"They had a slower method. One limb at a time. The final cut was high on the spinal cord, severing all sensation from the body but not so high as to affect the diaphragm. They were left floating in a black, silent void, seeing the thing they'd suffered for: the Kakureta Kao."
"Which means…?"
Slater pointed to his drawing and ran his finger along the outline of the hexagon. "See this? That represents a head." Then he tapped the hatchmarked center. "What sort of face do you see here?"
"None. Just a bunch of lines."
"Exactly. Originally, when the tattoo was in progress, the artist would draw a rudimentary face inside and then obscure it with all those crisscrossing lines. Hiding it. That's what Kakureta Kao means: They were called the Order of the Hidden Face."
"And what happens when they see this Hidden Face?"
"Then they knew the meaning of everything. They died happy and fulfilled, and joined it in its eternal void."
Jack had noticed something. "You keep using the past tense."
"That's because the last surviving members of the sole remaining enclave were incinerated by Little Boy on August sixth, 1945."
"I hurt, sensei."
Wearing a surgeon's mask and a stolen lab coat, Toru Akechi stared down at the man in the hospital bed and grieved. Poor Tadasu. Had he succeeded in his mission he would have been admitted to the Inner Circles.
But he had failed.
Tadasu lay in the bed like a broken marionette—legs suspended on wires, both arms in casts, his neck sheathed in a hard plastic brace.
Toru nodded toward the clear plastic bag suspended over the side of the bed. When he spoke, the surgical mask he wore muffled his voice more than the traditional mask worn in the temple.
"They give you painkillers."
"The pain is in my heart, sensei. The pain of failure."
Toru controlled a sudden burst of fury. He wanted to say, You should feel pain, Tadasu Fumihiro. In your heart and everywhere else. You deserve intractable pain for such miserable failure.
For although Tadasu had to answer to him, Toru had to answer to others.
But he modulated his response. "You made many mistakes, Tadasu. The first was in choosing the thief."
The younger man looked as if he was about to speak, but instead pressed his lips tightly together and nodded as best he could within his neck brace. He knew better than to mention that his sensei had approved the choice of Hugh Gerrish for the job.
It had seemed a good choice at the time: Better to deal with a known quantity here in New York, where they had the temple, and fly him out to Maui rather than try to find someone in Hawaii.
But Gerrish had betrayed them.
"At least we have the scrolls," Tadasu said.
Yes… the Kuroikaze scrolls once again belonged to the Kakureta Kao. And that was good. Gerrish had delivered them as promised, but had reneged on the katana. Instead of turning it over, he had fled home with it. The Order's reach was limited here in this barbaric land, and it had been unable to locate him. So they had turned to the man they had overheard recommended to that mongrel, Nakanaori Slater.
At least that had been a good decision: The man had tracked down the katana.
"How could you have failed in the last act of the task? You were to sever all links between the katana and yourself, and thus the Order. You are skilled in the use of the katana. You know all the kata. How could you not only fail to kill him but lose the katana as well?"
Tadasu closed his eyes. "I had my moves carefully planned. But when I saw the blade… when I touched it… I could not help myself. I dropped my plan and flew into action without thinking."
"That is very unlike you, Tadasu. How could you be so reckless?"
"I don't know, sensei. I had this sudden, overwhelming urge. I didn't give in to it. It… took over."
"And now, because of your foolish surrender to impulse, because of your weakness, the sword remains lost to us. It could be anywhere. Anyone could have picked it up."
"I saw him, sensei."
"You did?" Toru felt a jolt of hope suffuse his heart. Here was a chance to set this right. "Why didn't you tell me? What does he look like?"
"I saw only part of him—just his hand."
"His hand?" The excitement withered. "Of what value—?"
"He had a tattoo, sensei."
That might be useful.
"What did it look like?"
"It was the strange man-figure that I have been seeing painted on walls throughout the city."
A man-figure graffito? The necessity of hiding his face—certain to raise alarms in post-9/11 New York—kept Toru from leaving the temple often, but on a recent trip, sealed behind tinted windows, he thought he had seen the figure Tadasu was talking about.
He'd noticed a pen jutting from the breast pocket of the lab coat he'd borrowed. He went to hand it to Tadasu, then stopped as he realized both arms were in casts.
He looked around and found no paper, so he pulled back Tadasu's top sheet and began to draw. When finished he held it up where Tadasu could see it.
"Is this it?"
Tadasu gave another restricted nod. "Yes, sensei. That was on his hand."
Toru had no idea what it meant, but he would find out. He would learn everything there was to know about this figure.
But now it was time to deal with temple guard Tadasu Fumihiro. He would be undergoing multiple surgeries. Who knew what he might say under the effects of anesthesia? The Kakureta Kao could not risk exposure.
From a pocket of the silk tunic he wore beneath the lab coat, Toru withdrew the small ebony case of doku-ippen. He opened it and chose one of the deadly black-ringed slivers. When he looked up he found Tadasu staring at the box with bulging eyes.
"Sensei, this is not necessary."
"Do you question me, Tadasu?"
"No, sensei. But—"
"Accept your fate. It is a kind death I offer. One prick of the skin and all your pain—in your heart and body—as well as the shame of your failure will be gone. It is for the Order, Tadasu."
The acolyte closed his eyes. Tears found their way between the lids.
"I shall never see the Hidden Face."
"No, but in making this sacrifice for the Order, you will make that possible for others."
Eyes still closed, Tadasu nodded. "For the Order."
Holding the sliver between thumb and forefinger, Toru found a small area of exposed flesh near Tadasu's shoulder and pressed the sharp tip into the skin.
Then he turned and started toward the door, knowing that Tadasu would be dead before he reached the hallway.
… incinerated by Little Boy… August sixth, 1945…
Then Jack realized: "The Hiroshima bomb—same as the sword. Did the katana belong to these kooks?"
Slater shook his head. "It belonged to a Japanese Intelligence officer named Matsuo Okumo who was at ground zero with the sword when Little Boy went off. He died along with that psycho cult."
"Looks like they've risen from the grave."
"Maybe someone started them up again. They've had since forty-five to rebuild."
"If they're back, why doesn't anybody know about them? They're terrific tabloid fodder."
"If they're back, they're laying low. After the war it was discovered they were kidnapping children and mutilating them."