Kusanagi (7 page)

They looked at each other silently over their beers. There was a furious amount of telepathy going down.

‘I can read you like a book,' said Danny finally, to Reece, ‘but there are so many words I don't understand.'

Reece produced his lopsided smirk. He let out a groan. ‘So, you want to hear what I think?'

They agreed that they did – silently.

Reece scratched the back of his head, where his right trapezium met the short hair covering his shaven cranium. ‘OK, I think I should take this back to Tokyo and see what reaction I get. Thoughts?'

Brandon didn't want to cast any doubt but he asked anyway: ‘Do you think a store can pay like hundreds of thousands of dollars for the slab?'

Reece nodded approval. ‘Good question. I don't know. Those guys paid over fifty Gs like it was small change, but I have no idea about more.'

‘Take it abroad?' said Casey.

‘Cowboy!' said Danny. ‘Nice idea, but we might be trafficking, like, antiquities. That would be serious.'

Casey's head sank into his thick shoulders.

‘That's a good point, Danny,' said Reece. ‘The slab is either a nice piece of junk or a super artefact. Either way, we need to act innocent. I reckon I take it to the old man in the first place I went and see what he says.' Reece was imagining him writing a number. The offer was big, but somehow not so big as to bring the roof crashing in.

‘Maybe we should just hand it over,' said Brandon.

The three looked at him. ‘What if it's worth a million dollars?' said Danny. ‘Would you hand it over then?'

‘It might be the right thing to do.'

‘Yup,' said Reece, ‘but let me go to Tokyo and see first.'

‘OK.'

Reece stood at the antiques shop door. Nothing had changed since he was there a few weeks back, except that a cigarette stub had blown into the corner of the step. It seemed wrong, so he bent down, picked it up and put it into his pocket. He would throw it away later.

He pulled the door open and went in, ducking under the flagged lintel.

The old man came out from behind the beaded curtain and smiled in recognition.

This time Reece paid more attention to the cabinets as he passed them. There were swords and armour of every era, and he realised that many of the artefacts on display must be far more ancient and precious than he had previously thought. Some items were centuries older than the United States. They had belonged to generations long lost and forgotten, atoms from the past that had somehow survived while everything else had perished. When he was gone, in a few short years, no one would remember him; nothing would be left. He would be absorbed into the dirt. Yet here there were fragments of a momentous past, preserved like chicken legs in a freezer.

He felt his stomach flutter and the GI duffel sag on his shoulder. He took a deep breath. He felt like a kid on his first date. ‘Hi,' he said.

‘Hi,' said the shopkeeper, smiling and bowing.

Reece sat down in the little chair before the desk and dropped the bag gently to the floor. He unzipped it and lifted the heavy slab onto the counter. ‘Please,' he said.

The shopkeeper gasped, in an unsettling way, at the sight of it. The old man's mouth was open. He began to nod fast. ‘May I?' he said, opening his palms to Reece.

‘Sure,' said Reece.

The old man ran his right hand over the decorated face. He looked up at Reece in what seemed to be shock. He traced the carving, then ran his index finger around the circumference of the sun. He looked up at Reece again, a tear escaping from his left eye. He was smiling. He was shaking.

‘Would you like to buy?' said Reece, clumsily.

The old shopkeeper lifted the top of the slab and, magnifying glass in hand, began to study the face. He laid it down carefully and looked at Reece again. He dropped the magnifying glass and stared up at the ceiling as if in thought. He made a throaty gurgling sound. His forehead was suddenly covered with sweat. The colour drained from his face, which faded from pink to white to grey to green. He turned in his seat and pitched stiffly from his stool onto the floor.

‘Jeez!' said Reece, jumping up. He vaulted the counter. He pressed his finger into the old man's neck. There was a pulse. The bead curtain moved. The little old lady hobbled over as fast as she could and looked anxiously down at them.

‘
Ambaransu,
' he said. ‘
Hyu, kuyu, dayo
.'

The old man was breathing OK. Reece loosened his belt and put the embroidered cushion from the chair under his head. The old lady was still gazing mournfully at her husband.

‘Ambulance –
ambaransu
?' he asked.

She nodded.

‘
Asupirin
?' he said. ‘
Mizu!
'

She disappeared and came back with a glass of fizzing water. He sipped it quickly – it tasted of Disprin. He fed it to the old man, who was mumbling as he drank it, his eyes closed, his lips quivering. Aspirin would help a little.

Reece monitored the old man's pulse as he fed him the last of the drink. He seemed to be stable. He looked up at the old lady. ‘He's going to be OK,' he said. ‘
Yoroshii
.' There were sirens.

He stood up, vaulted the counter and put the slab back into the duffel bag. He ran to the door and let the paramedics in, then led them to the old man behind the counter. He put his hand over his own heart. ‘Heart attack,' he said. ‘
Tokkan
.'

The paramedics smiled in acknowledgement and went to work.

Reece grabbed the duffel bag. Time to scoot.

Jim looked at his email. He was waiting for a message from Jane. It didn't matter how much he hoped or waited, it never arrived early enough to keep him happy. It was like food to a starving man. She doled out scraps to just below the required calorie count needed to keep him healthy. Didn't she know he was waiting on every little word from her? Did she do it on purpose? Was she just too busy for him? Was some hunky super-agent lavishing attention on her?

When he got seriously frustrated by it, he would beat up on a stock or currency. He could spot the weak ones, like a lion could spot a calf separated from the herd. He would dive at it and drag it down. A few hundred million thrown against a weak financial instrument would cave it in under his claws. Flawed currencies, bonds or stocks were too lame to survive, and he would push them fast to the edge of extinction. Yet he would pull back from his attacks just before he drove them beyond the point of no return. While he could pile up yet greater profit if he traded them to their logical destruction, he couldn't help but imagine the faces behind the numbers.

A company might be doomed to bankruptcy from bad management but there were real people behind the stock chart of the dying company, normal folk who had to make their mortgage payment or cover their next credit card bill, thousands of them, perhaps tens of thousands, and, like the company, they, too, were clinging on. When he reached the point at which he knew he could tilt the lot of them off the cliff, a point they were doomed to reach some time anyway, he would stop and sigh.

Then he would buy back his stock to cover and consequentially push the price up again. He would make a few millions and roll a few numbers up at the end of his trading account and maybe, just maybe, there would be an email from Jane by the time he had finished.

If he could go back a few years, he would be energised by the fear of failure, motivated by the fight to hold onto his tenuous position. Now that was gone and he was floating in a void of wealth, a shallow but dense pool of anaesthetic.

Stafford brought him a round of toasted Marmite slices and a cup of sugary tea. Why couldn't she just SMS him ‘Hello'?

The little Japanese bar had become their personal haunt. Reece looked at his men. ‘There's no way we can fence this in Tokyo. This slab is worth way more than the coins, and those antiques stores can't write that sort of cheque.' He could see the old man's eyes rolling back in his head and his complexion turning from healthy red to a deathly pallor. ‘On top of that, we don't know the laws here, and fishing up a valuable antiquity might just get us sunk. We've got to take this thing abroad.'

They all nodded.

‘So, Danny, you look like the one to go,' he continued.

‘Hey-hey,' said Danny. He grinned nervously. ‘But where?'

‘Home is too hot,' said Casey. ‘We don't want to shit in our own backyard.'

‘Right,' said Reece. ‘NY would be cool, but if we got busted, it would be game over. That leaves London, as far as I can see. Anyone got a better idea?'

‘Hong Kong?' Brandon suggested.

No one responded, which meant they thought no.

‘So we'll go to London, England,' said Reece.

‘Londonshire,' said Danny. ‘I like it!'

‘Good job I got our furlough reassigned,' said Reece, ‘cause meanwhile we'll go back and keep looking for more of those coins while Danny's out in England.'

‘Agreed,' said Casey.

‘You've drawn up a plan of attack?' said Danny.

‘Sure,' said Reece.

‘So what's the thing worth?' asked Danny, for the hundredth time.

Reece gestured at Brandon. ‘What do you think?'

‘A million dollars,' said Brandon.

‘More,' said Danny.

‘How much more?' said Casey.

‘A hell of a lot more,' said Danny.

‘A million or more,' said Reece, smiling.

Danny tittered. ‘Reece, you sure you don't want to go yourself?'

‘Wish I could,' he said, ‘but after that typhoon I want to be behind the wheel again on our next trip.'

‘OK,' said Danny, ‘but don't blame me if I get more than a million for it.'

‘We don't do blame,' said Reece.

Danny was happy to stretch his legs. Getting a jump seat on a military transport was not a luxury experience. The seats were made for skinny airmen, not bulky marines like him. Mildenhall was some kind of field in England, and outside it looked like a normal day in Maine. He wasn't a fan of green and rainy, he liked it hot and brown, like his home town, Austin, Texas. He was going to have to get some freakin' train to London, but for now he was nervous about clearing the base with a duffel full of ancient gold.

He didn't have much to worry about. As a SEAL he was pretty much royalty and there was a lot of smiling and nodding as they stamped his papers. For Danny, respect was about the best thing in the world. It was why he had qualified as a doctor. He hadn't expected to be a medic, but that was what it had taken for him to become a SEAL, so he had forced himself through the training. It was so much harder than the running and lifting, but to get the respect he craved he'd had to heave his brain through that course in the same way that he'd had to haul his body up and down hills and through water.

It hurt his brain to learn more than it hurt his body to struggle, but he told himself it was just another ache in another muscle; a muscle that had never been his strongest. He liked his brain pumped up. Although he didn't use it as a first reflex, he knew it had grown strong.

His ‘little guy' was in charge, a younger self that pulled on three levers: his mind, his body and his emotions. The ‘little guy' had the last word and always had since the day the dog had attacked his little sister.

They had been walking down a back alley near home when a dog had jumped a fence and gone for them. It was some kind of pit-bull thing, a giant beast to him and the little girl. It had grabbed her face and pushed her to the ground. He had grabbed it by the balls and yanked them as hard as he could. It had turned on him. As it had lunged, its fangs a perfect white, something had gelled inside his soul. The dog had grabbed his arm and pulled him to the ground. He had stuck his thumb into its right eye and pushed until it came out of its socket as the dog shook him. The dog shuddered, but shook him harder.

The pit-bull was going to tear his arm off. He pulled his thumb out of the bloody socket and shifted his grip to press hard on the other eye. The dog let go and sprang back. It yowled, spun backwards and ran a few paces. It stopped, blood running down its muzzle, its right eye hanging gorily.

Danny had jumped up and run to his sister, who sat stunned, her face covered with blood, her cheek torn. He pulled her up and grabbed her around the waist. ‘Fire!' he had screamed. ‘Fire!' Everyone said people would come to a fire, but not a murder. He knew no one would come to a crazed dog attack. ‘Fire!' he cried, and soon they came.

From that moment on, the little boy who had fought the dog had taken his place on the bench: he was the manager who called the shots.

Danny sat on the British equivalent of a Greyhound bus to London. He looked out at all the little fields. It was rather like Japan, small and neat. There was something kind of cute about the landscape – it was strangely model-like. The people in the country seemed to have reached an agreement to share in a friendly way, too small a space to live comfortably. Through it all, a skinny freeway wove towards the city.

London was meant to be foggy and have soldiers in red there. They always teased the Brits about the London fog and the Brits laughed and teased them back about the dollar being three to the pound. That was good because three dollars to the pound for the gold brick would be great.

It might not be foggy in the UK today but it sure as hell didn't need fog for the weather to be as miserable as sin. No wonder the Brits were everywhere around the world: staying home would be seriously depressing.

Right now the guys would be out to sea again, sailing to the bay to look for more gold. If he wasn't so tired he'd be jigging in his bus seat like a child on his way to the fair. Instead, jetlagged, he was just awake. Tomorrow there was an auction at Christie's of antiquities. He was going to sit in on it and see if anything made sense to him. Then he'd go to the valuation department and get an opinion. An over muscular grin spread across his face. Time was passing way too slowly for his liking.

At the hotel he would stay in until the next day. He was not going out and risking anything. He would wait, eat and sleep until the new day came and his mission really kicked off.

The next morning, getting out of bed was a hard stretch. He could have lain in the nice sheets at the Best Western Marble Arch for many more hours. The auction was in about an hour and that was enough time to shave, shower and shift to Christie's.