Year of the Talking Dog: A Hana Walker Mystery (The Hana Walker Mysteries Book 2) (22 page)

“Got your attention, Ishihara?”

He jumps up and reaches for the telephone, but I’m too fast for him. I slice the sword down in a two-handed arc and jab the phone from his hand. I return the sword to first position.

He’s speechless.

“I want answers. You’ve been running me around like an idiot, and I’ve been stupid, but I know you are the key to this. I want to know what’s going on. Who killed Steve?”

He looks down at the ground, but doesn’t answer.

“I’m serious. I won’t leave until I have the answer.”

I raise the sword above my head
 

He makes no attempt to defend himself. I sweep his desk clear with the sword, everything clatters to the floor.

“Who killed Steve?”

There’s a knock at the door. A frantic woman’s voice calling in Japanese. Ishihara answers. She rattles the door handle to open it, but can’t. She says something else. Ishihara says, “Daijoubu, daijoubu,” and she asks a question, but then leaves us.

He steps away from the desk and kneels on the floor with his head down.

“I don’t know. Maybe the general, maybe accident. Really, don’t know. But doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me.”

“You not understanding, it really not matter now. Single death, so much more at risk now. So many lives, so many deaths. Mine and yours, my daughter, no matter. On my hands. On your hands.”

“What are you talking about?”

“On your hands. Death is for you as much as me. You can put the sword down now, there’s no need, we are both dead. The general is no scientist. You have nothing worse than the bubonic plague, Black Death. No danger with right antibiotics. But the days of individual test subjects are over. The general has
 
something much worse.”

“The general? You mean the masked man?”

He nods. I lower Uncle Kentaro’s sword.
 

“Much worse. I couldn’t control deception. This project kept growing. I couldn’t keep fooling others. Before long, my science was perverted by rest of team and they have begun working on something far more deadly. They have taken my amateurish mutation and weaponised it, added it to a delivery device. All they need to do is launch it and we are in trouble. They have developed an anthrax spore, that if it reaches critical mass, say infecting 2,000 people or so, the cross mutations will become unstoppable and we will have pandemic on our hands. Then no stopping the disease until it’s too late.”

“Wait, I don’t understand. The virus really works? It really does target white people?”

“Yes and no. It’s not a virus. It’s strain of bacteria. It does not target only white people. How can it? There is no scientific basis for race. We are all subsets of same species, genetic differences between people are negligible. You might as well divide populations by how tall people are or what their favourite colour is. Scientifically, it’s meaningless.”

“So that’s good news, that races are not real?”

“No, in this case it’s very bad news. It means the bacterium I developed has no limit. Once released, the mutations will spread to all people regardless of skin colour. Japanese, Korean, black, white and everything in between.”
 

“You developed this? Why?”

“I had to give the general something that works. If anyone looks at sample they will see bacteria that mutate, but not one that really develops based on race. How can it? There is no scientific basis for race. But he has Aoi. He has Aoi as insurance to ensure my loyalty, to ensure I deliver a drug worth all their time. Otherwise it’s the end for me and the end for Aoi. So I gave the general what he wanted. Something deadly that looks like it’s more accurate than it really is, but the mutations are only on the surface.”
 

“I don’t understand. You could have gone to the police or told the government or somebody. You didn’t have to give him anything.”

“But I did because the general was getting close. He didn’t have all the answers, but left alone, even he and his North Korean team could have pieced together a nerve agent deadly enough to kill millions.”
 

“Where is Aoi? Is she still alive”

“I don’t know, now the weapon is nearly perfected.”

“Nearly?”

“Yes, its only flaw is that it’s unstable in most states. But there is another strain the general was working on. It forms a gas at temperatures of 60 degrees, but only in lower air pressure between 300 and 400 metres above sea level. Anything stronger and the mutations don’t spread, anything lighter and the spores dissipate in the atmosphere.”

“They could release it in any foothills in Japan.”

“No. There are many locations outside, but there are too few people. It needs an instant infection of 2,000 people at least; more the better. There are many
 
mountains in Japan that attract that many people, but the conditions are not right. The spores would dissipate harmlessly in wind unless in laboratory conditions, but there are no labs that can accommodate 2,000 people 300 metres above sea level.”

“So what’s the problem, if it’s a weapon that’s impossible to use?”

“Something happened. The general has stepped up the deadline. He was never ready, I thought, never serious. Maybe he’s feeling pressure from Pyongyang; North Korea has a new leader. Maybe he has to prove his worth. I don’t know. All I know is that I’m out. Not needed. And that means Aoi is in real danger. She’s not needed.”

“You are willing to devote your whole life to fooling the North Koreans, but now that your science is actually helping them, you are still in your office, looking out the window? I don’t get it. Why don’t you do something? Warn the Americans?”

“Even if they did believe me, even if they want to help, it’s too late. There’s nothing else can be done. Nothing you can do. No win-win now.”

I look at him and I see the policeman, the doctor, the teacher. Everyone who has given up living but is telling me how to live. And I understand something. Their advice is just to make themselves feel better about their mistakes. They know nothing. It’s suddenly clear now. I have to stop the general. The general who has a secret base of operation on the floor above.

I run out of the door, past the secretary and back to the lifts. I push open the access door to the stairs and bound up them two at a time to an unmarked door that leads to the fourth floor. It’s the same flimsy door I’d ventured through to find the masked man. I turn the handle and my mouth drops.

I was expecting the dim lights and desolation of his secret lab, but inside it’s just one vast open floor. You can see out of the windows on three sides of the building. Everything smells fresh, new plaster, new paint. A new world. But no Aoi. No masked man.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

“Drive!”

“What?”

“Start the car. We have to get out of here.”

“Did you find what you needed to know from the doctor?”

“Drive!”

“OK, OK. Where, exactly?”

“I love you, Uncle Kentaro. But can we just please go? Go!”

He turns the key, the engine makes a half-hearted attempt at starting, but there’s no ignition.

“I do need to know where we’re going, you know. I can’t just drive.”

“Uncle Kentaro. This isn’t philosophy, this is a Mini. Just go.”
 

Uncle Kentaro shrugs his shoulders and sucks air through his teeth. “All good things come to those who wait. It’s a classic, but you can’t hurry a Mini Mayfair. Less haste, more speed.”

He pulls the choke out and pumps the accelerator twice, just like my father used to do. Then counts to 10. I look back at the entrance to the hospital. There is no movement. It looks like nobody is there. Like I’m imagining things like angry security guards unhappy about a girl running around with a championship kendo sword. I fight the urge to close my eyes and wish it all away.

Fear kicks in.

“I don’t have time for this!”

I’ve no idea where I’m supposed to go, but I know it’s not here. I reach for the door handle, but it’s stiffer than I remember. I can’t stand it anymore. Panic is welling up in me. Then the hospital doors open and two security guards look around.

“Please. Go. Now.”

“There we are, I knew this old girl would start up with a little TLC.”

Uncle Kentaro checks his rearview mirror, signals and pulls out from the car park space.

“Just go. Please.”

My head snaps back. I just know a guard has got me. But it isn’t that. The Mini lurches forward.

Uncle Kentaro laughs.

“Like I said, good things come to those who wait. I’ve made a few changes to the car since your father’s time. It has a Mazda Miata engine now for a start. Fits like a glove, and with our low weight, it accelerates. She’s a feisty one. Bit like you, but you’d do well to slow down a bit. You are a Walker, not a runner.”

“Is that a joke?”

He laughs. “Not a great one, but yes. Now tell me what all is going on.”

In the hour it takes us to drive back to Abiko, I fill him in on everything Dr Ishihara told me. Then I ask Uncle Kentaro if it’s true: “Can they release bacteria that will spread around the world causing millions of deaths?”

“I’m a priest, not a micro-biologist,” he says. Then he’s silent. I’m not sure if it’s Dr Ishihara he doesn’t believe or me. He doesn’t explain.

We cross over the Edogawa river out of Tokyo and into Chiba prefecture. I stare at Uncle Kentaro’s face for a clue to his thoughts. Beyond him are the lights of a massive new skyscraper, dwarfing all around.

Uncle Kentaro senses what I’m looking at.

“The only place you can’t see that monstrosity is from inside it. Be a hell of a place to avoid with all the hangers-on and tourists.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The tallest telecommunications tower in the world. It opens tomorrow.”

“What does?”

“Skytree. Tokyo Skytree. Don’t you follow the news?”

It’s my turn to fall silent.
I get my phone out and google Skytree.
There are hundreds of articles. I click on one.
The opening of Tokyo Skytree on May 22.
 

“It says here Skytree will revitalise Japan, a new beginning for the country after two lost decades. The new rise of the land of the rising sun.”

“Cute,” Uncle Kentaro says. “But I’m not smart enough to know how building the world’s tallest TV tower is going to save Japan. They already have plenty of tall buildings to beam TV signals from and there still isn’t anything worth watching. Lost decades? The first place I look for anything I’ve lost is between the sofa cushions, but I guess when you’re on a whole bigger scale you have to make everything on a bigger scale. Including your mistakes.”

I look up Skytree on Wikipedia. It’s a 650-meter tower open to the public. An observation deck is 350 metres above the ground with a second 100 metres above that. The capacity for the upper observation deck is 900, but 2,000 people at a time can stand on the lower deck. The floors are serviced by four lifts.

“The observation deck on Skytree is 350 metres above sea Level. It has a capacity of 2,000.”

Uncle Kentaro sucks on his teeth. “Wait. You don’t suppose that…”

“…that the general will release the bacteria at the grand opening of Skytree?”
 

Skytree. It makes sense. An observation deck 350 metres in the air where the virus could be kept indoors and 2,000 people had nothing to do but get infected. In an enclosed space with no way out, it couldn’t be released on a train, anyone could get out, and it’s not high enough. It couldn’t be in a stadium, too much airspace. No, it makes sense. Ground zero, only 350 metres up in the air.

Uncle Kentaro says: “That would be quite a stunt to pull off. But if he did it, my God, that would be insane. He has to be stopped. But there’s a problem there.”

I look at Uncle Kentaro. I don’t think he’s being serious — he doesn’t really believe me.
 

“Even if you could convince the police to take you seriously, I don’t think anyone important enough will champion this cause. None of those pencil-pushers would put their necks on the line to delay the opening of Skytree. You have no proof. At least, none that anyone would listen to and act on in 24 hours. If we could get Dr Ishihara to tell the police what he told you, then maybe…”

“No. It won’t work. They won’t believe me and nothing Ishihara says is proof that Skytree is where the masked man will release the bacteria. He can’t betray what he doesn’t know. Which means there’s only one thing to be done. We have to stop him ourselves.”

Uncle Kentaro snorts.

“Even if I wanted to help you, I don’t know how we could possibly do anything. Tickets for the grand opening are impossible to come by. Tens of thousands of people will be standing around. How are we going to get in? How are we going to stop them even if we do get in? It’s madness. The whole thing. Even if I wanted to help you. And none of it will save the girl Aoi, will it?”
 

We fall silent. I look out of the rear window. A red warning beacon glows on the tip of Skytree.