Disciple of the Wind (2 page)

Finally, for those who want to know not just how to pronounce the Japanese words but also what they mean, you’ll find a glossary toward the end of this book. If you have trouble keeping all the Japanese names straight, poke around my website (www.philosofiction.com) to find a list of characters showing who’s related to whom.

BOOK ONE

HEISEI ERA, THE YEAR 22

(2010
CE
)

1

M
ariko would never forget where she was when she heard the news.

She wasn’t all that likely to forget that afternoon anyway. It wasn’t every day that she met with the top brass. She saw her commanding officer, Lieutenant Sakakibara, almost daily, but this was her first meeting with his superior, Captain Kusama. And since Sakakibara was also in attendance, things were about to get either very good or very, very bad.

There were only so many reasons a captain called one of his sergeants into his office, especially with a lieutenant in tow. She might be promoted to head up a special detail. On the other hand, they might advise her to seek a legal counsel in advance of an IAD investigation. Her partner, Han, had recently endured such an investigation, and come out the other side stripped of his detective’s rank. He and Mariko worked closely together, and he’d strayed outside the lines; was she implicated too?

Maybe, but the captain was smiling when he opened the door. Kusama Shuichi was one of those men who only grew more handsome with age. His hair wasn’t thinning, he paid a lot of money for his haircuts, and he kept his office and his uniform as immaculately as he kept his hair. He’d earned an office on the top floor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department headquarters, with a wall of floor-to-
ceiling windows overlooking the heart of the city. His desk was polished teak, twice as big as it needed to be, and empty but for his phone and a sleek black laptop. Others might have arranged the desk to face the windows, but Kusama’s desk was perpendicular to them, so that both he and his visitors could admire the view. Mariko didn’t miss this detail, and neither did she miss the subtext: either Kusama was unusually considerate of his visitors or else he wanted to make sure they knew how important he was. Mariko couldn’t say which.

“Detective Sergeant Oshiro,” Kusama said, “Lieutenant Sakakibara, so very good of you to come. Would you like something to drink?”

“Coffee for me, nothing for her,” Sakakibara said, his tone characteristically gruff. “She won’t be staying long enough to get thirsty.”

Mariko swallowed. Was that good or bad? With Sakakibara it was so hard to tell. A line of vertical furrows creased his bushy black eyebrows, but he always looked like that. On this particular afternoon he was especially enigmatic, because even he couldn’t help but take in the view. He crossed the room in three long strides and looked out across the city he’d sworn to protect. Mariko wished she could see his reflection in the window. She was more interested in reading his face than enjoying the Tokyo skyline.

“Captain Kusama,” she said, “thank you so much for putting us into your schedule at such short notice. I know you must be a busy man.”

“Think nothing of it,” Kusama said. “It’s my duty to be available to those under my command. To be honest, I had already planned on calling you in to my office. Imagine my surprise when I came in this morning and my secretary told me you’d requested a meeting! I suppose you want to speak to me about the Joko Daishi case,
neh
?”

Mariko gulped. “I wasn’t aware you were following my work, sir.”

“You? Of course. You were our media darling for a time. Oh, do relax, Sergeant. This isn’t a military tribunal.”

Mariko breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m glad you said that, sir.” He waved toward a chair in front of his sprawling desk and Mariko sat.
“Begging your pardon, sir, but it’s not easy for me to relax when it comes to Joko Daishi. He’s dangerous.”

“And due for release today. I assume that’s why you asked to meet with me.”

“Yes, sir.”

Kusama nodded. “I’m afraid what’s done is done.”

“Sir, you’ve got to do
something
. This guy isn’t just an ordinary perp. Better to think of him as a cult leader.”

Captain Kusama sat forward in his seat. “I think you’ll want to watch your tone with me, Sergeant. I don’t take orders from my subordinates.” His smile soured. “I’ve read your reports, and frankly, I think ‘cult leader’ underestimates how dangerous this man is. ‘Terrorist mastermind’ is the description I’d have chosen—but perhaps you’re aware that I was the one who orchestrated the public relations campaign that kept any mention of terrorism out of the press.”

Mariko winced. She hadn’t known of Kusama’s involvement, but she supposed she understood the logic behind his decision. It was damn cold logic, though. Koji Makoto, known better by his self-appointed religious title, Joko Daishi, sent a massive bomb into the Tokyo subway system. Mariko and Han spearheaded the manhunt for him, and were always a step behind. Then Mariko ended up on a subway platform with Joko Daishi’s lieutenant seconds before he detonated the device. Mariko put a bullet in his brain and saved the lives of fifty-two civilians, but the department had quashed any mention of the explosives. Better for the press to report a police shooting than a major terrorist threat thwarted at the last instant.

It might have been good PR for the department, but it destroyed Mariko’s reputation. She could have been the hero, but since no one knew of the bomb, instead she became the hot-blooded cop who gunned down an unarmed man. Even at the time, Mariko thought it was the right decision to quash any mention of the bomb, however much that decision stung. Now that she sat across from the man who had made that decision, she felt that sting again.

“You do understand,” Kusama said, resting back in his chair, “it
pained me to see you dragged through the mud like that. Even if I had no sympathy for my officers, from a public relations standpoint you were a godsend. The first woman in the department to make sergeant. The first woman to make detective. The go-getter cop with an addict for a sister, working your way up to Narcotics so you could save your family. The stories write themselves.”

Now the sting jabbed Mariko in the heart, the lungs, the gut. “How do you know about my sister?”

“I know everything about you, Detective Sergeant Oshiro. Maintaining this department’s good reputation is what I do for a living. It’s why I got the office with the best view. It’s why I wear captain’s stripes, and it’s why I’m concerned any time one of my officers takes a life. So yes, I know your sister has been in and out of rehab. I know you placed ninth in your division in last year’s Yokohama triathlon. I know your English is flawless, and I’d hoped to use that fact to our advantage with our city’s
gaijin
population. But that was before you shot Akahata Daisuke in the forehead. Bomb or no bomb, cult or no cult, that’s not the way we do things here.”

“Sir, it’s not like I had a hell of a lot of choice—”

“Tone, Oshiro-san. This is your second warning. Watch it.”

Mariko swallowed. “Yes, sir.” She put her hands in her lap and balled them into fists, trying to keep them below Kusama’s sightline so he couldn’t see her whitening knuckles.

It didn’t work. “May I see your right hand, Sergeant?”

“Sir?”

He gave a little smile as if to say,
indulge me
, and motioned toward her hand with his own. Mariko felt awkward but she had no choice: she placed her maimed right hand on the desktop.

It was still ugly to her, though she’d had a few months to get used to it. The last thing she expected was for him to reach across the desk and pull it a little closer. His skin was soft, softer than hers. That was a detail Mariko would rather not know about a commanding officer. She certainly didn’t want him feeling the
kenjutsu
calluses on her tomboy hands. She didn’t become a cop because she was fond of intimacy.

“I’d heard you lost your trigger finger,” Kusama said, “but you’ve still got a little nub of it, haven’t you?”

Mariko felt her ears and cheeks grow hot. “Yes, sir.”

“You shot Akahata left-handed?”

“Yes, sir.” Her breath fluttered in her throat.

“But when you stabbed Fuchida Shuzo, it was with the right hand, wasn’t it?”

It wasn’t a question. The incident with Fuchida was the one that first put Mariko in the spotlight. A crazed yakuza butcher with a sword was enough to make the news by himself. So when Mariko was forced into a sword fight with Fuchida, when he maimed her hand and stabbed her through the gut, when she stabbed him through the lungs in return, when both of them flatlined and the paramedics brought Mariko back . . . well, Kusama must have been delighted. She wondered whether he was the one responsible for the headline
SAMURAI SHOWDOWN
, which had led every major news program for days.

Mariko, the samurai cop. Mariko, the narc with the junkie sister. Mariko, the woman in a man’s world, fighting tooth and nail to get what she wanted. She could have been the crown jewel of the TMPD—a thing of beauty, in Kusama’s mind, glamorizing his beloved department. But a thing of beauty was still a thing.

He released her hand and sat back in his chair. “You do understand,” he said, “I had such high hopes for you. But what can I do with you now that you’ve killed two suspects?”

“Zero suspects,” Sakakibara said. They were the first words he’d spoken since he’d entered the room.

“Excuse me?” said Kusama.

“Oshiro never once fired a shot at a suspect. She did kill two
perpetrators
. In the line of duty. Acting in both cases in self-defense and the defense of innocents.”

Kusama inclined his head. “True enough. But in the public eye, there’s very little difference.”

In the public eye I’d still be a hero, Mariko thought, if only you made different choices about what the public eye was allowed to see.
But Sakakibara had a different point to make. “Maybe not in the public eye, Captain, but in this office there ought to be a hell of a lot of difference. You want to kick her ass, you go right ahead. But do it because she gets lippy, not because she did her damn job.”

Mariko wanted to jump out of her chair and give him a high five. She made a vow to discover his favorite brand of cigar and smuggle a few into one of his desk drawers.

Captain Kusama wasn’t quite so enthusiastic. “Your lieutenant makes a good point,” he told her. “But the fact remains: you were once of great use to me, and now you’re a facial scar I have to figure out how to cover up.”

“Do what you have to do,” Mariko said. Seeing Kusama’s hardened glare she immediately subdued her tone. She remembered her two warnings. “I beg your pardon, sir. What I meant to say is, I think my record shows I’m willing to make sacrifices for the team. If I have to take another hit to keep the department looking good, that’s fine—but that’s not really what I came here to talk to you about. Joko Daishi’s due to be released today, sir, and I have to ask you not to let that happen.”

Kusama shrugged. “There’s nothing I can do about that.”

“With all due respect, sir, you’re a captain in the TMPD. There’s very little you can’t do.”

That earned her a tiny smile. “You’re learning, Sergeant. Flattery will get you farther than belligerence. And you’re right: I’ve spent a career building the right connections. I’ve tapped every last one of them to keep this Joko Daishi in custody as long as possible. You might have done me the service of presuming I’d do exactly that, but you’re not one to assume the best of your superiors, are you? You may think of me as a bureaucrat, but I assure you, Oshiro-san, I am a policeman first.”

Mariko nodded, duly reprimanded. He shouldn’t have had to remind her to respect the badge. Loyalty to the force had to count for something, even if some members of the force cared more about image than results.

Kusama gave her a chastising look, and softened it when he saw she’d gotten the point. “You said it yourself, Sergeant: this man has a cult of personality. He also runs a terrorist cell with dozens of zealots who will do whatever he asks. One of them has pled guilty to every charge your suspect is facing, and that means we have no argument to hold him without bail.”

Mariko felt her face flush. She heard a ringing in her ears that threatened to drown out the world. It was just as she’d feared: Joko Daishi wielded too much influence to stay in prison. His cult, the Divine Wind, had all the power of a yakuza clan. He had a lawyer slicker than Teflon, a network of illicit connections that probably included moles within the police department and the DA’s office, and a string of volunteers who would take the fall for him no matter what the legal system threw at him. That was to say nothing of fanatics like Akahata Daisuke, who were willing to become suicide bombers at Joko Daishi’s command.

There was one last recourse Mariko could think of to keep the cult leader from reclaiming the power she’d stripped from him when she brought him down. “Sir, he has a mask,” she said. “Very old, something you’d be more likely to see in a museum. He believes he gets divine power from it.”