Disciple of the Wind (58 page)

Mariko punched it through another yellow light. Then she looked at the speedometer, realized a hundred kilometers an hour was double the posted limit, and released the accelerator. “The thing is, there’s a little bit of a hitch,” she said. “I wasn’t totally sure I’d be able to get enough cops on scene to catch Joko Daishi.”

“Uh-oh. What did you do?”

Mariko winced guiltily. “I may have called the Bulldog. And I might have told him the cult leader who stole his mask is going to be at Kikuchi Billiards.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. So basically, the mask is the cheese in the mousetrap. The Kamaguchi-gumi is the mousetrap. And you and I are the great big
human hand that’s going to try to grab the mouse before the mousetrap kills him.”

Han nodded reluctantly. “Major style points for the analogy, but this is pretty risky, don’t you think?”

“Hence the need for you to call in SWAT.”

“Right. Because this situation definitely needs a lot more guns.”

“Exactly,” she said with a laugh. It was nice to be back to their old repartee. “Hey, at least these guns will be on our side,
neh
?”

“If they get there in time. That’s a major if, Mariko. I already have plenty of SWAT guys giving me funny looks about the last call. Car thirteen oh four, start looking on the north end, it’s the one with the suspect padlocked to it. Remember that?”

“Then do it through Sakakibara. Just make it happen. We’ll be there any minute.”

50

M
akoto looked on the faces of the sleeping children and his heart swelled with pride. Their sacrifice was so small in comparison to the truth they would illuminate.

These ones slept in a classroom, drowsing dreamlessly under the effects of a sleeping draft Makoto had developed himself. It was one of many concoctions he’d created for the Wind, some lethal, some not, back when he was still trapped in their clutches. In those days he did not liberate, he merely killed. Today he was glad to have put the Wind’s murderous ways behind him.

He looked in on the next classroom, and was comforted to see dozens of little ones sleeping softly. The deluded soul saw children as the heirs of the future. The truth was that there was no future. There was only the now. Deluded people might fear what the future held in store, or eagerly await it, or be in doubt about it, but fear, anticipation, and doubt existed only in the now. To embrace that was to be liberated from all of them. What a simple thing it was to die, and what a monumental thing to deliver freedom from dread and doubt! The thought of such a noble transformation almost brought Makoto to tears.

Pain speared him in the temples. Any swift change to his emotional state, anything that induced a change in his pulse rate, stabbed sharp icicles through his skull. He’d suffered the headaches ever since the harlot shot his father and took him away. They were not as acute as they had been a week earlier, but they were not pleasant. Makoto
had faith that his father could dispel the headaches, if only they could be together again. Until then, he had his chi gung to control the pain.

If only his father could be here, to witness the Divine Wind’s finest hour. This was his father’s vision, greater and grander than any of Makoto’s aspirations. So tragic that they could not realize that vision together.

“Daishi-sama,” a voice called behind him. “A message for you.”

He turned to see one of his disciples, a loathsome man with a scar across his left cheek. Makoto would not have called upon him for this sacred day if he’d had any other choice. Sending all of these children to the Purging Fire was a monumental task, and he needed every pair of hands he could muster. That included this disciple, who first drew Makoto’s ire in the earliest days of planning this sermon. When Makoto nominated the airport as the newest church, this man had the temerity to suggest that the baggage handling system was perfectly suited for moving hundreds of child-sized corpses. “They are heralds of the truth,” Makoto had said. “Divine servants of the Purging Fire. They shall be held in the highest honor, not tossed aside like so much luggage.” Then he’d backhanded the man, breaking a tooth and leaving that scar under his left eye.

The disciple was graceless then and he was graceless now. “A message,” Makoto said. He kept his voice low, so as not to disturb the children. “Now? On the eve of my most important sermon? Use your head, child, and mind your tongue. This is the hour for listening, not speaking.”

“It concerns your mask, Daishi-sama.”

Makoto brightened at that. “Where is this messenger?”

The loathsome disciple kneeled, pulled a cell phone from his pocket, and presented it with both hands, holding it as high as he could manage while also bowing his head.

Makoto took the phone. “Yes?”

“Furukawa is moving the mask and the sword,” said the voice on the other end. “They are no longer in the woman’s apartment.”

“Moving? Why?”

“He fears you are likely to come for them. He says you are more active now than you have ever been—his words exactly—and next you will take back what is yours. Since you know where it is now, he says it must be moved to a safer place.”

“Which place?”

“Kikuchi Billiards. Daishi-sama, I fear this is a trap.”

Of course it is, Makoto thought. The pool hall concealed one of Furukawa’s safe houses. Makoto was not supposed to know the safe house existed. If he hadn’t known of it, then it would have been the perfect place to hide his father and Glorious Victory Unsought. The fact that Furukawa thought it was safe made it all the easier to take what was hidden there. But Furukawa was crafty. If he suspected Makoto thought of the safe house as an easy target, then it was the ideal place to set a trap.

And yet . . .

Makoto longed for his father. Alone, he was only Koji Makoto. Reunited with his father, he was Joko Daishi, Great Teacher of the Purging Fire. It should be Joko Daishi that liberated these beautiful children. That was only fitting.

But was it worth the risk? Perhaps. Furukawa had not yet discovered the new church. If he had, Makoto would have heard about it. He had a disciple looking over Furukawa’s shoulder. Furukawa was looking everywhere Makoto predicted he’d look. The old man had his agents inspecting every closed school in Tokyo, but he’d forgotten that there were other places with classrooms.

Not many people knew an airport had classrooms. They were not marked on the maps provided to travelers. But the flight crews needed a place to do their training, and Haneda International had designated rooms for that purpose. There were also quiet quarters here for weary crews to catch a little sleep. Every airline had its own accommodations, modest but functional, and all were locked up and left behind after the Haneda sermon. Makoto had found just enough space to house nine hundred and twenty-five children.

Not for much longer. The Purging Fire would claim them soon.
Just as the classrooms and break rooms were abandoned, so too were the pumping stations at each of Terminal 2’s gates. These connected via underground pipes to the millions of liters of jet fuel in Haneda’s massive fuel depot. Makoto had a barrel set aside for each roomful of children. Deluded souls found death by fire to be utterly terrifying, but Makoto would show them the truth. Pain and death were merely states of being.

His father would be proud of this sermon. He had the right to see his vision brought to fruition. “It is my holy calling,” Makoto said. “I must retrieve him, no matter the risk. So let us be wary of the trap and move boldly nonetheless.”

“This is Furukawa,” his disciple said. “He has tried to kill you before.”

“He has his ploys and I have mine. What he does not have is a divine mandate. The light of the Purging Fire blinds his eyes. He has no idea how close my servant has drawn to him. When the time comes, faith will rule over cunning. My servant will return my father to the fold.”

“It shall be as you say, Daishi-sama. There is one more thing: you know whose hands the mask and sword will go to.”

“Yes, I know. She must not be allowed to live. Make sure of it.”

51

“T
his is taking too long.”

Mariko drummed her fingertips on the bar at Kikuchi Billiards. They fell in a steady, galloping rhythm, three beats at a time because the nub of her trigger finger wasn’t long enough to reach the bar. Part of her wished she had a gun. The better part of her was relieved to be unarmed. What she really wanted was a few dozen cops with guns, and then a nice cold beer and a safe place to sit back and watch all the action unfold. The last thing she wanted was to be in the same room with Joko Daishi and a lethal weapon. Fuck fate, she thought.

Han was nervous. He paced between the pool tables, leaving a haze of cigarette smoke in his wake. At one end of each pass, he glanced out the front door and onto the street. At the other end the sunset glow at the tip of his cigarette brightened like a warning light.

Kikuchi Billiards was a lot like Billiards Bagus: low ceilings, few windows, with most of the light coming from electronic dartboards or the boxy fluorescents hanging over the blue-green fields of the pool tables. The front wall was mostly comprised of heavily tinted windows, but at this time of day, steeped in shade, they did more for ambience than illumination.

“This is taking too long,” she said again. “Where the hell is everyone?”

“Seriously?” Han said. “You’re impatient about maybe getting shot at?”

“Well, it’s weird,
neh
? You called Sakakibara. He called SWAT. The Bulldog probably called a whole damn army—”

“Leaving one big question: who did
you
call, Mariko? When are you going to tell me how you’ve been working all this magic?”

Mariko didn’t want to answer that, and she didn’t want to sit and do nothing anymore. “Screw it, I’m getting myself a beer.”

She slid down off her stool and went behind the bar, which was unmanned; Furukawa had sent all of his people home. They had Suntory Malts on tap, so she poured herself a tall one. “I’m pretty sure that’s against regs,” Han said.

“Only if you’re a cop on duty. I’m suspended, remember?” She raised her glass in a toast.

“You can’t dodge me forever, Mariko. Tell me what’s going on.”

She took a long drink, steeling her nerve. “I made some deals with some bad people.”

“Like who? The Bulldog?”

“Yeah.”

“And the ancient ninja clan too, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“That is so damn cool.”

“Han, these guys do some seriously bad shit.”

He shrugged and puffed on his cigarette. “You know I’m a Giants fan,
neh
? You know what I say when someone hits a homerun against my Giants?”

“What?”

“I say that was a hell of a shot. These guys you teamed up with, they’ve got some serious swat. Let’s keep them in the lineup, at least until this game is over.”

Mariko shook her head. “This isn’t a game, Han—”

Her phone quivered in her pocket, distracting her. She pulled it out and saw it was a call she had to take. “Where are they?” she said. “You told me they’d be here by now.”

“The mask and sword will arrive shortly,” Furukawa said. “I’m
afraid there has been a complication. They will arrive in the hands of a double agent.”

“What, you mean Joko Daishi’s?”

“Yes. I sent word that the relics were to be moved, then monitored communications between Endo-san and Norika-san. It seems they are not as trustworthy as I expected.”

“Perfect timing,” Mariko said. At that very moment, someone was pounding on the door. “I have to go, Furukawa-san.”

Han was at the door before Mariko could warn him away. “Well, hello there,” he said. He stepped aside to admit Norika, and checked her out as soon as her back was turned. Then he caught Mariko’s attention and mouthed the words
I’m in love
.

Usually Mariko had no trouble admitting when another woman looked good. Norika was the exception, for two reasons. First, she’d tried to kill Mariko once. Second, Mariko only had eyes for the bags slung over Norika’s shoulder. Both were taken from Mariko’s apartment. The smaller one was a muslin shopping bag, which contained something heavy and pointy. It had to be the mask. The larger one, tied to the first, was lavishly embroidered silk, very slender, almost as long as Norika was tall. In fact, it was a sword bag, formerly Yamada-sensei’s, and it could only contain Glorious Victory Unsought.

The only thing Mariko could think of to say was, “You’re not going to swing that mask at my face again, are you?”

Norika gave her a falsely sweet smile. “Keep hiding behind that bar and you won’t have to find out.”

Once again Mariko wished she had a gun. She wanted to tell Han to lock the door and draw down on his new ladylove, but she couldn’t do that without revealing the fact that Furukawa had just outed Norika as the double agent. Mariko wasn’t even sure Furukawa had it right. Wasn’t Norika the one who shot Joko Daishi and stole the mask in the first place? That was the story she told Furukawa, anyway. Could she have been lying? Yes. She was a
genin
of the Wind; she could lie about anything. The larger question was whether there was some ulterior motive in giving Mariko the mask. Was there anything
so important that it trumped Joko Daishi’s need to keep the mask for himself?

If there was, Mariko couldn’t imagine what it could be. She wished she had more time to think. Norika could see Mariko had doubts about her, because she stopped halfway to the bar. “What’s wrong?” she said. “You don’t trust me?”

At the same time, Han looked back out the doorway and said, “Hey, aren’t you Endo Naomoto?” Then a lot of things happened at once:

Endo came in, his baseball bat hanging heavily in one hand.

Norika turned and smiled at him.

Han said, “You used to play right field for the Bay Stars,
neh
?”

Mariko figured out who the double agent was.

Then Endo took a homerun swing at Norika’s head.

The bat caught her in the base of the skull. It caved her head in. She hit the floor face-first, limp as a wet rag. “For Daishi-sama,” Endo said.