The old man nodded. “Yes, sir. We have your special order. It just came in.” He reached under the counter and handed Nishin a hardbound book. The old man pulled a receipt out from the inside cover. “It is already paid for.”
Nishin thanked the man and tucked the book under his arm. He took an even more roundabout route back to his new nest. By the time he arrived it was getting dark. He locked himself into the room and finally took a look at the book. It was old. The copyright information said it was published in 1950 by a press in Tokyo.
The book was only the wrapping, though. Tucked inside was a map of San Francisco. Nishin scanned it. A pier on the northeast side of the San Francisco peninsula off the Embarcadero was circled in red.
Nishin put the map in his shirt pocket. He opened his gym bag and pulled out a sweater. It was foggy out and would get chilly before dawn. He put the sweater on, re strapping the shoulder holster on over it, then the windbreaker. The phone startled him. He stared at it, then reluctantly picked it up.
A voice on the other end laughed, then spoke briefly in Japanese. “This is my city, remember that.” Nishin recognized the voice: it was Okomo, the Oyabun of the San Francisco Yakuza. The phone went dead.
Nishin put the phone down. Before he picked up his gym bag and the AUG case, his hand strayed to his stomach and tapped the knife strapped there.
A half a mile away the same man who had been on the roof the previous night had Nishin’s travels of the day overlaid on a computerized map of San Francisco. He was sitting in the driver’s seat of his white rental van, a laptop computer wedged up against the steering wheel. He started the engine when the computer told him Nishin was moving again.
A freighter and a fishing trawler were docked in the berth that had been circled. Nishin knew which was his target immediately. The freighter flew a Panamanian flag, the trawler the flag of South Korea. He found a large crane that looked like it wasn’t used much and climbed up to the control booth so that he could over watch the trawler. It made perfect sense that the North Koreans would infiltrate using a fishing boat flying the South Korean flag as their cover.
Now it was a waiting game and Nishin had never lost a wait. First, though, he needed to check in. He went to a pay phone and called in a report to Nakanga, then he returned to the crane.
The man in the van also waited as the sun came up. Nishin didn’t move from his perch. The man had seen the bag and metal case Nishin carried, which indicated he wasn’t going back wherever he’d come from. The man typed commands into his computer tracker. It was now set on alert. If Nishin moved it would come alive and beep him. He headed back to his hotel room.
Nakanga had just reported to Kuzumi that Nishin had located the North Koreans on their ship. Kuzumi did not acknowledge the report. If it was spoken in his presence, he heard it. Acknowledgment was a waste of time and energy. It was a trait he had used since first graduating the university over six decades ago. His Sensei departed the room, leaving him in peace.
Kuzumi’s office was on the top floor of the temple. There were no windows and the walls were hung with tapestries, muting the hard armored walls underneath. Kuzumi’s desk was a massive semicircular piece of highly polished dark teak. On the wall to the left were a bank of TVs tuned in to various channels around the globe. The sound on all of them was currently muted. A small box on the left side of the desk controlled all the TVs and a computer sat there awaiting his instructions. Several phones were on the right side of the desk. Behind the desk, a three-drawer file cabinet squatted beneath a large painting. The painting depicted the same tattoo that was on Kuzumi’s chest, in startling, brilliant colors.
It had been a long day for Kuzumi’. There were always deals to be made, information to be absorbed, people to be dealt with, plans to be made. The last was always the most difficult. Kuzumi often felt like those chess champions who played in a large room against multiple opponents, moving from table to table, remembering the setup of each one. Except his stakes were much higher than simply losing a game. Kuzumi dealt in life and death and fortunes and the future of his country.
The Black Ocean was a legitimate organization most of the time, although Kuzumi saw the law as simply a set of rules the government had to abide by, not the Black Ocean. If he had to break it, so be it. He answered to a higher authority than words’ written by men in a book.
The Black Ocean controlled a vast amount of industry and land, both in Japan and overseas. What caused the government to cast a suspicious eye on it and the other secret societies was the fear of history repeating itself and the simple fact that the societies represented power. Any government, with half a brain would keep an eye on the powerful organizations that existed within its borders and weren’t directly under its control.
Kuzumi had become Genoysha in 1968. He had done so primarily because of his strength in the scientific and manufacturing field. He was one of the key architects, through the Black Ocean, in helping rebuild Japan from its wartime wreckage into the powerful economic juggernaut it currently was. Kuzumi being chosen by Genoysha Taiyo to be his successor was an indication of the appreciation of the role he had played in Japan’s economic rebirth. Always before, the Genoysha had been selected from among the field operatives. A man of unquestioning loyalty and proven ability to fight for what the Society stood for. Kuzumi’s field record was weak, but Genoysha Taiyo had done his job correctly, seeing the direction that Japan was heading in and picking the right type of leader the organization needed to change with the times. When the cancer that had been eating his insides finished Taiyo in 1968, it was Kuzumi’s destiny to get the tattoo of Genoysha of the Black Ocean.
Kuzumi had wielded the power for the past thirty years, keeping the Black Ocean on a narrow path between the government, the people, the influence of other countries, and the Yakuza. There was no doubt he had succeeded so far in that he had much more influence among those other groups than they had with him. The Society controlled more wealth than many countries. It employed more people than most major corporations, although many of those who worked for it were unaware of the exact nature of their employer. But wealth and power was not the ultimate goal of the Society. The glory of Japan, and beyond and above Japan, the Sun Goddess and Emperor were.
Japan was the center of the world and as such all events must turn in the direction that benefited the islands. The Black Ocean and the other societies existed because the government and the people often lost their way and a steady hand behind the scenes was needed. It was Kuzumi’s job to exercise that steady hand here and abroad.
That thought drew his mind to the west. San Francisco. The name of the city brought conflicting emotions. He turned his wheelchair to the file cabinet behind him. The metal it was constructed of was the same used to line jet engines, impervious to heat and blast. The lock could only be activated by his retina placed up against a scanner at his eye level on top of the cabinet. Anyone else attempting to open the cabinet would set off a thermal charge on the inside, destroying the contents.
Kuzumi leaned his forehead against the scanner and the laser flickered across his eyes. With a loud click, the locks withdrew. Kuzumi opened the bottom drawer and drew out a small, intricately carved wooden box. He turned back to the desk, the box in his lap. He turned the small clasp and opened the lid. Tenderly he drew out a black-and-white photograph that lay on top of other documents. The picture had been folded and the paper was worn around the edges.