Temple of Fear

Chapter 5

The little man with the mallet was merciless. He was a dwarf and he wore dirty brown robes and he swung a mean mallet. The gong was twice as big as the little man, but the little man had big muscles and he meant business. He swung the mallet again and again against the sounding brass — boinggg— boinggg — boinggg — boingggg…

Funny thing. The gong was changing shape. It was beginning to look exactly like Nick Carter's head.

BOINGGGGGG — BOINGGGGGGG

Nick opened his eyes, then closed them as fast as possible. The gong started again. He opened his eyes and the gong stopped. He was lying on the floor, on a futon, with a quilt over him. Near his head was a white enameled pot. Foresight on someone's part. Nick got his head over the pot and was sick in it. Very sick. For a long time. When he had retched himself empty he lay back on the floor pad and tried to get the ceiling in focus. It was just an ordinary ceiling. Gradually it stopped whirling and settled down. He began to hear music. Frenetic, far-away, stamping go-go- music. It was, he thought as his head cleared, not so much a matter of sound as of vibration.

The door opened and Tonaka came in. No Girl Scout uniform now. She was wearing a brown suede jacket over a white silk blouse — obviously with no bra under it — and tight black slacks that clung with love to her slim legs. She was slightly made up, lipstick and a trace of rouge, and her lustrous black hair was piled with feigned carelessness atop her head. She was, Nick admitted even in his agony, quite a dish.

Tonaka gave him a quiet smile. "Good evening, Nick. How are you feeling?"

He touched his head tenderly with his fingers. It didn't fall off.

"I just might live," he said. "No thanks to you."

She laughed. "I'm sorry, Nick. I really am. But it seemed the' only way to carry out my father's wishes. The drug we gave you — it not only makes a person extremely docile. It also gives him an enormous thirst, desire, for alcohol. You were really quite drunk even before we got you on the plane."

He stared at her. It was all flooding back now. He rubbed the back of his neck gingerly. "I know it's a stupid question — but where am I?"

Her smile vanished. "In Tokyo, of course."

"Of course. Where else. Where are the gruesome threesome — Mato, Kato and Sato?"

"They have their work. They are doing it. I doubt that you will see them again."

"I think I can bear that," he muttered.

Tonaka knelt on the futon beside him. She ran her hand over his forehead and stroked his hair. Her hand was as cool as a Fuji brook. Her soft mouth brushed his, then she pulled away.

"There is no time for us now, but I will say this. I promise it. If you help my father, as I know you will, and if we both live through this, I will do anything to make up to you what I have done. Anything! That is understood, Nick?"

He was feeling enormously better. He restrained the impulse to pull her slim body down atop his own. He nodded. "Understood, Tonaka. I will hold you to that promise. Now — where is your father?"

She stood up and moved away from him. "He lives in the Sanya district. You know it?"

He nodded. One of the worst slum areas in Tokyo. But he did not understand. What was old Kunizo Matu doing in such a place?

Tonaka guessed his thought. She was lighting a cigarette. She Bung the match carelessly on the tatami.

"I told you my father is dying. He has cancer. He has come back to die with his own people, the Eta. You knew he was Burakumin?"

He shook his head. "I had no idea. Does it matter?"

He had thought her beautiful. The beauty vanished now as she scowled. "He thought it mattered. He left his people long ago and passed as a non-Eta. Now that he is old and dying, he wants to make amends." She shrugged fiercely. "Perhaps it is not too late at that — this is certainly the time for it. But he will explain all that to you. Then we will see — I think now that you had better take a bath and get cleaned up. It will help your sickness. We have a little time. A few hours until morning."

Nick stood up. His shoes were missing but otherwise he was fully clothed. The Savile Row suit was never going to be the same. He did feel grimy and had the beginnings of a stubble. He knew what his tongue must look like and he did not want to face it. There was a distinct taste of ditch digger's glove in his mouth.

"A bassu might just save my life," he admitted.

She pointed to his crumpled suit. "You'll have to change clothes anyway. That will have to be gotten rid of. It's all arranged. We have other clothes for you. Papers. A whole new cover. My lather worked it out, of course."

"Father seems to have been very busy. And just who are 'we?' "

She threw a Japanese phrase at him that he did not catch. Her long dark eyes narrowed. "It means Militant Women of Eta. It's what we are — wives, daughters, mothers. Our men won't fight, or very few of them, so the women must. But he will tell you all about that, too. I'll send a girl about your bath."

"Hold it a minute, Tonaka." He was hearing the music again. Music and vibrations, very faint.

"Where are we? Where in Tokyo?"

She flicked ashes on the tatami. "On the Ginza. Under it, rather. This is one of our few safe hideouts. We're in a sub-basement under the Electric Palace cabaret. That's the music you hear — go-go and girls. It's nearly midnight up there and the joint is jumping. Now I really must go, Nick. Anything you want…"

"Cigarettes, a bottle of good hair of the dog and to know where you got your English. I haven't heard a 'prease' now for a long time."

She could riot repress the smile. It made her lovely again. "Radcliffe. Class of '63. Father didn't want to raise his daughter to be an Eta, you see. Only I insisted. But he'll tell you about that, too. I'll send the things. And the bassu girl. See you soon, Nick."

She closed the door behind her. Nick, who was nothing if not adaptable, squatted in Oriental fashion and started thinking it out. There would, of course, be all hell to pay in Washington. Hawk would be getting the torture chamber ready. He decided to play the cards as they had fallen, at least for the time being. He could not contact Hawk at once, not tell the old man that his wandering boy had wandered to Tokyo. No. Let the boss have his apoplexy. Hawk was a tough, stringy old bird and it wouldn't kill him.

Meantime Nick would see Kunizo Matu and find out what it was all about. Pay his debt to the old fellow, get this whole infernal mess straightened out. Then would be time enough to call Hawk and try to explain.

There was a tap on the door.

"Ohari nasai." It was fortunate, as long as he had to be' shanghaied, that he spoke the language.

She was middle-aged with a flat placid face. She wore straw getas and a gingham house dress. She carried a tray with a bottle of whisky and a package of cigarettes on it. Over her arm she carried a huge fluffy towel. She gave Nick an aluminum toothed smile.

"Konbanwa, Carter-san. Here are things for you. Bassu is ready now. You come hubba-hubba?"

Nick smiled at her. "Not hubba-hubba. Drink first. Smoke first. Then maybe I won't die and can enjoy bassu. O namae wa?"

The aluminum teeth glinted. "I Suzy."

He took the bottle of whisky from the tray and grimaced. Old White Whale! About what you could expect in a place called the Electric Palace.

"Suzy, eh? That figures. You bring a glass?"

"No grass."

"That figures, too." He twisted the top off the bottle. The stuff smelled bad. But he needed one, just one, to get him off and running on this — this whatever it was mission. He held out the bottle and bowed to Suzy. "Your health, beautiful. Gokenko wo shuku shimasu!" And mine, too, he muttered under his breath. He had a sudden, sure knowledge that the fun and games were about over. From now on in the game would be for keeps and the winner kept all the marbles.

Suzy giggled, then frowned. "Bassu ready now. Hot. You come fast or be cold." And she flapped the big towel suggestively in the air.

It was of no avail to explain to Suzy that he could scrub his own back. Suzy was boss. She popped him into the steaming tank and took over, giving him a bassu her way, not his. She missed nothing.

Tonaka was waiting when he got back to the little room. There was a pile of clothing on the bed mat. Nick regarded the clothes with distaste. "What am I supposed to be? A bum?"

"In a way, yes." She handed him a battered wallet. It contained a thick wad of crisp new yen and a great many cards, most of them limp and dogeared. Nick riffled hastily through them.

"Your name is Pete Fremont," Tonaka explained. "You are sort of a bum, I suppose. You're a free-lance newspaper man and writer, an alcoholic, and you've been on the beach in the Orient for years. Now and then you sell a story or an article in the States and when the check gets here you go on a binge. That's where the real Pete Fremont is now — on a binge. So you don't have to worry about that. There won't be two of you running around. Now you had better get dressed."

She handed him a pair of shorts and a light blue shirt, cheap and new, still in their cellophane packets. "I had one of the girls buy these. Pete's stuff is pretty filthy. He doesn't take very good care of himself."

Nick dropped the skimpy robe Suzy had given him and got into the shorts. Tonaka watched impassively. She had, he remembered, seen it all before. No secrets from this kid.

"So there really is a Pete Fremont, eh? And you guarantee to keep him out of circulation while I operate? That's fine — but there is another angle. Everybody in Tokyo must know a character like that."

She was lighting a cigarette. "Keeping him out of sight won't be any problem. He's dead drunk. He'll stay that way for days, as long as his money holds out. He couldn't go anyplace anyway — these are his only clothes."

Nick halted his task of taking pins out of the new shirt. "You mean you stole the guy's clothes? His only clothes?"

Tonaka shrugged. "Why not? We need them. He doesn't. Pete is a sweet guy, he knows about us, about Eta girls, and he helps us now and then. But he's a hopeless lush. Anyway he's shacked up now and he doesn't need any clothes. He's got his bottle and his girl and that is all he cares about. Do hurry, Nick. I want to show you something."

"Yes, mem sahib."

Gingerly he picked up the suit. It had been a good suit once. It had been made in Hong Kong — Nick knew the tailor — a very long time ago. He got into it, noticing the very distinctive odor of sweat and age. It fitted amazingly well. "Your friend Pete is a big man."

"Fat now."

Nick put on shoes that were cracked and rundown at the heel. The tie was ragged and stained. The trenchcoat she handed him had, in the Ice Age, come from Abercrombie and Fitch. It was filthy and lacked a belt.

"This guy," Nick muttered as he shrugged into the trenchcoat, "is real type casting. Brother — how does he stand his own smell?"

Tonaka did not smile. "I know. Poor Pete. But when you've been fired by the UP, the AP, the Hong Kong Times and the Singapore Times and by Asahi, Yomiuri and the Osaka, I guess you don't much care any more. Here. The hat."

Nick regarded it with awe. It was a masterpiece. It had been new when the world was young. Filthy, dented, ragged, sweat-stained and shapeless, still it flaunted a bedraggled scarlet feather in the salt-rimed band. A last gesture of defiance, a final cocking the snook at Fate.

"I'd like to meet this Pete Fremont when this thing is over," he told the girl. "He must be a walking example of the law of survival." Something Nick was pretty good at himself.

"Maybe," she agreed curtly. "Stand over there and let me look at you. Hmmmmm — you'll pass for Pete at a distance. Not close, because you don't look anything alike. That's not really important. His papers are important, as your cover, and I doubt you'll meet anyone that knows Pete well. Father says you won't. This is all his plan, remember. I'm only carrying out my instructions."

Nick narrowed his eyes at her. "You don't like your old man very much, do you?"

Her face went as stiff as a kabuki mask. "I honor my father. I do not have to love him. Come now. There is something you must see. I have saved it until the last because — because I want you to leave this place in the proper frame of mind. And on your guard."

"I know," said Nick as he followed her out the door. "You're a great little psychologist.".

She led him down a corridor to a flight of narrow stairs. Somewhere over his head the go-go music was still dinning away. Imitation Beatles. Clyde-san and his Four Silk Worms. Nick Carter shook his head in silent disapproval as he followed Tonaka down the stairs. Mod music left him cold. He was by no means an old gent, but he wasnt that young. Nobody was that young!

They went down and down. It grew colder and he heard the trickle of water. Tonaka was using a small flashlight now.

"How many basements does this joint have?"

"Many. This part of Tokyo is very old. We're directly under what used to be the old silver foundry. Gin. They- used these dungeons to store bullion and coins."

They reached bottom, then went along a transverse corridor to a dark cubicle. The girl flicked a switch and a dim yellow bulb starred the ceiling. She pointed to the body on a plain deal table in the center of the room.

"Father wanted you to see that. First. Before you committed yourself irrevocably." She handed him the flashlight. "Here. Take a good look. It's what will happen to us if we fail."

Nick took the flashlight. "I thought I was committed."

"Not totally. Father says not. If, at this point, you want to back out we are to put you on the next plane back to the States."

The AXEman scowled, then grinned sourly. Old Kunizo knew what he was about. He knew that Carter might be a lot of things, but chicken wasn't one of them.

He put the glow of the flashlight on the body and examined it with an expert eye. He was familiar enough with corpses and death to know at once that the man had died in exquisite agony.

The body was that of a Japanese of middle age. Squat, powerful, graying at the temples. The eyes had been closed. Nick examined the many small wounds that covered the man from neck to ankles. There must be a thousand of them! Small, bloody, gaping little mouths in the flesh. None deep enough to kill of itself. None in a vital spot. But put them all together and a man would slowly bleed to death. It would take hours. And there would be the terror, the shock…

Tonaka was standing well back in the shadows cast by the tiny yellow bulb. The waft of her cigarette came to him, acrid and harsh in the cold death smell of the room.

She said: "You see the tattoo?"

He was looking at it. It puzzled him. A small blue figure of Buddha — with knives sticking into it. It was on the left arm, inside, above the elbow.

"I see it," Nick said. "What does it mean?"

"The Society of the Bloody Buddha. His name was Sadanaga. He was Eta, Burakumin. Like myself — and my father. Like millions of us. But the Chinese, the Chicoms, forced him to join the Society and work for them. But Sadanaga was a brave man — he rebelled and worked for us, too. He informed on the Chicoms."

Tonaka flipped away her glowing cigarette butt. "They found out. You see the result. And that, Mr. Carter, is what you will be up against if you help us. And that is only part of it."

Nick stepped back and ran the flashlight over the body again. The mute little wounds gaped at him. He flicked off the light and turned back to the girl. "It looks like the death of a thousand cuts — but I thought that went out with the Ronins."

"The Chinese have brought it back. Updated, in modern form. You will see. My father has a model of the machine they use to — to punish anyone who defies them. Come. It is cold down here."

They went back to the little room where Nick had awakened. The music was still banging and strumming and vibrating. He had somehow lost his wristwatch.

It was, Tonaka told him, a quarter after two.

"I don't feel like sleep," he said. "I might as well cut out right now and go see your father. Call and tell him I'm on my Way."

"He has no phone. It is not wise. But I will get a message to him in time. Perhaps you are right — it is easier to move around Tokyo in the small hours. But wait — if you are going now I must give you this. I know it is not what you are accustomed to — my father remembers — but it is all we have. Weapons are hard to come by for us Eta."

She went to a small cabinet in one corner of the room and knelt before it. The slacks tightened over a smooth line of thigh and buttock, limning the taut flesh.

She came back with a heavy pistol that glinted black with an oily sheen. She handed it to him along with two spare clips. "It is very heavy. I could not use it myself. It has been hidden away since occupation days. I think it is in good condition. I suppose some CI traded it for cigarettes and beer, or a girl."

It was an old Colt .45, 1911. Nick had not fired one for a long time but he was familiar with it. The weapon was notoriously inaccurate at over fifty yards, but within that range it would stop a bull elephant. It had, in fact, been developed to stop amoks in the Philippines.

He released the full clip and pumped the sleeve several times, checked the safeties, then thumbed cartridges onto the bed pad. They lay thick and blunt and deadly, the brass shimmering in the light. Nick checked the feeder springs in all the clips. They would do. Just as the old .45 would have to do — it wasn't Wilhelmina, of course, but then no other gun was. And he could have done with the stiletto, Hugo, nestling along his right arm in the chamois spring sheath, but that was out. He had to use the tools at hand. He jammed the Colt into his waistband and buttoned the trenchcoat over it. It bulged, but not too much.

Tonaka was watching him closely. He sensed her approval in her dark eyes. The girl was, in fact, feeling more optimistic about matters. She knew a professional when she saw one.

She handed him a small leather keyfold. "There is a Datsun in the parking lot behind the San-ai Department store. You know it?"

"I know it." It was a tubular building not far down the Ginza, resembling a massive rocket on its pad.

"Good. Here is the license number." She handed him a slip of paper. "The car may be watched. I don't think so, but it may be. You will just have to take that chance. You know how to get out to the Sanya district?"

"I think so. Take the Freeway to Shawa Dori, then come off and go as far as the baseball stadium. Cut right on Meiji Dori and that should get me somewhere around the Namidabashi Bridge. Right?"

She came closer to him. "Pretty right. You know Tokyo well."

"Not as well as I should, but I can make out. It's like New York — they keep tearing it down and building it again."

Tonaka was closer now, nearly touching him. Her smile was sad. "Not in the Sanya district — that is still slums. You will probably have to leave the car near the bridge and walk in. The streets aren't much."

"I know." He had seen slums the world over. Seen them and smelled them — the dung and the filth and the human garbage. The dogs that ate their own excreta. The babies that would never have a chance and the old waiting to die without dignity. Kunizo Matu, who was Eta, Burakumin, must feel very strongly about his people to return to a place like Sanya to die.

She was in his arms. She pressed her slim body against his big hard one. He was surprised to see tears glistening in the long, almond-shaped eyes.

"Go, then," she told him. "God be with you. I have done all I can, obeyed my honorable father in every detail. You will give him my — my respects?"

Nick held her gently. She was trembling and there was a faint scent of sandalwood about her hair.

"Just your respects? Not your love?"

She would not look at him. She shook her head. "No. Just as — as I say. But do not think of that — it is between my father and me. You and I — we are different." She pulled a little away from him. "I have a promise to keep, Nick. I depend on you to make me do so."

"I will."

He kissed her. Her mouth was fragrant, soft, as moist and yielding as a rosebud. As he had suspected she was not wearing a bra, and he felt the swell of her breasts against him. For the moment they melded, shoulder to knee, and her trembling increased and her breathing roughened. Then she pushed him away. "No! We must not. That is all — come, I will show you how to leave this place. Do not bother to memorize it — you will not be coming back here."

As they were leaving the room a thought struck him. "How about that body?"

"That is our concern. It will not be the first we have disposed of — when the time is right we will put it into the harbor."

Five minutes later Nick Carter felt the light touch of April rain on his face. Hardly more than a mist, really, and it was cool and soothing after the confines of that basement. There was a hint of damp chill in the air and he buttoned the old trenchcoat about his throat.

Tonaka had led him into an alley. Overhead the dark turbid sky reflected the glare of the Ginza's neon lights half a block away. It was late but the street was still swinging. As he walked Nick could smell the two odors he identified with Tokyo — hot noodles and freshly poured concrete. To his right was a desolate flattened expanse where a new basement was being dug. The concrete smell was stronger. The cranes in the pit were like sleeping storks in the rain.

He came to a side street and turned back toward the Ginza itself. He came out a block from the Nichigeki Theater. He paused on the corner and lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply and letting his eyes rove and register the frenetic scene. At nearly three in the morning the Ginza was cooling down a bit, but it was not yet dead. Vehicular traffic had thinned, but mobs of. people still ebbed and flowed up and down that fantastic street. Noodle vendors still piped. Brash music poured from the thousands of bars. Somewhere a samisen twanged softly. A late-running tram clanged past. Over it all, as though the sky was leaking rivulets of color, washed the bright surf of the neon. Tokyo. Brash, brawling, bastard of the West. Spawned by rape of the dignified maiden of the East.

A ricksha went by, the coolie trotting wearily with his head down. A Yank sailor and a cute Japanese girl were in heavy embrace. Nick smiled and tossed his butt away. You hardly ever saw that any more. Rickshas. They were as old-fashioned as clogs, or the kimona and obi. Young Japan was hip — and there were plenty of hippies.

High on his right, just under the clouds, winked the warning light on Tokyo Tower in Shiba park. Across the street the bright neon of a Chase Manhattan branch told him, in Japanese and English, that he had a friend. Nick's grin was a little sour. He doubted that C-M was going to be much help in his present situation. He lit a new cigarette and took off. His peripheral vision was excellent and he saw the two neat little cops, blue-uniformed and white-gloved, coming up to his left. They were walking slowly, swinging their batons and talking to each other, casual and harmless enough, but there was no point in taking chances.

Nick went a couple of blocks out of his way, keeping an eye on his back trail. Nothing. He was suddenly very hungry and he stopped at a garishly lit tempura bar and ate a huge dish of vegetables and batter-fried shrimp. He left yen on the stone bar and went out. Nobody was paying him the slightest attention.

He left the Ginza, walked down a side street, and came into the San-ai parking lot from the rear. Sodium lights cast a blue-green haze over the dozen cars there. The black Datsun was where Tonaka had said it would be. He checked the license, twisted the paper into a spill for another cigarette, then got in and drove out of the lot. No lights, no shadow of a following car. So far he appeared to be in the clear.

When he sat the heavy .45 dug into his groin. He put it on the seat beside him.

He drove carefully, keeping well within the 32-kilometer limit until he was on the new Expressway and heading north. Then he stepped it up to 50 kilometers, which was still within the night limit. He obeyed every traffic sign and signal. The rain increased and he rolled up the driver's window nearly to the top. As the little car grew stuffy he could smell the sweat and dirt odor of Pete Fremont's suit. There was little of the crazy Tokyo traffic at this hour and he saw no police cars. He was thankful. If the cops stopped him, even for a routine check, it was going to be a little tough, looking and smelling the' way he did. And there would be the .45 to explain. Nick knew the Tokyo police from past experience. They were tough and efficient — they had also been known to toss a man into the pokey and conveniently forget him for a few days.

He passed Ueno Park on his left. Not far now to the beisubooru Stadium. He decided to leave the car in the parking lot at the Minowa Station on the Joban line and walk into the Sanya district by way of the Namidabashi bridge — in the old days they had executed criminals out here by the bridge.

The little suburban station was dark and deserted in the rain-whimpering night. There was one car in the lot, an old jalopy without tires. Nick locked the Datsun, checked the .45 again and thrust it into his belt. He pulled down the beat-up hat, turned up his collar and started trudging into the dark rain. Somewhere a dog howled wearily, a cry of loneliness and despair in that desolate hour before morning. Nick trudged on. Tonaka had given him the flashlight and now and again he used it. Street signs were haphazard, often missing, but he had a general idea of where he was. going and his sense of direction was keen.

Once across the Namidabashi Bridge he was in Sanya proper. A faint breeze off the Sumida River bore the industrial stench of the factories lining it. Another smell hung heavy and pungent on the dank air — the odor of old dried blood and rotting guts. Slaughter houses. There were a lot of them in Sanya and he recalled that a great many of the Eta, the Burakumin, were employed in killing animals and skinning them. One of the few nasty jobs open to them as a class.

He came to a corner. He must be close now. There was a row of flophouses here. A paper sign, shielded from the weather and lit by an oil lantern, offered a bed for 20 yen. Five cents.

He was the only man awake in this desolation. Gray rain hissed and spattered gently on the ancient trenchcoat. Nick figured that he must be within a block or so of his destination. It didn't mean much because now he had to admit that he was lost. Unless Tonaka had set up the contact, the lead-in man, as she had promised.

"Carter-san?"

A sigh, a whisper, an imagined sound above the weeping of the rain? Nick tensed, put his hand on the cold butt of the .45 and looked around. Nothing. No one.

"Carter-san?"

The voice higher now, reedy, one with the wind. Nick spoke into the night. "Yes. I am Carter-san. Where are you?"

"Over here, Carter-san, between the buildings. Come to the one with the lamp."

Nick eased the Colt out of his belt and slipped it off safety. He walked to where the oil lamp guttered behind the paper sign.

"Here, Carter-san. Look down. Below you."

There was a narrow space between the buildings with three steps leading down. At the foot of the steps a man was crouching beneath a straw rain mat.

Nick halted at the top of the steps. "Can I use a light?"

"For one second only, Carter-san. It is dangerous."

"How do you know I am Carter-san?" Nick whispered.

He could not see the old shoulders shrug beneath the mat, but he guessed at it. "It is a chance I take — but she said you would come. And, if you are Carter-san, I am to direct you to Kunizo Matu. If you are not Carter-san, then you are one of them and you will kill me."

"I am Carter-san. Where is Kunizo Matu?"

He flashed the light down the stairs for an instant. Bright beady eyes reflected the gleam. A wisp of gray hairs, an ancient face seared by time and trouble. He squatted beneath his mat like Time itself. He did not have twenty yen for a bed. Yet he lived, he talked, he helped his people.

Nick doused the light. "Where?"

"Down the stairs, past me, and straight back along the passage. As far as it goes. Be careful of dogs. They sleep here and they are wild and hungry. At the end of this passage there is another passage. Take it to the right — go again as far as you can. It is a large house, larger than you would think, and a red light burns behind the door. Go, Carter-san."

Nick fumbled a crisp bill from Pete Fremont's crummy wallet. He dropped it beneath the mat as he passed. "Thank you, Papa-san. Here is money. Your old bones will lie easier in a bed."

"Arigato, Carter-san."

"Itashimashite!"

Nick went cautiously along the passage, brushing his fingers against the ramshackle houses on either side. The smell was terrible and he stepped into sticky filth. He accidentally kicked a dog, but the creature only whined and crept away.

He made the turn and kept going for what he reckoned was half a block. The shacks closed in on either side, jumbles of tin and paper and old packing crates — anything that could be salvaged or stolen and used to make a home. Now and then he saw a dim light or heard a baby crying. The rain wept for the inhabitants, the batayu buraku, the rag and bone pickers of life. A lean cat spat at Nick and fled into the night.

He saw it then. A dim red glow behind a paper door. Visible only if you were looking for it. He smiled sourly and thought fleetingly of his youth in a midwestern town, where the girls around the Real Silk factory had actually kept red bulbs glowing in the windows.

The rain, caught suddenly by wind, beat a tattoo on the paper door. Nick rapped lightly. He stepped back a pace, a pace to the right, the Colt alert to slam lead into the night. The odd sense of fantasy, of unreality, that had been dogging him since he had been drugged, had gone now. He was all AXEman now. He was Killmaster. And he was working.

The paper door slid back with a little sigh, to be filled by a vast bulk in dim silhouette.

"Nick?"

It was the voice of Kunizo Matu and yet it was not. Not the voice as Nick remembered it from the years. It was an old voice, a sick voice, and it repeated: "Nick?"

"Yes, Kunizo. Nick Carter. I understand that you wanted to see me."

Everything considered, Nick thought, it was probably the understatement of the century.