Less Than Human (36 page)

The man called Iroel wore a silver robe like Samael. A gangly man, his limbs swung like a puppet with loose strings. Below
his smooth, bald head, his forehead was corrugated with worry lines like a tin roof.

He put me tray on the bottom step of the dais and folded himself beside it in a kneeling bow. “Adam-sama, your meal.”

Akita pressed a button on his throne. A board shot out of the arm and snapped onto the opposite arm, giving him a table on
which to set the tray.

He obviously didn’t believe in ascetic mortification of the flesh. The tray was crammed with bowls: clear soup, paper-thin
puffer fish sashimi, delicately cut radish and carrot flowers, a huge bowl of steaming rice, and morsels such as sea urchin
roe and steamed aubergine with sweet miso.

Eleanor’s dry throat closed in revulsion. Akita wasn’t going to listen to her. He was set on his mad scheme, whatever that
might be, and she had to find a way both to stop him and to make sure Mari was safe.

She stood up, slowly because her joints ached. “I want to see my niece.”

Akita, his mouth full, waved at the door with his chopsticks.

“I will take you,” said Iroel. He waved her ahead of him out the door almost eagerly. They left Akita eating alone on his
throne.

T
he screen cleared. A cartoon figure stood against a flat orange background. From the neck down it wore white robes like a
Buddhist statue, but the haloed head was that of an old manga star, Ishihara had forgotten the name.

“Greetings, my children. I am Adam.”

The notes at the bottom of the screen said the voice was synthesized and that the word used for “my” could also be interpreted
as “our.”

“Blessed are we who have been reborn into this Third Age, for to us is given the gift of Ascension.” The manga head’s lips
didn’t open; it merely stared out of the screen.

“You who are receiving this message are doubly blessed, for to you is fallen the duty of guiding others to the right path.”

“Thanks for nothing,” muttered Beppu beside him. His eyes were red-rimmed, and he needed a shave. Ishihara knew he looked
the same.

“As you have seen today, the Third Children and myself are ready to assume our rightful position as leaders in the Great Ascension.”

Third Children, gods knew where that came from. The police profilers upstairs might work it out.

“My humble role is to be your guide and savior. I will help your human souls escape their prisons of desire and rise up to
be divine.”

Very humble, yes.

“You will make the necessary arrangements to hand over leadership of government to us. The prime minister may send confirmation
on a public broadcast at 11:00
A.M.
today.” The figure placed its palms together and bowed. The image froze.

It was after ten on Friday morning. They had just come back to Osaka after helping the fire crews pump out the last of the
gas at the Zecom Betta.

“Touched in the head,” said Beppu around a yawn.

The message had been sent to the National Police Authority at six in the morning on a delayed-action timer from the system
manager’s office in the Zecom Betta. The message must have been sent just before the attack started, but the senders could
have left much earlier. Fire crews had also found timers in the containers of rescopal placed in key positions in the duct
system of the Betta. Secure doors had been opened without a trace of forcing. Why bother with breaking in when the systems
manager will let you in?

Forensics hadn’t finished with the blackened remains of the systems manager’s office and the main control room. Ishihara swallowed
his fear of what they might find inside. He hadn’t told Tanaka the whole story, merely that they believed his wife was still
with Akita, wherever he was.

“What else have they got?” Beppu cleared the screen and called up more reports.

A farmer in the hills north of the Zecom Betta saw two twelve-seater vans and one eight-seater driving fast along the old
north road before the alarm went off. All stations in their radius of travel were alerted, and there was a possible satellite
ID from the Defense Department.

Beppu yawned. “Looks like the country boys get more action this time. Once the satellites zoom in on those vans, they won’t
be able to escape.”

Ishihara shook his head dubiously. The idea of the Silver Angels hiding out in some abandoned farmhouse seemed wrong; no electricity,
no computers, surrounded by all that dirt and decay Gen said they disliked so much …

“I’d like to know what they really want. ‘Hand over government’ is pretty vague.”

“According to the report …” Beppu scrolled down the screen. “Our basic strategy is to keep them talking while we find out
where and who they are. The first is HQ’s job, as they’ve got the hardware. The other is our job, as we have access both to
the database and the street.”

He looked around the incident room. Only two other detectives sat hunched over computers. “We better tell Funo we’re briefed.
She said she’d be upstairs with the profilers.”

“You go,” said Ishihara. He’d prefer to avoid McGuire’s husband. “I’ll call Mikuni and see what he’s got.”

Beppu left.

Yui might know more about Akita’s Silver Angels’ connection than he admitted. The police could now charge him under Internal
Security Laws, for supporting a terrorist group—maybe that prospect would be enough to make him spit out any conveniently
forgotten facts.

Ishihara hadn’t spoken to Mikuni since they parted during the chaos at the Zecom Betta earlier that morning. When he called
now, Mikuni was eating noodles at his desk. He had shaved and changed his smoke-stained shirt, but he ate with a dogged care
that told Ishihara how tired he was.

“What’s Yui been telling you?” said Ishihara.

“Who wants to know?”

“Funo. Career inspector on the Silver Angels case.”

“This damn gas stunt has messed up a promising homicide investigation, you know that?” Mikuni stared as Ishihara laughed.
“I’m serious.”

“That’s what’s funny.”

“Yui says he didn’t know Akita had a connection with the Silver Angels or any other group,” said Mikuni. “I don’t know how
we’re going to prove otherwise.” He folded his chopstick wrapper into a neat bow, slid the chopsticks through it, and balanced
them on top of his empty bowl.

“It doesn’t matter from the prosecution’s point of view. He’s guilty under the Antiterrorist Act.” Ishihara quoted, “‘Anyone
who supplies terrorists with weapons, funds, or other assistance with or without knowledge that they are terrorists.’” Yui
must have given Akita something in payment for the research. Akita was associated with the Angels. Which means Yui supported
the Angels.”

Mikuni lit a cigarette wearily. “If he knows anything, I think he would have tried to bargain with the knowledge by now. You
saw him—the only thing he’s fanatic about is his frigging company.”

Ishihara lit a cigarette, too.

Mikuni stared at something to one side of the monitor. “That’s why he did it, he says. To make sure the company stays ahead.
It wasn’t the money that he resented so much from Nakamura, you know. He was mostly pissed off because Nakamura wanted to
work on the new project. Yui thinks Nakamura was bloody useless.”

“What did he say about Akita?” said Ishihara.

“All he’s said is that Akita approached him for a reference when Akita applied for the job of systems manager at the Zecom
Betta. He gave a false name and history, but Yui recognized him from when he worked there before. He then showed Yui some
hardware, a prosthetic I think, which persuaded Yui it was worth keeping Akita around. Yui’s been buying information off him
ever since.”

“Yui definitely said ‘buy’?”

“Yes, in cash. Convenient for him that we can’t prove it.”

“Hang on,” said Ishihara with a grin. “Yui must have got Akita to fake the Betta records to show he went home at 7:35. There’s
your connection.”

Mikuni’s eyes lit up, then he grimaced. “I know that. You know that. But we can’t prove it, not with the Betta’s systems in
such a mess.”

The Silver Angels had covered their tracks well.

“Nakamura must have found out about the Silver Angels’ connection; otherwise, there’d be no blackmail. But Nakamura’s dead,
so we’ll never know.” Ishihara stubbed out his cigarette. “It’s nearly eleven. They have to reply to the cult by then.”

“I’ll be down at the Betta, cleaning up the mess.” Mikuni flexed his shoulders painfully. “We’ve got most of our manpower
keeping the blasted media in line.”

“They’re camped out around Prefectural Office here, too.”

Beppu was still upstairs. Several other detectives reported in and exchanged developments in the case. The geography club
tutor Harada had been found dead. His body was discovered in a bamboo thicket on the outskirts of Takamatsu, in the north
of Shikoku. He’d been poisoned with the same chemical that was released in the Betta. Inoue/Samael was the prime suspect.

They all gathered around the monitor tuned to the public broadcast to see what the answer to the Silver Angels’ message would
be. Instead of the prime minister, the head of the National Police Authority in Tokyo read a few lines that said the government
was taking the Silver Angels’ threat seriously but that they needed to talk details.

Would the group reply?

The balance of opinion in the incident room wavered between those who thought the prime minister should have made the announcement,
as requested, and those who thought the police chief should have refused any cooperation outright.

Ishihara called Forensics again. Yes, they’d got a positive DNA analysis from the blackened mess that had been Akita’s apartment.
The only human remains were some bones and skin, of Akita himself.

Ishihara felt some of his tension dissolve. McGuire hadn’t been trapped by the fire. But if Akita was dead, where did McGuire
go and why?

“Is that the only human residue?” he asked the technician, a middle-aged woman with a distracted air.

“Yes,” said the technician testily. “Our teams do check, you know.”

“I suppose you couldn’t have missed another person’s remains?”

She glared at him. “Of course not. And if you’d read the report instead of bothering me, you’d see that the remains we did
find weren’t a whole body.”

“What?” Ishihara slid his chair forward in surprise and hit his knee with a crunch on the edge of the desk.

“We found a hand that had been surgically severed at the wrist.” She seemed to be enjoying his expression.

Ishihara blinked. Maybe Akita wasn’t dead, after all. “If the man chopped off his hand, wouldn’t the trauma be disabling?”

“It would be at the time,” she said smugly. “But it wasn’t done recently. This is an old wound. The limb was probably frozen
for a while.”

“Thanks,” said Ishihara humbly. “I’ll read the report.” He did, before taking the information to Inspector Funo, who had retreated
to her office.

“A severed hand?” Her eyes widened. “Done before the fire?”

Ishihara pointed to the screen. “More like surgically removed, then preserved, probably frozen.”

She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Could it be some ritual? Sacrifice?”

Ishihara hoped for McGuire’s sake that the Silver Angels did not engage in human sacrifice.

“I don’t know. But that’s all there is. I’m wondering if the fire was a smokescreen.”

“Literally.” She glanced at him, one eyebrow raised.

“And figuratively. So we’d assume Akita was dead and concentrate on putting out the fire. Not notice other things.”

“Such as the vans going north.”

Ishihara said nothing. He couldn’t find the right, tactful, words.

Funo rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand. She wore a crisp, clean white blouse, but her face looked younger in tiredness.
He wondered if she’d slept at all. “Do you have some new evidence about that, too?” She rose from her desk and walked around
to stare up at him.

Ishihara gave up on tact. “It’s too obvious.”

Funo folded her arms and waited for him to continue. “‘Obvious’ doesn’t tell me much, Assistant Inspector.”

“I mean, as far as we know, all of the group’s connections are with the city. They don’t have a commune in the country, they
don’t own land …”

“As far as we know,” she repeated. “You think the vans are a decoy, too? Like the fire.”

“Could be.” He stared straight ahead. He never managed to put these feelings into words properly.

“The thought did cross my mind.” She unfolded her arms and slowly returned to her chair behind the desk. “All the metropolitan
police are on high alert, too. I expect soon that someone will come forward with information about the chemist, Inoue. Unless
you’ve got another lead, I don’t see what else we can do.”

She paused before sitting down. “Do you have another lead?”

“No.”

“Ah.” She lowered herself in the chair with an exhausted thud. The interview was finished.

“What about McGuire? She could be used as a hostage.”

Funo fixed him with a stare from red-rimmed eyes. “Until we get a demand from them, we don’t know that. And frankly, Ishihara,
we have only McGuire’s call to her husband as evidence that she isn’t part of this whole thing.”