Year of the Demon

“We’re not crossing that line. Period.”

Han’s eyes were pleading and pained and frightened and angry, all at once. “Mariko, he took off a long time ago. On a fast fucking bike. What makes you think we’re going to find him in time?”

“Because we’ve got his boss, and because I think our speculating actually did us some good. Joko Daishi’s a strategist, not a mental patient. It’s like you said: from his perspective, everything he’s doing makes sense. All that Wind imagery—scattering, randomizing, blowing what’s orderly into disarray—that’s the real mask. He’s not following some divine hallucination. He’s got a plan. He’s got a timeline. He’s got—holy shit.”

“What?”

Mariko punched him in the arm. “The dope deals. Buying his hexamine with speed instead of cash. He was conning us, right from the beginning.”

“Slow down, Mariko. What are you seeing that I’m not?”

“As soon as we got onto the hexamine, what did we assume?”

“MDA. . . .” Mariko could almost see the shift in his thinking, a deft little slide away from desperation and back to their old give-and-take. “No way. You think he decided to cook his bombs with hexamine just to throw us off his scent? To make us think he was just another random speed freak?”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“Come on. You’re saying he knew we’d get onto the hexamine before we got onto the cyanide?”

“Yeah.”

“And he knew we’d leap to the conclusion that he was cooking MDA?”

“We didn’t leap, Han; he pushed us. He’s not just making bombs, is he? He’s cooking boutique uppers with rare ingredients, and he knows exactly what any narc who runs across those ingredients is going to assume.”

“And you and I never thought to question that assumption until we saw that.” Han jabbed a finger at the cluttered folding tables lined along the right-hand wall—the explosives assembly line. He shook his head, flabbergasted. He couldn’t even bring himself to look Mariko in the eye; he was too embarrassed by the idea that Joko Daishi had so thoroughly duped them. “This dude is thinking way farther ahead than we are.”

“Yeah.”

“Like, months ahead. Maybe years ahead.” He snorted a self-conscious laugh. “You don’t suppose he writes it all down in a day planner, do you?”

“Years ahead. . . .” Mariko didn’t even mean to say it aloud. She looked at the tables too, and at the hodgepodge collection scattered across them. Nails and screws: shrapnel. SIM cards, rubber-coated wire, outdated cell phones: remote detonators. Right beside them, gutted flashlights: handheld detonators. Any one of those items was totally innocuous. The only way to see them as dangerous was to take a much longer view.

And then she saw it. The Year of the Demon. Right above those tables. “Holy shit, Han, it’s right in front of our faces. He’s got a calendar!”

She turned and broke into a run. The cops watching over Joko Daishi instantly formed a defensive barrier, just in case Mariko was ready for round two. But Mariko was headed for the explosives assembly line, and specifically for the astrological calendar hung above it.

Only one day was circled, smack in the middle. Mariko could make no sense of the rest of it—too many months, too many weird astrological squiggles—but she knew for a fact that Joko Daishi had been hurrying things along lately. Preparing for the Year of the Demon. The appointed hour. It was a good bet that the circled day was today. Tomorrow if she was lucky, but there was no point in assuming her luck would suddenly improve.

No. She didn’t need to be lucky. She’d already seen another calendar with today’s date circled on it. That little wallet-sized copy of the Yomiuri Giants season schedule. She still had it in her pocket.

“Han!” She pulled the schedule out of its Ziploc bag, unfolded it too quickly, nearly tearing it. One game was circled. A home game. Today.

It had started three hours ago.

“His target is the game, the Tokyo Dome,” Mariko said. “We have to go—”

“No,” he said, and she followed his gaze to Joko Daishi. The son of a bitch still looked as giddy as a little boy, but a boy who was anticipating something, not a boy who’d already won. “We haven’t heard anything over the radio. If there was an attack, we’d have gotten the call—or at least heard about it, neh? ”

He whipped his phone out of his pocket and pulled up the app that kept him up to date on box scores. “Come on, come on,” he said. Mariko had far too much time to think about how long eight or nine seconds could be. “Okay, the game’s not over yet. Bottom of the eighth, two outs, the Giants are up five to four.”

“Han, I really don’t give a shit about the scores—”

“I’m saying it’s not a blowout. The stands are still full, Mariko. The stands are still full.”

Of targets, Mariko thought. Han didn’t need to say it. But as she saw it, his logic was flawed. “Akahata’s late if he’s trying to set off bombs in the stands. He should have done it midgame. It’s like you said: if this had been a blowout—”

“The stands would be half-empty already. People trying to beat the rush to the trains.”

“The trains!” Mariko’s skin went cold. “Han, he’s going to hit the subway.”

“No. Oh no, no, no.” Han began to quiver. “What if he . . . what if we can’t . . . ?”

Paralysis through analysis, Mariko thought. There wasn’t time to consider worst-case scenarios; she and Han needed to act. “Come on,” she said. “The Giants are your favorite team. You’ve been to a million games. What’s the train station down there?”

“Four stations. One is JR’s, the other three go to the subway.”

Mariko looked back at Joko Daishi, who watched the two of them eagerly. “He wants to cause chaos, right? Remind people of old fears?”

“Then it’s the subway,” Han said. “Like the sarin gas attack when we were kids.”

“Exactly.”

“Then our best bets are Suidobashi Station or Korakuen Station. Kasuga’s nearby, but it’s the other two that are always jam-packed after a game. If he wants a body count, it’s got to be Suidobashi or Korakuen.” His face went white. “Mariko, they’re going to be packed like sardines down there. It’s going to be a massacre.”

Mariko started running for the door, Han a pace or two behind her. She didn’t have time to give orders to the rest of her detail; there was too much to explain, too many loose ends to be tied up on-site before she could even think about a mass redeployment to the subway stations. “You take Suidobashi,” she told Han, “I’m taking Korakuen.”

“Oh, hell,” he said.

She heard him miss a step. Looking back, she saw him slowing, staring at the phone, halfway through the movement of trying to cram the phone back in his pocket. “Top of the ninth,” he said. “Still five-four. We’ve got three outs before all hell breaks loose.”

60

Mariko raced to Korakuen Station, lights running hot, siren as loud as it got and still not loud enough. Even before she became a cop, she remembered thinking people ought to go to prison for not pulling over to give emergency vehicles right of way. How these idiots failed to notice an ambulance or a fire engine riding their bumper had always been a mystery to her. Today she wished not pulling over was a capital offense. Death by strangulation, and Mariko wanted to do the strangling.

She clenched down on the steering wheel instead, thinking about all the mistakes she’d made in the last few minutes. She should have taken side streets, not the main thoroughfares. She should have ordered one of her officers on scene to call the Bureau of Transportation and order them to close Suidobashi and Korakuen stations so that she didn’t have to call it in herself. She’d made the call to Dispatch easily enough, but she’d done it driving one-handed at maximum speed, and plenty of cops had put themselves in the hospital that way.