The Gate (9 page)

“I stand on my record,” Lake cut in.

“You may, but I have to go back to Feliks and I don’t want your record standing on my shoulders when the ship goes down.”

“The people who want those weapons are Asian,” Lake said, noting that he’d given Randkin his surprise of the evening.

“Japanese? Going to the Patriots for guns?”

“I don’t know,” Lake said. “I’ll know when I see them and give them their guns. Maybe they have tattoos on their upper-right arm. How the fuck do I know until I get the guns? I got the order through a Patriot cutout, which is kind of different by itself. So maybe there’s something here.”

Randkin fingered the note, then put it in his pocket. “You didn’t have to be so hard on those feds. They were just doing a job. They didn’t know they were bait in your game to keep your cover floating.”

“Maybe they’ll treat citizens like citizens next time they go on the street.”

“Yes, and maybe next time they’ll bust someone’s head.”

“Lots of maybes in the world,” Lake said. He walked back off to the south, his mind full of troubled thoughts.

SATURDAY, 4 OCTOBER 1997

1:12
p.m
. LOCAL

The phone rang, shattering the silence of the room. Nishin stared at it. No one knew he was in here. Perhaps a wrong number. It rang six times, then stopped. He went back to doing elevated push-ups, feet up on the bed. He was working out the soreness accumulated on his last mission. The pain felt good.

The phone rang again. Nishin stopped and hopped to his feet. He walked over to the cheap table next to the bed and stared at the ancient black instrument. On the fourth ring he picked it up and held it to his ear without making a noise.

A voice spoke in Japanese. “Senso to Kyonsanshugi. By Takeo Mitamura.’’ The phone went dead and Nishin slowly lowered it back onto its cradle.

He taped the Plexiglas knife to his stomach, then strapped the Brown High Power on, putting a short blue windbreaker on over the gun. The AUG was in its case and he took that with him. The rest of his meager belongings went into a gym bag. He wiped down the room. By the time he was done there was no sign he had ever been there. He jammed a chair up against the door. Someone would really have to want to get in to open that door. It might gain him a couple of days.

He took the fire escape down to the back alley. Six blocks away, he checked into another flophouse, reserving a room for a week. He went upstairs, deposited the AUG case and the gym bag, then left, this time by the back staircase.

His new hotel was three miles from the Japan Center and he made it almost twice as long by zigzagging and occasionally doubling back on himself.

He knew where the Yotoku Miyagi bookstore was, but he approached it slowly. He sat for a half-hour a block away, watching customers going in and out. Finally he went into the store. The young woman from the previous evening was not there. An older man stood behind the counter. Nishin gave him the book title and author in Japanese.

The old man nodded. “Yes, sir. We have your special order. It just came in.” He reached under the counter and handed Nishin a hardbound book. The old man pulled a receipt out from the inside cover. “It is already paid for.”

Nishin thanked the man and tucked the book under his arm. He took an even more roundabout route back to his new nest. By the time he arrived it was getting dark. He locked himself into the room and finally took a look at the book. It was old. The copyright information said it was published in 1950 by a press in Tokyo.

The book was only the wrapping, though. Tucked inside was a map of San Francisco. Nishin scanned it. A pier on the northeast side of the San Francisco peninsula off the Embarcadero was circled in red.

Nishin put the map in his shirt pocket. He opened his gym bag and pulled out a sweater. It was foggy out and would get chilly before dawn. He put the sweater on, re-strapping the shoulder holster on over it, then the windbreaker.

The phone startled him. He stared at it, then reluctantly picked it up.

A voice on the other end laughed, then spoke briefly in Japanese. “This is my city, remember that.” Nishin recognized the voice: it was Okomo, the Oyabun of the San Francisco Yakuza. The phone went dead.

Nishin put the phone down. Before he picked up his gym bag and the AUG case, his hand strayed to his stomach and tapped the knife strapped there.

*****

A half a mile away the same man who had been on the roof the previous night had Nishin’s travels of the day overlaid on a computerized map of San Francisco. He was sitting in the driver’s seat of his white rental van, a laptop computer wedged up against the steering wheel. He started the engine when the computer told him Nishin was moving again.

*****

A freighter and a fishing trawler were docked in the berth that had been circled. Nishin knew which was his target immediately. The freighter flew a Panamanian flag, the trawler the flag of South Korea. He found a large crane that looked like it wasn’t used much and climbed up to the control booth so that he could overwatch the trawler. It made perfect sense that the North Koreans would infiltrate using a fishing boat flying the South Korean flag as their cover.

Now it was a waiting game and Nishin had never lost a wait. First, though, he needed to check in. He went to a pay phone and called in a report to Nakanga, then he returned to the crane.

*****

The man in the van also waited as the sun came up. Nishin didn’t move from his perch. The man had seen the bag and metal case Nishin carried, which indicated he wasn’t going back to wherever he’d come from. The man typed commands into his computer tracker. It was now set on alert. If Nishin moved it would come alive and beep him. He headed back to his hotel room.

SAPPORO, HOKKAIDO, JAPAN

SUNDAY, 5 OCTOBER 1997

10:00
p.m
. LOCAL

Nakanga had just reported to Kuzumi that Nishin had located the North Koreans on their ship. Kuzumi did not acknowledge the report. If it was spoken in his presence, he heard it. Acknowledgment was a waste of time and energy. It was a trait he had used since first graduating the university over six decades ago. His Sensei departed the room, leaving him in peace.

Kuzumi’s office was on the top floor of the temple. There were no windows and the walls were hung with tapestries, muting the hard armored walls underneath. Kuzumi’s desk was a massive semicircular piece of highly polished dark teak. On the wall to the left were a bank of TVs tuned in to various channels around the globe. The sound on all of them was currently muted. A small box on the left side of the desk controlled all the TVs and a computer sat there awaiting his instructions. Several phones were on the right side of the desk. Behind the desk, a three-drawer file cabinet squatted beneath a large painting. The painting depicted the same tattoo that was on Kuzumi’s chest, in startling, brilliant colors.

It had been a long day for Kuzumi. There were always deals to be made, information to be absorbed, people to be dealt with, plans to be made. The last was always the most difficult. Kuzumi often felt like those chess champions who played in a large room against multiple opponents, moving from table to table, remembering the setup of each one. Except his stakes were much higher than simply losing a game. Kuzumi dealt in life and death and fortunes and the future of his country.

The Black Ocean was a legitimate organization most of the time, although Kuzumi saw the law as simply a set of rules the government had to abide by, not the Black Ocean. If he had to break it, so be it. He answered to a higher authority than words written by men in a book.

The Black Ocean controlled a vast amount of industry and land, both in Japan and overseas. What caused the government to cast a suspicious eye on it and the other secret societies was the fear of history repeating itself and the simple fact that the societies represented power. Any government with half a brain would keep an eye on the powerful organizations that existed within its borders and weren’t directly under its control.

Kuzumi had become Genoysha in 1968. He had done so primarily because of his strength in the scientific and manufacturing field. He was one of the key architects, through the Black Ocean, in helping rebuild Japan from its wartime wreckage into the powerful economic juggernaut it currently was. Kuzumi being chosen by Genoysha Taiyo to be his successor was an indication of the appreciation of the role he had played in Japan’s economic rebirth. Always before, the Genoysha had been selected from among the field operatives. A man of unquestioning loyalty and proven ability to fight for what the Society stood for. Kuzumi’s field record was weak, but Genoysha Taiyo had done his job correctly, seeing the direction that Japan was heading in and picking the right type of leader the organization needed to change with the times. When the cancer that had been eating his insides finished Taiyo in 1968, it was Kuzumi’s destiny to get the tattoo of Genoysha of the Black Ocean.

Kuzumi had wielded the power for the past thirty years, keeping the Black Ocean on a narrow path between the government, the people, the influence of other countries, and the Yakuza. There was no doubt he had succeeded so far in that he had much more influence among those other groups than they had with him. The Society controlled more wealth than many countries. It employed more people than most major corporations, although many of those who worked for it were unaware of the exact nature of their employer. But wealth and power was not the ultimate goal of the Society. The glory of Japan, and beyond and above Japan, the Sun Goddess and Emperor were.

Japan was the center of the world and as such all events must turn in the direction that benefited the islands. The Black Ocean and the other societies existed because the government and the people often lost their way and a steady hand behind the scenes was needed. It was Kuzumi’s job to exercise that steady hand here and abroad.

That thought drew his mind to the west. San Francisco. The name of the city brought conflicting emotions. He turned his wheelchair to the file cabinet behind him. The metal it was constructed of was the same used to line jet engines, impervious to heat and blast. The lock could only be activated by his retina placed up against a scanner at his eye level on top of the cabinet. Anyone else attempting to open the cabinet would set off a thermal charge on the inside, destroying the contents.

Kuzumi leaned his forehead against the scanner and the laser flickered across his eyes. With a loud click, the locks withdrew. Kuzumi opened the bottom drawer and drew out a small, intricately carved wooden box. He turned back to the desk, the box in his lap. He turned the small clasp and opened the lid. Tenderly he drew out a black-and-white photograph that lay on top of other documents. The picture had been folded and the paper was worn around the edges.

He had not looked at this for over twenty years. He blinked, then refocused his eyes. There was a very young woman standing with a baby in her arms. Behind her the Golden Gate Bridge arched over the water. The woman appeared to be part Caucasian, part Japanese, the blend mixing together to form an exotic beauty. She was tall and slender, the Western-style dress clinging to her body. Her hair was jet black and very long with edges of it framing her waist. Her skin was dark and her eyes coal black. The slant to them wasn’t strong enough to pass in Japan but too far to pass as white in the West. Today he knew she would be considered beautiful, perhaps a model, but back then she was simply a half-breed.

“Nira,” Kuzumi whispered, slowly putting the photograph down on his desk. Nira Foster. The name was strung like a harp string inside of him. A string that he had long ago thought he had put away by sheer force of will. Over half a century before that string had played hard and loud.

It was her beauty that Kuzumi had not been able to resist at first. That she was Dr. Lawrence’s primary undergraduate assistant made her that much more attractive. She knew all that Lawrence did. Kuzumi had used that as a justification to get closer to her, not admitting the real reason, even to himself for a long time. That she had returned the attraction had not surprised him. She was half-Japanese and in those days there was much prejudice against Asians in California. She was also a budding physicist and Kuzumi represented the cutting edge of international study. He’d been published and she’d read his articles even before he’d arrived. He was three years older and had traveled the world. And, most importantly, he was the first true Japanese she had spent much time with.

Nira’s father had been a petty officer in the American Navy. She didn’t know her mother. Her father had dumped her in the care of a convent when she was two. She’d seen him several times over the next decade when he happened to be in port, but then he’d disappeared and she’d never heard from him again. He had never told her about her Japanese mother or where she had been born. There were no records at the convent other than the papers her father had signed to get her into it.

She’d done well on her own and the nuns had given her a good enough education to get a scholarship to UC-Berkeley, but there was a glass ceiling waiting for her and she was smart enough to know it. Her ethnic background and her gender limited her options in the United States. That intellectual awareness didn’t temper her pain and anger, though.

Their first talks had been of atoms and particles and cadmium and all the other subjects that made up the burgeoning science they both were immersed in. Kuzumi could not recall when the talk had changed. He did remember the first time they had slept together. For two reasons. First, of course, was the experience itself, passionate and exciting beyond anything he had experienced before. But of more consequence was the fact that in his next message to be sent back to the Society through the Japanese Embassy pouch, he reported that he was involved with her, as was required by his standing orders.

He had been half-afraid he would be ordered to stop the relationship. What happened was worse. His instructions were to continue, build it, make it stronger. Then he was to recruit her. Kuzumi knew he would have to return to Japan soon to begin work on Genzai Bakudan. The Society wanted Nira to stay at UC-Berkeley and keep an eye on Lawrence and his work. They knew that Lawrence would undoubtedly be part of any atomic project the Americans developed and being an American citizen Nira was the perfect spy. Because of her father’s abandonment, she hated the United States deep inside and it wasn’t hard for Kuzumi to tap into that. He told her stories of a Japan she’d never seen and the different life she’d have there. They kept the relationship a secret so that there would be no stories of her liaison with Nishin to filter back to the FBI.