high. There was a parlor. A walk-in pantry in the kitchen. Two spare bathrooms. Mariko couldn’t imagine why anyone would even want three bathrooms. It was just more to clean. Then again, if you had daily maid service, maybe that didn’t matter.
Mariko couldn’t tell what the computers in the dining room were up to; the monitors showed only a little text box for entering a username and password. An old-school landline phone sat on the table, hooked up to a boxy gray gadget she’d never seen before. Cables ran down from the gadget onto the floor, then to a hasty stapling job along the baseboard, then to all the other phones in the suite. There were no folders, no papers, no pens—nothing analog.
There was, however, a pool table. It dominated an open space just beyond the dining room, and its mere existence was a staggering display of affluence. If you put them side by side on a floor plan, Mariko’s entire bathroom would have a smaller footprint than the pool table. The same was true of her kitchen. Then there was all the space around the table; it had a boundary as deep as the length of a pool cue. In Shinjuku, that much floor space could easily cost half a million dollars.
Mariko got to see every last feature of the suite, not because her host gave her the grand tour but because she insisted the two of them wouldn’t sit down and talk until after she’d cleared every room. No matter the thread count of the sheets, this was enemy territory.
“There,” Furukawa said, “are you quite satisfied? No, wait, don’t answer that. Allow me to pour you a drink first. We ought to share a toast.”
“A toast? What for?”
“A momentous meeting. It was decided some time ago that our paths would cross. Now, at long last, here we are.” He wrapped one of his slender hands around the neck of a broad-shouldered crystal decanter. Mariko assumed the smoky amber liquid within was the eighteen-year-old whisky she’d spilled earlier. “Shall I pour two?”
“A little early for the hard stuff, isn’t it?”
“Oh, how very gauche of me. I do apologize. In my line of work a man keeps odd hours.”
“And what line of work would that be?”
He pondered the question for a moment. His free hand circled subconsciously as he thought. “Let us say ‘middle management.’ That strikes close enough to the mark.”
“I didn’t know ninja clans had middle managers.”
That got a good, deep laugh out of Furukawa. “My dear, we all but coined the term. If you and I were to be having this conversation five hundred years ago, I would be the chunin, quite literally the ‘middleman.’ I would be answerable to some high-ranking shonin, just as my genin would answer to me.”
Just like kenjutsu, Mariko thought. She practiced many techniques from a chudan stance, a middle position below jodan and above gedan. “That Norika,” she said. “She’s one of your genin?”
“She is.”
“And that’s what you want me to do? Be your genin? Run around train stations in my nightie?”
“Oh, no. You would serve in quite a different capacity.”
Furukawa filled a tumbler with three fingers of whisky and settled the crystal stopper back into the decanter. “You’re sure you won’t have one? Or perhaps something more fitting for the brunch hour—say, a mimosa? We’ve got some very fine fresh-squeezed orange juice on hand, though I must tell you, the champagne in this hotel is best described as potable.”
Mariko didn’t know what to make of this man. He was alone and unarmed, and when faced with the fact that Mariko had trounced both of his bodyguards single-handedly, his only concern was waking the neighbors. Had she been on duty, he would have had no cause for worry; between the law, general orders, and standard operating procedure, there was very little Mariko could do to threaten him. But she was under suspension. General orders and SOP had no bearing on her, and Furukawa knew that. As far as the law was concerned, all she had to do was say she was trapped in his room against her will and she could shoot him on the spot. Yet his biggest worry was that the champagne wasn’t up to snuff.
“Maybe we can skip the toast and get down to business,” she said. “On the phone you said you were a friend of Dr. Yamada’s.”
“Friend? No. Ours was . . .” His free hand gestured in its idle way, tracing circles in the air.