All in all, Chin’s role had been minor. All that remained now was confirmation from the mining ship en route to the volcano that its target was in sight. That would not take place for another ten hours or so. Once his family had possession of the volcano, Chin would recall his troops, making sure that their withdrawal would bring a swift end to the state’s unrest. The violence now gripping Hawaii served only a limited purpose. Once the volcano was secure, it was best that the islands quieted.
“Your rewards will be great, Kenji. What do you plan to do with them?”
Kenji did not like the young man sitting languidly in his chair. Chin was brash, uncouth, and obnoxious.
“Do not speak too quickly; everything is yet to be settled.”
“That commando team fell for your ruse perfectly — they attacked the wrong house, just as you planned.” Chin waved his cigar in a dismissive gesture. “The volcano is within our grasp, surely you no longer worry.”
“Ivan Kerikov believed that the volcano was within his grasp and Takahiro Ohnishi believed that Hawaii was within his, too. Both men were wrong. I will not believe that we are successful until the mining vessel anchors at the volcano site.”
“Ach,” Chin said, then launched into another story of his own bravery in the face of adversity.
He had told Kenji nearly a dozen such stories earlier in the afternoon, before Kenji had set out to murder Ohnishi. Chin’s tales of bravado had a whining tone to them, as if daring Kenji to doubt them. Since Chin had not volunteered to lead his troops in the assault on Ohnishi’s mansion, Kenji needed no proof of the boy’s true character. Kenji had grown weary of the stories and the boy, yet listened as if rapt. It was expected of him.
Chin summed up, “If I could survive that and still keep the diamonds with me the whole time, surely I will get us out of this.”
Kenji tightened his fists at his sides. He could disembowel Chin with his bare hands without raising a sweat and the idea was a pleasurable one, but he had to maintain his composure. His grandfather held Kenji’s fate after he escaped Hawaii and he wouldn’t jeopardize that for the mere pleasure of killing the boy.
“All operations are different, surely you know this. Because you survived many in the past does not mean you are protected in the present.”
Though not chastened by Kenji’s comment, Chin remained silent.
Kenji was content to lean against the paneled wall of his study, arms now crossed over his chest, watching Chin smoke his cigar. His years of training had taught Kenji to remain impassive no matter what the situation around him. The tension within him would make a weaker man pace, but Kenji simply stood, quiet and dangerous.
“What of the woman,” Chin said, breaking the minutes long silence, “the reporter you have in the gardener’s shed?”
“What about her?”
“She has refused to help us; surely it is time for her to die.”
“Yes, maybe it is,” Kenji said sadly.
“I will do it,” Chin volunteered. “I want her first.”
“Take her,” Kenji replied casually, masking a sense of hurt.
At first, Kenji had entertained thoughts of taking Jill Tzu with him. There was something in the defiant beauty of the woman that made Kenji want to dominate her. Maybe it was because she knew of his Korean birth? He knew that she would never willingly be with him. Of course she could be drugged, like that American woman he’d rescued a week ago.
But Kenji knew that that was not a solution. Jill had to be eliminated, yet he had not been able to bring himself to do it. Chin’s lurid request was the perfect opportunity. Jill would die, but her blood would not be on his hands.
Chin pulled his small feet from the desk and slammed them against the carpeted floor. Kenji expected him to skip from the room like a spoiled child granted his favorite wish. Instead, Chin swaggered out, eyeing Kenji in an adolescent attempt at domination.
Jill wasn’t sure, but it felt as if night had descended once again, making this the fifth she’d spent locked up inside the maintenance shed. She could hear the incessant buzz of insects if she pressed her ear against the tiny crack under the door. The slit was too narrow for her to look through, not that it really mattered to her anymore. What was another night after all?
She’d entertained the thought of marking the floor by scratching the concrete with a sharp pebble to track the passage of time, but decided that it wouldn’t do her any good. She knew she’d be dead before there were even a few gouges. She’d asked herself over and over why she was willing to be killed rather than report the propaganda Kenji had presented her with. Was her journalistic integrity worth more than her life? Were her priorities that messed up?
No, she decided. She could have done it, spouted off whatever he told her. She could have guaranteed her survival, but afterward, her life wouldn’t really be worth living. Not because she would have helped that monster Kenji and not because she would have deceived the public. She would have disappointed herself and that was something she just couldn’t do.
All her life she had faced the world according to her personal set of standards and not once had she ever broken her own rules. If she had, she would have been lying to herself. Jill remembered doing a report once on heroin use among teens in Honolulu. One junkie, a sixteen-year-old girl who supported her habit by hooking, refused to admit she was addicted to drugs. She accused Jill of faking a photograph of her shooting up behind a sleazy hotel. The girl had lied to herself so much that she couldn’t even acknowledge the physical evidence of her problem. She’d told Jill that the needle tracks on her arms were tattoos.
Jill was afraid that if she broke her personal code, she would end up as self-delusioned as that junkie. Helping Kenji, even in an oblique way, would be a violation of that code. She couldn’t do it, wouldn’t do it, and would die for it.
Her mind had sharpened during the solitude of the past few days, driven by the same instincts which had kept man’s ancient ancestors alive on the plains of prehistoric Africa. Like any animal, the human being can sense danger long before the threat is seen or heard. Jill knew that there was a new danger around her; she could feel a malignancy in the air as surely as if it were a physical sensation.
She had first noticed it about an hour earlier, primarily as a tightening of the atmosphere, an almost electric sensation. Soon she noted more tangible evidence of a change.
There was an audible increase in the numbers of guards pacing around Kenji’s estate, more pairs of footfalls on the raked gravel walk next to the shed that was her prison. These new guards walked with a tighter cadence, more vigilant than Kenji’s usual security. But in the past half hour or so, she had heard fewer and fewer people walking around, as if the new guards were vanishing into the night. She heard them walk past the building as if headed for the jungle’s edge, but they never returned.
Now she heard new footsteps; there was an urgency in the strides. Jill knew instinctively where this man was headed.
The footsteps stopped outside the door and she heard keys jingling as merrily as a Christmas chime. The man thrust a key into the lock, turned it violently, and threw open the door. Jill had gotten to her feet and backed as far away from the door as possible.
The intruder was young, no more than a boy, but he carried himself with the negligent attitude of a world weary soldier, cocky eyes and a leering slit of a mouth. There was a pistol in a holster hanging from one bony hip.
He will rape me and then kill me, she thought as if reporting an incident that happened to someone else. I will be dead soon.