Non-Stop Till Tokyo (41 page)

He sounded like he meant it, and the
kanbu
looked at him and started talking, fast.

I shut my eyes and leaned back slightly. The back of my chair was bowing under the weight Chanko was putting on it. We needed to get him out of here. And I really didn’t want to witness an inter-gang massacre either.

“Sonja, what’s the time?” I asked in Dutch.

“Are you out of your mind? What the hell are you doing, what are you
saying
? They’re going to kill us!”

“What’s the time?”

She took a deep, steadying breath. “Nearly twenty-five past.”

“Twenty-five past what?” I genuinely had no idea.

“Eleven. Kerry—”

“I’m doing my best, I promise. How’s the big guy?”

“I think he’s going into shock. He’s losing blood, badly, he’s soaked in it. Whatever you’re doing, you have to make it quicker. And the other thing is, our friend with the hair knows we’re here, and he’s on his way.”

“You’re joking.” I felt the sweat spring around my hairline. Taka was the number-one last thing we needed here and now, not just because he was a loose cannon, but because if they got Taka, they’d get his address, and then they’d have Yoshi.

Except they had his address already, because how else had Oguya found me?

“Sorry,” Sonja said.

The Japanese guy stopped speaking abruptly, and I realised the Korean boss was holding up a hand and looking at Sonja.

“You’re Swedish, are you?” he said in Japanese. “Do you speak Korean too?”

“I’m not Swedish, I’m Dutch—from the Netherlands. I don’t speak any Korean. Or Swedish. Sorry.”

“You speak Dutch too?” he asked me. “Who
are
you?”

“I’m just a hostess. Look, I’m sorry to seem insistent, but you should know the information goes out at twelve, so—”

“Yes, your friends will send it,” said Park. “Unless we find them first. I believe we have names, don’t we, Ii-san?”

“Oh yes, we know who they are.” Ii came in hard and belligerent, obviously relieved to be back on Park’s side for the moment. “Toyoda, that’s the name. We know where he lives, and his family—”

“Why do you idiots keep talking about Toyoda like he’s involved in this?” I demanded. “The guy’s a salaryman.”

“He’s a computer programmer,” said Ii. “A ‘hacker’.” He pronounced the word with audible quotation marks. “How else did you get this information from the disc?”

“He’s not a hacker, he’s an office grunt in an IT department,” I said. “He just got sacked for incompetence. You want to know how we got your password? It was in the briefcase.”

Chanko’s hand, cold and heavy on my shoulder, tightened slightly as Park said, “What?”

“I was checking through the briefcase, and the first thing I found was a business card with this cryptic message written on the back.
Banzuiin
and some numbers. It looked like a password, so we gave it a try. You know, when people get too old to remember their passwords, maybe it’s time to stop trusting them with secret information?”

“Liar!” Ii’s face was dark purple, and he raised a furious hand.

“Excuse me,” Park said. “Ii-san…your people put all this information onto a disc, then put the password into the bag containing the disc?”

“No. She’s lying.”

“How did they break the disc, then?”

“I don’t know, Park-san.”

“Well, you’re not much use then, are you? Song, get those assholes on the line. I want the new
waka-gashira
, Matsui.”

“Wait a moment, Park-san!” said Ii urgently as the Korean soldier flicked open his mobile. “She’s lying, it’s to protect her friend—”

“You just told me the disc was protected,” said Park. “You said it was entirely secure and safe for the Brother to carry this information around Tokyo. So if she’s lying, so were you. Were you lying to me, Ii-san? I don’t like it when people lie to me.”

Ii’s mouth worked. “No, Park-san, but—”

“Was the information properly encrypted, or just password protected?”

“I don’t know, Park-san.”

“It was password protected, wasn’t it?”

Ii looked at the floor. “Yes, Park-san.”

“And you allowed Mitsuyoshi-san to set his own password, didn’t you?”

“Park-san, Mitsuyoshi-san insisted—”

“Technical genius, was he? Knew what he was doing?”

“No, Park-san, but—”

“If you let a geriatric use a shitty guessable password in the first place, does it even matter if he writes it down as well?”

“I have the greatest respect for Mitsuyoshi-san—”

“Shut the fuck up. You’re an idiot.”

The yakuza opened his mouth, and Park looked at him. He swallowed, and his eyes dropped. “Yes, Park-san.”

“Matsui, sir.” Song passed over the phone to Park, who broke into rapid, furious speech. I tried to swallow but my throat felt dry. Ii was doubtless no more than a middle-ranking executive, but Matsui the
waka-gashira
was the underboss, the second in command of the whole family. If Park was able to speak to a
waka-gashira
in the insulting tone he was using…

I might have underestimated who the hell this guy was.

“Not good enough,” the Korean said into the phone. “I already told your
kanbu
here, it doesn’t matter if she’s lying or not. You people have been culpably careless, disgracefully irresponsible and fucking stupid— Well, you should have found out. You brought in these people— I’m
speaking
, Matsui, don’t interrupt me. You’ve exposed us, and yourselves, and made a bad situation into a clusterfuck, and as you clearly can’t deal with it, I will. You can tell that decrepit old fart, your boss, that I am
significantly
displeased with him, and his senile dead brother, and his useless minder.” He shot Ii a satanic glare. “I will be speaking to him myself. Shortly.” He stabbed the off button savagely and turned on Ii.

“We’re going back to your office.” His street-Seoul accent was coming through very strong. “Right now. Letting the old fool take this fucking disc to a fucking love hotel with the fucking password on a fucking business card. You dickwipe.”

“Park-san, I swear, I didn’t know it was in there!” wailed Ii.

“Sir, these people.” Song gestured at the three of us as we stood watching: Sonja shorn and half-naked, me tied to a chair, Chanko grey and sweaty and bleeding. “What should we do with them?”

“It’s quarter to twelve,” said Park. “Do you think we can get to these friends of theirs in fifteen minutes, Ii?”

“We could make them call,” muttered Ii, eyes on his shoes.

Park gave him a withering look, then turned to me. “You didn’t kill the old man, did you?”

“No. I had nothing to do with it.”

“So you got involved because—”

“The Mitsuyoshi-kai sent two psychopaths to hurt my friend.”

“Are you getting this down, Ii?” asked Park. “So if your friend hadn’t been attacked—”

“I’d just have run away. I didn’t
want
to be involved.”

“But now you have the disc, and your friends are ready to use it. Ii, I hope you understand all this.”

Ii really didn’t look well. I wondered why, just for a second, and then it came to me like a punch in the gut.

“You sent Oguya and Soseki to Noriko,” I said. “Didn’t you?”

Ii looked at me, his eyes full of hate and fear, and I was suddenly thrashing in my chair, screaming at him, jerking at the plastic bonds round my wrists, regardless of the pain. “Bastard, you bastard, why did you do it, you fucking bastard!” I rocked back and forth, desperate to get at him. “I’ll kill you, you shit!”

Sonja grabbed at me, and Park was snapping something, but I couldn’t stop screaming. I don’t know what I’d have done if I’d been able to get free, but the fact I couldn’t was sending me into frenzy, and one arm of the chair splintered as I fought against it, ignoring the shouts.

It was Chanko’s deep voice that got through to me. All he said was, “Butterfly,” but the pain and effort it cost him was audible, and it was enough.

Noriko was still alive, and so was Chanko. There was everything to play for. Everything to lose.

I threw my head back, clamped my aching jaw, forced the screams back down. The room was silent as everyone stared at me. I breathed hard, licked my lips, finally got my voice back under control.

“Excuse me. Sorry about that.”
Come on, Kerry, get a grip. You need Park on side. Play it cool, he likes cool.
“You should know, we have done some things already. Made it look like the Mitsuyoshi-kai are trying to blackmail connected people. Set things—quite a lot of things—up to cause trouble for them. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

Song rubbed a finger over his top lip as if thinking, hiding his mouth with his hand, but his eyes were gleaming.

“If you need to know details, I’ll gladly give them,” I went on. “I mean, I’d hate to cause any trouble.”

“Shut up, Song,” Park said as his man choked. “You’re telling me this because…?”

“I’ve got no reason to cross you, and I really wouldn’t want to anyway,” I said. “Given the choice, I’d rather be friends.”

“I’m sure you would. Tell me, then.”

I did a quick rundown of our morning’s work. Ii glowered. Song was grinning openly.

“Very neat,” said Park when I’d finished. “And you’re a hostess.
Just
a hostess.”

I gave him a wry smile. “Yes, but I’m planning a career change. Something less dangerous. Nuclear waste disposal, or shark hunting.”

His lips twitched slightly, then the expression faded, and he looked at me for what seemed like minutes. I could hear my heartbeat, Chanko’s shallow, painful breathing. I was sweating badly. Had I heard the lift ping or was it on another floor or just my imagination?
Taka, go away!

Finally Park nodded as if reaching a decision.

“I could kill you,” he said. “That would solve one problem, but the matter of this information would remain. And disposing of your bodies would be tiresome, to say the least. We’d need a truck. I wonder if you have the sense to keep to a deal.”

“Yes,” I said, and if I ever told the truth in my life, it was then.

“You delete all the information, and you go away. Get out of the Mitsuyoshi-kai’s affairs. Send nothing to anyone. Talk to no one. Forget this ever happened. Don’t speak to the police. If your friend wakes up, tell her to get amnesia; don’t take the big bastard anywhere they ask about gunshot wounds; don’t even think about journalists. Cross me, let one word of the information you have leak out, and I will find you and your friends, and I will have you flayed alive and dropped in salt. Understand?”

I swallowed. It felt like I had broken glass in my throat. “Mutual nonaggression pact?”

“Precisely.”

“I have your word? The Mitsuyoshi-kai won’t touch us? Nor your people?”

“You have my word. If I have yours.”

“You have it,” I said. “I promise.”

“Don’t break it,” he said softly. “I don’t like it when people lie to me.”

“I won’t.”

“My name is Park Sang-do. Don’t forget it.”

“I won’t.”

“Forget everything else. Do not fuck with me, or I will hunt you down and you will wish I had killed you now. Do we understand each other? Kim, cut her loose.”

Ii stiffened as the Korean moved. “Park-san—”

“Shut up,” Park said in Japanese. “Or the next body your men dispose of will be your own.”

“The next body is a woman in the bath.” The guilt wrenched at me. I’d actually forgotten her for a moment, poor, silly, kind Yukie, who’d never deserved to suffer pain in life or this indignity in death. “Through there. She was called Ichikawa Yukie. A hostess. Oguya killed her too.”

Park and Song exchanged glances. Then they both looked at Ii.

“We’re going to talk about your management technique later,” said Park. “In detail. Go check it out. Now.”

Ii went. Park shoved him between the shoulder blades as he passed, sending him stumbling over Oguya’s body.

All this time, the third Korean had been sawing with a serrated blade at the plastic straps that bound my wrists. They popped free, and the pent-up blood in my hands started moving again in a fiery tide. I pressed my lips together hard.

“I trust you won’t make me come after you,” Park said.

“With the greatest respect, I’m going to try very hard never to see you again,” I assured him. “Um, Sonja should call our friend—”

He nodded permission, and Sonja grabbed for the mobile. “Hi, Ta-ah-er, it’s Sonja. Yes! Don’t do anything, okay? We’re safe for now, do not take any action at all or send anything to anyone or go anywhere.”

“We’ll call him in ten minutes to confirm that,” I added hastily, and Sonja repeated it.

The last bond, on my left ankle, snapped free. I gave the soldier a courteous “Thank you, Kim-ssi” in Korean, tried to move my stiff, aching leg, hissed at the pain.

“Here,” said Park suddenly, and flipped something at me. It landed in my lap and I flinched, before I saw it was a business card. It carried his name in Korean script and a mobile number.