Gale Force

92

Daishin Sato found an access hatch in the hull of the Pacific Lion, midway between the accommodations deck and the waterline. He unlocked the bulkhead door and swung the hatch open, revealing an endless expanse of azure sea and blue sky, a gentle rolling swell, the hush of the water as the Lion plowed through it.

Sato took a moment, admired the view. Breathed the fresh air. He and his colleagues had been imprisoned belowdecks for three days, confined mostly to darkness and the stale air of the holds. He’d ventured up to the weather deck once, when the cargo hold started to seem suffocating, but it had been nighttime, the ship’s minders asleep in the lounge, the air outside cold.

It was a beautiful day. It had been an uneventful voyage, so far, for better or for worse. Sato wasn’t seasick; that was a positive. Perhaps the only positive, at this point.

He produced his satellite phone. Entered the number he knew by heart, and waited to be connected.

The connection took time, longer than a cellular phone, and Sato held the phone to his ear, and watched the waves roll by. Then a click, and the connection was made. “Hai.”

“The product is not here,” Sato told the man on the other end of the line. “We’ve looked exhaustively.”

There was a pause. The connection clicked and coughed. Sato waited.

“Very well,” the man said at last. “We will have to escalate the matter.”

“I’ll wait for instruction,” Sato replied.

The other man didn’t bother to answer. He killed the call, leaving Sato alone again with the vast, open ocean, and the sky equally limitless. Sato indulged the view for another minute or two.

Then he closed the hatch and locked it, and set out to return to his colleagues.

THREE THOUSAND MILES away from the Pacific Lion, Katsuo Nakadate replaced the handset on his phone.

He turned in his chair, away from his desk and his computer, to stare out through vast picture windows at the city of Yokohama and the ocean beyond. He thought, with a long moment, about what he was going to do.

The syndicate’s interests remained in jeopardy. The bonds remained unrecovered. Nakadate would use any means to recover them, but still, he had hoped to confine any violence to the accountant Ishimaru, and perhaps to his accomplice on the freighter.

He didn’t relish the prospect of initiating conflict with civilians. He had hoped that Sato and his colleagues would have located the bonds on the freighter, that his most pressing concern would be bringing his men home.

But the bonds had disappeared. And that meant someone—an American—knew of their whereabouts.

Nakadate swiveled in his chair again, back to his phone. Picked up his handset and instructed his secretary to make another call.

He waited briefly. Then the call was placed, and Masao Tanaka answered on the first ring.

“Your colleagues have had no luck,” Nakadate told him. “It’s your turn to act.”