Fitzduane 02 - Rules of The Hunt

by O'Reilly-Victor

  "So you blew up three of your own people to snatch me," said Fitzduane.

  Kei made a dismissive gesture with something he was holding in his right hand. Fitzduane looked closer, and realized with incredulity that it was a folded fan. The man was really getting into his role.

  "So what is on the agenda now, Namaka-san?" said Fitzduane. "You certainly get an A for effort for grabbing me, and I'm flattered, of course, but I imagine you have something more in mind — a bottom line to this exercise, if I may borrow some financial terminology."

  Kei beamed expansively. "Fitzduane-san," he said. "I am looking forward to being your host without the constraints that have limited our relationship up to now. At last we can speak freely. Complications like the police are no longer something we have to worry about, and I can tell you everything you want to know. We shall enjoy each other's company, and I can promise you that you will be fascinated. We shall start with a tour of a place you expressed particular interest in, Namaka Special Steels."

  "I tour factories better when I'm vertical," said Fitzduane. "Can I get up without someone kicking me in the balls?"

  Kei barked an order and two yakuza rushed forward and helped Fitzduane to his feet. Then Kei spoke again and another man came forward. He also wore traditional samurai clothing, but somewhat awkwardly, as if slightly embarrassed.

  "My name is Goto," he said. "I am the new security chief of the Namaka Corporation. The chairman has asked me to explain a few points. Unfortunately, there have to be some restrictions on your freedom."

  Fitzduane felt his arms being seized, and seconds later his arms were handcuffed in front of him and secured to a chain around his waist. Leg restraints were then placed around his ankles.

  Goto pointed to a corner of the dojo and Fitzduane saw his Calico and throwing knives on a small table, together with the other contents of his pockets. They had left him his shirt and trousers, but everything else, including his shoes, had been removed.

  "Shortly after you were shot with the tranquilizer dart, we found a miniature transmitter attached to your belt, Fitzduane-san," said Goto. "It was immediately deactivated, so please do not expect any help from that source. You are outnumbered, physically constrained, and have no weapons, and your friends think you are dead. You would be wise to accept your fate and cause us no trouble. Frankly, you can do nothing."

  Fitzduane shrugged, and his chains clanked. He had been brought up to look on the brighter side of things, but was having a hard time finding any positive element in his present situation. "Goto-san," he said, "it is not considered polite, in my part of the world at least, to belabor the obvious."

  Goto blushed. Fitzduane grinned. "Let's go and see a steel mill," he said. Inside, he was fighting hard to keep control. There had to be something he could do, but he could not imagine what. Hope had taken a serious knock with the discovery of the belt transmitter.

  "You should know, Fitzduane-san," said Goto, indicating three unfriendly-looking thugs glowering at Fitzduane, "that your yakuza guards are members of the Insuji-gumi — the very organization that you humiliated outside the Fairmont upon your arrival. They feel they have a score to settle."

  "And is that on the agenda?" said Fitzduane.

  "Oh, yes, Fitzduane-san," said Goto, smiling unpleasantly. Fitzduane stayed silent, but he made a mental note to remove Goto permanently from circulation if ever a suitable opportunity should arise. Unfortunately, it did not seem likely.

  * * * * *

  The dojo, Fitzduane judged, as he shuffled across the floor, legs hobbled between two yakuza guards, was about the size of a Western school gymnasium.

  The décor was understated simplicity, but the room was quite magnificently finished and appointed. Japanese craftsmanship at its best was truly something to see. The floor, made of planks of some richly hued hardwood, was seamless, ever plank impeccably aligned. The roof was arched and paneled with the same wood. The walls were plastered and racked with an extraordinary selection of medieval pikes, swords and fighting knives from all over the world. Glancing across, Fitzduane noticed everything from Spanish rapiers to Malayan fighting knives.

  Firearms were conspicuous by their absence. Kei Namaka's orientation was more toward fantasy than fact, though that did not make him any less dangerous.

  The small procession made its way through two sets of double doors, donning shoes in the lobby in the middle. As they passed through the second set of doors, which were double-glazed and of heavy industrial quality, the noise level rose and Fitzduane could see the highly specialized equipment of a modern steel plant spread out ahead of them.

  So the dojo was actually in the plant. Now he was beginning to understand things better. The NamakaTower was the symbol of the brothers' joint success. The steel plant was Kei's personal baby. Costing billions, it was a grown-up box of toys.

  They were standing on a railed catwalk of perforated metal. The cat-walk, in turn, led to metal stairs which would bring them to the factory floor, but instead of continuing, Kei Namaka held up his hand to indicate they should halt and turned to Fitzduane.

  "Steel, Fitzduane-san," he said, "is my passion and joy. It is at the same time so elemental and yet so extraordinarily sophisticated. It is a manifestation of man's superiority and the supreme link between man and nature. It is the very stuff of legend. It is the raw material of the sword, the very symbol of Japan. It is strong, beautiful, infinitely malleable, supremely versatile, and technologically elegant. It is the principal material of war and one of the major blocks of peace. Ships, aircraft, and all wheeled communication depends on it. Nations have been built with it. We cut our very food with it." He paused. "And the creation of steel products on the scale we operate at here is a process of unsurpassed excitement. It is physically exciting — indeed, sexually arousing in its power and drama and beauty."

  After he had finished speaking, Kei Namaka stared at Fitzduane with an extraordinary intensity, as if he were trying to communicate his enthusiasm for steel telepathically.

  The scene was quite bizarre. Kei, in the foreground in full samurai armor including an ornate horned helmet, looking like something out of the Middle Ages, and over his shoulder the vast machines, ovens. And other devices symbolic of advanced late-twentieth-century metals technology. Yet curiously, Kei did not really look out of place. The relationship of steel and the warrior was ever valid.

  Steel, for so much of history, was indeed at the cutting edge of power.

  Fitzduane held up his hands as far as the handcuffs and the restraining chain permitted. "I am bound by steel, Namaka-san," he said quietly. "It tempers my enthusiasm."

  Kei's face flushed with rage, and for a moment it looked as if he was going to strike Fitzduane. Then he started to laugh. "‘Tempers my enthusiasm’ indeed, Fitzduane-san. A clever pun. You have a good sense of humor for a gaijin."

  He gave an order, and one of the yakuza placed safety glasses on Fitzduane. The incongruity of following safety regulations while escorting their prisoner around in chains caused him to give a wry smile.

  "We Japanese," said Kei, "achieved some of our earlier postwar successes with steel. While the West was working with old technology — too greedy to invest and lacking in vision — we built new modern steel plants and produced cheaper, higher-quality steel faster. This, in turn, provided the raw material at the right price for car production and for shipbuilding. It was the beginning of our economic recovery. Later, of course, we developed into electronics and other high-added-value products, but steel was our initial breakthrough."

  Fitzduane nodded. The Japanese achievement was undeniable, but it had not occurred in a vacuum. Without U.S. military protection, Japan had stood a good chance of being grabbed by Soviet Russia at the end of the Second World War. Subsequently, Japan had benefitted enormously from U.S. expenditure in Japan and virtually unrestricted access to U.S. markets. Still, this was no time to get involved in a geopolitical debate.

  "But Namaka Special Steels has little to d
o with cars and ships, I think," shouted Fitzduane.

  The noise had increased as they had approached the center of operations. The primary sound was like a wave, loud and continuous. He had been around Vaybon's steel facilities in Switzerland and remembered that it came from burning flames of gas. It was the noise of the tempering ovens generating the awesome temperatures that steelmaking required.

  There was something frightening about the sound, as if it represented a ferocity beyond the ability of mere humans to resist. In fact, almost all the machinery he could see was vastly larger than human scale. It looked like a workshop for giants. Humans might have conceived it, but now their very creation had surpassed them and seemed to have a life of their own.

  In the center of the floor was an immense vertical construction of tubes and black metal and cylinders that looked like a cross between some insane scientist's vision of the ultimate destructive robot and a rocket complete with strapped-on boosters on a launching pad.

  It was roughly the size of a six-story building, and Fitzduane felt dwarfed by it. It emphasized the scale of the facility they were in. The huge machine was in turn comfortably accommodated by its surroundings. The roof must be well over a hundred feet up. He looked, but his gaze was lost in darkness.

  "Project Tsunami," shouted Kei into Fitzduane's ear. "This is what makes it all possible."

  "What is Project Tsunami," Namaka-san?" said Fitzduane. "I haven't the slightest idea what you are talking about."

  "Hah!" said Kei. "You know exactly what I am talking about, gaijin, and it is why we could not let you live, even if we did not have a past obligation to kill you."

  The thought occurred briefly to Fitzduane that, in the interests of self-preservation, it might be a good idea not to get to know any more about Tsunami. Then he thought, What the hell! For one reason or another, Kei, quite obviously, had not intention of letting him live. He had not blown up three people just to have the pleasure of Fitzduane's company for a pleasant half hour or so.

  "Indulge me, Namaka-san," said Fitzduane. "Let me put it as simply as I can. What the fuck is Project Tsunami?"

  Namaka looked at him curiously. Perhaps the gaijin did not know. Perhaps he was not the threat he had appeared. That would be ironic. Well, it was too late to turn back now.

  "Project Tsunami," said Kei, speaking into Fitzduane's ear to counteract the noise, "is the name we have given to our North Korean project. In defiance of the U.S. and, indeed, world embargoes, we are providing North Korea with the specialized plant and equipment necessary to manufacture nuclear weapons. It is an immensely profitable project and will restore the fortunes of Namaka Steel and indeed the keiretsu as a whole. And this machine — we call it Godzilla — is an important element. Godzilla allows us to forge the huge pressure chambers required for an essential part of the process. Few companies have the technology, and fewer still have the production plants of this scale. Look! They are just about to forge another chamber. You can see the whole process for yourself."

  Fitzduane looked across to where Kei was pointing. A giant crablike machine running on tracks had scuttled up and extended two metal arms and was manipulating an enormous glowing cylinder. A darker material seemed to surround it, and as Fitzduane watched, the cylinder was beaten by what seemed to be a giant flail of chains.

  "That is the ingot for one chamber," said Kei. "It weighs forty-two tons and it has just been heated to forging temperature by one of the ovens. The ingot oxidizes on the surface, so the impure surface layer — it is called scale — must be removed or it will hinder forging. Scale is peeled away partly by the chains and then by the initial forging."

  For all the talk of high technology, beating a white-hot lump of metal with chains seemed to Fitzduane to be a crude process, but Kei certainly got some fun out of it. His face was glowing with enthusiasm and the ambient heat. Under his samurai helmet with its ornamental horns, he looked like some demonic goblin king.

  "The ingot is now going through a series of preliminary deformation processes," said Kei. "The next stage is that it will be given a predetermined diameter by one of the smaller processes."

  The crab moved the ingot away from the flail and placed it under a giant ram. The ram descended and deformed the ingot, making it shorter and wider. As this happened, the remaining scale fell from the shape and there remained only glowing, pulsating steel. It was as if this was new life emerging from a chrysalis, and it was a dramatic sight. Even Fitzduane, who felt he should be preoccupied with more important issues — like his imminent death — was impressed.

  The crab next lifted the cylinder of pure steel and placed it under a 12,000 ton press. The cylinder, an approximate shape up to now, was placed in a mould and pressed to be dimensionally perfect. Then a further process pierced the cylinder to make it ready for the main extrusion.

  "By doing the piercing process first," said Kei, "you cut down on the maximum amount of energy needed in Godzilla. It is like preparing a screw hole by drilling a small hole in advance. The total amount of energy used is the same, but it is spread and the peak is lower."

  The crab now inserted the squat, pierced, forty-two ton cylinder at the base of Godzilla while Kei explained the procedure.

  "That cylinder of steel now has a temperature of over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit — or over twenty times body temperature. It is placed upon a pedestal, and then the FE punch, or mandril, determining its internal diameter — in this case, one meter — comes down, and the vertical press forces the steel up, compressing it and reducing the wall thickness, so that what emerges at the top of the press as the process reaches its conclusion is a longer, thinner cylinder with the same diameter. To achieve this result — to extrude white-hot steel like toothpaste — it exerts a force of up to 45,000 tons."

  The background noise of the gas ovens and the hammering of the pumps providing the hydraulic pressure to Godzilla was now dominated in turn by a long, appallingly loud, high-pitched screeching sound, as white-hot steel was compressed and squeezed.

  The sound receded, and like some huge pink erection, a long, thin, hot shape —compared to the original ingot — was withdrawn from the top of Godzilla by a crane in the roof.

  Kei looked delighted as he exhaled. "Now, gaijin," he said. "That — THAT — is power. It is beautiful to watch, don't you think?"

  Fitzduane took a flier. He was talking to an enthusiast, and enthusiasts were notoriously indiscreet. Also, who was he going to have time to tell? He decided he had better throw in some positive sounds. Kei clearly expected an appreciative audience.

  "That is singularly impressive, Namaka-san," he said. "And part of Project Tsunami?"

  "Oh, yes," said Kei. "You have just seen one pressure chamber made. There are two hundred required for one phase of the process alone. So far, we have shipped one complete chamber to our customer. That will be tested, and then Godzilla will be put seriously to work. As you have seen, a pressure-chamber section can be forged from ingot to tube in under ten minutes. Allowing for finishing, welding on flanges, polishing, and so on — the really time-consuming elements — we shall still be able to complete the shipment in one year."

  Fitzduane felt very depressed at what he was hearing. So this was the world that Boots was entering. What he was seeing was illegal, but nonetheless, here was Japan, the one country that had demilitarized and dedicated itself to peace, involved in the wretched business of nuclear weapons as well. It was a grim note on which to die. An inner rage began to burn.

  Kei shouted an order, and Fitzduane was roughly pulled away and propelled between two yakuza across the vast floor and back up the steps to the dojo. As he was pushed through the soundproof double doors, he could hear the screeching of Godzilla once again as another pressure-chamber length emerged.

  Inside the dojo, the silence could almost be felt.

  Fitzduane was pushed to his knees. Ahead of him, a magnificent if barbaric figure in his medieval samurai armor was Kei Namaka. Behind him and slightly to one side stoo
d Goto, similarly attired. On either side of Fitzduane were his yakuza guards. Two more yakuza stood against the wall. All six were armed with swords. The yakuza also had submachine guns.

  "It is time, gaijin," said Kei Namaka, "for you to die." He spoke rapidly, in Japanese, and Fitzduane felt his handcuffs and leg restraints being removed. He rose to his feet, rubbing his wrists to restore circulation.

  "The only issue here, Fitzduane-san," said Kei, "concerns the manner of your death."

  Fitzduane smiled. "I would prefer, Namaka-san, if you don't mind, to debate the timing."

  * * * * *

  There were four passengers in the Koancho helicopter besides the pilot, and one of them was Sergeant Oga, who was not at all sure what he was getting into.

  The only thing he was certain of was that anything involving the gaijin Fitzduane-san, even after he was dead, was sure to be trouble. He had much the same feeling about Tanabu-san as he sat across from her. Even had he not harbored a deep suspicion about the games the security service got into, the Howa Type 89 5.56mm assault rifle she held resting on her knees would have given him serious cause for concern.

  The folding-stock weapon was fitted with laser sight, sound suppressor, under-barrel 40mm grenade launcher, and hundred-round C-Mag. The U.S.-made C-Mag was an extremely compact, spring-loaded, plastic double-drum that fed rounds from each drum alternatively and provided over three times the capacity of a conventional magazine.

  The combination of elements added up to the most vicious personal weapon he had yet encountered, and it did not look like the kind of thing you would carry on a routine investigation.

  He leaned across the tiny cabin and spoke to Tanabu-san. The intercom would have been an easier way of overcoming the engine noise, but the fewer people who heard their discussion the better.

  "Shouldn't we do this through channels, Tanabu-san?" he said. "This is really a job for a large force of kidotai. My men are not really trained for this sort of thing."