Spiral

“After he landed, he ran to his barracks. Thankfully, no one was around. He was alone with his shame. It was the worst moment of his life. He had let down his family, his country. And most of all, his fellow Tokkō. He said that he felt as though he were already dead. His family thought that he was dead. The only idea that brought him comfort was that soon he would be in another airplane, pointed toward another American warship. But that was not his fate. Instead he was called to Harbin. Do you understand now? Why he was chosen?”

“No. I don’t.”

“He had proved he was willing to die. He was very brave, Seigo Mori. He wanted to get in a plane and attack right away. But as a Tokkō, he was willing to wait, to be one of the walking dead for as long as was required. He was no soshoku-danshi. No grass-eating man.”

A NARROW ASPHALT ROAD BRANCHED OFF TO THE RIGHT, and the arrow on the iPhone told Jake to take it. A few more turns put them onto a gravel road. Jake didn’t like the way Kitano was talking. He felt the menace coming off the old man, in addition to the smell of sweat, a pent-up aggression that might boil over at any moment. And the scratching-he was going to tear through his skin.

Kitano was starting to panic, Jake reasoned. Cracking up. Jake would have to keep a close watch when they got out of the car. He might try to run, or even attack, as preposterous as that seemed. Jake didn’t blame him. Orchid had viciously tortured Liam. She’d killed Vlad and Harpo, murdered Maggie’s housemate. She’d tried her best to kill Jake. What would she do when she got her hands on Kitano?

Kitano was distracting Jake with his anger, his stories about the war. It was dangerous, keeping Jake from focusing on his real adversary. Orchid was his target. He needed to keep his mind on Orchid, not on Kitano. Another hundred miles north and they’d enter a huge swath of nearly uninhabited wilderness and into what was known as the “north hole” in GPS satellite coverage. Satellites were predominantly over the equatorial regions: coverage got worse and worse the farther north you went.

Jake touched the trigger they’d implanted, the tiny thread next to his eye. All that was left to connect them to the outside world was the tracker, and soon even that might not work.

THE ROAD TOOK A SHARP LEFT, THEN BEGAN TO WIND THROUGH a forest of bare trees. Jake checked the time: they’d been driving now for almost eight hours. The clouds were thickening.

An address appeared on the iPhone: 23 Giles Street. Soon after, they came upon a series of cottages tucked back from the road, all empty for the winter. The windows were shuttered, the doors already blocked by small drifts of snow. Behind them, Jake glimpsed stretches of blue water through gaps in the woods. The slow-moving Saint Lawrence, here more a lake than a river, peppered with islands by the thousands. The border was halfway across. On the other side lay Canada.

Jake checked the addresses of the cabins on the right, the ones on the side of the river. Soon he saw 23 Giles, a nondescript saltbox with deep brown wood siding and an incongruous bright blue door. He pulled into the driveway, tires marking the snow, stopping in front of a two-car garage.

Kitano spoke. “If the other six Tokkō failed, I was to be the last to strike. Holding back the Uzumaki until it was time.”

“Too bad Connor took it away from you,” Jake said. He got out of the car, approached the front window of the house, all the while keeping tabs on Kitano. Jake glanced though the glass pane. The interior of the house was empty and dark.

Kitano joined him on the porch, his movements jerky and quick. His eyes darted around, as though he sensed danger just out of sight. He was freaking out.

Jake left the porch and checked the garage. Inside was the FedEx van, the back door open. No sign of life.

He returned to the car and grabbed the iPhone. The arrow on the screen pointed through the house and toward the water, the word rowboat underneath it.

He walked around to the back of the building, and Kitano followed. The wooden rowboat was pulled up into the middle of the yard, upside down to keep out the snow.

Two parkas were stored underneath.

Jake gave one to Kitano and put on the second himself. He prepared the boat for the journey, rolling it over and dragging it down to the edge of the water. Kitano excused himself, taking a piss over by the bushes. Jake watched him carefully.

MINUTES LATER, JAKE WAS ROWING ACROSS THE RIVER. HIS hands ached, from both the burns and the cold. The snow was still falling, cloaking them in a world of white. It was perfectly quiet. All except for the sound of the oars, the strain and creak of wood on wood, the small splashes as he pulled the oars through the water.

In the back of the boat, directly in Jake’s line of sight, was Kitano. The old man was silent now, huddled inside his parka. Jake was glad for the chance to focus. He was hyperaware of every shift of Kitano’s body movements.