“This is where we meet Senzo and his friend,” Kotani explained. “He did not want you to go to the apartment building.”
They crossed the fake drawbridge and pushed open a heavy wooden door. The hotel lobby lacked furniture, but it had a row of brightly lit vending machines that sold condoms, beer and energy drinks. The framed photographs of twelve different rooms were hanging on the wall. One room was designed to look like a medieval dungeon, another was a cabana.
Kotani picked a room with an African theme. He pushed a red button and the light over the photograph immediately went out. A
half-curtain covered part of an alcove opening so that the clerk and the hotel customers would never see each other’s faces. When Kotani placed a wad of cash on the counter, a woman’s hands took the money and offered a plastic key card. A few seconds later, a speaker played the sound of wind chimes, and an elevator door glided open.
Kotani dialed a number on his mobile phone and said a few words. They stepped into the elevator, and it moved slowly upward. “Why can’t we operate the elevator?” Hollis asked.
“You can only go to the correct floor. They do not want customers meeting other people in the hallway.”
On the third floor, Kotani slid a key card into the lock for room 9 and the door clicked open. The African Room resembled the photograph in the lobby, but the zebra skin rug was frayed and the room smelled like lemon-scented disinfectant.
Hollis went into the bathroom and found a whirlpool tub with a rock façade and fake tropical foliage. He returned to the bedroom, pushed back the leopard print curtains and looked down at the streetlight. No fire escape. The door was the only way out.
“Where’s the closet?”
Kotani looked confused.
“Every hotel room has a closet.”
“Most people do not stay here for long.”
Hollis inspected the African carving hanging on the wall and the four-poster bed covered with mosquito netting. Still looking a little drunk, Kotani sat down on a rattan chair and smiled. “Why are you suspicious? No one knows we are here.”
“In a few minutes someone is going to show up with a gun for sale. Maybe they’ll decide to keep the gun and take all the money.”
“There is nothing to worry about. You are the suspicious person, Mr. Wilson. Not Senzo. When you first came to the shop, I thought you were sent by the Tabula.”
“I guess you’ll just have to trust me.”
“But I know who you are. I checked everything with Linden.”
Hollis controlled the expression on his face. “And how did you do that?”
“I sent him an email. After he confirmed your identity, I called you on the mobile.”
“Did you send the email from a cyber cafe?”
“I have my own computer at home. No need to worry. I did not use my real name.”
“The Tabula could have placed a virus on your hard drive. It’s activated when it detects certain words.”
“You are much too nervous, Mr. Wilson. Sparrow never talked this way.”
“Sparrow is dead. I plan to stay alive.”
Both of them were startled when Kotani’s mobile phone played “Ode to Joy.” He switched it on the phone and said a few words in Japanese.
“See? Everything is good. Senzo is in the lobby with his friend. They are coming up in the elevator.”
“And he’s your landlord?”
“Yes. I told you. He offered to sell me the weapon a year ago.”
“And so you called him?”
“That was not necessary. He came to my apartment and told me that he was going to paint the kitchen.”
“So he just happened to show up at that particular moment?”
“What are you saying?”
“We’re getting out of here.”
Hollis grabbed Kotani and pulled him to his feet as someone knocked on the door. No way out. He thought about the smashing the window, but it was too far to jump.
“Listen to me …” Hollis pulled two packets of Japanese currency
out of his shoulder bag and stuffed them into Kotani’s pockets. “If the Tabula are looking for me, then we’ve got a problem. But maybe it’s okay. Maybe they just want money. Buy the gun and they’ll leave.”
“I—I understand.”
Hollis pulled the ceramic knife from its sheath. As the visitor in the hallway knocked a second time, he dropped to the floor and slid beneath the canopied bed. A cotton mattress cover hung down from the box spring and concealed him. There was a two-inch gap between the hem of the cover and the wood floor.
Kotani opened the door and two men entered the hotel room. They spoke Japanese, and Hollis didn’t know what they were saying. Peering through the gap, he could see one of the men was dressed in a dark blue business suit. The second man wore stained cotton pants and old running shoes. Hollis decided that the second man was Senzo—the landlord who grew up in South America. He had a brisk, friendly voice and his legs rocked slightly as he stood beside the bed.
Senzo did most of the talking while Mr. Business Suit paced back and forth inspecting the room. Kotani’s voice was soft and respectful. Hollis tried to breathe quietly as he held the blade of the knife against his chest. Just pay them the money, he thought. Pay the money and tell them to leave.
After a few minutes of conversation, the man in the business suit began to ask questions. He had a deep, powerful voice and spoke in short sentences. Kotani answered him with a frightened voice.
Silence. And then the man wearing the suit grabbed Kotani and slammed the bookseller against the wall. The man’s voice filled the room, demanding an explanation. Kotani fell onto the floor, but his interrogator picked him up and slapped him across the face. Hollis didn’t need to understand Japanese to know that Kotani was desperate,
begging for mercy. If the bookseller betrayed him, then he would have to attack.
Turning his head slightly, Hollis saw Kotani’s scuffed brown shoes. He was standing very close to Hollis, on the left side of the bed. Footsteps across the floor and then a muffled cracking sound. Suddenly, Kotani collapsed onto the floor. Blood poured out of the dead man’s mouth. Hollis could see that someone had shot the bookseller in the back of the head. The man in the business suit laughed and said something.
Hollis glanced to the right beneath the hem of the mattress cover; Senzo was standing only a few feet away. Then he looked left and realized that Kotani’s blood had formed a bright red patch beneath his head. The blood trembled when the men walked back and forth. Hollis stopped breathing as the blood trickled toward him.
He crawled to the right, emerged from beneath the bed and stood up quickly. Senzo was standing a few feet away. Hollis grabbed Senzo’s shoulder with his left hand and jabbed upward with the knife, pushing it deep into the man’s stomach. As Senzo screamed and fell backward, Hollis jerked the blade away.
A Japanese man with a broad face and slicked back hair was standing by the rattan couch. He had wrapped a hotel towel around his handgun to muffle the sound. The man raised his weapon, but Hollis was already on him, grabbing the wrist of the gun hand, then twisting it around. Screaming with pain, the man dropped the gun and Hollis drove the knife between his shoulder blades. The ceramic blade hit a vertebra and snapped in two. Hollis let go of the knife, threw an arm around the man’s neck and shoved a knee into his back. As Kotani’s killer fell forward, Hollis pulled back with one quick jerk and broke his neck.
He stood up and stared at the motionless body. There were mirrors
all over the room so that the couples could watch themselves making love. Hollis could see his wild eyes, his chest heaving in and out. In the mirrors, the dead men looked unsubstantial, like piles of clothing dumped on the floor.
The packets of Japanese money and a loaded 9mm handgun were lying in the middle of the bed. Hollis stuffed everything into his shoulder bag, and then returned to the man wearing the suit and pushed him onto his back. He ripped open the dead man’s shirt and saw that his chest and stomach were covered with a dragon tattoo. Yakuza. A Tabula mercenary.
Akihido Kotani lay next to the bed. Looking down at the dead man, Hollis realized that the Itako had given the correct prophecy; the bookseller had bravely protected him. He left the hotel room and sprinted down the hall to the fire exit. Two surveillance cameras were mounted on the wall. Within a few hours, both the Tabula and the Tokyo police would be looking for a murderer, a black man, a
gaijin
, an outsider with no place to hide.
W
hen Gabriel had first crossed the barriers, the experience was terrifying. After a series of journeys, he had learned how to guide the movement of his Light. Though his physical body had nothing to do with this knowledge, the process reminded him of skydiving or bodysurfing—activities where a shift of weight or a slight movement of the arms could propel you in a different direction. Crossing over, his consciousness sensed the right direction and was able to guide his Light to the First Realm. The arrival itself was always unexpected. After passing through the barriers, you were suddenly
there
. It was like lying down in one bed and waking up in another.
—
He opened his eyes, scrambled to his feet, and saw that he was standing in a long, narrow room with a shattered window at one end. Out on the street, a gas flare blossomed like a bright orange flower from a crack in the pavement. He was in a store that had once sold refrigerators, washing machines and stoves. These appliances weren’t the
modern devices with stainless steel facades that were displayed in New York or London; instead, the washing machines had wringers fixed over an open tub, and the refrigerators were white metal boxes with cooling coils mounted on the top. The old-fashioned technology made each appliance look like a squat little idol—once worshipped, now abandoned in the ruins.
Gabriel turned again and found a shifting patch of darkness on the wall behind an overturned stove. Although this shadow could only be seen by a Traveler, it was a passageway that could be used by Maya, a route back to a specific access point—the hidden chapel at St. Catherine’s monastery. He pushed some of the abandoned machines across the room to mark the way out and walked over to the broken window. The appliance store was on a boulevard lined with other looted shops. A half-burned sofa and a pile of concrete rubble were on the sidewalk in front of him. The trees that had once shaded the area were now blackened trunks and leafless branches that reached toward the light of the flare.
Once again, he wondered if his father had explored this dark city. Gabriel’s Pathfinder, Sophia Briggs, had said that only a few Travelers crossed over to the different realms. Many thought that the power to leave their bodies was a hallucination. Others were so terrified by the four barriers that they refused to go any farther.
During Gabriel’s previous visit to the First Realm, the Commissioner of Patrols had mentioned the “visitors” who came from outside the island. Perhaps one of these people had been Matthew Corrigan. When Gabriel thought about his father, he recalled moments when Matthew was driving the pickup truck or working in the garden. Nothing was frightening or dangerous on their farm, but sometimes an expression of great sadness would appear on his father’s face. Perhaps he had been thinking about the anger and hate that imprisoned the inhabitants of this dark world.
Gabriel slipped out the entrance and headed down the street, moving with an alert and cautious rhythm—like an animal that knew it was being hunted. The last place he had seen Maya was at the abandoned school that was used as a headquarters for the patrols. Although it was dangerous to return there, he decided that it would be the center point of an invisible circle. He would start searching at the edges of the city and then spiral inward to the streets around the school.
Hell was a permanent reality, trapped in an endless cycle of destruction, creation, and destruction again. Perhaps everyone in the city was dead except for a few wolves and cockroaches. When the last survivor perished, the city would somehow return to that first morning when the sky was blue and hope was possible. The pain of Hell was all the more powerful because of what had been lost.
He had no idea if Maya was alive, but it didn’t look like the cycle of destruction was over. Light oozed through the thick cloud layer that covered the sky. The air smelled like burning tires and bits of ash covered the street. Everywhere he looked, he could see words and numbers scrawled on the walls and sidewalks.
X Cross the Sky. Green 55. Here is the place. Remember
. Some of these words delineated certain territories or fiefdoms that existed in the past—like the gang signs in his world. But most of the graffiti was put up by people who believed they would be reborn in a new cycle. Before they died, they left clues and coded directions to hiding places and caches of weapons.
He paused at the corner of a building and peered down a side street. It was dangerous to be here. Eventually, he would be seen by the wolves. He considered different strategies and then decided to leave messages to Maya all over the city. After searching through a burnt-out grocery store, he returned to the street with two pieces of charcoal. Feeling like a teenager in a deserted subway station, he scrawled a Harlequin lute on a brick wall with the words:
WHERE U?
The next street over had been turned into a dumping area for broken chairs, two faceless grandfather clocks and a pile of smashed crockery. Someone had dismantled a carousel and left the wooden horses leaning against a brick wall as if they were chasing each other down the block. Gabriel touched one of these carvings and felt the smooth surface of the black saddle and the flowing mane. He decided to leave another message, but when he raised the piece of charcoal, he noticed faded words written with red paint. Each letter had dribbled at the edges as if they were bleeding.
Are you the Traveler?
Asked the writer.
Have you returned?
Below the words was a red arrow, pointing down the street.
Had Maya painted the message? That was possible, but Maya probably would have included the lute or interlocking diamond shapes—Harlequin signs. Gabriel stood beside the carousel horse for several minutes as he considered the possibilities. Then he headed down the street in the direction of the arrow. Two blocks away, he found a second message that led him onward to additional signs. The words were always written in red paint, but the size of the letters varied. Sometimes the message was splattered high up on a building like a billboard. But usually there was only a red arrow, painted on the hood of a smashed delivery truck or on a door still hanging from one hinge.