“Kikuchi Billiards. Daishi-sama, I fear this is a trap.”
Of course it is, Makoto thought. The pool hall concealed one of Furukawa’s safe houses. Makoto was not supposed to know the safe house existed. If he hadn’t known of it, then it would have been the perfect place to hide his father and Glorious Victory Unsought. The fact that Furukawa thought it was safe made it all the easier to take what was hidden there. But Furukawa was crafty. If he suspected Makoto thought of the safe house as an easy target, then it was the ideal place to set a trap.
And yet . . .
Makoto longed for his father. Alone, he was only Koji Makoto. Reunited with his father, he was Joko Daishi, Great Teacher of the Purging Fire. It should be Joko Daishi that liberated these beautiful children. That was only fitting.
But was it worth the risk? Perhaps. Furukawa had not yet discovered the new church. If he had, Makoto would have heard about it. He had a disciple looking over Furukawa’s shoulder. Furukawa was looking everywhere Makoto predicted he’d look. The old man had his agents inspecting every closed school in Tokyo, but he’d forgotten that there were other places with classrooms.
Not many people knew an airport had classrooms. They were not marked on the maps provided to travelers. But the flight crews needed a place to do their training, and Haneda International had designated rooms for that purpose. There were also quiet quarters here for weary crews to catch a little sleep. Every airline had its own accommodations, modest but functional, and all were locked up and left behind after the Haneda sermon. Makoto had found just enough space to house nine hundred and twenty-five children.
Not for much longer. The Purging Fire would claim them soon. Just as the classrooms and break rooms were abandoned, so too were the pumping stations at each of Terminal 2’s gates. These connected via underground pipes to the millions of liters of jet fuel in Haneda’s massive fuel depot. Makoto had a barrel set aside for each roomful of children. Deluded souls found death by fire to be utterly terrifying, but Makoto would show them the truth. Pain and death were merely states of being.
His father would be proud of this sermon. He had the right to see his vision brought to fruition. “It is my holy calling,” Makoto said. “I must retrieve him, no matter the risk. So let us be wary of the trap and move boldly nonetheless.”
“This is Furukawa,” his disciple said. “He has tried to kill you before.”
“He has his ploys and I have mine. What he does not have is a divine mandate. The light of the Purging Fire blinds his eyes. He has no idea how close my servant has drawn to him. When the time comes, faith will rule over cunning. My servant will return my father to the fold.”
“It shall be as you say, Daishi-sama. There is one more thing: you know whose hands the mask and sword will go to.”
“Yes, I know. She must not be allowed to live. Make sure of it.”
51
“This is taking too long.”
Mariko drummed her fingertips on the bar at Kikuchi Billiards. They fell in a steady, galloping rhythm, three beats at a time because the nub of her trigger finger wasn’t long enough to reach the bar. Part of her wished she had a gun. The better part of her was relieved to be unarmed. What she really wanted was a few dozen cops with guns, and then a nice cold beer and a safe place to sit back and watch all the action unfold. The last thing she wanted was to be in the same room with Joko Daishi and a lethal weapon. Fuck fate, she thought.
Han was nervous. He paced between the pool tables, leaving a haze of cigarette smoke in his wake. At one end of each pass, he glanced out the front door and onto the street. At the other end the sunset glow at the tip of his cigarette brightened like a warning light.
Kikuchi Billiards was a lot like Billiards Bagus: low ceilings, few windows, with most of the light coming from electronic dartboards or the boxy fluorescents hanging over the blue-green fields of the pool tables. The front wall was mostly comprised of heavily tinted windows, but at this time of day, steeped in shade, they did more for ambience than illumination.