Yamaoto stepped to the side, away from the spray. Without thinking, he wiped down the blade on one of the men's wide backs, reversed the sword in his hand, and prepared to resheath it in a scabbard he suddenly remembered wasn't there. He walked over and handed it hilt first to Kuro, who took it with trembling hands without even rising from his seat.
Yamaoto looked for a moment at the fallen men. Their bodies had remained in chinsha, the heads on the floor beside them. Blood pumped vigorously from their severed necks. Lost your heads, indeed, he thought.
He turned to Kuro. 'I assume you have ample cleaning supplies in this establishment?' he asked.
Kuro, his skin pasty white, nodded wordlessly.
'Good. Have someone bring them and take care of this mess. And call the Taiwanese who can identify these men. Have him come here immediately.'
24
A half-hour later, two of Kuro's people escorted a nervous-looking Taiwanese man into Kuro's office. Kuro's staff had already mopped up the remarkable quantities of blood the sumos had lost and laid out the enormous bodies on plastic tarps. The next step would be to take them to a food preparation establishment friendly with Yamaoto's organization, an establishment with heavy equipment used in more ordinary circumstances for grinding fish into fishcake.
The Taiwanese saw the bodies and flinched. When he looked over at Kuro's desk and noticed the actual heads propped up there, he turned and tried to flee. Kuro's men blocked the door.
'Do you recognize these men?' Yamaoto asked in English.
The man struggled for another moment, to no avail. He turned and looked at Yamaoto, his eyes wide, but didn't answer.
'Do you recognize these men!' Yamaoto shouted, but still the man was mute.
Kuro repeated the question in Chinese. After a moment, the man stammered, 'Y-Yes. I recognize.'
Yamaoto nodded to Kuro. Kuro took out his mobile phone and input Big Liu's number. He handed the phone to the Taiwanese.
For someone who had been reluctant to speak a moment earlier, the man was suddenly garrulous. He let loose a torrent of agitated Chinese, his eyes darting from the heads to the bodies to Yamaoto and back again.
After about a minute, he returned the phone to Kuro with a trembling hand. Kuro gave it to Yamaoto, who raised the unit to his ear and said in English, 'This is Yamaoto Toshi.'
'Okay, very good,' Big Liu said. 'You kill bad men. Big Liu happy. But still missing money. And Big Liu men still dead.'
'Yes,' Yamaoto said. 'And we should talk about all of that.'
'Okay, talk.'
Yamaoto didn't like to be issued commands, but decided it was better to attribute the construction to a faulty command of English and let it go for now.
'I killed those men because there was no other way to avert a war,' he said. 'But I don't believe they were responsible for what happened at Wajima. They claimed there were two men there who shot them with tranquilizers. And if they really were the perpetrators, they never would have come in. They would have had escape plans in place and they would have used them. So there is a leak in one or both of our organizations, or worse, a collaborator. We need to discuss this and try to figure out who.'
'Tran… tran…' Big Liu said, and Yamaoto realized the man hadn't followed anything after the word tranquilizer. He handed the phone to Kuro and said, 'Translate what I just told him.'
Kuro complied, then gave the phone back. Yamaoto said, 'You see? We really should talk about this face-to-face. May I suggest my associate Mr Kuro's club in Minami Aoyama in Tokyo? Whispers, you may remember it's called. I think it would provide the right setting.'
Whispers was Kuro's most lucrative and high-class establishment, staffed by stunning women from all over the world. It was the very club where they had sealed the current supply arrangement, and Big Liu had been so overwhelmed by the beauty of the hostesses that he had stayed in Tokyo two extra days and taken a different blonde back to his hotel every night. Yamaoto sensed that the allure of another all-expenses-paid trip to the club would be enough to bring Big Liu around.
'Big Liu still missing money,' the man said, holding out. 'And Big Liu's men still dead.'
'My men are dead now, too,' Yamaoto said, 'although I suspect they were as blameless as yours. Blood has been repaid with blood. As for the money, I'm certain we can reach an accommodation. We're reasonable men, after all. Won't you be my guest in Tokyo for a few days?'
There, pushback on Big Liu's attempts to squeeze Yamaoto for the missing money and restitution, but without an actual no. And a sweetener that Big Liu could tell himself was a concession: confirmation that all aspects of Big Liu's trip, including, doubtless, another stay in a suite at the world-class Grand Hyatt in Roppongi Hills, suitable for after-hours entertainment by multiple blonde Whispers hostesses, would be complimentary.
'When?' Big Liu asked.
Yamaoto smiled. 'Whenever would be convenient for you. But I would propose that sooner is better.'
'Saturday,' Big Liu said, after a moment. 'Busy before then.'
Yamaoto shrugged. Maybe Big Liu really was busy for the next three days. Maybe he was just trying not to seem too eager, to maintain the appearance of control. Yamaoto didn't particularly care. The main thing was that he was coming. If they sat down together, Yamaoto was confident they could work out what had happened, then settle this in a reasonable way.
'Saturday, then,' Yamaoto said. 'I'll arrange a suite for you at the Grand Hyatt.'
'Good,' Big Liu responded, and Yamaoto could feel his eagerness. 'Thank you. Yamaoto good man. Good friend.'
Yamaoto detested these sorts of false protestations of friendship between business partners who would as happily kill each other if that's where the profit lay, but sometimes they were called for. 'Yes, and so is Big Liu,' he said. 'I'll leave it to Mr Kuro to sort out the details, and will look forward to seeing you on Saturday.'
Yamaoto clicked off and handed the phone back to Kuro. And suddenly, for the first time since the sumos had told him their story, his mind flashed on a possible explanation: John Rain.
He paused to consider, but then dismissed the thought. How would Rain get access to the particulars of the Wajima meeting? The man was formidable, but he wasn't supernatural. The more likely explanation was the simpler one: a turncoat, either in Yamaoto's organization or Big Liu's, working with people outside, and motivated by nothing more complicated than greed.
Besides, Rain was still in hiding. There had been no sign of him in New York, where Big Liu's people were watching Midori and her child and where Yamaoto expected Rain would resurface if he resurfaced at all.
Now that he thought of it, though, he realized Chan in New York was overdue to call him. Ordinarily the man checked in at least once a week to update him on the New York surveillance operation, but now Yamaoto realized he hadn't heard from Chan in, what… eight days? Nine?
Chan had been late once before, but Yamaoto had told Big Liu about it and there hadn't been a problem since. He imagined Chan didn't like reporting to a Japanese, but that's what he was getting paid for, and Yamaoto was irritated that the man was being lazy and disrespectful again.
If Big Liu had still been on the phone, Yamaoto would have mentioned it to him. But there had been more pressing things on his mind just then. Well, it wasn't a material thing, just an annoyance. If Chan had anything to report, presumably he would have done so. Yamaoto would mention it to Big Liu when they met on Saturday. They'd straighten it out then.
He heard Kuro saying, 'Kumicho,' and realized the man had been trying to get his attention.
'Yes,' Yamaoto said, looking at him.
'Shall I… shall I have them taken away?'
Kito and Sanada. It was a shame he had needed to dispatch them. Most likely they were guilty only of incompetence, not of betrayal. They had come to him hoping for mercy, and look what he had been forced to do instead.