Red Shark

Scott stuffed yen in the man’s fist. Twenty minutes after showing a passport and international driver’s license that identified Scott as Mr. T. Jacobs, he squeezed behind the wheel of a tiny commuter car.

Noda’s streets were not well marked, and none were marked in English. Even though he had an address gleaned from Fumiko’s classified file, he couldn’t find Tokugawa’s villa, which was described as having a high stone wall around it, and, at the entrance, an ancient iron gate with pikes. He drove through the streets until he found a narrow lane half hidden by cryptomeria and wild foliage. There! At the end of a narrow lane, a high stone wall and a gate with pikes. He parked up against a stand of shrubbery, aware that if the prefecture police entered the lane, they’d see the car and investigate. He had no choice.

Scott switched off the engine and rolled down the window. He heard the Tokyo Express on the Chiba Line over-pass and, after it had gone, ticking from the car’s hot engine and exhaust system. He sat there, not moving, needing time to sort through what he had to do, and to let the tension in his body ebb after the encounter with Tracy. Even the short time they’d been thrown together had made him willing to risk smashing his psyche.

He forced himself to wait a beat, then he scanned the villa’s gates and a section of the ten-foot-high wall for intrusion sensors. He didn’t see any. Though the wall had no chinks or cuts suitable for use as handholds or footholds, a stand of spruce, its boughs overgrowing the wall, presented possibilities.

Scott got out of the car and, bent low, trotted across the lane. Back against the wall, he crept through shadows until he reached the trees. He climbed one using its branches for a ladder. After making sure there were no sharp obstacles or hidden sensors on top of the wall, he dropped to the ground on the other side into a garden of moso bamboo.

Crouching, he faced the villa, which had been built as two separate wings, each surrounded by a gallery. The wings, set at a forty-five-degree angle, were connected by an arch through which passed a cobblestone driveway. A courtyard facing a closed four-car garage was illuminated by light spilling from a row of small windows in one of the wings.

Scott gripped Rick’s Glock in his right hand. Still crouching, he inched toward the villa. He’d advanced barely ten feet when he saw a dot of blue light suspended above the ground: a laser beam motion detector. He scanned to either side and saw its mate by the driveway. Break the invisible beam and alarms would go off in the house. There had to be more sensors, perhaps ground motion pads and trip wires. It had been too easy so far. He approached the beam path and stopped to scan the garden for a way around the beam, but he didn’t see one.

Suddenly a white light exploded in his head. He felt his knees cave, and for an instant he saw Tracy. Why had she come back? Why wasn’t she at the Embassy with Rick, and what the hell was she doing in Japan anyway?

Part Four Red Shark

40

Noda, Japan

Scott, flat on his back on a tatami mat, opened his eyes and saw a face enter his circle of vision.

“Welcome to Noda, Commander Scott,” Tokugawa said in excellent English. Resplendent in a royal blue kimono, white tabi and getas, he looked every bit the shogun. “I was expecting you.”