He was yanked to his feet once again and marched forward alone, leaving Freya tied and immobile on the floor. The interior was immaculate, hundreds of glass-encased historical artifacts under soft LED lighting. Jonah wallowed in his own overwhelming sense of regret and dread; walking beneath the ornate ceiling and above the pulsating organism felt like traversing between hells of Dante’s Inferno.
The geriatric security personnel silently prodded Jonah forward toward a figure beside a mahogany art-nouveau writing desk, his hand atop an empty wheelchair. Massively overweight, the figure’s long, dark hair dripped from his balding scalp before falling over his shoulders, his sickly face defined by the thick, pinched lids covering his bright eyes. The security personnel retreated a few steps as Yasua Himura stepped forward into the light.
“Mr. Blackwell,” said Himura, tilting his head as he addressed Jonah. “I’ve so wanted to—”
“Can I have a chair?” interrupted Jonah.
“You want a… chair?”
“Yeah, a chair. Or a stool. I’ve got a couple of broken ribs and I’d really like to take a load off. You mind?”
Himura nodded, refusing to show irritation for having been cut off. He gestured towards his own unoccupied wheelchair, and Jonah started to step forward until the security guards lurched to intercept him, warily putting themselves in front of Himura before Jonah could reach striking distance. Himura calmed them with a wave before gently pushing the wheelchair across the smooth floor. It rolled easily, bumping against Jonah’s leg.
Jonah gratefully took it, flopping down in the seat and sighing as he yanked the straps of his bulletproof vest free, loosening the pressure against his chest. He snuck a glance over one shoulder — the other security personnel had already carried Freya away, disappearing into the recesses of the ship.
“I’m good,” said Jonah, waving Himura on. “You can keep talking or whatever now.”
Himura cocked an ear towards Jonah, reluctant to speak lest he be interrupted again.
“I’ve watched you quite closely over our short, shared history,” he finally said. “You speak with such unvarnished braggadocio, call yourself an outlaw, a smuggler — and yet your actions betray such little regard for self-interest. North Korea exports many things… illicit weapons, counterfeit currency, narcotics. But you, Jonah Blackwell, sailed into the most dangerous waters on the planet to transport what the world wants least: starving North Korean refugees.”
“It wasn’t a mission of mercy or anything,” said Jonah. “More like a mission of moolah.” He forced himself not to think of the drowned Koreans, their wide-eyed, unseeing faces staring accusingly at him within the freezing waters of the sunken carrier.
“If this were true, you would have abandoned them on the ice the moment you spotted incoming DPRK military forces,” said Himura. “Instead you chose to stay and risk your life for men and women with whom you shared nothing — not nation, not race, not even language. And even now, after presented with an opportunity to escape, you instead take a suicidal risk in boarding my ship. Why?”
“Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“I believe it’s because you thought stopping me was the right thing to do.”
Jonah said nothing as he glared at Himura.
“And your inherent contradiction is combined with a seemingly inexhaustible ability to simultaneously survive the impossible and resurface in the most secret and unexpected of places. I’d hoped I’d get a chance to meet you, see for myself how a single man could embody such vast incongruity. I gleaned much from your submarine’s computer system, but there was always a missing element, an unanswered question — what does Jonah Blackwell want?”
“Yeah, I’m a mystery wrapped in an enigma inside a crispy tortilla shell,” said Jonah. He grasped at the curved handles of the wheelchair, rotating them back and forth as he absentmindedly tested their smooth, exactingly machined motion. “Also, we may need to break out Webster’s if you plan to keep using words like incongruity.”
“Tell me how you first located my island — no, tell me first how you crossed paths with Freya Weyland!”
Jonah sighed and shook his head. “Don’t take this personally, but I’m not in much of a talking mood. A good friend of mine just got shot to pieces on your helicopter pad. I was hoping to work through the anger stage of the grieving process by gutting you with a salad fork and mounting your bloated corpse on my conning tower as a warning to other like-minded assholes, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. So if you’re going to gloat about it, let’s go ahead and get this over with.”
Himura frowned, for a moment he was a little boy denied the chance to play with a favorite toy. “After all we’ve been through together? You’ll tell me… nothing?”
“Sure, I’ll throw you a bone. Your thesis on me is bullshit. Every single thing you’ve said can be traced back to poor impulse control and a stunted ability to think through real-world consequences. Case fucking closed.”
Himura laughed as he circled the wheelchair, the hem of his robe swaying over the bamboo floor. “And yet this is another contradiction — impulsive, reckless Jonah Blackwell is somehow the first man to methodically uncover a conspiracy seven decades in the making.”
Jonah ignored the barb. “So what are you going to do with Freya? She looked like she was having a pretty bad time when she got hauled away.”
Himura widened his hands in acceptance of the changed subject as the security personnel behind Jonah shifted uncomfortably. “I’m not a cruel man, Jonah. I’m disappointed in her betrayal, but not vindictive. I suppose I must thank you for our unexpected reunion — my perfect instrument has returned to me.”
“I don’t think she digs being called that anymore. How did you end up recruiting her, anyway? She doesn’t seem like the type that plays well with others.”
Himura thought about the question for a moment before answering. “Do you know the parable of the magician’s knife?”
Jonah shook his head. “No, but I got one about the man from Nantucket.”
“A stage magician prepares a simple magic trick. He takes a sharp kitchen knife and mounts it upright, the tip of the blade pointed towards the sky. He asks a beautiful woman from the audience to come to the stage, touch the knife, feel the sharpness of its edge, closely examine the plain table it rests upon. The magician then takes a paper bag and carefully sets it over the upright knife, concealing it. He dances and chants, whispering incantations. And then he tells the beautiful woman to crush the paper with her palm.”
“Let me guess — she slaps it down and the knife is gone?”
Himura laughed again, stringy hair brushing against his shoulders as his soft voice echoed throughout the chamber. “No, no,” he said. “You misunderstand the parable. The blade goes through her hand to the hilt. She screams, bleeding. You see, the magic was not in sleight of hand or a hidden compartment. She’d felt the knife, the blade, checked the table for tricks. The real magic was in the words the magician used to convince her to hurt herself. It’s always a matter of finding the right words to create an illusion within the mind — and Freya proved quite easy to motivate. She came to my attention as a creature of incredible talent, yet unmolded. Meisekimu catalogued her life, every phone call, every text message, every email, every photo she’d taken of herself, every website she’d ever visited, every book she’d ever bought, every post she’d ever placed on social media. We fed her own words back to her, bent to our cause — and thus she became mine.”