a pistol. Eddie saw that it was a Smith & Wesson SD9, a compact automatic—yet not so compact that Scarber could have easily smuggled it into the country. She must have picked it up in Japan, which meant she had associates.
Associates who could bring modern weapons from the United States through the strict Japanese customs checks …
“Eject the mag, then chuck ’em under the table,” Eddie ordered. She did so, the gun and its magazine clunking to the floor. He kicked them under his seat. “Former spook, my arse. You’re either still active or you’ve got close mates in the CIA. So who are you working for—and why’d you go to all this trouble to put me in the building when your chopper started shooting it up?”
Scarber sneered, parchment skin drawing tight. “You really think I’m going to tell a punk like you?”
“If you don’t, that’ll be your last smoke.” The Makarov remained locked unwaveringly on her heart.
She took the cigarette from her mouth and looked at it ruefully. “I was planning on quitting anyway … Okay, kiddo, strap yourself in. The people I work for wanted Takashi dead—your wife too—and the statues destroyed. Stikes was just an incidental bonus.”
Eddie clenched his jaw. “Why do they want to kill Nina?”
“Hell if I know. I’m just an operator—I don’t make the decisions. They’re on one side, my employers are on the other, it’s that simple. As for why they want you dead …” Scarber returned the cigarette to her mouth, a final lengthy draw burning it to ash all the way to the filter. She smiled like a skull. “Seems one of my employers has a beef against you personally. When he found out there was a chance to get you into the building with your wife, he asked me to arrange it. I guess you really pissed him off at some point.”
“There’s a long fucking list of people I’ve pissed off,” said Eddie. “Shorten it. Who is he?”
Instead of answering, she glanced down the aisle. Eddie turned his head—to see one of the other passengers pointing a gun at him. Another SD9. A second man approached from behind Scarber, similarly armed. “You took your goddamn time,” she snapped.
“Sorry, ma’am,” said the first man. His accent was American. “We didn’t have a clear line of sight on the subject. If you’d sat in the aisle seat, as we suggested …”
“Don’t you try to give me fieldcraft tips, kid,” Scarber said, irritated. “I was working undercover in China while your dad was still in diapers.”
“More like his granddad,” Eddie said, grinning.
With an angry look she took the Makarov from him. “Son of a bitch,” she muttered, ejecting the magazine and finding it empty. “It wasn’t even loaded.”
“What do you want us to do with him, ma’am?” asked the gunman.
“Gee, what do you think? Deal with him.”
His gun still locked on Eddie, the man slipped into the seat beside him. The other goon took the empty seat next to Scarber, also fixing his weapon on the Englishman. “You’re just going to shoot me?” said Eddie, feigning casualness even as his mind raced to figure a way out of the situation. “I think the other passengers might notice.”
“Everyone in this car is with me,” Scarber announced smugly. “We booked every seat.”
“Oh. Glad I bought shares in Japan Rail, then,” Eddie replied, his affected nonchalance rapidly fading. The remaining “passengers” headed for the exits at each end of the carriage, presumably to stop anyone from passing through while Scarber’s people completed their work. “Be a bit hard for you to hide a body with a bullet hole in it for another hour, though.”
“Don’t worry, kiddo, we thought of that.” She nodded to the man beside Eddie, who cautiously holstered his weapon—the other gunman pointedly raising his SD9 toward Eddie’s face to discourage him from trying anything—and took out a shiny metal tube with a nozzle on one end. “Gas injector,” Scarber explained. “No needle marks, no noise, and you’ll be dead in twenty seconds. We get off at Nagoya, and by the time someone tries to wake you up at the end of the line we’ll be out of the country.”
“Well, hoo-fucking-ray for Japanese politeness,” said Eddie. Blocked in, with the man across the table covering him, he could neither fight nor run. “Do I at least get to finish my ciggy?” He raised it to his mouth.
Scarber shook her head. “Those things’ll kill you.” She gestured to the first goon, who turned in his