“For the library, of course. Our records of his beloved relics were far more complete than he could have imagined. And I confess that they were in a dreadful state. We cannot maintain a permanent archive, you understand. We must remain mobile. We had documents scattered hither and yon, and so he had a lifelong project: to bring order to the collection.”
He must have been like a kid in a candy store, Mariko thought. “I get it. He’s another pool ball to you. You put him in front of the pocket and you give him a little nudge, right?”
“Just so. But Yamada proved most recalcitrant. He refused.”
Mariko refrained from doing a fist-pump. Score one for the good guys, she thought.
“In a way, it was Joko Daishi that changed his mind,” Furukawa said. He’d racked the balls; now he took up a cue and lined up a break. “Or rather, Koji Makoto, formerly Shoji Makoto. His mother told you about his maladies, I think. Did she tell you he was raised under my care?”
“She said she got his meds through you.”
“Quite right.” The cue ball struck with a loud crack, sending the other balls hurtling in every direction. “He required constant monitoring. You understand, psychiatric pharmacology was still in its infancy. Many of his medications were still in testing. In effect, the Wind raised him as one of its own. This was a common practice for us in ages past, but it has been many generations since we trained our genin from childhood.”
“Sure. Those pesky child labor laws must be a real pain in the ass in the ninja racket.”
“Very droll, Detective. The point, if I may ask you not to interrupt me any further, is that young Makoto was our very best. Even as a boy he was possessed of a scintillating intellect. He showed a particular knack for chemistry—the evidence of which you have already seen, I think.”
Mariko nodded emphatically. His “knack” blew her right off her feet at Haneda, and would have torn her limb from limb if Akahata had managed to detonate his bomb in Korakuen Station.
“It may interest you to know his passion for chemistry started from entirely peaceful motives,” Furukawa went on, casually sinking one ball after the other. “His interest was in pharmaceuticals, not weaponry. He aspired to exorcise his own demons. But I ask you, Detective, how could he study psychotropic drugs and not learn the secrets of amphetamines or high explosives? It is all one science. Unlock it and you unlock all of it.”
And now he uses all his tricks, Mariko thought. His terrorist recipe book went beyond high explosives and ricin. He cooked MDA too, a psychedelic amphetamine he distributed widely to his Divine Wind cultists. It heightened his godlike status—or demonlike, if that was how they thought of him. Mariko didn’t understand all the ins and outs of the cult. She didn’t feel the need. He was recruiting cultists and bending them to criminal purposes; that was enough for her to do her job.
“We believe he inherited his mother’s gift of foresight,” Furukawa said. “Imagine what that power would do in a mind already given to hallucinations. Many schizophrenics suffer from delusions of grandeur, even delusions of their own immortality. The difference for Koji-san is that some of his hallucinations occasionally come true. Is it any wonder he thinks of himself as a god? Would you or I not come to the same conclusion?”
“So you used him,” Mariko said. “You had a very sick man and you propped him up as a phony cult leader. You guys keep getting better and better.”
“The cult of the Divine Wind was entirely his idea. And your moral pronouncements are wearing thin.”
“Hey, you’re the one who called me, asshole. If you want someone who doesn’t give a shit about right and wrong, maybe law enforcement isn’t the best place to go looking for new recruits.”
“Thin and getting thinner, Detective. And fraying at the edges too. Can you hear your own hypocrisy? I seem to remember an intelligence asset of yours. Shino, I believe, though you called him LeBron. Did your partner have him killed on purpose? No. He sent the boy into harm’s way, and all the while he lulled himself into thinking he was doing the right thing.”
Mariko didn’t need the reminder. She could still picture Shino’s body, sprawled facedown in the basement of Joko Daishi’s covert headquarters. His face was as red as the worst