Flashback

1.02 Denver—Friday, Sept. 10

Sato couldn’t fit in the car seat or get the damned seat belt harness on.

Nick had done the entire three-tier security thing in reverse with Sato in tow: Mr. Nakamura’s personal security ninjas or whatever they were handing him off to the Nipponese Compound security people, the Japanese turning him over to the Colorado state troopers and the DS agents—the State Department’s Office of Diplomatic Security charged with protecting foreign diplomats—who gave Nick back his Glock 9 in its clip-on holster. And then Nick got in the gelding and was ready to leave, except for the fact that Sato wouldn’t fit.

“Sorry, power seat, but hasn’t worked for a while,” mumbled Nick as Sato’s mass filled all the space between the seat back and the dashboard. “Been meaning to fix that stuck harness as well.” The seat belt harness extended about twenty inches, which barely reached Sato’s shoulder, and would not extend farther.

“Do you have airbag?” asked the security chief.

“Ahh…,” said Nick and then remembered that the car had been CMRI’d on its way in. Sato must know that all the ancient hybrid’s airbags were missing. Nick had sold them years ago.

Sato fiddled with the unmoving power seat controls for a minute and then, just as Nick got out to come around to add his own useless fiddling, Sato planted his feet on the floorboards, gave out a sumo-wrestler’s grunt-growl, and straightened his legs.

The stalled power seat screeched back as far as it could go, the bearings almost tearing off their railings, until the back of the half-reclined seat was almost touching the rear seat.

Sato gave another weight lifter’s grunt and pulled down on the stuck shoulder harness with all his might.

Something in the mechanism tore and three yards of seat belt hung loose. Still half reclined, two feet farther back than the driver, Sato clicked the harness into the buckle.

Nick came back around and drove off. He would have rolled up the windows to shut out the DS agents’ laughter, but it was already far too hot in the little car and the air-conditioning wasn’t working with the batteries this low.

The low batteries were a problem.

Nick had popped his phone back in the dashboard slot and its nav function told him that the distance to the Cherry Creek Mall by the shortest route—reversing the way he’d come via Speer Boulevard, to 6, to I-70, and then the Evergreen exit to the Green Zone—was 29.81 miles. The DS guys had charged the gelding with their garage’s high-speed 240-volt charger, but the phone and car readouts both said that the old batteries only had enough charge to travel 24.35 miles, even factoring in the downhill stretch on I-70 dropping out of the foothills.

The last thing that Nick Bottom wanted on this particular Friday was to be stuck with Mr. Hideki Sato somewhere on Speer Boulevard—probably in reconquista territory south of downtown—five miles from their destination.

Fuck it, thought Nick, not for the first time that morning. No guts, no glory.

The gelding hummed, hissed, and rattled its way out of the Green Zone toward I-70.

Sato’s position, lying almost flat in the broken and fully reclined passenger seat and so far back that it seemed that Nick was a chauffeur up front and Sato the passenger in the rear seat, looked absurd, but the hefty security chief didn’t seem bothered by it. Sato folded his callused hands over his belly and looked up and out at the trees and sky.

Glancing at the sky, Nick said, “Mr. Sato, how did you get the video of me using the flashback on that cul-de-sac? Some of the shots looked to be from a handheld camera from about ten feet away.”

“They were,” said the security chief.

Nick tried to accelerate down the ramp onto the Interstate, but the gelding wasn’t in the mood to accelerate—even heading downhill. At least there wasn’t much traffic to merge into coming east on I-70. At one time, a time Nick could still remember clearly, a family could get on I-70 and drive 1,034 miles without ever leaving the Interstate except to pump gas—merging with I-15 about 500 miles from Denver in the Utah high desert and mountain country and staying on it the rest of the way to L.A.—ending up at the Pacific Ocean at the Santa Monica Pier.

Now an adventurous driver could get in his car and drive 98 miles west from Denver on I-70 to where state and federal protection ended at Vail. Beyond Vail, there be dragons.

“How did you get one of your people to within ten feet of my car with a camera?” asked Nick.

“Stealth suit,” said Sato. The short but absurdly solid man seemed totally relaxed.

Nick stopped himself from replying. Stealth suits were the stuff of agencies like the former CIA, long since disbanded, and of sci-fi action movies. How could the expense of a stealth suit possibly be justified just to follow Nicholas Bottom to an interview? Even if they’d badly wanted the footage to embarrass him as they did during the interview—why a stealth suit? And how’d they get the operative in the stealth suit so close to Nick’s car before Nick had zonked out under the flash—driving a stealth car? This was James Bond crap from the last century. Ridiculous.

Sato was almost certainly joking. But Nick, who still had a cop’s ability to pick up most of the subtle physical and auditory signals that someone was lying (with some inner-city types the signal was simple—the perp’s lips were moving), just couldn’t get any reading on Sato. Except for the security chief’s occasional and deliberate flashes of contempt, disdain, and amusement toward Nick, there was nothing. Beneath that Japanese layer of what Occidentals like Nick thought of as Asian inscrutability, Security Chief Sato wore another—probably professional—mask.

“The aerial video,” persisted Nick. “All MUAVs?”

“Not all miniature,” Sato said softly. “And one was a satellite feed.”

Nick laughed out loud. Sato didn’t join in the laugh or crack a smile.

Using full-size UAVs and tasking a recon satellite, even one of the Nakamura Group’s corporate sats, to watch me snort some flashback? He mentally laughed again at the thought.

Sato continued lying there like a tipped-over Buddha, his fingers interlaced over his broad but heavily muscled belly.

Nick braked lightly on the 6 percent I-70 grade down the mountain toward Denver, slowing the crawling car to an even more glacial pace, hoping against hope that the regenerative braking would add enough juice to the dying li-ion batteries to get him home. Even other old clunkers honked and roared past. The hydrogen vehicles in the far-left VIP lane were blurs.

He changed the subject in an attempt to keep Sato talking.

“How did you translate ‘gelding’ to your boss?”

“As a male horse whose testicles have been removed. This is correct, yes?”

“Yes,” said Nick. “But don’t you have geldings—old hybrids with the gasoline engines removed—in Japan?”

“Not legal in Japan,” said Sato. “Cars in Japan are inspected every year and must meet all modern standards. Few automobiles there are more than three years old. Hydrogen-powered vehicles are—how do you say it?—the norm in Japan.”

Vehicres.

Still braking, watching his meters while trying to keep both his batteries and the conversation alive, Nick said, “Mr. Nakamura doesn’t seem to like old movies.”

Sato made that deep noise in his throat and chest. Nick had no idea how to interpret that. Different topic needed.

“You know,” said Nick, “this liaison idea isn’t going to work.”

“Riaison?” repeated Sato.

Nick didn’t smirk but he wondered if he’d brought up this conversation strand just to get Sato to mispronounce the word.

“The idea Mr. Nakamura brought up of you following me everywhere, reporting on everything I see and hear, being part of the investigation with me. It won’t work.”

“Why not, Mr. Bottom?”

“You know damn well why not,” snapped Nick. He was approaching the bottom of the hill, emerging onto the high, mostly flat prairie that stretched east past Denver some eight hundred miles or so to the Mississippi River, and he’d have to decide in a few minutes whether to continue a little north and then due east on I-70 to the Mousetrap and a short stretch of I-25 south to Speer Boulevard, with no stops, or angle right to go back on Highway 6 to Speer the way he’d come. The 6 route was a little shorter, I-70 perhaps a little easier on the dying batteries.

“My witnesses and suspects won’t talk with a Jap listening,” continued Nick. “Sorry, Japanese person. You know what I mean.”

Sato growled something that might mean assent.

Nick turned to look back and around and down at the security chief. “You weren’t one of Nakamura’s assistants or security people who dealt with the Denver PD six years ago when Keigo was murdered. I would have remembered you.”

Sato said nothing.

At the last second, Nick took the Highway 6 exit. Shorter was better. Or it had damned well better be.

All the charge meters were reading flashing amber or red but Nick knew that the gelding, like him, had a few more miles hidden in it somewhere.

“So why didn’t you come to the States with Mr. Nakamura when his son was killed?” demanded Nick. “It seems to me that as head of Nakamura’s security detail, you would have been front and center in asking questions of the cops here. But your name’s not even in the files.”

Again Sato remained silent. He seemed to be almost asleep, his eyelids almost—but not quite—closed.

Nick looked back at him again. He suddenly understood. “You were on Keigo’s security detail,” he said softly.

“I was Keigo Nakamura’s security detail,” said Sato. “His life was in my hands the entire time he was here making his film about Americans and flashback addiction.”

Nick rubbed his chin and cheek, feeling the stubble there from his hasty shave that morning. “Jesus.”

The gelding hummed and rattled along for a few minutes. The regenerative braking had helped some, even though it didn’t really show the added charge on the crappy gauges. Nick thought they might make it back to the Cherry Creek Mall Condos garage after all.

“Your name wasn’t in the files,” Nick said at last. “I’m certain of that even without checking under flashback. That means that you didn’t come forward. Nor did Nakamura ever mention it during the investigation. You had vital evidence about the murder of Keigo Nakamura, but you and your boss kept it secret from the Denver PD and all of us.”

“I do not know who murdered Keigo Nakamura,” Sato said in low tones. “We were… briefly separated. When I found him, he was dead. I had nothing to offer the police. There was little reason to remain in the United States.”

Nick barked a cop’s laugh. “The man who found the body flees the country… nothing to offer the police. Cute. I guess the main question is, how are you still working for Hiroshi Nakamura after his son was killed while under your protection?”

It was a brutal thing to say and for a minute Nick’s shoulder blades itched as he imagined the massive security chief firing his pistol through the back of Nick’s driver’s seat. Instead, there was only a slight intake of breath and Sato said, “Yes, that is an important question.”

Nick had another revelation. He blinked as if flashbulbs had gone off in front of him. “You already did an investigation—you and your security guys—didn’t you, Sato? What—five and a half years ago?”

“Yes.”

“And even with all your technology and MUAVs and satellites and shit, you still couldn’t find out who killed your boss’s son.”

“No, we could not.”

“How long did your investigation run, Sato?”

“Eighteen months.”

“How many operatives on the job for those eighteen months?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Holy shit,” said Nick. “All that money and manpower. You couldn’t find Keigo’s murderer and you never told us—the Denver cops or the FBI—that you were carrying out your own investigation.”

“No,” confirmed Sato. His voice seemed to be coming from very far away.

“All that money and manpower and technology,” repeated Nick, “and you couldn’t find out who cut the boy’s throat. But your boss expects me to find the killer with nothing but shoe leather and some flashback.”

“Yes.”

“What happens to you if this last try fails?” asked Nick. Somehow he knew the answer as soon as he asked the question, even if he couldn’t remember the correct word at that moment.

“I commit seppuku,” Sato said softly, neither his voice nor expression changing. “Just as I offered—but was denied permission to do—the first two times I failed my master. This time, permission has been granted ahead of time.”

“Jesus Christ,” whispered Nick.

His phone in the diskey slot buzzed a terrorist alert at the same instant he heard a distant THUMP through his open driver’s-side window and he saw a plume of black smoke to the north and east of them. Black Homeland Security helicopters were clearly visible, circling like carrion crows two miles or so north.

Nick verbally queried his phone but the phone had no data yet.

He looked in the rearview mirror and saw Sato touch his left ear. The earphone had been so tiny that Nick had missed it earlier.

“What is it?” asked Nick. “What’s going on?”

“A bombing. A car bomb, evidently. At the interchange of I-Seventy, I-Twenty-five, and Highway Thirty-six that you call the Mousetrap. Segments of two of the overpassing highways have collapsed. Several dozen vehicles are in the debris of the collapsed roadways. There seems to be no radiological, chemical, or bacteriological contamination detected.”

“Christ. I almost went that way. We’d be there now. Do they know who did it?”

Sato shrugged.

Nick interpreted the shrug not as I don’t know nor as It’s not on the Net yet but as Does it matter?

And did it?

Hajji, AB, reconquista, flashgangs, anarchist syndicate, spanic militias, anglo militias, Black Muslims, Nuevo cartels, local cartels, Posse Comitatus, draft dodgers, aggrieved veterans, New Caliphate infiltrators… it didn’t matter, Nick realized. Knowing which terrorists had blown the Mousetrap to bits wouldn’t really help you avoid the next terrorist with a gun or IED or van full of fertilizer with a fuse.

But Nick was still irritated that Sato’s phone was picking up secure data faster than Nick’s not-quite-legal, grandfathered-in tap on the police tactical net.

He slowed at the Highway 6 overpass above I-25. Due north, beyond the huge black-oil-dipped wavy oval of the Mile High DHSDC, just west of the A-T-wrapped stubs of what was left of Denver’s high-rise buildings downtown, beyond the bulks of Six Flags Over the Jews and Coors Field, black smoke continued to rise. The Homeland Security choppers continued to buzz and flit and circle the smoke like vultures, while the lesser carrion birds of news choppers circled much farther out, not yet allowed close enough to bring the scene to waiting viewers.

Nick crossed I-25 and turned right onto Speer Boulevard.

“So if I fail in this investigation—a case you couldn’t solve five years ago in eighteen months of trying at a time when the witnesses’ memories and clues were fresh,” he said over his shoulder to Sato, “a case you couldn’t solve with twenty-seven operatives working for you, more tech than the FBI has, and Nakamura’s budget of billions of dollars behind you—you’re going to disembowel yourself?”

The security chief nodded and closed his eyes.