Kusanagi (21 page)

‘Do you mean to tell me there's not a single television in this mansion?' said Smith, to Stafford.

‘It isn't a mansion,' Stafford informed him. ‘It's a large townhouse.'

‘I stand corrected,' said Smith. ‘Now, about the TV?'

‘I'm afraid we do not have one.'

‘You must get bored out of your mind,' said Smith, disgusted.

‘Indeed not,' said Stafford. ‘I have my books and my journal to occupy me.'

‘What about Jim?'

‘He has his Internet.'

‘It's unnatural,' said Smith, ‘and very suspect if you ask me.'

‘I think not,' said Stafford.

Smith sat up and took out his mobile. ‘A RIB,' he said, ‘coming up the river. Surely they aren't going to try to repeat the attack. That would be crazy.' He looked at Stafford. ‘It might be kicking off again.'

Stafford picked up the machine pistol from the floor by his chair. ‘What is the plan?'

‘As soon as an attack starts, hopefully my lot'll be swarming all over this place. We'll have to keep them at bay for a bit. Do you have a panic room?'

‘Unfortunately not. It is planned.' Stafford was considering another attack from the river. ‘They won't be able to get in from the river this time.'

‘Why are they coming back?' Smith answered his phone and listened to the caller. ‘OK,' he said. ‘Good.' He looked at Stafford. ‘False alarm, Bertie,' he said, relief in his eyes.

‘I wish you wouldn't call me Bertie,' said Stafford. ‘I might get used to it again.'

James Dean Yamamoto was dumbfounded by what he saw on the screen. Jim had wheeled the chair back with every appearance of contentment.

‘How can this be real?' Yamamoto asked Akira. ‘How will I explain it?'

‘I hope it won't be too inconvenient.'

Yamamoto logged off, then back on. The balance remained the same. ‘Evans-san must be very rich.'

‘I believe so.'

‘That explains everything.'

Akira raised his eyebrows. ‘How so?'

‘Why Kim has kidnapped his woman.'

‘Kim? Basho Kim?'

‘Yes. Kim, perhaps. I will know for sure soon.'

‘But Kim is a big man, surely not a criminal.'

‘A big man, yes,' said Yamamoto, ‘but very deep in debt. He owes trillions of yen more than he can repay.' He sat down heavily in a chair that was normally on the other side of his desk. He frowned and appeared to fall asleep. His eyes flickered open. ‘His name may be on much of the Tokyo skyline but he has run out of the means to maintain his repayments.' He laughed in a single burst of a low toned syllable. ‘It is a trap in which many of us are caught and one he has worked very hard to become ensnared by.' He exhaled in a growl. ‘He is the lowest of the low. If I would kill anyone it would be him.'

‘Kim-san a kidnapper?'

‘And worse.' Yamamoto stared up at the ceiling. ‘So much worse. I suppose I must tell you a story.' He let out a long snort.

‘When I was still young I used to enjoy chasing the ladies. Life was good. I had money.' He smiled a little. ‘The world was so fresh and finally it was being good to me. Life can be so good. I had a sweetheart, who lived in the Ginza, and I was very much in love.' He paused to recall. ‘To a rough guy like me, she was a princess, a sweet little bird who sang for me. She lived in this tiny apartment and I made sure she was all right and could pay her rent. Ginza is such an expensive district, as you know. She always made me laugh. I still smile at the thought of her…' He fell into a reverie.

Akira watched him remembering.

‘Then one day she vanished. Gone like a picked flower.' His face was twisted in anger. ‘I traced her family, what there was of it, but no one had any word of her. She had not given up her lease. She did not use her bank account. There were fresh groceries in the kitchen the day she went away. Ah, Akira, I was heartbroken. I had not realised how deeply I loved her. She was my happiness.'

Yamamoto glanced at Jim, who was listening in the way people do when they cannot understand what is being said. He turned back to Akira. ‘I became crazy. I hunted high and low. I hired detectives, two or three at a time. I fired them and hired more. I spent all the money I could to try and find her. Then one day the answer came. She had most likely been kidnapped and taken to North Korea. I was horrified and filled with uncontrollable rage. How could this happen?'

Jim had given up trying to understand and had returned to the trading screen. Gold looked about to take a dive. He wanted to jump on it. It was a screaming short. A few clicks and he could be on for the ride. He sat back and shook his head. He was like an alcoholic who had fallen off the wagon and bought a nice big bottle of whisky.

‘Then I went looking,' growled Yamamoto. ‘I wanted to find out how people could be kidnapped like that. Korean visitors could not just show up to pick people off, like plums from a tree. It took organisation, money, skill. I would use my contacts and track these people down. Then I would make my play.' He grunted in disgust. ‘While I was doing this, devoting my time to the search, I was making money like never before or since. My property portfolio was growing and its value was shooting up. This was the beginning of the bubble years. It was a deep irony to me.' He frowned as if a great sadness had filled him.

‘So then one day the secret opened itself to me. A friend of a friend who stole the tax on ships came to me and asked a favour. I told him my puzzle and promised to solve his problems if he solved my riddle. He went pale. I saw this and he knew I saw it and he told me. Basho Kim-san.'

‘What did you do?' asked Akira.

‘I reverted to the old way.' He looked pleased with himself. ‘I sent him a letter with her name on it and the letter was charred. Then I burnt down one of his buildings. I repeated this action every moon and sure enough, after a few months, my sweetheart was returned.'

‘Was she all right?'

‘No. She was a broken woman.' Yamamoto rose. ‘I still look after her.' He looked across the city. ‘She's down there somewhere – she has a husband and children. It's a happy ending.' He turned to Akira. ‘That is my story, one of many in my strange life.' He pushed back his tidy grey hair. It made to puff up in a ghost of a quiff. ‘And now the story continues.'

‘When do you think you will know for sure?' asked Akira.

‘I know for sure. It is a matter of where, not who. I guess it will become a matter of how to get her back.'

Jim's mobile was buzzing in his pocket. ‘Yes?' he said.

‘Jim Evans?'

‘Yes.'

‘Your lady is very sick. We need the objects in twenty four hours or we cannot be sure she will survive.'

‘Prove to me she's alive.'

‘Of course.'

‘Who are you?' said Jane, her voice echoing in a hard space. ‘Are you talking to me?'

‘We will organise an exchange.' The phone went dead.

Jim looked at Akira and Yamamoto. ‘We're running out of time.'

His room in the Grand Hyatt was lovely and the bed was perfectly comfortable, but he was finding it very hard to sleep. It was daytime in London and his body knew it. He lay awake, his mind racing. He had called Stafford three times and all was quiet on the home front. It wasn't like him not to be able to sleep. Then at five a.m. the inevitable happened: he passed out.

The phone at his bedside woke him. It was seven a.m. Akira was on the other end.

‘Evans-san, Yamamoto-san has news. When will you be ready?'

‘Give me a few minutes. I'll come straight down.' He jumped out of bed and ran into the shower. The water shocked him with a cold blast. ‘Fuck,' he muttered, adjusting the temperature. He was out again in two minutes, drying himself.

Akira met him in the lobby. He looked rough, as if, like Jim, he hadn't had much sleep or time to shave. ‘Yamamoto's car is waiting.'

They walked swiftly outside to a black Toyota Crown. It was an old car but it shone like new. They got into the back. Yamamoto was in the front passenger seat. ‘I think I have found her. Let's go.'

The chauffeur set off. Jim noticed he was a very old man, who drove as carefully as if the car was stuffed with nitro-glycerine. The roads were busy but the traffic flowed. ‘Where are we going?' he asked.

‘Where are we going?' repeated Akira in Japanese.

‘You'll see,' said Yamamoto.

Jim got out of the Crown and looked at the polished grey granite building. Across the broad entrance it said ‘Yamamoto Towers' in English, then probably the same in Japanese characters.

Yamamoto was striding towards the entrance and Jim jogged to catch up. The Japanese businessman bustled through the revolving doors to where a reception committee stood.

Everyone bowed. The welcoming party saw them to the lifts and bowed at them as the doors closed. The lift was saying something to them and Jim wondered what it was. He hadn't been in a talking lift before. They were heading for the roof.

When it stopped, Yamamoto strode out, and around the roof garden to the far side. Jim gazed at the rocks and gravel, all perfectly placed, and thought how bizarre it was that anyone would want a rockery on the top of an office block. A telescope was set up at the far end with a young guy of about Jim's age beside it.

Yamamoto squinted through the eyepiece and smiled at his employee. He said something that sounded to Jim like ‘Well done.' Then he indicated that Jim should look through the eyepiece. Jim crossed to the telescope and found he was focused on another giant tower. The floor in the centre had some kind of garden in it – with what looked like an aviary. If you're going to build a rock garden on top of a building, he thought, why not a greenhouse?

Yamamoto was talking to Akira.

‘So, so, so,' said Akira. ‘Evans-san, your lady is being kept in the zoo you can see before you.'

He stood up. ‘That's a zoo? Whose zoo?'

‘Kimcorp Zoo.'

Jim was scanning the floor for a glimpse of Jane, but all he could see was vegetation and birds. ‘Are you sure?'

‘Yes.'

‘What the fuck is Kimcorp?'

‘Huge property company,' said Akira, ‘one of the top five.'

‘Can't we just get the police to bust in?'

‘I'm afraid Kim would be the first to know. By the time a raid happened, your lady would be gone.'

Jim took a deep breath and blew it out, frustrated. He looked back through the telescope. ‘Can we see the other side of the building?'

Akira asked Yamamoto.

‘Yes,' said Yamamoto. ‘We should have helicopter photographs very soon.'

The animals went silent and, moments later, the lift door opened. She stood up and held the plate by her side. She had sharpened it in the small hours and hoped they might not have noticed. She had tried to be subtle about it, but if they'd been awake… As she could hear only one set of footsteps, she guessed she had got lucky.

Kim stood in front of the cage, well back. She watched him closely. Only a small section of the plate's rim was now blade sharp. If she hurled it through the bars at him she'd pray for a miracle.

‘Who are you?' said the man.

‘Who are you?' she replied.

He reached into his pocket. ‘It doesn't matter,' he said, pulling out the dart gun. He pointed it at her loosely. ‘I don't need to know your name.' He fired.

It took him a moment to register the clank.

Jane picked up the dart from the floor. It had discharged most of its load with the blow. She didn't think. She just did. Thinking made the barely possible impossible. She had to be in the moment, in the zone. Accuracy came from the deep subconscious, the brainstem, the hypothalamus. She lanced the dart through the bars at Kim. He flinched as it stuck in his neck.

He squeaked in shock and reeled back. He pulled the dart from his flesh, dropping it to the ground.

Jane was smiling. A very satisfactory shot. The tranquilliser was in a puddle at her feet and she guessed the round was spent, but her victory had a kind of small perfection.

Kim tottered forwards and staggered, then careered headlong into the bars of the cage.

‘Thank you, Jesus,' she said, and ran to the bars. Clearly the round had had some sting left. She knelt down, grabbed his arm and pulled it through the cage bars. He didn't have a watch or a band on his wrist. He must have a tag under his skin. She took the plate. She couldn't lift him to the door latch, so she'd have to cut his arm off. In the circumstances it wasn't such an unpleasant prospect. She pushed up his jacket and shirt sleeves. She went to undo his cufflink.

‘Bingo,' she muttered. The cufflink was the key. She took it out of his cuff and stood up. Red lights around the room started flashing. ‘Damn it,' she muttered. She pushed her arms through the bars to the control surface.

Nothing happened. She already knew the problem. She went back to Kim and pulled his other arm through. It was the other cufflink. When they were both in range the system operated; when they were further apart than the length of his arms, they set off an alarm and ceased to function. She tried the lock again and the door clicked open. She leapt out. She opened the gorilla's door. ‘Come with me,' she said, but the gorilla just looked at her.

She didn't wait. The lift was going down to the floor below. She called it, then looked into the camera. Its little red light was lit. If she could deal with the people in the lift she could get free. She could go back and use the man as a shield, but she wouldn't be able to carry him with her. No matter. Attack was always the best way.

Jim looked at the photos. An indistinct figure sat in a cage. Was it Jane? It was hard to tell. He felt sick and his face bunched up in disgust.

‘I'm so sorry,' said Akira. ‘This is horrible.'

‘Don't be sorry,' he said. ‘At least, if that's her, she's alive.'

Yamamoto was slumped in a chair, apparently fast asleep. ‘Pay the ransom,' he said.

‘What did he say?' asked Jim.

‘Pay Kim.' Akira told him.

‘That's not going to work, is it?' said Jim.

‘Why?'

‘For one thing I owe you an object, and for another, if we give them to him, he can't leave any witnesses behind, can he? Not me, not you, least of all Jane. We can't take the easy way out.' Jim sat up a bit. ‘I've got something for you,' he said, smiling ironically at Akira. He reached under his shirt and pulled out the Yasakani no Magatama. He lifted it over his head and handed it to Akira.

Akira held up his short hand in shock.

‘Take it,' said Jim.

Yamamoto had woken up.

‘No,' said Akira, ‘not yet. We are not sure if it is Jane-san. Nor do I wish it returned until I have secured the sword Kusanagi and Yata no Kagami.'

Yamamoto was suddenly wide awake.

‘That doesn't make any sense,' said Jim.

‘I trust you to continue to bear Yasakani no Magatama with honour.'

Yamamoto was staring at Jim. ‘Kusanagi? Yata no Kagami? Yasakani no Magatama?'

‘I'm sorry, old friend,' said Akira, ‘but I have lured you into a legend.'

James Dean Yamamoto was sweating profusely again. He watched Jim put on the green glowing necklace and cover it with his shirt. Then he began to laugh uproariously. Sweat and tears were trickling down his face and he clasped his legs.

‘What's so funny?' asked Jim.

Akira shrugged.

‘This will surely kill us all,' wheezed Yamamoto.

Akira translated.