"And you know what my friends in the U.K. — you've heard of the SAS, I'm sure — say about our rather particular activities?"
Sasada could feel the sweat break out on his forehead, and he felt a quick pain in his upper arm. He turned his head sharply and saw a hypodermic syringe being emptied into him. He tried to struggle, but he was thoroughly immobilized by the Rangers on either side of him. He could no longer focus, and he could feel his limbs getting weaker.
His mind seemed to float away from his body. He could understand what was being said, but he could not reply. He was in despair and he knew, without being told, that his mission had failed. He also knew that this terrible man was right. He would talk. These people would do what was necessary to break him and there was nothing he could do to resist.
"Big boys' games, big boys' rules," said the voice relentlessly.
Sasada's eyeballs rolled upward in their sockets, and he stiffened in a last attempt to fight the drug, then collapsed.
Kilmara felt nauseated at what he was about to do to this man and the other he had captured, but events had gone far enough to demand special measures, and Molloys' death had tipped the balance.
These men would talk and their individual determination to resist would have no effect on the outcome, though their brains could well be permanently damaged. It was an unpleasant business, tinkering with somebody's mind, but the alternatives were worse.
Ranger Molloy's body was removed from the hospital in a body bag, and Kilmara accompanied it as it was carried to the mortuary at the rear of the hospital. He was married with three children, Kilmara recalled. The youngest had been born a few months ago, and Kilmara had attended the christening.
Big boys' games, big boys' rules.
I have no answers, he thought to himself, but a great deal to do.
* * * * *
Tokyo, Japan
February 1
The helicopter beat its way across the skies of central Tokyo, heading south.
Night had fallen, and the gray concrete drabness of much of the architecture was no longer evident. Instead, the city was a blaze of light, glowing with vitality. To the right, the recently erected skyscrapers of Nishi Shinjuku soared into the clouds.
Getting permission to fly across the metropolitan area was a rare privilege, but Hodama-sensei had made the necessary arrangements some five years previously, when private helicopters for Japan's business elite had started coming into vogue, and now the chairman of Namaka Industries could make the trip from the Namaka Tower at Sunshine City to Namaka Steel in forty minutes, instead of the normal two to three hours, and include a detour over the sea — a relaxing contrast to the urban sprawl.
There was no getting around it. Tokyo traffic was a bitch, and to use the faster subway-and-suburban-train combination was unacceptable from both a security and prestige point of view. A helicopter was the only way to go. It was also a measure of the scale of the Namaka brothers' achievement. As he looked down, Kei could still remember the desperation of the postwar years, the hunger, the fear, and above all the humiliation, of having and being nothing.
They crossed the docks, still a mass of activity, then went over the dark polluted waters of Tokyo bay, the traditional resting ground of yakuza victims and still popular, though now rivaled by more scientific disposal methods. The memory of so many faces frozen in fear flashed through Kei's mind as he looked down. The climb had been hard and bloody. Staying at the top was no easier. Standards had to be kept high. Examples had to be made.
The lights of Kawasaki showed up ahead, and soon the cooling towers and industrial labyrinth that was the might of Namaka Steel. The plant was vast and operated around the clock. All kinds of steel were produced there. Pride of place was given to the well-guarded inner compound which housed the long, beige, ultramodern building of Namaka Special Steels. Special Steels forged the high-specification alloys required for the aerospace industry and it also made a range of items for the Japanese Self-Defense Forces. Accordingly, the facility was classified top secret and its security guards were legally authorized to be armed. Only the most carefully selected Namaka employees worked within it.
It was an ideal location for Kei Namaka's purposes. He found the naked power of so many of the production processes an inspiration, and certain of the facilities a convenience. His favorite items of equipment were the giant forging press — which could mold white-hot forty-ton ingots as if they were plasticine — and the tempering ovens. The ovens, some bigger than a railway carriage, were used to change the molecular structure of steel by the application of heat, and could reach 1,400 degrees centigrade. When open, radiating the incredible destructive power of pure heat, they looked like the gates of Hell.
Kei Namaka had had a private dojo, a training room for martial arts, constructed high up in the Special Steels facility. One wall was of shoji screens. When they were pulled back, it was possible to see through one-way glass the giant forging press and the ovens below. A bank of television monitors and one giant screen offered close-up observation of the factory floor and the various manufacturing processes.
Kei's interest in the martial arts stemmed for the fundamental need to survive in the confused and desperate environment that was the Tokyo underworld of the 1940s and ‘50s. Most of his opponents had been unskilled thugs whom he had easily been able to overcome, given his natural speed, height, and strength; but an encounter with a seasoned yakuza of the old school, who had actually taken the time to master his weapons taught him the lesson that youth and brute force alone were not enough.
The grizzled gangster had disarmed Kei and was just about to kill him, when Fumio shot the man in the thigh. Guns were rare then and seldom used, but Fumio always used one in those days to compensate for his physical weakness. He was a terrible shot.
Kei had completed the termination of the yakuza with a thrust to the stomach, and he swore, as he watched the man writhe, that he would never again be outclassed. After a suitable interval, he had then decapitated his victim and gone to find the best sensei he could. The cleaning-up had been left to Fumio, who was good at that sort of thing and rarely failed to turn adversity into a benefit. The yakuza's body was encased in concrete and dumped in TokyoBay. His head was embalmed in sake and sent back to his boss in a lacquer box.
Those were the days, thought Kei, good days in their way. That lacquer-box business was typical of how the brothers had prospered in the earlier years. His strong right arm and Fumio's brain had been a complementary combination, and then Hodama-sensei had taken them under his wing and their rise had accelerated, but their world had also become more complex.
Fumio was in his element. Kei was confused by the endless complexities. He let the kuromaku and his brother get on with it and devoted as much of his time as he could to bujutsu, the martial arts, and above all to iai-do, the art of swordsmanship. For much of the time, Kei Namaka wore a business suit and availed himself of all modern conveniences as required, but in his heart and dreams he was a samurai, a warrior and soldier like his father and his ancestors before him.
The helicopter set down on the landing pad on the roof of the Namaka Special Steels building and Kei jumped out into the brightly lit area. Armed company guards saluted, their uniforms whipping in the downdraft of the rotors as he strode impatiently toward the private elevator that linked with his office and the dojo below.