The Samurai Inheritance

XXXI

‘So, in a nutshell, she has the head and I don’t think she’ll willingly part with it,’ Jamie explained warily.

‘But she wanted to know your client’s identity?’ Keith Devlin sounded outraged.

‘That’s right.’

‘I hope you bloody well didn’t tell her.’

‘Of course I didn’t.’

‘And you’re certain she’s Yakuza? From what I hear they don’t go in much for women bosses.’

Jamie shrugged. ‘She as good as admitted it. I got the feeling she was proud of the fact.’

There was a long silence at the end of the phone and Jamie had a feeling he’d been put on hold while the other man discussed the situation with a third party. Eventually, Devlin came back on the line.

‘All right, son. This is where we’re at. Time’s getting short due to some factors of which you’re not aware. We need the head now, and you’re gonna get it. It’s time to go the extra mile.’ Jamie felt the breath catch in his chest and he couldn’t have spoken even if he’d known what to say. ‘So you’re going to go right back in there and fetch that little treasure back for your Uncle Keith.’

‘And get myself killed?’

‘C’mon, Jamie mate,’ Devlin sounded positively jovial, ‘you’re a player. You’ve done this kind of stuff before. You can do it now. Besides, son, you’ve never had a better incentive.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Well, those girls of yours, they’re gonna be rooting for you for a start.’

An image of Fiona and Lizzie locked in a cell at some remote mining complex in the Australian bush filled Jamie’s head and he felt a thrill of panic. ‘What have you done to them?’

‘Nothing at all, son,’ Devlin assured him, but the words not yet were there by implication. ‘They’re being well looked after. We’re on a little exotic holiday just like we planned from the start.’

Jamie heard a muffled squeal in the background and thought he recognized Fiona’s voice.

‘Let me talk to them.’

‘Tell me you’ll think about it first.’

‘All right, I’ll think about it. Just let me talk to Fiona.’

‘Jamie?’

‘Yes, darling, it’s me. Are you and Lizzie okay?’

He heard her take a deep breath. ‘Yes, we’re being treated well enough. He said we were going to the Gold Coast, but we’re on some kind of tropical island. It’s horrid, the whole place stinks and there are men with guns.’

‘Where—’

‘I think that’ll do for now, son.’ Devlin’s voice returned to the phone. ‘Your girls are just fine and I’ll make sure they stay that way as long as you cooperate. The guns are for their protection, and as long as I’m with them we’ll be fine.’

Jamie tried without success to keep his voice anger free. ‘All right, Devlin, what do you want me to do?’

‘Just exactly what’s in your contract, Jamie. You find the head and you bring it to me.’

‘What if I can’t get it? What if …?’

The Australian lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘If I read your obituary in the Tokyo Times your little lady and her lovely daughter will be flown back to Oz none the worse for their holiday. Likewise, if you end up in a Jap jail. All I want to know is that you’ve given it your best shot, son.’

‘And if by some miracle I do get the bloody thing, what then?’

He could almost see Devlin’s grin. ‘When you get the Bougainville head, all you have to do is let me know and I’ll make sure you get to where you need to be. Are you still there?’

‘Yes, I’m still here. And Devlin …’

‘Yes, mate.’

‘Just so we know exactly where we are, if you harm a hair on either of their heads I will hunt you down and I will kill you. Do we understand each other?’

Devlin’s mocking laughter echoed in the earpiece. ‘You just bring me the head, son, and we’re quits. I might even forget what you just said.’

The phone went dead in his hand.

He looked up to find Magda Ross staring at him. ‘What’s going on, Jamie?’ she demanded.

‘It seems my esteemed client is in more need of the head than I’d realized.’ He explained what Fiona had said about a tropical island and armed guards.

‘You mean he’s holding them hostage? That’s unbelievable.’

‘Unfortunately it’s not. I think Devlin means exactly what he says and he’s not the kind of man to let morality get in the way of his objectives.’

‘You should call the police,’ she said, but without any conviction.

Jamie nodded distractedly. It was the logical thing to do, but he had a feeling Keith Devlin would have planned for that contingency. It was too big a risk. Instead, he said: ‘I think it’s time we did some late-night shopping.’

Platinum Street — Gaien-Nishi-dori — lived up to its name and Jamie’s Presbyterian instincts winced at the amounts he shelled out as he ticked off the mental check-list in his head. Small black rucksack from some Italian designer fashion house — seventy thousand yen. Tight-fitting leather jacket in black, with zipped internal hood, Hugo Boss — ninety thousand yen. Jeans, black. Cashmere roll-neck, black. Sport shoes, black. Still, he rationalized, it would all go on Keith Devlin’s expenses bill, and if not, the Princess Czartoryski Foundation’s little windfall would tide him over.

‘When you said we should do some shopping, I actually thought you meant we not you. Why this sudden interest in dressing like James Dean? Couldn’t you have waited till we got back to the hotel to change?’

As he’d shopped, Jamie had exchanged each item for a piece of clothing he was already wearing so he’d gradually metamorphosed into something approaching a silhouette of his former self. It was only when they exchanged the designer shops for a hardware outlet that realization dawned. She shook her head as he added a head-torch, a hammer, a large pair of pliers, pepper spray and fifteen metres of climbing rope to the contents of the rucksack.

‘Are you crazy?’ she whispered. ‘You have no idea what kind of security they have in those woods. You’ll get yourself killed.’ The thought had already occurred to Jamie, which was why he’d discarded his original plan of buying a black ski mask on the grounds he was less likely to get shot if someone could see the terror on his face. ‘And even if you get there,’ she added unnecessarily, ‘do you really think the Dragon Lady is going to let you walk into her house?’

‘No, I don’t. All I know for certain is that I have to try, and there’s only one way to find out.’

‘You look far too wholesome to be a burglar.’ She gave him a shrewd look. ‘Do you have any experience of breaking and entering?’

He considered for a moment, remembering the intimidating darkness of Himmler’s Hall of the Generals at Wewelsburg Castle, the snarling hounds in the long grass outside Max Dornberger’s mansion and the unique terror of having a gun barrel pressed against his forehead at a Teutonic castle in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In retrospect, none of those episodes had turned out quite the way he’d intended. ‘A little,’ he admitted eventually. ‘But it’s not something I do every day.’

‘Then you’re going to need all the help you can get.’

‘What do you mean?’ he said suspiciously.

‘I mean I’m coming with you.’ There was no arguing with Magda Ross when she’d made her decision. She walked back into the store and returned moments later with an oblong box from a multicoloured stand by the door. Jamie nodded appreciatively as he saw what she’d bought.

He pushed the box into the rucksack and they set off for the complex. A road flanked much of the walls, with buildings on the opposite side. He chose an area that hopefully shielded him from any security cameras covering this part of the wall.

‘All right, tell me what you had in mind for these?’ He reached into the rucksack and brought out the multicoloured box Magda had bought in the hardware store.

‘If you’re going in there, you’re going to need some sort of diversion.’ Magda kept her voice low. ‘I’ll find a way to the opposite side of the complex — somewhere close to a camera — and set these off at intervals along the wall.’ Jamie opened his mouth to protest that she’d be deliberately putting herself in the firing line, but she continued: ‘I’ll be safe enough. The best chance you have is if the people watching screens up at the Dragon Lady’s concrete palace are looking the other way when you go in.’

‘All right,’ Jamie agreed reluctantly. ‘But don’t take any more chances than are absolutely necessary.’

She didn’t reply, but gave him a look that reminded him who was about to put their head into the lion’s mouth.

He tore open the box to reveal a string of firecrackers, four or five rockets and a range of anonymous tubes with bright starbursts on the side. ‘There should be enough here to keep them interested for at least half an hour if you play it right, but for God’s sake don’t start any fires. Most of the houses around here are made of wood and I don’t want to burn down half the bloody city.’ He kissed her on the cheek and she reacted with a rueful smile. ‘I won’t move until I see the first rocket or hear the first bang. Don’t rush it. Don’t cut any corners. Go right to the far side of the complex before you start anything. We’ll meet up back at that twenty-four-hour coffee shop we passed. Okay?’

Magda nodded and Jamie watched her jog off down the street. When she was out of sight he closed his eyes and leaned against the wall of the building. One more thing to worry about. How in the name of Christ did he keep getting himself into these things? He studied the wall on the far side of the road. At seven foot high he’d have no problem clearing it but he could see no sign of the usual refinements that protected the homes of the rich, the famous or the criminally inclined. And that was a puzzle in itself. Yes, they had the security cameras at the gate, but where was the electrified wire that would turn the wall into a formidable and — depending on the voltage — potentially lethal barrier? The wall itself ran in a long curve, which ruled out any laser or ultrasonic beams. Maybe Madam Nishimura didn’t want to advertise her presence by living in a fortress, but the Dragon Lady was a major player in a, quite literally, cut-throat business, and she hadn’t become that by being careless with her security. No, there must be something else. The wall was the first line of defence, therefore its purpose was not to deter, but to detect. So, some kind of pressure pad running round the top, or just inside the wall where an intruder would drop when he slipped across. A problem. But not an insurmountable one. All he needed was to find the right tree.

When she was certain she was past the gate, Magda returned to the road running round the wall. She followed it until she estimated she was more or less diagonally opposite where Jamie waited. The surrounding streets seemed to be devoid of life, which was fortunate, and the few cars she could see appeared unoccupied. A security camera was fixed to a tree in the woods opposite, but that didn’t bother her. Her entire purpose was to be seen.

She strung the firecrackers along the top of the wall and left the fuse dangling. When she was satisfied with their position, she pressed the rocket’s wooden stick into a patch of soft earth so that the rocket was angled just over the wall. Her preparations complete, she struck a match and lit the firecracker fuse first, immediately followed by the rocket. The twisted paper glowed and a worm of fire ate its way upwards. Without warning the rocket rose on a column of sparks before accelerating with a long whoosh to rip through the air almost faster than the eye could follow. As it soared into the night sky the first firecracker went off with a tremendous bang that made her heart stutter, instantly followed by ten more in quick succession. A buzz-saw ripple of violent explosions. The awed silence that followed was broken by an almighty crack as the black void above was flash-lit by the expanding blossom of sparks from the exploding rocket. For a moment she was too stunned to move, but after a few seconds she put the box back in her bag and hurried away to the left as the lights in the apartment block behind began to flick on.

Even though he’d been waiting for it, Jamie was startled by the flash of the rocket above the trees. He stood outside the wall opposite the tree he’d chosen, a big cedar, hundreds of years old and with a wide cleft where the trunk split at just about the right height. From the rucksack he withdrew the rope and attached the hammer with a pair of half hitches. The tree was perhaps fifteen feet inside the wall and the cleft maybe eighteen or twenty feet up, giving him just enough rope to play with. He positioned himself six or eight feet back from the wall and dropped the coiled rope at his feet. Taking a length of rope in hand he swung the hammer in an arc and allowed it to sail out, arching upward towards the cleft only to fall slightly short. He winced at the sound of the steel hitting the trunk; the echoing clatter as it rattled on to an unseen root. Cursing under his breath he carefully retrieved the rope.

After three more failed attempts sweat ran down his back and he tried to ignore the sharp little bangs from the far side of the complex that told him he was running out of time. The split in the trunk widened the higher he went. Did he have enough rope? There was only one way to find out. He swung again, released and opened his eyes just as the rope sailed through the gap. With a panic-stricken lurch he clamped his left hand on the cord as the last five feet uncoiled. Very gently, he pulled the rope back towards him. This was the key. Was the cleft narrow enough to stop the hammer sliding straight back through? He felt the line tighten and increased the pressure. Would the knot hold?

He shrugged on his rucksack and used the taut rope to help him walk up the wall until he was balancing on the balls of his feet on the very edge. Remember what the instructors told you: left hand as high as you can get it, right hand above and pull your knees up, all in one smooth movement. He felt himself sailing into space, saw the gnarled trunk speeding towards him and allowed himself to drop to the ground just short, fortunate not to break his ankle on a twisted root. The hammer dropped to the ground on the other side of the tree carrying the rope with it.

He allowed himself to breathe again. And that was the easy part.

Jamie untied the hammer and recovered the rope, coiling it neatly into the rucksack. When it was safely stowed he took out the head-torch and slipped the band over his brow. The only other item he retrieved was the small canister of pepper spray he hoped would be proof against any guard dogs that roamed these woods. He had a horrible memory from a couple of years earlier of a slavering pair of fangs and jaws with terrible strength; he didn’t want to repeat the experience.

He waited a few moments, allowing himself to become accustomed to the whisper of the woods; the sound of branches rubbing together, the soft breeze through the leaves and, in the distance, the faint hum of a generator he hoped would lead him to his target. When he was ready, he set off, moving silently in a low crouch. All he could do was pray Magda’s diversion had done its job. If they spotted him he would know soon enough, because the Dragon Lady’s deadly guardians would be on him like a pack of wolves.

While one part of his mind concentrated on silence and survival, the other turned to Keith Devlin. Mr Lim had hinted on the train that there was more at stake than mining rights, however rich. What if Mr Devlin’s motives for the Bougainville exchange are not what he wishes you to believe? That hint had latterly taken on an element of prophecy. What incentive was so powerful that Devlin thought it was worth abducting an innocent woman and her daughter to force Jamie Saintclair to steal an ancient body part? Fiona had said they were being held on some kind of tropical island and the more he considered it the more he understood the answer had to lie somewhere on Bougainville.

He slowed when he came to a roadway and had one foot on the tarmac when the faintest hum in the air made him hesitate. With a convulsive heave he threw himself backward as one of the electric carts rounded the corner and swept silently over the ground he’d been about to cross. A glint of light on a gun barrel and they were past, leaving Jamie lying in the damp roadside ditch with his heart pounding in his chest. When he was certain they’d gone he raised his head — and froze.