Executioner 053 - The Invisible Assassins Page 7

  That was an unjust conclusion, thought Bolan, as he walked over to rejoin Suki. What with chopping their fingers off and committing ritual suicide, Yumoto's countrymen still seemed to find plenty of use for the sword.

  "IF I DIDN'T KNOW yours was a government agency," Bolan said to Nakada, as Suki showed him into the latter's office, "I'd think you were training a private army down there."

  The commander lighted another cigarette, although a butt was still smoldering in the ashtray. He appeared unamused at Bolan's offhand remark.

  Bolan stared down from the rain-streaked window—Nakada's office was located in one of the gingerbread mansion's two towers—and he could see the trainees doubling around the edge of the lawn.

  "Did you see the car?" asked Nakada. "It's built like a tank."

  "I noticed it when we parked."

  "Perhaps we can take it for a test run tomorrow," offered Nakada. "That is, if I can wrap up this Ikida affair. We finally got a break. It is very difficult to find an informer in this country."

  Bolan nodded, remembering the stories of the ninja who would certainly die rather than risk being forced to talk.

  A woman walked into the office, carrying several files and a slip of paper. She was apparently Nakada's secretary. He looked up, and she addressed him in rapid Japanese.

  "Some more information on those men who attacked us," explained Nakada, glancing at the neatly scripted message. "The local police identified the body. He was a small-time hoodlum who soldiered for one of the families. But our records indicate he had a brother who was jailed for demonstrating against America's nuclear deterrent. I hardly think that connection has anything to do with last night."

  Bolan shrugged.

  The secretary brought other files to Nakada's attention. "This is the itinerary for the German foreign minister's visit. These are the preliminary floor plans for the new banquet hall in Osaka. . . "

  She flipped open the last folder and placed it in front of Nakada. He picked up the top paper, a neatly typed report, and Bolan found himself staring across at a familiar face.

  The picture clipped to a thin sheaf of papers was that of the older man in Shinoda's photographs.

  There was no mistaking that odd streak of white hair.

  10

  SUKI DROVE BOLAN back alone, Nakada staying behind to catch up on his work. The traffic was much busier on the way into the city, and Bolan took his time to steer the conversation to the subject that interested him: the report he had seen Nakada sign.

  "Professor Naramoto was one of our most brilliant scientists, though his work was not publicized. He'd been with the Red Sun Chemical Company for years, so his disappearance is most mysterious," Suki told him. It did not sound as if she felt the case should have been closed.

  "What happened?"

  "A boating accident." Again, Suki hesitated. "Apparently. Could I have one of those?"

  Bolan lighted them each a cigarette and waited for her to continue.

  "He chartered a small power-cruiser for a day ... took his wife with him ... then they vanished, boat and all."

  "How long ago was this?"

  "About a month. Down by the Umishi peninsula. It's a beautiful area. Red Sun has a company retreat there for their senior employees. Frogmen have searched along the coast, but they found nothing."

  "Nothing at all?"

  "It's a very rough shoreline with hidden rocks and powerful currents. The local police called on Commander Nakada's services—at the insistence of Red Sun, I should add—but after the underwater search proved fruitless, he concluded the boat must have got into trouble, probably hit a rock and sank immediately."

  "And so the professor and his wife are presumed to have drowned?"

  "Yes, Colonel, that's what it says in the final report."

  "But what do you think?"

  Suki did not reply for a moment, making a fast lane change to overtake a truck.

  "I think it was unwise of the professor not to have taken along a younger man to crew the boat."

  They were getting close to the hotel. Bolan asked Suki to join him for dinner, thinking he might extract more useful information over a warm flask of sake. Suki considered his invitation. It really seemed as if she wanted to say yes, but then she claimed she had a prior engagement.

  Bolan lingered for a moment as he got out of the car, but she did not change her mind. He could not tell if her reluctance was for professional or personal reasons.

  He watched the car drive off. Whatever her motives, Suki remained quite mysterious.

  BOLAN PROWLED the restless streets.

  Perhaps it was better this way. He was glad to be on his own. It gave him time to think things through as he walked with a purposeful stride in an unspecified direction. Not even the crowds that thronged the sidewalks, nor the dazzling display of Fokyo's fluorescent advertising, could distract him. He was back in the jungle of the street.

  Where The Executioner was born.

  Where he was forged.

  Where he belonged.

  And where that sixth sense now told him he was being followed.

  Bolan had expected Nakada might put a tail on him. After all, the commander could not take the risk that any more trouble should plague such an influential guest. Anticipating this, Bolan had taken every precaution after leaving the hotel. The thin man with tinted glasses and a raincoat folded over his arm was left behind in a large department store on the Ginza. In a city as overcrowded as Tokyo it was really not too hard to shake off a tail, but the crowds made it far more difficult to spot one.

  Assuming the air of a slightly bewildered tourist, the tall American paused outside a diner apparently to inspect the plates full of plastic food that advertised the menu.

  He picked her out on the second sweep. In a bobbing sea of black hair, she stood out as a blonde. It was the woman from the airport, the one with glasses and her hair tied in a bun.

  She was standing by a newspaper kiosk, seeming to browse through the latest edition of Time, but to Bolan's experienced eye it was obvious she was more interested in the nearby entrance of a pachinko parlor.

  Bolan moved to the doorway of a travel agency. He took his time lighting a cigarette, watching her as she fidgeted with another magazine. There was no doubt that she was the woman who had been arguing with the immigration officials at the airport. She glanced nervously around the street. To avoid any chance of eye contact, Bolan turned to face the window.

  The travel agency was selling escorted tours of Japan's perennial attractions. A series of posters advertised visits to Mount Fuji, the giant bronze statue of the Great Buddha at Nara, and to Osaka by the superexpress "bullet" train. What caught Bolan's attention was the colored photo of a thatched building—the same cottage like shrine that was featured in Shinoda's snapshots.

  It was used to illustrate a guided tour of the Shinto shrines in the Umishi area. Maybe in the morning Colonel Phoenix would take up Suki's offer to do a little sightseeing. It was time he made a pilgrimage of his own.

  Bolan almost missed the guy coming out of the pinball arcade.

  It was Pock Face! Bolan caught the white flash of his bandaged hand where Suki had skewered him with her hairpin. And the second fellow, the weaselly looking one in the ill-fitting shiny suit, could be the one who had given the orders last night—Bolan was willing to bet he had a mouthful of gold teeth.

  What the hell was a young female American visitor doing shadowing those two hoods?

  They strutted down the block, and the woman took off after them. Bolan followed on his side of the street.

  The unwitting game of three-way hide-and-seek threaded its way past several twenty-four-hour coffee shops, a couple of porno movie houses, a group of Japanese punk rockers who were even more bizarre than their Western counterparts, and a row of electronics and stereo stores engaged in a price war.

  The two gangsters stopped to talk with an over-painted hooker. There was no sign that they realized they were being tailed.
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  Faced with the obstacle of a new shopfront construction, Bolan decided it was time to cross over. The big warrior felt a surge of energy as he dodged through the traffic.

  Pock Face and his pal had vanished at the far end of the block. Bolan could see the young woman linger for a moment before turning right to follow them. He had to hurry if he was going to keep up.

  When Bolan turned into the narrower side street, all three had disappeared. He brushed aside a foul-breathed pimp who clutched at his arm. He increased his pace. Dark alleyways led off at either side—they could have gone down any one of them.

  He turned to make sure he had not already passed the woman hiding in one of the shadowy doorways. Then he heard the scream.

  It came from a dark alleyway. Bolan pushed past a businessman bargaining with a B-girl and plunged into the alley. It ran round the back of a dingy butcher shop. The place stank of rotting garbage.

  "If you dare try anything . . ." The voice was frail, breaking on the far edge of desperation.

  The woman had her back to a brick wall and was holding a pair of sharp nail scissors in her outstretched hand. It was an inadequate weapon, but it temporarily held her opponents at bay.

  There were now four of them: Pock Face, Gold Teeth and two young thugs sporting elaborate tattoos. They shifted around in a loose semicircle, seeing who would be first to risk a poke in the eye.

  Bolan called out calmly, "Leave her alone."

  He walked up to her, turned deliberately to face them with one arm held protectively across the woman's front.

  Gold Teeth looked past him and nodded a quick signal. Bolan shifted just far enough to see a fifth soldier approaching with a stout length of wood in his hands.

  A yakuza street gang versus The Executioner. Five against one.

  The odds were about even.

  As the newcomer jumped in, hefting the shaft, Bolan unleashed a powerful side kick that caught the attacker in the solar plexus. Even as he turned to counterbalance, the big man took advantage of his long reach to punch Tattoo One, who sprang in from the other side.

  The decorated youth might as well have run headfirst into the wall. Skin split and nose gristle tore as his face was flattened into a blood-spurting mask.

  Bolan ducked low, dodging under a high kick from Tattoo Two, and snatched the wooden club from the first guy, who was still retching his guts out.

  "Thanks," snarled Bolan as he grasped the weapon and straightened up, bringing it around in a hard, tight swing. In Yankee Stadium it would have been a homer in the left-field stands for sure, but there was no ball to connect with, just the third punk's ribs.

  Beneath his nylon shirt, a tattooed butterfly almost flew into the punk's lung cavity. The guy went down.

  The blonde staggered against the wall for support. In those final seconds before the hoods closed in on her, she had tried to make a deal with God—but she had not anticipated that he would send a cross between a white knight and an executioner.

  Pock Face tripped over the guy with the mangled rib cage in his haste to escape. His bandaged hand smacked down on the stones to break his fall, and Bolan slashed his club down on the hand with such force it shattered the guy's knuckles.

  Gold Teeth ran off with a terrified yelp, hoping to escape before this bloodcrazed madman drove the precious bridgework down his throat.

  Bolan grabbed the woman by the arm and hustled her down the alleyway. He did not look back at the carnage but hit the street and hailed a cab.

  "I ... I don't ... " she stammered as her savior bundled her into the rear seat. "Oh, thank God you came when you did!"

  "Lady, you and I are going to have a little chat."

  11

  "NOW, WHAT THE HELL were you following those men for, Sandy?"

  Her name was Sandra Dawson. Her small rented apartment was furnished with a minimum of second, hand pieces. Bolan was sitting cross-legged on a large cushion. He expected this sparsely decorated room to look out onto some sort of Zen rock garden instead of just another aging residential block.

  "What are you doing here?"

  "You will stay for tea, won't you?" Sandy turned away awkwardly before those icy eyes sliced right through her.

  "I'm not going anywhere until I've got some straight answers out of you."

  "Okay, but you know my name—what's yours?" "Phoenix. John Phoenix."

  "I'm a student, John Phoenix. I'm working on my doctoral thesis. Japanese history." Sandy paused to ladle the tea leaves into the pot. "My very first year I took an elective in Film Studies—it was all the rage then—you know, Kurosawa, Ozu, Mizoguchi . . ."

  Bolan did not share a passion for Japanese cinema, but he nodded anyway.

  "I got hooked. After that I specialized in Japanese history, politics, culture. By the time I completed my master's degree, I'd managed to pick up the language. At least, enough to get by."

  "I overheard you at the airport," Bolan said. She was astonished. "You told those officers it was the third time you'd been here. . . "

  "That's right. You seem to have observed rather a lot of my crises lately. And risked your life for me, too. Well, I'm researching my dissertation," she said nervously. Then she relaxed. "I'm studying the period leading up to World War II. I'm trying to figure out the real power structure that brought Japan into the war. It's a story that's never been told."

  Now she was torn between the desire to share the excitement of her research and the need for secrecy. But since this brave man was already involved, to her mind there was no point in hiding her ideas from him. Besides, it might encourage him to pool his information with her.

  "Have you ever heard of the Eight Jonin?" Bolan shook his head.

  "Very few people have," she said, warming to her subject as she poured out the tea. "The Eight Jonin are a select group of warrior-lords who have represented the true power in Japan for nearly two hundred years. They pushed their country into World War II. And they may still exist."

  Bolan sipped the hot greenish brown liquid from the little porcelain bowl.

  "They control a fanatical organization called the Circle of the Red Sun," she continued.

  "I've heard of Red Sun Chemicals."

  "A name that was not chosen at random, as a matter of fact. The Red Sun Chemical Company was owned by the Yamazaki family. My research will prove that Colonel Yamazaki was the Eighth Jonin throughout the thirties. He was their ringleader."

  "And only a colonel?" Bolan wore a slightly cynical smile. He had heard many conspiracy theories before.

  "I'm being quite serious, John." Sandy's fingers reached for the small gold cross that nestled in her cleavage, as if she wanted to touch something to swear by.

  She had long been immersed in her research and seemed unprepared for any sarcasm about it.

  "Do you know how Red Sun got started?" she persisted. "I'll tell you. Government contracts before and during the war. They developed the germ strains used at the Unit 639 laboratory for bacteriological warfare that the Japanese ran in Manchuria. The testing facility there was under the command of Colonel Yamazaki. He didn't need a higher rank—he already gave the orders the generals listened to—and it was better not to draw attention to himself. But it didn't matter. Thanks to some POW's testimony, we got him anyway. Yamazaki was tried, found guilty and executed for war crimes in 1946."

  "And who took over the company? Did he have a son?"

  "Yes. Hideo Yamazaki. But when he came of age, he handed over his holdings into trust and retired to a monastery."

  "In reaction to his family's past?"

  "I suppose so," she said, looking at him with bright, sad eyes. "The research team was headed by a Professor Naramoto."

  "I know about him. He just died."

  Sandy looked at Bolan even more closely. "His death didn't get much coverage considering how important he was. What's your interest in this, mister big guy? Are you a spy? That's it, isn't it, you're an industrial spy?"

  "I try to stop industrial espion
age." Bolan looked her straight in the eye. She was forced to glance down at her teacup.

  She was better pleased with his answer than with her own suggestion. He had appeared as a knight in shining armor, and she would not have wanted him to be involved in anything that might tarnish that, even though she could sense the dangerous undercurrents that stirred in him. They stirred something in her, too.

  "I think Naramoto's disappearance is the handiwork of the gang led by Kuma. His stepfather was also one of the Jonin," she said.

  "Were those Kuma's men who cornered you to-night?"

  "Yes," she nodded, her shoulders shivering at the thought of how close she had come to a bloody death. "Kuma started out as a sumo wrestler. It's always been his first love. He made a fortune in the black market and rose through the ranks of the yakuza. Now he heads the Kuma-kumi. Do you have any idea what a capo di tutti capi is?"

  "Why, yes . . . " Bolan hesitated, smiling slightly. "Doesn't it mean 'the boss of bosses'? It's been a long time since I saw that movie."

  "Brando's character was a pussycat compared to this guy," Sandy insisted innocently. "Some of the less scrupulous corporations use the yakuza as enforcers—you know, strong-arm men. They can help break up any industrial disputes, intimidate the competition, anything. Well, I think there's a close connection between Red Sun and the Kuma clan. It's the last piece in the puzzle that will show how the power of the Jonin still exists, that the same secret circle still exerts its evil influence. It'll bring my thesis right up to date."

  "And help sell a million copies?" Bolan smiled. Her enthusiasm was infectious, although the targets of her curiosity were of the dangerous kind. Fatally dangerous.

  "I've been finding out a lot," she continued. "Remember the one with the gold teeth? He's one of Kuma's right-hand men. More of a messenger boy than muscle. I've been following him as best I can, keeping tabs on whom he makes contact with. Sooner or later, I'll prove the connection they have with Red Sun."