Patience will serve us well in such cases.” Gyoshin knew this was not advice her co-conspirator would be able to follow easily, and she derived no little pleasure from this thought. “Have you heard yet from General Diao, or his son?”

“No. It is distressing that there is no news of his troops having taken Beijing yet. His operation depended on speed, and if he is bogged down in a long struggle, he will fail.”

“If we have not heard from Captain Diao by now, I think we should assume he is either dead, or has betrayed us.”

“Betrayed us how?” The tremor in Jin-san’s voice was audible even over the digital connection. This was a contingency she had not prepared for.

“He may have kept the princess alive, to use against us later.”

“You mean he may intend to produce her later to undermine our public support, is that it?”

“It is a possibility worth considering.” In fact, Gyoshin’s confidence in this possibility made it more akin to a likelihood in her mind. This had been a weak point in the original plan – General Diao would have wanted to preserve some leverage over his new allies. She had hoped the Crown Prince’s family would have been killed in the initial attack or in the subsequent pursuit, thereby sealing off this risk. But they had underestimated the resolve of Ozawa and his men both at that moment and later. It could prove to be a fatal error, and there was nothing to be done about it now. What a terrible result – Gyoshin had to blame herself for it – to have risked so much to gain the supreme authority in her country, only to render it a vassal state to their ancient rivals.

After an uncomfortable silence, Jin-san returned to a familiar difficulty. “We need to enforce order in the streets. Our support will bounce back as soon as business returns to normal.”

“Are you going to quote Napoleon to me again?”

“But he was right… a ‘whiff of grapeshot’ did calm down the crowds.”

“Violence against the public will hurt our cause, especially if it goes on for very long.”

“Then we set an example, in one of the smaller cities. Achieve order in, say, Nagano, and the other cities will fall in line.”

In the end, Gyoshin didn’t wish to oppose Jin-san every time she urged some sort of crackdown. It was necessary to achieve order, and the sooner this happened, the sooner the rule of law could be restored. At some level, perhaps it was also true that she was beginning to appreciate the sense of noble entitlement her grandfather had always displayed. From her current height, ordinary people seemed to be just that, creatures of a day.

After handing the phone back to Eiichi-san, she took a moment to contemplate her fellow passengers. A young man with tech-skills enjoyed a certain freedom to imagine his future more openly than a low-level civil servant, like Rinko-san. Gyoshin had plucked her from a list of similar drones with interchangeable skills to be her personal assistant. In effect, she had launched her on a new career arc that would either be the making of the girl, or her unmaking. No one would hold the bodyguards accountable for the actions of the new regime – if their careers in the Defense Ministry suffered any sort of eclipse in the aftermath, they’d find work as mercenaries, no doubt for considerably more money.

The previous evening, in a meeting with the Maritime Chief of Staff at the naval base at Yokosuka, she suspected that, if she’d been acting in her own name instead of her grandfather’s, the admiral might well have had her arrested on the spot, and initiated his own counter-coup. At least dead,
Ojii-san
served her well, allowing her to take meetings with impunity, since no one would appear to gain anything by attacking her.

The natural next thought suggested itself – once they’d solidified their hold on power, she’d have to clean house among the staff officers, perhaps six months or a year from now. Admiral Owari and his ilk were too dangerous to leave in their positions, and younger officers would owe their advancement to her.

But would she still be among the living in six months?
The looming problem, she’d buried it not even two weeks ago, was the fact that her grandfather was dead. Jin-san hadn’t inquired about him, beyond asking about his health. But soon enough an occasion would arise for a public appearance by the men in whose name they purported to rule.

The engine noise in the cabin abated, and the pilot begin the long, slow descent into Haneda Airport in Tokyo. They would be on the ground in thirty minutes. Eiichi-san cleared his throat to get her attention again, and extended the handset to her. “Heiji-sama, it is the commander of Misawa Airbase.”

“Forgive my intrusion, Heiji-sama,” Colonel Hosokawa began. “We have a developing situation at Hakodate.”

Gyoshin couldn’t help but think of Jin-san’s earlier report of American fighters in Tokyo airspace. “I’m listening, Hosokawa-san.”

“A military plane has taken an approach vector at the airport. The IFF transponder indicates that it is American. It appears to be one of their carrier-based cargo planes.”

“Have your men taken control of the airport, as I suggested?”

“Yes, Heiji-sama, and we have scrambled two F-15’s. We can shoot them out of the air, or confront them on the ground. AWACS out of Hayakuri reports a second, slow-moving bandit one hundred knots out, probably another cargo plane. What are your instructions?”

A shiver caressed the hairs on the back of her neck and suggested to Gyoshin that Jin-san had failed to grasp the intentions of the American fighter planes. The changing shape of their destiny presented itself to her in shining colors. “It’s time to go down,” she thought Taka’s voice whispered in her ear.

“Our options are limited, Heiji-sama, as is our time,” the colonel said, when she didn’t respond right away.

“Take no action with regard to either plane, Hosokawa-san.”

“Please repeat, Heiji-sama. I did not copy.”

“Stand down, Colonel. Take no action against either plane.”

“What about my men at Hakodate?”

“If you cannot withdraw them from the airport, then have them stand down, too. It’s time to provide for your own safety, Colonel… and that of your men.”

Gyoshin ended the connection, and glanced around the cabin. Had her people understood the substance of that call? The sound of the wind rushing over the wing grew louder, and a few moments later the landing gear dropped into position. A bump as the wheels contacted the runway, and then the engines spun up to slow the plane down. Taxiing across the airport took less time than usual, since air traffic had been reduced to a bare minimum. Gyoshin had hoped to be able to restore traffic and commerce to pre-crisis levels by now, but events had forestalled her. She had a feeling things would be back to normal sooner than Jin-san expected.

The bodyguards opened the side-door and cleared the jetway – that was their protocol, and they were very thorough. Gyoshin turned to Rinko-san and Eiichi-san, and gave them each a wan smile.

“It’s time for you to go home, both of you.”

“I don’t understand, Heiji-sama,” Rinko-san said, her voice fluttering.

Eiichi-san merely hefted his backpack over one shoulder and left the communications satchel on his seat, before stepping through to the jetway. He
would
understand sooner, Gyoshin figured.

“Don’t worry, Rinko-san. You will be fine. Just go home, maybe have dinner with your mother.”

The girl protested what she mistakenly took to be her dismissal, but there was no point trying to make her understand. Gyoshin walked up the jetway and stepped into the near empty terminal. She signaled the bodyguards to approach. “I won’t need you any more. Thank you for your service.”

Boarding a train for Tottori was a relief, though she’d gotten used to having doors held for her. Soon the city would slip by her window, and then the countryside would unfold. Perhaps she could even close her eyes… and leave the death throes of their conspiracy to Jin-san.

S
ecuring
the airport had taken less time than Kano expected. The single terminal was practically deserted when his men landed, less than ten flights departing each day since the crisis began. Only one of the shops in the main arcade had bothered opening, as well as a snack bar and an automated video arcade. He’d sent Ishikawa to secure the tower, and after herding the Air Force personnel they’d found watching the entrances into a waiting area, he posted a contingent of his Airborne Rangers at key points. Another squad expedited the refueling crew so that the C-2 Greyhound they arrived in could make the return trip. Two other squads screened vehicles arriving through the automobile entrances.

“Chrysanthemum One is ten minutes out,” Ishikawa reported over the radio.

Standing on the tarmac outside the four jetways that comprised this tiny, regional airport, a rising breeze ruffled his hair, and Kano contemplated the
wakizashi
in his right hand. The
saya
had seen better days. Scuff-marks graced both edges and the lacquer finish had faded from exposure to salt water. Moon had suggested having it restored, but Kano already knew he would never allow that to happen. On the long flight up from the
USS Nimitz
, he’d drawn it, and run his fingers along the
hamon
that ribboned along it like the line left behind by the surf. When he dug a nail into a tiny nick in the blade, his mind drifted through memories of his father, who would never have left it in such a state.

“She certainly got good use out of you,” he’d muttered, then glanced around the cabin to check if his men were listening.

The electricity had faded to a mere tingle by that point, but when he’d first grasped the sword, curling his fingers around the handle to wrench it free from Diao’s chest, he’d received a jolt, which only made him tighten his grip. Slashing and stabbing with it as he charged through the Chinese firing line, his confidence grew… in the might of his arm, and the edge of the blade, in his own invincibility, as if he’d discovered the strength to conquer the world. Almost giddy with the mad power of it, he’d carried all before him.