Disciple of the Wind (48 page)

“Not quite, Nene-dono.”

*   *   *

In the end Nene would not give him a garment of her own, but she did ask her handmaid to give him something. The boy was so small that it was not hard to find a girl of his height.

He had an intriguing plan, worthy of Prince Yamato in the tales of old. Now that is a fine thing to think of a samurai, Nene thought. How many men today could be likened to Yamato himself? Like the legendary prince, Daigoro was courageous and cunning. But fortune
had always sided with Yamato; not so with Daigoro. She feared this time the boy might be too clever for his own good.

It was a pity, sending a boy his age into that valley—especially a boy as brave and unlucky as this one. But if anyone stood a chance against Shichio, Daigoro was the one. She hoped he would survive. He might make a fine ally for her husband one day.

In any case, he was still an excellent subject for a haiku. The bear that was a bear trap. But better to wait until after the battle at Obyo Falls before she wrote it. She had to know whether the bear
survived.

BOOK NINE

HEISEI ERA, THE YEAR 22

(2010 CE)

40

“Y
ou do understand,” Mariko said into the phone, “I’m not fucking killing anyone.”

“You’ve made that quite clear,” said Furukawa.

The son of a bitch sounded like he was smiling, as if he found her moral principles cute. Mariko hated this idea more than ever, but she didn’t know what else to do. On her own, she had no resources to bring down Joko Daishi or to find the thousand-and-some-odd first graders he’d kidnapped. The news anchors bumped up the number by the hour. Mariko had a sneaking suspicion that the final tally would be 1,304.

She mussed her still-wet hair with a towel; a quick shower had woken her up a bit and cleared her mind. A stripe of pain sang out when she ran the towel over the stitches in her scalp. “Ow. So what happens next? Thanks to you, I don’t have a badge. Kind of hard for a detective to do much detecting without one.”

“Not to worry. I can provide whatever resources you require—including a badge and sidearm, if carrying them illicitly doesn’t offend your sensibilities. If it’s computer access you need—”

“I get it. You’ve already hacked the department’s system. That’s a felony, you know.”

“Oh, quite.”

Mariko could think of a few things she’d like to do with invisible access throughout the TMPD’s network. Ending Captain Kusama’s
career would be a good start. Furukawa had the hackers to do that sort of thing—assuming, of course, that Kusama hadn’t already done the deed himself. The press wouldn’t forgive him for bullshitting them about Jemaah Islamiyah and covering up what he knew about the Divine Wind. At the moment he sat safely in the eye of that particular storm; this mass kidnapping made everyone forget about everything else. It was just his style to find some positive media spin even in a crisis like this.

“I told you before,” Furukawa said, “I sought you out because you are ideally placed for our purposes. First, if your departed sensei was right, then your destiny is to kill Koji Makoto with Glorious Victory Unsought—”

“Which I’m not going to do.”

“Yes, yes. Second, you have unique connections with police, drug dealers, and yakuzas—”

“Which you have too, so why drag me into this?”

“We’re king-makers. Street-level criminality is not our milieu.”

“So much for ‘no place you cannot reach.’”

“On the contrary. We have you.”

She heard crystal clink against crystal—a decanter gently bumping a whisky tumbler, if she had to guess. “This crisis will not be resolved in the halls of power,” he said. “It will be resolved when someone sees a panic-stricken child waving frantically from a window. Your people make their living by knowing what happens on the streets. Talk to them. Find out what they’ve heard, what they’ve seen.”

Mariko didn’t need to think about that for long. “Well, maybe you shouldn’t have disgraced me with my department, huh? A lot of cops won’t want to take my calls right now. I can talk to my CIs, but I have to tell you, my guys know dope, not kooky cults.”

“This kidnapping was a massive effort. Koji-san must have employed hundreds of people to carry it out—”

“And you’re hoping for a blabbermouth in the group. Keep hoping. These are cultists. Fanatically loyal. Some are willing to blow themselves up.”

“Detective Oshiro, you have a pernicious habit of interrupting people. I must say I don’t care for it.”

“Gee, sorry.”

He took a sip of whatever he was drinking. “As I was saying, Detective, he must have deployed many hundreds. Our intelligence indicates his entire cult is fewer than a thousand strong. Not all of them can be in his inner circle. One of them will talk.”

“We can hope. But I don’t like our chances. Start looking at traffic camera footage. Maybe we can spot . . . no, you’ve tried that already, haven’t you?”

“Yes. The entire system underwent a ‘routine software upgrade’ at a quarter of eight this morning—seven hours
after
it was scheduled to happen, and about ten minutes before the first report of an abduction. We trained Koji-san too well.”

“You think?”

Mariko threaded her arms awkwardly into yesterday’s blouse, shifting the phone from one ear to the other and back, then pinching it between her ear and shoulder as she buttoned up. “Okay, but he took them by car,
neh
? Like, a lot of cars. It’s the only way to move that many kids. So what if—?”

“Let me stop you there. The answer you’re fumbling for is traffic helicopter footage. We’ve already captured it and we’re analyzing it now. He was very careful; thus far we have detected no anomalies.”

“Okay, fine,” she said. “So you’ve thought of everything. I’ll talk to my people, for all the good it will do. But word gets around about cops, so some of my CIs will know I’ve been suspended. They may not be willing to talk.”

“You can tell them you’ve been reinstated. You’ll find a badge and identification waiting for you in a box on the porch. A pistol and holster too; you prefer a SIG-Sauer P230, as I recall.”

“How did you—?”

“There is no place the Wind cannot reach.”

Mariko groaned. “What if I hadn’t called this morning? You were just going to leave it sitting there?”

“Oh, but you did call.”

“Whatever. I’m not taking the pistol.”

“It’s not illegal. I took the liberty of creating a permit for you.”

“I said I’m not taking it.”

“Joko Daishi is dangerous. You should know when it comes time to face him: he is extraordinarily difficult to kill.”

Face him? Mariko had no intention of doing that. She’d find him, keep eyes on him, and call the cops. Regardless of whether Furukawa was right about all the fate stuff, it was clear that Mariko and Joko Daishi were on a collision course. She couldn’t be tempted to pull a gun on him if she didn’t carry one in the first place, and then she couldn’t accidentally fulfill the destiny the Wind had planned for her.

Even so, something Furukawa had said made her curious. “You told me something like that before. You said he’s almost bulletproof. Why?”

“There was an ancient weapon. Streaming Dawn, it was called. It had . . . oh, shall we say,
unusual
properties.”

“I know. Yamada-sensei wrote about it in his notes.”

“Well, now! You’ve been quite the diligent student, haven’t you?”

Mariko let out an exasperated grunt. “You don’t have to sound so surprised.”

“Oh, pleasantly so. A historian’s scribblings hardly make for exciting reading material. If you’ll pardon my saying so, I didn’t know you had the patience.”

“Thanks. That makes me feel so much better. What’s the deal with Streaming Dawn?”

“Ah, yes. The blade that heals. Well, after a fashion. The Wind unlocked its secrets some years ago. Do you know what we found? The blade needn’t be whole to exercise its remarkable power.”

“And?”

“It was broken. Four shards, none of them as potent as the original, yet each one has the power to stave off death. The
shonin
bestow them upon an operative when they deem he is too important to lose.”

Mariko nodded. “And they gave one to Joko Daishi. Got it. I’ll toss it in an evidence bag when I arrest him.”

“I’m afraid it’s not that simple.” Furukawa breathed heavily into the phone; Mariko couldn’t read the emotion there. “Streaming Dawn had to be embedded in the subject’s body to be effective. That was the curse entwined with its blessing. The fragments are no different, but the
shonin
found an alternative to stabbing oneself. Their solution was . . . well, more permanent, shall we say.”

“Yeah?”

“The shards are surgically implanted.”

Mariko squirmed. The thought of having a shattered knife stuck in her body made her shudder. “Eww.”

“Yes. It’s quite painful. Nevertheless, I must urge you to carry that pistol, Detective. You needn’t fear killing him with it; your bullets are only likely to slow him a little. But slowing him might make the difference between your survival and an excruciating death.”

“Right,” Mariko said. It was exactly what he’d like her to believe if he wanted her to kill Joko Daishi.

“I warn you, Detective Oshiro, his martial training is considerable. You must not face him unarmed.”

“I’ll take my chances. Good-bye, Furukawa-san.”

She finished getting dressed and headed downstairs, where she found Shoji-san in the kitchen over a little pot of rice. “Some breakfast before you go, dear.”

“I can’t,” Mariko said. “I’ve really got to run. Um . . . listen, I’ve got to ask. Do you know where I can find your son?”

Shoji deflated a little. “No.”

“I promise I won’t hurt him. Furukawa wants me to. He says I’m supposed to kill him. With Yamada-sensei’s sword, no less. So here’s the deal: I’m not going back to my apartment. I won’t even set foot in the same room as the sword. And I’m going to give you the gun that Furukawa left for me on your porch. I swear to you, Shoji-san, I’m not going to do their dirty work for them. I’m not going to hurt your son.”

Shoji’s unseeing eyes gazed blankly at the steam rising off the rice. “I know.”

“I can’t say
they
won’t. But I promise you this: I will do my best to see your son brought to justice. He’s going to have a judge, a jury, and a defense attorney. From there, I have to tell you I hope he spends the rest of his life in prison. But he’s not going to be executed by some assassin. Not if I have anything to say about it.”

“I know, Mariko-san. I don’t want to tell you. . . .” Shoji cleared her throat and blinked back tears. The way her eye scars bent at the corners made her seem sadder. “My child or all the others. For my whole life I’ve chosen mine. Today . . . Mariko, don’t go after him. I see him wearing the mask. You have the sword in hand. He can see it coming. Do you understand, Mariko? He has seen his death coming. He sees it as a bright light, as bright as the sun. You’ll try to ambush him. You’ll fail.”

“Am I going to . . . ?”

Mariko couldn’t bring herself to finish the question. It was better not to know. If she got the wrong answer, she might have trouble seeing this through.

“I’ve got to go, Shoji-san.” Mariko hurried for the door.

41

B
y ten o’clock the numbers were in. 1,304 public elementary schools in the Tokyo school system; 1,290 kids taken; thirteen botched attempts; two fatalities after one of the kidnappers got himself killed along with his abductee in a stupid, preventable car crash; zero sightings of Joko Daishi, the Divine Wind, or the kidnapped children; nineteen attempts on Mariko’s part to get something useful out of a contact or confidential informant, with zero results to show for it.

Every school was locked down, not just in Tokyo but Chiba, Yokohama, Saitama—every major city in the region. Not just the grade schools, either; all of them, public and private, from kindergarten through twelfth grade. There weren’t enough police to cordon every school—not even close—so principals and teachers were left to fend for themselves. The advice they were getting from the National Police Agency was to lock down the campus completely. The NPA needed head counts from every classroom, and the counts had to be pristine. Well-meaning parents were being arrested for trying to take their kids home. The arresting officers had no choice; there was no way to tell between an earnest mother and a cultist of the Divine Wind.

Tokyo was crippled. Its hospitals were plague zones, its roadways were death traps, its airports and train stations were targets. If there was a positive side for Mariko, it was that getting around town had
never been easier. Traffic was light, and though the sky was swarming with police choppers, they were hunting for kids, not speeding drivers. Mariko didn’t own a car, but Furukawa had left the white BMW parked outside Shoji’s house, with the keys in the same box as the pistol, badge, and ID. As promised, Mariko left the gun in Shoji’s foyer, unloaded and safetied. She kept the false badge, knowing it could get her in trouble but predicting greater trouble if she went without it. It hadn’t done her much good thus far; none of her contacts had asked to see it, and even if they had, none of them knew anything.