Flashback

Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev froze, cigar halfway to his mouth, and Nick thought—Shit, I went too far.

He didn’t care.

Noukhaev threw his head back and laughed again. It sounded sincere.

“You are right, Nick Bottom,” growled the don after finishing his laugh and inhaling his smoke. “I was patronizing you. You were right to call me on it. But Sun Tzu did say that, and it does apply to our… ah… situation here. Hiroshi Nakamura is a general and he does know his Sun Tzu. He might well have hired you simply because he knows that I would be tempted to talk to such an underling… no offense intended, Nick Bottom.”

“None taken,” said Nick. “So is that why Nakamura hired me? If so, I guess my job’s at an end. And I failed, since if Sato and his boss watched the various trucks or Mercedeses or whatever leaving the hacienda at the same time, they’d probably know you were taking me somewhere else and call off the gee-bear strike.”

“There were eleven vans that left the hacienda at the same moment thirty-nine minutes ago, Nick Bottom,” said the don. “Hiroshi Nakamura has the resources to hit a hundred targets with his kinetic missiles. Allowing time for you to be brought into the place and for me to enter, the orbital weapons should be arriving about… now.”

Nick glanced at the ceiling. He couldn’t resist the impulse. Nor could he stop his testicles from trying to climb back up into his body. He’d seen what six gee-bears could do.

“Do you play chess, Nick Bottom?” The don’s eyes looked serious.

“Sort of. I guess I could be called a chess-duffer.”

Noukhaev nodded, although whether that was a confirmation that there was such a stupid term, Nick had no idea. The don said softly, “As a chess player, Nick Bottom, even a beginner, how would you improve the odds that Nakamura not use his weapons on the eleven possible targets?”

“I’d have each of them go to some important, public, crowded, and—if possible—historic spot,” Nick said at once. “And unload the trucks out of sight. At the St. Francis Cathedral, say, or the Loretto Chapel or the Inn of the Governors… places like that. Nakamura might still do it—what do American historical sites and American casualties mean to him or Sato?—but it might give him pause.”

Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev smiled slowly and it was a different sort of smile than any he’d shown Nick before. “You are not as stupid as you look, Nick Bottom,” said the don.

“Neither are you, Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev.”

There was no hesitation this time before Noukhaev’s laugh, but Nick decided to quit pressing his luck.

“No, I do not believe that Hiroshi Nakamura hired you just so that he could locate and kill me, as much as he wishes and thinks he needs to do that. No, Nakamura hired you, Nick Bottom, because he knows that you may be the only man alive who can actually solve the crime of the murder of his son, Keigo.”

What’s this? thought Nick. Heavy-handed flattery? Nick didn’t think so. Noukhaev was too smart for that and—more important—he already knew that Nick was as well. What, then?

“You need to tell me why I’m the only man who can solve Keigo’s murder,” said Nick. “Because I don’t have a fucking clue—either to who did it or to why I’d be the one to know.”

“ ‘The one who figures on victory at headquarters before even doing battle is the one who has the most strategic factors on his side,’ ” said the don and this time there was no game-playing about the provenance of the quotation.

Nick shook his head. He wanted to tell Noukhaev just how much he’d always hated people who spoke in riddles—it was one reason he wasn’t a Christian—but he resisted that impulse. He was tired and he hurt.

“Hiroshi Nakamura knew when he hired you that you probably could solve the crime that none of the American or Japanese agencies—nor his own top people—could solve,” said the old don. “How could that be, Nick Bottom?”

Nick hesitated only a second. “It has to be something about me,” he said at last. “About my past, I mean. Something I know. Something I encountered when I was a cop… something.”

“Yes. Something about you. But not necessarily something you learned when you were a detective, Nick Bottom.” The don had pulled what looked to be a mayonnaise lid from the desk drawer and continued to flick his cigar ashes into it. It was almost full.

I could have used a real ashtray as a weapon, Nick thought stupidly.

“Something in my past, then,” said Nick. He shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“Because of whom you do suspect as being behind the murder,” said Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev.

“Yeah.”

“And who is that?”

“Killers from one of the Japanese… whatyacallthem? Daimyos. The other corporate lords in Japan who want to be Shogun.”

“Do you know the leading keiretsu warlord clans?” asked Noukhaev.