Death Before Dishonor Read online

  Phone in hand and sitting back against the seat, Carlos breathed an indignant sigh and looked at the screen. The call was from his oldest daughter, who was probably calling to harass him for the tragic mess that he’d made of her life. He was relieved that he’d missed it—aching hand notwithstanding—and stuffed the phone into his coat, opting to wait until he had arrived at home to call her, and pulled out his car keys. He glanced around the garage as he turned the key in the ignition, noting that the beggar was nowhere to be seen. Good riddance, he thought to himself.

  Crash! The driver’s window imploded, splashing glass all over Carlos. It was a blur at first, but once he recovered from the initial start and persuaded his heart out of his throat and back into his chest, Carlos realized that he was staring down the barrel of a pistol with the bearded and marred face of a beggar behind it.

  “You’re one hell of a philanthropist! You know that?” the beggar barked.

  Once the adrenaline haze cleared completely, Carlos became acutely aware that not only was he at the receiving end of a gun but it was so close to his face that he could make out the rifling that spiraled the length of the barrel interior. He lurched backward but was yanked to a stop by the seatbelt like a sprinting dog reaching the limit of its leash.

  “Stop moving,” the beggar demanded, more quietly this time. “Otherwise, I’ll consider you a threat and blow your head clean off.”

  “Okay—okay!” Carlos yelled with his hands up. “I won’t move. I swear I won’t move!” Puddles of desperation began to pool in his eyes. “Please don’t kill me! Please—I’m begging you! I have a family, a wife, and daughters. They need me! I’ll give you anything you want. You just name it! You want money, my wallet, my car keys?”

  The beggar inclined his head. “You’ll give me anything?”

  “Anything!”

  He leaned into the window, looking Carlos straight in the eye, and licked away matted strands of mustache from his own lips. “First off, I want you to stop screaming, because you’re hurting my ears. Second”— his mouth became a hateful grimace—“I want you to stop crying, because it’s just flat-out embarrassing, Carlos. Pull yourself together.”

  Carlos swallowed hard and tried to straighten himself despite the fact that the barrel of the pistol tracked his every movement. “How—how do you know my name?”

  The beggar pressed the barrel into the soft tissue of Carlos’s left temple. “I’m the one with the gun, Carlos. I’m going to ask the questions.”

  “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

  “Stop screaming. That’s the last time I’m going to tell you. Next time, I’m going to ventilate the side of your fucking face.” The beggar rested his free arm in the window and leaned on it. “Now, if you must know, you’re all over the news, Carlos. Who doesn’t know your name?”

  “Are you going to kill me? I don’t want to die.” It all came out practically as a single word.

  The beggar chuckled, “What kind of monster do you take me for, Carlos?”

  Terry’s disembodied voice rang in Yuri’s ear again: “Stop playing with your food and wrap it up. We don’t want to draw attention.”

  “You can’t rush perfection,” Yuri whispered.

  “We’re going to play a game,” the beggar rasped. “Here’s the rules: I’m going to point this gun at you while I ask you some questions. If you tell me exactly what I want to know, this will go quickly. If this doesn’t go quickly, it’s because you decided to toy with me. People who toy with me have a liaison with my gun. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “So you’re not going to kill me?”

  “I just told you that we were going to play a game, Carlos.”

  Carlos whimpered as he exhaled relief. “Oh, thank the Lord.”

  “Don’t thank God just yet, Carlos,” the beggar said condescendingly. “I’m still holding a gun to your head. Now, when I say exactly, I mean exactly. No holding back. Am I making myself abundantly clear, or do I need to say it in Spanish?”

  “Yes—yes, of course,” Carlos said immediately, but then he realized he was being ambiguous. “I mean, yes I understand and no, you don’t have to say it in Spanish.”

  The beggar smiled hard beneath all his facial hair. “Good.” Then his mouth became a straight line. “How much money did you make off the illegal sale of your shares?”

  “Almost three and a half million dollars.”

  The beggar scowled and pressed the barrel into Carlos’s temple. “I said exactly.”

  Carlos yelped, “I don’t know!”

  The beggar rolled his eyes. “How many shares did you sell?” he sighed.

  “Forty-eight thousand.”

  “At what price?”

  “Seventy-two dollars per share.”

  “Okay,” the beggar said sharply, pressing harder with a gun, “do the fucking math, Carlos! Didn’t you get a degree in accounting?”

  Carlos mewled but nodded his head.

  The beggar roared in his ear, “Do the fucking math, then!”

  “Three million four hundred fifty-six thousand!”

  “How much of that was profit? Be exact.”

  Carlos closed his eyes as he counted to himself. “Two million eight hundred forty thousand.”

  “Where’s the money now?”

  “In an overseas account...”

  The beggar’s mouth twisted with insult beneath his beard. “Obviously—the feds haven’t seized it yet. What account?”

  “Swedish Trust.”

  “What are the account and personal identification numbers?”

  “Wh—what?” Carlos asked, his eyes flickering between the pistol and the beggar.

  “Did I stutter? Account number and PIN, what are they?”

  “I have to release those funds, or I go to prison.”

  “Prison or the afterlife, Carlos? Your choice.”

  “But…” Carlos decided to play dumb; he had to protect that money if he intended to survive the litigations. “I don’t know them by heart.”

  “Bullshit,” the beggar snarled. “I watched you type them into your cellphone yesterday.”

  “You’ve been watching me?”

  The barrel thumped the bone between Carlos’s eyebrow and eye socket. “I’m asking the questions. But since you asked, I was paid handsomely to watch you. I’ve been doing it for weeks. I’ve been watching your family too. Maybe they’ll be more cooperative with a gun to their heads than their obstinate man of the house.”

  Carlos heard the creak of the trigger and blurted out the account number and the PIN.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  “Where are the fiscal reports that miraculously went missing?” the beggar asked.

  “On ESI’s GEEKS database, but I had it destroyed.”

  “Information is never destroyed. Where is the database?”

  “It was on an external drive that I hid at my house.”

  “No wonder you were caught.” The beggar shook his head. “Where at your house?”

  “In the safe in the floor under my office desk.”

  “What’s the combination?”

  “There isn’t one. I have to use my identification card to access it.”

  “Where’s your ID card?”

  “Locked in my desk drawer at ESI.”

  “Where’s the key?”

  “Right here on my key chain.”

  “Tell me, Carlos”—the beggar’s face softened beneath the dirt and grime that caked his face—“are you a God-fearing man?”

  “Yes—of course.”

  “Do you read the Bible?”

  “Yes.”

  “Remember Isaiah 54:17?”

  Carlos searched the beggar with his eyes. He didn’t recall that verse.

  The beggar reminded him. “No weapon formed against thee shall prosper and all that jazz?”

  Carlos nodded vigorously.

  “That verse doesn’t apply to you.”

  Carlos’s face became she
epish, but then he realized what the beggar was saying: the beggar had planned to kill him the whole time.

  Carlos pleaded and yowled, but the beggar ended Carlos’s pathetic falsetto with a cascade of carbon gas, bloody mist, gray matter, and skull fragments. Carlos’s body slumped over the center console, twitching and pouring blood into the passenger seat.

  The beggar unleashed two more bullets into Carlos’s corpse for good measure. Then he leaned into the window, reached across the steering column, turned off the car, and pulled the keys out. The beggar dropped the keys into his overcoat pocket and then pulled the sleeve down to cover his own blood-splattered arm.

  Yuri surveyed the hit and smiled with satisfaction. “It’s done. I’m on my way to meet you,” he said over the net.

  From the corner of an adjacent street, Terry spotted the beggar exiting the garage and waved him over.

  “Oh, hello,” the beggar said as he approached, situating his tarnished overcoat.

  “Took long enough,” Terry said, adjusting his sunglasses and starting in the direction of ESI.

  The beggar followed. “Theatrics are a necessary evil. Got to keep the job interesting, you know.”

  “Your disguise looks great, by the way. Almost don’t recognize you. I’d swear you’ve been doing this your whole life.”

  “I’m an artist in my own right. How else am I supposed to work in broad daylight?”

  “Yeah,” Terry chortled, unconvinced, “whatever.”

  “I am—don’t hate.”

  “If you say so, Yuri.”

  “This job was easy as hell. They made it sound like it was going to be difficult.”

  “They always do.”

  “I suppose.” Yuri stroked his matted, fake beard thoughtfully as he walked. “The security measures here stink too. How is he going to leave his ID card in the desk?”

  “That’s why he and our employer got busted for shady business. They’re not very good at what they do.”

  “Clearly.”

  Terry and Yuri looked over at the security node as they walked in the direction of the elevators. The security guard stood to his feet, preparing to query the two strangers, but Terry beat him to the jump. “Good evening, Antwon.”

  Antwon’s lungs froze—he didn’t even want to watch them get on the elevator. Once the men were out of sight, he took a deep breath, looked around the lobby, and then returned to his chair, trembling—ten thousand dollars richer.

  Chapter Seven: The Coming Storm

  Suzuka Mountains. Mie Prefecture, Japan. Eighteen years ago.

  Terry was not happy.

  Of all the things he could think of doing during the summer, being volunteered by his parents for a camping trip into humid Japanese backcountry was not one of them. Yuri did not mind—he mostly loved anything that irked his brother.

  Pat and Francesca had been called away to a diplomatic conference on the southernmost Japanese island, Kyūshū. Not wanting to bring their children along for the week-long festivities, the couple had opted to leave their boys in the care of Kintake, who was planning to return to his village nestled deep in the Suzuka mountain range in the Mie Prefecture. Kintake’s village was hosting a summer camp for his martial arts students so they could live and learn the history and tradition of the rural Japanese as well as continue the study of martial arts in an immersive environment.

  Pat and Francesca had jumped at the opportunity. A summer camp was an excellent opportunity for the boys to make friends and experience something other than the fast-paced lifestyle of Tokyo. Terry didn’t share his parents’ enthusiasm—no summer camp was worth hiking through the mountains and humidity. Not to mention the car ride was long and uncomfortable.

  Kintake had picked the boys up in his cramped and venerable, once silver but now rusting four-by-four truck and driven three hours from the heart of Tokyo into the mountains. He departed a lonely paved road about two hours into the trip for an equally lonely winding dirt road. The dirt road weaved through the terrain, ending in a small clearing blanketed by a canopy of trees near a sleepy, remote farm, where Kintake parked the vehicle.

  “Omiyoshu Sensei, where are we?” Terry asked suspiciously.

  “Northeast of Iga, near Togakure Ryu—my village. Come, boys, we still have some walking to do.”

  Still sitting in the cab, Terry’s head followed Kintake as he exited the vehicle and walked to the bed of the truck. “How far do we have to walk?” Terry asked.

  “About two hours.”

  Terry groaned audibly. “Two hours?!”

  “Give or take, depending on the pace you two keep. Make haste, please. We are limited on daylight, and I would prefer not to make this walk in the dark.”

  Terry groaned again, pushing the passenger door open. Yuri rushed over him and leaped from the vehicle. Terry groaned more, slid from the passenger seat, and closed the door behind him.

  “Boys, make haste.” Kintake rapped the bed with his knuckles. “Take from your suitcases only the belongings that you will need and place them in your backpacks. Also, ensure that your shoes are well tied. The ground’s angle changes regularly, and a loose shoe can lead to an injured ankle. Traversing the mountains with an injured leg or foot could be challenging at best or torturous at worst.”

  Terry and Yuri did as they were instructed and then set off with their sensei.

  ***

  In his humble, matter-of-fact tone, Kintake spent the rest of the trip educating the boys on the history of his village, the Shinobi—the creators of taijutsu—the mountains and their utility to the Shinobi, and how the politics of feudal Japan had shaped the Shinobi. The boys listened distantly as they followed—Yuri ballistically so and Terry sulking even further back. Kintake paid their idiosyncrasies little attention. After nearly three years of teaching them, he was accustomed to these sorts of behaviors.

  Kintake continued his exposition of Iga, suggesting that Togakure Ryu had been founded by his ancestors, the Fujibayashi clan, over four hundred years ago when they’d left a war-torn region of Iga, which, he added, was one of the two birthplaces of the famed ninja—or Shinobi, as he referred to them. The terrain had played a key role in site selection, he noted, when the Fujibayashi—and the many other now-defunct clans—had sought to lay the foundation for a new home hidden from the whirlwind politics of belligerent Shogunates—feudal dictatorships that Kintake referred to as bakufu. He claimed that the village had been established on the banks of a divine river that was created when the spirits began to weep over the slaying of the first Shinobi. Legend had it that the slain Shinobi were reborn from the river as Mamushi—the Japanese viper that was revered as their corporeal spirit. This, he asserted, was the reason that the river snaked through the basins of the range. The river, of course, provided water and industry to Togakure Ryu and acted as a natural border to the village. But most importantly, it provided a rapid, tactical egress if Togakure Ryu were to be overrun.

  He directed their attention to the many peaks and crests with his hands. Kintake claimed that the Fujibayashi used them as listening posts for invaders and other threats. However, if their enemies managed to control one or several of the peaks, the Fujibayashi had nestled Togakure Ryu beneath a thick canopy of trees, all but eliminating an enemy’s ability to locate their village.

  Additionally, he explained that the boulders that dotted the wooded mountain faces and basins—numbering perhaps in the thousands—were not natural to the terrain. The Fujibayashi had placed them about to slow the advance of invading armies, to break up their ranks, and to place cavalry at a disadvantage.

  After nearly two hours at a slow jog’s pace, the three travelers crested the final ridge and began their descent into the Togakure Ryu basin. The village was situated in a flat area littered with trees, resting against the bank of the river that divided two tower escarpments and a lazy crown. The ear-shaped basin in which Togakure Ryu was established broke the otherwise uniform makeup of the terrain much like swirling eddies broke the f
lows of streams.

  Kintake stopped near a cluster of trees to take a swig from his water bottle. The boys joined him seconds later, Yuri singing “One Hundred Bottles of Beer” with conviction as he approached and Terry grinding his teeth with frustration.

  “That is quite enough singing, Yuri.”

  Terry threw his arms up. “Thank you, God! He has been driving me crazy! I swear I’m never going to drink beer when I grow up now!”

  “Why, Terry? Daddy drinks beer.”

  “He wouldn’t if he had listened to you sing that song three times in a row.”

  “Daddy loves that song.”

  “Don’t know why,” Terry snapped.

  “Terry, Yuri, that is enough from both of you.” Kintake’s voice became stone. “Now, pay attention, please. Togakure Ryu does not often receive visitors. Therefore, you will be under tremendous scrutiny. I expect that both of you will be on your best behavior. You will not dishonor yourselves, me, the Fujibayashi, or Togakure Ryu. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, Sensei,” they said in stereo.

  “Most importantly, you will bow to everyone you meet, especially the Shinobi-no-mono, Hattori Hanzo. He is our grandmaster. You must not make eye contact with him unless he commands it. He does not take kindly to outsiders.”

  Terry was instantly apprehensive. “He won’t like us? Is he mean?” Terry asked, remembering the feeling of being ostracized by Japanese boys in school.

  “I will leave you with no illusion, Terry. Shinobi-no-mono will not favor your presence. He will be rancorous and petulant towards you.”

  Yuri sheepishly raised his hand. “What does that mean?”

  “It means he’s not going to like us, Yuri,” claimed Terry.

  Yuri’s face pruned with distress.

  Kintake waved a dismissive hand. “Hattori Hanzo is similar to a priest in church. He is closest to our ancestor spirits. He does not command the Togakure Ryu—I do. He commands me and all other kōchō—Shinobi headmasters. The kōchō command all other Shinobi. You will be safe.”