Rules of the Hunt (55 page)
Oga's internal smile vanished.
He
swallowed and nodded.
The elevator
arrived.
*
*
*
*
*
Adachi stared unseeing into the still water of the Imperial moat.
He had switched both his radio and beeper off.
He needed time to grieve alone and to think
his situation through.
A gray mood of
depression gripped him.
Everywhere he
turned he seemed to be faced with corruption and betrayal.
Even the best of men like the prosecutor was
contaminated.
The bloody envelope had laid out the story.
An indiscretion years
earlier had made Sekine vulnerable.
More
recently, the marker had been called in and the prosecutor had been enrolled as
part of the move by Katsuda against Hodama and the Namakas.
He did not even have to do anything except
keep Katsuda informed and push the prosecution forward in his normal, thorough
way.
But then Adachi had upset the plan.
Instead of taking the easy way out and working the case based upon the
evidence against the Namakas so carefully prepared by Katsuda, he had played
the masterful detective.
His foolish
cleverness had destroyed the case against the Namakas, who well deserved
prosecution, and had placed the prosecutor in the position of having to make a
choice between his obligations toward Katsuda and his affection for
Adachi.
And the resolution had been his
life.
Mistakes or not, he was an
honorable man and his death was an honorable death.
But what a waste, what a
terrible waste.
There was not a scrap of evidence against Katsuda.
Even Sekine's suicide not had avoided the
man's actual name.
The context was clear
enough to Adachi, but the letter would be useless for legal purposes.
No, Katsuda would end up as the new
kuromaku
and there was not a thing that
Adachi could do about it.
The system was corrupt at the top and, subject to some window
dressing, that
would remain the situation.
If he had any sense, he would bend like the
proverbial bamboo or else someone was likely to break him.
The final betrayal was the confirmation that the informant inside his
team was his ever-reliable Inspector Fujiwara.
The man had been operating under orders of the prosecutor, so he may
have thought he was doing the right thing, but his behavior hurt horribly.
Fujiwara had been implicated by name in the prosecutor's letter.
Adachi had already guessed as much since the
Sunday of the baseball match, but had pushed the thought to the back of his
mind.
Of course, it was unlike Fujiwara
to by working on a Sunday when the rest of the team were glued to the TV, but
that just might not have been significant.
Unfortunately, it was.
Adachi's
instincts had been right.
The question
now:
Was Fujiwara merely working for the
prosecutor or did the trail lead right back to Katsuda?
Did the sergeant have
yakuza
connections?
Adachi
was not looking forward to finding out.
Anyway, did it matter?
He felt
drained and bone-weary.
The gray sky was looking ominous.
Adachi turned away from his contemplation of the moat as the first drops
rippled into the water.
Soon, the warm,
oily drops were falling in sheets and every stitch of clothing on his body was
soaked.
The only dry thing left was the
prosecutor's letter in his pocket, tucked bloody but safe into a plastic
evidence bag.
Adachi knew he should call in or at least return to headquarters, but he
could not do it.
He could not face the
pressure and the questions.
The DSG
would certainly want to talk to him about the prosecutor's death.
What could Adachi say?
Would the truth serve any useful
purpose?
Where did the DSG's loyalties
lie?
No he could not face this kind of
thing for the moment.
Today was one day
he had to be alone.
He headed away from the grounds of the
The rain grew heavier.
*
*
*
*
*
Inspector Fujiwara had had a set of keys to the superintendent's
apartment since he had been sent to pick up some things for his boss shortly
after the start of the Hodama investigation.
It had been a simple matter to have an additional set cut, and since that
time he had made periodic use of them.
There was little risk.
He
normally knew where Adachi was, and the man lived alone.
Even if Fujiwara had been caught, he had a story
about arranging a surprise party for the superintendent.
It would have been awkward, but it would have
worked.
It was during one of these visits that he had first learned of Adachi's parallel
investigation into the Hodama affair.
Paradoxically, he had been annoyed at first.
The man did not even trust his own men.
Then the inconsistency of his reactions had
hit him.
The truth was that Adachi was a
smart cop and an excellent man to work for.
And as a smart cop, Adachi had smelled something wrong.
But he had not suspected that Fujiwara was
the mole.
The sergeant was sure of that.
Fujiwara let himself into the superintendent's apartment and relocked the
door.
As a reflex he started to remove
his shoes and then realized the ridiculousness of the action.
Instead, he used his jacket to dry his wet
shoes so they would leave no mark on the
tatami
mats and moved across the living room into the bedroom.
Inside, he unzipped the flight bag he had been given by his
yakuza
contact and removed the silenced
machine gun.
It was a British-made 9mm
L34A1 Sterling, curved with a thirty-four-round box magazine inserted from the
left side.
This gave the weapon a low
profile when firing from the prone position.
The
yakuza
was a gun
enthusiast and had spelled out the weapon's specification in detail.
The most important element, from Fujiwara's perspective, was the
effectiveness of the silencer.
He had
been reassured on that point.
The
silencer, in this case, was integrated into the barrel and was so well-designed
it could use standard high-velocity ammunition and still make no more noise
than the sound of a person spitting.
The
seventy-two radial holes drilled into the bore bled off enough of the
propellant gas to make the rounds emerge subsonic.
This model had been issued to the British
SAS.
Fujiwara had to wonder about the gun's history and how such a weapon had
ended up in
Internationalization, he thought.
It is not always a good thing.
He inserted the magazine, cocked and locked the weapon, and settled
himself on the bed.
It was now just a
matter of time.
Then one long burst and
a second close up to make sure, and he would vanish into the night.
His long coat, hat, and glasses were a
sufficient disguise if he met anyone on the stairs.
Once in the nearby subway, he would be
anonymous.
In the most unlikely event of the subsequent investigation including him
among the suspects, he had a foolproof alibi arranged.
It would almost certainly be
unnecessary.
It was more likely that he
would be a key member of the team doing the investigation.
How did I get myself into this situation
? he
thought as he waited.
Very few Tokyo MPD
cops are on the take.
Money,
money, and more money.
It was a
simple answer, and one he found greatly satisfying.
He enjoyed the rewards of his activities.
The general lack of police corruption had created its own
opportunity.
The price of inside
information became higher, and then it was just a matter of initiative and
displaying an entrepreneurial streak and knowing whom to connect with.
Working in an anti-
yakuza
unit made the last part easy.
The coming
gang were
the Katsuda-
gumi
, no question about
it.
Hard men, but they paid well.
For this hit, the paid
superbly.
A double squeeze on the
trigger would bring him enough money to retire.
Well, it was all a matter of being in the right place at the right time
and knowing what moves to make.
He could hear keys in the lock, and then the door opened.
*
*
*
*
*
Over the years, Fitzduane had developed an aversion to walking straight
into places where something unpleasant might be waiting.
A planned ‘domestic accident’ certainly put Adachi's apartment into that
category.
God knows what the Katsuda-
gumi
might have planned.
So far — though he was still learning — the
Japanese seemed to favor direct action and edged weapons.
Opening the front door and walking straight
into a bunch of sword-wielding
yakuza
struck him as being not a good idea.
Granted, he could send his convoy of bodyguards in first, but it really
did not seem like the decent thing, and explaining a diced quartet of Tokyo MPD
detectives to the Deputy Superintendent-General would be embarrassing.
No, the indirect approach was required here, combined with
reconnaissance.
Your parents might have
done their very best to bring you up direct, honest, and forthright, but there
were times when there was a definite role in life for sneakiness.
Kilmara was a strong advocate of guile in a
combat situation, and Fitzduane had been an apt pupil.
Adachi's apartment was on the top floor of a six-story building and was
reached through a locked front door that was squeezed between a martial-arts
store and a bookshop.
The locked door
looked solid.
That was another argument
in favor of sneakiness.
They did not
have any keys, and Fitzduane did not want to alert anyone who might be inside
by playing with the bells.
Apart from
the radio beeper, he had tried phoning Adachi at the apartment, but there had
been no reply.
A further check revealed
that there was a fault on the line.
This
did not make Fitzduane feel good at all.
"Sergeant-
san
," he
said.
"Leave two men here and tell
them to stop anyone entering or leaving — and in particular to stop
Superintendent Adachi from entering.
The
rest of us will find a way up to the roof
.."
The block consisted of some ten adjoining buildings.
From the pavement looking up it was hard to
tell, but the roof looked roughly flat, and getting across to Adachi a simple
matter of crossing a few parapets.
It turned out to be more complicated.
Having reached roof level from an entrance three houses away, after some
badge-flashing and shouting by Sergeant Oga to a remarkably stubborn little old
lady, they found themselves one level below the next building.
The rain continued to emulate a lukewarm power shower as Fitzduane
assessed the situation.
The adjoining
roof was not just one floor higher, there was a parapet involved as well.
They would have to climb about fourteen or
fifteen feet, and the only way he could see to do it was to scale a drainpipe
on the front of the building, with the street directly below.
"Sergeant Oga," he said.
"Send your colleague for some rope.
God knows what we'll find when we get to the top.
Meanwhile, you and I are going to do some
climbing."
Oga snapped out instructions and the detective rushed away.
Then the sergeant ran toward the parapet and
moved to reach out to the drainpipe.
Fitzduane caught up with him and interposed an arm.
"
Gaijins
first," he
said, "and besides, this was my thoroughly stupid idea."
He started to climb.
Six feet up, he noticed that whatever was
true about Japanese craftsmanship, the drainage fixings had not been installed
on one of their better days.