Girl Takes Up Her Sword (12 page)
“He’s dead, you son of a bitch.”
With the shock of the news, he released his grip. He really didn’t know. Emily was sure of it. She grabbed the hand on her neck across the palm and twisted down and away. He didn’t resist as she spun him face first into the wall.
“He died protecting me from the people your boss sent to attack our home,” she hissed over his shoulder. “Don’t flatter yourself that you and I have anything in common. You’re nothing to me.”
“Died how?”
“He died protecting me. That’s all you need to know. And now that you know, what are you gonna do about it?”
“I can’t do anything without you,” he said after a moment. “You and I are alone in the world, now that George is dead. Together, we can destroy all the people who have haunted our family. Otherwise, they’ll never leave us alone.”
“Yeah, right.
Our
family. My family is my mom, and Michael and Andie and Anthony. It doesn’t include you.”
“I’m more family to you than anyone. Ask your mother. Or, better yet, ask Sensei Oda. He knows what I mean.”
She released her grip and he turned around. Something in his eyes spoke directly to her heart.
“We’ll talk again soon,” he said as he slipped away. Over his shoulder, and almost as an afterthought, he said: “Tell Connie I’ll be looking for her.”
Chapter
15
A Special Visit
When she stepped out of the SUV, the late afternoon sun lit up her dress from behind. It was one of the floral prints she favored, a reminder of the time she and George spent in Hawaii when they were first married. Sensei had never met her, or even seen her before this moment. But he knew of her because he was there, too, in Hawaii, living near the base at Kanehoe Bay and running a little dojo that catered to servicemen. She never came to his dojo then, or at any other time.
Sunlight poured through the front window, making it hard to see out into the parking lot. With the glare, it looked to him like she was in a formal kimono, and flanked by Michael’s security people, it might as well have been an imperial procession. A tiny gesture from her flicked them away from the door. He dropped what he was doing and rushed out of his office to greet her.
“Kagami-sama, you honor me. Welcome.”
She nodded, looking a little unaccustomed to such a formal address.
“Stand up, Oda-san. I must speak with you.”
When he refused to get up, she knelt down across from him. He pressed his forehead to the floor.
“My condolences for your loss. When Chi-chan told me what happened, that George died keeping her safe, it felt as if the world had ended.”
“Thank Heaven she is still safe. His sacrifice has not been in vain. We worked to keep her safe for all these years, and that always meant keeping her hidden.”
“I don’t think she can hide anymore. And if David Walker is here for her, the danger is grave.”
“She told me about her meditations, about how you can join her there. I’m not sure I fully understand it.”
“It takes all my strength to do it, but it is possible. When I see her there, she is so beautiful, like she’s made of light.”
“Someone else meets her there.”
“Yes, she told me, the little boy. Somehow, it’s easy for him.”
“He speaks to her there,” Yuki said.
“But… how? He never speaks.”
“She told me he calls her ‘Ama.’ You know what that means, don’t you?”
“He thinks she is the daughter of heaven.”
“What do you think?”
It was a fair question. The idea that Emily might be descended from the goddess of the sun,
Amaterasu-omikami
, Sensei knew it sounded preposterous. For one thing, it would mean she is related to the imperial family. But the immensity of the forces he felt in her meditation, her
chi
, pointed to something preposterous. He cast about for a way to express it.
“She showed me the sword. It’s a beautiful weapon, excellent craftsmanship. She let me hold it, and for a brief moment I experienced how it must feel in her hands: awful power, truly frightening, as if it could cut the world in half. I had to put it down.”
“So it’s true. My grandfather always said it, but no one would believe an old drunk. He insisted it was
Kusanagi-no-tsurugi
, the sword of heaven. I gave it to George when we were first married, so he would keep it safe. And he passed it on to her. But now I’m worried Walker might take it from her.”
“I don’t think the sword makes any difference.”
“I don’t understand, Oda-san. What do you mean?”
“It’s her, don’t you see? It’s who she is. I only felt the power of the sword that day because she had just been holding it. She
let
me experience it.”
Yuki smiled at this, as if she had known all along what he was going to say.
“Then you understand who she is, too, Oda-san?”
“She
is
the daughter of heaven,” he said, knowing full well how it sounded to utter those words. But what else could he say, given everything he’d seen? His only consolation was that the child had seen it, too. It was reassuring in some small way to share the delusion of an innocent.
“No, Oda-san. She is not the daughter of heaven. She’s just my little girl, just a teenager trying to finish high school and lead a normal life with her friends and family.”
“I understand. We must help her find that path, experience the joys of that life.”
“She never ceases to amaze me. I disapproved of her training with you. But George was right. It was necessary. The events in Kamchatka made that clear.”
Sensei nodded. He wanted to tell her more about her daughter, but didn’t know where to start.
“I don’t think you need to worry about the sword. It’s nothing special, until she touches it. I suspect any sword she touches becomes
Kusanagi
, if she needs it to be. That must be what her dreams are trying to tell her.”
“She told you about her dreams?” Yuki asked, now appearing genuinely surprised for the first time. “What does she dream about?”
“She thinks the goddess of the sun speaks to her, that she’s giving her some kind of command, though she doesn’t understand it. I’m not sure I know what it means either.”
He could see these words made her uneasy, though he hardly knew why. How much would she confide in him? He told her the rest of the dream just as Emily had related it to him. She seemed especially moved by what the seven figures sing to her at the end: “Michiko, Michi-san, Michi-sama, Michi-kami.”
“I think you know how important it is that we continue to keep her safe,” Yuki said.
“I’m not sure it is within our power to keep her safe anymore. Whatever heaven has in store for her, she is preparing herself to face it in her own way.”
~~~~~~~
On the ride home, Yuki pondered what Sensei told her about her daughter’s dreams.
“No wonder she worries about paranoid delusions,” she thought. “Amaterasu speaks to her in her dreams, maybe even gives her a command, and she hears magical creatures addressing her as a
kami
.”
When she first described the accident that may have infected her with the virus, it was a sort of confession, but she didn’t believe it could have passed through the placenta to infect the child she was carrying. Now events were beginning to erode her confidence in that notion. It would explain a lot about her daughter’s surprising abilities to think she had suffered a genetic modification
in utero
. It just didn’t seem to explain everything about her.
She remembered an argument between her own parents, just before her mother’s death. Her father had always been devoted to her mother. But something about his demeanor, his attitude upset her. He sat next to her, at her bedside, her fingers resting across his palm, not closing his hand around them, as if he were contemplating some rare flower, or a priceless jewel. She was giving him instructions.
“Don’t worry,
Ohime-sama
,” he said. “I will see to it.”
“I wish you wouldn’t call me that.”
“It’s only the honor you deserve, Haruko. You know I feel...”
“I don’t want that sort of honor,” she cut him off. “It’s inappropriate.”
“But, but...” he stammered out. Words failed him.
“You’ve been a good husband and a good father. But when you talk like that, it makes me feel you didn’t mean to marry me, that you were marrying my family tree.”
“That’s not true, Haru. I never...”
“You were entranced by my father’s delusions, his crazy stories. None of them were true. We are not descended from the Minamoto clan. That sword is an old piece of junk. Tell me again, that’s not why you married me.”
“I’ve always loved you, Haru. Only you. And our child, she’s so like you. When she smiles, I see you in her.”
“Please, don’t call her
Ohime
either. It just sounds like you’re treating us as if we were lab specimens, genetic oddities. Honor me by loving her for who she is.”
He nodded grimly, looking deeply chagrined.
“And promise me you won’t pursue those experiments anymore. That research is wrong, and it dishonors you.”
Yuki remembered running from the doorway at those words. The expression on her father’s face was too painful look at. She didn’t understand everything her mother said that day, but those words never left her memory. Her mother died a few days later. She left for school a few weeks after that. Her father did not go back on his word until many years later. She remembered those days, too.
The lab supplied by the Mori Corporation was state of the art. A huge conglomerate, with subsidiaries in various industries, Dr. Kagami worked in a division specializing in military projects. She refused to accept a position with them, to be on their payroll. But she was effectively in charge of the lab, approving every purchase, supervising every experiment... and disapproving of the new turn her father’s research was taking.
“How did we end up here, Father,
again
?”
“What do you mean?”
“Genetic enhancements, psychotropic drugs... can’t you see how wrong this is?”
“We’re just fulfilling a contract. If we can get the drug to work, it’ll reduce the likelihood of war.”
She rolled her eyes at this.
“What do you think Mom would say about this?”
“We’re not doing gene tracing. That’s what she disapproved of. What we’re doing could unlock so many secrets, improve so many lives.”
“And destroy how many along the way? She would have disapproved of this.”
He didn’t respond. Whenever she spoke of her mother, his face would droop under the weight of the memory.
“And what about the visitors you’ve been bringing to the lab, the Chinese, and even worse, the Americans? Does Mori know what you’re up to?”
“Don’t worry about them,” he replied darkly. “They’re just potential customers.”
“I’m pretty sure the Americans wouldn’t like it if they knew you were so cozy with the Chinese.”
“You need to understand,
Ohime-san
, what we’re doing now will make gene tracing irrelevant. This is how we will take entire control of the genetic code, piece by piece. Can’t you see how important that is? Your mother would approve. It’s for her, to serve her memory, that’s why I’m doing it.”
“I hate it when you call me that. And so did she.”
He said nothing, a look of deep chagrin etched across his face.
“I don’t know what exactly my grandfather told you. But I remember what Mom thought about it. He was an old fool. Please, tell me you’re not still trying to make his delusions come true.”
Looking back on those days so long ago, Yuki couldn’t help but think that the truth about her daughter was somehow caught up in her father’s work, or her grandfather’s ravings, or perhaps some combination of the two.
As she turned her mind to Emily, the phrase rang in her ears:
Ohime-sama
. Perhaps this title had finally found the person it fit. “Please, keep her safe, Queen of Heaven,” she muttered under her breath.
Chapter
16
A Day in Seoul
It took a lot of persuading, and in the end Danny’s mother was still opposed to his going. His father thought he could use an adventure before the work of the summer began, though she was convinced he didn’t really understand the sort of adventures Emily regularly traded in. At least Emily would be with him, and she was probably more dangerous than anyone they might meet, as far as Laura could tell. And Connie and Ethan would be there, too.
Thursday afternoon found the four of them on a flight to Osaka, where they would make a connection for Seoul. Michael thought the less trafficked airport would be safer. Emily wanted to make a side trip to Kyoto to show Danny the sights. That would have to wait for another day.
It seemed like Connie spent the entire fifteen hours briefing Emily in hushed tones on what to expect from various intelligence agencies. Danny drifted in and out of sleep, and didn’t understand much. It was mainly names of people he didn’t know. One name kept recurring in the conversation: Walker. Emily was particularly interested in him, even though, or maybe because Connie seemed reluctant to say much on the subject.
“How did you end up working for him, anyway?” he heard Emily ask.
“My first assignment out of the Naval Academy. He was working out of the embassy in Manila. We were supposed to be doing wind and tide surveys in the South China Sea. But it was really about tracking subversive journalists. I was just cover so he could have access to small planes and launches from Subic Bay, sort of like an aquatic chauffeur.”
“I gather it didn’t stay as innocent as that for long.”
Connie glowered at her, as if to tell her not to have this conversation in front of just anybody.
“He is a very devious person. I fell for his lies. And his cruelty knows no limits. You need to be careful. Don’t trust him.”
When Danny snorted awake again, it was 6:30 in the morning local time, and they were landing at Gimpo airport in Seoul. An officer of the South Korean National Intelligence Service, or NIS, met them at the gate. Kim Jae-Kyu owed Connie a favor for some unnamed past service. Danny didn’t know where to begin trying to imagine what it might have been.
“No new developments since your call,” Kim said. “Berea’s here with a team of contractors. He’s got a man watching the apartment.”
“He’s made no move on Rhee?” Connie asked
“No. Nothing yet.”
“What other assets does he have in Seoul?”
“It’s hard to say. There are several new faces in the embassy staff. What’s Berea want with a low level defector? And what’s your interest? What the hell is so important about this guy?”
“He’s not important at all,” Emily butted in. “He’s a friend, and I want to make sure he’s safe.”
Connie frowned at her.
“And who is your young friend here?”
“Jay, this is....” Connie paused, obviously at a loss. She looked at Emily for guidance.
“I’m not interested in hiding anymore. My name is Michiko Tenno. I’m David Walker’s niece, I suppose you could say.”
Kim froze at the mention of that last name, as if she were shaking an evil talisman at him. His face took on the delicate gray cast of cigarette ash, the feathered heap of burnt tobacco and paper just before a tiny puff of air scatters it. Even Connie looked surprised to hear it. She stared at Emily, with eyes wide, then cleared her throat to get her friend’s attention.
“Rhee is a civilian. But he’s in danger because certain people think he knows something about my friend here. You now know more about her than he does. We don’t want anyone torturing him just to find out that he knows nothing.”
The ash gone and his face having recovered its stony exterior, Kim nodded. Connie shooed the boys off to collect the baggage and pulled Emily into one of the airport shops. Danny lingered a few feet away. He couldn’t hear everything, but Connie’s gestures highlighted the urgency of what he did hear.
“What the hell do you mean, Walker’s niece?” Connie sputtered out. “There’s no way that’s true, right?”
Emily stood silent, looking directly into her eyes. Connie was aghast.
“And you’re just telling me now?”
“I’m sorry about that. I’m still sort of digesting it myself. He’s my father’s cousin.”
“Second thing: we don’t have to tell everyone everything.”
“Isn’t he your friend?”
“He’s not a friend. He owes me. That’s as far as it goes.”
“What’d you do, save his life or something?”
“Yeah, you could say that. I hid him from your uncle, if you must know.” They looked at each other in silence for a moment, digesting the significance of this detail. “We need Kim’s help. You blabbing about being
his
niece isn’t the best way to get it. What if he tries to get back at Walker through you?”
“I can’t worry about that now. Rhee Sung is in danger because people think he knows a secret. I don’t want to keep any more secrets at his expense.”
“But he knows about the clone. Isn’t that one secret you want to keep? Don’t think for a second that the South Koreans are above trying to rebuild the Parks’ program.”
This was a stickier problem. Emily pondered it for a moment.
“Keeping that secret only serves Burzynski’s purposes, not mine. Maybe it’s time to come out with it.”
Connie smiled and shook her head. Danny couldn’t believe what he was hearing. There was no reason to confide in Kim. She wouldn’t do that, would she? He didn’t seem particularly trustworthy. A dream of betrayal flashed across Danny’s imagination. Before Emily could react, Connie pulled a large, floppy sunhat over her head and handed her a pair of fashion sunglasses with huge frames.
“What this for?”
“Korea may be a democracy, but it’s only been a few decades since it was run by the military and the intelligence services,” Connie explained. “The apparatus of state surveillance is everywhere, and it’s very high-tech these days. In case you hadn’t already noticed, cameras picked us up the moment we got off the plane.”
Emily had noticed. Her father taught her to look for cameras long ago. It was a game they played on trips when she was a child. He seemed to have a sixth sense for them. For her it was more a matter of looking at the environment the way the cameras did. When a room or a corridor or a walkway looked a certain way, there was usually someone watching. She felt them as soon as they had gotten off the plane.
A few quick tugs at the brim, a bend here, a fold there, and she had a fair facsimile of a cowboy hat. Connie glowered at her.
“Aw, c’mon, Mom,” she teased.
“The point of the hat is not to stick out. Can we try to blend in, at least for a little while?”
Emily harrumphed and pulled the hat down over her head like a bucket.
“Now I remember why I never had kids,” Connie muttered.
Emily adjusted the glasses while Connie settled with the cashier.
Later, riding in the front seat of Kim’s car, at a nod from Emily, Connie filled Kim in on more of the secrets.
“We’ve been tracking the Parks for several months now,” he observed. “The full scope of their genetic experiments is unclear.”
“It was a cloning operation,” Connie said. “They only managed to produce one viable adult.”
“Was?” Kim asked.
“Their operation no longer exists.”
“What’s your source for that? We’ve had no intel on them for the last several weeks.”
“I’m the source,” Emily said from the back seat. “The Parks are dead. I burned their compound in Kamchatka to the ground.”
Kim pulled the car over so he could look back at her. She was deadly serious, no one could miss that about her, even under the goofy sunhat.
“What happened to the adult clone?”
“It seems he turned on the Parks,” Connie said. “And he ended up being killed in the confusion.”
“And his body? My people will need to examine it.”
Connie looked at Emily, uncertain what to say.
“I buried him at sea, about an hour outside of Avacha Bay,” Emily told him.
Kim looked at her as he weighed this information.
“What were you doing there, Tenno-san, if you don’t mind my asking?” he asked in a tone Danny took to be condescension.
“Colonel Park kidnapped the son of the family I live with. I went to get him back.”
Kim stared at her in apparent disbelief.
“They took the boy to force me to go with them,” Emily added, after a moment.
“What did they want with you?”
“They believed me to be a clone, too. They wanted to compare us,” she said in a low growl. The expression on her face was difficult for Danny to endure. “They wanted to see if he could beat me to death.”
No one retained any longer the power of speech. At least it felt to Danny as if there wasn’t enough air in the car to support the vibrations requisite to make sounds. Emily had already told him about her adventure in Kamchatka weeks earlier, even the bit about people thinking she was some sort of genetic experiment. But he’d never heard it expressed so baldly, so publically, as though it was just a simple, straightforward fact, like any other. His teeth clenched and his tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth. He felt the urge to jam his fist into Kim’s face, if only to prevent him from asking any more questions. The prospect of Emily baring her soul to this stranger was almost unbearable. He rolled down the window and looked away.
“Since you’re here, and he’s dead, can I conclude that he failed?
Are
you what they thought?” Kim finally asked.
“Of course not,” Danny barked. “We’ve known each other our entire lives. She’s no clone.”
It was a slight exaggeration. He had known
who she was
since kindergarten, but he only got to know her personally, as a friend, as a crush, as a boyfriend (if that was even true yet) in the last year. The intensity of his feelings for her only made it seem as though he’d always known her. The expression on Kim’s face taught him to regret his outburst almost immediately. Giving this man information was like handing him a weapon he might use against Emily later, he thought.
Kim nodded, still puzzled and clearly doubtful. He pulled the car back onto the road.
“Rhee Sung lives in Songjung-dong with his cousin, Lee Kyung-hae,” Kim said. “Her husband died a few years ago in a car accident. There is no other family, except for a little girl, her daughter, Lee Ji-yeong.”
“I’d like to see him now, if that’s possible,” Emily said.
“His sister has a stall in the Noryangjin Fish Market. He’s probably there now. It’s on our way, more or less.”
A densely populated metropolis, Seoul is situated on the Han River, on the west side of the Korean peninsula, not far from the border with the North. Large, multistory apartment complexes sprout haphazardly among the hills of the city, incongruous next to older single family dwellings shouldered up against one another. They drove along the south bank of the river, toward the wealthy neighborhoods of Gangnam-Gu, opposite the monumental Olympic era architecture of the north bank. It was a more densely packed and urbanized environment than Danny had ever seen.
The fish market turned out to be an airplane hangar-sized structure squeezed up against the river, penned in by railroad tracks. Kim pulled the car into a large parking lot on the north side of the complex.
“Just Danny and me, okay? I don’t want to freak him out.”
Connie nodded reluctantly.
“Fine. I didn’t want to wear my good shoes in there anyway. We’ll watch the perimeter. Go talk to your friend.”
Ethan got out and unkinked his legs. Kim pulled Connie into a private conference on the other side of the car. Danny followed Emily in to the market.
The market was huge, several hundred separate little vendor stalls, each crowding up against the one next to it. Finding just one was going to be a chore. The directions Kim provided would probably get them to Rhee quickly enough. Emily preferred to wander a little bit first, get a feel for the place.
The stench of fish was overpowering at first. Danny pulled his collar around and over his nose. It didn’t help, and he was afraid it would make them stand out. No one else seemed to be troubled by the smell. The floor was mainly unfinished concrete, smooth in places, broken in others, with trenches cut for drains here and there, covered by iron grates or metal plates. Where the floor wasn’t covered in fish guts, it was being hosed down by a shopkeeper.
Sea creatures of every description were on display everywhere. Some were recognizable, sometimes of bizarre proportions—foot long shrimp, octopi no bigger than your fist, oysters the size of a kitchen sink—some were totally mysterious. Danny’s mind reeled as he tried to take it all in. Did people really eat some of these things? He wondered what Emily thought of it all. “She’s probably plotting escape routes, or something,” he imagined.
Eventually Emily pointed out Rhee Sung to him. He was working a booth selling shellfish of every description. He looked completely at home, with his cousin working alongside him. She stood quietly and watched from a few yards away.