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Chapter or Story 
Chapter or Story
Truth and Consequences - by MMB
Chapter 5: Lines in the Sand
Ikeda held the little stick of incense to the candle's flame until it lit, then shook the flame away so that the end only smoldered. With a bow first, he put the stick end down into the ash bed of the incense holder that stood in front of the small metal statue of a seated Buddha. As ritual demanded, he took up the wooden stick and tapped the sides of the little golden meditation bell so that the clear sound reverberated through the room, then arranged himself comfortably on his heels in front of the low altar shelf to settle into meditation.
This morning ritual, drilled into him since childhood and abandoned as useless for so many years, had become a comfort to him in the days since his return from America. Many had been the times that he'd slyly teased Fujimori-san for his discipline and perseverance, only now to understand just how this quiet time of introspection could clear the mind. And now, more than ever, he desperately needed that mental clarity if he were going to see where his next steps were going to take him.
His position within the Yakuza organization had never phased him. He had trained for years in the use of many weapons and techniques to disarm, disable and kill - and then been given the status and opportunity to use those skills on the generally nefarious and unprincipled. He did not regret his killings, for the most part - most of those people had, by their own actions, assured their own violent ends one way or the other. He was only the instrument through which the power of Karma acted.
His passing along information on the Yakuza and its dealings to the Triumverate also had generally not phased him either. Both groups dealt with the underbelly of their societies - and neither stood on any moral high ground to claim insult except by virtue of any traditional expectations of loyalty. The Triumverate, after all, was mostly a money-dispensing agency that made it possible for its stockholders and investors to reap huge profits by the quickest and most dependable means - means that often included criminal activity. Helping the Triumverate protect it's investment in the Yakuza had never presented a conflict of loyalties before.
But the phone call that had just ended put that comfortable balancing act very much into jeopardy. He had genuinely hoped never to hear that cell phone ring again...
"Mushi-mushi..."
"Please hold for Ngawe," had come the heavily accented voice from the other end. Ikeda had sighed - it took a great deal of concentration to understand this form of English.
"Mr. Ikeda," another voice had spoken into his ear, more musical, more regal.
"Ngawe-sama, it is good to hear your voice. I was sorry to hear..."
"News will be reaching your Mr. Ueda shortly that Mr. Sonny Tanaka is no longer among the living," Ngawe had interrupted and then got straight to the point. "You will keep us appraised of any actions to be taken in answer to this event."
Ikeda had been silent. This new directive was in contradiction to the terms of the agreement he had made with the former head of the Triumverate, Mr. Mutombo, when he agreed to provide inside information to them for a hefty price. "I see," he had replied eventually in a very cautious tone.
"Do you have a problem with this task?" Ngawe had demanded, hearing the less-than-enthusiastic response.
"Yes, sir. If you will investigate the terms under which I agreed to work for your organization, I specified that I would never directly betray the Yakuza." Ikeda was in a corner; only the truth would suffice. "Your current request demands precisely that."
"You are extremely well-paid to forget the terms under which you began to work for us," Ngawe's voice had risen slightly as the elderly African's temper began to ignite.
"I recently checked my overseas account, and I note that I have yet to be compensated for the information I gave you while in America," the assassin had retorted very calmly. "In fact, I believe that I will relinquish that payment in lieu of submitting notice of resignation. I will not betray Yakuza."
"Now you listen to us, you hired gun," Ngawe had growled. "You do NOT want to oppose us right now. We intend to..."
"I wish you a speedy recovery, Ngawe-sama. We will not be speaking again. Sayonara." Ikeda had quickly disconnected the call and immediately turned off the cell phone. He had stripped the battery pack from the device and dropped the rest of it into his trash compactor with the day's garbage and crushed it.
And now he sat in front of his altar, the scent of sandalwood wafting gently through the room, and contemplated his options. Were he to report the call to Ueda-sama, at best he'd lose a thumb - at worst, he'd be wrapped in chains and dumped off the end of a dock into Tokyo Bay. He could keep his covert dealings a secret - provided that there wasn't another Triumverate mole in the Yakuza whose next order would be to betray him.
No, his future included neither Yakuza nor Triumverate.
Which, at the moment, left him nowhere to turn.
~~~~~~~~
"Here's to the conquering hero, returning from fighting the evil Centre on it's own ground," Jay toasted with his water goblet held high over his appetizingly full plate. "May they all rot in Hell."
"Here, here!" Margaret joined in the toast with her goblet raised high as well. She looked around the table, seeing the varying reactions to the toast. "C'mon, people. Let's toast our freedom!"
Em glanced at Jarod at the other end of the table and noted that he wasn't even looking up anymore. And while she was seriously tempted to join in the toast to Jarod's return, she knew that wishing everyone in Delaware ill would not sit well with her brother. "Mother..." she groaned in frustration.
Ethan merely sat back in his chair and shook his head at the entire display, unwilling to join in wishing ill to either his half-sister or his little nephew.
Nathan, Em's handsome husband, looked from one face to the other in some confusion. "Say, Jar, what's going on here?" he asked finally. "I thought that was why you went Back East - to take down the Centre."
Jarod finally looked up. At least his brother-in-law wasn't making any bones about his curiosity. "That's right," he replied evenly, refusing to even look at his mother. "And in the end, the Centre that we've all been so afraid of is gone." Now he looked directly at his younger brother - a cloned mirror of himself twenty years younger - and glared. "But I don't wish those who survived ill, and I won't join in a toast that does so." Finally he turned his glare to his mother. "And YOU should know better."
"What the hell..." Jay began, his brow curling together.
"How dare you!" Margaret hissed at her oldest.
"How dare YOU!" Jarod hissed back. "That's your grandson you're wishing to rot in Hell, if you hadn't noticed..."
"What?!" The exclamation of surprise burst from both Nathan and Jay.
"It seems we haven't heard the latest," Em patted her husband on the arm gently. "It seems that Jarod found out that he has a son while he was back there."
"Why the hell didn't you bring the kid back with you?" Jay demanded in angry confusion. "He didn't need to be left behind..."
"I left Davy with his mother," Jarod explained after taking a deep breath. "I would never take a child from his mother - and YOU of ALL people should appreciate that!" he glared at Margaret again.
"That bitch..." she muttered, then looked up at him challengingly. "Tell them who his mother IS, then," she dared him.
"They... The Centre created a child out of genetic material taken from me... and Miss Parker," he said clearly and carefully, keeping his mother's gaze firmly held by his own. "She thought all this time he was her little half-brother - but we uncovered the truth while she was HELPING ME put things in motion to bring down Raines and Lyle."
Jay had backed away from some of his ire as the details began to come clear to him. Not for the first time did he remember that odd day when the beautiful woman came into his space at Donoterase, telling him it was OK to cry and that she'd known someone just like him. "She helped you take down the Centre?" he asked quietly.
"Yeah," Jarod answered, his head held high. "And so did Sydney and Broots - and Miss Parker's sweeper, Sam." He looked around the room. "Yes, I could have managed it all by myself - but it worked out better when I had help."
"And this Miss Parker," Nathan's blond head was still swiveling from face to face around the table, trying to understand the dynamics involved. "She's..."
"The bitch that chased him back and forth around the world for years," Margaret's voice was bitter. "And now he's going back to HER..."
"What?" Jay burst out. "You're going... back?"
"Mommy, Unka Jarod going away again?" little Sammy's voice was the first to sound genuinely sorrowful.
Finally Em's limit had been reached. "Thanks, Mom - we were going to try to break it to Sammy gently, but you just HAD to get that barb in, didn't you?" She glared at her mother in frustration and bent to comfort her son.
"Sugar-coating it isn't going to change the facts," Margaret retorted defensively, stung that her grandson's tears were getting more sympathy than her point was. "The fact is that Jarod has decided that those people in Delaware mean more to him than..."
"STOP IT!" Jarod bellowed, fully angry now. "Mother, with all due respect, you're..." He sighed heavily instead of saying the hurtful words that were on the tip of his tongue. Neither his father nor Sydney would have approved. "I would have thought that having a son and not being able to see him or be with him all those years would help you understand how I feel - but..." Jarod sighed. From the expression in her eyes, he realized he could rail at his mother and yet never reach her.
"You know, I guess that the only way for me to handle this is just to put it out there and let each of you deal with it as you see fit. Yes, I'm going back to Delaware - to stay. I have a son, and I happen to be in love with my son's mother. I don't love them more than any of you, but I don't love them any less either. My only thought here is that I want to be with the woman I love and my son - and to do that, I have to go there. Miss Parker is now the Chairman of the Centre. Her job is there."
"You have a practice HERE," Margaret reminded him angrily, tossing her red and silver head.
"Yes, I do. I will be talking with Ethan tomorrow about whether we'll be looking for a new partner to take over my half of the practice, or whether we'll close the office and he'll find another practice to join." Jarod looked up at Ethan and found his half-brother nodding his head calmly.
"You're going back to the Centre?!" Jay asked, dumbfounded. "After all these years and all that talk about how they're so evil..."
"Miss Parker is working to change all that. Raines and Lyle are dead - which means that the only people with any unethical agendas are out of the picture." Jarod reached out to his younger brother. "I have a chance to help make the Centre into what it should have been all along. I can't just walk away."
Nathan shook his head and sat back in his chair. "Well, for what it's worth, Jar, I don't blame you. A man needs to be with his son." He reached over and ruffled the hair of his own boy as Sammy huddled against his mother's side. "Em, what do you think?"
"I think we need to let Jarod decide how and where he lives his life," the brunette said after some thought. "I don't like it that he'll be moving so far away from the rest of us - but nothing says that we can't visit, or that he can't come visit us. It isn't as if he's walking off the face of the planet..."
"Thanks, Em," Jarod smiled at his sister. "That means a lot."
"What would your father say?" Margaret tossed out, seeing the tide of opinion slowly turn against her utter rejection of Jarod's plans toward reluctant acceptance. It was quite possibly the only trump card she knew would make her oldest son stop and think.
But she was wrong. Jarod turned his warm and sad chocolate eyes to her. "Mom, I think Dad would understand why I have to do this. He'd understand, like Nathan does, that a man should be with his son." He wished he could make this easier on her. "And with the woman he loved."
Her beautiful blue eyes filled with tears. "How can you love her, Jarod? She chased you for years - shot at you..."
Jarod's lips turned up at the edges. "She was my best friend when we were younger, and no matter what else happened between us, she was still my best friend. And when she shot at me, if she'd been aiming AT me, she would have hit me. She's too good not to have." Now he smirked. "If I remember correctly, Sydney used to tell me about the bad time her father and brother gave her every time her gun “misfired” or “jammed”."
"She's a Parker - and Parkers aren't to be trusted." The statement was absolute.
"She CAN be," Jarod shook his head gently. "I just hope that one day you'll see that."
~~~~~~~~
The darkness was like a gentle ocean upon which he floated in timeless comfort. And yet, now, new/old sensations teased at the edges of his perception - a heaviness slowly overtook him and dragged him down. He took a breath, and then another, and found that he was starting to see through the darkness - a dim glow of light beyond a barrier. He tried to move and yet was prevented; something was holding him down tightly and yet comfortably.
Finally he took a deep breath and let the light tickle his eyelids into moving, first a little bit, and then more and more until they fluttered open. Fujimori blinked several times, then sighed in deep frustration to find himself still trapped in the same hospital room he'd tried to escape through seppuku. He lifted his head slowly and saw that his wrist - carefully bandaged from where he'd torn his own flesh open - was cuffed in softly padded leather and buckled to the railings on either side of his bed.
He let his head fall back into his pillow in defeat. His Karma must be strong to have kept him trapped in this lifetime rather than floating towards a new rebirth - hopefully into a life where he'd never hear the word “Yakuza.”
There was movement to his left, and with growing horror he watched the man who had been sitting quietly in a chair rose to his feet. This was a new observer - gai-jin, not African - but the idea that he had no privacy at all was distressing. The gai-jin came over to look down into his face, the foreign-looking non-Japanese features utterly inscrutable. "You're awake," the man said in smooth American English.
Fujimori moved his lips, but no noise arose.
The gai-jin reached for the water pitcher and poured a little in a glass, then held it so that he could capture the straw in his mouth and pull a little of the refreshingly wet liquid.
"Thank you." His voice was a whisper from dryness and disuse.
"My boss has some questions for you," the gai-jin nodded in apparent satisfaction. "Now don't you go anywhere before I get back..." He walked from the room chortling softly to himself.
Fujimori's brow curled weakly. He most definitely was NOT in the mood for jokes.
~~~~~~~~
Ueda read the memo that his assistant had handed him after a most abject bow, then looked up at the man sharply. "How could such a thing have happened?"
"We have no way of knowing, Ueda-sama. The gai-jin authorities had placed Tanaka-sama in a prison with no other members of the Yakuza in the immediate area, so we have no information resources other than what we can gather from the police databases themselves." Konde Hiro shrugged his shoulders. He had joined the Yakuza in the days after Tommy's father had received his jail sentence - and while he understood the traditional loyalty Yakuza felt toward their own while incarcerated, Sonny Tanaka had been gone from the organization long enough that he really didn't care.
"Unacceptable," Ueda shook his head. "It cannot be mere coincidence that Sonny spend over nine years in this prison, calmly minding his own business and serving his term, only to suddenly be dragged into a dark corner and done away with in this fashion."
"You don't suppose that this is Centre retaliation for..."
Ueda was already shaking his head more vigorously. "I heard from Mayeda-san late last night. I seriously doubt that a Centre bent on revenge would be fully reimbursing us our deposits on contracts, with interest, no less."
"Hmmmmm." Konde had to admit that the chances of both actions being taken by the same chain of command were very slim. "Who then?"
"If I had to put money on a candidate," Ueda pronounced carefully, "I'd guess that we are starting to see the consequences of having harmed the head of the Triumverate without actually having killed him." He waved the memo. "Something tells me we'd have been better off killing him."
"We could always call in Ikeda-san to take care of that. That IS what he does best, you know..." Konde suggested.
"I don't think so," Ueda shook his head. "If I were Ngawe, and I were pissed because some ronin dropped a building on me to the point that I wanted to take out the ronin's entire operation, I think the FIRST thing I'd do would be to get myself into as invulnerable a place and position as I could."
"And where is this Ngawe now?" Konde asked pointedly. "With all due respect, Ueda-sama, but do we even know?"
"We know, Hiro-san. He's in the same hospital that Fujimori's in - the one in Dover."
"And are hospitals invulnerable, sir?" Konde asked again. "Perhaps a strategic strike at the head of the serpent will save us all a LOT of trouble."
Ueda stared at Konde for a moment, the pushed the button on his intercom. "Reiko-san, have Ikeda Katsuhito come to my office as soon as possible." He nodded to his assistant and gestured for the man to take a seat. "Perhaps you have a point. Let's see what Ikeda-san himself has to say about the idea."
~~~~~~~~
"This is Sydney."
"What do you do when you want to disown your own mother, Sydney?" Jarod grumbled into the handset of his phone in utter frustration.
"I'm doing fine, Jarod, thanks for asking," the Belgian smiled back into the phone.
Jarod sighed. "I'm sorry, Sydney."
"I take it that your mother is being no more reasonable with you on that side of the country than she was while you were here?" Sydney leaned back into his comfortable recliner in the den and let the footrest come up and support his legs.
"Not one inch."
"Did you really expect her to see it your way that easily?" he asked the younger man in his best professional tone.
"Why won't she listen to reason?" the Pretender complained bitterly.
"Because this goes beyond the bounds of reason, Jarod - this is a matter of the heart, not the head," Sydney explained patiently. "We talked about some of this before you left. Your mother is still dealing with the death of your father, and now with the idea that you're going to be walking out of her day-to-day life too. From the sounds of things, her time on the run and looking for you has made her a bit unstable emotionally."
"And how!" Jarod inserted in disgust.
"In which case," Sydney continued in almost a lecturer's cadence, "the most effective course of treatment would be to slowly and consistently bring her existing support network to her attention, and repeat the lesson often enough that she remembers that they're there." He slipped his glasses from his face and rubbed his tired eyes. "She is so focused on what YOU'RE up to that she's forgetting that she has all the rest of her children around her. You need to help her remember them."
The younger man mulled over his mentor's words and then filed them for further inspection a little later. "I never thought, when I was dreaming of putting my family back together, that I'd end up with this kind of mess!"
Sydney chuckled. "That sounds a lot like Kevin wondering to me if family life was always as chaotic as ours has been," he explained, still laughing softly. "Neither of you has really had much to work with other than an ideal model - reality is far more interesting, and complicated." He wiped a hand over his face to rid himself of the trickling hilarity from the corners of his eyes. "What about the rest of your family - am I mistaken in that I'm NOT hearing you gripe about any of the others?"
"Actually, the rest were like Em - not very happy about the development, but could see my point in the end." Jarod stretched himself out on his bed, amazed at how comfortable he got almost immediately. "The only one seriously upset besides Mom is Sammy - and that's because he's afraid I'll miss his birthday party next week."
"And Sammy is..."
"Em's little boy - he turns five."
Sydney was quiet for a long moment. "Another thing you might try with your mother is to simply be patient and consistent in letting her know that no matter how desperate her histrionics might get, you ARE going to be moving to Delaware. I would be willing to guess that she's currently hoping that if she makes life miserable enough for you in the short term, you'll change your mind." He paused and thought again. "Of course, hopefully she'll begin to see that she's making her own suffering by trying to hang onto you so tightly - but you may still want to enlist the help of a grief counselor for her. I think we mentioned that a while back too..."
"I want to talk to Em about that first," Jarod nodded against his pillow. Now it was his turn to think. "How are things on your end? I understand you and Davy met head to head..."
"Like father, like son," Sydney smiled. "He misses you desperately and didn't know how to communicate it properly."
"So you turned on your nice, quiet, Inquisitor's voice, pulled your lethal “bad-guy/good-guy” number on him and got him quaking in his boots?"
Now the older psychiatrist laughed out loud. "Is that how you describe it?"
"No," Jarod chuckled back. "When I think of the rather small number of times you did that to me, I generally lump them under “I really, REALLY pissed Sydney off that time!” and then promise myself all over again NEVER to try whatever set you off like that again."
"As long as it worked..."
Jarod whistled low. "Oh, it worked, alright. You usually had me ready to agree to almost anything to get the real you back. You must not have lost your touch - Parker was telling me tonight that Davy had confided in her that he'd “REALLY made Grandpa mad.” She mentioned you'd pulled it on her once too - I didn't know that..."
"That happened after you left," Sydney left the explanation at that. He still felt guilty at the way his discipline had been the final push that had sent Miss Parker into a minor nervous breakdown, despite the real benefits that had eventually come from it in the long run.
Sydney's reticence was clear, and Jarod obligingly dropped the subject. Instead: "How's Kevin?"
"Still thoroughly impressed with his first trip to the cinema," Sydney chuckled again. "Deb took him to see some action/adventure show."
"I can imagine." Jarod was chuckling now too. "I remember my first time in a movie theatre - I couldn't figure out how projecting the movie onto such a huge screen would be anything but out of focus."
"Deb, bless her little pointed head, has also decided that she's going to teach him to like junk food..." the older man complained with a fond smile as he thought of the interesting discussion he and his granddaughter had had over the supper table. "She's already got him addicted to popcorn while watching movies..."
"I'll have to suggest PEZ and Pop Tarts..." Jarod grinned, knowing exactly what the younger Pretender was going through and appreciating the help that Kevin would get that he hadn't in his early days of freedom.
"Don't you DARE!" Sydney was aghast. "That young man needs a tasty and BALANCED diet to make up for that tasteless nutritional swill..."
"I'm kidding, Sydney," Jarod soothed, still chuckling, "at least, I am, more or less. I think one of the things all escaped Pretenders have to contend with is an insatiable sweet tooth. You might as well give up - between Deb's determination and Kevin's deprivation, you're doomed..." The Pretender continued to chuckle for a bit, then sobered. "Thanks, Sydney. I needed that spot of trivial nonsense to put the mess here into perspective."
"I've done my good deed for the day, then - and with that, I think I'm going to call it a night," the older man announced. "I wish you luck with your mother - I wish I could help more."
"You've helped a lot more than you know. And now, just take care of yourself and help me take care of Parker and Davy," Jarod said softly. "I need you all to be safe and secure for when I get back. Give them all my love when you see them."
"That I can do. Goodnight, Jarod."
"Sleep well, Sydney. Goodnight."
~~~~~~~~
Ueda nodded at his security, who reached out and opened the door to let Ikeda Katsuhiro - elite assassin to the Tokyo Yakuza - come into the office. The man was impeccably attired in a somber navy business suit and blazingly white shirt, and his dark eyes were calm and cold. Ikeda walked sedately to just in front of the huge desk of his superior and bowed deeply. "You sent for me, Ueda-sama?"
"Hai. I have a new assignment for you - one that could prove to be dangerous." Ueda watched the face of his best assassin carefully as he motioned the man to have a seat.
Ikeda and others like him had always been an enigma to him. It was one thing to be in charge of or participating in decidedly criminal activities wherein the victim ultimately brings his/her fate upon themselves - it was quite another to willingly shoulder the responsibility for taking the life of another, regardless of the reason given. Having come up through the ranks of Yakuza, he appreciated the valuable resource such dangerous men represented, but he never made the mistake of taking either their loyalty or unquestioning complicity for granted.
For his part, Ikeda focused his mind carefully on the intake and outtake of air into his lungs to maintain the illusion of serenity. To get this summons so soon after Ngawe's call was unnerving - something he couldn't afford to let his boss know at all. "I am your servant, Ueda-sama, as always. What is it that you wish me to do?"
"What do you know of the organization called The Triumvirate?"
The assassin brutally disciplined himself to keep from glancing up into his boss' face in stark surprise and discomfort. Appearing only to sort through his thoughts, he resisted the urge to panic at the idea that Ueda had found out something after all. "The Triumvirate," he replied in a deceptively calm voice, "began as a consortium of wealthy businessmen from Nigeria, Uganda and Rwanda seeking a means of investing their money outside the continent of Africa and making a profit. Their portfolio of investments has never been particularly discriminatory as to the mechanics of making a profit provided that the profit is sizeable and in a timely manner."
"I wasn't expecting a history lesson," Ueda said shortly, then relented somewhat. "Although I appreciate some of that information. It explains a great deal. However," he leaned back in his chair expectantly, "I was looking for how much you know about the current hierarchy."
Ikeda nodded and took a deep breath. "Each country's bloc of voting businessmen send an elected representative to Nairobi, and then the entire consortium membership votes on which one of those three men they feel is most qualified to lead the Triumvirate. At the moment, the leader is a man named Ngawe - a former arms dealer from Nigeria. His immediate two associates are Ugo Agunde, a diamond speculator from Rwanda, and Chele M'basa, a banker from Uganda."
Ueda gazed at his assassin with frank amazement. "You know a great deal about them, it seems," he commented quietly.
"Tanaka-sama made a point of keeping me informed of when my current assignment might run me afoul of this organization or his agendas..." Ikeda answered easily. Telling the truth was so much safer than lying. "...especially in the unsettling days after the unfortunate assassination of the previous leader, a Mr. Timoto Mutumbo." He could finally look his boss in the eye without a hint of expression in either his face or eyes.
"Hmmm," Ueda nodded slowly, content with the explanation. Tanaka-sama had run his house quite differently, the new Yakuza boss knew all too well - and very likely had taken Ikeda-san into confidence with some of this information. "This Ngawe-sama, it seems, was in Delaware when a rather ill-conceived plan of Tanaka-sama went awry. The bomb that was supposed to take out the Centre was set off while Ngawe was on a visit to the Centre facility."
"He was one of the ones rescued, was he not?" Ikeda asked carefully, knowing that the names of the people rescued from the rubble of the tower had been made public long ago.
"My sources say that yes, he was rescued - but not without serious injury, and without starting to nurse a serious grudge against us." Ueda sighed. "And, it seems, he has ordered a first strike on our people to make that point plain to us. Tanaka Setsuo was killed in prison late last night."
"Indeed!" As Ngawe himself had predicted, the news had traveled fast.
"I have decided that our answer to this outrage needs to be as outrageous as the injury dealt us," Ueda pronounced, and then leaned forward to hand his assassin a glossy packet of papers. "This is a round-trip ticket back to Delaware. I want you to see to it that this Ngawe finds his way to his ancestors... with all due haste."
Ikeda took the tickets hesitantly. "You want me to eliminate the leader of the Triumverate?" he asked, wanting to make absolutely sure that he had understood Ueda's intent.
"Your plane leaves in three hours," the Tokyo Yakuza boss stated grimly. "Be sure you don't miss your flight - and be sure your actions in this matter do NOT come under scrutiny of any kind. We are killing a serpent by lopping off its head before it bites us -we don't need to be smothered when the coils wrap themselves around us mindlessly."
Ikeda stood and bowed deeply. "I am your servant, Ueda-sama."
"Good hunting. That will be all."
Ikeda bowed again and walked from the office on legs that trembled inside with the knowledge that at that point, no matter which way he turned, he was a walking dead man.
~~~~~~~~
The noisy jangling of the telephone next to the bed penetrated with the diplomacy of a hand grenade the soft dream Berringer was having of seducing his favorite showgirl. Grunting as the vision of seductive breasts and thighs awaiting his touch evaporated into sheets and bedspreads, the Nevadan rolled over and fumbled for the handset. "It's only..." He glanced at his travel clock on the nightstand. "...seven o'clock in the damned morning - so whatever this is better be life-threatening..."
"Have you heard from Santini yet?" Flores demanded in an unreasonably awake and functioning voice, considering the amount of tequila the two of them had put down the night before.
"Wha... Gil!" Berringer propped himself up on an elbow. "What the hell do you think you're doing, waking me up at this hour..."
"Have you heard from Santini yet?" the Hispanic repeated in a less-patient tone.
"No, of course I haven't - Christ! We only talked to him yesterday, and he told us he was going to have to talk to his superiors about it. I honestly don't expect to hear anything much before tomorrow, if you wanna know the truth - which you probably don't..."
Flores was up and pacing, his cell phone held tightly to his ear. "The longer he takes..."
"Something neither of us can help," Berringer reminded him pointedly.
"...the more chance that Parker bitch has to put us in a box. I've got Miguel convinced to keep an eye on the main office, but..."
"Shit!" Berringer rolled himself to a sitting position off the edge of the bed. "Have you lost your mind? We can't afford to bring in too many players on this, Gil - the conflicting interests and promises won't do us a bit of good."
"I trust Miguel to keep the place secure until we get back," Flores insisted belligerently. "I've even got him stealing a shipment of dope from the Yakuza as payment for services rendered."
Berringer put his face in his empty hand and shook his head. "You're running off with this, and your impatience is going to get us all killed - by the Yakuza if not by Parker herself."
"Yeah? Well all this sit around and wait crap is driving me crazy!"
"Do you want to do this right or not?" Berringer demanded in a very quiet and dangerous tone.
"Stu..."
"Don't Stu... me. You listen to me and you listen good! You're going to sit on your hands and not make anymore phone calls until we hear back from Eddie - and THEN we'll start making plans."
"That could take days..." Flores waved his hands impotently in the air.
"Better it take days than get us both killed, asshole!" Berringer spat, rapidly running out of patience with his former protégé. "We're playing for pretty damned big stakes here - and we gotta keep our wits about us if we're going to stand the least chance of winning."
"What about if we..."
"No, Gil. No more. I'm with you if you want to take out the Parker woman and get our operations back to full capacity - but if you're going to play loose cannon, shooting your mouth off and pushing first one hot button and then the next, you're on your own." The Nevadan rose. "Listen to me. Sit tight - and meet me downstairs for coffee in fifteen minutes. Do you think you can do THAT right?"
Berringer heard the click of the call disconnecting and slammed the telephone handset back into the cradle. Flores was going to screw everything up if somebody didn't tie that little bastard down and sit on him, hard! He went to the dresser and pulled fresh underwear from a drawer and stomped off toward the shower. He needed to do SOMETHING to help calm him down before he throttled that little bastard at first sight in the coffee shop this morning...
Maybe a hot shower would cool down his temper. Maybe not...
~~~~~~~~
Tyler pulled his coupe to a stop in front of the little store and climbed out. It was his turn to stop and get coffee for Miss Parker, Sam and himself - their eight-thirty meeting to bring each other up to speed before the day got started was rapidly becoming a set part of the day's agenda - and this combination deli and mini-mart was the best place to get it. Besides, Miss Parker had mentioned in passing yesterday, with an odd little smile, that this little store had a new early-morning cashier...
"Hey there!" Deb smiled at him as she tied on her apron.
"Ah! So this is what she meant when she said that your mornings were now taken," he smiled at her, leaning on the counter next to the register.
"She who?"
He waved his hand dismissively. "Don't worry about it. I'll just thank her for the clue."
"OK..." she shrugged and then reached behind herself. "What can I do for you?" she asked saucily, pulling her long braid from beneath the fabric neck strap with a casual hand.
"Three coffees will do it for now," he drawled in a thicker accent. "But maybe I could interest you in something after work tonight?"
Deb tossed a surprised smile at him as she busied herself with pouring and capping three cups of steaming liquid. "Oh? What are you thinking?"
He turned on his brightest grin. "I don't know - I was thinking maybe... dinner in Dover?"
"Dinner, huh?" she pondered as she rang up the coffee purchase on the register. "That'll be three seventy-five."
He dug in his wallet for the four dollar bills. "Yeah - there's a really nice Texas-style steak house that I haven't had an excuse to patronize for the last month or so. I thought maybe that would give you a break from cooking for a change."
"That would be kinda nice," she admitted, then smiled up at him as she handed him quarter change. "Do you want me to meet you there, or..."
"Oh, let me do the driving," Tyler insisted with a flashing smile.
"It's just that I'm already in Dover to visit my Dad in the afternoons..."
"How's he doing?" Tyler inquired, very aware that this girl's father's health was a big concern of his boss as well.
She merely shrugged, not quite concealing her worry. "Same as always - still out. The doctors think another week like this, and then they'll let him wake up again."
"Still..." He couldn't help seeing her worry and wanting to do something to distract her. "How about I pick you up at Parker's dad's house at about... what? Six-thirty? That IS where you're staying lately, right?"
Deb tipped her head, not used to hearing Sydney referred to as Miss Parker's dad. "Yeah. Sounds good to me - gives me a chance to set them up for eats before I leave."
Tyler's dark brows pulled together a bit. "This is supposed to be getting you OUT of the kitchen, little lady," he complained.
"Grandpa isn't ready to take up cooking yet, and Kevin would probably burn water," she told him with a fond smile. "I don't want them to starve..."
"I know - I'll suggest that Miss Parker bring pizza home to them after work," he grinned in pride at having thought through a solution. "That'll feed the “boys” and still get you out of the kitchen."
"Alright," Deb grinned back at him. "I'll see you at six-thirty then."
"Yes, ma'am!" Tyler tugged at his forelock politely and shot a glance down the aisle to where Curt, the sweeper Sam had assigned to Deb and Kevin, watched his every move with an eagle eye. He waved at the man and smiled when the sweeper waved back slightly in surprise, then took his cardboard carrier of coffee and backed out the door, winking at Deb as he left.
The day was certainly starting out well.
~~~~~~~~
Sam listened to the sweeper assigned to listen in on the telephone conversations of Flores and Berringer with a growing grin. Flores was proving to be a loose cannon even to his confederate in mutiny - and knowing this was going to make things very interesting. He glanced over at the co-opted kitchen clock that now hung on his office wall and saw that he had about ten minutes yet before he was expected in Miss Parker's office for coffee and updates.
"If you have a number for that cell phone, get a trace into that as well," he instructed his man, "or bug it if you can. We want to keep as close track on where those men go and who they talk to as we can."
"We'll get the bugs into Berringer's and Flores' cell phone tonight after they go to sleep," the sweeper promised. "Those two tend to put down a healthy amount of tequila just before nighty-night time - we should be able to do the job without them being the wiser, now that we are starting to get a handle on the way they do things."
"See to it, then." Sam stood. "Check back in with me a lunchtime.
"Yes, sir."
Sam hung up the phone and ran his fingers through his thick, dark hair. If it weren't for the threat posed by those two clowns calling in mobsters of all shapes and sizes and ethnicities, this mutiny would be a joke. He yawned, still not entirely awake before his first cup of coffee for the day, and walked from his office down the corridor towards Miss Parker's.
"She in?" he asked the pretty Chinese secretary and was greeted with her wide smile.
"Yes, sir, Mr. Atlee. Go on in." She gestured gracefully towards the wooden door behind her desk and then returned her attention to the computer screen in front of her.
Sam looked back at Mei Chiang before he knocked on the door. He had to admit that Lyle had had good taste in secretaries - then grimaced at his own horrible and horrific wordplay. The girl was now virtually unique to the organization, one of the last of an entire group of Hong Kong Chinese girls brought to the Centre by Mr. Lyle that slowly had thinned through the years. Nobody ever asked the questions, and none of the surviving girls had ever offered theories as to where their compatriots had gone. But Mei Chiang had long since caught HIS eye - and only Miss Parker's rank had made him back away from trying to hire her himself.
Hire her nothing, he chided himself and deliberately turned and knocked on the door. One of these days, he was going to get brave and ask her out to dinner. Her slender form and soft, accented voice fascinated him. Sam blinked at the sound of Miss Parker's voice from within calling just a bit louder this time, "I said, come in," and then pushed through the door, shaking his head free of dreams that belonged at home and not at work.
"Flores is getting cagey," he announced to her as he found his regular seat in one of the chairs pulled up close to her desk. "He's using his cell phone more often - probably to avoid phone taps in the hotel itself." As the eyebrow cocked, he continued, "I'm having both his and Berringer's cells bugged tonight after they drink themselves into bed again."
"Ah," she nodded. "What's the latest from our daring duo?"
"Flores is getting really itchy for action too," Sam replied. "Report is that he claims to have a fellow named “Miguel” watching the LA office for him - and paid the guy by giving him information on a Yakuza drug shipment that, with Flores removing security, will be free for the grabbing."
"Wasn't he going to sell that shipment out to the feds instead?" Miss Parker asked quickly, perking up.
"From the sound of things, this guy is all over the map," Sam shook his head. "Even Berringer is starting to come to the conclusion that Flores is his own worst enemy. Surveillance at the hotel coffee shop report that they argued almost non-stop for forty-five minutes about all the different groups that have been called in to assist, and how easy it would be to slip up and give two of them the same carrot. Flores couldn't care less - he just wants something to DO. NOW."
"What did I miss?" Tyler asked as he came through the door, coffee carrier extended forward so that both of his companions could snag their morning fix as quickly as possible.
"Just that our Los Angeles supervisor is getting antsy and changing his mind about all kinds of things," Miss Parker informed him as she settled back into her chair, coffee cup cradled against her chest. "Yesterday he was going to let that Yakuza shipment go to the feds - and now he has it promised to his Mexican mob friends as payment for keeping an eye on OUR LA office."
"Yah don't say," Tyler drawled with a slow and mischievous grin growing on his face.
"The Texan has an idea," Sam announced solemnly.
"No duh," Miss Parker quipped dryly, although her smile dulled the words down to just another bit of banter. It was getting to be interesting, watching these two very efficient and capable men strive to out-do each other sometimes - other times inspire each other. "What are you thinking?" she asked Tyler then. "You look like the cat that ate the canary."
"Well, we WERE going to call the feds ourselves, weren't we?" Tyler answered her question with another and then grinned. "And the Yakuza are going to lose their shipment anyway, aren't they?"
"Hell, technically that's MY shipment - I've already paid for it!" Miss Parker frowned at him, then halted as his point suddenly became clear to her. "Oh, Tyler!" She began to smirk too.
"Oh c'mon!" Sam looked back and forth between them in frustration, utterly lost. "That's not fair!"
"I cain't he'p it if y'all's slow on the uptake, big guy," Tyler drawled back at him with a big smirking grin.
"Tyler..." Miss Parker glowered at him for a moment, then took pity on her Security Chief. "It's simple, Sam. Flores WAS going to call in the feds, and now he isn't - so we should call the feds in ourselves. They catch the Mexican mob ripping off the Yakuza - supposedly - and maybe make Mexican mob a bit skittish at pitching in much further on Flores' account."
"Not to mention get a healthy dose of real BAD stuff from hitting the streets," Tyler added seriously. "If we time it right, we could spill all our information on the LA office's dealings at about the same time - and it should be well within that two day timeframe that Miss Parker gave Mayeda before the feds act on THAT tip and start cleaning house for us."
"We'll have to time that just right," Sam mused aloud - if Flores and Berringer are footloose and fancy-free about the time the feds raid the LA office, and they find out about it, they'll be spooked and go to ground. We'll have a helluva time finding or figuring out just what their next move will be."
"What about calling another meeting of the supervisors?" Tyler suggested. "We haven't really let very many of them go yet - and we could give the excuse that we're in the process of finding some very real problems within the current organization."
"Too bad we can't just lock them up somewhere," Miss Parker grumbled. "I never thought I'd see the days when I wished that those cells down in SL-25 were still accessible!"
"We wouldn't have to hold them for long, would we?" Sam asked, looking back and forth for confirmation. "Couldn't we just turn them over when we call in the feds in the first place - as part of our show of dedication to “cleaning house” when we found corruption in the ranks?"
Miss Parker looked back and forth between her assistants. "I like it. OK. Tyler, make that supervisor's meeting happen - Sam, find someplace where we can keep these two jokers on ice until we call in the feds." She sat back and nodded in satisfaction. "We just gotta hang tough a little bit more..."
~~~~~~~~
Gillespie nodded to the agent currently sitting guard and suicide watch in the private hospital room. "Is he awake?"
"Yeah," the agent nodded with a knowing expression. "Don't let the closed eyes and even breathing fool you. He's been watching ME for about an hour now."
The FBI SAC nodded back and moved over to the side of the bed, pulling his ID from his pocket. "Mr. Fujimori, my name is Thomas Gillespie, and I'm Special Agent in Charge of the FBI office here in Dover. I have a few questions I'd like to ask you..."
"I no speekee Eenglich," Fujimori mimicked one of the more grossly obtuse semi-literate accents that he'd worked for years to overcome otherwise.
"Nice try, wise guy," Gillespie shook his head and pulled the chair next to the bed just a little bit closer and sat down. "A degree in foreign languages from Tokyo University and a certified translator speaks English just fine, I think." Hazel eyes bored unflinching holes into the ebony ones gazing up at him from the pillow. "Wanna try that again?"
"I have nothing to say to you," Fujimori sighed and turned his head to the side - the only way he could get the American lawman's face out of his sight.
"Well, let me see if I have all your information straight," Gillespie sighed and opened the file he had carried into the room with him and began to read. "Fujimori Torii, born Aug 13, 1964 in Nara Prefecture, graduated with honors 1986 from Tokyo University in foreign languages, first arrested in association with Yakuza activities March 23, 1983 for selling grades to fellow students. Many and sundry arrests follow graduation for mostly petty offenses, nothing that earned you very much jail time." Gillespie's hazel eyes narrowed. "But you were working your way up in the ranks - in 1992, Sonny Tanaka made you his second in command, a post that you held even after he was arrested here in the states and his son Tommy took over. You were here, with Tommy, at the Centre when the bomb went off. Did I miss anything?"
Fujimori kept his face averted and simply closed his eyes and sighed again wordlessly.
The FBI agent sighed too. "Well, let me run THIS past you and see if you still think silence is a great idea. We have evidence linking the detonator of the bomb that took out the Centre administration Tower to a research firm in Nagasaki - and our forensics boys have traced the chemical signature of the C-4 explosive to the same firm. That means the bomb that took out the Centre Tower originated in Japan - which in turn suggests a high probability of Yakuza complicity in the deaths of forty-two people at the very least. As a high-ranking member of said Yakuza present at the time of the explosion, that means that you may very well have to answer for those deaths."
Finally the Japanese could keep silent no longer. "You are not thinking logically, Mr. FBI. If Yakuza were responsible for planting the bomb at the Centre, then what was Mr. Tanaka himself doing IN the Centre when the bomb went off?" Ebony eyes became just as penetrating, and Gillespie held the gaze with difficulty.
"I haven't figured that out yet," he admitted with a small shrug, "but my gut still tells me I'm onto something here. What I'm really hoping you can help me with," he drew out a photograph and held it up so that Fujimori could see the face it pictured, "is this man. Any idea who he is?"
"You Americans all look the same to me." The man in the bed sighed in frustration, flinching inwardly to see Damien's face again - not to mention the damage that had been done in the process of trying to put the man down before he carried out his job, an effort utterly wasted. "Your guess is as good as mine."
Gillespie's brows rose. "You just don't know very much, do you?" He only paused a second because he knew that there was no response to that statement possible. It was the truth. "And, you know, I just really don't believe that you're THAT uninformed. Tanaka's second in command would probably be one of the MOST informed people in the area, by my thinking."
"Believe what you will," Fujimori sighed again.
The FBI agent just shook his head. This interview was going absolutely nowhere, and his patience was starting to be seriously stressed. "Explain to me this then: when my men got here, you were being - uh... I suppose the term is “guarded” - by security personnel answering to another victim of the Centre bombing: a Mr. Otamo Ngawe. I suppose you know nothing about that, either." He watched in dismay as the Japanese face turned away from him again. "Uh-huh. One last question: WHY did you try to kill yourself, Mr. Fujimori?"
"None of your business, Mr. Gillespie," Fujimori pronounced without inflection or accent - and without looking at the agent. "And now, if you will excuse me, I'm very tired." He closed his eyes again and silently began chanting his mantras again, deliberately pulling his attention from the room around him and the gai-jin in it.
Gillespie watched the Japanese patient for a long moment, then rose and moved his chair back against the wall. "You keep a GOOD eye on him," he directed the agent occupying the chair across the room. "No closed curtains except during doctor and nurse exams - no more suicide attempts. We want Mr. Fujimori to regain his health as quickly as possible."
"Yes, sir!" The seated agent uncrossed his legs and crossed them the other way, obviously settling down for a lengthy stay.
Fujimori heard the door of his room gently close but didn't lose the pace of his chanting. Even the presence of the other gai-jin FBI agent no longer registered, no longer mattered. They would get no willing offer of information from him - and he was ready for whatever else Karma and American justice had to throw at him. It just didn't matter anymore. Nothing did.
~~~~~~~~
Siskele waited until the nurse had finished raising the head of his uncle's bed and helping the elderly gentleman to sit up straighter before approaching. He could see the real reluctance and discomfort NOT having an African nurse was causing the older man, and he admired the grudging patience with which the care he was receiving was being accepted. Once the nurse finally finished her fussing and pushed through the door on her way back to the nurse's station, Siskele leaned in closer. "There is word, sir."
"Good!" Ngawe replied immediately. "Tell us."
"A small and elite group of our best men broke into the warehouse we were told was one of the major arms depots for the entire American end of the Yakuza last night..."
"Yes," the elderly man smiled widely. "And..."
Siskele shuddered. "Nothing, sir. The place was empty."
"WHAT?!" Ngawe thundered. "Our informant told us that this warehouse has been in continual use for over ten years now - were we misinformed as to location? What happened?"
The younger man shook his head. "There was plenty of evidence that the warehouse had been well-used, and not that long ago - but whatever HAD been stored there is now long gone. The office was absolutely empty of any paperwork on shipping or receiving. The place was completely cleaned out."
Ngawe glowered at his nephew, then took a deep breath and began to think. "Were they warned of our intents? Could there be a leak?"
"I don't know how, sir," Siskele shrugged, thoroughly stumped. "It isn't as if they can just plant one of theirs in our midst, you know..."
"Well..." The elderly African looked up with raised eyebrows. "We did manage to plant one of OURS with them, did we not?"
"Not exactly, sir. We simply paid one of theirs extremely well to give us information when we asked for it." Siskele knew it was dangerous to correct the head of the entire organization, but the point was an important one. "We have no one originally loyal to the Triumverate planted with the Yakuza."
"Damn!" Ngawe pounded his fist into the mattress next to his useless leg. "Then our next target will need to be a more sure one. The Yakuza have plenty of merchandise moving in and out of the LA port all the time - a good deal of it very expensive and highly sought after. Check the records we have and take control of as many of those shipments as we can. We must increase the pressure on these slant-eyed devils - and show them NEVER to do harm to our interests again." His eyes as he looked up at his nephew were burning with an internal fire. "We will make them pay many times over for what they've done - and then, when they have no more money to do business here, we will absorb them and crush them."
"Yes, sir." Siskele nodded, convinced by his uncle's fervor.
"Tell them that failure to take control of Yakuza shipping matters is not acceptable," the older man announced implacably. "We MUST cut their source of funding first of all now. Without money, the organization will fall into chaos."
"Yes, sir," the younger man nodded and headed for the door. "I'll get right on it!"
"Damn!" Ngawe pounded his fist into the mattress again and again. "DAMN THEM!"
~~~~~~~~
Mayeda looked up from his reading the Tokyo newspaper at the knock on his office door. "What is it?"
"Mayeda-sama," one of the minor soldiers assigned to his operation came briskly into the room and bowed. "We have word that our warehouse in Long Beach was broken into last night - about an hour after we finished moving all the supplies from there to the new facility."
"US Customs or FBI?" he asked, running his fingers over his moustache.
"No sir. The men who broke in were all black, sir, and they weren't speaking English."
Mayeda frowned. "No idea who they were?"
The unnamed soldier merely shook his head. "No sir. They looked around for a long time - really searched carefully - then just left."
"Thank you, that will be all," the Yakuza boss dismissed his soldier and stared at the far wall and the serene scroll of bamboo done in the start blacks and whites of sumi-e ink for a long moment. Then, with a sigh, he dialed a lengthy number and waited, then spoke in rapid-fire Japanese. "I need to speak to Ueda-sama, dozo - immediately."
There was a very long wait, and then Ueda finally came on the line. "It is very late, Masa-san. This had better be important."
"Gomen nasai, Ueda-sama - but it seems there is a major problem here that you need to be aware of. Our Long Beach arms warehouse, or the one we used to have, was raided today - by African-looking people NOT speaking English." Mayeda gave his news as succinctly as he knew how. "We are stumped as to who would have done this..."
"Triumverate," Ueda pronounced with a defeated tone overlaying the fatigue of having been pulled out of bed. "They're the only ones who would try such a thing."
"Especially since Miss Parker assured me that we would have a window of two days before she was going to call in her government's law enforcement," Mayeda reminded his boss.
"Ngawe is certainly working on upping the stakes in this little fracas," Ueda sighed. "Keep me informed of any other movement, and in the name of all the gods and spirits, continue to relocate all our assets there in your area! It appears Miss Parker's warning about her own internal fracas may be playing out in our best interests in the long run."
"That it does," Mayeda agreed easily, then said, "Once more, gomen nasai for awakening you, but this was important enough, I thought, to warrant the interruption."
"Good night, Masa-san," Ueda yawned.
"Good night, Ueda-sama."
Mayeda put the phone back on the hook and began toying with his moustache again. Yes indeed, Miss Parker's problems had worked out to Yakuza advantage. Had all those guns fallen into other hands, it would have been a major blow to the organization - and probably cost him a thumb. The thin man rubbed his hands together nervously, appreciating the presence of all ten fingers. The Yakuza, or at least his part of it, was now in Miss Parker's debt - and he would have to see what he could do to discharge this matter of honor as soon as possible.
~~~~~~~~
Ikeda carefully stowed his briefcase in the overhead compartment and took his seat by the window, looking out across the broad expanse of runways to the Los Angeles skyline that he could see. His flight for Chicago was almost ready to depart, and he had nearly ten more hours before he'd be able to settle into a hotel room and get some decent rest.
America was the LAST place he wanted to be, and certainly he'd had no plans to return so soon after his last visit. He put his face in his open palm and stared out at the runway without seeing anything, wondering idly if the American authorities had figured out that at least one of those killings in Delaware had been an outside job. And here he was, heading right back into the middle of that mess.
All through the last fourteen-hour flight, he'd been racking his brain trying to think of a way out of his current dilemma. His primary loyalty was to the Yakuza and their interests - which meant that if he were to follow those instincts, he'd rest up, head for the hospital, take out Ngawe, and then head home again without a second thought. But he'd been in the employ of Ngawe for years now, feeding the Triumverate internal information on the financial strengths and weaknesses that he'd discovered in the Yakuza as a whole and the Tokyo branch in particular. He'd accepted sizeable payments from Nairobi for his information - payments he really DIDN'T want to have to account for in the end. If he were to honor the connections those payments represented, he'd let Ngawe know that there was a contract on his life - and that his not acting on that contract constituted his severing all ties with the African organization.
Should the Yakuza find out about his treachery, there was no place he could hope to hide. If he actually killed Ngawe, again there would be no place he would be able to hide from another set of determined hunters. He couldn't just disappear - his reputation as an assassin was well-enough known in the crime syndicate circles that his appearing to settle permanently in America would be perceived as his announce his free agency, which again would amount to a death sentence.
There was only one option that seemed even remotely open to him - and that represented a significant risk of its own. It had been his shot that had removed Raines-san from the Chairman's seat at the Centre, making room for the current administration. Perhaps the woman who had often and obviously sat in opposition to Raines' administration could be prevailed upon to offer sanctuary in return for information on BOTH the Yakuza and Triumverate.
That would make him, Ikeda Katsuhito, tenth generation samurai and fourth generation ninja, ronin - a warrior without a master, a man without honor.
He closed his eyes. At least he'd be alive, though...
Chapter 5: Lines in the Sand
Ikeda held the little stick of incense to the candle's flame until it lit, then shook the flame away so that the end only smoldered. With a bow first, he put the stick end down into the ash bed of the incense holder that stood in front of the small metal statue of a seated Buddha. As ritual demanded, he took up the wooden stick and tapped the sides of the little golden meditation bell so that the clear sound reverberated through the room, then arranged himself comfortably on his heels in front of the low altar shelf to settle into meditation.
This morning ritual, drilled into him since childhood and abandoned as useless for so many years, had become a comfort to him in the days since his return from America. Many had been the times that he'd slyly teased Fujimori-san for his discipline and perseverance, only now to understand just how this quiet time of introspection could clear the mind. And now, more than ever, he desperately needed that mental clarity if he were going to see where his next steps were going to take him.
His position within the Yakuza organization had never phased him. He had trained for years in the use of many weapons and techniques to disarm, disable and kill - and then been given the status and opportunity to use those skills on the generally nefarious and unprincipled. He did not regret his killings, for the most part - most of those people had, by their own actions, assured their own violent ends one way or the other. He was only the instrument through which the power of Karma acted.
His passing along information on the Yakuza and its dealings to the Triumverate also had generally not phased him either. Both groups dealt with the underbelly of their societies - and neither stood on any moral high ground to claim insult except by virtue of any traditional expectations of loyalty. The Triumverate, after all, was mostly a money-dispensing agency that made it possible for its stockholders and investors to reap huge profits by the quickest and most dependable means - means that often included criminal activity. Helping the Triumverate protect it's investment in the Yakuza had never presented a conflict of loyalties before.
But the phone call that had just ended put that comfortable balancing act very much into jeopardy. He had genuinely hoped never to hear that cell phone ring again...
"Mushi-mushi..."
"Please hold for Ngawe," had come the heavily accented voice from the other end. Ikeda had sighed - it took a great deal of concentration to understand this form of English.
"Mr. Ikeda," another voice had spoken into his ear, more musical, more regal.
"Ngawe-sama, it is good to hear your voice. I was sorry to hear..."
"News will be reaching your Mr. Ueda shortly that Mr. Sonny Tanaka is no longer among the living," Ngawe had interrupted and then got straight to the point. "You will keep us appraised of any actions to be taken in answer to this event."
Ikeda had been silent. This new directive was in contradiction to the terms of the agreement he had made with the former head of the Triumverate, Mr. Mutombo, when he agreed to provide inside information to them for a hefty price. "I see," he had replied eventually in a very cautious tone.
"Do you have a problem with this task?" Ngawe had demanded, hearing the less-than-enthusiastic response.
"Yes, sir. If you will investigate the terms under which I agreed to work for your organization, I specified that I would never directly betray the Yakuza." Ikeda was in a corner; only the truth would suffice. "Your current request demands precisely that."
"You are extremely well-paid to forget the terms under which you began to work for us," Ngawe's voice had risen slightly as the elderly African's temper began to ignite.
"I recently checked my overseas account, and I note that I have yet to be compensated for the information I gave you while in America," the assassin had retorted very calmly. "In fact, I believe that I will relinquish that payment in lieu of submitting notice of resignation. I will not betray Yakuza."
"Now you listen to us, you hired gun," Ngawe had growled. "You do NOT want to oppose us right now. We intend to..."
"I wish you a speedy recovery, Ngawe-sama. We will not be speaking again. Sayonara." Ikeda had quickly disconnected the call and immediately turned off the cell phone. He had stripped the battery pack from the device and dropped the rest of it into his trash compactor with the day's garbage and crushed it.
And now he sat in front of his altar, the scent of sandalwood wafting gently through the room, and contemplated his options. Were he to report the call to Ueda-sama, at best he'd lose a thumb - at worst, he'd be wrapped in chains and dumped off the end of a dock into Tokyo Bay. He could keep his covert dealings a secret - provided that there wasn't another Triumverate mole in the Yakuza whose next order would be to betray him.
No, his future included neither Yakuza nor Triumverate.
Which, at the moment, left him nowhere to turn.
~~~~~~~~
"Here's to the conquering hero, returning from fighting the evil Centre on it's own ground," Jay toasted with his water goblet held high over his appetizingly full plate. "May they all rot in Hell."
"Here, here!" Margaret joined in the toast with her goblet raised high as well. She looked around the table, seeing the varying reactions to the toast. "C'mon, people. Let's toast our freedom!"
Em glanced at Jarod at the other end of the table and noted that he wasn't even looking up anymore. And while she was seriously tempted to join in the toast to Jarod's return, she knew that wishing everyone in Delaware ill would not sit well with her brother. "Mother..." she groaned in frustration.
Ethan merely sat back in his chair and shook his head at the entire display, unwilling to join in wishing ill to either his half-sister or his little nephew.
Nathan, Em's handsome husband, looked from one face to the other in some confusion. "Say, Jar, what's going on here?" he asked finally. "I thought that was why you went Back East - to take down the Centre."
Jarod finally looked up. At least his brother-in-law wasn't making any bones about his curiosity. "That's right," he replied evenly, refusing to even look at his mother. "And in the end, the Centre that we've all been so afraid of is gone." Now he looked directly at his younger brother - a cloned mirror of himself twenty years younger - and glared. "But I don't wish those who survived ill, and I won't join in a toast that does so." Finally he turned his glare to his mother. "And YOU should know better."
"What the hell..." Jay began, his brow curling together.
"How dare you!" Margaret hissed at her oldest.
"How dare YOU!" Jarod hissed back. "That's your grandson you're wishing to rot in Hell, if you hadn't noticed..."
"What?!" The exclamation of surprise burst from both Nathan and Jay.
"It seems we haven't heard the latest," Em patted her husband on the arm gently. "It seems that Jarod found out that he has a son while he was back there."
"Why the hell didn't you bring the kid back with you?" Jay demanded in angry confusion. "He didn't need to be left behind..."
"I left Davy with his mother," Jarod explained after taking a deep breath. "I would never take a child from his mother - and YOU of ALL people should appreciate that!" he glared at Margaret again.
"That bitch..." she muttered, then looked up at him challengingly. "Tell them who his mother IS, then," she dared him.
"They... The Centre created a child out of genetic material taken from me... and Miss Parker," he said clearly and carefully, keeping his mother's gaze firmly held by his own. "She thought all this time he was her little half-brother - but we uncovered the truth while she was HELPING ME put things in motion to bring down Raines and Lyle."
Jay had backed away from some of his ire as the details began to come clear to him. Not for the first time did he remember that odd day when the beautiful woman came into his space at Donoterase, telling him it was OK to cry and that she'd known someone just like him. "She helped you take down the Centre?" he asked quietly.
"Yeah," Jarod answered, his head held high. "And so did Sydney and Broots - and Miss Parker's sweeper, Sam." He looked around the room. "Yes, I could have managed it all by myself - but it worked out better when I had help."
"And this Miss Parker," Nathan's blond head was still swiveling from face to face around the table, trying to understand the dynamics involved. "She's..."
"The bitch that chased him back and forth around the world for years," Margaret's voice was bitter. "And now he's going back to HER..."
"What?" Jay burst out. "You're going... back?"
"Mommy, Unka Jarod going away again?" little Sammy's voice was the first to sound genuinely sorrowful.
Finally Em's limit had been reached. "Thanks, Mom - we were going to try to break it to Sammy gently, but you just HAD to get that barb in, didn't you?" She glared at her mother in frustration and bent to comfort her son.
"Sugar-coating it isn't going to change the facts," Margaret retorted defensively, stung that her grandson's tears were getting more sympathy than her point was. "The fact is that Jarod has decided that those people in Delaware mean more to him than..."
"STOP IT!" Jarod bellowed, fully angry now. "Mother, with all due respect, you're..." He sighed heavily instead of saying the hurtful words that were on the tip of his tongue. Neither his father nor Sydney would have approved. "I would have thought that having a son and not being able to see him or be with him all those years would help you understand how I feel - but..." Jarod sighed. From the expression in her eyes, he realized he could rail at his mother and yet never reach her.
"You know, I guess that the only way for me to handle this is just to put it out there and let each of you deal with it as you see fit. Yes, I'm going back to Delaware - to stay. I have a son, and I happen to be in love with my son's mother. I don't love them more than any of you, but I don't love them any less either. My only thought here is that I want to be with the woman I love and my son - and to do that, I have to go there. Miss Parker is now the Chairman of the Centre. Her job is there."
"You have a practice HERE," Margaret reminded him angrily, tossing her red and silver head.
"Yes, I do. I will be talking with Ethan tomorrow about whether we'll be looking for a new partner to take over my half of the practice, or whether we'll close the office and he'll find another practice to join." Jarod looked up at Ethan and found his half-brother nodding his head calmly.
"You're going back to the Centre?!" Jay asked, dumbfounded. "After all these years and all that talk about how they're so evil..."
"Miss Parker is working to change all that. Raines and Lyle are dead - which means that the only people with any unethical agendas are out of the picture." Jarod reached out to his younger brother. "I have a chance to help make the Centre into what it should have been all along. I can't just walk away."
Nathan shook his head and sat back in his chair. "Well, for what it's worth, Jar, I don't blame you. A man needs to be with his son." He reached over and ruffled the hair of his own boy as Sammy huddled against his mother's side. "Em, what do you think?"
"I think we need to let Jarod decide how and where he lives his life," the brunette said after some thought. "I don't like it that he'll be moving so far away from the rest of us - but nothing says that we can't visit, or that he can't come visit us. It isn't as if he's walking off the face of the planet..."
"Thanks, Em," Jarod smiled at his sister. "That means a lot."
"What would your father say?" Margaret tossed out, seeing the tide of opinion slowly turn against her utter rejection of Jarod's plans toward reluctant acceptance. It was quite possibly the only trump card she knew would make her oldest son stop and think.
But she was wrong. Jarod turned his warm and sad chocolate eyes to her. "Mom, I think Dad would understand why I have to do this. He'd understand, like Nathan does, that a man should be with his son." He wished he could make this easier on her. "And with the woman he loved."
Her beautiful blue eyes filled with tears. "How can you love her, Jarod? She chased you for years - shot at you..."
Jarod's lips turned up at the edges. "She was my best friend when we were younger, and no matter what else happened between us, she was still my best friend. And when she shot at me, if she'd been aiming AT me, she would have hit me. She's too good not to have." Now he smirked. "If I remember correctly, Sydney used to tell me about the bad time her father and brother gave her every time her gun “misfired” or “jammed”."
"She's a Parker - and Parkers aren't to be trusted." The statement was absolute.
"She CAN be," Jarod shook his head gently. "I just hope that one day you'll see that."
~~~~~~~~
The darkness was like a gentle ocean upon which he floated in timeless comfort. And yet, now, new/old sensations teased at the edges of his perception - a heaviness slowly overtook him and dragged him down. He took a breath, and then another, and found that he was starting to see through the darkness - a dim glow of light beyond a barrier. He tried to move and yet was prevented; something was holding him down tightly and yet comfortably.
Finally he took a deep breath and let the light tickle his eyelids into moving, first a little bit, and then more and more until they fluttered open. Fujimori blinked several times, then sighed in deep frustration to find himself still trapped in the same hospital room he'd tried to escape through seppuku. He lifted his head slowly and saw that his wrist - carefully bandaged from where he'd torn his own flesh open - was cuffed in softly padded leather and buckled to the railings on either side of his bed.
He let his head fall back into his pillow in defeat. His Karma must be strong to have kept him trapped in this lifetime rather than floating towards a new rebirth - hopefully into a life where he'd never hear the word “Yakuza.”
There was movement to his left, and with growing horror he watched the man who had been sitting quietly in a chair rose to his feet. This was a new observer - gai-jin, not African - but the idea that he had no privacy at all was distressing. The gai-jin came over to look down into his face, the foreign-looking non-Japanese features utterly inscrutable. "You're awake," the man said in smooth American English.
Fujimori moved his lips, but no noise arose.
The gai-jin reached for the water pitcher and poured a little in a glass, then held it so that he could capture the straw in his mouth and pull a little of the refreshingly wet liquid.
"Thank you." His voice was a whisper from dryness and disuse.
"My boss has some questions for you," the gai-jin nodded in apparent satisfaction. "Now don't you go anywhere before I get back..." He walked from the room chortling softly to himself.
Fujimori's brow curled weakly. He most definitely was NOT in the mood for jokes.
~~~~~~~~
Ueda read the memo that his assistant had handed him after a most abject bow, then looked up at the man sharply. "How could such a thing have happened?"
"We have no way of knowing, Ueda-sama. The gai-jin authorities had placed Tanaka-sama in a prison with no other members of the Yakuza in the immediate area, so we have no information resources other than what we can gather from the police databases themselves." Konde Hiro shrugged his shoulders. He had joined the Yakuza in the days after Tommy's father had received his jail sentence - and while he understood the traditional loyalty Yakuza felt toward their own while incarcerated, Sonny Tanaka had been gone from the organization long enough that he really didn't care.
"Unacceptable," Ueda shook his head. "It cannot be mere coincidence that Sonny spend over nine years in this prison, calmly minding his own business and serving his term, only to suddenly be dragged into a dark corner and done away with in this fashion."
"You don't suppose that this is Centre retaliation for..."
Ueda was already shaking his head more vigorously. "I heard from Mayeda-san late last night. I seriously doubt that a Centre bent on revenge would be fully reimbursing us our deposits on contracts, with interest, no less."
"Hmmmmm." Konde had to admit that the chances of both actions being taken by the same chain of command were very slim. "Who then?"
"If I had to put money on a candidate," Ueda pronounced carefully, "I'd guess that we are starting to see the consequences of having harmed the head of the Triumverate without actually having killed him." He waved the memo. "Something tells me we'd have been better off killing him."
"We could always call in Ikeda-san to take care of that. That IS what he does best, you know..." Konde suggested.
"I don't think so," Ueda shook his head. "If I were Ngawe, and I were pissed because some ronin dropped a building on me to the point that I wanted to take out the ronin's entire operation, I think the FIRST thing I'd do would be to get myself into as invulnerable a place and position as I could."
"And where is this Ngawe now?" Konde asked pointedly. "With all due respect, Ueda-sama, but do we even know?"
"We know, Hiro-san. He's in the same hospital that Fujimori's in - the one in Dover."
"And are hospitals invulnerable, sir?" Konde asked again. "Perhaps a strategic strike at the head of the serpent will save us all a LOT of trouble."
Ueda stared at Konde for a moment, the pushed the button on his intercom. "Reiko-san, have Ikeda Katsuhito come to my office as soon as possible." He nodded to his assistant and gestured for the man to take a seat. "Perhaps you have a point. Let's see what Ikeda-san himself has to say about the idea."
~~~~~~~~
"This is Sydney."
"What do you do when you want to disown your own mother, Sydney?" Jarod grumbled into the handset of his phone in utter frustration.
"I'm doing fine, Jarod, thanks for asking," the Belgian smiled back into the phone.
Jarod sighed. "I'm sorry, Sydney."
"I take it that your mother is being no more reasonable with you on that side of the country than she was while you were here?" Sydney leaned back into his comfortable recliner in the den and let the footrest come up and support his legs.
"Not one inch."
"Did you really expect her to see it your way that easily?" he asked the younger man in his best professional tone.
"Why won't she listen to reason?" the Pretender complained bitterly.
"Because this goes beyond the bounds of reason, Jarod - this is a matter of the heart, not the head," Sydney explained patiently. "We talked about some of this before you left. Your mother is still dealing with the death of your father, and now with the idea that you're going to be walking out of her day-to-day life too. From the sounds of things, her time on the run and looking for you has made her a bit unstable emotionally."
"And how!" Jarod inserted in disgust.
"In which case," Sydney continued in almost a lecturer's cadence, "the most effective course of treatment would be to slowly and consistently bring her existing support network to her attention, and repeat the lesson often enough that she remembers that they're there." He slipped his glasses from his face and rubbed his tired eyes. "She is so focused on what YOU'RE up to that she's forgetting that she has all the rest of her children around her. You need to help her remember them."
The younger man mulled over his mentor's words and then filed them for further inspection a little later. "I never thought, when I was dreaming of putting my family back together, that I'd end up with this kind of mess!"
Sydney chuckled. "That sounds a lot like Kevin wondering to me if family life was always as chaotic as ours has been," he explained, still laughing softly. "Neither of you has really had much to work with other than an ideal model - reality is far more interesting, and complicated." He wiped a hand over his face to rid himself of the trickling hilarity from the corners of his eyes. "What about the rest of your family - am I mistaken in that I'm NOT hearing you gripe about any of the others?"
"Actually, the rest were like Em - not very happy about the development, but could see my point in the end." Jarod stretched himself out on his bed, amazed at how comfortable he got almost immediately. "The only one seriously upset besides Mom is Sammy - and that's because he's afraid I'll miss his birthday party next week."
"And Sammy is..."
"Em's little boy - he turns five."
Sydney was quiet for a long moment. "Another thing you might try with your mother is to simply be patient and consistent in letting her know that no matter how desperate her histrionics might get, you ARE going to be moving to Delaware. I would be willing to guess that she's currently hoping that if she makes life miserable enough for you in the short term, you'll change your mind." He paused and thought again. "Of course, hopefully she'll begin to see that she's making her own suffering by trying to hang onto you so tightly - but you may still want to enlist the help of a grief counselor for her. I think we mentioned that a while back too..."
"I want to talk to Em about that first," Jarod nodded against his pillow. Now it was his turn to think. "How are things on your end? I understand you and Davy met head to head..."
"Like father, like son," Sydney smiled. "He misses you desperately and didn't know how to communicate it properly."
"So you turned on your nice, quiet, Inquisitor's voice, pulled your lethal “bad-guy/good-guy” number on him and got him quaking in his boots?"
Now the older psychiatrist laughed out loud. "Is that how you describe it?"
"No," Jarod chuckled back. "When I think of the rather small number of times you did that to me, I generally lump them under “I really, REALLY pissed Sydney off that time!” and then promise myself all over again NEVER to try whatever set you off like that again."
"As long as it worked..."
Jarod whistled low. "Oh, it worked, alright. You usually had me ready to agree to almost anything to get the real you back. You must not have lost your touch - Parker was telling me tonight that Davy had confided in her that he'd “REALLY made Grandpa mad.” She mentioned you'd pulled it on her once too - I didn't know that..."
"That happened after you left," Sydney left the explanation at that. He still felt guilty at the way his discipline had been the final push that had sent Miss Parker into a minor nervous breakdown, despite the real benefits that had eventually come from it in the long run.
Sydney's reticence was clear, and Jarod obligingly dropped the subject. Instead: "How's Kevin?"
"Still thoroughly impressed with his first trip to the cinema," Sydney chuckled again. "Deb took him to see some action/adventure show."
"I can imagine." Jarod was chuckling now too. "I remember my first time in a movie theatre - I couldn't figure out how projecting the movie onto such a huge screen would be anything but out of focus."
"Deb, bless her little pointed head, has also decided that she's going to teach him to like junk food..." the older man complained with a fond smile as he thought of the interesting discussion he and his granddaughter had had over the supper table. "She's already got him addicted to popcorn while watching movies..."
"I'll have to suggest PEZ and Pop Tarts..." Jarod grinned, knowing exactly what the younger Pretender was going through and appreciating the help that Kevin would get that he hadn't in his early days of freedom.
"Don't you DARE!" Sydney was aghast. "That young man needs a tasty and BALANCED diet to make up for that tasteless nutritional swill..."
"I'm kidding, Sydney," Jarod soothed, still chuckling, "at least, I am, more or less. I think one of the things all escaped Pretenders have to contend with is an insatiable sweet tooth. You might as well give up - between Deb's determination and Kevin's deprivation, you're doomed..." The Pretender continued to chuckle for a bit, then sobered. "Thanks, Sydney. I needed that spot of trivial nonsense to put the mess here into perspective."
"I've done my good deed for the day, then - and with that, I think I'm going to call it a night," the older man announced. "I wish you luck with your mother - I wish I could help more."
"You've helped a lot more than you know. And now, just take care of yourself and help me take care of Parker and Davy," Jarod said softly. "I need you all to be safe and secure for when I get back. Give them all my love when you see them."
"That I can do. Goodnight, Jarod."
"Sleep well, Sydney. Goodnight."
~~~~~~~~
Ueda nodded at his security, who reached out and opened the door to let Ikeda Katsuhiro - elite assassin to the Tokyo Yakuza - come into the office. The man was impeccably attired in a somber navy business suit and blazingly white shirt, and his dark eyes were calm and cold. Ikeda walked sedately to just in front of the huge desk of his superior and bowed deeply. "You sent for me, Ueda-sama?"
"Hai. I have a new assignment for you - one that could prove to be dangerous." Ueda watched the face of his best assassin carefully as he motioned the man to have a seat.
Ikeda and others like him had always been an enigma to him. It was one thing to be in charge of or participating in decidedly criminal activities wherein the victim ultimately brings his/her fate upon themselves - it was quite another to willingly shoulder the responsibility for taking the life of another, regardless of the reason given. Having come up through the ranks of Yakuza, he appreciated the valuable resource such dangerous men represented, but he never made the mistake of taking either their loyalty or unquestioning complicity for granted.
For his part, Ikeda focused his mind carefully on the intake and outtake of air into his lungs to maintain the illusion of serenity. To get this summons so soon after Ngawe's call was unnerving - something he couldn't afford to let his boss know at all. "I am your servant, Ueda-sama, as always. What is it that you wish me to do?"
"What do you know of the organization called The Triumvirate?"
The assassin brutally disciplined himself to keep from glancing up into his boss' face in stark surprise and discomfort. Appearing only to sort through his thoughts, he resisted the urge to panic at the idea that Ueda had found out something after all. "The Triumvirate," he replied in a deceptively calm voice, "began as a consortium of wealthy businessmen from Nigeria, Uganda and Rwanda seeking a means of investing their money outside the continent of Africa and making a profit. Their portfolio of investments has never been particularly discriminatory as to the mechanics of making a profit provided that the profit is sizeable and in a timely manner."
"I wasn't expecting a history lesson," Ueda said shortly, then relented somewhat. "Although I appreciate some of that information. It explains a great deal. However," he leaned back in his chair expectantly, "I was looking for how much you know about the current hierarchy."
Ikeda nodded and took a deep breath. "Each country's bloc of voting businessmen send an elected representative to Nairobi, and then the entire consortium membership votes on which one of those three men they feel is most qualified to lead the Triumvirate. At the moment, the leader is a man named Ngawe - a former arms dealer from Nigeria. His immediate two associates are Ugo Agunde, a diamond speculator from Rwanda, and Chele M'basa, a banker from Uganda."
Ueda gazed at his assassin with frank amazement. "You know a great deal about them, it seems," he commented quietly.
"Tanaka-sama made a point of keeping me informed of when my current assignment might run me afoul of this organization or his agendas..." Ikeda answered easily. Telling the truth was so much safer than lying. "...especially in the unsettling days after the unfortunate assassination of the previous leader, a Mr. Timoto Mutumbo." He could finally look his boss in the eye without a hint of expression in either his face or eyes.
"Hmmm," Ueda nodded slowly, content with the explanation. Tanaka-sama had run his house quite differently, the new Yakuza boss knew all too well - and very likely had taken Ikeda-san into confidence with some of this information. "This Ngawe-sama, it seems, was in Delaware when a rather ill-conceived plan of Tanaka-sama went awry. The bomb that was supposed to take out the Centre was set off while Ngawe was on a visit to the Centre facility."
"He was one of the ones rescued, was he not?" Ikeda asked carefully, knowing that the names of the people rescued from the rubble of the tower had been made public long ago.
"My sources say that yes, he was rescued - but not without serious injury, and without starting to nurse a serious grudge against us." Ueda sighed. "And, it seems, he has ordered a first strike on our people to make that point plain to us. Tanaka Setsuo was killed in prison late last night."
"Indeed!" As Ngawe himself had predicted, the news had traveled fast.
"I have decided that our answer to this outrage needs to be as outrageous as the injury dealt us," Ueda pronounced, and then leaned forward to hand his assassin a glossy packet of papers. "This is a round-trip ticket back to Delaware. I want you to see to it that this Ngawe finds his way to his ancestors... with all due haste."
Ikeda took the tickets hesitantly. "You want me to eliminate the leader of the Triumverate?" he asked, wanting to make absolutely sure that he had understood Ueda's intent.
"Your plane leaves in three hours," the Tokyo Yakuza boss stated grimly. "Be sure you don't miss your flight - and be sure your actions in this matter do NOT come under scrutiny of any kind. We are killing a serpent by lopping off its head before it bites us -we don't need to be smothered when the coils wrap themselves around us mindlessly."
Ikeda stood and bowed deeply. "I am your servant, Ueda-sama."
"Good hunting. That will be all."
Ikeda bowed again and walked from the office on legs that trembled inside with the knowledge that at that point, no matter which way he turned, he was a walking dead man.
~~~~~~~~
The noisy jangling of the telephone next to the bed penetrated with the diplomacy of a hand grenade the soft dream Berringer was having of seducing his favorite showgirl. Grunting as the vision of seductive breasts and thighs awaiting his touch evaporated into sheets and bedspreads, the Nevadan rolled over and fumbled for the handset. "It's only..." He glanced at his travel clock on the nightstand. "...seven o'clock in the damned morning - so whatever this is better be life-threatening..."
"Have you heard from Santini yet?" Flores demanded in an unreasonably awake and functioning voice, considering the amount of tequila the two of them had put down the night before.
"Wha... Gil!" Berringer propped himself up on an elbow. "What the hell do you think you're doing, waking me up at this hour..."
"Have you heard from Santini yet?" the Hispanic repeated in a less-patient tone.
"No, of course I haven't - Christ! We only talked to him yesterday, and he told us he was going to have to talk to his superiors about it. I honestly don't expect to hear anything much before tomorrow, if you wanna know the truth - which you probably don't..."
Flores was up and pacing, his cell phone held tightly to his ear. "The longer he takes..."
"Something neither of us can help," Berringer reminded him pointedly.
"...the more chance that Parker bitch has to put us in a box. I've got Miguel convinced to keep an eye on the main office, but..."
"Shit!" Berringer rolled himself to a sitting position off the edge of the bed. "Have you lost your mind? We can't afford to bring in too many players on this, Gil - the conflicting interests and promises won't do us a bit of good."
"I trust Miguel to keep the place secure until we get back," Flores insisted belligerently. "I've even got him stealing a shipment of dope from the Yakuza as payment for services rendered."
Berringer put his face in his empty hand and shook his head. "You're running off with this, and your impatience is going to get us all killed - by the Yakuza if not by Parker herself."
"Yeah? Well all this sit around and wait crap is driving me crazy!"
"Do you want to do this right or not?" Berringer demanded in a very quiet and dangerous tone.
"Stu..."
"Don't Stu... me. You listen to me and you listen good! You're going to sit on your hands and not make anymore phone calls until we hear back from Eddie - and THEN we'll start making plans."
"That could take days..." Flores waved his hands impotently in the air.
"Better it take days than get us both killed, asshole!" Berringer spat, rapidly running out of patience with his former protégé. "We're playing for pretty damned big stakes here - and we gotta keep our wits about us if we're going to stand the least chance of winning."
"What about if we..."
"No, Gil. No more. I'm with you if you want to take out the Parker woman and get our operations back to full capacity - but if you're going to play loose cannon, shooting your mouth off and pushing first one hot button and then the next, you're on your own." The Nevadan rose. "Listen to me. Sit tight - and meet me downstairs for coffee in fifteen minutes. Do you think you can do THAT right?"
Berringer heard the click of the call disconnecting and slammed the telephone handset back into the cradle. Flores was going to screw everything up if somebody didn't tie that little bastard down and sit on him, hard! He went to the dresser and pulled fresh underwear from a drawer and stomped off toward the shower. He needed to do SOMETHING to help calm him down before he throttled that little bastard at first sight in the coffee shop this morning...
Maybe a hot shower would cool down his temper. Maybe not...
~~~~~~~~
Tyler pulled his coupe to a stop in front of the little store and climbed out. It was his turn to stop and get coffee for Miss Parker, Sam and himself - their eight-thirty meeting to bring each other up to speed before the day got started was rapidly becoming a set part of the day's agenda - and this combination deli and mini-mart was the best place to get it. Besides, Miss Parker had mentioned in passing yesterday, with an odd little smile, that this little store had a new early-morning cashier...
"Hey there!" Deb smiled at him as she tied on her apron.
"Ah! So this is what she meant when she said that your mornings were now taken," he smiled at her, leaning on the counter next to the register.
"She who?"
He waved his hand dismissively. "Don't worry about it. I'll just thank her for the clue."
"OK..." she shrugged and then reached behind herself. "What can I do for you?" she asked saucily, pulling her long braid from beneath the fabric neck strap with a casual hand.
"Three coffees will do it for now," he drawled in a thicker accent. "But maybe I could interest you in something after work tonight?"
Deb tossed a surprised smile at him as she busied herself with pouring and capping three cups of steaming liquid. "Oh? What are you thinking?"
He turned on his brightest grin. "I don't know - I was thinking maybe... dinner in Dover?"
"Dinner, huh?" she pondered as she rang up the coffee purchase on the register. "That'll be three seventy-five."
He dug in his wallet for the four dollar bills. "Yeah - there's a really nice Texas-style steak house that I haven't had an excuse to patronize for the last month or so. I thought maybe that would give you a break from cooking for a change."
"That would be kinda nice," she admitted, then smiled up at him as she handed him quarter change. "Do you want me to meet you there, or..."
"Oh, let me do the driving," Tyler insisted with a flashing smile.
"It's just that I'm already in Dover to visit my Dad in the afternoons..."
"How's he doing?" Tyler inquired, very aware that this girl's father's health was a big concern of his boss as well.
She merely shrugged, not quite concealing her worry. "Same as always - still out. The doctors think another week like this, and then they'll let him wake up again."
"Still..." He couldn't help seeing her worry and wanting to do something to distract her. "How about I pick you up at Parker's dad's house at about... what? Six-thirty? That IS where you're staying lately, right?"
Deb tipped her head, not used to hearing Sydney referred to as Miss Parker's dad. "Yeah. Sounds good to me - gives me a chance to set them up for eats before I leave."
Tyler's dark brows pulled together a bit. "This is supposed to be getting you OUT of the kitchen, little lady," he complained.
"Grandpa isn't ready to take up cooking yet, and Kevin would probably burn water," she told him with a fond smile. "I don't want them to starve..."
"I know - I'll suggest that Miss Parker bring pizza home to them after work," he grinned in pride at having thought through a solution. "That'll feed the “boys” and still get you out of the kitchen."
"Alright," Deb grinned back at him. "I'll see you at six-thirty then."
"Yes, ma'am!" Tyler tugged at his forelock politely and shot a glance down the aisle to where Curt, the sweeper Sam had assigned to Deb and Kevin, watched his every move with an eagle eye. He waved at the man and smiled when the sweeper waved back slightly in surprise, then took his cardboard carrier of coffee and backed out the door, winking at Deb as he left.
The day was certainly starting out well.
~~~~~~~~
Sam listened to the sweeper assigned to listen in on the telephone conversations of Flores and Berringer with a growing grin. Flores was proving to be a loose cannon even to his confederate in mutiny - and knowing this was going to make things very interesting. He glanced over at the co-opted kitchen clock that now hung on his office wall and saw that he had about ten minutes yet before he was expected in Miss Parker's office for coffee and updates.
"If you have a number for that cell phone, get a trace into that as well," he instructed his man, "or bug it if you can. We want to keep as close track on where those men go and who they talk to as we can."
"We'll get the bugs into Berringer's and Flores' cell phone tonight after they go to sleep," the sweeper promised. "Those two tend to put down a healthy amount of tequila just before nighty-night time - we should be able to do the job without them being the wiser, now that we are starting to get a handle on the way they do things."
"See to it, then." Sam stood. "Check back in with me a lunchtime.
"Yes, sir."
Sam hung up the phone and ran his fingers through his thick, dark hair. If it weren't for the threat posed by those two clowns calling in mobsters of all shapes and sizes and ethnicities, this mutiny would be a joke. He yawned, still not entirely awake before his first cup of coffee for the day, and walked from his office down the corridor towards Miss Parker's.
"She in?" he asked the pretty Chinese secretary and was greeted with her wide smile.
"Yes, sir, Mr. Atlee. Go on in." She gestured gracefully towards the wooden door behind her desk and then returned her attention to the computer screen in front of her.
Sam looked back at Mei Chiang before he knocked on the door. He had to admit that Lyle had had good taste in secretaries - then grimaced at his own horrible and horrific wordplay. The girl was now virtually unique to the organization, one of the last of an entire group of Hong Kong Chinese girls brought to the Centre by Mr. Lyle that slowly had thinned through the years. Nobody ever asked the questions, and none of the surviving girls had ever offered theories as to where their compatriots had gone. But Mei Chiang had long since caught HIS eye - and only Miss Parker's rank had made him back away from trying to hire her himself.
Hire her nothing, he chided himself and deliberately turned and knocked on the door. One of these days, he was going to get brave and ask her out to dinner. Her slender form and soft, accented voice fascinated him. Sam blinked at the sound of Miss Parker's voice from within calling just a bit louder this time, "I said, come in," and then pushed through the door, shaking his head free of dreams that belonged at home and not at work.
"Flores is getting cagey," he announced to her as he found his regular seat in one of the chairs pulled up close to her desk. "He's using his cell phone more often - probably to avoid phone taps in the hotel itself." As the eyebrow cocked, he continued, "I'm having both his and Berringer's cells bugged tonight after they drink themselves into bed again."
"Ah," she nodded. "What's the latest from our daring duo?"
"Flores is getting really itchy for action too," Sam replied. "Report is that he claims to have a fellow named “Miguel” watching the LA office for him - and paid the guy by giving him information on a Yakuza drug shipment that, with Flores removing security, will be free for the grabbing."
"Wasn't he going to sell that shipment out to the feds instead?" Miss Parker asked quickly, perking up.
"From the sound of things, this guy is all over the map," Sam shook his head. "Even Berringer is starting to come to the conclusion that Flores is his own worst enemy. Surveillance at the hotel coffee shop report that they argued almost non-stop for forty-five minutes about all the different groups that have been called in to assist, and how easy it would be to slip up and give two of them the same carrot. Flores couldn't care less - he just wants something to DO. NOW."
"What did I miss?" Tyler asked as he came through the door, coffee carrier extended forward so that both of his companions could snag their morning fix as quickly as possible.
"Just that our Los Angeles supervisor is getting antsy and changing his mind about all kinds of things," Miss Parker informed him as she settled back into her chair, coffee cup cradled against her chest. "Yesterday he was going to let that Yakuza shipment go to the feds - and now he has it promised to his Mexican mob friends as payment for keeping an eye on OUR LA office."
"Yah don't say," Tyler drawled with a slow and mischievous grin growing on his face.
"The Texan has an idea," Sam announced solemnly.
"No duh," Miss Parker quipped dryly, although her smile dulled the words down to just another bit of banter. It was getting to be interesting, watching these two very efficient and capable men strive to out-do each other sometimes - other times inspire each other. "What are you thinking?" she asked Tyler then. "You look like the cat that ate the canary."
"Well, we WERE going to call the feds ourselves, weren't we?" Tyler answered her question with another and then grinned. "And the Yakuza are going to lose their shipment anyway, aren't they?"
"Hell, technically that's MY shipment - I've already paid for it!" Miss Parker frowned at him, then halted as his point suddenly became clear to her. "Oh, Tyler!" She began to smirk too.
"Oh c'mon!" Sam looked back and forth between them in frustration, utterly lost. "That's not fair!"
"I cain't he'p it if y'all's slow on the uptake, big guy," Tyler drawled back at him with a big smirking grin.
"Tyler..." Miss Parker glowered at him for a moment, then took pity on her Security Chief. "It's simple, Sam. Flores WAS going to call in the feds, and now he isn't - so we should call the feds in ourselves. They catch the Mexican mob ripping off the Yakuza - supposedly - and maybe make Mexican mob a bit skittish at pitching in much further on Flores' account."
"Not to mention get a healthy dose of real BAD stuff from hitting the streets," Tyler added seriously. "If we time it right, we could spill all our information on the LA office's dealings at about the same time - and it should be well within that two day timeframe that Miss Parker gave Mayeda before the feds act on THAT tip and start cleaning house for us."
"We'll have to time that just right," Sam mused aloud - if Flores and Berringer are footloose and fancy-free about the time the feds raid the LA office, and they find out about it, they'll be spooked and go to ground. We'll have a helluva time finding or figuring out just what their next move will be."
"What about calling another meeting of the supervisors?" Tyler suggested. "We haven't really let very many of them go yet - and we could give the excuse that we're in the process of finding some very real problems within the current organization."
"Too bad we can't just lock them up somewhere," Miss Parker grumbled. "I never thought I'd see the days when I wished that those cells down in SL-25 were still accessible!"
"We wouldn't have to hold them for long, would we?" Sam asked, looking back and forth for confirmation. "Couldn't we just turn them over when we call in the feds in the first place - as part of our show of dedication to “cleaning house” when we found corruption in the ranks?"
Miss Parker looked back and forth between her assistants. "I like it. OK. Tyler, make that supervisor's meeting happen - Sam, find someplace where we can keep these two jokers on ice until we call in the feds." She sat back and nodded in satisfaction. "We just gotta hang tough a little bit more..."
~~~~~~~~
Gillespie nodded to the agent currently sitting guard and suicide watch in the private hospital room. "Is he awake?"
"Yeah," the agent nodded with a knowing expression. "Don't let the closed eyes and even breathing fool you. He's been watching ME for about an hour now."
The FBI SAC nodded back and moved over to the side of the bed, pulling his ID from his pocket. "Mr. Fujimori, my name is Thomas Gillespie, and I'm Special Agent in Charge of the FBI office here in Dover. I have a few questions I'd like to ask you..."
"I no speekee Eenglich," Fujimori mimicked one of the more grossly obtuse semi-literate accents that he'd worked for years to overcome otherwise.
"Nice try, wise guy," Gillespie shook his head and pulled the chair next to the bed just a little bit closer and sat down. "A degree in foreign languages from Tokyo University and a certified translator speaks English just fine, I think." Hazel eyes bored unflinching holes into the ebony ones gazing up at him from the pillow. "Wanna try that again?"
"I have nothing to say to you," Fujimori sighed and turned his head to the side - the only way he could get the American lawman's face out of his sight.
"Well, let me see if I have all your information straight," Gillespie sighed and opened the file he had carried into the room with him and began to read. "Fujimori Torii, born Aug 13, 1964 in Nara Prefecture, graduated with honors 1986 from Tokyo University in foreign languages, first arrested in association with Yakuza activities March 23, 1983 for selling grades to fellow students. Many and sundry arrests follow graduation for mostly petty offenses, nothing that earned you very much jail time." Gillespie's hazel eyes narrowed. "But you were working your way up in the ranks - in 1992, Sonny Tanaka made you his second in command, a post that you held even after he was arrested here in the states and his son Tommy took over. You were here, with Tommy, at the Centre when the bomb went off. Did I miss anything?"
Fujimori kept his face averted and simply closed his eyes and sighed again wordlessly.
The FBI agent sighed too. "Well, let me run THIS past you and see if you still think silence is a great idea. We have evidence linking the detonator of the bomb that took out the Centre administration Tower to a research firm in Nagasaki - and our forensics boys have traced the chemical signature of the C-4 explosive to the same firm. That means the bomb that took out the Centre Tower originated in Japan - which in turn suggests a high probability of Yakuza complicity in the deaths of forty-two people at the very least. As a high-ranking member of said Yakuza present at the time of the explosion, that means that you may very well have to answer for those deaths."
Finally the Japanese could keep silent no longer. "You are not thinking logically, Mr. FBI. If Yakuza were responsible for planting the bomb at the Centre, then what was Mr. Tanaka himself doing IN the Centre when the bomb went off?" Ebony eyes became just as penetrating, and Gillespie held the gaze with difficulty.
"I haven't figured that out yet," he admitted with a small shrug, "but my gut still tells me I'm onto something here. What I'm really hoping you can help me with," he drew out a photograph and held it up so that Fujimori could see the face it pictured, "is this man. Any idea who he is?"
"You Americans all look the same to me." The man in the bed sighed in frustration, flinching inwardly to see Damien's face again - not to mention the damage that had been done in the process of trying to put the man down before he carried out his job, an effort utterly wasted. "Your guess is as good as mine."
Gillespie's brows rose. "You just don't know very much, do you?" He only paused a second because he knew that there was no response to that statement possible. It was the truth. "And, you know, I just really don't believe that you're THAT uninformed. Tanaka's second in command would probably be one of the MOST informed people in the area, by my thinking."
"Believe what you will," Fujimori sighed again.
The FBI agent just shook his head. This interview was going absolutely nowhere, and his patience was starting to be seriously stressed. "Explain to me this then: when my men got here, you were being - uh... I suppose the term is “guarded” - by security personnel answering to another victim of the Centre bombing: a Mr. Otamo Ngawe. I suppose you know nothing about that, either." He watched in dismay as the Japanese face turned away from him again. "Uh-huh. One last question: WHY did you try to kill yourself, Mr. Fujimori?"
"None of your business, Mr. Gillespie," Fujimori pronounced without inflection or accent - and without looking at the agent. "And now, if you will excuse me, I'm very tired." He closed his eyes again and silently began chanting his mantras again, deliberately pulling his attention from the room around him and the gai-jin in it.
Gillespie watched the Japanese patient for a long moment, then rose and moved his chair back against the wall. "You keep a GOOD eye on him," he directed the agent occupying the chair across the room. "No closed curtains except during doctor and nurse exams - no more suicide attempts. We want Mr. Fujimori to regain his health as quickly as possible."
"Yes, sir!" The seated agent uncrossed his legs and crossed them the other way, obviously settling down for a lengthy stay.
Fujimori heard the door of his room gently close but didn't lose the pace of his chanting. Even the presence of the other gai-jin FBI agent no longer registered, no longer mattered. They would get no willing offer of information from him - and he was ready for whatever else Karma and American justice had to throw at him. It just didn't matter anymore. Nothing did.
~~~~~~~~
Siskele waited until the nurse had finished raising the head of his uncle's bed and helping the elderly gentleman to sit up straighter before approaching. He could see the real reluctance and discomfort NOT having an African nurse was causing the older man, and he admired the grudging patience with which the care he was receiving was being accepted. Once the nurse finally finished her fussing and pushed through the door on her way back to the nurse's station, Siskele leaned in closer. "There is word, sir."
"Good!" Ngawe replied immediately. "Tell us."
"A small and elite group of our best men broke into the warehouse we were told was one of the major arms depots for the entire American end of the Yakuza last night..."
"Yes," the elderly man smiled widely. "And..."
Siskele shuddered. "Nothing, sir. The place was empty."
"WHAT?!" Ngawe thundered. "Our informant told us that this warehouse has been in continual use for over ten years now - were we misinformed as to location? What happened?"
The younger man shook his head. "There was plenty of evidence that the warehouse had been well-used, and not that long ago - but whatever HAD been stored there is now long gone. The office was absolutely empty of any paperwork on shipping or receiving. The place was completely cleaned out."
Ngawe glowered at his nephew, then took a deep breath and began to think. "Were they warned of our intents? Could there be a leak?"
"I don't know how, sir," Siskele shrugged, thoroughly stumped. "It isn't as if they can just plant one of theirs in our midst, you know..."
"Well..." The elderly African looked up with raised eyebrows. "We did manage to plant one of OURS with them, did we not?"
"Not exactly, sir. We simply paid one of theirs extremely well to give us information when we asked for it." Siskele knew it was dangerous to correct the head of the entire organization, but the point was an important one. "We have no one originally loyal to the Triumverate planted with the Yakuza."
"Damn!" Ngawe pounded his fist into the mattress next to his useless leg. "Then our next target will need to be a more sure one. The Yakuza have plenty of merchandise moving in and out of the LA port all the time - a good deal of it very expensive and highly sought after. Check the records we have and take control of as many of those shipments as we can. We must increase the pressure on these slant-eyed devils - and show them NEVER to do harm to our interests again." His eyes as he looked up at his nephew were burning with an internal fire. "We will make them pay many times over for what they've done - and then, when they have no more money to do business here, we will absorb them and crush them."
"Yes, sir." Siskele nodded, convinced by his uncle's fervor.
"Tell them that failure to take control of Yakuza shipping matters is not acceptable," the older man announced implacably. "We MUST cut their source of funding first of all now. Without money, the organization will fall into chaos."
"Yes, sir," the younger man nodded and headed for the door. "I'll get right on it!"
"Damn!" Ngawe pounded his fist into the mattress again and again. "DAMN THEM!"
~~~~~~~~
Mayeda looked up from his reading the Tokyo newspaper at the knock on his office door. "What is it?"
"Mayeda-sama," one of the minor soldiers assigned to his operation came briskly into the room and bowed. "We have word that our warehouse in Long Beach was broken into last night - about an hour after we finished moving all the supplies from there to the new facility."
"US Customs or FBI?" he asked, running his fingers over his moustache.
"No sir. The men who broke in were all black, sir, and they weren't speaking English."
Mayeda frowned. "No idea who they were?"
The unnamed soldier merely shook his head. "No sir. They looked around for a long time - really searched carefully - then just left."
"Thank you, that will be all," the Yakuza boss dismissed his soldier and stared at the far wall and the serene scroll of bamboo done in the start blacks and whites of sumi-e ink for a long moment. Then, with a sigh, he dialed a lengthy number and waited, then spoke in rapid-fire Japanese. "I need to speak to Ueda-sama, dozo - immediately."
There was a very long wait, and then Ueda finally came on the line. "It is very late, Masa-san. This had better be important."
"Gomen nasai, Ueda-sama - but it seems there is a major problem here that you need to be aware of. Our Long Beach arms warehouse, or the one we used to have, was raided today - by African-looking people NOT speaking English." Mayeda gave his news as succinctly as he knew how. "We are stumped as to who would have done this..."
"Triumverate," Ueda pronounced with a defeated tone overlaying the fatigue of having been pulled out of bed. "They're the only ones who would try such a thing."
"Especially since Miss Parker assured me that we would have a window of two days before she was going to call in her government's law enforcement," Mayeda reminded his boss.
"Ngawe is certainly working on upping the stakes in this little fracas," Ueda sighed. "Keep me informed of any other movement, and in the name of all the gods and spirits, continue to relocate all our assets there in your area! It appears Miss Parker's warning about her own internal fracas may be playing out in our best interests in the long run."
"That it does," Mayeda agreed easily, then said, "Once more, gomen nasai for awakening you, but this was important enough, I thought, to warrant the interruption."
"Good night, Masa-san," Ueda yawned.
"Good night, Ueda-sama."
Mayeda put the phone back on the hook and began toying with his moustache again. Yes indeed, Miss Parker's problems had worked out to Yakuza advantage. Had all those guns fallen into other hands, it would have been a major blow to the organization - and probably cost him a thumb. The thin man rubbed his hands together nervously, appreciating the presence of all ten fingers. The Yakuza, or at least his part of it, was now in Miss Parker's debt - and he would have to see what he could do to discharge this matter of honor as soon as possible.
~~~~~~~~
Ikeda carefully stowed his briefcase in the overhead compartment and took his seat by the window, looking out across the broad expanse of runways to the Los Angeles skyline that he could see. His flight for Chicago was almost ready to depart, and he had nearly ten more hours before he'd be able to settle into a hotel room and get some decent rest.
America was the LAST place he wanted to be, and certainly he'd had no plans to return so soon after his last visit. He put his face in his open palm and stared out at the runway without seeing anything, wondering idly if the American authorities had figured out that at least one of those killings in Delaware had been an outside job. And here he was, heading right back into the middle of that mess.
All through the last fourteen-hour flight, he'd been racking his brain trying to think of a way out of his current dilemma. His primary loyalty was to the Yakuza and their interests - which meant that if he were to follow those instincts, he'd rest up, head for the hospital, take out Ngawe, and then head home again without a second thought. But he'd been in the employ of Ngawe for years now, feeding the Triumverate internal information on the financial strengths and weaknesses that he'd discovered in the Yakuza as a whole and the Tokyo branch in particular. He'd accepted sizeable payments from Nairobi for his information - payments he really DIDN'T want to have to account for in the end. If he were to honor the connections those payments represented, he'd let Ngawe know that there was a contract on his life - and that his not acting on that contract constituted his severing all ties with the African organization.
Should the Yakuza find out about his treachery, there was no place he could hope to hide. If he actually killed Ngawe, again there would be no place he would be able to hide from another set of determined hunters. He couldn't just disappear - his reputation as an assassin was well-enough known in the crime syndicate circles that his appearing to settle permanently in America would be perceived as his announce his free agency, which again would amount to a death sentence.
There was only one option that seemed even remotely open to him - and that represented a significant risk of its own. It had been his shot that had removed Raines-san from the Chairman's seat at the Centre, making room for the current administration. Perhaps the woman who had often and obviously sat in opposition to Raines' administration could be prevailed upon to offer sanctuary in return for information on BOTH the Yakuza and Triumverate.
That would make him, Ikeda Katsuhito, tenth generation samurai and fourth generation ninja, ronin - a warrior without a master, a man without honor.
He closed his eyes. At least he'd be alive, though...
