On the Fifth Day (39 page)

ther of them spoke Japanese and they had no idea where to start looking. The Seal-breaker's calls had become terse, threat

ening. He was talking about bringing Death out of cover. Pestilence had taken to wandering aimlessly around the pachinko parlors and tech stores of Shinjuku, hoping for a chance sighting. It was as desperate and pointless a search as she had ever conducted.

And then, quite suddenly, it wasn't.

She picked up her phone and called the Seal-breaker, something she had done only three times in her life. 292

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She stared up at the JumboTron above the entrance to a TV

store, waiting for him to pick up. They were showing footage of some archaeological sting in which a local celebrity scien

tist had been busted. She hadn't been paying attention before, and understood little of the details, but the case had been everywhere for the last twelve hours. It now seemed beyond belief that she had not noticed the white man who was talking to the archaeologist on the grainy blue-gray video.

"Yes?"

"I have him," she said.

"Finally," said the Seal-breaker. "I suspect you'll find one of your number is ahead of you."

Pestilence paused.

"I'm sorry?"

"The Italian papers have been buzzing with the story of an incident in Bari," he said.

"The death of Famine," she answered, bracing herself.

"Not exactly," said the Seal-breaker. "Apparently a man--

and a strange one, by all accounts--was taken for dead after falling from the castle walls."

"Taken for?" Pestilence echoed, suddenly stricken with panic. "What do you mean, 'taken for'?"

"I mean that he woke up in the ambulance," said the Sealbreaker, his voice hard now.

"He's alive?"

It wasn't just shock, there was something else in Pesti

lence's voice, something between resignation and dread.

"Concussed and injured," said the Seal-breaker, "but, yes, very much alive, which is more than one can say for the am

bulance driver and one of the EMTs."

"He got out," she said, her voice flat, without incredulity or hope. For all the Seal-breaker's disapproval she had been hap

pier thinking Famine dead.

"And reached Japan without my help," said the Sealbreaker. "I think he knows something he didn't tell you, some

thing he got from the old priest or from Satoh before they died. I think he knows where Knight is and has gone after 293

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

him. He has a vengeful streak," he said, adding, "and I fear he can no longer be relied upon to tell friend from foe."

Pestilence hung up ashen faced, and it was almost a minute before she remembered that they had reacquired the target, that Knight was waiting for them in Yamanashi.
If Famine hasn't found him already,
she thought, wonder

ing what he would do to the man who threw him from the cas

tle, what he might do to them too for abandoning him . . . CHAPTER 83

Thomas caught Matsuhashi at the lab as he wrapped up an

other round of interviews and press conferences.

"Do you believe Watanabe's story, that Ed only came to get the bones returned?" he said.

"Yes," said Matsuhashi, clearly wishing he had something more satisfactory to offer. "He did not stay long. I gave him a ride to the station."

"What did you talk about?"

"Not much."

"He went back to Tokyo?" said Thomas.

"No. At least, not directly," said Matsuhashi. "I helped him buy his ticket. He did not speak Japanese."

"Where was he going?" asked Thomas, urgent.

"Kobe," said Matsuhashi.

"Kobe?" said Thomas. "Did he say why or if he knew some

one there?"

Matsuhashi shook his head sadly. "I am sorry," he said.

"Is there a museum in Kobe," said Thomas, "or maybe a school or . . . some kind of archaeological institute?"

"Probably," said Matsuhashi, "but nothing famous. There's an aquarium. Supposed to be very good. If you are planning a visit . . ."

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"I'm not," said Thomas, managing a smile. "Thanks."

He began to walk away.

"Wait," said Matsuhashi. Thomas turned back to find the Japanese man earnest, one hand raised, index finger extended. Thomas had never seen him look so spontaneous and ani

mated. "He left a bag at the station. He probably came back for it, but . . ."

"Come with me?" said Thomas.

"It would be my pleasure."

They reached the station from the town side, parked in a lot dominated by bicycles, and emerged behind the statue of Takeda Shingen no more than a couple of blocks from where Kumi and Jim were finishing their dinner, talking about God knew what. Thomas pounded up the steps to the ticket offices in the graying evening light. Kofu was a regional station, con

nected to Tokyo by a reasonably direct line, and to Shizuoka by another, but there was no Shinkansen--bullet train--line here in the mountains. Thomas let Matsuhashi do the talking.

"Knight," he said. "Edward Knight. A foreigner who came through around March fifth."

The woman at the desk, in her fifties, her too-black hair piled up on her head, tapped computer keys and nodded. There was such a locker, as yet unopened, she said, but it was against com

pany policy to open it unless requested to do so by the police.

"This is his brother," said Matsuhashi.

The woman smiled and bowed as Thomas thrust his pass

port in her face, but she cocked her head to one side, grimaced with a suitably pained sense of personal failure, and told them that nothing could be done.

Matsuhashi began to talk, explaining politely, but she kept shaking her head and smiling. There was nothing she could do. Matsuhashi rephrased his request, but she shook her head.

"
Watashi no kyodai ga, shinda,
" Thomas blurted out. "My brother is dead."

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The woman became quite still. Then she looked to Mat

suhashi, who nodded gravely. She hesitated, looking at him, and then opened a drawer and took out a ring of keys. She said something to Matsuhashi that Thomas didn't catch.

"What was that?" he said.

"She said her mother died two months ago," he said. Thomas looked at the woman. Her eyes met his briefly and she nodded.

The locker contained a backpack in which were a change of clothes, some books and a clipping from the
New York Times.
It was dated April 4, 2006. The headline read Scientists Call Fish Fossil "The Missing Link."

There was a picture, a fossil skeleton dominated by a heavy brown skull, lying next to a lifelike model of the crea

ture itself. It was greenish and scaly, stocky, with a stumpy tail and a broad, crocodile head, the eyes on top. The body was fishlike but the head was reptilian, and the front fins that be

gan just below the massive jaws were clearly legs.

"What the hell is that?" Matsuhashi whispered.

"That," said Thomas, hastily scanning the article, "is
Tik

taalik roseae.
A nine-foot monster that swam in water and hunted on land at the end of the late Devonian era, three hun

dred sixty million years ago."

"Edward was interested in paleontology?"

"No," said Thomas, "not, at least, for its own sake."

"Then what?" said Matsuhashi.

But Thomas did not speak for a long moment in which the student, the railway station with its traffic and PA announce

ments, and everything that had been in his mind till that mo

ment all vanished. In their place was a kind of slideshow in his head, mosaics of strange fish from Herculaneum, carvings of crocodile-headed sea creatures from the Temple of Isis in Pompeii, the bizarre legged fish crawling out of the red water in a Paestum tomb painting . . .

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But that made no sense. This creature from the newspaper had been dead for three hundred fifty million years. So what was it doing swimming through the art of Roman Italy?

CHAPTER 84

Thomas headed back to the restaurant elated, prepared to cut through all hostility and skepticism with the power of his con

viction. He had it, at last. After all the wandering, the vagaries of his questioning, he had it. There were still a lot of holes, but it was as if he had been searching through a box of keys and suddenly found one that fit the lock perfectly. There were other doors beyond, but this first one was the most important. Now he would keep trying keys till the other doors opened as well.

Kumi will have waited,
he told himself. She wouldn't just leave without saying good-bye. Now at least they would have something to talk about, something that might keep her with him a little longer.

It was dark outside the railway station and the restaurant was in one of those mazy, narrow back streets hung with dusty red paper lanterns splashed with Chinese characters in black. The air was thick with the steam from kitchen vents, heavy with the scent of
ramen
and
udon
noodles. High on a wall a Kirin beer sign glowed.

And there was something else.

Thomas had felt it when he parted from Matsuhashi out

side the station--a momentary sense of something on the edge of his perception, something he had
almost
seen--and now it was back. He slowed, listening, trying to decide which sense had stirred, glancing over his shoulder. Nothing. The alley was deserted.

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He picked up speed again. The restaurant door was only twenty yards away. But there it was again, different this time, not behind him but ahead, something tugging at a primal alarm. He stopped, gazing through the steam that hung like mist over a swamp, and there, just beyond the metal door, was . . . something, a black space in the wall like a hole or . . .
A shrouded figure.

As he watched, spellbound, the quality of the darkness shifted, defined itself. It moved. Pale, long-fingered hands ap

peared, rose and pushed back the concealing cowl. The same terrible face.

"No," said Thomas, still frozen. "You're dead."

The ghoul hissed its familiar response, baring those awful teeth, reaching inside its robe and drawing out a long-bladed knife.

"No," said Thomas.

It was too much, after everything else. This at least he had thought was finally behind him, and the realization that it wasn't, that it had to be faced again, sapped all thought and energy from him, hollowed him out. He remembered the struggle on the castle walls, the fall, the ambulance . . .
With its lights and siren going,
said a voice in his head.
They don't rush anywhere with corpses.

Thomas could only stare as the truth sank in. He had sur

vived, the bogeyman from his dreams, and he had come across the world to get him.

The ghoul emerged slowly, eyes flashing, jaws gaping, eas

ing spiderlike into the empty street with infinite deliberation. Then, without warning, he sprang.

He was so quick, so improbably quick and strong, that Thomas could only react as the ghoul landed on him, grasping at his knife hand, falling backward under his weight. In Bari, Thomas had been ready for him, his senses honed and adrena

line pumping from the flight through the old city. Now he strug

gled to find the sharpness he would need to stay alive while the other snarled and hissed, pleased with the fight. Thomas flailed and kneed and wrestled, but there was an inevitability to the 298

A. J. Hartley

thing, and the more he fought, the more he knew he would lose. The ghoul was too strong, too poised, too determined. The knife hovered above Thomas's throat, but only for a moment, and though Thomas used all his force to hold it back, it began to de

scend, point first.

Thomas rocked and squirmed, but could not break free, and the blade came closer. He felt it connect with the skin be

low his Adam's apple, cool and sharp, and he put all his re

maining energy into pushing it back, channeling every iota of the strength he had left. For a second the pressure seemed to lessen, and then it was back, the knife was starting to cut, and Thomas knew that he had nothing left.

The ghoul's eyes rolled back with satisfaction, like a shark tasting blood, and then he quivered and became quite still. The eyes met Thomas's and they looked perplexed. They widened, flickering, a stream of emotions rushing through them, all turning into fear.

And then he was crumpling and sagging, muscles spas

ming and relaxing, and Thomas was clawing his way out from under him, gaping, horrified. A short sword stuck out of the small of his back. Still holding its hilt was Ben Parks. CHAPTER 85

This time he was dead.

"We have to call the police," said Thomas, crouching, steadying himself.

"After we've had a little chat," said Parks.

He had dragged the corpse into a refuse-strewn corner and piled it with empty boxes "to buy some time."

"We should call the police," said Thomas again.

"They know where you are, Thomas," said Parks. "Not the 299

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police. The others. The people who want you dead. The people who killed your brother. You call the police now and you'll never stop them. You'll never know why Ed died or why they're going to kill you, cops or no cops."

"You left me to die," Thomas snarled.

"In a hot bath?" Parks sneered. "Please. I just forgot to turn it off. I knew you'd be okay. The place was full of people. All you had to do was yell."

"I'm telling you nothing," Thomas said.

"Nothing I don't already know, trust me," said Parks.

"Trust you?" Thomas snorted. "You're joking."

"I just saved your life," said Parks. "For which, I think, you owe me dinner."

He nodded toward the restaurant. "I believe you have com

pany. Get them out and we'll go somewhere less . . ." he mused as if searching for the word, "less close to people I killed on your behalf. What do you say?"