The Tomorrow Heist (14 page)

 

Chapter Eighteen

Jirojin Maru

10:45
A.M.
Local Time

T
HERE
WERE
ALMOS
T
twice as many ­people mingling on the deck around the stern's heliport now, but somehow Jonathan still found himself trapped by Melinda Lacie and her friends.

“Seriously, you should come around the top deck tomorrow,” Melinda said, exchanging a look with her friends as she spoke to Jonathan. “We'll be suntanning before the presentations start.”

“Uh-­huh,” a redhead towering over Melinda at about four-­foot-­three, said while she worked the straw of her margarita and nodded. Then Melinda leaned up as if to tell Jonathan a secret. He reflexively leaned down.

“Au naturel.”

Jonathan's eyes widened, and he snapped his head back as the women giggled. Then he felt an arm around his shoulders.

Oh, God. Now what?

“Good morning, ladies,” the arm's voice said. Jonathan turned and saw that it was a man in a uniform. Above the breast was a name tag: “Captain Tanaka.” Despite his Japanese appearance, he spoke perfect, unaccented English. “You don't mind if I steal Dr. Hudson for a few moments, do you?” Tanaka didn't wait for approval but steered Jonathan away from the women and over to the stairs near the back of the deck.

“Oh my God, thank you,” Jonathan said. “How did you—­”

“Go to your room,” Tanaka said, suddenly deadly serious.

“Excuse me?” Jonathan asked, unsure of what he'd heard. The captain looked around as if trying to see if anyone could hear them.

“I'm with Fahd. Go to your room and open your luggage. Right. Now.” To send his point home, the captain pushed Jonathan toward the stairs.

Jonathan looked over to where his luggage had been and saw it was gone. He'd been so distracted that he hadn't even seen anyone take it to his room. He pulled his key from his pocket, read the room number, and headed off without another word.

He should have known that The Custodians would have at least one man on board. Though it begged the question why
he
was here. And why hadn't Fahd included Tanaka in his briefing? Jonathan still thought there was something off about The Custodians. He worried that he'd bought into this whole scheme too easily. Lew and Emily's urgings had helped swayed him, but what had really sold him was the idea of Natalie's protection. That and Fahd's apprehension of Canton George. And that was the thing: If someone wanted to perfectly bring down Jonathan's defenses, those were the exact things they could do to convince him. But now with the first chance he'd had to be alone and think, it all just seemed—­too perfect.

He headed up the stairs in search of his room. It only took him about ten minutes to find the large stateroom on the upper deck. He unlocked it and went in, locking the door behind him.

The room was immense, the walls paneled in a caramel oak and offset by the white wall-­to-­wall carpeting. A few white-­upholstered chairs and couches were scattered around, but the focus of the room was the massive king-­size bed in the center, which faced a huge flat-­screen television on one wall. Over top of the bed on the ceiling was a round mirror. Jonathan tried to ignore that.

On the bed was his luggage. He closed the drapes behind the bed and opened one of the bags. It held more clothes in the same style as the ones he was wearing, including more loafers, all in a range of browns. He closed the bag up again and tossed it on the floor. Then he opened a smaller bag and was confused at what he saw. Inside the bag were two gas masks and a note:

“Press the Settings Button on Your Data Device.”

He picked up one of the gas masks, inspected it, then put it down on the bedspread, his doubt of The Custodians' validity growing. Then he took out the data device Ryan had given him and pressed the “Settings” icon. An audio recording began playing through his implant. It was Fahd. Jonathan sat on the bed as he listened.

“Hello, Jonathan. I wish I had more time to explain everything to you, but we're coming late to this party. If you're listening to this, then you've met Captain Tanaka. Not his real name, of course, but as you've no doubt surmised, he's our man. Unfortunately, he's not really an operative. He's captained yachts before, and he was the only one we could get in there on such short notice who could work the computer systems that control the yacht. He got us a sample of the gas a few weeks ago, which was crucial, but even that was really too much for him. But I'm getting ahead of myself.”

Gas?
Jonathan looked down at the masks as he listened.

“First, there is no painting. The Custodians do indeed want to work with The Monarch—­aka you and Lew—­but your life after being a spy has nothing to do with why you're here, today.”

“What the fuck?” Jonathan said. The recording continued.

“We intercepted a call from a Dr. Norris to MI6 a few weeks ago which put all this into motion. The call didn't last long and was short on details, but apparently Umi Tenabe's longevity conference was not as benevolent as it appeared. Lives were apparently in danger. The call was cut off before any more details could be revealed, but it concerned us enough to put our man in there to find out what was really going on, if anything.

“We created a—­family crisis for the existing captain of the
Jirojin Maru
, which opened up the space with little time to fill it. When the real Tanaka was contacted to report for duty, we replaced him with ours.

“It wasn't long before Tanaka was able to verify Norris's call, despite the fact that Norris had apparently disappeared the same night he made the call. Tenabe wasn't trying to restart her funding of gerontology research at all. Quite the reverse. She wanted to erase every advancement her ten years of financing and support had brought about.

“But you can't just put the genie back in the bottle, not in today's world with the Internet and information sharing. When borders mean nothing, how do you contain something? Umi Tanabe's solution was elegant and horrifying—­invite all the world players to a single secluded location. She couldn't erase the knowledge, but she could erase everyone who knew what to do with it.”

“Oh my God,” Jonathan uttered, still dealing with the fact that The Custodians were sophisticated enough to get away with monitoring calls to MI6. “She's going to kill them all.”

The recording went on for ten minutes, confirming Jonathan's fear. Tanabe's plan was to get everyone in their rooms under the guise of hearing her welcome speech, then the gas canisters that her men had placed all around the ship would release their contents, killing everyone. Then the ship full of corpses would travel on automatic pilot almost a thousand kilometers south, where it would be left for the authorities to find—­after several videos were “leaked” to the Internet for everyone to see. Videos telling the authorities where to find the ship and about an experiment gone wrong. There was no experiment, of course, it was all a lie concocted to ensure that the ship of corpses would be a warning to anyone who tried to unnaturally extend life. With a single act, she'd cripple the science.

Umi had no intention of sacrificing herself, apparently, planning on slipping away just before the gas was released.

“With your background and no time to get another operative out there, we knew you were our only choice. Of course, Lew's background is very different, and he wasn't suited to this kind of assignment at all, which is why I've detained him on the
Atlantis Explorer
until you get back.

“Tanaka will give you the timetable and your final instructions. Best of luck, Jonathan. I know I've put our faith in the right place.”

Jonathan just stared at the data device, waiting for more information to come out of it. None did.

“This is crazy,” Jonathan whispered. He was about to play the recording again when he heard a light rapping on the door.

He put the data device away and put the mask back in his luggage. He answered the door. It was Tanaka.

“I only have a few minutes before I'll be missed,” Tanaka said, coming into the room and shutting the door behind him. “You listened to the recording?” he asked, taking out his own data device, which looked just like the one Jonathan had.

“Why?” It was all Jonathan could manage. “Why would she do this?”

Tanaka tapped through several screens on his device. On a final tap, Jonathan heard a click from his implant. “There, our implants are connected now,” he said, putting his device away.

“Her husband,” Tanaka said in answer to Jonathan's question.

“Mikawa,” Jonathan said, thinking back over the notes he'd read on the plane.

“Yes. I've listened over the comms to some conversations she's had with Tatsu Koga. No real relation, but she treats like her granddaughter. Or, great-­granddaughter, considering Umi's age. Umi's looking for revenge. A final act.”

“Final? Is she committing suicide during the attack?”

“No, she's already dying. She's under a doctor's care. Some kind of cancer. As the gas is released, she's taking all her belongings and her closest guards and escaping to some place called Ashita. It must be close, because they're taking the submarine to get there.”

“Ashita?” Jonathan said.

“Yeah, all I can tell you is the word is Japanese for
tomorrow
. Other than that, all we have is the name.”

“Why didn't Fahd send in the troops to shut all this down before it got started?” Jonathan asked, but he was pretty sure he knew why.

“The defense system. The loss of life would have been on par with the gas attack. And based on our profile of Umi's dealings over the years, she would have scuttled the ship and everyone on board rather than give up. A surgical strike with a small team was determined to be the only viable option.”

“Umi's profile? How long have you been watching her?”

“Not long. Only a few weeks. Their analysis was based on public knowledge and interviews with ex-­employees and ­people she's done business with. It's patchwork at best, yes, but it's all they had.”

“Great. But what good are only
two
gas masks? What's the full head count? Looked to be dozens on the heliport.”

“Not counting her guards, there are ninety-­seven staff and guests on board.”

“Ninety-­seven? Jesus. When is she releasing the gas?”

“One thirty,” Tanaka said.

Jonathan checked his watch. It was almost eleven.

“Are you fucking kidding me? You've had three weeks, and you're putting a plan in action less than three hours before the attack? That's insane! Why did you wait so long?” Jonathan knew he needed to calm down, but he needed some answers more.

Tanaka flipped a latch on the upright lid of Jonathan's luggage and the insert fell out of the way, revealing two injection guns and two bottles of a yellow liquid in glass cartridges. Tanaka took one of the guns out of its Velcro straps, then pushed one of the glass cartridges into its base. It hissed when he did.

Tanaka rolled up his sleeve and injected himself.

“You're pretty trusting,” Jonathan said, calming down. “How do you even know that's not just apple juice?”

“Because this isn't my first go-­round with The Custodians. I've been an analyst with them for almost ten years. Trust me, if they say something, it's a fact. Now you,” he said, holding the gun out.

“Whoa, whoa, hang on just a second,” Jonathan said. It was too much too fast. He needed to catch his breath before he made any decision about anything. Especially about shooting something into his body. Of course, he hadn't hesitated about letting them inject a communication implant into his neck. Why had he given in to that so easily anyway? Not just given in, but convinced Lew to give in too. Had he actually missed this life that much?

And what about Natalie? Would they protect her if he backed out, assuming he even could back out? Not to mention the almost hundred ­people whose lives were now depending on him. The downside was just too great. It had been so long since he trusted anyone besides Lew. Then he thought about what Lew would do if he was in this situation, and he knew what he had to do. He rolled up his sleeve and held out his arm.

“Do it.”

Tanaka injected him. It didn't hurt much. Tanaka put the injection gun back in the case.

“Why do we need masks if we've got the antidote?”

“The best they could do on short notice. The injection renders the poison into just a knockout gas. Without the masks, anyone who is inoculated is still out cold. Even us. “

“Hang on. There's no way you've got masks on board for everyone. Are you telling me—­”

“You've got two and a half hours to inject everyone on board, or they're dead,” Tanaka said. “While keeping the guards from seeing you or starting a panic, of course.”

“Of course,” Jonathan said. “This is nuts. It's impossible for one person—­”

A knock at the door shut Jonathan up. Tanaka smiled. “I got you some help.”

“Some help? Who?”

“Uh . . . I think it's best if I just show you. Go ahead and answer the door.”

Jonathan looked at Tanaka and another knock sounded. With a slight scowl, he walked to the door and opened it. Jonathan felt like he'd been kicked in the gut. For a terrible second, he thought he was having a reaction to the injection, but it only took a moment to realize that wasn't what he was having a reaction to. She was older and seemed a little less soft around the edges, but that was to be expected. He could tell from the way she opened her mouth and gasped for breath that she was having a similar reaction.

“Jesus, Maggie?” Jonathan said, his chest heaving.

Maggie's eyes seemed to be welling up, but then she launched herself into the room and into his arms. They kissed hard and deep. Jonathan squeezed her in his arms, like he was trying to make her part of him. She tasted like coffee and gum. It was the best goddamn thing he'd ever tasted.