by Jacob Whaler
“To the next time,” Ryzaard says.
CHAPTER 75
Matt finishes off the eggs and bacon, picks up his plate and walks it over to the sink. It is already full of layers of dirty dishes, cups and a frying pan.
In the silence of the room, Matt can’t hold back thoughts of Professor Yamamoto. Nausea builds in his stomach as he again sees Ryzaard thrusting the dagger into the professor’s chest, making a dry scraping sound. For an instant, he closes his eyes and brings his hands up to his ears, a useless attempt to shut out the haunting memory. He can’t hold back the obvious conclusion that distills into words in his mind.
It’s my fault the professor is dead. Ryzaard followed me to his office.
In the silence of the room, thoughts of Jessica rush into his mind like a pack of lions swarming a wounded elephant. Panic spreads through his gut. In his mind’s eye, he sees her slumped limply in the chair, head hanging down, eyes closed. Ryzaard is standing over her with a dagger in his hand, making ominous threats. It is all fresh in his memory, an open wound.
He sees the truth. She’s been pulled into this nightmare because of Matt. His reckless use of the jax led them to her.
If only I had listened to Dad, he thinks.
That triggers another thought. Has Ryzaard been able to trace any messages that might lead his men to Matt’s dad? Probably not, since his dad left, tossed his jax and cut all direct communication between them. But how can he be sure?
And the answer is simple. He can’t.
No matter what, Matt has to find and protect the woman he loves. His thoughts go to the Stone.
As if drawn by a magnet, his eyes drop to the small gray box on the table. He tries to look away, but it pulls on his gaze like open water to a man dying of thirst. An urge to grab it and run surges through his arms and legs. His heart beats faster. Naganuma’s words float through his mind, something about the box keeping the Stone hidden from Ryzaard.
Matt feels warmth on his face and turns away from the table to the first rays of the rising sun framed in the glass of the sliding door. Walking forward to see the sunrise, he stands at the entrance and gazes into the bright orange orb emerging above the distant mountain ranges.
It slows his breathing, at least for a few seconds.
But thoughts of Jessica muscle their way back into his mind. They dance around the edges at first, and then he embraces them wholly.
Ryzaard intends to kill her. Matt saw it in his eyes. He will do it without remorse or mercy.
An explosion of panic rises up and displaces all other emotions. His chest tightens and makes it hard to breathe. Before he knows what he is doing, he spins around and grabs the stone box off the table. It is incredibly light, and the lack of weight throws him off. Maybe it’s empty. He shakes it hard, straining to hear the sound of stone knocking against stone.
But it’s silent inside.
The lid opens easily on tiny hinges. He stares into the depths and sees the Stone, his Stone, lying snuggly inside, black as obsidian, the same as when he found it. It falls out when he tips the box upside down and drops into his other hand, heavy and solid in his grip. It feels good. Comfortable. Natural.
Stepping down from the main floor, he slips into his shoes and slides the front door open to gaze out at the shrine grounds. The world is bathed in pristine silence except for a single chirping bird. With the sun now above the horizon, he observes the mist hanging over the lush emerald valley below. As far as he can see, the trees line up in neat rows as if straightened by a giant comb, a testament to the Japanese penchant for meticulous simplicity, even in nature.
Half expecting to see Naganuma appear and rail at him for taking the Stone, Matt steps onto the ground and runs out to the main walkway. There’s the distinct sound behind him of wood scraping on wood. He spins around to see the figure of the old priest, standing in front of the open door of the main shrine fifty meters away, staring in his direction. Matt waves and pretends to be outside enjoying the scenery and waiting for Naganuma to return. The priest disappears back into the main shrine, apparently not concerned.
Matt thinks about what he is doing. How far can he get on foot? How far away is Jessica? How long will it take to get to her? Judging from the dirt road winding down into the valley, the nearest town must be hours away. It could take days to hike to the nearest train station, even if he knew the way. He needs something faster. A wild thought enters his mind, only to be discarded. Then it creeps back in and refuses to leave.
He runs back to the small building where he had breakfast with Naganuma.
One minute later, he shoots out the open front door astride the Harley, full throttle, clearing the front steps and ten feet of ground beyond them, light-blue smoke trailing in his path.
The previous summer he had tried out a motorcycle. It was love at first sight. He would have bought it on sight if not for his dad, who insisted that motorcycle riders get too much attention from the cops. No doubt his dad was right, but the sense of freedom that surges through him now is impossible to resist. Naganuma will get the bike back. Matt only intends to borrow it for a few hours, long enough to get to the nearest train station and back to Jessica.
Pausing at the top of the stone steps, Matt surveys the torii gate far below and guns the engine. He is sure Naganuma has heard him by now and is running down the walkway, mad as an old badger. No matter. He is going to find Jessica. The sun is well above the horizon, and he surveys the shrine grounds for an alternate path to the road at the bottom. But there is none, so he throttles the engine, points the motorcycle down the stone steps and lets the bike jump forward.
He takes a beating all the way down.
When he finally reaches the bottom and passes under the torii gate after what seems like hours, a feeling of nausea sweeps over him, and he leans over and spills the remnants of the bacon and eggs onto the ground. Wiping his mouth with his sleeve, he guns the throttle again and flies off down the winding dirt road, shifting quickly up through the gears, leaning into turns and feeling the back tire slide over gravel and grit.
As he relaxes into the speed, the nausea drains away, and his attention is drawn to regulating his breathe. His shoulders drop down and his head comes up to let the wind flow through his long black hair.
After ten minutes of riding, Matt looks down at the tank gauge and confirms what he suspected. It’s full. Naganuma will be livid by now. The thought of the old priest on the Harley, riding at full speed through the mountains with white robes flapping behind him, causes a smile to creep across Matt’s face. That would be quite a sight.
Plans come together in his head. Follow this road until it merges into a paved highway, find the nearest town, ask for directions to a train station. From there, he can find a Mesh-point and send an emergency link to MOM, his dad’s secure datasite. After some explaining, his dad will send him the money to get out of Japan. Then, with dad’s help, he will go after Ryzaard and find Jessica.
It will be a great bonding experience. Father and son, fighting together.
But it feels wrong. Dad has taken care of him, watched over him, made decisions for him, controlled him, smothered him, held him back. Matt remembers the look on his dad’s face when he heard about Matt’s plans to come to Japan. But Matt stood firm and finally got away on his own for the first time in his life. After all that, how can he go back to his dad and confirm all his fears, like a little boy running home after losing a fight?
He would almost rather die.
Reaching down the side of his right thigh, he feels the hard shape of the Stone through the fabric of his pants. He stopped time with it. He healed himself with it. He is not so sure about the jump from the professor’s office to the top of the mountain. Naganuma might have helped with that, but with practice, Matt could learn more and go after Ryzaard without any help from his dad.
Yes, that feels good. That is what he will do.
The road drops down into a small valley and levels off for half a kilometer w
ith trees on both sides forming a canopy overhead. The smell of cedar is heavy in the moist morning air. The road turns slightly to the left and enters a tunnel in the side of a steep green hill. Matt eases off the throttle as the cycle plunges into darkness. Strangely, there are no overhead lights, but he can see a round white circle at the far end. At first, his instinct is to shift down and cut his speed in case there are any slow cars or other obstacles in the tunnel, but then, in a show of defiance against the world and all it has done to him, he opens the throttle and lets the Harley run free, exulting in the high pitched whine of the engine and the cool dark wind in his hair.
The white circle at the far end grows larger and brighter. He squints, but can’t make out the road beyond the tunnel or see the lush green foliage that surely grows on the outside. It does not matter. His eyes have adjusted to the dark. Light appears as a glare. He increases the speed for good measure and shoots toward the exit.
Seconds before he hits the light, he sees a man standing squarely in the middle of the road just outside the tunnel. He wears the white robes of a Shinto priest.
Naganuma.
Matt brakes hard with his right hand and foot and swerves to miss the old priest. The motorcycle goes down on its side in a shower of sparks and bursts out of the darkness into a blinding white light. The road vanishes beneath his feet, turning to dirt and loose gravel. A grove of massive trees rises directly in front, only a dozen meters away. The back tire of the Harley goes into a power slide. Matt’s eyes drop shut, and he has a final thought of Jessica in a blue summer dress walking through an aspen forest. His fingers let go of the handlebars, and arms instinctively come up to shield his head, waiting for the bone crunching crash that will end his short life.
But it never comes.
He finds himself lying in soft grass, the same trees towering overhead, a pleasant breeze blowing across his face, the smell of pine mixed with sweet incense in the air.
“Glad you could finally make it. Shall we begin?”
It’s the voice of Naganuma.
CHAPTER 76
Ryzaard stands by the window, admiring the sunrise, hands clasped behind his back. The door to his office slides open.
“Come in,” he says. “How did you sleep?” His eyes follow the long arc of a helicopter as it levitates off a rooftop below.
“Incredibly well.” Alexa stretches up to the ceiling. “Did you put something in my drink last night?”
Ryzaard turns to face her. “The same thing I put in my drink. I thought you would appreciate a good rest. You have a lot to do today.”
“Thanks for thinking of me. I’m sure I’ll manage just fine. What was it you needed?”
“I need Kalani to hack into the Sapporo Police Department Mesh-files first thing today. I need to know how their investigation is going.”
“Investigation?” Alexa raises her eyebrows.
“The bodies of a certain professor and two Yakuza goons have, no doubt, been discovered by now.” Ryzaard chuckles. “The police will want to know who killed them. I doubt they have a suspect.”
“I’ll get Kalani working on it right away,” Alexa says. She begins to leave, and then stops. “Any chance they can trace it back to you?”
Ryzaard turns away and stares out the window. “Impossible. I jumped directly from the jet to the professor’s office and never set a foot on campus. I was careful not to leave any evidence pointing to me.”
“What about the boy?”
“He would come in rather convenient at this point, wouldn’t he?” Ryzaard walks the length of the window and stares down at the streets, his hands behind his back. “Any ideas?”
“How about this.” Alexa moves to the wood desk, opens a small cabinet door and reaches in for a bottle of champagne. “An American graduate student goes to Japan to do research under the guidance of a professor. The student is a rabid nationalist with an intense hatred of all things Japanese. Witnesses observe them engaging in heated arguments. A few days later, the professor turns up dead, along with some ultra right-wing Yakuza gangsters who happen to be the professor’s unofficial bodyguards. As it turns out, the American student has a fascination with knives and was last seen walking across campus to the professor’s office. After the murders, he mysteriously disappears.”
“Sounds good so far. Keep going.”
Alexa pours herself a drink. “This hypothetical American graduate student has a history of mental instability, ever since his mother died in a tragic accident caused by a Japanese transport company. He’s been living off-grid for some time, nurturing a hatred of Japan, writing on the Mesh-logs about his plans to go there and kill as many as he can, hoping to die a martyr. In short, he’s your typical xenophobic American nut-job.” She takes a long drink of champagne while looking at Ryzaard for approval.
He thinks for a moment. “I like it. Sounds exactly like the sort of plot an anti-American Japanese public would be happy to believe.”
“Of course, all of this comes out after the local police receive an anonymous tip about the American student’s background and Mesh-logs laying out his plans in detail.”
“Even better.” Ryzaard walks back to his chair. “You and Kalani come up with a Mesh-log. Have his girlfriend help out with research on the latest developments on the anti-Asian fringe here in the United States, sort of keeping it all in the family, so to speak. Then just find a subtle way to plant it all in front of the proper authorities in Japan. Should be quite fun, I would think.”
“It will be a pleasure.”
CHAPTER 77
“Please come inside. I am waiting for you.”
Matt sits up and looks in the direction of voice. It comes from a house nestled beneath the trees not far away. The building itself is a simple one-story structure in the shape of a square constructed entirely of wood in classic Japanese style, with a gently sloping roof turning up at each corner, and an open deck circling the outer wall. The shape reminds him of a teahouse he once saw in the garden of a wealthy family in Tokyo, only this one is much larger. Elegant steps stretch up to the deck from ground level not far where Matt sits in the grass.
He rises and walks to the base of the steps and notices that the bottom of the house is a meter off the ground. At first, he assumes it’s built on blocks or stilts, but a quick check under the base reveals the strange truth. It’s floating in the air just over the top of the soft blades of grass that ripple back and forth in a light breeze.
Slipping out of his shoes, he ascends up the steps to the deck. Its surface is devoid of dirt or sand and feels slightly damp, as if it’s been recently wiped clean. He moves to the left, studying the underside of the roof and running the palm of his hand along the outer wall, stopping to touch the square columns that drop down at each corner. The surfaces and planes of the structure all have a perfection that can only be described as mathematical in precision. Everywhere, there are clean lines with no superfluous detail or blemishes.
All of it is very strange. The motorcycle. The tunnel. The house. Naganuma.
Matt leans on the railing to survey the grove, but there’s no trace of the Harley or the tunnel. Nothing but giant cedar trees and soft grass cover the ground for a hundred meters around the cottage. He wonders if he has crashed the motorcycle and fallen into a coma from which he will wake and find himself in a hospital bed attached to tubes and pumps.
Perhaps he’s already dead.
“No need to worry. You are still very much alive.”
The voice of Naganuma pulls him around the last corner where there’s an open sliding door. Coming closer, he sees the figure of a standing man with grey hair, bent over a low table, his back to the opening.
“You made it through the tunnel. Good.” It’s the voice of Naganuma, but instead of the crude Japanese he spoke before, he’s now speaking an elegant form of the language and wears a white garment exuding light even in the daytime. “What do you think of my garden?”
Matt steps over the threshold of the door
onto the pristine tatami floor. It feels pleasantly cool under his feet.
Naganuma drops down onto a red zabuton sitting mat. He dips a thick brush into black ink, leans over and makes slow, graceful movements on a long sheet of rice paper.
It is the Japanese art of shodo calligraphy, and Matt has never seen it mastered to such a degree.
On the other side of the room there are two sliding shoji doors, each consisting of translucent white paper stretched across a latticework of bamboo. The doors are open to a view of an immaculate Japanese garden. Two ornamental plum trees in full bloom stand to the left, their purple blossoms perfectly balanced by the white flowers of a single cherry tree on the right.
Matt notes to himself that when he walked around the outside of the entire structure, there were no shoji doors, no plum trees, no cherry tree, no garden.
“The normal laws of physics do not apply here.” Naganuma’s gaze drifts out past the open doors to the garden. “There are limits to the perfection one can achieve in an imperfect world. No such limits apply here.”
“Sorry about the motorcycle.” Matt swallows hard and drops his gaze to the tatami floor. He fully expects Naganuma to berate him for stealing the bike.
But Naganuma only laughs. “No need to apologize. I enjoy riding through the mountains myself. You passed the first test by making it here. Now, come see what I have been working on.”
Matt moves closer and looks over Naganuma’s shoulder at the black calligraphy on white paper.
He is stunned.
Two columns of Japanese kanji float on the paper’s surface. As Matt stares at them, they move and shimmer as if written on water, each brushstroke altering and distorting the paper around it, sending out ripples in a field of gentle chaos.
“What do you think?” Naganuma’s head turns, and his eyes rise up to Matt. “It’s an original tanka poem about the choices we make. Each flows into the others, like a pebble dropping into a pond.”
“It’s incredible. How…” Matt is at a loss for words.
