The Devil's Footprint (12 page)

"Follow
me," said Oga, and he was already running up the stairs as he finished
speaking.
 
Chifune's tactical sense was
almost always sound.
 
They could see very
little from ground level with fire being poured down on them.
 
From a flat roof it should be a different
story.

But they had
to move fast.
 
He knew them.
 
The terrorists would not stick around.
 
By the time the police cordon in place, they
would be gone.
 
Ambush and run.
 
Kill and hide.
 
Mankind had been doing it since time began,
because it worked.
 
The only solution was
to react very, very fast and then lay down some serious counterfire.

The roof was
not flat.

Oga swore but
did not hesitate.
 
The two Kidotai threw
him up into the crawl space and he smashed a hole in the tiles.
 
One of the policemen made it up beside
him.
 
The second Kidotai, whose cupped
hands had propelled up his colleague, headed off to find a window.

Oga, peering
out from between smashed tiles, could see nothing from where he stood.
 
He had thought he was pointing in the right
direction, but running up flight after flight of stairs was disorienting.

Automatic fire
smashed into the tiles and the Kidotai looking through a hole to his left
careered backward.
 
He had taken an
entire burst in his head.

Oga thought
fast.
 
The Kidotai sergeant's hole in the
roof was facing the right way, but looking through it risked receiving exactly
the same treatment.
 
That was not the
object of the exercise.

He smashed out
more tiles and then hauled himself out through the enlarged hole onto the
roof.
 
Then he looked down, which was a
mistake.
 
There was a nominal parapet at
the base of the sloped section in case he slipped, but despite the earthquake
regulations, it did not look strong enough to stop a Japanese detective
inspector.
 
Even one who had considerable
interest in continuing to
live.

The tiles were
nailed onto a matrix of wooden supports.
 
Most of the thin lateral slats were too light to hold his weight, but
every two feet or so there was a stronger beam that looked more reassuring.

He thought of
ducking back in and making some foot holes, but then realized there was not
time.
 
The people he was after would be
gone.

He raised his
automatic rifle and fired a burst into the tiles just above where he estimated
the top lateral beam ran.
 
The tiles
shattered and Oga slung his rifle and levered himself up so that he was
supported by the beam but able to look over the ridge.
 
In truth, he was too high.
 
He pulled back and lay at an angle so only
what was absolutely necessary was exposed.
 
Unfortunately, that was his head.

He felt scared
and vulnerable and was just beginning to regret his enthusiasm when he suddenly
saw a figure on a flat roof only two blocks away rise to aim a shoulder-fired
RPG over the parapet wall.

The terrorist
seemed close enough to touch.
 
Oga felt
that the man must notice him any second.
 
They were monitoring the roofline, he knew from the burst of fire that
had killed Sergeant Tomoto.

The terrorist
with the launcher was intent on lining up his target below.
 
The sergeant had been killed with
automatic-weapons fire, so that meant that almost certainly there was at least
one other terrorist armed with an automatic weapon on the roof.
 
Or an adjoining roof.
 
Or moving around.

Oga ducked
down and unslung his weapon.
 
It came to
him that Chifune was lying there helpless below, and then he moved without
hesitation, straightening up so that his weight was fully supported on the bar
and then bringing the automatic rifle up to his shoulder and firing as soon as
the red laser dot came to bear.

Rounds
hammered from the flash guard of the Howa and smashed the arm steadying the
launcher before hitting home just below the terrorist's throat.
 
He fell backward, already dead, and as he hit
the ground his finger was jarred against the trigger.

The rocket
blasted out and blew the water-tank housing into the air.
 
The tank inside exploded in a lethal fountain
of metal, steam, and water.

A figure
scurried out form behind the debris and got up on the parapet, ready to jump
across a narrow alley onto an adjoining roof.

There was a
split second during which the shot looked possible, but Detective Inspector Oga
did not squeeze the trigger.

The think
plank beneath his feet had just snapped and he had instantly dropped an
unsettling two inches.
 
There was perhaps
thirty seconds' pause while the molecules in the thin laths and tiles debated
whether they could sustain his weight.
 
Oga did not dare move.

It didn't
help.
 
Tiles and laths snapped one after
the other as if in syncopation before he came to a bone-jarring halt on the
next, thicker lateral support.
 
That
might have been enough, except the building had been erected only a few years
after World War II when really any grade of material had to do.
 
And the building inspector was a cousin of
the second cousin of the builder.
 
And he
was connected with the local
yakuza
clan who just happened to have a load of rather dubious lumber in need of a
good home.

The wooden
support hesitated, vibrated.
 
And then snapped at a knothole.

Oga was just
about to go over the edge when Chifune, her hair matted with blood, appeared
through the hole in the roof and grabbed him as he was sailing by.
 
She could well have been pulled down with
him, except that the Kidotai held on to her.

As the pair of
them
were
pulled in, Chifune thought more kindly of
the brawn of the security police.
 
There
were times when she was quite in favor of big strong men.
 
Sexist or otherwise.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

The Tokyo
Metropolitan Police Department was
officially
run by the Superintendent General, and he was the man who appeared frequently
in the public eye looking authoritative and concerned and dignified and
projecting
exactly
the right public
image.

In the
Japanese tradition of public image and private reality — "
tatamae
and
honne
" — the Tokyo MPD was actually run by the remote and
sphinxlike figure of Deputy Superintendent Saburo Enoke, known to one and all
within the Tokyo MPD as ‘The Spider.’
 
Secretly, he was also director of counterterrorism.

The Spider had
the social warmth of a well-iced dead tuna in the
Ginza
fish market, but though not liked, he was respected and, where appropriate,
feared.
 
No one knew quite how he did it,
but the consensus was that he did an outstanding job with the police department.
 
In
Tokyo
,
the crime rate was a fraction of that in other major cities, and terrorism was
regarded as being reasonably well under control.
 
Most hard-core terrorists had fled
Japan
for the
Middle East
and elsewhere.
 
Most.

Exceptions did
not please the Spider.
 
But the context
of some exceptions was — he searched for the right word —
complex
.
 
Sometimes
exceedingly so.
 
There were forces
that the Spider could influence and others that were outside his control.
 
Sometimes that meant accommodating interests
that he was privately opposed to.
 
This
had been such an occasion.
 
But the
Spider believed he could operate most effectively by staying within the web,
and to ensure that sometimes sacrifices were required.

Neither the
Spider's face nor his body language gave any indication at all of his inner
thoughts.
 
The Spider's control was
legendary.
 
It was also quite unnerving.

Although the
Tokyo MPD had a reputation for integrity, Chifune had initially harbored strong
doubts about the Spider.
 
It was only
during Fitzduane's visit to Tokyo that she had realized that the Deputy
Superintendent of Police was not, as she had originally suspected, an inside
man for corrupt politicians and organized crime, but instead was, as the
gaijin
had said, ‘on the side of the angels.’

He did not
look like an angel, Chifune reflected.
 
He was very small and somewhat squat and looked almost like a mannequin
in his very large and well-padded black leather swivel chair.
 
His tailoring was impeccable but revealed
nothing except a sense of order.
 
His one
human touch was a penchant for rather elegant designer glasses.

Chifune, on
secondment from Koancho, had reported directly to the DSG for over a year.
 
Working with Oga, promoted from sergeant, she
had been focused on eliminating the last vestiges of the terrorist group known
as Yaibo.

The
gaijin
, Fitzduane, had created the
opportunity by destroying the inner cadre of Yaibo and killing the leader,
Reiko Oshima.
 
Since then, it had been
mainly a matter of tracking down the small fry — until yesterday.

Yesterday's
deliberate ambush, carefully planned and meticulously executed, was more
redolent of earlier times when Yaibo had acquired their reputation.
 
They had been the bloodiest terrorist group
Japan
had ever
experienced since the political assassins of the thirties, who had brought the
militarists into power, had flourished.

Yaibo had
murdered her lover and best friend, Detective Superintendent Aki Adachi.
 
Never a day went by that Chifune did not miss
him.
 
She would never forget, nor would
she forgive.
 
Her commitment was
absolute.

"Tanabu-
san
," said the Spider quietly, and
the effect was like a breeze springing up and beginning to thin out a
mist.
 
She might not like what she was
about to behold,
but she would see
.

Chifune nodded
respectfully.
 
This was not proving easy
for the DSG.

"It has
been necessary, Tanabu-
san
,"
continued the Spider, "to keep certain information from you despite the
fact that it was directly relevant to your work.
 
This view was not mine, but I acceded to
it.
 
There were good reasons for this,
but I am exceedingly embarrassed.
 
I have
your trust, I know, and I feel I have partially betrayed it.
 
It grieves me.
 
It was not appropriate behavior."

"Directly relevant to your work."
 
Yaibo
!
Thought Chifune.
 
What could it be?
 
She had read every file, interrogated every
suspect, checked every computer record on Yaibo, and talked to every cop with
specialist knowledge.
 
So what could she
have missed?

"You
missed nothing," said the Spider.
 
"No one could have been more thorough and more resolute, but these
facts were not in the records.
 
It was a
policy decision by certain members of the security service.
 
It was felt that it would be better if you
were not informed.
 
A confusion of
loyalties was suspected."

Fitzduane
! thought
Chifune.
 
There had been that one night of love before he had returned to Kathleen
to marry her.
 
And she had returned to
Adachi, who had died so soon afterward.
 
Who had been slaughtered like an animal by Reiko Oshima and her
assassins.
 
Her
alliance with the
gaijin
had made her
suspect in the eyes of her superiors.
 
Her loyalty should be entirely to
Japan
, not confused by an affair
with a foreigner.
 
It was a
traditionalist view but not entirely surprising.
 
It was also a male chauvinist view, and that
was profoundly irritating.

But why had
the Deputy Superintendent General gone along with this — whatever it was?
 
He
knew
her.
 
He knew her sense of purpose and
her utter commitment.
 
He
knew her loyalties.
 
Inwardly she sighed.
 
And
she
knew the pressures on him and the accommodations he had to make.

She came
originally from that very world.
 
Power brokers; manipulators; unspoken agreements; money politics.
 
All tied to organized crime, with its roots
in the chaos of the postwar period and the need to have
Japan
as a
bulwark against communism.
 
So the
democratic structures set up by the
U.S.
government of occupation were
flawed.
 
Opposing communism came first —
but there was a price to be paid.
 
The
public image of
Japan
was now democratic, with structures similar to those of the West.
 
The private reality was infinitely more
complex and more dangerous.
 
And the
Spider had to work within this world.
 
It
was reality.