Paul McEuen - Spiral

IN THE ADJOINING ROOM WAS A TEAM OF INTERROGATION experts analyzing the spectrum of Kitano’s voice patterns, the fluctuations in his pupil size, the electrical conductivity of his skin. The FBI interrogator would be getting real-time updates on Kitano’s stress levels.

The interrogator began by reading a summary of events pertaining to the woman. Dunne took no pleasure watching Kitano’s shocked reaction to the details of the victim taken to Bellevue, the “731 Devil” symbols carved into his chest. A similar reaction when Kitano learned of the finger bone in the cylinder with the words KITANO MUST PAY.

Before today, Kitano couldn’t talk about their cozy and highly improper relationship without getting himself in at least as much trouble as Dunne. But now the duplicitous rat had blanket immunity.

THE QUESTIONS STARTED EASY, QUERIES ABOUT KITANO’S personal information, his business interests, all for the instrument boys to get baseline readings. From there it moved into more interesting territory, questions about the man dropped off in Times Square. Dunne watched closely, attentive to Kitano’s every gesture. He appeared calm, answering in simple declarative sentences.

Finally the interrogator nodded to Dunne.

“All right, Hitoshi,” Dunne said. “Talk. Do you know who the woman is? Or are you just jerking us around?”

Kitano’s eyes met Dunne’s. “Did you find a tattoo on the victim? An Orchid flower? Anything like that?”

Dunne said, “Yes.”

Kitano nodded. “She goes by the name Orchid.”

“Orchid,” Dunne said. “How do you know?”

“I saw the photo. I recognized her.”

Kitano was correct. They’d picked up their first real information on the woman less than an hour ago. The name tattooed on the finger bone had set off alarm bells with the CIA station chief in Beijing.

“Who is Orchid?” Dunne asked Kitano.

“She is a kind of specialist. Known in the Chinese right-wing circles. It is rumored she was behind the bombing of Japan’s Yasukuni Shrine. Last year. And the murder of Kabawi.”

“Kabawi?”

“A conservative member of the Japanese legislature. He led the movement to purify the textbooks of anti-Imperial rhetoric. What your newspapers would call a revisionist . Denying the Rape of Nanking. The Korean comfort women.”

“Why does Orchid want you?”

“Many know of my past, what happened at Harbin. Her benefactor wants revenge.”

“Who does she work for?”

“There are rumors of a billionaire Chinese backer. Rabidly anti-Japanese.”

“No names?”

“Billionaires in China are a cancer. In 2003 there were none—now there are hundreds. It is very dangerous, such sudden power, sudden wealth. It amplifies one’s secret desires, secret prejudices. Such men are very dangerous.”

You should know , Dunne thought. “Why did Orchid torture Liam Connor?” he asked.

Kitano’s demeanor changed at this question. Dunne saw it in his face, his body language. A chink in the man’s confident armor. Now they were getting down to it.

The room was silent. Dunne began to wonder if the old man had suffered a stroke.

Finally he spoke. “Do you know what happened after they destroyed the USS Vanguard back in 1946? About the confrontation I had with Connor on the USS North Dakota ?”

A knock, and the door to the interrogation room opened. It was Dunne’s attaché. He passed Dunne a note. It said one word: IMPORTANT.

DUNNE STEPPED OUT INTO THE HALL. HIS DEPUTY WAS WAITING. “What now?”

“In Ithaca. They found a woman shot dead near Maggie Connor’s workplace. No one can find Ms. Connor. Or her son. The police said there was a fire. And a second fire that was even stranger. Out in the sticks with the rednecks. Firemen found what looks like the remnants of a state-of-the-art biotech lab. The firemen also found two bodies inside, both with gunshot wounds. One of the victims was a Cornell professor, a friend of Jake Sterling’s.”

“Sterling? Has anyone spoken to him about this yet?”

“They can’t find Sterling, either.”

“What? But he should be at Detrick by now.”

“He never showed.”

“And why wasn’t I told?”

No explanation.

“Is everyone around here goddamned incompetent? Why didn’t Sterling show up?”

“No idea, sir.”

DUNNE WAS SHAKEN AS HE STEPPED BACK INSIDE THE INTERROGATION room. He sensed a malevolent pattern, a dark web of danger just outside his reach. Now he wanted answers. “No more stalling, Hitoshi. Why did Orchid kill Connor?”

Kitano raised his right hand, highlighting his missing finger. “She is looking for a small brass cylinder. The length of the medial phalange finger bone. At Unit 731, I had it implanted in my finger. I was extracting it when Connor stopped me. He took it. I had no intention of bleeding to death, not before I released it. I am the seventh Tokkō.”

The light went on in Dunne’s head. “Connor kept the cylinder? He was holding on to a specimen of the Uzumaki all these years?”

“Yes.”

He leaned back, stunned. He thought of the reports from Ithaca, Maggie Connor going missing. The pieces snapped together, a cold knot growing in Dunne’s chest.

JAKE DROVE THE FEDEX VAN ALONG ROUTE 96A, THE SAME road he’d taken the morning before. FedEx vans were like telephone poles, part of the landscape. The President could put on a FedEx uniform and no one would notice him.

Orchid crouched behind him in the storage area, gun drawn. Dylan and Maggie were tied up in the back, mouths wrapped in packing tape. Orchid was guiding them by Liam’s message, the yellow sheet of paper she had taken from Vlad. Jake didn’t know what the text said, but he had a damned good idea where it was leading them. There wasn’t much else out here but the Seneca Army Depot. They were just a few minutes away now.

In the rearview mirror, Jake caught glimpses of Maggie and Dylan in the shadows. Orchid had secured them to the wall with the same kind of high-tech handcuffs she’d used on him. The cuffs opened and closed electronically, and Orchid controlled them by tapping a sequence on her leg with her right hand. The same kind of tapping also controlled the electric shocks that came from Jake’s belt. There must be some kind of transducer built into Orchid’s gloves. She used them to control everything.

He paid close attention to the patterns of the taps of her fingers.

UP AHEAD THE FENCING STARTED, VISIBLE IN THE VAN’S headlights. On Orchid’s command, Jake parked the van near a locked gate. He turned off the headlights.

“Put these on,” Orchid said, tossing him the cuffs.

Jake obeyed, closing the latch down loosely.

Orchid tapped a pattern on her leg and the cuffs came alive. The shackles tightened, pulling in close, to the edge of real pain.

She tossed him a small army shovel. He caught it with one hand. She tapped another sequence on her leg, and Jake jumped. A bolt of electricity shot through him, emanating from his waist belt, and just as suddenly stopped.

Jake was practically hyperventilating, his heart beating rat-a-tat-tat .

“Don’t forget,” she said.

THEY WALKED DOWN AN ENDLESS ROW OF BUNKERS, EACH one an ominous, hulking shape in the growing darkness. Jake was in the lead, Orchid forty feet behind, Dylan just ahead of her. Maggie was still in the van, unconscious—Orchid had stuck a needle in her that knocked her out in less than a minute. Orchid had placed a handwritten sign in the window that said, TOW TRUCK ON ITS WAY, and they’d left her behind.