The Amtrak Wars - Ironmaster Part 45

'Are you sure we've met? I've been trying to place you but your name doesn't ring a bell."

'That doesn't surprise me,' said Kelso. 'When Simons here mentioned your name, I thought I knew you but, uhh . . . like Jodi . . . I've obviously got you confused with some other guy." He shrugged. 'It happens."

'All the time,' said 'Brickman'. Never mind. We'll have plenty of time to get acquainted in the next few weeks.

Welcome aboard." He shook hands with both of them.

'Ray Simons will put you in the picture. We've got a good little team here, but now that you two have arrived we can really start moving."

He signed off with a snappy parade-ground salute and strode away. It had all gone much better than he expected. He hadn't fooled either of them, but they both had enough savvy not to make waves.

Simons eyed Kelso. 'Well, I'm glad that's over. What d'you say start with a clean slate?"

Kelso grasped the offered hand. 'Sure. No hard feelings?"

'None whatsoever." Simons began walking backwards.

'See you back at the hut - okay?" He turned and hurried after 'Brickman'.

Jodi and Kelso watched them disappear round the corner of the far workshop building, then exchanged blank stares. Jodi was the first to find her tongue.

'Well, well, well . . ."

'Exactly,' said Kelso. 'Just what the f.u.c.k is going on?"

Precisely the same question - phrased somewhat more elegantly in j.a.panese - was being posed with equal urgency by Consul-General Nakane Toh-Shiba, Lord Min-Orota and, with the aid of fleet-winged courier pigeons, by Lord Hiro Yama-s.h.i.ta. But they too found themselves obliged to draw speculative conclusions from the few facts available.

The Consul-General, concerned by reports that the road convoy had been twice delayed before arriving at Fin, asked the two house-women to explain exactly what had happened. Su-Shan and Nan-Khe, who had been living in terror of this moment, recounted their part of the story in a shrill falsetto, fluttering their hands and twittering like panic-stricken canaries.

Listening to them was like having his head pierced with long needles, but Toh-Shiba bore it stoically, then sought out Clearwater, whose luminous presence once again graced the bedroom of the lake-house. Now bathed and freshly clothed in a gossamer-light kimono bearing a design of wild flowers and dew-soaked summer gra.s.ses, she was invited to soothe her master's troubled spirit by renewing her acquaintance with his pleasure-machine.

Only then, when the weeks of pent-up pa.s.sion had been spent and he was left lying on his back with the deliciously painful feeling that his b.a.l.l.s were about to catch fire, did the Consul-General ask for her version of the same event.

Called to account for each moment of captivity, Clearwater admitted to being unmasked and subjected to a physical examination but swore on her life that the ronin had asked no questions and she had volunteered no information of any kind. She said nothing about her midnight encounter at the post-house with n.o.buro, Steve and the Herald, Toshiro Hase-Gawa.

To have spoken of this would have placed the cloud warrior in mortal danger. But the subject never came up. Nakane Toh-Shiba's questions were based on what the house-women had told him - and they had slept throughout the entire episode.

During one of his regular official visits to Lord Min-Orota's fortress at Ba-satana, the Consul-General recounted the details of the kidnapping and volunteered the opinion that it was an ill-fated enterprise based on faulty intelligence. Anxious to put the best gloss on things, Toh-Shiba plumped for the simplest and most obvious explanation: a group of ronin, alerted to the presence in the convoy of a sealed carriage-box, had made off with its occupant in the hope of extracting a hefty ransom then, finding the mask hid a worthless long-dog, had promptly abandoned her and the two house-women by the roadside.

Kiyo Min-Orota listened carefully, nodding in agreement as the Consul-General concluded that, while all such acts of criminality were regrettable, this particular incident was, essentially, a minor upset that need not worry any of them.

'It is, without doubt, a convenient theory which I would be happy to embrace were it not for one, small, irksome detail." Kiyo paused to let his opening shot sink in, drawing a certain satisfaction from watching Nakane Toh-Shiba's bullish confidence become tinged with fear, uncertainty and doubt. The Consul-General might be a well-connected fellow-n.o.bleman, but he engendered scant respect and Kiyo always enjoyed taking the over-fleshed c.o.c.ksman down a peg or two.

'I'm not sure I understand..."

'Oh, come now, isn't it obvious? The ronin lost forty-six hors.e.m.e.n in the course of capturing their prize ' The Consul-General reacted with astonishment. 'You know of this already?"

The lie came easily. 'I heard in a roundabout way that a convoy had been waylaid and that the ronin had been hotly pursued. But until this moment I had no idea they had made off with, ahh. goods belonging to you. The point is, the ronin lost a great many men only to find themselves in possession of a long-dog and two Vietnamese house-women.

Three worthless individuals, that they fed, then escorted back to within sight of the main road - risking more of their men in the process."

'Yes - but they did move under cover of darkness."

'Even So, doesn't it strike you as odd?" * Toh-Shiba looked perplexed.

'Why let them go? Why weren't they killed out of hand or, at the very least, kept as slaves?"

Toh-Shiba's brow became increasingly furrowed as he grappled with the implications of the domain-lord's questions.

With his brain almost totally geared to the needs of his nether regions, logic was not his strong point. 'Mmm, yes, now that you mention it, I suppose it is rather strange... ' He scratched his navel absent-mindedly. 'I suppose they must have had a reason, but for the life of me I can't think what it could be."

'You should try harder, my friend,' said Kiyo severely.

'Because your life and mine could depend upon the answer! By the great kami - it's staring you in the face!

These three individuals should have vanished, never to be heard of again I' 'Ye-ess, I see that now."

'To my mind,' continued Kiyo, 'there is only one explanation. They were set free because they are by no means as worthless as they appear.

Someone places as much value upon the long-dog as you do yourself."

He paused to give his words time to sink in, then added. 'As this is your affair, I leave you to consider who that someone might be. But I think you've been rumbled, my friend, and I suggest it's time for some rapid housecleaning."

Domain-lord Yama-s.h.i.ta who, if anything, was faster on the draw than Kiyo Min-Orota, arrived at exactly the same conclusion when presented with the bare facts by courier pigeon. Through his close links with the Se-Iko, he had learned of the raid and its b.l.o.o.d.y aftermath two days after it had occurred, and he had promptly dispatched one of his own winged couriers to alert Lord Min-Orota.

Yama-s.h.i.ta was furious. Despite his best efforts, the long-dog had fallen, albeit briefly, into unknown hands.

Fortunately, the Consul-General was not privy to the plot to recapture the Dark Light, but Yama-s.h.i.ta now found himself wishing he had kept to his rule of never becoming involved with people he disliked, mistrusted and, above all, did not respect. He had allowed Kiyo Min-Orota to persuade him that, as the Shogun's brother-in-law, Toh-Shiba might be a useful p.a.w.n, but despite their vigilance the degenerate clown had finally managed to compromise them as well as himself!

No one knew the true nature of the ronin who had held the long-dog overnight, but those few hours might prove perilous. It was not unknown for criminal bands to act on orders from above. When laws and common usage did not provide the means, the rulers of Ne-Issan did not hesitate to use unorthodox methods to achieve their ends - and neither did ambitious domain-lords. According to the dispatch sent by Min-Orota, the gutter-b.i.t.c.h had not been interrogated by her captors.

But the account she had given Toh-Shiba had not been elicited under threat of torture. Who could say, without putting her to the test, that she was telling the truth? Allowing her to live once she had become Toh-Shiba's painted wh.o.r.e had always been a risky decision; but now she was the subject of outside interest she was an even greater danger than before.

Yes... steps would have to be taken . . .

Yama-s.h.i.ta had also been told of what the house-women had said regarding the samurai and two red-stripes, found dead at the Midiri-tana post-house.

There was a suggestion that the men might have been killed by ninja, but the two women knew next to nothing about the incident and Yama-s.h.i.ta did not have any independent source of information that would have enabled him to link the killings with the raid on the road convoy. The paper placed on n.o.buro's chest identifying him and his two companions as ronin and enemies of the Se-Iko had been spirited away before it could become public knowledge. Midiri-tana was in the domain of the Mitsu-Bishi, allies of the Shogun, and they had responded to an appeal from the summer palace at Yedo to lay a veil of secrecy over the whole affair.

The contents of the anonymous letter, penned by the Herald Toshiro Hase-Gawa and addressed to a member of the Se-Iko family, might have helped Yamas.h.i.ta make the connections which would have confirmed the suspected ident.i.ty of the puppet-master. But the letter revealing the location and method of entry to the ronin's hidden base camp never arrived at its destination.

Someone who had been ordered to keep a discreet watch on the Herald's movements observed him entrust a shopkeeper at Ari-dina with the task of dispatching a sealed doc.u.ment via the postal service, and it was intercepted soon after being handed over the counter.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

Having used his position as a Herald of the Inner Court to secure Steve a job as a roadrunner, Toshiro Hase-Gawa left Ari-dina and returned to the Summer Palace on Aron-giren. By changing mounts at post-house inns along the way, he was able to ride at full gallop for hour after hour.