The Gatekeeper's Son (33 page)

Shoko carried her school bag slung over the shoulder of her new jacket. I hadn’t brought much, only a small pack with a few computer tools and a memory stick. I’d done all I could think of to prepare. Walter’s apartment was near Nobb Hill—Snob Hill I liked to call it—about a thirty-minute bus ride away. I’d studied a map online, checked the street-view images, and found a small park across from his building that looked promising—a patch of grass with enough shrubs and trees to give us a place to hide.

As we knelt side by side on the tatami mats, our eyes met. The soft glow of the house lights illuminated Shoko’s face. My chest clenched and I felt a flush come over me. I had to look away.

Her hand touched mine. “You are troubled?”

“No.” I kept my gaze on the mats. “It’s just that …”
I really like you and I’d love to take you out after we finish up tonight. I know this great pizza place near the library that’s open late, a real Italian place, and the owner uses a real brick oven. Would you like to go with me?
“I’m a bit nervous, that’s all.”

She nodded and moved her hand away. “Then let’s begin.” She was all business now. “I need you to view our destination and feel if it is safe.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You must. Focus, Junya, see it in your mind.”

I closed my eyes, focused on my breathing, and tried to push thoughts of Shoko out of my head. I pictured the park and let my mind clear. I saw the street-view picture in my head, but—

“Use less energy,” Shoko said in a strained voice. “Let the Mother Earth do the work. Go there, feel the energy. Try to
see
what is there.”

I tried again, but there was nothing, only the usual noise in my brain. I sighed.

“This is important, Junya,” she said, sounding a bit annoyed. “We cannot appear like a gopher from his hole.”

I was about to give up when I felt the energy of Mother Earth seep up through the tatami and into my body. A distorted image began to form in my mind. A moment later, I was in the park—at least a part of me was. The air swirled around me like mist. Through it I saw a thermal image of shapes and energy—warm red and orange shapes and the cool greens and blues of the earth. Above me, a bird rested in a nest, three warm eggs beneath it. Near the fence, a cat stalked through the bushes behind a smaller orange shape that moved ahead of it, unaware.

Two people, a mix of glowing orange and red, passed by on the sidewalk. I could have reached out and touched them. Would they have felt me, or I them? I waited until they were gone to open my eyes. “That’s amazing!”

“If you believe it, you can do it. Nothing is impossible.” She was smiling. “It is safe there?”

“I think so.” I suddenly felt drained and emotional. “It’s quiet.”

Shoko’s eyebrows came together. “What is it?”

“I just feel so strange.” I paused, trying to find the right words. “Since I got back, I’ve been so caught up in all this business crap. I feel so far away from Izumo … from the gods.”

Shoko looked confused. “The energy of the gods is always with us. It is not an afterthought—it is
the
thought.”

I took her hand. “Let’s go.”

CHAPTER

31

When we appeared in the park, it was nothing like what I’d seen with my energy. The light from street lamps flooded across the dew-covered grass, sparkling in the light. It might have been a beautiful sight at any other time, but now we were in the open, exposed.

We both dived into the shadows but in different directions.

I glanced over at Shoko. She was behind a small bush, peering out at the street. Unlike me, she looked calm, but I caught the glint of light on steel—she’d drawn her wakizashi. She ran across the grass, bent low, and dropped down next to me.

“Next time,” she whispered, “pick a hiding spot
before
you travel.”

“You didn’t tell me that,” I whispered back.

“It is common sense.”

I turned to her, ready to argue, but she was smiling.

“Being with you is always interesting,” she said. “Every moment is an adventure.”

I looked across the street, suppressing a smile. Walter’s apartment building wasn’t new but it looked well-kept and tidy, luxury evident even from the outside. The doorman, dressed in a long red jacket and black cap, stood outside the glass lobby doors, watching and waiting. A dozen expensive cars lined the curb in front of him. Through the glass, I saw two men in dark suits sitting on a sofa in the lobby. They looked familiar and I closed my eyes, reaching out, trying to sense something from them, but I felt nothing.

I pulled binoculars from my pack, a pair of decent Nikons I’d grabbed from Dad’s camping gear. I studied the men and felt a knot tighten in my stomach: they were two of the men I’d fired this morning.

“They found a new job pretty quick,” I muttered.

I got a yawn in reply and I turned to Shoko. She sat cross-legged on the grass, looking bored.

“Are we going to sit here all night?” she said. “My new pants are getting wet.”

“There’re guards in the lobby,” I whispered. “We’ll have to be careful.”

“Those men are nothing.”

I sighed. Everything had been so clear back at home but out here, I was losing confidence fast and she wasn’t helping. “Can we travel straight up to his suite?”

“Do you even know what awaits us inside? You want to be stealthy, but if I have to cut someone down—”

“I don’t want you to kill anyone!”

“Then do what you did in the dojo and see what’s up there. Do I need to explain everything?”

“Look, I’m not very good at this.”

“I know nothing about the limits you have placed on yourself.”

I sighed and closed my eyes. I thought of Walter’s apartment, thought of him, thought of where I wanted to land, but nothing came to me. I opened my eyes and glanced around. With the park, I’d had an image to get me started, the aerial and street views, but with the apartment, I had nothing.

“I’m not getting anything. What should we do?”

She shook her head. “Perhaps you can tell me what we are doing, besides going inside some computer thing.”

I squatted on the grass beside her and she listened while I explained what I knew about Walter and what I intended to do. She nodded and occasionally grunted, all the while staring at me with those big dark eyes of hers. And then a smile spread across her face.

“What?”

She started to giggle. “You sound like my brother, Toro, planning an adventure in the forest. It is so cute!” She fell backward and lay there laughing.

“Shhh.”

She nodded and covered her mouth. “OK, we are going to go in there, sneaky like ninja. You are going to enter a computer and do … something.” She paused. “And I will kill anyone I see.” She started to laugh again.

“Shoko, be serious.” I already felt like abandoning this crazy mission and going for pizza. I shook my head and tried to regain my focus. “Let’s travel to the balcony first. I’ll try to feel for Walter from there.”

“Yes, sir.” She giggled.

I glared at her.

“OK, OK.” She put her wakizashi away.

I took one more look at the top-floor balcony, imagining us there. She grasped my hand and I squeezed it, glad this was a necessary part of traveling. A moment later, we were on his balcony.

I was peering into the dark suite when I noticed the change: the warmth and energy of the earth was gone. I glanced up at Shoko to see if she’d noticed, but she was cupping her hands against the glass, trying to see inside.

“Um, Shoko … how far above the ground does the earth’s energy reach?”

She turned to look at me and shrugged. “Its energy reaches through anything that is still a part of her. Why?”

I touched the cold reinforced concrete, saw the steel and glass railing, the metal patio furniture. “Because I don’t feel her anymore.”

She frowned. “That’s interesting,” she said and turned to look into the suite again.

I peered through the railing, ten stories to the street below. “So we can’t travel in or back down?”

“Perhaps we will find something inside that still has some of her energy left in it.”

“I didn’t plan to break in,” I said as I dug into my backpack. There was nothing useful in there, only a small set of computer tools. What I needed was a hammer.

Shoko grabbed the handle and slid the glass door open.

Great. Next time I needed a hammer, I could just use my head—it wasn’t much good for anything else.

A faint sound—three electronic beeps—registered in my brain.

“Shoko, stop!” I froze, waiting for the wail of the alarm.

“What is that?” she asked, her tone higher than usual now, sounding more than just curious. She was pointing at a red light on the wall.

“Motion detector,” I whispered, feeling another shot of adrenaline. It was glowing red, sensing our movements and body temperature. I pulled myself together and ran to the front door. The alarm panel had to be there—and it was—but the lights were green.

Shoko came up beside me and I pointed to the green LEDs.

“It’s not turned on,” I said. Walter had only the door chime turned on.

“What is it?”

“It’s an alarm system. It detects intruders and rings a loud bell.”

“There is a magic eye, too.”

“Magic eye?” I peered over her shoulder. A small monitor displayed an alternating view of the elevator doors, the hallway outside and the lobby downstairs. The guards down there looked bored—one was lying on the sofa. Obviously no silent alarms were ringing.

“Do you think he has other … things to see inside here, like in Edward’s study?”

“I doubt it.”

I looked around. I’d somehow imagined outdated furniture and yellowing wallpaper, maybe even a velvet painting of dogs playing poker. Now I wondered if I’d broken into the wrong apartment.

The glow of the city lights illuminated the room enough to see his ultra-modern suite, minimalist with strange steel and leather furniture and chrome lighting. Several large paintings, abstracts with geometric shapes and bright colors—the kind that looked like a kid had painted them—hung in the hall and the living room. And the kitchen was right out of a magazine, sleek and commercial, with stainless steel counters and glossy red cabinets.

Shoko rubbed her shoe on the floor and took a tentative step toward the windows. “It is like walking on a pond,” she whispered as she tiptoed across the smooth, polished concrete.

We found an office down the hallway, past the kitchen—a spacious corner room with large windows and the same polished concrete floors. The desk was a thick slab of glass, nearly invisible in front of the windows, held up by steel legs. The two large flat-screen monitors and the keyboard, the only things on the desk, appeared to float above the floor. The walls were stark white and blank except for two things: a large flat-screen TV on one wall and a framed illustration on the opposite wall. The TV didn’t interest me, but the illustration did. I moved closer. It was a caricature, a cartoon portrait of a laughing man with an enlarged head, standing on top of a huge pile of money shaped like the hills of San Francisco. There was no mistaking the subject. It was Walter.

I decided two things right then: I was definitely in the right apartment, and I knew nothing about Walter Roacks.

Shoko stood watching me, looking curious, but when I sat on Walter’s weird clear plastic chair and slipped on a pair of latex gloves, she wandered away. I took a deep breath and tapped a key. Both screens flashed to life, flooding the room with light. One monitor opened to a stock-market page. Real-time quotes from the European and Asian markets glided across the screen, a steady flow of letters and numbers. The other screen opened to a Web browser, with the search screen waiting. And the Internet was connected.

I got to work.

Shoko came back a few minutes later. I’d sensed her so I wasn’t startled when she came up behind me.

“This place is huge,” she whispered. “And so high up. It is like the shrine at Izumo, a house fit for a god. Only one man lives here?”

“Yup, the whole top floor of the building.” I was concentrating on the boot sequence. He didn’t have any security software or virus scanners. I could have sent him an infected e-mail and saved us all this trouble.