Paprika (42 page)

Finding the front doors closed, they walked around to the side of the building and went in through the staff entrance. There they were challenged by an elderly security guard, who poked his head through the window of the security booth. He had the look of a former worker who had been re-employed.

“What are you two after?” he demanded haughtily.

“Where’s the Secretariat?” Konakawa demanded with equal arrogance, brandishing his ID.

The guard barely glanced at it. “We’re closed! Don’t care what it is. Come back tomorrow!” he barked.

“What it is, is a police investigation,” Konakawa replied with a calmness that was almost menacing. Noda was impressed.

The guard took a proper look at the ID and was seized with panic. “What?! … But! … This sudden?! A raid?! You got a search warrant, then?”

“Take another look, my friend,” said Konakawa. “See there? Where it says ‘Chief Superintendent’? I don’t need a search warrant. I’m the one who issues them. See me as a walking search warrant, if you like.”

The suitably humbled guard told them where they could find the Secretariat and the Secretary-General’s office, which was next to the Secretariat. They walked to the end of the corridor as instructed.

“Is that really true?” Noda mused as he tried to keep pace with his friend’s broad strides. “You don’t need a search warrant? I thought they could only be issued by a court of law.”

Konakawa smiled but gave no reply. Noda supposed he’d been bending the truth.

A telephone was ringing. It seemed to come from the Secretary-General’s office ahead of them.

“Sounds like the guard’s called to announce us!”

“Hmm.”

They hastened their steps and entered the office without knocking.

Inside, they saw Katsuragi’s desk with the window wide open behind it. In a blind panic, Katsuragi was desperately stashing ledgers into a safe in the corner.

“Freeze!” roared Konakawa.

Startled by the volume of his voice, Katsuragi turned and dropped the books onto the floor. His hair was disheveled with fright, even though he’d made no particularly violent movement.

“What do you want?!” he shouted, clinging to a corner of his desk. “Coming in unannounced like that! And without knocking! Have you no manners?!”

“You know why we’re here,” said Konakawa. He strode toward Katsuragi’s desk, took the accounting books that Katsuragi had clutched to his chest, and shoved them along the desktop toward Noda. “Check these, would you.”

Noda opened the books and started to check through them.

“My card,” Konakawa said, thrusting a name card at Katsuragi. “I think we’ll be seeing more of each other from now on.”

Katsuragi gasped when he saw the card, his eyeballs practically popping as spittle flew from his mouth. He reached for the telephone without a word.

Konakawa left Katsuragi to his devices and went to peer through the open door of the safe.

This is the “second journal,”
thought Noda. He knew it as soon as he’d opened the first accounting book. In that case, there should also be paperwork related to it. “Toshimi,” he called. “Is there a bundle of invoices in the safe, or some other collection of papers? I think you’ll find something like that. Will you have a look?”

“There’s a bundle of invoices.”

“Have they been stamped?”

“Yes. All stamped with Inui’s seal.”

“That’s it. Confiscate them!”

“Doctor Inui?” Katsuragi called into the mouthpiece. Inui had taken so long to answer the phone that the Secretary-General was stamping his feet in irritation. “I’ve got the Chief Superintendent from the Metropolitan Police Department with me here. A certain Mr Konakawa,” Katsuragi started, and proceeded to give his report.

Konakawa and Noda quickly gathered together the ledgers, invoices, related paperwork, and other documents to be confiscated.

“I’ve just spoken to the President,” Katsuragi said angrily after putting the phone down.

“President?” Konakawa quibbled. “You were talking to Inui, weren’t you? He’s the Vice President. Why didn’t you call the real President, Doctor Shima?”

At a loss for an answer, Katsuragi shuffled awkwardly around the desk to stand in front of them. He looked up with hangdog eyes and appeared to be pleading with them. “Could you possibly wait a few minutes? I mean, will you please meet the Vice President? He’ll be here right away. That is … Otherwise … You see, I …”

Noda smiled wryly. “Of course we could wait, but what’s with this ‘Vice President’?” he said, repeating Konakawa’s sentiment. “Does he scare you more than the President? Ah, but I should have introduced myself. How rude of me. Noda’s the name.”

The door suddenly opened. The security guard entered in a state of frenzy, closed the door behind him, then stood motionless in front of it, casting bewildered looks at the men in the room as he spread his arms out wide. The three had absolutely no idea what he was trying to say.

“What?” Katsuragi yelled in irritation.

“A b-bird … In the c-corridor …”

“A bird? Chase it away then!”

Katsuragi stopped short when he realized that, by spreading his arms out, the guard was trying to show them how big the bird was. Now he spread them wider still; the bird was even bigger than that.

“What sort of bird?” asked Noda.

Faced with the notion of describing the bird in words, the guard succumbed to paroxysms of panic. “It had the body of an animal,” was all he could squeeze out at first. Then he bawled loudly in exasperation: “
IT WAS BREATHING FIRE!
”

Noda and Konakawa exchanged glances. Yes – this was just the kind of place, just the kind of situation where an apparition from a dream might appear.

“Idiot! You’re half asleep! Get out of here!” barked Katsuragi. At that moment, the sound of roughly flapping wings could be heard in the corridor. Something heavy collided with the other side of the door. The guard had been standing with his back against it. Now he straightened his body in shock. Katsuragi’s eyeballs almost popped out again.

“Got your pistol?” Noda whispered. Konakawa shook his head.

The flapping sound moved away. Konakawa went to the door and opened it a crack. After looking out into the corridor, he turned back to Noda. “Looks like it’s gone.”

Konakawa hurried back to the desk, took a large buff envelope containing important documents from Noda’s hand, and clasped it firmly in his arms.

“Do not leave this room until further notice,” he warned Katsuragi and the security guard. “There is very grave danger outside. Shall we go?” he said, urging Noda on.

“W-what was that just now?” a visibly shaken Katsuragi asked as they were about to leave.

“You called him, didn’t you. I’d say it was the Vice President,” Noda replied before stepping out into the corridor behind Konakawa.

The corridor was quiet. Some employees should still have been in the building, but there was no sign of them. Perhaps they’d been frightened off by the security guard’s “bird.” The lights in the corridor ceiling were broken, walls and doors on both sides scorched. They seemed to have been burnt at a temperature of several hundred degrees.

“I wonder if the bird, or whatever it was, has vanished? Like that doll, or the tiger I saw?” said Noda.

“I wonder.” Konakawa picked up a single brown feather from the floor.

Noda looked to the end of the corridor and froze. There, where the corridor widened slightly and became brighter, something red had appeared out of nowhere, accompanied by a sparkle like the flickering of a TV screen.

“Paprika.”

Konakawa looked up, and was amazed to see her there. “When did she arrive?”

Paprika seemed to be checking out the vicinity, but noticed the pair as they started off toward her. “Well!” she called. “You two asleep already?”

Konakawa didn’t know what she was talking about. But Noda felt a shudder. He could sense a bizarre phenomenon in the making. Worried that their presence might have an adverse effect on her, Noda grabbed Konakawa’s arm to stop him advancing farther. They remained at a distance of four or five meters from where Paprika stood in front of the Medical Office. “So you’re asleep now, are you?” Noda called loudly to confirm his fears.

“This is my dream. And you’ve come to join me. I’ve just been fighting them.”

It was just as Noda had thought. Paprika spoke as though she was murmuring in her sleep.

“Paprika. We’re actually here, in reality. We’re actually standing here now. You’ve come here in a dream, and now we’ve met you here.” Noda took a step toward her in the excitement of the moment. “Do you remember, earlier today? We said we’d come here unannounced, to investigate impropriety in the accounts.”

“Ah.” Paprika’s eyes shone with an intelligence that seemed hardly possible for someone in a dream. As she stood there in the corridor, her sleek, slim figure a classic image from a bygone era, her whole being seemed to emit a faint brownish light. Noda and Konakawa were overcome with a great feeling of nostalgia. She was beautiful.

“This is no joke,” Konakawa said with a groan of dismay. “I could never have imagined this. It’s no joke at all.”

“Dreams have merged with reality. Paprika, were you being chased by some kind of bird?”

“Bird? You mean the griffin? Yes. That was the Vice President.” Without warning, Paprika floated up into the air. “I mustn’t wake up. Not yet. I’ve come to get the DC Minis back.” Floating about a meter above the floor with her body tilted slightly downward, Paprika seemed to be murmuring to remind herself of her mission.

“You mean, because we approached you?” asked Noda. “You think you might wake up if we approach you?”

“Not really, but please don’t touch me. I think I’d wake up if someone touched me with a real hand.”

Paprika was like the touch-me-not,
impatiens
, the busy lizzie – a plant whose seed pods explode when touched. The slightest indiscretion could have destroyed the delicate balance of this extraordinary phenomenon. Paprika, now floating in the air with her body tilted at around forty-five degrees, moved along the corridor toward the stairs.

“We’ve already found proof of impropriety in the accounts,” Konakawa said as he followed her along. “Now we want to help you. I think you need help from real people here. You said you were looking for the DC Minis. Are you saying they’re here, in this building?”

Konakawa’s style of questioning made Noda nervous. Speaking so rationally might stimulate Paprika’s logical thought patterns and wake her.

As a method of going from A to B in a dream, Paprika’s movement was incredibly fast. Like a fish swimming against the flow, she floated along the ceiling of the stairway to the first floor, nimbly moving in little diagonal darts to the right and left. Noda and Konakawa followed while watching her from below. Konakawa ran two steps at a time without breaking stride; Noda started panting immediately.

“The DC Minis must be in Osanai’s lab … Judging by Inui’s …” Paprika mumbled as she reached the first-floor corridor and leapt down to the ground, then slid along the corridor as if gliding on air. The first door on the right was the research lab newly assigned to Hashimoto. As the three passed along the corridor outside, little did they know that his bloody, lifeless corpse lay sprawled on a sofa inside the room.

A door on the left bore Osanai’s nameplate. The door was locked; Konakawa broke it down with his shoulder.

As she entered the room, Paprika nodded in recognition. “That griffin. I only caught a glimpse through a gap in its consciousness, but … There’s no doubt. This is the room. In there …” and she pointed to a chemical storage box in a corner of the room.

The box was made of lead and solid as a safe. It was also firmly locked. In her dream, Paprika’s mind started to wander as she watched Konakawa and Noda struggling to open the box. This place was real, not a place in her dream. Maybe she could continue to exist in this real place, but with actions and abilities that could only be possible in a dream. In that case, there would be two of her in reality at the same time – Atsuko, now sleeping, and Paprika, a character in a dream.

Suddenly, the alarm bell rang. It was so loud that Paprika had to cover her ears. But Konakawa and Noda didn’t seem to hear it at all; they merely continued their despairing attempts to open the chemical box. Only Paprika could hear the bell, it seemed. The noise was deafening, even with hands planted firmly over her ears. So it wasn’t the Institute’s alarm bell. It was a telephone ringing. The telephone next to the bed where she slept. As Atsuko Chiba.

Leaving her two comrades in Osanai’s lab, Paprika woke in reality as Atsuko. Her telephone was ringing in the gloomy half-light of the bedroom. Even in the waking world, the noise was so loud as to become distorted. Atsuko picked up the receiver.

“Hello? …”

“Hello? Hello? Is that Atsuko Chiba? It is, isn’t it?” The caller ignored Atsuko’s sleepy tone; it was too early for anyone to go to bed, and he had no idea that he’d woken her.

“Who is it? …”

“It’s Matsukane, social affairs correspondent for the
Morning News
. We’ve just heard from Sweden. Doctor Chiba, you and Doctor Tokita have won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine! Many congratulations!”