Gale Force

83

Hiroki Okura sat in the little cell in the back of the Dutch Harbor Department of Public Safety’s police station, staring at the wall and wishing he’d never encountered Tomio Ishimaru in that smoky mah-jongg parlor.

His head hurt from where the salvage man had beaned him. He remembered trying to work up the nerve to shoot the young woman, remembered a glimpse of her partner before he’d knocked Okura to the deck. Then he’d woken up on the Coast Guard cutter, and nobody would talk to him or look him in the eye.

They’d bandaged his head, refused him any painkillers, kept him under observation, took his belt and his shoelaces.

“Suicide watch,” someone said. “Have to make sure you don’t do anything crazy.”

At that point, Okura would have welcomed death. Certainly, he had no future to live for, not now. The Coast Guard crew had put him on a helicopter, flown him to Dutch Harbor, where a couple of members of the town’s small police force were waiting to take him to jail.

They’d fingerprinted him. Booked him. Refused him a shower, though he smelled absolutely foul after weeks on that ship. They’d locked him up in this cramped little cell, three walls of bars and a fourth of cinder block, a stainless-steel toilet in the middle.

“Debating whether to prosecute you here, or just send you home,” one of the policemen told Okura. “Seems you’ve caused something of an international incident.”

Excellent, Okura thought. So much for anonymity. At the best case, he would spend years of his life in prison. In the worst-case scenario?

Okura didn’t want to think about it. There would be plenty of time for that later. But just as he’d succeeded in chasing the thoughts from his mind, the door in the corridor was unlocked and swung open. And in walked a police officer, trailing that worst-case scenario in the flesh.

“Guess I have some good news,” the police officer told Okura. “Looks like your brother’s here to see you. Moral support, or whatever.”

He unlocked Okura’s cell door. Stepped aside so the man who called himself Okura’s brother could walk in, then locked the door behind.

“Ten minutes,” he said, and retreated to the outer door again, leaving Okura alone with the man.

THE MAN WAS YOUNG, in his mid-twenties, and thin. His eyes were dark, almost as black as his hair. He wore a black suit, a white shirt, a skinny black tie, and his hair was artfully mussed.

He was not Hiroki Okura’s brother. Okura didn’t have a brother, and if he did, this man would not have been him.

The man didn’t bother to introduce himself. He walked to the center of the cell. Sniffed, made a face. Then he fixed his eyes on Okura and smiled, wide. His teeth were white; Okura could have sworn they were jagged, like a shark’s.

“Katsuo Nakadate sends his regards,” the man told Okura. He reached into his suit pocket, removed a folded piece of paper. Unfolded it, and held it out to Okura.

Okura hesitated. The man gestured, Take it.

Okura took the paper, though he wanted nothing to do with it. He forced himself to look down. Swallowed.

His sister. Her daughter. A photograph from a distance, outside of their house.

“We aren’t barbarians,” the man continued. “Maybe you didn’t know what you were doing when you helped Ishimaru. You were old friends, yes? We can understand that. We’re not cruel.”

Okura said nothing. Felt his legs begin to shake, tried to focus on standing upright, maintaining control of his bladder.

“Mr. Nakadate simply wishes to be returned what has been taken from him. I assume you know what I’m speaking of?”

Okura nodded yes.

“Do you know where it is?”

Okura nodded again.

“Tell me, Okura-san. I give you Katsuo Nakadate’s word that your niece and her mother will not be harmed.”

Okura closed his eyes. Hoped desperately that what he said next would absolve him, wash his hands of this mess, keep his sister safe.

“On the ship,” he said, soft enough that the man had to lean in to hear him. “In the infirmary, in a medicine cabinet. If it’s not there, it was taken by one of the salvage crew.”

The young man grinned again. Shark teeth. “Thank you, Okura-san. I hope, for your family’s sake, that we recover the property without delay.”

He turned and called for the guard, who appeared quickly. Walked out of the cell and down the corridor, stopping before the outer door to turn back and wink, once, at Okura. And then he was gone.

Okura sank to the hard concrete bench. The man had left him the picture, his sister and his niece. Okura stared down at it for a long time. There was nothing else he could do.