Time of Attack (27 page)

O
da shoved the trembling girl aside at the interruption of the ringing telephone. Barely thirteen, she was a new addition to his stable. She was attractive in her own way—sturdy shoulders and strong cheekbones—but looks had deceived him. He remembered when females didn’t melt to mush at a little physical pain. There was a time when girls like this were tough, able to withstand a bit of correction and stand up to the rigors of the life he demanded. Such a young and vibrant woman would have been putty in his hands, moldable into whatever he wanted her to be. Now, it seemed, the entire gender were no more than chalk, crumbling to dust at the slightest cuff or kick. This one had wept like a baby at the mere sight of his tattoo.

“Get out!” he growled before picking up the phone. Naked, the whelp whimpered pathetically as she opened the sliding paper door and limped out, dragging her robes with her.

Oda snatched up the phone, looking at the number.

“What is it?” He kept his voice dismissive. With the idiot Tanaka it was important to set a standard from the beginning of any conversation. He had no time for second-rate gangsters who held to old ways that were fast getting them marginalized by virtually ever facet of Japanese society.

“Ah, Oda-san,” Tanaka said, “thank you for taking my call.”

“You are either calling to apologize or to threaten me. I am interested to hear which, for it will dictate what I do once we are finished.”

“It is neither, I’m afraid.”

“Very well,” Oda said, “that may also dictate certain actions.”

“I only wish to be of assistance.” Tanaka spoke quickly, risking interruption in order to keep Oda from giving any edicts he’d feel obliged to keep. “A man came to see me looking for you. I believe he will pay you a visit as well.”

“And how would he know where to look?”

There was a long silence—a liar’s pause—before Tanaka answered. “I fear one of my men may have given him some information before this man killed him.”

“How very convenient that the man who betrayed me is dead,” Oda said, his voice cold, snakelike.

“As soon as it came to my attention, I called to warn you,” Tanaka said.

“Describe this man.” Oda knew who it was before the yakuza boss told him.

“An American, I think,” Tanaka said. “Dark—both in features and demeanor. He has killed before. I am certain of that.”

“Thank you for the notice, Tanaka-san,” Oda said. “I will look forward to his visit with much pleasure.”

Oda ended the call and tossed the phone on his desk. He was not frightened of Jericho Quinn. But it was a mark of failure in his organization that the man was still alive and had gotten this far.

Certainly as head of the organization it was his fault that Quinn had been left alive for so long. His fault because he had left the job to others. Failure was one thing he would not tolerate. Someone would have to atone for this—and since he did not feel like punishing himself, he knew exactly where to begin.

G
overnor Lee McKeon paced in front of the window of the cheap motel. It was impossible to sit still while he discussed weighty matters.

Qasim Ranjhani sat on the bed, leaning against the far wall. In contrast to McKeon’s nerves, Ranjhani’s hands were folded serenely in his lap. The governor had big ideas and the will to see them through, but for the most part, it was Ranjhani who worked the trenches. It was he who got his hands dirty while McKeon played the concerned politician. Years before, and under another name, McKeon had gotten his hands dirty as well.

The motel was located on Portland’s east side, off 82nd Avenue, well off the beaten path. The desk clerk stunk of cheap bourbon and was unlikely to even know there was a governor of Oregon, let alone what he looked like. McKeon was fairly certain someone from his Oregon State Police protective detail had followed him discreetly, but that could not be helped. This particular motel was known as a place for illicit affairs, particularly with other men. All the entries were from an inside hall, and several people had arrived at roughly the same time as McKeon. Unless they booted his door, anyone who had defied his order and followed him anyway would have no idea who he happened to be meeting with. Rumors of an affair he could weather, even an affair with another man—but if they’d known what he was actually planning, the men protecting him would have shot him on the spot.

“So,” McKeon said, fairly giddy with the possibilities. “We are actually going to do this?”

“So it seems, my friend. So it seems.” Ranjhani was cool and matter-of-fact. To talk of killing thousands to this man was to talk of killing a common fly.

“Do you believe they will all leave at once?”

“That depends on U.S. military response,” Ranjhani said. “The illness takes a week or so to develop. Most will think any initial symptoms are merely a reaction to the live virus vaccine.”

“Brilliant.” McKeon nodded.

“Oda has forty thousand units of vaccine for the American soldiers in Afghanistan and another fifteen thousand for Kuwait.” Ranjhani paused. “At your request, we have orchestrated a small outbreak to stir up emotion in South Korea. Roughly a hundred ninety-five thousand units are waiting in cold storage for shipment to the United States, but I suspect officials will rob some of those for their twenty-eight thousand troops in Seoul.”

Ranjhani was quiet for a time, allowing the governor to do the math.

“And what of Oda?” McKeon gave a long, thoughtful sigh. “I was under the impression he undertook this task in order to get American troops out of Japan.”

“There is a particular beauty in the domino effect of all this,” Ranjhani said. “When thousands of their emergency personnel begin to sicken and die, the U.S. government will have no choice but to recall overseas troops. It is difficult to be the world’s policeman if your own home is on fire.”

McKeon smiled. In a matter of hours, eighty thousand U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines and over 160,000 Americans—mainly medical and law enforcement personnel—would be vaccinated as “first responders.” Soon afterward, they would find that they were dying. South Korea would be left alone. American citizens would realize that their own government had spread the deadly virus. Conspiracy theorists would, at long last, be proven correct. The Middle East would be purged of infidel invaders as remaining troops rushed home to take care of a collapsing nation.

The governor held his breath, thinking through the details.

“It hinges on the tests.” McKeon’s voice clicked with tension.

“It does.” Ranjhani shrugged. “But the American officials are under tremendous pressure to approve a cure. The woman the CDC sent to Japan has already received two calls Oda believes came from the White House. Photographs of the sick flood the Internet, but just to push things along we have seeded several forums with the idea that the U.S. administration is conspiring with Japan to hold back the new vaccine in order to tamp down population growth.”

“Brilliant,” McKeon said, laughing, running a hand over his long face.

“Oda has given me assurances,” Ranjhani went on. “The tests will go as we have planned. Japan, after all, is no enemy. Why would they produce anything to hurt the United States?”

McKeon took a deep breath, addressing the elephant neither man had mentioned. “And what of our American agent? It sounds to me as though he could still pose a major problem.”

“Ah.” Ranjhani sighed. “I suppose Quinn proved useful in establishing Drake’s credibility. He is apparently in Japan looking for Oda and the girl who shot his ex-wife. He knows nothing of the vaccine, and, in any case, Oda assures me Quinn will be sorted out within hours.”

“That is welcome news.” An infectious grin spread across McKeon’s face. “It is all happening as my father predicted. Allah willing, in a very short time, the world we live in will be a very different place.”

“Ahh,” Ranjhani said. “That it will, my friend,
insh’Allah
.” He popped the latches on a scuffed aluminum briefcase that sat on the table before him. Inside were two simple boxes of polished wood, each a little smaller than a brick. “And that brings me to my real reason for coming to this country of infidels.”

B
owen and Hase were greeted by two men carrying a heavy roll of carpet down the stairs from Ayako Shimizu’s apartment. Each wore a light blue tracksuit and Ray-Ban sunglasses. The lead man, slightly older than his partner, had a ponderous belly, and the sagging load caused him to grunt and sweat as he shuffled along. When he saw Detective Hase, he dropped his end and ran. Unsupported, the carpet fell out of the second man’s hands and unfurled on the damp pavement, revealing the body of a man in a red leather jacket.

“You want me to go after the runner?” Bowen asked. There was no hurry. The fat guy was running slow enough Bowen could have stopped for a cheeseburger and still caught him before he got out of sight.

“Do not bother.” Hase sighed. “I know him. I am much more interested in what is upstairs.”

Hase ordered the second man, a young yakuza soldier named Kono, to sit on the curb. Amazingly, he complied, hanging his head between his knees, waiting obediently to be carted off to jail.

There was another body in the apartment, another yakuza soldier, according to Hase. This one displayed a cracked skull, apparently caused by a sudden collision with the bloody bowling pin that lay on the floor beside the body.

Three distinct pools of blood stained the wooden floor. One next to the dead man’s ear, another beside a pillow with the stuffing blown out of it, and third, just inside the door. Either there had been a third body or someone had survived.

Bowen looked around the apartment—a neatly folded towel next to a pile of crumpled laundry, a blanket and sheet in perfect order amid a chaos of bedclothes, a set of dishes sorted and stacked beside the sink full of crusted bowls and pots—all but screamed the obsessive-compulsive behavior of an Air Force Academy cadet.

“He was here all right,” Bowen said. “We find the woman, we’ll find Quinn.”

Detective Hase looked up from his cell phone. “I concur,” he said. “Crime scene investigators will be here any moment. Ayako-san has a certain client who, I believe, will tell us where to find her.”

 

S
himoyama Takako sensed his presence as she approached her front door. She was dressed traditionally as she always was in a lavender kimono with a foam green belt and a darker green coat. The neighbors in her upscale suburban neighborhood believed she dressed this way because she taught flower arrangement or the tea ceremony. They could never know it was because her employer—the man she loved and so desperately wanted to please—required it.

She knew she should turn and run. But what good would that do? He would only catch her and she would look a mess. One did not run from Oda any more than a bee flew away from honey. Though he was surely there to chastise her—or even worse—Takako’s heart swelled at the fact that he waited for her inside. She longed for his presence, the sight and smell of him close to her. Even if he was angry, he was there, in her home, and that was something.

She closed the door behind her and set her keys in a red lacquer tray on the stained pine shelf to the right of the entryway. A pair of black shoes, his shoes, sat neatly below the shelf, toes facing outward as if ready for a quick exit. She touched them, feeling the warmth of his body lingering in the rich leather. He hadn’t been here long.

A flight of stairs, deeply stained to match the exposed ceiling beams, rose up in front of her toward the second floor—where she kept her pistol.

Her toilet was to her immediate right, but the door was open. One look told her he wasn’t there. Her bedroom lay to the left. It was too much to hope that he waited for her there, ready to forgive her imperfections.

The ceiling creaked as someone walked on the floor above.

“I am up here, my darling.” Oda’s voice rolled down the stairs like a gentle breeze.

Shimoyama kicked off her shoes. She padded quickly up the stairs, holding up the hem of her kimono with both hands. Her socks were startlingly white and split at the toe—traditional, as Oda liked everything to be.

She stopped cold when she reached the top.

Oda stood at the far corner of the room, naked but for a twisted white loincloth. A long sword, her father’s, hung loosely in his right hand. The black sheath lay on the floor, discarded as he surely intended to discard her.

Shimoyama knew there could be only one reason he’d removed his clothes. He didn’t want to soil them with her blood.

Diffuse light sifted in from the paper window shade behind him, framing the garish red of the two long-nosed mountain demons tattooed on either side of his hairless chest. Riots of black and green swirled on the sinewed muscles of his thighs and arms. Ink melded with dark wood and shadow, giving the impression that he sprang from the walls of the house.

“You look lovely as ever.” Oda turned the blade back and forth as he spoke so it caught the scant light from the stairwell.

“Thank you,” she said. “It is good to see you, Oda-san.”

“Is it?”

Shimoyama’s eyes flashed around her room. She could not just let him kill her. He would lose what little respect he had for her if she merely gave up. Perhaps, if she put up a good fight, he would remember their past, the tender moments they’d shared together, and show some mercy.

Her Beretta pistol was still on the low table, where she’d left it. She licked her lips. Her mouth had gone dry and it was difficult to swallow. Perhaps this was a test. Perhaps he did not intend to kill her after all. Oda would never leave a weapon like that in the open if he intended to cut her down. He was too good at what he did.

He spoke, drawing her from thoughts of possible salvation. “I suppose you know why I am here.”

She bowed her head. She and Oda had killed many men while fighting side by side, stripped of their clothing in order to escape the bloody consequences of using a sword for such intimate work.

“Because Quinn is still alive.”

“Because he is in Japan.”

“We will find him.”

Oda all but exploded in a furious scream. He stomped forward, planting his leading foot as he struck downward with the
katana
.

Shimoyama rolled out of instinct. She felt the whisper of wind as the blade hissed past her face. The foam green obi fell away, cut neatly into two pieces on the tatami floor, leaving her kimono hanging open to reveal her white undergarment. He was toying with her. She had seen him use the same cut to cleave a man from shoulder to hip.

The Beretta was still two meters away.

“I want him dead today!” Spittle flew from Oda’s lips. He had never been able to control himself for long with Shimoyama, not when she was young and beautiful, and certainly not now that she was old. “I want him dead before nightfall. Within the hour.”

“I understand.” Shimoyama took a step backward, angling closer to the table—and the pistol.

“I am quite certain that you do not understand,” Oda snapped. “If you truly knew what it means for this American agent to be here in Japan you would have followed through and killed him before.”

“I will see to—”

“I fully expected you would see to it before he left the United States.”

“I understand.” There was little more she could say.

“There will be no atonement for you if he discovers our project. Do you understand that?”

“I do.” Shimoyama’s lips trembled. “I have no excuse—”

“Shut up,” Oda said, his voice dropped to a whisper. “Foolish, foolish woman. I will handle this myself. But that leaves me the problem of what I should do with you . . .” He turned the sword back and forth, admiring it in the light. “Do you know how many men your father killed with this sword?”

“I do not,” she said, turning her head slightly and stepping back again. Three feet from the table, she rolled again, coming up with the pistol in both hands. She pointed it directly at Oda.

He sighed softly, the way he’d done so many times in the past when she’d performed in an extraordinary way. Could it be that he was proud of her? She beamed, thinking she’d done well. A lock of hair had come loose from a lacquer comb and fallen across her eyes during her aerobatics. She pushed it back, not wanting him to see her unkempt.

Suddenly dizzy, she held the Beretta in one hand and attempted to steady herself with the other. She winced when her palm touched the table. It burned as if on fire.

Oda stooped to pick up the polished sheath and slid the blade in before setting it gently on the table in front of her. He stepped away and methodically began to put on his clothes.

Shimoyama swayed, feeling a white heat crawl up her arms. The heat turned to unbearable pain as it moved past her elbows as if she was being attacked by a swarm of wasps. Her mouth hung open, too confused to even scream.

“What . . . is . . . happening?” Her words came in breathy gasps.

Oda fastened the buttons of his starched white shirt one by one, head tilted, eyes now glued to her.

“None of this is actually your fault, you know.” He looped a red necktie around his upturned collar. “I do not blame you for Jericho Quinn.”

The Beretta fell from Shimoyama’s hand, thudding to the wooden floor. Red blisters bulged with fluid on her palms wherever she had touched the pistol—as if she’d been branded. He’d put something on the grips before she’d arrived, then driven her to pick it up with the threat of her own sword.

“I . . . I . . .” The pain enveloped her shoulders. Tendons in her neck tightened and cramped like steel cables, jerking open her jaw. An enormous pressure began to build in her chest. It seemed her heart would break out of her ribs.

“It is a form of fungus.” Oda smiled as he continued to dress. “A mycotoxin—grown from bat guano I think—but somewhat similar to the Yellow Rain used in Laos. My friends have been able to make this even more potent. A lethal dose can be absorbed through minimal skin contact. Can you imagine the uses for such an incredible poison?”

“You cared for me once . . .” Shimoyama pitched forward, destroying the harmony of her ivory pen and papers. Cheek pressed against the open pages of her journal, she blinked up at him. “If I am not to blame . . . why do this to me?”

“I needed to conduct a test, my darling.” Oda pulled the silk tie snug against his collar and shrugged. “And, because you remind me that I am growing old.”

He took his coat from the kitchen chair and disappeared down the stairs without looking back.

Shimoyama felt her throat constrict, like a sob she couldn’t quite finish or control. Unable to move her head from where it lay against the book, she flailed with her right hand, the only part of her that she still felt under her will. Searching blindly, her fingers brushed the cell phone. She gritted her teeth through the acid pain and punched in a number by feel alone—a number that she had not called for a very long time. A trembling finger pressed
SEND
.

Her heart raced wildly, out of control. Her body tensed, racked with spasms that felt as though they would break her back. A moment later, she fell slack, splayed across the table, completely still. A drop of blood trickled from her nose, creasing the white powder of her cheek to fall with a tiny plop against the pages of the open book.