Dodge attempted to digest this. He’d never heard of Alamut; even Persia was something exotic, the stuff of history, myth and legend. He knew Alexander the Great had conquered Persia. It was mentioned in the Bible, though he couldn’t off the top of his head remember any details. His knowledge of Persia in modern times was colored by fictional accounts — adventure stories by Robert Howard and Talbot Mundy — and while entertaining, those could hardly be considered a source of accurate information.
Dodge felt the g-forces of rapid deceleration as Anya applied the brake. When the car came to a complete stop, Anya pushed a button on the control panel. Outside, the clank and screech of machinery accompanied the movement of the concealed turnaround, and Dodge saw the false tunnel wall swinging out of the way. Anya advanced the car onto the revealed section, then pressed the button again. In a few minutes, they were once more in the Saddle Mountain tunnel, heading east.
“I have a question for you,” Anya said. “That man who tried to kill you back there; who was he?”
“He said his name was Uchida.”
“Japanese?”
“He’s actually American-born, but yes. He and another man followed us from New York, and jumped off the train when we did. The second man attacked me last night, but then something happened… I think you might have hit him.”
“I struck someone coming out of the tunnel. I feared it was you, at first. The body wasn’t recognizable, but the clothes were different. I buried the remains in the forest.”
Dodge was speechless for a moment. Anya’s manner was matter-of-fact, as if killing someone and concealing the crime was an everyday occurrence. Granted, she had probably unwittingly saved Dodge’s life on that occasion as well, but her indifference was disconcerting. He shook his head and resumed speaking. “Uchida was very interested in finding you. I’m not sure why, but if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say he’s probably after the death ray, too.”
Anya’s eyes widened slightly, but that was the extent of her reaction, and its significance eluded Dodge. He decided not to pursue the matter. “How far can we go in this thing?”
“It is electrically powered,” Anya replied. “I do not know how long the batteries will last, but I believe it will get us as far as the nearest train station.”
Dodge smiled. One way or another, the secret of the ghost train would soon be revealed to the world.
Ryu Uchida was halfway up the hill leading out of the compound when he heard the satisfying thump of his explosive device detonating. He turned and looked back, expecting to see the hangar erupt in a blaze of hydrogen fueled fire, but saw only a plume of smoke and dust issuing from the open door.
A frown twisted his normally stony countenance. Something had gone wrong. Still, Dalton could not have survived the explosion. Surely not.
He continued to gaze down at the hangar, contemplating what to do next. He had not risen to prominence in the Kokuryu-kai—the Aum River Society — or risen to the rank of Chusa in the Kempeitai—the Imperial Japanese secret police — by ignoring the small details or leaving a task half-done. His decision already made, he turned on his heel and had just begun backtracking when he spied movement near the hangar.
Like a shadow evaporating on a cloudy day, Uchida — a skilled shinobi-no-mono—simply melted into the landscape. His mastery of the ancient stealth arts described in an esoteric manuscript known as the Togakure-ryu, was but one more example of his personal toleration of nothing less than excellence.
A few moments later, a black train car rolled out from behind the hangar and accelerated without a sound up the hill. Uchida followed it with his gaze, not moving a muscle until it crested the hill and moved out of his line of sight, but inwardly he was seething. Dalton had escaped. Worse, the writer knew of Uchida’s mission.
But what does he know, really?
The Nisei reviewed his memories of the interrogation. He should not have given his name, he realized, but by itself, that admission signified little. Dalton would have his suspicions, no doubt, but there was nothing to connect Uchida to the Japanese government — nothing that could be construed as espionage.
He rose from concealment and crept up to the top of the rise. The black train was gone. Dalton had slipped away.
Uchida stared at the distant black spot that was the tunnel leading out of the hidden valley, and considered what to do next. Without a means of transportation, he could not hope to pick up Dalton’s trail again, as he had over the past two days when he had shadowed the writer into town, and then back to the tunnel again. By the time Uchida reached the nearest train depot, Dalton could be anywhere in America, or even on his way overseas.
Instead of continuing along the tracks to the tunnel, Uchida picked the nearest slope and began climbing its flank. When he reached the peak, he unlimbered his pack and produced a portable, battery operated short-wave radio receiver-transmitter. Snugging the headset in place, he switched it on and began adjusting the tuner until he found the desired frequency.
He took a book from his bag and used it to transform the message he intended to send, turning it into groups of five-digit numbers. He then keyed his own identification code, establishing two-way contact. The radio waves went up into the atmosphere and then bounced between earth and sky in all directions. Anyone monitoring that frequency, almost anywhere in the world, could have listened in, but unless they spoke Japanese and understood the code he was utilizing, they would be hard pressed to make any sense of what they heard. When the response came, he transmitted the coded message and waited.
A series of tones, some long, some short, came over the wire. Uchida was familiar enough with the code to skip the step of writing down the numbers in order to decipher them. The message was not encouraging. “Dragon two missed check in. Status not known.”
“Dragon two” was the second ranking man in his team, Tai’i Hiro Nakamura. Nakamura was presently shadowing Dalton’s companion, in hopes that he might lead them to the real target of their mission: the American industrialist, Walter Barron.
For nearly two years, Kempeitai spies had been trying to infiltrate American industries, in hopes of acquiring new technologies. It was a difficult task; despite her reputation as a “melting pot,” America was very xenophobic, particularly toward immigrants from the Far East. For their own part, Japanese immigrants and their children, the Nisei, made little effort to integrate with the ijin—the “different people,” Caucasian society — even though they themselves had become gaijin—foreigners. Thus, it was no simple thing for the spies of the Kempeitai, working in tandem with the ultra-nationalist Aum River Society, to gain access to the inner workings of companies like Boeing, Hughes Aircraft, or Royal Industries. However, it seemed the effort was about to pay off.
Walter Barron was building a death ray.
Scientists at Nohorito Laboratories had been struggling for years to create a weapon that could focus radar beams with lethal intensity, but thus far, a practical application had eluded them. If Barron had made some kind of breakthrough, it might be the key to developing a weapon that would make it possible for the Empire to achieve its long sought goal of total domination of the Pacific Rim.
He tapped in another message, detailing what little he knew about Barron’s movements. Although his Kempeitai agents were few and far between, there were other ways to pick up Barron’s scent.