Stackpole, Michael A - Dark Conspiracy 02 (12 page)

The oyabun held the crystal glass cupped in his hands and rested his elbows on his knees. “My nephew has told me that you are no longer with your father’s firm. He also said you believed that success in your current job depended upon receiving our help. I would have met with you sooner except for some business in Hong Kong, but you should not take my tardiness in seeing you as a rejection of your friendship.”

“I did not, oyabun. I understand very well the difficulties of the tasks thrust upon you.” Sin drank some of the scotch and let himself relax into the chair. “Your invitation to play here, in your home, was a very pleasant surprise.”

“It was the least I could do to repay your kindness for hosting Kazuo on his visits to Phoenix, and to applaud your courage in returning to our island again.” The oyabun’s dark eyes glittered. “Your new employer must be very powerful indeed.”

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Sin sensed a mixture of curiosity and confidence in the oyabun’s comment. Fishing for information, orconfirma-tion of what you already know? “I have only been working for him over the past week but, yes, he does seem very well connected. Even so, there are things he does not know, and assistance he requires. He personally sent me hereto Japan, fully knowledgeable of my past difficulties and my allies.”

Takeshi Takagi leaned back in the couch. “I still recall how you accepted blame for us in that stock manipulation affair three years ago. I know your exile back to the United States forced a reconciliation with your father on his terms. I respect you more than you could know for performing this duty for us. How can I help you?”

“I need information on an institution that is likely to be very private or oddly disguised.It will be the sort of thing that will attract no notice among us, but the
burakumin
and minor merchants might find it odd. I need your ears to listen closely, for the collection of data should be passive. If what I am searching for does exist, I do not want to alert its people to the fact that I am looking for them.”

He drank a bit more, then continued. “Somewhere, here, there is an institution or training center. Its resources would be nearly limitless, yet it would seem very stingy to those outside.It would seem, on the surface, to be more normal than anything else in terms of daily administra-tion.It would never seek the limelight, but would not draw attention to itself by trying to hide, either.”

Kazuo smiled easily. “You mean, if it were a warehouse, it would look like one and function like one, but never become too successful, yet never so security-conscious that it would become noticed.”

“Exactly.It would have loading-dock workers who moved crates in and out, but never had cause to visit the executive offices.It might be a school that offers basic and advanced courses, but a part of the student body never interacts with those from the general public.It might sponsor a Little League baseball team and even display trophies it had won, but never tour the team through the whole facility.”

Takeshi nodded as his eyes narrowed. “It would be
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hiding in plain sight, as with Poe’s purloined letter.”

“
Hai!
”Sin set his drink on the arm of his chair and pulled himself forward. “Even so, there will be things that they cannot hide. For example, they might successfully clean up a shooting range so no brass could be found and shred all bullet boxes and targets into pulp so fine it could never be reconstructed. On the other hand, the chances are excellent that the laundry women would be able to smell cordite on the clothes used in the shooting exercise. A delivery person might never see what is in the packages he drops off, but he would notice if the firm only worked with certain companies or, more significantly, seemed to change suppliers on an almost random basis.”

The oyabun ran a hand over his smooth chin. “You want information about a firm that is so ordinary that it seems unremarkable, and you want us to gather this in a passive manner.” He shook his head. “You want us to find the firms about which no one is talking, in essence.”

“You have it precisely, which is why I need help.” Sin sighed heavily. “There are some things you can look for.

This place will have a number of nonnatives as long-term clients or residents. One of those residents vanished six weeks or more ago and did not return as anticipated. Guns of every variety are available here, and there is a prodigious amount of ammo used. Gun drills will also take place in odd ways, so rumors of an accidental shooting are possible. Weapons and equipment will have to be smuggled in and out without notice, so access to a private airfield or shipping could be a factor. It will require a lot of power, so independent- or high-power demands are likely.Itwill have communications needs that suggest its own satellite facility.”

Uncle and nephew exchanged a glance that Sin knew was significant, but he could not decipher it. “What?”

Kazuo shrugged uneasily, “There is one place where all the things you mention could be placed, and it would go unnoticed. Unfortunately, that is also the one place in all of Tokyo where our influence is the weakest: Kimpunshima.”

“Thereservation?Ihadn’tthoughtaboutthat.”
Golddust
Island.. Makes sense for all the wrong reasons.
“This could make my job very easy or absolutely impossible.”

Sin knew that, because of the clash of cultures in the 1980s and 1990s, tension had risen between the Japa-Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
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nese and foreigners. A diet full of nationalists forced a number of laws that severely restricted the accepted habitation zones for resident aliens in Japan. The laws served to protect the contamination and dissolution of the Japanese culture, as well as isolating the foreigners so they could only really deal with those the Japanese wished to have represent them.

The largest of the reservations was Kimpunshima. Built as a floating island in Tokyo harbor, a typhoon had devastated it in the mid-‘90s. It had been rebuilt and improved and enlarged until some people began to think of it as the fifth island in the Japanese chain. Various parts of it had been segregated so the streets and neighborhood distribution amounted to an economic map of the world, with the whole of Japan right in scale with Kimpunshima.

Sin had enjoyed living there for his first two years in Japan, but mainly because he could leave the American sector and find himself in France or Italy or Mexico by taking a tram from one tower to another. Soon, however, he realized that he could not successfully maintain corporate security in Japan while living apart from the Japanese. With the Yamaguchi-gumi’s covert help, he obtained one of the rare Imperial Invitations to live wherever he wanted.

“If you can check to make certain there are no suitable sites outside Kimpunshima, I will try to cover it.”

Takeshi Takagi nodded. “We will do this, Sinclair. We will make our search methodical and precise.” The oyabun downed the last of his scotch. “And I think, my friend, that we will need to consult each other at least weekly, on our investigations. To aid you, I even volunteer use of my Simcenter for these meetings.”

As Sinclair rode the private elevator up to his suite, he chuckled again at the way the oyabun had trapped him into golfing each week.
He will beat me, there is no doubt
about it. He will select a course so difficult that both of us
will be forced to play our best. It will be interesting.

The door opened, and he flicked the lights on with the switch beside the doorway. The huge living room had been decorated with standard Western furnishings, but everything had been carved in a way or upholstered with cloth that was in keeping with Japanese mythology. The suite seemed to him like a halfway house between the West and the East. He found the combination annoying
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because it suggested a contempt for him by his hosts.

That was not really surprising to him. The same fierce nationalism that had created the reservations was the fire in the belly of Japan’s economy. While Emperor Akihito still headed up the government, Japan had really reentered the days of the shogunate. In this case, though, the shogun waged economic power, not military might, and he sought to dominate the world, not just Japan.

In the 1800s, Japan had tried to reject the gun and return to the days of the samurai, complete with total isolation. That had been a mistake and, in some ways, was blamed for Japan’s defeat in World War Two. Having been rebuilt in a Western image, traditionalists fought against that warping of Japanese society. They sought to preserve what they had by sucking the rest of the world dry of the things Japan needed to sustain itself.

That created a number a paradoxes for those who would be shogun. They had to maintain the emperor because he was the soul of Japan, yet his inherent influence over the people could make him a very dangerous person if he spoke out against their plans. The corporators also had to tolerate the Yakuza, because they were the staunchest nationalists of all and were more than capable of doing the things necessary to keep the lower classes in line. They had to accept contact and trade with the West while studiously avoiding its seduction.It was a walk across a tightrope with both ends burning and alligators waiting below.

Dangerous, yes, but the view from up there is un-equalled.

Smiling, Sin hit the glowing red button on the hardwood cabinet to the right of the elevator. From its hidden recess, the message printer dropped two sheets of paper into a wire basket. Picking them up, he saw the first was from Erika inviting him to a party over on Kimpunshima in the American sector. The second was from Lilith Acres telling him her departure for Japan would be delayed a week.

Sin deposited Lilith’s message in the shredder slot and heard the gears grind it down into micro-fine confetti. He reread Erika’s note and smiled.
Good timing, Erika. I think
I will accept your invitation. If Kimpunshima is tied into
this whole thing, going in as your guest is probably a
better cover than even Coyote could arrange.

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During the entire journey from Nevada to Flagstaff, Rajani had assumed that finding Dorothy and Mickey’s father would be the easiest part of the operation. In the early 1980s, before she had entered stasis, she had come to know enough of the world to be able to plot out a course of action that would result in reuniting the children with their father. While she had been kept apart from the normal world outside Area 51, or a half-dozen other secret facilities where she was studied and educated, the outside world had come to her in rich color and stereo sound.

At first she had been dead set against returning the two children to the man who had sold them, but the love for him that both kids showed puzzled her. Dorothy appeared very reluctant to discuss her father, and Rajani could tell being sold had hurt her deeply, but more because of the separation it caused than of the betrayal of the bond between them. Dorothy explained it had been a hard time because it was the anniversary of her mother’s death, and her father’s girlfriend was brutally murdered by a co-worker who had pushed her into a pulping mill.

Realizing she had no choice but to return them, Rajani thought she would simply direct the children to the police in Flagstaff. Despite stasis, she remembered seeing ample evidence—on television—that the police would gladly pack the children into one of their black-and-white vehicles and take them directly home. When she began to suggest this strategy, Dorothy nixed it instantly. “The state of Arizona is last in social spending, Rajani. In Rumanian orphanages, they tell the kids to clean their plates because there are starving children in Arizona who would love to have whatever they leave.”

For a moment or two the sharp resentment Rajani sensed from Dorothy seemed out of place, but she recalled plenty of cases she’d studied in which the disadvantaged were suspicious of authorities. So, despite what she knew of the police from “Cagney and Lacey”

and “Barney Miller,” she fell back to a second line of defense. Unfortunately, Magnum, PI and Jessica Fletcher did not have phone listings in Arizona, and the local paper had no ad in it for the Equalizer.

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Realizing she was on her own didn’t depress her. She found her mission oddly revitalizing after the long trek south and east.
If I cannot find their father, how can I
expect to locate this Coyote or help defeat Fiddleback?

Resolved to finding a way into Flagstaff and acknowledg-ing that even the A-team would find this difficult, she set about organizing a plan.

Daizaimoku, she quickly discovered, owned the whole city and controlled the vast majority of it. To protect its interests, the multinational corporation had fortified the city with a series of trenches and walls that reminded Rajani of pictures she’d seen of Berlin—