Even the textbooks used in Japanese schools had been rewritten to reflect the perpetual guilt of Takahashi’s people and to heap that shame on children who had nothing to do with the events of the past. Still, it wasn’t enough for a rising China. They were putting political pressure on Sanetomi’s government to rewrite the books again—to eradicate any allusion to who the Japanese people were and how a tiny island had become feared by the entire world.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Prime Minister, but you must understand that if I were to turn around now, it would be seen as a dismissal of the sacrifice made by the men honored in this place. I—”
“General, please,” Sanetomi interrupted. This time, his voice wasn’t quite as even. Most people would mistake the subtle change in tone as irritation, but Takahashi saw it was something very different. Fear.
“After what just happened in the Senkakus, you more than anyone should understand that this isn’t the time for provocations. We’re stepping very close to the brink, Masao. Very close to the point where the posturing could…” His voice petered out for a moment. “Could become something more.”
War, Takahashi mouthed silently, relishing the feel of the word on his lips. How could a politician who wouldn’t even speak the word be trusted to protect Japan? These men’s lives were ruled entirely by fear. Of confrontation, insult, embarrassment. Of anything that could affect their soft and privileged lives.
Sanetomi liked very much to talk about the greatness of Japan and his own patriotism, but it was just theater. He would use back channels to Beijing to do whatever was necessary to appease his Chinese masters and de-escalate the standoff in the East China Sea. To quietly return Japan to the pathetic state that its people had come to accept as normal.
“I don’t understand,” Takahashi said, feigning respectfulness. “We demonstrated no aggression whatsoever in defending islands that virtually the entire international community agrees are ours. Further, I ordered the Izumo to retreat when the Chinese targeted it, even though that craft is more than capable of defending itself. How is it the responsibility of the Japanese people to de-escalate a situation that we didn’t create?”
“You are entirely aware that this isn’t a matter of fault,” Sanetomi responded. “In addition to a substantial nuclear arsenal, the Chinese military has ten times our manpower, ten times our tanks and artillery, and four times our combat aircraft. I understand and respect your efforts over the last thirty years to update the capabilities of our defense forces, General. But this isn’t the time for arrogance.”
Takahashi resisted the urge to laugh. Sanetomi understood nothing. It was very much the time for arrogance.
“Of course, I sympathize with your position, Prime Minister. But you must understand that I’m not a politician. I’m a soldier. I won’t turn my back on these brave men and the sacrifices they made for our country.”
“Even if the people of Japan have to suffer the consequences of your actions?”
“I doubt any discomfort they might experience would compare to what was suffered by the men whose souls rest here, Prime Minister.”
Takahashi cut off the call and stepped from the vehicle, barely aware of the competing shouts from the protesters on either side. He walked the barricaded corridor between them, focused on the Shinto priest waiting on the other end. The holy man wore the white robe demanded by tradition, and it flowed gracefully in the breeze as the general approached.
The countries that pretended to rule the world had become weak. Europe was fractured and useless. Russia was sinking into a disastrous kleptocracy that would inevitably lead to another revolution. China’s corruption continued to grow as it destroyed everything it laid its hands on in the name of unfettered greed.
Even the United States, which had been such a force for stability in the world, had been transformed into a bickering, bankrupt shadow of its former self. It could no longer be trusted to govern itself, let alone show leadership to a rising Asia or control the Middle East as it descended into chaos.
Nature abhorred a vacuum and America was leaving one that would prove catastrophic. Only he and his closest advisers understood it yet, but a new era was dawning. This was to be Japan’s time.
Takahashi stopped and bowed respectfully to the priest, the hair standing on the back of his neck as it always did in this place. One day he too would be honored here. People would remember him as the man who changed Japan—and the world—forever.
10
Tokyo
Japan
Can I get you another cup of coffee?”
Kaito Yoshima—his name when he was in Japan—answered the young waitress with a smile and flawless Japanese. Even if she’d been a student of subtle accents she would have placed him in the northeastern part of the island. Certainly she would never have dreamed that he’d been born and raised outside Dingxi, China.
He admired her as she weaved through the crowded coffee shop, dodging the knots of animated conversation with practiced agility. His preferences leaned more toward the exotic, but even he had to admit that there was something special about this girl. French wasn’t one of his four languages and he strained to remember the phrase. A certain je ne sais quoi.
Yoshima turned back to the massive window, ignoring the crowded street scene beyond and instead focusing on his reflection. In addition to his perfect accent, there would also be no way for the people surrounding him to determine his foreign birth from his features. They were a gift from the Japanese soldier who had raped his grandmother during the war—a strange trick of genetics that had not gone unnoticed by the Chinese government.
He’d been taken from his family just before his fourth birthday under the cover that he’d been identified as deeply gifted and would be educated at an exclusive boarding school. To this day his family had no idea that the school he’d been shipped off to was actually a training facility for spies and assassins.
From before he could even clearly remember, he had been immersed in the Japanese language and culture, the subtle art of espionage, and of course the shining glory of the Communist Party. Upon reaching adolescence, he’d been issued a forged passport and begun traveling to Japan on a regular basis, honing his ability to blend in under the watchful eye of his trainers and classmates.
There had been thirty of them in all, split equally between male and female. Friendships had been a luxury none of them could afford, and the endless competition had been both cruel and brutal. Mistakes, weakness, and even the slightest hint of a lack of patriotism or resolve were all severely punished. If enough of these usually trivial violations were incurred, that student was expelled.
Of course he knew now that this was just a euphemism. The level of secrecy that had to be maintained around a program that stole children and turned them into anti-Japanese weaponry was oppressive, to say the least. No, it was clear that the children born without the necessary intelligence or physical capability—and even the gentle ones whose nature was unsuited to the tasks they would be charged with—now inhabited a series of unmarked graves in the Chinese countryside.
Only nine of the thirty had survived their training, and those nine went on to become China’s top covert operatives. Or at least that’s what he was told. He’d never seen any of them again, and that separation generated a strange emptiness in him that he’d never been able to completely fill. His teachers had in some ways done their jobs too well. Now he straddled two different countries, two different cultures. Which did he really belong to? Certainly his loyalty to Beijing had been beaten into him throughout his childhood, but he was a man now and his allegiance to that country was beginning to feel more like a habit than anything else.
The pretty waitress returned and he smiled at her as she slid the latte onto the table in front of him.
“Do you speak English?” she asked, pointing to the copy of 1984 he’d been rereading to pass the time.
“I try,” Yoshima responded easily. “But I don’t think anyone could really understand me.
”
It was a lie, of course. While slightly accented, his English was nearly perfect. Another gift from the Chinese government.
“I’m taking a class,” she said. “It’s really hard. So don’t feel bad. I can’t even understand myself!”
Her laugh was engaging enough to turn his thoughts to using the skills he’d been provided to disappear. Maybe somewhere in Japan. Maybe with this very girl.
She turned and he watched her walk away again, the fantasy fading as the physical distance between them grew. There had been so many women like her, so many daydreams of a normal life where his Japanese features didn’t make him the constant target of hatred by the very people he had been charged with protecting.
A bitter smile crossed his lips. The very people he had been charged with protecting.
In truth, the only people he protected were his country’s politicians. And that task was getting harder and harder as they pushed China further toward the brink. The runaway economic growth was slowing, information was becoming increasingly difficult to control, and his hopelessly corrupt masters were feeling their grip on the population weakening.
With all other avenues exhausted and religion unavailable to them, they had chosen Japan as a focal point for the Chinese people’s anger. They dredged up atrocities that had happened generations ago and skillfully transformed a group of useless islands into a beacon of national pride. All the while arrogantly believing that they could control the carefully cultivated rage of a billion human beings.
He scanned the street out front again, finally letting his gaze settle on a small Honda parked parallel to the curb. It looked almost laughably normal—Japan’s most common car in Japan’s most common color. Neither old nor new, neither clean nor dirty, it might as well have been invisible.
Within that mundane exterior, though, it was really quite remarkable. Six kilos of crudely formulated but still potent plastic explosive were hidden inside the driver’s-side door. The body had been cleverly reinforced with steel plate in order to channel and amplify the power of the blast into a force that its Chinese designer struggled to describe without invoking the frowned-upon concept of God.
No mistakes would be tolerated. No chances taken. General Masao Takahashi wouldn’t be injured or even killed. He would be vaporized.
A text popped up on the phone in front of him and he took a casual sip of his coffee as he looked down at it. Three minutes.
There was no excitement, no dread, and no adrenaline. Those responses had been deemed to dampen logical faculties and had been eradicated from him long ago. He was not to think or feel, and certainly not to question. He was a tool of men far greater than him. Nothing more.
For a long time, he’d believed all of it. Now, though, he saw things much more clearly.
There was no question that Masao Takahashi was an extremely dangerous man. He refused to bend with the wind, to acknowledge that the Chinese government’s saber rattling was just a bit of political showmanship for the benefit of the masses who granted it power. Because of this, Yoshima’s masters had decided that if the general’s influence was removed, the Japanese people would sink back into their mumbled apologies and averted gazes.
Ironically, it was the training he’d been given by these men that made him certain they were wrong. Nationalism was on the rise in Japan, and Takahashi’s death would do nothing but strengthen it. All he would accomplish here today would be to inch the two countries a little closer to the point of no return.
Another text came in warning him that the ETA of the general’s limousine was now one minute. He carefully inserted a set of custom earbuds and plugged the cord into his phone. Anyone looking would think he was listening to music, but the headphones were actually designed for hearing protection.
A drop of sweat ran down his forehead and he wiped it away. His masters had carefully designed the assassination to look like the work of the Japanese Patriotic Front, a left-wing group that had recently set off bombs in Yokohama and Nagoya. The subtle poison he’d suggested had been deemed too exotic and easily traced to a foreign source if discovered. And the sniper bullet that was his backup plan had been deemed too professional looking.
So he was sitting in a coffee shop waiting to unleash hell. Yoshima looked at the faces of the pedestrians walking by the colorful shop windows and at the drivers on their way home from work. How many would be disfigured or carry debilitating injuries for the rest of their lives? How many would die?
He bobbed his head to imaginary music and watched out of the corner of his eye as Takahashi’s opulent personal limousine came into view. Waiting until it was almost even with the Honda, he reached out and pushed the “volume” button on his phone three times in quick succession. A two-second delay had been programmed in, and he used the time to force himself to relax. It was important that he not flinch before the blast. The modern world was riddled with cameras, and every second of footage would be examined by the Japanese authorities.
Even after being briefed by the engineers in Beijing, he was stunned by the power of the blast. People around him screamed and dived to the floor, as did he, covering his head and making sure that panic read clearly on his face. He surreptitiously watched the people around him, not wanting to be the first, or the last, to look up.
When others started to move, he lifted his head and peered through the cracked window in front of him. As promised, the explosion had indeed been tightly concentrated. The entire front of the building across the street was caved in and starting to burn. People who weren’t lying motionless were fleeing desperately in every direction. Mangled cars, one still spinning on its roof, were scattered like a child’s discarded toys.
Yoshima stared into the smoke and dust billowing from the hole in the building across from him and felt his brow furrow involuntarily. The wind was pulling at the cloud, providing brief glimpses of what was behind. It took a moment for his mind to knit together the patchwork but when it did, he forgot the cameras and rose to his feet.
There should have been no more left of Takahashi’s car than a few small pieces of twisted metal and burning rubber. But there it was, lying intact on its side in the rubble.
Impossible.
11
Tokyo
Japan
General Masao Takahashi could no longer make sense of a world he thought he understood. There was no sound but the ringing in his ears and there was no light beyond a few muted rays coming from above. The only thing that seemed familiar was the ache in his shoulder, though he didn’t know why it hurt or when the pain had started.
After a few moments his equilibrium came back enough for him to realize that he wasn’t sitting upright. His arm was jammed between the back of the vehicle’s front seat and the door. The light filtering in was coming through a window. The car was on its side.
“Genzo,” he called out, but his driver didn’t answer.
Takahashi freed his arm, finally feeling his mind start to come back online. He was crumpled against the driver’s-side rear window, and through the glass he could see a mix of bright floor tiles and rubble.
“Genzo,” he said louder, righting himself to the best of his ability and leaning forward through the seats. His driver hadn’t been wearing a seat belt and lay motionless with one hand hanging loosely through the steering wheel. There was a blood smear about ten centimeters in diameter on the undamaged windshield, and when Takahashi reached for his man he discovered the stain had come from what had once been Genzo’s forehead.
He stood on the door panel and reached up to try to open the door above him. The latch worked and he managed to crack it, only enough to let in a wave of black smoke and terrified screams.
The handle was suddenly torn from his grasp and he threw an arm up against the filtered glare of the afternoon sun. Someone was shouting at him but the buzzing in his ears and crackle of flames made it impossible to understand anything that was being said.
He felt a powerful hand grip him under his injur
ed arm and he was immediately dragged out of the vehicle.
“General!” the man shouted directly in his ear. “Are you hurt?”
Takahashi just shook his head, still dazed.
“Come on! We have to get out of here!”
From his elevated position on the side of the limousine, Takahashi could finally take in his surroundings. The building was thick with smoke but still recognizable as some kind of store. He remembered the roar and the flash now. An explosion. His vehicle had come partially through a cement wall and partially through a display window. The burning figures that had at first looked like mannequins were, he now realized, corpses strewn among shattered brick and shredded clothing.
“Let’s go, General! Now!”
He was pulled off the car and his arm was thrown painfully over a broad set of shoulders. Men from his chase car, some bleeding badly, others visibly burned, fell in around him as he was swept deeper into the wrecked building.
As they progressed, the still bodies were replaced by ones writhing in agony or trying pathetically to escape the approaching flames. He saw a small child, half his body charred black, wailing next to a motionless young woman. Someone running past scooped the child up and disappeared like a ghost into the choking smoke.
They slammed through a metal door and the open space turned into a dark hallway. His head continued to clear and after a few more moments he forcibly slowed. “Where are we going?”
“The fire exit,” one of his men said.
“Are you sure there is one?” Takahashi asked, feeling himself being pushed forward again. “We could get trapped by the fire.”