“Wait here,” somebody said.
She looked around. Whiteboards propped on easels stood everywhere, as well as a lectern and other conference paraphernalia. Of course, there was only one room big enough to house all these mobsters — the building’s premier conference room. So she was about to head out on stage for the first time in her life.
Smyth would be proud, she thought. Maggie in the limelight. Maggie standing proud. Maggie undefeated. And Drake? Where was the Yorkshireman now? The darkness around her crawled with Yakuza. And as she put her mind to it, as she concentrated on her peril instead of her problems, she heard the murmurings of a gathered crowd.
“They’re waiting for you.” The boss’s mouth was so close his dry lips brushed against her ear. “Time to face your accusers, Kitano. Time to face those you wronged.”
She struggled to remain mute, to keep from crying out: No you’re not! I wronged Hayami! I wronged his family! Emiko! That’s who I wronged, not some inked-up, arms trafficking, lethal organization that destroys hundreds of lives every single day! Never that!
The rear of the stage protruded into the room and was reached by a set of small steps. For now she was shielded from the conference area by a wide accordion-shaped partition. As she waited a great cheer split the air.
“You’re up.”
A door opened and she was guided through, then left alone. A great hubbub swelled all around her, straight at her, filling her head. An overwhelming force, it swept all else aside, leaving her stunned. But she stood tall against it; a sturdy oak in the eye of a hurricane, a survivor refusing to bend in the face of all her aggressors.
The men sat before her, arrayed around the room in their hundreds if not thousands. She stood on the stage, watching their hostile gestures, their violent fake lunges. Not one of them would stand against her alone. Not one in several thousand. Yet here… here they were kings and gods and unstoppable tyrants. Their words — only words, she reminded herself — threatened every manner of degradation and shame and vicious death.
“Approach the stage.” She spoke aloud into the storm, her words whipped forcefully away and unheard so that only those who could read lips knew what she said. “Come now. Just approach.”
None did. It took many minutes for the abuse to die down and nobody immediately brought the trial to order. There were no judges here today, only prosecutors. If any germ of hope existed in the far corners of her mind it knew that the longer this trial went on, the more chance she had of being saved.
Let them rant.
At length, the men relented and were served drinks. As this process continued Mai finally heard the voice of someone she knew.
All too well.
Hikaru rose from his, no doubt honorary, place in the front row. “You are accused of dishonoring the Yakuza family, Mai Kitano. What do you say?”
Mai ignored the little weasel, preferring instead to examine the faces beside him. These would be the most powerful then. She wondered if she might seize one of them.
“What do you say?” Hikaru repeated, voice rising.
“I say it takes at least three people to have a trial,” she said. “The accuser, the accused and the judge. I see no judges here today. Only killers. I say this is no trial at all.”
“Oh damn, you got us.” Hikaru hooted to the sound of laughter, jeers and some disapproving looks from the older men beside him. “This is what you Europeans call a holiday. Some time off for jobs well done.”
“I am Japanese,” Mai pointed out.
“But show no respect for your countrymen. We are Yakuza; we live and die here as our ancestors did. We are family with a family ideal. Many of our members are outcasts, betrayed by their so-called parents. And yet you have now disrespected us twice.”
You are a bunch of deluded killers, Mai wanted to say but her composure won the day. Maybe she could turn this into a long-running debate. “I was doing my job.”
But Hikaru and his betters saw her reply only as a further sign of contempt. Hikaru snorted, “The police work for us. Not us for them. But not you. Never you. Not until now, at least.”
Mai caught a change in his tone, a cunning that hadn’t been there before. Instantly she was on her guard. Perhaps she had underestimated this homicidal mixture of deviants.
Hikaru waved in a general manner. Mai saw movement over by a far door. A loaded moment passed and then the world fell out from under her. Even she, trained and tough as she was, felt her knees buckle.
Chika came into the room, restrained and bloodied, a gun pointed at her head.
The world would never be the same.
Hikaru began to laugh.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Hayden Jaye stared into the heart of chaos, wondering how to make sense of all the evidence scattered around her. Never in her life had she known so many clues to exist that led nowhere. First — the Lost Kingdom. It was out there somewhere, probably submerged between China and Taiwan, though the jury was still out on that one — their language translator, David Daccus, still engrossed in his thankless task of deciphering the symbols and characters nobody had ever managed to decode in all of human history — those found on the Niven Tablets.
Or had they?
The USS Queenfish was looking more and more like it might have been an exploration vessel, and had been ordered to sink the Awa Maru to conceal its real intentions in the South China Sea. Such an appalling tragedy. Either way, it had helped spirit away a fortune in glittering treasure and an ancient, priceless one — the Peking Man. And now Dudley, his crazy crew and the Pythians possessed the old Chinese treasure and a potential map to an even older and more controversial one.
The lost kingdom of Mu. It would be a find beyond belief, she reasoned, but also an enormous bone of contention between China and Taiwan. As if they didn’t have enough already.
Their curator back at the Steel Mountain facility was busy checking for an old translation of the Niven Tablets, but had come up with nothing so far. The physical tablets had been saved by Hayden and her team, but Dudley still escaped with the photographs. Hopefully it would take the Pythians time to put so many pictures together, but her gut and Karin’s knowledge of cutting edge technology, told her otherwise.
“Seconds,” the Blake woman told her. “Once they get the photos loaded onto the right machine it will render them in seconds.”
As time marched on she decided to take a break and call Matt Drake. It would be early morning for him on the night Chika was due to infiltrate the Yakuza. She paused with her finger hovering over the button. Should she risk the call? The team could be in the middle of something finicky.
What the hell… Mai once made a call that saved Smyth’s life!
Fortunately, the call was answered immediately. “Yep?”
“Matt? Can you talk?”
“Aye, could do with the break actually. Things have gone right to shit here.”
Tell me about it, Hayden thought. She sighed aloud. “What’s happening over there?”
Drake ran her through the high- and lowlights. Hayden listened then poured herself a black coffee. “Quite a dilemma. Remember, Dahl and the others are still likely to get the job done. Mai may be down, but never count her out. My issue would be with Chika and Yorgi and the length of this so-called trial. Can you get another night out of it?”