Victor O'Reilly - Rules of The Hunt

He smiled with some affection, and then his expression turned serious. "You will always have my support. But you must be careful who you trust. You must take the fullest security precautions. At all times, you – and your team – will be armed."

Adachi's eyes widened. Although the uniforms were armed, he rarely carried a gun. It just was not necessary except in certain specific circumstances, and it was difficult to get his suit jacket to hang right with a lump of metal strapped to his belt. He said the Japanese equivalent of "Holy shit!"

"One extra thing," said the prosecutor. He pressed a button on his desk twice, and a buzzer rang in his assistant's office. "Koancho will be involved."

Adachi heard the door open, and he could smell her perfume before he saw her. Koancho's brief was internal security and counterterrorism. It was a mysterious and sometimes feared organization and officially reported directly to the Prime Minister's office, though there were links with Justice. It did what was necessary to preserve the constitution. Whatever that meant. It was not an organization that pissed around. It was small. It was effective.

"Involved how?" said Adachi.

"A watching brief," said Chifune.

"Quite so," said the prosecutor.

ChifuneTanabu bowed formally at Adachi, who had risen from his chair. He returned her bow.

"I think you two know each other," said the prosecutor, "and, I hope, trust each other. I asked specially for Tanabu- san."

I know your lips and your tongue and your loins and every inch of your exquisite body, thought Adachi, but trust? Here we are in uncharted waters. "I am honored, sensei," he said to the prosecutor, but including Chifune in the remark. He bowed again toward her. "It will be a pleasure," he added, somewhat stiffly. He felt decidedly disconcerted.

Chifune said nothing. She did not really have to. She just looked at him in that peculiar way of hers and smiled faintly.

Adachi's apartment was not a ninety-minute commute away in some godforsaken suburb. It was a comfortable two-bedroom, one-living-room affair of reasonable size on the top floor of a building in the Jinbocho district conveniently close to police headquarters. The area specialized in bookshops and, for some obscure reason, cutlery shops selling an intimidating array of very sharp instruments.

Just up the road was Akihabara, where anything and everything electronic could be purchased. Turn in the other direction and there were the moat and grounds of the ImperialPalace and, nearby, the Yasukuni Shrine, the memorial to the war dead.

The area had character and amenities, and it was on a subway route. It was a nice place to live. Occasionally, Adachi jogged up the road and rented a rowing boat and paddled around the moat of the ImperialPalace. Other times, he took his ladder and went up through the roof-light onto the flat roof with a bottle of sake and sunbathed. There was a low parapet around the edge of the roof, so he had a modicum of privacy.

He also used to make love on the roof from time to time, but the advent of the police airship rather took the fun out of that. It tended to hand around central Tokyo quite a lot, and he had been up in it and knew what you could see from a thousand feet with good surveillance equipment.

Like most Japanese homes, Adachi's was decorated in a mixture of Japanese and Western styles but all blended in a distinctively Japanese way. Western furniture, where used, was modified for the shorter and slighter average Japanese physique. In Adachi's case, since he was tall, it was a modification he could have done without.

Adachi had been reared to sit upright on the floor when required like any civilized human being, and could maintain that position for hours without any discomfort. But his present posture was less traditional. He was sprawled out on the tatami mat floor of his living room with his head on a pillow. The room was in semidarkness, lit only by two candles.

Facing him, slightly to one side, was Chifune, also on the floor but sitting in a manner considered more appropriate for her sex. Her legs were tucked under her and she was resting back on them, her hands in her lap. She looked submissive and demure, every Japanese man's dream, which only goes to show, thought Adachi, that what you see is rarely what you get.

She was wearing a short Western skirt of some soft beige material, and in that position it was well above her knees. She had removed the matching jacket. Her blouse was cream-colored and sleeveless.

She was truly delectable. The Beretta automatic pistol she carried in a holster tucked inside the waistband of her skirt in the small of her back had been removed and place in her purse. She also carried a silencer, Adachi knew, and two spare magazines of hollow-points. The weapon was more than a precaution. It was meant to be used. Still, she did not look in a shooting mood at the moment.

Adachi tried to remember where he had left his revolver and when he had last trained with it, but neither answer came quickly to mind. Those were tomorrow's problems. He looked through the skylight at the glow that was the Tokyo night sky when it was cloudy, and missed the stars.

He looked back at Chifune and then raised himself on one elbow. He drained his glass and she refilled it. As she came closer to him, he was acutely conscious of her body and the softness and texture of her skin. She returned to her original position.

"What is Koancho's interest?" he said.

She shook her head. "I can't tell you. You know that."

He smiled. "I know very little about you," he said. "I don't know what you may or may not do. I only know what you do where I am concerned, and you do that extremely well."

Chifune returned his smile. "You're a male chauvinist," she said sweetly, "but perhaps a little less extreme than most Japanese men. Make the most of it. Times are changing."

Adachi had to admit that she was correct on all three points. He did like – and had been brought up to expect – subservience in a woman. But he also had learned to enjoy and respect independence in the opposite sex. Truth to tell, Adachi liked women.

"Tell me about Hodama," he said.

"You know about Hodama," she said.

"Tell me anyway," he said. "The what I know will join with what you know and that will add up to what we know, which quite probably will be more than I know right now. I think it's called synergy."

"Gestalt psychology," she said. "The whole of anything is greater than its parts."

"Tell me about the whole Hodama," he said. "Who would want to boil a nice little old man like that – to death? Actually, it looks like he died of a massive heart attack almost immediately, but you know what I mean."

"I think our problem is going to be too many candidates," said Chifune. "Hodama led a long, active, and mostly evil life."

"‘Our problem’," said Adachi. "That's encouraging. I thought observer status meant just that. Koancho is not really into the sharing business." He grinned. "Like most security services, more into paranoia."

"‘Our’ problem," Chifune repeated quietly.

"Ah!" said Adachi, savoring this new insight. He decided not to pursue it for the moment, at least verbally. Instead he stretched out a bare foot and slipped it between Chifune's knees and then a little further. She did not resist. There was a faint flush in her cheeks.

"Hodama," he said, "but perhaps the shorter version for now."

Chifune was an expert in various martial arts and related disciplines. They all put a heavy emphasis on mind over matter. She drew on this training as she spoke.

"Kazuo Hodama was born in Tokyo early in this century, the son of a civil servant. He actually spent much of his early life in Korea. His father was part of the Japanese occupation forces. Hodama therefore grew up with both military and other government connections – which he was to put to good use later on in life."