‘Depends on your definition of “fine”.’ She wrapped one arm across her chest, gripped by a sudden chill. ‘He came through the window. He must have made a noise or something, because I woke up before he could skewer me.’
‘The way he’s dressed…what is he, a ninja or something?’
‘Or something.’ Dutch forced herself to breathe more evenly until her heart rate slowed a little. A more urgent need took hold of her and she turned towards the bathroom, feeling unsteady on her feet. ‘I gotta pee.’
She locked the door and dropped down onto the closed lid of the toilet, leaning forward and putting her face in her hands, breathing deeply. She stayed that way for a couple of minutes, then got back up and took a look at herself in the mirror. Her t-shirt was specked with blood, as was her skin; she sluiced water onto her face until it was gone.
When she emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, she found Nat had gotten dressed. He stood at the open window, peering down at the street below the hotel and talking on his phone. She found her Levi’s on the floor and pulled them on.
‘You’re going to have one hell of a time explaining all this to whoever owns this hotel,’ she said once he hung up.
He turned around to look at her. ‘This hotel is owned by one of Wu’s subsidiaries.’
She let out a weak laugh. ‘I should have guessed.’
‘Someone’s coming to deal with all this mess. And I’m moving you to another room.’
Nat went over to the bed and carefully searched through the dead man’s pockets. When he pulled out a red envelope and a pre-paid travel card, Dutch’s heart skipped a beat.
‘Let me see that,’ she said, stepping up beside him and snatching the envelope from his grasp. She opened it, finding it contained a single sheet of rice paper with intricate Japanese calligraphy. Dutch stared down at it with a powerful sense of unease.
Nat gave her a curious look, tossed the dead man’s travel card onto a side-table and stepped into the bathroom, washing the blood off his hands. When he came back out, Dutch showed him the letter.
He shook his head. ‘I don’t read Japanese.’
‘It’s from a woman who calls herself Madame Muto—’
Nat’s eyes grew wide with clear recognition. ‘Muto?’
She squinted at him. ‘You’ve heard of her?’
He blinked like a deep-sea fish confronted by a torch-wielding diver. ‘I…guess her reputation precedes her.’
‘So how much do you know about her?’
‘Beyond the name, very little,’ said Nat.
‘She owns a bunch of clubs and hostess bars all over Roppongi, but that’s a cover for her real business. Any time someone pisses her off enough she wants them dead,’ said Dutch, holding the letter up, ‘these get left on their bodies so everybody knows what a mean motherfucker she is. She calls them “death notices”.’ That the would-be ninja had been sufficiently lacking in talent he couldn’t even kill Dutch while she was asleep suggested Muto’s standards had slipped badly since Dutch had last encountered her.
‘And do you happen to know why Muto wants you dead?’
‘It’s a long story,’ Dutch sighed, letting the rice-paper slip to the floor. ‘I’ll tell you some other time.’
‘Anyone else coming after you?’
‘Knowing Muto, it’s entirely possible.’ Dutch glanced at the three-ring binder, which still lay on the floor where she’d discarded it. ‘She once told me never to come back to Japan, or she’d kill me.’
He regarded her with a sour expression. ‘And yet you somehow neglected to inform me.’
She gave him a hard look. ‘It’s not like I told her I’d be coming back. And I’m only here for the duration of the time-trials, right?’ Her eyes returned to the three-ring binder and a sudden idea came to her. ‘You know, they do say offence is the best form of defence. And unless she’s sold it some time in the last five years, Muto has the car I used to drive in the Devil’s Run.’ She moved closer to him. ‘How about we go get it?’
Nat’s eyes widened, and he put out a hand. ‘You are not going to get Wu into a war with some gangster because they’ve got a grudge against you. We’ll increase security until we fly out to Teijouan.’
‘But—!’
‘That’s final, Dutch—I don’t want to hear one more word about this.’ He glanced at the corpse on the bed and shuddered. ‘Stay right where you are while I sort out some extra security.’
He left the room and she waited a moment before pushing her head out into the corridor. She saw Nat standing close by the elevators with his back to her.
Her blood still burned hot and spiky with adrenaline. She pulled on her boots and grabbed up her jacket before she had time to reconsider. Her heart raced like back in her car-jacking days.
She stopped by the door and looked back at the body on the bed, the longer of the two swords still protruding from his chest. She stepped up onto the bed and took a two-handed hold on the katana, tugging it loose before wiping it clean on a pillow miraculously unstained by blood.
Dutch wrapped the blade up in her leather jacket and held it close to her chest as she looked back out into the corridor. Wrapping it up wasn’t going to do a great job of hiding it from anyone looking closely, but there was nothing she could do about that. There was no sign of Nat, but she could hear him still talking from inside his room next door.
She snatched up the dead man’s travel card and headed down the corridor in the opposite direction from the elevators, the soft carpeting blanketing the sound of her footsteps. She hurried down a stairwell, hoping nobody paid too much attention to the gaijin woman with a half-concealed sword in her hands.
Two minutes later Dutch walked out of the hotel entrance
