DAY ONE – Monday, 12:46AM
The Toyota Hi-Ace van climbed slowly on the narrow street, as Vince drove to where his home was, located in a warren of tile-roof homes overlooking the small city and the harbor that can only be described as a "Navy Town" ever since the Imperial Navy first established a base on that piece of land jutting out into the bay, where they developed and tested naval aircraft, as well as containing a wartime shipyard, which later gave birth to much of Japan's seaborne arsenal, including the largest battleships ever constructed: the Yamato,Musashiand the Shinano, the last being converted into an aircraft carrier, then later sunk by an American torpedo on its maiden voyage.
But at this quiet moment on this cold and dark Monday morning, a war has now been declared against Sachiko, complete with bullets and blood, except for God knows who sent those goons to raid her home and kill most of her security detail, and in the process putting Yumi and Touko in harm's way.
Now the van drove through an open gate, and into a small yard, where, just a few meters away and illuminated by headlights, was a two-storey house built in the contemporary style: glazed-blue tiled roofing, stucco walls, a traditional polished-wood porch, glass windows with aluminum frames, and a garage (which at the moment was empty, save for the large red Craftsman tool boxes, with Vince inadvertently having left his Civic behind at the company garage).
Just as Vince killed the engine, the lights in the house went on, and once they came out of the van, a young man was standing right besides the supporting post on the porch, wondering what made his father bring this van here; the young man's hair was in a mess, he was wearing eyeglasses, a black Thirty Seconds To Mars t-shirt, and checkered pajama pants.
"Hi Dad," Seiji greeted Vince with a half-smile. "What the heck's going on? Who are they?"
The young man checked out the man's companions: a tall Caucasian with a moustache, and a trio of young women, two of high school age and one… she looked familiar, so Seiji blinked twice.
"Oh, sorry," Vince said. "It's going to be a very long story, but they're going to stay with us in the meantime." The ex-commando nodded to the girls, as if asking them to introduce themselves. The three Roses looked at each other for a moment, but Seiji decided that he should do the honors first.
"Hi…" the young man said, nodding as he did, the dim light almost hiding his blush after he recognized, but took a breath and then added, "I'm Seiji. Nice to meet you; and you are…?"
Coming face to face with a boy almost of her age, thus rousing her momentarily from pangs of exhaustion, Sachiko blinked at first, but then she figured that this should be better than the first time she met all of Yuuki's oddball student council two years ago, so she bowed her head and said, "My name is Sachiko Ogasawara; How are you?"
Seiji grinned, feeling a bit awkward, fighting to look composed. "Uh… Just all right, been studying since nine," he said, before he turned his attention to the two other girls.
"I'm Yumi Fukuzawa," the girl with the brownish hair said, and then she bowed.
"Touko Matsudaira," the other said, also bowing her head lightly.
Seiji wondered who was that mustachioed foreign man standing behind them, carrying a pair of shopping bags, plus what looked like a single-grip submachine gun slung over his shoulder (he thought it was yet another pellet gun), but the Englishman said, "Hi, I'm Sean Liston, and I'm milady's butler."
The young man blinked. "Milady?"
"I work for Miss Ogasawara," Sean clarified. "Sorry, lad."
With the introductions done, Vince looked at them and said, "Well, since all of you are welcome, why don't we step inside? And Seiji—"
"Yeah, Dad?" Seiji said as he let the visitors take off their shoes on the threshold of the door and then entered.
"Get the spare room cleared up and ready, and bring out the futons," Vince ordered.
MARIA-SAMA GA MITERU: NINETEEN
Chapter6:REFUGE
Written by soulassassin547
10/13/2011 9:22 a10/p10
The Situation Room, as the meeting place was called, and placed in the basement of the Prime Minister's office building, was almost identical to its American counterpart beneath the White House: a very long conference table, identical chairs, three sets of pitchers filled with ice water and glasses surrounding them, a pen and a pad of paper for every chair, one wall lined with flat-screen monitors, a whiteboard plus a marker, and an overhead LED projector with the requisite projection screen.
At this moment, the projection screen was overlaid with information, mostly data about the Flight 3902 Bombing, and the whiteboard had several pictures of people tacked on, with more data scribbled below each picture.
And already the meeting was halfway through for an hour, talking about possible suspects and motives, when Murasaki told all of them about his deduction, after Commissioner Ogata said about an unlikely answer that could be the impetus for the bombing. Only the CIA station chief, the NTSB and the FBI representatives, also the only foreign nationals present in the room, sounded skeptical about the idea.
"You seem to have overlooked about the possibility of the bombs being transferred from one plane to another," the CIA man said. Already he'd been issued an order from his President to investigate the bombing incident, to see if the Ten Rings was indeed behind it, but the other Japanese present in the room thought otherwise.
He'd already read the newspapers and the butcher's bill: roughly half of Flight 3902's passenger manifesto were Americans bound for home, mostly businessmen, students, and military personnel, and already, too, his country was in a state of shock and mourning, and predictably some were asking loudly for revenge. Worse, once again there were troubling reports that American Muslims were being targeted for hate crimes across the country, no thanks to the stereotype tacked onto them since 9/11.
"We have that angle covered already, sir," Ogata said, referring to the 1980s attempt by Sikh separatists to plant bombs in Indian airliners by exploiting the baggage transfer system, that is, airliners passing on the baggage from one city to another, separated from its owner while in transit. "Any luggage passing through either Narita or Haneda must undergo a multi-point security check, and the system has been changed since then. Besides, it's a long way from Bin Laden's so-called Bojinkascheme back in the nineties, when a bunch of terrorists tried planting bombs in US-bound airliners and failed, except for the one passenger who got killed in his seat when one of those bombs exploded without taking down the whole plane. It's only now that we're looking into the angle that a third-party group might have been able to infiltrate the ground crew staffing."
Ogata didn't bother to add a few more: yesterday the airport security administrator at Narita publicly apologized and then resigned on the spot; that the US State Department and several other foreign ministries promptly issued travel advisories warning their nationals from going overseas; that once again security in every airport in the world came under intense scrutiny.
"Come again? There's no way that any member of Ten Rings could be employed inside your airports."
"I know, but there is a possibility," Murasaki said, "that someone and somehow might have held a personal grudge against any of the passengers, and at the same time, given that lots of money involved can do wonders, this same someone could have paid Ten Rings, with untold sums of cash, to take credit publicly as the sole party responsible for this incident."
"You mean that Ten Rings did only the PR, to take the heat away from the real perpetrators?"
Murasaki nodded. "It's likely, yes, and as much as it's a long shot, I cannot discount individuals from our other neighbors as being behind the scenes, the ones you refer to as 'rogue states'. This someone might have paid experts to plant those bombs and walk away without being detected."
The Americans looked at each other, and then the FBI man asked, "Is there a connection between this and this evening's attack on the Ogasawara estate? That's what we came here for."
Ogata nodded. "Yes, it's possible."
"How so?" the CIA man questioned.
Ogata explained about a rumor that circulated during and after World War Two, heard by his grandfather while working as an office clerk in the Imperial Army, it was said that among the industrialists who were asked to fund Hideki Tojo's war machine, Hiromu Ogasawara's money was allegedly used in 1932 as capital to set up the Unit 731 germ warfare research operation in China, and whether he was coerced to pay or voluntarily pledged his money was a question that was still unanswered.
Because this allegation was based on second-hand information, and most of the personnel involved in 731 whose names were never made public, save for its top scientists and military overseers, Ogata admitted that he has yet to find anyone alive who could prove or disprove, for most of them have died over the years, never convicted of crimes against humanity, and there may be secret documents floating around somewhere in the government archives, hopefully not heavily redacted or burned up completely, which might help Ogata confirm the allegation's authenticity.
For now, a rumor was still a rumor, and the old men and perhaps a handful of women have taken their secrets to the grave.
"And so you say that someone who was victimized by this program, after all those years, decided to get even on a huge scale?" the FBI representative asked.
"In a way, yes," Ogata said. "That's why I brought this up as a possible angle, and besides, haven't you forgotten about last year's spate of unexplained deaths of 731 men in your country?"
"Of course, we don't," the American answered as if he almost took offense. "But even now, we haven't found any suspects, and, yes, they were all involved in that program." He then explained the brief version of the sordid story.
Last year and across America, from San Francisco to New York, the FBI was stumped by a series of deaths of elderly, expatriate Japanese survivors of the Unit 731 project, wholly unsolved due to the lack of evidence.
Under the program called Operation Paperclip, and with General Douglas MacArthur's approval in writing, Axis technologies were transferred to the US military for further study, with some of the scientists brought over to the United States after World War Two, to assist in developing that military's covert biological warfare research using their data, in response to the Soviet threat during the Cold War. Their war records were expunged, thus avoiding prosecution, given a new, quiet lease in life (with a new citizenship, a job and a house, a pension, plus free education for their children), these survivors were therefore largely unknown and lived unmolested for decades.
That is, until most of them died under suspicious circumstances.
"It smacks of revenge, and thus makes sense, doesn't it?" Ogata questioned. "All's left is a name that links everything, along with the proof we need, which is why, right now I'm having several of my people looking into it, and by late morning they're going out to ask questions and sift through the archives."
They entered the living room, which was lit by a standard circular fluorescent lamp hanging from the ceiling, directly over the low table; the floor consisted of nine tatami mats laid out in the traditional style, and there were cushions gathered on one corner, the other was occupied by a high-definition television set, below which a low cabinet contained a satellite receiver, a VCR and a Blu-Ray player. Besides the television and a foot away, was a gas heater, now turned on to provide warmth.
One wall of the living room, however, was occupied by a pair of loaded bookshelves and an upright lacquered-black Steinway & Sons piano in between, and above them was Vince's personal memorabilia – especially from his military days and subsequent studies in personal protection and physical security – and pictures, showing him (in both civilian and formal naval dress white uniform) and his son in the past, back when his wife was alive and well.
While Seiji went ahead and prepared the bedroom upstairs, the rest of them sat down around the table, with the three girls kneeling on the cushions, while Vince sat cross-legged, and Sean deposited the bags by the stairs.
"Sean, be my guest," Vince said. "You can help yourself to fix some tea for all of us. There's some in the cupboard."
"All right, Skipper," Sean said as he stood up and walked over the kitchen. Sachiko noted the way Liston now moved, more loosened up than the usually upright, stiff and formal butler he was back home.
"What do you think?" Vince asked. "You might not be impressed, but that's all we have here."
"It's okay, Mister… I mean, Vince," Sachiko said, correcting herself.
"Just like back home," Yumi said. "It's no different."
Touko nodded wordlessly, agreeing that she felt as ease being here.
"It's done this way so that any of my guests can feel relaxed," Vince said. "Okay, I just want to talk about just who wanted you dead, so—"
Sachiko said, "There was a nasty rumor about my great-grandfather being involved in some secret project during the war."
Vince blinked. "What?"
Just then Seiji was back from the spare bedroom, walking down the stairs and heard his father talk.
"Dad," he asked as the young man sat down, "did you say that someone's trying to kill her?"
"Yeah," Vince said. "Is it on the news right now?"
"I'll check," Seiji said, picking up the remote control and switched on the TV, which immediately showed a news bulletin, with live aftermath coverage of the attack on Sachiko's home. He was instantly stunned.
"Several of my men are dead, son, as well as her former fiancé," Vince said, "Which is why these girls are here now."
As he watched the anchorwoman talk to the reporter on the scene, asking if the attack was a mob hit or a Red Army terrorist raid, Seiji scowled. "W… Who did this?"
Vince shrugged. "We just don't know, and those bastards came in without warning." The former commando explained what transpired more than an hour ago. "Now I want to know precisely who was behind this, and why."
"God," Seiji muttered as he looked at Sachiko. "I'm sorry for your loss," he almost whispered.
Sachiko nodded. "Thank you," she said.
"Tell me," Vince spoke as Sean returned with a tray, laden with tea cups and a kettle, and set them down on the table before sitting on the mat. "Tell me what he did during the war."
The young woman took a deep breath and said, "It was a rumor about him, where he was supposedly involved in a secret military project as a financier, and that project killed a lot of people, mostly prisoners."
"And none of your parents or your grandfather ever told you about that?"
Sachiko shook her head. "No, but I only found out more a few months ago, as I came across a newspaper which my grandfather was really upset after reading and tossed it into the wastebasket. I wondered why and picked it up, and there's this article inside that says that my great-grandfather was named in an upcoming tell-all book about this group called Unit 731."
Vince was suddenly wide-eyed. "What?" he exclaimed.
"Hey, I know that," Seiji said, butting into the exchange. "Those guys did a lot of nasty stuff back in the Big War, making biological and chemical weapons, then testing them on prisoners of war and dissidents, before unleashing the bugs onto the Chinese."
"Bugger," Sean muttered, instantly surprised at Seiji being knowledgeable in the subject. "How did you know?"
"I watch documentaries on my free time," Seiji said. "I also browse and look up on some factoids, not all of it very pleasant reading."
"I see. You sound like a walking encyclopedia, lad."
Seiji nodded in thanks and continued. "Yeah, and then the scientists involved were taken prisoner after the war, but instead of being charged for war crimes, they were secretly shipped out to America with General MacArthur's approval, where their data supposedly was used to understand and then develop that country's own secret arsenal until the late seventies, with the signing of the Biological Weapons Convention, which effectively halted all further development of those weapons, and in compliance the United States had to destroy their bio-weapon arsenal completely."
"Now, wait a minute," Vince said before he turned to Sachiko and asked, "What's this book that your granddad was upset about?"
"I think it was called… Germs of War," the young woman answered.
At the same moment, three black-and-white Toyota Crown police cruisers were heading from main headquarters to separate homes within the Musashino District; each cop car had a pair of detectives and a pair of patrolmen in the front, the latter to drive them to their destinations, the former to personally deliver the summons.
One of them stopped by the front yard of the Fukuzawa residence, and the two detectives stopped out and walked over to the door. One of the duo pressed the doorbell, repeating the procedure for five minutes until they heard someone coming. The door opened to see Miki Fukuzawa standing before them; she looked as if roused out of bed, her eyes half-asleep and brown hair unkempt.
Miki yawned. "Good morning, gentlemen. Who are you?" the woman asked, her eyes blinking.
The two detectives flashed their badges. "I'm Detective Yano and he's Detective Ishihara," the taller of the two men said before they bowed. "I presume that you are Mrs. Miki Fukuzawa?"
"That's right, gentlemen, and what is it that you two need?" she asked, but felt there was something not right about their unexpected arrival. "I mean, what's going on?"
"I'm sorry, but Mrs. Fukuzawa, we would like you and your husband to come with us to Headquarters, to answer a few questions regarding your daughter Yumi."
Immediately Miki gave them a shocked look. "What?"
While they partaken their cups of tea, Seiji brought down his laptop computer and placed it right on top of the table. As the household was within the range of their wireless network router, and therefore linked to the Internet, Seiji searched for the book Germs of War, and immediately found it available for sale on Amazon Japan's website.
There was the book cover, a short blurb, and the user comments on the bottom, filled with rants and raves from both sides of the political spectrum. He then clicked on the Preview button, which included an excerpt of the book:
In July 1932, a month before the germ warfare research groups were deployed to occupied China, then called Manchukuo, the militarists needed seed money to create the program, including the hiring of top scientists and the acquisition of deadly material to work on. They came up with the list of known industrialists and at random they picked Hiromu Ogasawara, the owner of the retail company based in Tokyo.
So the next night they summoned Mister Ogasawara, the Kempeitai military police transporting him by car from his home in Musashino, and at Imperial Army HQ, in a room occupied by the top militarist leadership, they asked the man if he could lend them money for a top secret project, saying it was approved by the Emperor himself. The men around him even showed the purported document, complete with the Emperor's signature and the imperial chrysanthemum seal, stamped in red ink.
At first Mister Ogasawara hesitated to think, and it took minutes before he decided that since the document was official and the intent legitimate, and since he was very loyal to the Emperor and whatever he said was a imperial edict, he signed the document, effectively handing them over ten million yen worth of securities and bonds to finance the project, not knowing that soon he would be partly responsible for the gruesome deaths of several thousand Chinese, prisoners of war, and dissidents.
"Who wrote this?" Sean asked. The passages in that brief extract alone chilled him to the bone, a feeling that he never had before.
Tapping and scrolling his finger on the touchpad, Seiji checked the sidebar that contained details on the book.
"Taro Matsuyama," he said, reading off the kanji on the book cover. "He's an investigative journalist and a writer. Let's see if he has a blog or a webpage."
Sachiko and Vince nodded, as they watched Seiji opened a new tab on the browser, and using Google, he found Matsuyama's webpage before clicking further to access the journalist's personal information; in addition of being a journalist/writer/pundit for four decades, Matsuyama revealed himself to be a card-carrying member of the Communist Party, has authored several books critical of the government, corporations, and US foreign policy and its military presence in the country; co-authored investigative books about atrocities committed on both sides during World War Two; the side of the webpage was filled with small graphics declaring his support for various causes, as well as other books and websites he strongly endorsed.
His most recent picture showed him to be a stern-looking old man, with long gray hair, horn-rimmed glasses, and a fierce, scowling face streaked with wrinkles, as though wanting the world to rid of its capitalist trappings and face the music.
As voluminous as his profile was, however, Matsuyama never had a phone number or an email address, insisting that his readers, admirers or haters correspond to him by mail through his publisher.
"Given this guy's slant," Vince said, "I wonder if he's telling the truth or reinterpreting it with a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist filter, and if he has a lucky lawyer who can pull him out of libel cases."
"Well, he's lucky in this country where political reprisals are very rare," Sean remarked. "Elsewhere he's a libel magnet, or a lynch mob would've killed him for provocation."
Vince nodded. "Son, can you check if he has an address?"
"Sure, Dad," Seiji said, and indeed there was, but it belonged to his publisher: the office was located within Meguro district, on the southern part of Tokyo. "Why, you want to talk to him?"
"We need to ask him about his sources, face to face, assuming if any of them are still alive. We need proof."
"But that means we'll have to go back to the city," Sachiko said.
"No, not today," Vince said. "Apart from preparing ourselves, there's a way to play it safe to come back there."
In unison, the three young women asked, "How?"
After passing around the table several folders to the attendees, Ogata was now reciting the biographic data of those who escaped last night's hellstorm; he was holding a copy of the printed information that his people had gathered up, replicated by the digital Powerpoint presentation write-up that appeared on the projection screen. At the moment the screen had Vincent's face on, along with earlier photographs of him as a naval officer. Initially he was deeply impressed with Vince's biography.
"First of all, we have Vincent Inoue Hayashida, male, widower, born on May 15, 1966, according to the data provided by the US Department of Defense."
The CIA chief nodded in acknowledgement, as he was the one responsible for supplying the sanitized version of the file, thanks to a quick favor made by talking to the presiding base commander of US Naval Base Yokosuka, also known as CFAY.
"A native of Pearl City, Hawaii," Ogata continued, "the only son of John and Ritsuko Hayashida, both Nisei,he graduated from the US Naval Academy at the age of 23, joined the Navy and served two years as an officer before he voluntarily applied for training in the Sea-Air-Land Team, known more precisely as the Naval Special Warfare Group or SEALs. He first saw action in 1991 in Kuwait, then Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and later served as an instructor for the SEAL school at Coronado Beach, California. In his capacity as an effective officer in the field won him many awards and citations, but the death of his wife Sarah from ovarian cancer, however, forced him to retire early with the rank of lieutenant commander, and he emigrated here with his son Seiji. He is currently employed by the Ogasawara Group as a Deputy Chief Security Officer for four years now, and is living with his son in the city of Yokosuka."
"Fascinating," one of the Jietai generals observed. "So this is the unlikely man to protect that young woman? It looks like they got more than they bargained for."
"Yes, he is," Ogata said. "I have met Hayashida before at a conference on corporate security some years ago, and by all accounts he's a very good professional, despite that he doesn't speak much of his career in the past, for most of those missions are top secret."
Ogata then flipped the paper to another page and clicked on a pen-shaped pointer that he used to advance the Powerpoint presentation to another slide, which showed Sachiko's picture. He took another breath and spoke.
"Sachiko Ogasawara, age nineteen, female, born on October 8, 1992. She is the sole daughter of Tohru and Sayako Ogasawara, and also grand-daughter of Harumi Ogasawara, three of them deceased recently due to the said plane bombing, and thus currently heir to the family corporation, a retailing concern worth over six billion US dollars. Presently, Miss Ogasawara is also a freshman student of Lillian University, after having graduated from Lillian's Private High School for Girls with high honors, and prior to her recent enrollment to that university's Business Administration course, she was then president of the student council called the Yamayurikai, the Mountain Lily Club, and in her capacity of that office she demonstrated excellent leadership skills. She was to marry Suguru Kashiwagi, whom, I'm sad to say and as we all know, is now dead as of last night, but the engagement was canceled a year ago, on the decision of her then-fiancé."
The men around the table quietly murmured their sympathies, before Murasaki nodded to Ogata to move on. The 52-year-old police commissioner took a quick drink from the glass and a breath, and then clicked on his pointer yet again; now the slide showed Yumi this time.
"Yumi Fukuzawa, age eighteen, female, and born on May 18, 1993. A daughter of Yuichiro and Miki Fukuzawa, Miss Fukuzawa is also a twin of her brother Yuuki. This young woman is a third-year student of Lillian's Private High School, and at present she is also the president of that school's student council."
One of the Jietai officers, an admiral, held up a hand. "She sounds insignificant," he remarked. "That's all you have there?"
Ogata shrugged. "I'm afraid that's everything we have on that girl, except my niece, who happens to be studying there, thinks that Miss Fukuzawa is an effective diplomat."
"I see… Go on," the admiral said, and Ogata moved to the next slide, this time showing Touko's face.
"Touko Matsudaira, age seventeen, female, born on July 24, 1994. She is the adopted daughter of Ryoji and Minami Matsudaira, both owners of a company engaged in the manufacture of medical equipment and supplies. Adopted because her parents were killed in a car crash, and she was the only survivor, and it happened that her biological mother was also the classmate of her current foster mother. Like Miss Fukuzawa, Miss Matsudaira is also presently studying at Lillian's as a second-year student, and is a member of the Yamayurikai."
"Hm," the Transportation Minister said. "Looks like Mister Hayashida has a lot on his hands. Given the scale of the dangers they're facing, isn't it too difficult for that man to protect those young women?"
"No, I don't think so," Ogata said. "Miss Ogasawara's butler happens to be a former British Army soldier, and as a paratrooper he served in Afghanistan for two years. He is a British national, a native of Liverpool, and for the record one of his former employers included the Duchess of York."
The men before Ogata flipped the pages on their dossiers, and read off the biographic data on Sean Liston, thanks to the cooperation of the British Embassy and the Immigration Department.
"Well," the minister said. "You're right. This Sean Liston must be damn tough for a butler."
"Personally, I think it's unwise that we should underestimate Hayashida and Liston," Ogata said. "I think they're more than capable enough to protect Miss Ogasawara and her companions while in hiding."
"Where are they right now?"
"Since we are the only ones in this room," Murasaki said, "and of course, we do not allow anything we said tonight to leak out of here after this meeting, I believe they have taken refuge in Hayashida's home… at least for now."
Only then a door opened, and then an aide came walking up to Ogata and whispered into his ear. It took no more than ten seconds before Ogata said, "Excuse me, gentlemen. Right now the parents of two of our subjects are being questioned."
"That's right, we'll have to go by with our disguises," Vince said in reaction to the looks on the girls' faces. "But before that, we have to consider whether we should be using the train or another car, as I'm sure the van outside needs to be disposed of. So, first of all, do any of you have some kind of special skill, something where you're really good at?"
Vince was asking them that question because, because he believed every person had a special talent for a particular field, the knack, the moxie, the small grain of hidden genius, no matter how smart or dumb he or she was, but rather acquired by experience or by accident or by instinct. To have that talent might be able to weasel them out of trouble, whether on a daily basis (at the office) or in a life-or-death situation (on the battlefield).
Touko was the first to answer. "I'm a great actress," she said. "I mean, I do onstage drama."
Vince was surprised that the young woman's mood turned 180 degrees, from morose to being ebullient, perhaps her old self before being struck by this senseless tragedy.
"And what's your best role?"
"I was Amy two years ago," Touko said confidently. "In LittleWomen."
Vince grinned. "Wow, and what else you could do?"
Touko blinked. What could I say? I could bluff or sweet-talk my way around, I could tell a man a tall tale, flash him by acting cute, all the while I'm fooling him as I steal something from him.
Yeah, I might be a liar.
"Touko, don't worry," Vince said, breaking her reverie. "You can play-act as anybody, masquerade, to sound like you come from elsewhere like Osaka or Sapporo, provided, of course, a little change to your hair color... and a bit of cutting." His hands then made gestures, as if he was squeezing a bottle, and then using his index and middle finger as though they were scissors.
Touko's eyes flew open. "What?" she exclaimed.
"I'd say you bring out your wild side," Vince replied.
Seiji shook his head. "He means that you should act like a Yankee," he said, using a slang word for a teenage delinquent. "That is, bleached hair, a slightly disheveled look, and those loose socks: the clichéd kogyaru look."
"No!" Touko objected, the bad joke a complete affront to her patrician upbringing. "I'd rather not! I would look dirty! I'd rather be dead than to look like a streetwalker!"
Sean shook his head half-amusedly as Touko sulked.
"Sorry," Seiji apologized.
"All right, I don't want a row between you two," Vince chided before he focused his attention to Yumi. "What about you?" he asked.
Yumi blinked. "Me?"
"Yeah."
The young woman looked up, thinking. "Well…" she trailed off.
"She's really a diplomat, you see," Touko helpfully said.
Yumi nodded. "That's right; I think I'm more of a negotiator."
"What else?" Vince asked.
"Nothing, except I'm good at bringing people together, you know, even if they don't agree at first with each other," she said, and then explained in detail how she, being Sachiko's second-in-command through two years, successfully turned the Yamayurikai into a credible organization by means of diplomacy and dialogue within the school and with other schools; this way Yumi made many friends with benefits.
"I see," Vince said. "You know what? Someday you could be the next Henry Kissinger."
Yumi blinked. "Who's Kissinger?"
"That man defined what diplomacy was all about, and in addition he was a highly indispensable aide, back when he was an adviser in the White House for three presidents. In your case, it turns out you have that savvy of persuading people and then bringing them together on the negotiating table."
Yumi couldn't say anything else, but she looked positively flattered.
Now Vince wondered what else Sachiko could do, but it became obvious to her that she should say something, with everyone's attention trained on her.
All I know, Sachiko thought, I mean, I can only play the piano; I once studied ballet, and I was a leader of a student council…
The young woman blinked, for her mind brought up the only talent that she was becoming better at. Ofcourse,I…
Yes.
"I'm still into archery," Sachiko finally said. "Traditional kyudo, really… However, as much as I practice, we never intend kyudoto be a competitive sport; it's unlike the usual form of archery you see on TV, but rather a way to instill self-discipline than simply trying to hit the bull's-eye. It's about me and how I handle my relationship with the bow, the arrow, and the target."
"I didn't know you were into kyudo," Vince said. "When did you got started?"
"After I enrolled at Lillian University," Sachiko said. "Rei introduced me to it, and turned out to be wonderful experience; it's like a form of standing meditation, almost like zazen. Coincidentally, a distant ancestor sharing the family name first set up an archery school whose emphasis was on the ceremonial side, so in a sense I'm sort of carrying on the tradition."
Vince, Sean and Seiji were impressed with Sachiko's knowledge in kyudo,but the ex-commando thought otherwise.
"Have you studied the other side," Vince said, "I mean, kyujutsu?"
"No," Sachiko replied. "Not much, except its emphasis was training the archer for warfare, back in history when this country was then divided up into many fiefdoms, and warlords employed them by the hundreds… Why did you ask?"
Vince sighed and said, "You know, and don't be angry, but given our circumstances right now, tomorrow I'll have to teach you how to defend yourself... even if you may have to kill in self-defense."
The heiress blinked in incredulity. "With a bow?"
"With a gun," Vince corrected her.
Half a kilometer away from where Murasaki and the rest of the ad-hoc committee, Mrs. Miki Fukuzawa tried to wipe off the tears from her cheek with a crumpled wad of tissue, as Chief Detective Shunji Muramoto asked a few questions regarding her daughter's whereabouts, after he explained what happened at the Ogasawara estate.
"So, basically she's with her onee-sama, is that correct, ma'am?" Muramoto questioned.
Miki nodded. "Yes. They're very close for almost three years."
Muramoto scribbled his findings on a paper pad. "I see," he said. "Nothing else wrong with either one of them?"
"No."
"Now, do you have any idea where she, no, I mean, they could find refuge?"
Miki thought for a moment, trying to remember where Yumi once ventured out of town, and then she said, "The Ogasawaras have this vacation home near Nagano."
Muramoto blinked. "Really?"
"Yes, she was there two years ago, to spend all of Golden Week with Sachiko, and then the next year, shortly before that girl graduated, we were invited for a get-together for the holidays."
The detective nodded. "I see. Do you know where it is?"
Miki looked worried. "Yes, but first, why do you need to ask?"
"Because we want to prevent the possibility of Miss Ogasawara and your daughter from being caught in harm's way, assuming these raiders may have known their possible whereabouts. So we might have to send someone to watch over that place, and make sure they're in good hands until the bad guys are dealt with the full extent of the law."
"Okay, but as long as you cops really mean it," Miki said.
"We'll do our best, ma'am."
"Thank you," Miki said, and then told him the full address of Sachiko's summer home, which was situated in a small upper-class neighborhood nestled on the wooden hills overlooking the city, and thus called the "Millionaires' Row of Nagano".
The concept of killing another human being – for real, and with her own hands – was very upsetting to Sachiko, who was a product of an utterly different upbringing, where there was plenty within her economic bracket and in a country where crime statistics were still low, but in consequence a world plagued by social intrigues, well-chronicled in both the society pages on every broadsheet and gossip magazines in the country.
To kill was to witness great, horrific gouts of blood, gushing from an open wound, as though the victim's life-force was being drained away, and she could only imagine a man lying on the ground, blood pooling around his body as the final expression of his face was contorted by pain, the mouth gasping for the last few breaths of air, a futile act of desperation to climb out of the black hole that was mortality.
That was what Sachiko knew of what a kill looked like, based from what she read and saw on TV and PG-12 (but not R-15) movies. Specifically, at one time, out of the recommendation of an acquaintance from Hanadera's Detective Club, she tried to watch CSI:Miami, where on a weekly basis Sachiko was presented with an unusual case, a supposedly complicated crime, replete with the slow-mo CG of a bullet flying in the air or a gas explosion or the butcher's knife about to strike and split the skin, until the main characters comprising the police forensics team, the case handed over to them, decide to use their forensic skills – combined with the classic deduction techniques promulgated by Sherlock Holmes – to go as far as to never overlook a minute detail in a crime scene, be a bullet, a body part, or a dagger dripping with blood, no matter how gruesome, to piece together the exact circumstances of the crime.
But for her to do the unthinkable, to kill even out of self-defense, was unimaginably terrifying, especially that her faith upheld one of the Ten Commandments not to kill another human being.
"No way," Sachiko finally objected. "I can't do it."
Vince shook his head and sighed.
"Even if you don't want it," he said, "the circumstances we are in may have to force you to think about doing the impossible. We are in danger, you see, so taking things for granted for what you think is normal is no longer possible. There maybe someone watching your back, someone with a malevolent intent, out to do harm. You unknowingly present yourself as an unarmed target, an easy kill for them, and because you're a woman, it gives them more confidence once they grab you by the wrists and subdue you completely until they'll do everything they want with your belongings or even your body; you, therefore, become their possession, against your will, a piece of living property for a finite amount of time till they decide on your final disposition."
Sachiko blinked. "Like killing me?"
"Yes, they'll do anything to you if they're truly cold-blooded."
Now that really made her insides twist around and freeze her blood, and worse, if they first decide to touchher skin… and mental images even more terrifying than death. Thus Sachiko gave out this pained expression on her face as she shuddered.
"Are you okay?" Vince asked, as Yumi and Touko weren't able to speak to assist, only listening to his lecture, trying to comprehend as their minds realized that the real world could be as safe as hop-scotching on a minefield.
"Yes… I'm thinking," Sachiko replied.
"About what?"
The young woman stared back into his eyes. "About what it takes for me to defend myself, but it's difficult for me to take the killing part seriously."
Here was the hard part, the one a fresh recruit from boot camp has to go through the first time he finds himself in a firefight, with many others like him as they face a horde of determined men out to overrun their post. Sure, he has the rifle, but the soldier must decide as to whether he needs to pull the trigger or not. Yet the very post he was assigned to was a chunk of his home country, and he has sworn by oath to defend it, and therefore he has the reason and the purpose to take up arms on behalf of the homeland and law, mandated to defend the defenseless and of the interests of his country, to follow the orders of his Commander-in-Chief.
And with that in mind, despite initial mixed feelings, his ears blasted with the loud staccato of gunfire, and adrenaline rushing through his veins, he rises from the trench, protected by sandbags, picks the first target right through his sights, and pulls the trigger, before a second later he sees the enemy crumple down to the ground, yet another statistic to be compiled in a later report.
That was all when Vincent first saw as he observed the Marines that he was with, the time when he was assigned to this specific outpost in Kandahar, Vince already a veritable sea-daddy, a seasoned SEAL mentor to the anxious young Marines out of Camp Pendleton, a training base near Los Angeles.
"You know," Vince said. "The first time you kill someone, you'll be thinking a lot afterwards, seriously. You're shaken, your conscience will be bothered, you'll be having a hard time getting some sleep, trying to get over that experience, but the next time it happens again, stuck between hell and a hard place, another bastard trying to end your life, that hard reality becomes a part of your normal self before putting him out of his misery. This is what makes it very different from a video game or an action movie: you only live once; it's either you have to kill or be killed, and this is what makes up every soldier, be it me or Sean right here."
Sean nodded, agreeing with Vince's explanation. "He's right," the Englishman said. "We're been through that frightened first time, but overcame it because we were trained to kill out of self-defense and in the service of our countries. Now that we're in a war declared against you, milady, first you'll have to get acquainted with your dark side."
The dark side, Yumi thought upon hearing the words.
What was it? You mean, the bad side of a person, the one that allows someone lie to parents, cheat in exams, or steal a bag of chips in a convenience store, when the storekeeper wasn't looking?
Yes, lie, cheat, steal… But to kill? That was going too far, and that was also madness.
Yet with Vince's words, there was a difference between killing out of bloodlust and killing for a good reason. Yumi then noticed that her onee-sama had nothing to say, to express her objection; she simply listened while trying to make up her mind.
As for Yumi, what would happen should they, like the masked invaders, caught up with her?
She would be dead, that's for sure.
However, she couldn't imagine what its like to have a gun fired at her direction, and in a millisecond later she receives the bullet, accompanied with great, searing pain somewhere in the body, while simultaneously staring at the fatal wound, blood gushing out with the volume of a faucet turned full-on… like the one time she briefly watched an old chanbara movie, a samurai slicing his opponents down, their cut and exposed arteries spraying out into the air, a crimson mist.
And then the moment of death, the last breath and the last thing her eyes would see before fading out into blackness, into the forever sleep, not knowing what it would be like at the other side.
Quickly Yumi shook her head, and then made a personal resolve: she would rather die an old lady than to be a victim of a gruesome death at the hands of whoever evil was pursuing her onee-sama, henceforth she was summoning the courage to bring herself to accept the reality that Vince was proposing to Sachiko.
On the other hand, what words Touko had heard from the two men was almost alien and incomprehensible, speaking a language and of a culture different from her world; they were once men of arms, practitioners of controlled and reasoned violence, right before they left their military uniforms to live once more as civilians dressed in ordinary clothes.
Touko's grandfather, the overall authority who, together with another couple, ran the country hospital with the usual Japanese efficiency; he was a doctor who took the universal Hippocratic Oath at the beginning of his career, and therefore a man sworn to preserve life; his duty was to cure, but those two men present were trained to take life away.
True, they were servants, thus paid employees of the Ogasawara Group, but indeed they were of a different breed, hardened by war but tempered by their post-military duties. Judging from their actions a few hours ago, they were no ordinary men; if they have sworn fealty to their country, to defend it with whatever means necessary, right now they have also done the same for onee-san Sachiko, and will do it again.
Now she remembered Suguru Kashiwagi, onii-san, who earlier made the judgment call to be left behind, to foil and delay their pursuers. What he would be called and remembered for, should people ask her about his actions, even though she could not imagine how he died back there?
In the end, he proved himself to be a good man by bringing out what she thought to be true nobility, such nobility expressed by his actions rather than personal wealth, and in one stroke removing the selfish, self-centered stigma associated with his cavalier, suave personality.
He redeemed himself, despite having never been a soldier like those two men tonight, as they talked to Sachiko about the use of lethal force.
As he watched his father expound to Sachiko about taking another man's life, Seiji remembered the one time when his dad said about how wars were conducted then and now, wars that took thousands or millions of lives using traditional means and at close range, and wars involving the latest in technology while employing powerful weapons of destruction:
"There is a difference between pulling the trigger in the battlefield and pushing a button thousands of miles away; the former is quite real, everything's presented before you, the blood, the guts, the madness, the explosions, and that's where you can expound on the meaning of your life in a few seconds than you would brood upon existentialism for almost a lifetime; the latter is impersonal, as your enemy is presented as a distant target on the screen, like a pixilated bad guy in a video game, before you're given the orders to waste him right there with missiles, while comfortably seated and fiddling with the control stick. Easy as cake, or so he thinks.
"Well, the latter can't hit it right with his UCAV most of the time, because the man doing the remote-control killing thousands of miles away can't be damn sure if it's indeed the enemy he's ordered to kill. Anything can go wrong under Murphy's Law: faulty camera circuitry, faulty transmission, faulty intelligence, faulty orders from the REMFs, and what he could hit might not be the enemy at all, but a hapless peasant goat herder who simply let his goats come out of the pen and munch on some grass.
"That's where we come in, the men trained hard and long for the job to make sure it's the right target we have to eliminate; we go in where no smart bomb, cruise missile, gadget or machine could hope to seek and kill, where real eyeballs, instinct and moral judgment take over, where we have to sneak in under the cover of night, dressed in black, almost never making a noise, before killing a couple of sentries with even our bare hands, and enter the cave to find the man we want.
"Yeah, they know that war machines and weaponry, no matter how powerful, would be useless against their age-old tactics and techniques they have employed with almost no money but with lots of religious and personal motivation. So it is far more better to have a dozen of us on the ground, hardened, smelly cavemen comparable to our smelly foes, than radio-control techno-dweebs (but no offense to you, my son, so sorry), because we are dangerous, we have the weapons right between our ears, rather than whatever firepower we have at our disposal, and we will do the killing the surgical way like cutting out a cancer from the body, making damn sure we have the enemy, face-to-face and in person, dead to the rights."
That was the philosophy his father espoused, preferring the human touch as opposed to machine-assisted destruction, and that also left Seiji in a quandary, as to whether he could follow his father's footsteps or follow his heart's desires, even though the old man didn't ask him what he wanted to be.
Maybe someday, as soon as he receives his diploma, come graduation day, he would make the judgment call as to what vocation he should be pursuing, but for now he was damn sure that his dad would bring him along for the ride of his life, even if it could mean that he'll have to dodge bullets, because his dad knows that his skills with the computer would come in handy, whenever the old man needs information, because every good fight begins with good information and planning.
"My dark side?" Sachiko questioned.
Vince nodded. "Yes, that's right, the other side of your morality fence," he said. "I tell you, every one of us has a dark side, an opposite of our good side, just like yin and yang. This is the side of us that defies the laws of men and our beliefs, the taboos most of us don't want to explore, yet some of us tend to do in the contrary. This happens when we're desperate; we want to have at least one advantage in a very serious situation we can't extricate from.
"Say you wake up, in the middle of nowhere, to find yourself with nothing but the clothes you're wearing, and there's nothing in your pockets, either. What can you do, then? You then walk out of the forest, to see there's a village right ahead, except you can't be sure if the villagers are friendly and helpful, especially if you happen to be stuck in a hostile nation where one mistake will land you in jail. But you need food, clothing, and most important of all, money, and at the same time, you wonder how can you make it from that village to home?
"This is where your 'dark side' comes into play; you now have to rely on instinct, you have to assume the mind of a hungry animal, where survival is everything and the world is a dangerous place full of predators, so what's the first thing you need to do, should your stomach yearns for breakfast?"
Sachiko thought for a moment, and then she answered, "Steal some food?"
"Yes, you'll have to steal, but it's not easy; what seems to be a comfortable walk to a neighbor's home is now a difficult task, which means that you'll have to make yourself invisible by hiding, then sneaking up to another hidden spot, and so on, studying their movements and finding the proper timing to move on, until you're sure nobody's watching you enter any of their houses, whether it's a man or a dog, as you take away that fresh bowl of gruel on the table, pick up a few clothes drying on the line, even their wallets or purses if they're careless, and then duck and sprint again until you make it back to your safe spot.
"The point with this example is how the instinct for survival makes it absolutely necessary to abandon all moral reservations and never play by the book, and instead maintain your capacity to analyze and plan your next move."
Sachiko nodded. "I see," she said, before glancing at the wall clock.
Two minutes past one AM.
Inwardly Sachiko wanted to at least purge her brain of the evening's chaos by not thinking much about it. She then massaged her temples and added, "Is it okay if we talk about this tomorrow?"
Vince now saw that she, Yumi and Touko looked tired and in dire need of sleep. "Sure," he said. "Guess it's time to sleep, guys."
The girls made a collective sigh as they rose from the tatami mat and trudged towards the staircase, with Seiji leading them. Meanwhile Sean piled up the pillows, staking out a spot near the door.
"Good night," Vince said.
"Good night," the girls said in unison as they climbed up.
Vince picked up the remote control and turned off the TV set, walked over to the wall switch and turned off the lights, before he settled back to where he sat, took out his Glock and unstrapped the harness from his body, placing them all on the low table. He then took one of the free pillows and lay down.
"So, what's gonna be?" Sean asked amidst the darkness in the living room.
"We'll have all of tomorrow to prepare," Vince said.
Back in the room, Muramoto heard his mobile phone go off, vibrating as it rang.
"Excuse me, ma'am," he said to Miki.
He then went out of the room, into the hallway, and took the call, recognizing the number on his display belonged to the police commissioner.
"Pardon me, sir?" Muramoto asked.
"Listen to me," Ogata said. "Miss Ogasawara and her friends are in safe hands for now."
"With whom?"
"A Mister Hayashida is keeping an eye on them, but we're not at liberty to disclose their exact whereabouts right now, but anyway, whom you're talking with?"
"Mrs. Fukuzawa, sir."
"Okay, what did she told you?"
Muramoto told him some answers he gleaned from Yumi's and Touko's parents.
"I asked if there are any other possible refuges, and Mrs. Fukuzawa said the heiress has a summer home in Nagano, but I think it wouldn't be safe there."
"I see. Keep me updated."
"Yes, sir."
Author's Notes: I'm sorry if it took some time before I could finish this, owing it all to personal issues, which right now I'm not at liberty to discuss. Instead, our three girls will have to get used to their new, albeit difficult, situation.
Addendum - it appears that upon importing as a chapter from Word, with formatted content (bold, italics or underscore) tend to lose their spaces. The heck's happening?
Till next time… thanks!