calling. He centered his concentration on his breath, then directed his ki to the acupressure points in his temples.
His father’s dream became clear again. “Yes, I see,” he said. “So beautiful.” His blue line resumed its zigzagging course through the city.
His journal held down one corner of the map, filled with scribblings that only his father could help him decipher. Holding down the far side of the map was the L-shape of an automatic pistol fitted with a sound suppressor. It was not within reach, but it did not need to be. No one would harm him here. No one would find him here. He was constantly on the move, vanishing for hours at a time, resurfacing only in safe houses and never in the same one twice.
This one was a construction company whose storage building was large enough to serve as a sanctum of the Divine Wind. Makoto sat in the project manager’s office, a cold, windowless space with only a small desk lamp for illumination. Brighter light would have sharpened Makoto’s headaches. Hamaya Jiro stood in attendance, and eleven others as well, all of them nervously silent. Hamaya wore an arm sling and a pained expression. Both were due to the bullet he’d taken through the shoulder in defense of Joko Daishi. No god could ask for greater devotion.
Makoto studied the map, then connected one last path of green to the blue one he’d just drawn. Then he released a great sighing breath and set down his pen. At last the work was done.
Green signified the second phase, blue the third. The first phase was red, the most intricate, the most demanding. The green lines were few and the blue ones fewer, but slashes of red ink crisscrossed the entire city. From Makoto’s perspective it looked like he’d sliced Tokyo’s face with ten thousand razor blades. It pained him to think that Tokyo herself would feel that way before the end. But incisions were a part of surgery. A physician’s hands sometimes had to harm before they healed.
“Behold,” he told the twelve disciples gathered before him. “Behold the vision of Joko Daishi. This next teaching shall be my most profound. One thousand three hundred and four. It is a great number, and a heavy burden on our fold. Many hundreds of your brothers and sisters are called to action. We must be organized. We must strike without warning. And you, oh my brethren, you must do this without me.”
That drew a gasp from the assembly. “Daishi-sama, no,” said one of his disciples. The man was short but powerfully built, a foreman in the construction company Makoto now used as his sanctuary. “Do you still mean to go to the police?”
“I do.”
The foreman came to Makoto’s side and went to one knee. The muscles stood out in his forearms when he pressed his palms together in supplication. “Please, Daishi-sama, let me take your place. Once they have you, they’ll never let you go.”
Makoto smiled and clasped the man’s hands in his own. “Do not doubt the vision of Joko Daishi. I am the light, and I will not have my children wander in darkness. I have already illuminated your path. It is yours to walk, just as I must walk my own path. Alone.”
“Please, Daishi-sama, please don’t let them take you.”
“How can they contain a being of light? I choose the hour of my coming and going. Their laws mean nothing. Their walls mean nothing. Their prisons are but shadows before me. Let them think their justice system makes them safer; I will show them the truth.”
He released the foreman and stood to address the entire congregation. The act of standing sent splitting pain through his temples. He bore it stoically. “I go to reveal my wisdom to these defenders of delusion. Since they have misunderstood all that I taught at Terminal 2, I shall make them the subject of my next sermon. They call themselves ‘law enforcement.’ I will show them the true law, using their own bodies and minds as the vehicles for my revelation.”
“But, Daishi-sama—”
Makoto fixed the foreman with a demonic glare. “Doubt deserves no place in your heart. Now which one would you have me cut out, your doubt or your heart?”
The foreman bowed to the floor and prostrated himself. “Forgive me, Daishi-sama.”
Makoto looked down at him. With one stomp of his foot he could snap the man’s neck. But Joko Daishi was a loving god. He was not here now—he could not return until