Genocide of One: A Thriller (57 page)

“True, but they’re few and far between. Couldn’t you consider them a sort of evolved
race, too?” Heisman’s calm smile returned. “We don’t need to go to the trouble of
seeing Nous because we probably pass those kinds of people on the street.”

“They might be a little more seedy looking than we imagine,” Rubens said.

The mammoth container ship Yeager and the others were on passed through the Panama
Canal into the Pacific Ocean and continued on course toward Yokohama. With the scion
of Pierce Shipping on board, they were treated well. They each had a private cabin
with a shower, the food was decent, and they could drink as much as they wanted in
the bar onboard.

Yeager knew he risked getting dependent if he relied on liquor to salve his emotional
wounds, so he drank little. Instead he used the sauna, swam in the small pool on deck,
and just relaxed. The two-week voyage was a precious cooling-off period to help him
recover from his physical exhaustion.

The ship had Internet access, and every day Yeager got more good news from Lisbon.
From the photos Lydia sent him it was obvious that Justin was making a miraculous
recovery. Dr. Garrado, the attending physician, assured them that once the complications
from his condition improved Justin could be discharged from the hospital.

Yeager remembered the dubious face of that young Japanese man and laughed. The guy
actually did it. The researcher looked like some high school kid, but he’d conquered
a disease that no one else had been able to cure.

The day before they were to arrive in Japan, Pierce asked them to assemble in the
officers’ mess. Akili was there, too. So as not to attract the attention of the crew,
while on board the three-year-old always wore a child’s hat pulled down low.

They settled down at the round table, and Pierce began. “This is our last meeting
before we make landfall. I have a proposal for the two of you.”

“I’m listening,” Yeager asked.

“I’m sorry to get personal, but if you have any financial problems, loans and such,
could you lay them all out for me?”

“Why?”

“The Pierce Foundation is prepared to pay off all your debts.”

Meyers rolled his eyes in surprise. “Are you serious?”

“Totally. And the foundation will take care of you from now on. We’ll pay you a stipend
for the rest of your life, enough to live on. But if you’d like to work, we’ll provide
employment.”

The two soldiers looked at each other. Meyers spoke up. “Maybe I can manage the parking
lot at your headquarters.”

Pierce laughed. “At any rate, you won’t need guns anymore.”

It sounded almost too good to be true. Yeager started to smile, but quickly turned
serious when he remembered the burden he couldn’t shake. “What about the other two?
If Garrett and Mick had families, will you provide them compensation, too?”

“For Garrett we plan to. But Mick didn’t have a family. There’s nothing we can do.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Yeager, truly regretful, shook his right arm, as if brushing
away liquid stuck on his hand. This had become a habit. The sensation he’d had when
he’d shot Mick and his blood and brain matter had splattered over his hand had gotten
worse, rather than better, over time. Yeager refused to justify his actions and fully
accepted the blame for them. He told himself he had to hold on to that pain or else
he’d become corrupted by true evil. The day would never come, he knew, when he could
tell Justin what he’d done on the battlefield to save his life. “Then there’s the
Japanese man. Kento Koga. I heard he had a Korean helping him. What about them?”

“They’ll be taken care of. The foundation will guarantee their future, too. We haven’t
told them yet, but we have a long-term plan for them. The foundation is going to invest
in a business venture to develop new drugs, and I’m thinking of eventually putting
them in charge.”

“Then we could be security guards in their company,” Meyers said.

An image of Kento Koga’s face popped into Yeager’s mind. “You really think he can
handle it? The guy doesn’t seem like a CEO type to me.”

Just then a mechanical, artificial voice broke in.
He’ll be fine.

They all looked at the three-year-old. Akili was typing out his message on the computer.
We will back up the Japanese and the Korean.

“By ‘we,’ do you mean you and Ema?”

Yes.

Yeager searched a far-off memory—of the first conversation he had with Akili, via
computer, in the Congo jungle. “Is it true you made software to create new drugs?”

Yes.

“I want to thank you. You and Ema saved my son.”

You’re welcome,
 Akili said, his reply very human.
I’d like to thank you, too.

“Why?”

You protected my life.

Yeager and Meyers were a little surprised by this, and Yeager lifted up Akili’s hat
and peered into his catlike eyes. As he looked into Akili’s upturned gaze, he noticed
the boy’s eyes had double eyelids—human eyes rather than those of a cat—and the eerie
feeling abated.

“That was my job,” Yeager said. “Just like you, we humans value our lives. I want
you to remember that.”

I will.

The meeting finished. The next morning they all got out of their beds early. The large
container vessel had entered Japanese waters, the area off of Tokyo Bay. Yeager and
Meyers checked their night vision gear and GPS equipment. One final job for the mercenaries
lay ahead.

Along with the Filipino captain the four of them went out onto the cramped deck and
lowered a rubber boat with an outboard motor into the water. They climbed down the
rope ladder to the boat, first Meyers, then Pierce, and lastly Yeager, carrying Akili
on his back. They yanked the pull cord on the engine, and it started right up.

The captain gave them a hearty salute, and the little boat carrying the heir to Pierce
Shipping headed northeast.

Though it was only 4:00 a.m., they could make out the huge mass of land filling the
horizon. They would come ashore one hundred kilometers from Tokyo, on the east side
of the Boso Peninsula. This was no battlefield with an enemy they were heading toward
but rather an off-season beach resort, and they soon relaxed, joking as they cruised
ahead.

The landing spot came into view, and they cut the engine and scanned the shoreline
with infrared binoculars. Past the long beach was a concrete wall, and above that
a road. The road was lined with streetlights at regular intervals, so it was brighter
than they expected.

“There aren’t any fishermen,” Meyers said, and raised his gaze. “I see two men on
the road above. And one motorcycle. No other vehicles.”

“Must be our Japanese friends,” Pierce said, and dialed a number on his cell phone.
Through the night vision goggles they saw one of the men raise a cell phone to his
ear.

“Can you flash the motorcycle headlights for me?” Pierce asked, and the man not on
the phone walked over to the motorcycle and flashed its lights twice.

Pierce hung up. “We’re clear.”

Meyers got the motor going again, and they were no longer bobbing on the waves but
speeding ahead. The shore grew nearer. As they got close to the beach they cut the
engine and let their momentum carry them up to the shallows.

The night was still, the only sound the gentle lapping of the waves. Yeager put Akili
on his back and stepped out of the boat. The water came up to his groin and was surprisingly
cold. He walked slowly, keeping his balance, and he could feel the warmth of the three-year-old
through the arms wrapped around his neck. When Justin feels better, Yeager thought,
I should bring him to Japan.

With each step the buoyancy lessened and the weight increased on his legs. His footprints
remained in the sand now and there were no more waves lapping at him from behind.

Yeager had finally landed in Japan.

At long last, his mission was complete.

The men who’d clambered out of the boat strode up the beach.

As he waited for their arrival, Kento had a strange feeling, as though a fairy tale
had come to life.

An American will show up at some point.

That American was here now. Right in front of him.

The day after the crisis was over, Yuri Sakai had gotten in touch again and told him
about Jonathan Yeager’s arrival. Jeong-hoon was back from Portugal, and the two of
them talked it over and decided to go meet him.

Over the next week Kento gradually stepped back into the world. He called home, taking
his mother by surprise, and she was overjoyed he was all right and peppered him with
questions. As they talked, Kento learned something very unexpected. The detectives
had come to his mother’s house and apologized for wrongly suspecting her son.

Hearing this, Kento nervously checked in at the university lab. Dr. Sonoda stared
at him in amazement and told him how the detectives had explained the whole situation
to him. His innocence now proven, Kento could openly return to work.

At some point Kento was planning to talk with Dr. Sonoda about the drug for PAECS.
With the professor’s skill and connections, they should be able to get a major pharmaceuticals
company involved to officially develop and market the drug.

“If we make a lot of money from the patents,” Jeong-hoon had remarked earlier, “let’s
invest that in the next new drug development. We’ll target rare diseases that no one
else has worked on.”

Naturally, Kento had no objections.

There was still one person involved in all this whom Kento hadn’t contacted. Sugai,
the newspaper reporter. Yuri Sakai had looked into the background of this old friend
of his father’s.

“He wasn’t told anything,” she said. “So you should forgive him.”

Kento had no objections to this, either.

He turned his eyes to the horizon, now growing light, and saw that Yeager and the
others were right below him. They walked up the concrete steps to the parking lot
beside the highway.

Kento waited nervously. Finally, the solid face of the American, his massive shoulders
swaying, appeared under the streetlight. Kento had memorized a greeting in English,
but he didn’t need it. When Yeager reached the top of the stairs and saw Kento, he
stood there for a moment without saying a word. Then he put Akili down and suddenly
wrapped Kento in a huge hug. The brawny soldier squeezed him so tightly, and slapped
him so fiercely on the back, that Kento was momentarily afraid his spine would break.

“Thank you, Kento!” Yeager said with a huge laugh. “You saved my son!”

“Y-you’re welcome,” Kento replied in English.

Yeager turned to Jeong-hoon. “Are you the one who delivered the medicine to Lisbon?”

“I am,” Jeong-hoon replied, and Yeager gave him a huge hug, too. Jeong-hoon laughed
along with him and slapped him on the back.

They introduced each other. Nigel Pierce expressed warm words of sympathy to Kento
for the loss of his father. The last person, the young man named Scott Meyers, had
such a gentle smile as he shook hands that Kento found it hard to believe he was a
mercenary. Lastly, Kento looked down at the little child at their feet. The child,
wearing a hat way out of proportion to his tiny body, gazed up at him.

“This is Akili,” Pierce said. “We finally got him here from the jungles of the Congo.”

Could it really be this child? Kento thought, and knelt down in front of him. Huge,
slightly upturned eyes gazed up from the shadows of his hat. Deep black eyes he couldn’t
read. Kento was taken aback, but the uncomfortable feeling quickly vanished. Depending
on how you looked at him, he was actually kind of cute.

“Hey, Akili,” Jeong-hoon said, gazing at him. “You made it.”

“He can’t talk yet,” Pierce explained. “And he just came from a war and is exhausted.”

Kento remembered that in the video images from the Congo front he’d seen four soldiers,
one of whom spoke Japanese. The others must have died in battle, but this wasn’t the
place to revisit tragic events. In the battlefield there must be awful tales that
only those who had been there knew about.

Kento patted Akili on the head. “You’re safe now. There’s no war here. The people
in this country decided never to fight a war again.”

Akili’s expression changed, ever so subtly. Kento detected a trace of doubt in his
eyes. Was he suspicious about what Kento had told him?

“Akili, your family’s here,” Pierce said, and they all turned to the highway. A navy
blue minivan, turn signal blinking, turned into the parking lot. Kento remembered
the van. Yuri Sakai’s car that night at the university.

The minivan passed by them and came to a halt a little ways off. Doors opened on both
sides, and a slim Japanese woman emerged, and from the passenger side a young elementary
school–age girl.

“Akili!”

Akili reacted to the girl’s shout.
“Ema!”
he managed to say, and ran toward her, his large head swaying as he did.

In the dim light of dawn, Kento gazed at the sister hugging her brother. Strangely
enough, she didn’t look as odd as Akili did. Her skin color was closer to that of
an Asian, and except for a slight swelling of the forehead, her face was fairly flat.
She looked like a half-Japanese, half-African child. As they grew up, then, did they
come to look more like ordinary people? Her face, though, was still extraordinarily
babyish. Her build was that of an elementary school child, but from the neck up there
were still vestiges of infancy.

Yuri left the little brother and sister and walked over. She wore a faint smile, quite
unlike the gloomy impression Kento had gotten of her that night on campus.

Pierce came forward to greet the woman he’d worked with in Zaire years ago. They exchanged
a few words and hugged each other, happy to meet again.

After she’d met everyone, Yuri said, “I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done.
Thanks to you, we could protect these new lives.”