by Alex Archer
Ken stopped her. “Wait!”
Annja heard it, too. In the distance, the sound of wailing sirens broke the early-morning quiet.
“Think they’re headed this way?”
“We can’t stick around to find out,” he said. He headed to the window and looked out. “They’re already here!” He turned and ran to Annja. “Come on.” He grabbed her by the hand and led her toward the elevator but stopped when he heard the clamor of footsteps and shouts from below.
Annja pulled up short. “They’ll call the elevator.”
Ken scrambled around looking for a stick. He found a ski pole and jammed it in the elevator winch. “That should stop them for a few minutes.” He turned and ran back into Jiro’s loft with Annja close on his heels.
“Is there a back way out of here?” she asked.
Ken nodded. “I thought Jiro to always have an escape hatch. I know he put one in place.”
“Shame he couldn’t have used it last night.”
“I think they somehow caught him by surprise,” Ken said. “But I’ll find out when we catch up with them.”
Annja could hear the groan and whine as the elevator call button was repeatedly pushed and the elevator strained against the ski pole.
The police officers were calling from down below.
“What are they shouting?” Annja said.
“Something about the building being surrounded,” Ken said. “You know, the usual.”
Annja smirked. At least he had his sense of humor intact. “You think they mean it?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure why they’re even here unless someone spotted the door and called them about that. I don’t think they’d mobilize the whole force for a simple breaking and entering.”
“But again, we won’t be around to find out.”
“Right.” Ken rummaged in a closet and after tossing a few boxes out of the way, he reemerged with a frown. “Where is it?”
Annja heard a sudden snap and a victorious shout from below. “Ken, the elevator!”
He nodded. “Come on!”
They ran toward the largest of the crates. Ken ran behind one and then came back out with a smile. “Found it.”
They moved behind the crate and Annja saw the small metal grate open up as Ken jerked on it. A tiny set of stairs led up. But where?
“Pull it shut behind you,” Ken said. “And let’s hustle. They’ll be up here any minute.”
Annja stooped in and pulled the grate down behind her. She felt the dusty stairs beneath her hands. They’d be filthy as sin when they got out, but they couldn’t afford a run-in with the cops right now. Not when there was so much at stake.
And as much as Annja hated the idea of running like a guilty party, she didn’t think the police would be all that warm and fuzzy toward her.
Ken shuffled quickly up the stairs and Annja heard him pop open the other end of the tunnel. Bright sunlight flooded the tunnel. He scampered out and put his hand back in to Annja. “Come on.”
She grabbed it and he helped pull her out of the air-conditioning duct onto the roof. She glanced back. “You think they’ll figure it out?”
“Don’t know, don’t care.” Ken ran to the edge of the roof and glanced down. He moved back. “Not that way. Cops are all over the place.”
He checked the opposite edge and saw the fire escape. “This will work.”
Annja followed him. Ken helped her over the lip of the roof. “Start climbing down.”
“I hope this doesn’t go past Jiro’s windows.”
Ken shook his head. “It doesn’t. We would have seen it, remember?”
“Yeah.” Annja ducked down and let her feet descend as she gripped the rusted sides of the fire escape. She looked at the bolts securing it to the side of the building and frowned. This thing doesn’t look like it’s been used in years, she thought.
Above her Ken started climbing down. Annja looked beneath her and frowned. “Oh, no.”
“What’s the matter?” Ken asked.
“The fire escape isn’t extended.”
“Just keep climbing down. When you get to the final step, you’ll have to trigger the release yourself. Can you do it?”
“I guess.”
Annja climbed down farther. The last of the ladder rungs arrived too quickly and she was still at least fifty feet from the ground.
“See that hook? There’s one on either side,” Ken said. “Undo them and then you should drop down toward the ground.”
Annja located the hooks and unsnapped them.
The fire escape didn’t move. “Dammit!”
“Jump,” Ken said.
Annja glanced back up. “What?”
He grinned. “Not down. Just jump up and down and see if that triggers the release.”
Annja took a breath and jumped. She felt the other half of the fire escape start to give. But a bit of rust seemed to be hindering it from coming all the way undone and letting the fire escape continue down toward the ground.
“Jump again,” Ken said. “Hurry!”
Annja jumped.
The ladder came free and Annja plummeted toward the ground. She grabbed the ladder with both hands as the building face shot past her. She glanced up at Ken who was now scampering toward her even as the distance between them increased.
The ladder jerked to a sudden halt, nearly toppling Annja from her perch as gravity pulled hard on her body. “Oof!”
Ken came streaking down the ladder. “You okay?”
“Shoulder,” Annja said. “But yeah.”
“They’ll be on the roof soon. We’ve got to go now.”
Annja slid down the last few rungs. The fire escape was still short of the ground by a good twenty feet.
“Now we’ll have to jump,” Ken said.
“That’s concrete down there,” Annja said. “Twenty feet and we’ll have ourselves a couple of broken bones. If we’re lucky.”
“You trust me?”
“I guess.”
“Thanks.” Ken chuckled. “Listen to me. Drop down and when you hit the ground, tuck yourself into a ball and roll. Can you do that?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Sure, you can spend years in prison when the cops catch you.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll take my own life in a fit of traditional duty.” He grinned. “Just do it, Annja. You’ll be fine if you do what I say.”
The ground looked a long way away, but she knew Ken was right. There was no time left to dawdle. She took a breath and let go of the fire escape.
She exhaled and then the ground shot up for her. Her feet hit and she allowed herself to collapse, breathing out the last of her breath, and immediately sinking on her knees, tumbling and then rolling.
She stopped rolling and felt okay.
Ken hit the ground a second later. He rolled and was already up and moving even as Annja tried to get up. Her shoulder hurt like hell.
Ken’s hand was on her arm. “Come on. You okay?”
“Shoulder.”
“We’ll get to it later. We’ve got to get out of here.”
They ran down the neighboring street. When they’d cleared a block, they risked looking back. Only then did they see the heads of police officers peering over the edge of the building, scouring the streets below for signs of Ken and Annja.
“You don’t think they know what we look like, do you?” Annja asked.
Ken shook his head. “Not a chance. Unless they had video cameras there, which they didn’t. We’re cool.”
“Nice to know we won’t end up on Japan’s Most Wanted tonight.”
“We need to get back to the ryokan and get our gear.”
“Too bad you didn’t get a chance to refill your ammunition supply while we were there,” Annja said.
Ken grinned. “Says who?”
“You did?”
He lifted his jacket and Annja saw the spare magazines filled with fresh rounds. “You had time to grab that?”
/>
“While I was looking, yeah.”
“I don’t suppose you found me a gun?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
“Great.”
“You can use mine, if it makes you feel better, but honestly, I didn’t think you’d want a gun after that giant sword you used last night.”
“Don’t bring that up.”
“I’m not.” Ken smiled. “But it was an awfully big blade.”
“And somehow I managed to handle it well.”
“You did seem very well accustomed to handling it.”
They crossed the street by the train station and Ken pointed at a noodle restaurant. “We’ll grab some lunch here and then head back.”
“At this rate it will be dark when we get into the mountains,” Annja said.
“Probably.”
“You’re not concerned about that?”
Ken shrugged. “Day, night, it doesn’t much matter to me. But I want to make sure you’re okay. So we’ll eat and give that shoulder a moment to rest. If it isn’t better when we get back to the ryokan, then we’ll see a doctor about it.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Annja said. “And I’m not really a huge fan of doctors.”
“You’re scared of doctors?”
“I never said that.”
“Okay.”
He held open the split curtain and they entered the small stand. Ken pointed at the seating bar. “I’ll order. You sit and pretend doctors don’t scare you.”
“Ken,” Annja said. “Don’t make me pull out my big sword.”
He laughed. “I can’t figure out if that’s some sort of vague sexual innuendo or not.”
“It’s not,” Annja said.
But she was smiling too.
26
Nezuma watched as Annja and Kennichi made their way into the noodle stand. Next to him, Shuko shook her head.
“The police certainly acted like idiots.”
“They usually do,” Nezuma said. “Even though they were told to be there shortly after Kennichi and Creed entered the building. Leave it to our bureaucratic morons to screw up something so simple.”
“Why did you want to lay a trap like that? It seems rather counterproductive to me.”
Nezuma smiled. “Because it would give us a bit more time to get ourselves in position. Plus, I have a contact on the police force here. Given a little time, I could have arranged to have him place a homing device on Kennichi or Creed. And that would have given us a great deal of luxury.”
“Such as not having to sit here and do surveillance?”
“Exactly.” Nezuma slid on his sunglasses. “There’s nothing I abhor more than this mundane lack of action. Even now, they’re having themselves a bite to eat while we’re forced to sit out here and wait for them to finish.”
“I could get us something,” Shuko said.
“No.” Nezuma shook his head. “We might miss them leaving while you’re gone and I don’t want to have to leave you behind.”
“Thank you.”
He smiled at her. “Of course.”
“So we wait now, is that it?”
“Yes.”
She leaned against the armrest of the black BMW they rode in. “Do you remember when you took me to Milan for my birthday?”
“What about it?”
“The fashion show we went to, the one where you said I was more beautiful than any of the women who walked the runway.”
He nodded. “I remember. And it was the truth. You always take my breath away.”
She touched the side of his face. “I never said thank you for that trip.”
He smiled. “I thought you said thank you in other ways.”
She turned away. “Well, yes, but I like to say it for real, too. You didn’t have to take me anywhere for my birthday, but you did. And it meant the world to me. Spending time with you was the best gift of all.”
“That dinner we had was amazing. The wine especially was incredible.”
Shuko nodded. “The waiter said it was from a local winery. That the restaurant was one of the only places in the world where you could get a bottle of it. And how it was aged, the secret family recipe.”
“We had some great times together, didn’t we?”
She smiled at him. “Yes.”
He patted her thigh. “And when we get the dorje, we’ll have even more of them, just you wait.”
“I am.”
Nezuma looked back at the noodle shop. “I must admit I was a bit impressed by Creed’s athletic ability with that fire escape. Part of me expected she would fall when it came to the sudden stop.”
“As did I. But she managed to hold on. I think it’s fair to assume she injured her shoulder, though. I saw her clutching it as they ran down the street,” Shuko said.
Nezuma frowned. “Knowing the ninja, he’ll have some sort of herbal remedy that will make her all better.”
“Too bad.”
Nezuma shrugged. “No matter. She’s as good as dead anyway as soon as they locate the dorje.”
Shuko checked her watch. “They really ought to be coming out any time now.”
“You’re going to estimate how long it takes them to eat?”
“These subway noodle stands don’t make money if they don’t keep the customer turnover high. Meals get served fast and customers know to eat just as quick. I should know—there were enough of them where I begged for food when I was younger.”
“Before me,” Nezuma said.
She smiled at him. “Yes. Before you.”
He pointed. “It appears you were right.”
In front of the car, Annja and Kennichi walked away from the noodle stand. Nezuma nodded. “She’s not clutching her shoulder anymore.”
“You think she’s acting?” Shuko asked.
“Maybe.”
Nezuma started the car and slid it into Drive. “This is the tough part. I’ve got to keep tabs on them, but without making this car an item of curiosity for them. That wouldn’t be good.”
“I’ll go on foot,” Shuko said. “That way we’ll have me as point. You can trail behind at a safe distance.”
Nezuma frowned. “You’re sure?”
“Why not?”
“Because that man ahead is a ninja. And he’s very well-trained. He’s shown himself to be extremely capable at detecting surveillance.”
“You think I can’t stay concealed?”
“I didn’t say that.”
She smiled again. “I appreciate your concern, master, but I’ll be fine.”
“There’s a risk of him seeing you. He might think we were the ones who killed his contact back at that warehouse. He might just take his anger out on you.”
“I can handle myself.”
Nezuma shrugged. “It’s your call.”
Shuko opened the door. “Then I choose this.” She opened her cell phone. “I’ll be in touch.”
Nezuma watched her go and shook his head. He couldn’t remember her being quite so stubborn before this. He wondered if the near choking he’d given her last night might have been just a bit too much.
He sighed. The hunt for the dorje had absorbed much of his life, from the time he was a young boy and had heard legends about it. And when he’d grown up and learned that the ninjitsu family that had been given the dorje had then entrusted it to mere monks, it had angered and infuriated him.
As the last remaining descendant of Shotoku Taishi, Nezuma took it personally that the gift his ancestor had given to the ninja had been so callously disregarded. And if the dorje was returned to the Taishi family, the legends spoke of untold wealth and power that would be theirs.
Nezuma had spent much of his family fortune trying to locate the dorje. And he had spent much of his time scouting for an assistant he could secure the dorje with.
Shuko was that person.
Or she had been until recently. Certainly Nezuma had feelings for her. He wouldn’t deny himself the truth, and the truth was simply that he had a
ffection for her.
But love?
No.
And that was precisely what she wanted.
From the way she spoke—the memories of past trips, the dinners, the wine and the vacations—all of it meant she was thinking far too much about what their time together meant to her.
She wasn’t thinking about the mission.
And that was dangerous.
Nezuma sighed. He would definitely have to kill her.
He ruminated on the matter but then pushed it out of his mind. He’d killed others whom he’d cared for. He’d murdered his own mother when she’d threatened to cut him off from any financial support when he was just eighteen years old.
He would have expected it to be difficult to kill the woman who had brought him into the world kicking and crying, who had suckled him at her breast while he grew.
But no.
In fact, Nezuma had relished the utter feeling of absolute power as he grasped her tiny throat in one hand and simply flexed his wrist the right way. The barely audible crack as her neck popped surprised him more.
It was so easy.
And he never had nightmares about it, either. But Nezuma wasn’t sure he believed in an afterlife anyway. Or heaven and hell. But the promise of magic with regards to the dorje had been enough to make him sit up and buy into the superstition.
He grinned. Who wouldn’t?
Ahead of the car, Nezuma watched Creed and Kennichi walk purposefully down the street as if they were headed right to their location.
“They’re in a hurry,” he said to himself.
Shuko lingered behind, on the opposite side of the street. She perused the sidewalk market stalls and only showed the vaguest sense of direction. Nezuma smiled and shook his head. She was the best at tailing someone on foot.
And in a car, she was pretty good, too.
Shuko moved down the street and then pressed the buttons on her cell phone. A second later, Nezuma’s own purred on the seat.
“Yes?”
“You see them still?” Shuko asked.
“They’re out of my range. I can see you.”
“They look like they’re grabbing a taxi. You’d better come and pick me up.”
“Wait it out until that’s confirmed. I don’t want to risk burning you.”
He could hear her impatience on the phone. “And if they get into a fast cab, it will take too long for you to pick me up. We could lose them again.”
