The Man With The Red Tattoo E-Book

Raymond Benson

• Herausgeber: Ian Fleming Publications
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Serie: James Bond 007
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 434

Beschreibung

When a British businessman and his family are killed in Japan by a virulent form of West Nile disease, James Bond suspects a mass assassination. Investigating with the help of beautiful Japanese agent Reiko Tamura and his old friend, Tiger Tanaka, Bond searches for the killers and the one known survivor. Bond's discoveries lead him to believe that two powerful factions controlled by the mysterious terrorist Goro Yoshida are playing God. Between them they have created the perfect weapon, one small and seemingly insignificant enough to strike anywhere, unnoticed. With an emergency G8 summit meeting just days away, Bond must discover when - and how - the next attack will occur. It's a race against time as Bond confronts both man and nature in a desperate bid to stop the release of a deadly virus that could destroy the Western world.

Leseprobe

The Man With the Red Tattoo

By Raymond Benson

Ian Fleming Publications

IAN FLEMING PUBLICATIONS

E-book published by Ian Fleming Publications

Ian Fleming Publications Ltd, Registered Offices: 10-11 Lower John Street London

www.ianfleming.com

First published in the UK by Hodder and Stoughton 2002 First published in the USA by G.P.Putnam’s Sons 2002

Copyright © Ian Fleming Publications, 2002 All rights reserved

James Bond and 007 are trademarks of Danjaq, LLC, used under licence by Ian Fleming Publications Ltd

The moral right of the copyright holder has been asserted

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-1-906772-48-2

JAMES BOND TITLES BY RAYMOND BENSON

NOVELS

Zero Minus Ten (1997)

The Facts of Death (1998)

High Time to Kill (1999)

DoubleShot (2000)

Never Dream of Dying (2001)

The Man With the Red Tattoo (2002)

FILM NOVELIZATIONS

(based on the respective screenplays)

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

The World is Not Enough (1999)

Die Another Day (2002)

SHORT STORIES

Blast From the Past (1997)

Live at Five (1999)

ANTHOLOGIES

The Union Trilogy (2008)

Choice of Weapons (2010)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Besides writing official James Bond fiction between 1996-2002, RAYMOND BENSON is also known for The James Bond Bedside Companion, which was published in 1984 and was nominated for an Edgar. His first two entries of a new series of thrillers, which Booklist called “prime escapism,” are The Black Stiletto and The Black Stiletto: Black & White. As “David Michaels” Raymond is the author of the NY Times best-sellers Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell - Operation Barracuda. He recently penned the best selling novelizations of Metal Gear Solid and its sequel Metal Gear Solid 2-Sons of Liberty, as well as Homefront: the Voice of Freedom, co-written with John Milius. Raymond’s original thrillers are Face Blind, Evil Hours, Sweetie’s Diamonds, Torment, Artifact of Evil, A Hard Day’s Death and the Shamus Award-nominated Dark Side of the Morgue. Visit him at his websites, www.raymondbenson.com and www.theblackstiletto.net.

For Judy

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT PAGE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

1 FINAL FLIGHT

2 ASSIGNMENT: JAPAN

3 A NIGHT AT THE MORTUARY

4 YAMI SHOGUN

5 YES, TOKYO!

6 BRIEFING BELOW GROUND

7 SCENE OF A CRIME?

8 YAKUZA TERRITORY

9 MORNING MAYHEM

10 KABUKI MATINEE

11 SMOKE SCREENS

12 THE DISTANT PAIN OF DEATH

13 LOOSE ENDS

14 NIGHT TRAIN

15 THE DESIRE FOR DEATH

16 IN THE TUNNEL

17 OLD GHOSTS

18 THE SEARCH FOR MAYUMI

19 SECRETS

20 ESCAPE FROM SAPPORO

21 DEMONS FROM HELL

22 CAUGHT!

23 BITTER GLORY

24 EARTH’S HEARTBEAT

25 G8 EVE

26 RED WIDOW DAWN

27 QUICK RESPONSE

28 THE FINAL ACTION

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ONE

FINAL FLIGHT

WHAT WAS THAT HIGH-PITCHED BUZZ IN HER EAR?SHE WONDERED AS A WAVE of nausea swept over her once again.

An hour ago she had been fine. Now Kyoko McMahon felt weak and chilled, and she had an agonising headache that pounded through her skull.

The Japan Airlines flight had left Narita Airport two hours earlier and wouldn’t reach London for another ten hours. Would she be able to stand it? She felt woozy and disoriented. All she wanted was to stop the world from spinning around her.

Kyoko dismissed the idea that the food Shizuka had served at their mother’s birthday party was to blame. Her sister, like all her family, was meticulous in everything she did and her careful preparation could be trusted. Come to think of it her father had complained of a stomach ache at breakfast, and her mother had barely made it out of bed to say goodbye to her that morning. Perhaps they had drunk too much of the excellent Ginjo sake the night before.

Feeling ill on an aeroplane was never fun. The pretty twenty-two-year-old half-Japanese, half-Scottish woman was thankful that she was nearly alone on the upper deck executive class cabin of the aircraft. Not many travellers were aboard today. There was only the businessman sitting two rows in front of her, and the other two men three rows behind her. Not that she needed more room. The business class seats on JAL’s 747 were luxurious: plenty of leg room, reclining and with a personal television monitor that provided a wide choice of movies. As a member of the successful McMahon family, Kyoko took business class travel as her right whenever she made the long flight from London back home to Japan.

This trip had been for a special occasion; her mother Junko’s fiftieth birthday. Her father had organised a party of the immediate family. Shizuka, the eldest sister, had ensured that the banquet was appropriately elegant and delicious. It was a shame, thought the younger and more beautiful Kyoko, that Shizuka would probably never find a husband who would benefit from her accomplishments.

Kyoko had flown to Tokyo to surprise her mother. It had been a wonderful dinner party and a loving reunion. But in the middle of the family toasts and celebration, Junko could not forget her youngest child and said quietly, “I wish Mayumi was here.” Nobody could speak and they all sat silent for a moment, remembering the lovely and vivacious girl who had disappeared from their lives.

“Are you feeling all right?” the young flight attendant asked her.

Kyoko moaned, “Not really. I don’t know what’s wrong. I feel ill.”

The flight attendant felt Kyoko’s forehead and said, “You’re burning up. I’m not supposed to do this, but I’ll give you some aspirin. All right?”

Kyoko closed her eyes and tried to smile in acknowledgement. The woman left her side and Kyoko’s mind drifted back to the previous evening’s festivities.

Her father, Peter McMahon, had made a short affectionate speech declaring his love for his wife, causing Junko to blush. Kyoko had thought it was sweet. Even in manners-conscious Japan, her parents had never felt that they should hide their affection for each other. It was her father’s devotion to her mother that had convinced him to move permanently to Japan, learn the language and raise a family there so many years ago. Even though he had always kept his British citizenship, Peter McMahon had wholeheartedly embraced Japanese culture and integrated himself into it. CureLab Inc., the company he ran, was hugely successful. He had rescued it from bankruptcy after Junko’s father, the company’s founder, had retired. With Peter McMahon at the helm, the struggling pharmaceutical company Fujimoto Lab Inc. became the front-running CureLab in just eight years. The McMahons had become wealthy as a result. The gaijin who had married into a long-established Japanese family had gained respect in a world where business was made up of inner circles and closed networks. Kyoko could appreciate the hardships her father had gone through as a foreigner. She knew what discrimination foreigners could face in Japan when they attempted to squeeze into society. There was an old adage that a foreigner in Japan was “a friend after five minutes but still an outsider after twenty years.” For someone who was half-Japanese it was even worse. It was one reason why she had chosen to study business at Oxford, her father’s alma mater. There she was treated as an exotic and mysterious Eurasian, not as a “half breed.” She hoped that she would someday be able to take over her family’s interest in CureLab and gain great face in Japan.

The flight attendant brought Kyoko some aspirin and water. “Drink plenty of water. Try to sleep, all right?”

Kyoko took the pill, drank as much of the water as she could stand, and pulled the blanket around her body. She reclined the seat and closed her eyes.

Kyoko’s tired and unhappy thoughts drifted to Mayumi. Why had shegone? Their parents’ hearts were broken. The last they had heard about Mayumi was that she was living in Hokkaido, probably the girlfriend of a gangster. Mayumi had brought shame upon the family, though if she came home, Kyoko was sure that her youngest sister would be forgiven. The furious fight Mayumi had had with their parents four years ago had ended with Mayumi walking out of the house at the age of sixteen, vowing never to return. At first their father had said that Mayumi would come home once she had “found herself.” Junko had been distraught. None of them had liked Mayumi’s boyfriend, who was nothing but a common street thug. Peter McMahon had chalked up Mayumi’s actions to teenage rebellion and put his faith in the notion that one day Mayumi would return the prodigal daughter.

Kyoko vaguely remembered thinking that “teenage rebellion” was quite an understatement. Mayumi had been a rebellious child from the day she was born. She had been plagued with colic and proved to be a big problem for her mother. Her first word was “No,” and it had continued to be a regular part of her vocabulary as she grew up. Her parents, especially her father, had fought her hard over the years. It had been a losing battle for them, for Mayumi’s will was shockingly strong. What a waste, Kyoko thought. Mayumi was easily the prettiest and possibly also the most intelligent of the three girls.

Kyoko’s limbs felt heavy and she was struggling to think. The drone of the plane’s engines reminded her of last night too, and the annoying whine of the mosquitoes. They were usually bad in the summer months but they had shown up in greater numbers this particular June. Kyoko remembered slapping at least three on her arm.

Another wave of nausea overtook her. Kyoko reached for the airsickness bag and vomited. The passenger two rows in front of her turned around to see what had happened.

Kyoko managed to close the bag and drop it on the floor before she fell back into her seat and drifted from consciousness.

The flight attendant came by and frowned before picking the bag up from the floor. She tucked the blanket snugly around Kyoko’s shoulders. Thinking that the poor girl needed some sleep, the flight attendant elected to leave her alone for the next few hours. The other passengers on the upper deck were asleep as well, so there was no reason for her to do anything but walk through the cabin every now and then.

Four hours later, Kyoko was still asleep, but the blanket had been tossed aside. The poor girl was bathed in sweat. The flight attendant thought about waking her to see if she wanted water but decided against it. Best to let her sleep.

Two hours later, the call bell alerted the flight attendant to come into the cabin. The passenger in front of Kyoko had rung it. He pointed to the girl and said, “Something’s wrong.”

Kyoko McMahon was convulsing in her seat. The flight attendant ran downstairs and fetched the cabin officer. After he saw the writhing girl, he used the intercom to ask if there were a doctor aboard. A Japanese man in his fifties responded. The doctor came up from the main cabin, examined Kyoko, gently talked to her and held her still. Eventually she choked and coughed, gasping for air. The doctor gave her a sip of water. After a few minutes she had settled down again and drifted back to sleep. The doctor told the cabin officer that the girl probably had the flu. “It might possibly be a form of malaria,” he said, “but I suggest that we just let her sleep. It’s the best thing for her right now. Keep an eye on her, though.”

The pilot was informed of the situation. The plane had already flown over Siberia, Russia and Finland. They could make an emergency landing in Copenhagen if necessary, but London was only three hours away.

“As long as she’s sleeping, we’ll continue,” the pilot said. “At this point, it would be better to get her to her destination.” He radioed ahead to make sure there would be no delay at the gate.

Everyone agreed.

The flight attendant looked in on Kyoko every half-hour. At one point, the girl was struggling and mumbling as if she were having a bad dream. The flight attendant shook Kyoko gently until she calmed down and began breathing deeply again.

Two hours later, the flight attendant decided to wake Kyoko, but couldn’t rouse her. This time the girl felt cold and clammy.

When the doctor examined Kyoko again, he pronounced her dead.

Since they were so close to London, the flight crew agreed to keep it quiet and continue on.

Kyoko McMahon died alone, 39,000 feet above the earth. She never knew that her mother, father and sister had also died at approximately the same time with identical symptoms in their opulent house in the Tokyo suburb of Saitama.

TWO

ASSIGNMENT: JAPAN

MAJOR BOOTHROYD CLEARED HIS THROAT AND BEGAN.

“As you know, I asked you here this morning for a routine equipment briefing for all Double-Os and other field agents.” He added, with sarcasm, “I see that we have the usual splendid turnout.”

They were in the soundproofed shooting range in the basement of MI6 headquarters. Shooting Instructor Reinhardt stood at the back, genuinely concerned that the good major might accidentally cause a dreadful explosion inside his beloved range. Agents 004 and 0010 were present and they sat near 007, close to the table that displayed the various items Boothroyd had brought to the meeting. Three lower level field agents and several technicians also sat or stood near the major.

There never seemed to be more than three Double-Os around headquarters at any given time. Most of them, after all, were on assignments or stationed in other parts of the world. Or they were dead.

“Right,” Boothroyd continued, his voice echoing in the stone room. “We have a few new pieces of hardware for you to review and most of them involve explosives.”

The major, a tall thin man with wavy white hair, was wearing a pair of workman’s overalls and a hard hat. A pair of safety goggles hung loosely around his neck. Bond had learned long ago to overlook his ridiculous appearance.

“Double-O Seven?”

“Yes, Major?”

He approached Bond and handed him a tubular cigar holder. “You’re one of those who still indulge in the filthy habit of smoking. Might I interest you in a nice Cuban?”

Bond took it and noticed that it was slightly heavier than it should have been. “Thank you, Major. Now, what is it really? ”

Boothroyd took it from Bond, popped off the cap and removed the cigar. He displayed it to the group and said, “It appears to be an ordinary cigar. But if you use your thumbnail to take off the end …” He did so and revealed that the cigar was not filled with tobacco. Boothroyd moved further back into the room some thirty feet away, where a small iron safe sat on a laboratory table.

“Two-thirds of the cigar is filled with plastic explosive. You can dispense it by squeezing the cigar like a tube of toothpaste.” He demonstrated by squirting a small amount of brown paste onto the combination knob of the safe.

“The cap from the holder is a timer. It is pre-set for ten seconds. You simply set it by pushing this tiny button and placing it in the plastic explosive.” The major fiddled with the cap and displayed a tiny readout to the group, although they were too far away to see the numbers clearly. Boothroyd realised this and said, “It has already begun to count down.”

Boothroyd thrust the timer into the paste-like substance and moved behind a lead shield that had been set up away from the table. The Double-Os looked at each other with concern, but the technicians seemed confident that the major knew what he was doing.

Seconds later, the explosive ignited and smoke filled the room. The noise had been much louder than anyone had expected, but no one was harmed.

The front door of the safe hung on one hinge, grossly bent out of shape.

Boothroyd emerged from behind the screen and walked back to the group. “With practice you should soon be able to estimate near enough how much explosive is needed. Note that the cigar can get through Customs with no problem and we have even given it the odour of tobacco. Now then.”

He walked over to the near table and picked up a blister pack of a well known brand of indigestion tablets.

“No business traveller should be without antacids, wouldn’t you agree?” he asked. “These are now standard issue. The white tablets are real antacids. The pink ones, if you throw them, burst and produce a thick cloud of smoke.” He nodded at a technician, who threw one against the far wall. There was a loud pop and a dark billow of smoke appeared.

“The red ones are a little more powerful,” Boothroyd said. “One of them can blow a small hole in a wall, create a pothole in a pavement, knock a door off its hinges. It can also take your hand right off, so be very careful with them.”

The major dropped the blister pack. His audience didn’t have time to gasp before it hit the floor. “You need not be worried. You have to throw them with great force to explode them,” he said. “The packaging is designed to withstand being dropped on the floor and even the jostling that occurs within airline baggage.”

Boothroyd spent the next twenty minutes demonstrating a variety of other incendiary devices. Bond thought that thirty per cent of them were not very practical, fifty per cent were possibly useful, and twenty per cent were brilliantly conceived, if not quite perfected. Q Branch was capable of designing some ingenious stuff, but only some of the products had a life beyond the initial testing period.

The meeting broke up so that the technicians could familiarise the agents with the new equipment. Bond took a look at some of the other things on the table that Boothroyd hadn’t presented.

“What’s this, Major?” Bond asked, picking up a Palm Pilot V. Boothroyd beamed and said, “Ah. Our little electronic organiser. That’s still in the testing stage, Double-O Seven. We haven’t worked out all the bugs.”

“What does it do?”

“Besides being a real Palm Pilot, a cross section is filled with a stronger plastic explosive than we’ve seen here today. It has the force of a stick of dynamite. You set it off simply by inputting the data into the Palm Pilot. It becomes its own detonator.”

“Ingenious. How much memory does it need to do that?”

“You’re being facetious, but actually that’s the problem we’re having with the device’s other function. Not enough memory. Or rather, not enough of a power source to be truly effective.”

“For what?” Bond asked.

Boothroyd turned on a small desk fan that sat on the table. As the blades spun and whirred, he held the Palm Pilot a few inches away from it and pressed something. The fan’s power immediately shut off. The blades slowed to a stop.

“It’s a fairly weak electro-magnetic pulse,” the major said. “We’d like it to be able to knock the power out of cars at a reasonable distance, but we can’t figure out how to give it a large enough energy supply.”

“What can it do now?” Bond asked.

“Oh, just what you saw. Small appliances. Televisions. Perhaps some security alarms. At extremely close range, mind you.”

“May I have it now? I’ll test it in the field for you.”

Boothroyd thought for a moment and then nodded. “All right, Commander, I’ll let you do that. I’ll put it on your clearing slip for M. Just make sure that—”

A loud explosion made everyone in the room flinch. Someone shouted, “Whoa!” and laughed as Instructor Reinhardt cursed aloud.

“—you know how to operate it properly,” Boothroyd sighed.

“I think it might have something to do with Japan,” Nigel Smith said.

Bond winced. “Doesn’t she realise that I’m doing everything I can about this Yoshida business? It’s all that I’ve been doing since we beat the Union.”

“You and me both,” agreed Nigel, Bond’s relatively new personal assistant, a clear-eyed young man who had been discharged from the Royal Navy due to an injury. Bond had originally bristled at being assigned a male assistant, but Nigel had shown that he was sharp and capable. He also possessed much of the same sardonic attitude towards the job as Bond. And while Nigel made it a point not to be over impressed with Bond, it was obvious that he admired his boss. Taking a cue from the style with which Bond presented himself, it wasn’t long before Nigel upgraded his own wardrobe by buying his shirts from Turnbull and Asser.

Bond appreciated Nigel’s candour and honesty, especially when it came to intelligence matters. The young man had a knack for reading between the lines and interpreting oblique reports from the field. His opinions were blunt and often gelled with Bond’s. In a very short time the young man had become an ally.

“It might be about the G8 summit conference,” Nigel suggested.

“Lord, I hope not,” Bond muttered. He had seen the memo. An emergency session had been scheduled to take place in Japan in less than two weeks. “She probably wants me to babysit the PM.”

“That’s because you’re the PM’s best friend since that business in Gibraltar a couple of years ago,” Nigel said, chuckling.

Bond glanced at the digital clock set into the wall, a standard feature in all outer offices. The working day was nearly over.

“How long ago did she ring?” Bond asked.

“Miss Moneypenny phoned me about a half-hour before you arrived.”

“All right,” Bond said. “Surely she was aware of my appointment with Q Branch. Call Penny back and tell her I’m on my way.”

“Right.” Nigel picked up the phone as his boss turned around and left the office.

Bond cursed silently as he got into a lift. If it wasn’t about the G8 conference, then it was certainly about Goro Yoshida. He was just as concerned about Yoshida as M was. After all, the exiled Japanese extremist had been the Union’s client for the recent affair that ultimately proved the unmaking of that terrorist-for-hire organisation. It was Yoshida who had put up the money. It was Yoshida who was now at the top of the “most wanted” lists of Japan and nearly every country in the world.

Just before the lift stopped on M’s floor, Bond gazed into his indistinct reflection on the silver panels of the lift doors. He ran his fingers through the coal-black hair, not bothering to push the comma that hung above his right eyebrow back in place.

He got out of the lift and strode down the hall towards Miss Moneypenny’s outer office, continuing to run through the precious little new information that had been uncovered since Yoshida’s last venture. All that MI6 and MI5 knew about the terrorist was that he was a wealthy businessman who had hooked up with criminal elements, probably the yakuza, the Japanese mafia, and become a prominent nationalist. At first he was harmless, confining himself to travelling the streets of Tokyo in a green van, as most of the nationalists did and still do, announcing his views through a loudspeaker. He proclaimed that Japan had lost its traditional values and was being poisoned by the West. It was the same rhetoric that dozens of nationalists have spouted since before World War II. But shortly after Yoshida publicly declared “war” on the West, he mysteriously disappeared. He handed over his company to others to run, then left Japan just as several violent terrorist acts were instigated against Western countries. An embassy was bombed here, a fast-food restaurant was obliterated there. Intelligence agencies speculated that Yoshida had been behind the incidents.

Yoshida, now wanted by the police in Japan for “treasonous views and acts” as well as terrorism, was believed to be hiding somewhere in a remote part of Russia with his own private army.

Miss Moneypenny was on the phone when Bond walked into the office but her bright eyes held a greeting for him. Before she could mime a message, the door to M’s inner office opened.

“Ah, there you are, Double-O Seven. I wanted to see you. Come inside.”

M handed a folder to Moneypenny and walked back into her office, leaving the door open. Bond moved forward as Moneypenny gave him a wink and a little wave.

As soon as the door had closed behind them Bond said, “Ma’am if this is about Goro Yoshida, I assure you that—”

“It’s not about Goro Yoshida, Double-O Seven,” M said as she moved around her desk. “Please sit down.”

Bond did as he was told.

So what was the score? he wondered. Something new?

M, who was dressed in a sharply tailored charcoal grey Bella Freud suit, sat down and asked, “You’ve seen the memo about the emergency G8 summit conference?”

Here it comes, he thought. “Yes, I have.”

“The Koan-Chosa-Cho is in charge of security but every representative brings his or her own entourage. I’d like you there with our PM. Bodyguard duty. As a matter of fact, the PM requested you. You should be flattered.”

Bond smiled to himself.

“Is something funny, Double-O Seven?”

“No, ma’am.”

“The Japanese are a little worried about security in this day and age, as are we all. Potential threats to representatives of Western governments are a constant concern since the events of September 2001. The Japanese secret service want intelligence operatives from all of the participating governments to accompany the G8 members. I believe you are acquainted with the head of the Koan-Chosa-Cho.”

“Indeed,” Bond said. He had an old and dear friend who worked for the Japanese Secret Service.

“Mr. Tanaka was the one who initially put forth your name. The PM, after discussions with the US president, has agreed and made the official request. The Japanese have received some information that suggests there could possibly be a danger to the summit conference. In light of this revelation, I suppose your earlier comment about Goro Yoshida might not be too far off the mark.”

“What kinds of threats have been made?” Bond asked. “Do they involve Yoshida?”

“We don’t know. Tanaka will have to brief you on that. Now.” She reached across the desk, picked up a folder and handed it to him. “There is something else I want you to look into while you’re in Japan. In fact, I’m sending you over ahead of the summit conference so that you can do so. We don’t want your presence to arouse too many suspicions in Japan, or cause undue alarm, so you will ostensibly be in the country to investigate the suspicious deaths of a British citizen and his family.”

Bond opened the folder and saw photos of a man named Peter McMahon.

M continued talking. “Two days ago, the Japanese-born daughter of that man died of a mysterious illness aboard a Japan Airlines flight from Tokyo to London. It just so happens that the girl’s parents and older sister in Japan died around the same time that the plane was in flight. I’m waiting for the pathology results on the dead girl, but the examining doctor at Heathrow thought that she might have died from some fast-acting form of West Nile disease. He had never seen anything like it. From what news we can gather from an unhelpful Japan, it appears that the same thing killed the rest of the family.”

“Had they been together recently?”

“Yes,” M replied. “At the mother’s birthday party the night before, in a suburb of Tokyo.”

Bond quietly cleared his throat and asked, “What does this have to do with us?”

“Have you heard of Peter McMahon?”

“I don’t think so.”

“A shrewd businessman. Ran a pharmaceutical company called CureLab Inc. in Tokyo. He married the founder’s daughter and pretty soon the old man gave him a job. McMahon turned the company, which was in the throes of bankruptcy, into a business worth millions of pounds. They’re one of the leading firms in the Pharmaceuticals industry. And he has important friends in this country.”

Bond looked straight into M’s cool blue eyes.

“I see,” Bond said.

“The Japanese police have yet to declare whether or not the McMahon family died of accidental or natural causes or if they were murdered.”

“Murdered? You think this was an assassination?” Bond asked. “Why?”

“Apparently McMahon had a lot of enemies,” M said. “His father-in-law, Hideo Fujimoto, died three years ago. Ownership of the company passed to Fujimoto’s daughter, as his wife was already dead. I would imagine that in the case of the McMahons’ deaths, ownership would have passed to their three daughters. One of those daughters died with her parents in Tokyo. Another one died on that aeroplane.”

“Where is the third one?”

“We don’t know. The Japanese bureaucracy is withholding information about the McMahons. But you’ll have the full cooperation of the Koan-Chosa-Cho, which seems to be taking a more aggressive view of the situation than the Tokyo police. We have a right to look into the mysterious death of a British citizen and they know it. You can begin by going out to Uxbridge tonight to have a word with the coroner who is looking after Kyoko McMahon’s body. His office has been alerted and you are expected at seven-thirty this evening.”

Bond felt a flicker of fear. Even the thought of going back to Japan after all these years gave him reason to pause.

“It all sounds very interesting, but with all due respect, I’m really not qualified to be a crime-scene detective,” Bond said truthfully.

M looked at him hard and said, “That may be true, but that’s not the real reason you don’t want to go.”

Bond raised his eyebrows.

“I know you better than that, Double-O Seven,” M said. “I am quite aware of your history with Japan. I understand that you might have certain reservations about returning there.”

Bond sighed inwardly. The old girl was perceptive. Bond had spent a significant amount of time in Japan, the victim of amnesia, after his pursuit of Ernst Stavro Blofeld. It had happened a lifetime ago, it seemed, but Bond didn’t enjoy being reminded of those dark times.

“You might think of it as a holiday,” she proposed with a wry smile.

“A holiday?”

“Your friend Tanaka is eager to see you.”

Bond nodded. “It would be nice to see Tiger again. But still …”

“James,” M said, uncharacteristically referring to him by his fore-name. “I need you there. You have the ability to see the wider picture. I want you to investigate CureLab itself. I want you to find out if Peter McMahon had an enemy who would be willing to assassinate him and his family. Was it really murder? And if so, who was responsible? And I want you to locate that missing daughter.”

Bond remained silent. He knew that she was giving him an order, but the prospect of facing the ghosts that haunted his memories was daunting.

“That’s all, Double-O Seven,” she said. “And just to ease your mind, I’m not taking you off the Yoshida case. See what you can learn about him while you’re there. If these threats to the summit conference concern him, well …”

“I understand.”

“I know you hate babysitting jobs, Double-O Seven,” she added. “Every Double-O has to do it every now and then.”

Bond stood and raised his hand to stop her. “I’ll get the details from Miss Moneypenny. You’re right. It will be a change of scenery for me. And I certainly can’t let down my old friend the PM.”

M couldn’t help but smile as he walked out of the office.

THREE

A NIGHT AT THE MORTUARY

THE SUN WAS ON ITS WAY DOWN AS BOND DROVE WEST ON THE M4 OUT OF London in the decommissioned Aston-Martin that he had purchased from Q Branch a few years back. He had always enjoyed the DB5 and he drove it around London more often than his old much-loved Bentley.

Bond came off the motorway at the Heathrow exit, turned north, followed the signs to Uxbridge, found his way to Kingston Lane and pulled into Hillingdon Cemetery. The Hillingdon Public Mortuary was in a fifty-year-old single-storey T-shaped brick structure built on a corner of the cemetery, adjacent to a playing field. A Ford and a Range Rover were the only other two vehicles in the car park. Bond parked the Aston-Martin next to them, got out and took in his surroundings. The gravestones in the cemetery were bathed in the dull glow of dusk as the sky was caught between dark navy blue and golden orange.

Bond entered the lobby through blue front doors. The building was silent and dark, save for a few lights on in the offices. The staff had gone home and the place seemed deserted.

“Hello?” Bond called.

A man dressed in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up came into the room from an office on the right. He had the rugged look of someone who might once have been a police officer or perhaps served in the fire brigade.

“May I help you?” the man asked.

“The name’s Bond. James Bond. I’m here to see Dr. Lodge.”

“Oh, right. We’ve been expecting you. I’m Bob Greenwell, coroner’s officer. This way, please.”

Bond followed him into the office, where another man was looking intently at a laptop computer. The man looked up and stood.

“Mister Bond? I’m Chris Lodge. I’m the pathologist assigned to this case.” They shook hands. Lodge appeared to be in his mid-thirties, was soft-spoken and had a gentle grip.

“I hope it wasn’t too inconvenient to see me tonight,” Bond said. “I’m leaving for Japan tomorrow.”

“I quite understand,” the doctor said. Greenwell sat at another desk, picked up a paperback novel and began to read.

“The staff usually go home at night,” Dr Lodge said. “I come in when I’m called. Please sit down.” The doctor gestured to an armchair on the other side of his desk.

Bond got to the point. “Can you tell me about Kyoko McMahon?”

Lodge shook his head with pity as he sat down. “An ugly and lonely death. We’re still waiting for the toxicology results. We’ve sent all of our information to the Imperial College people at Charing Cross Hospital. There will have to be an inquest, I’m afraid. The coroner has yet to sign my postmortem report.”

“So it’s a suspicious death?” Bond asked.

“Downright baffling. We still don’t know what killed the poor girl. To tell you the truth, it’s one of the more interesting cases I’ve ever seen.”

“Why don’t you take me through the chain of events that occurred after the plane landed at Heathrow. Then I’d like to see your report, if you don’t mind.”

The doctor frowned. “This is highly unusual, Mister Bond, but as you’re with the Ministry of Defence, I suppose it’s all right. Postmortem information is normally kept confidential and is released only to the family … and to the police if the cause of death wasn’t natural.”

“I assure you that I’m not a reporter for the Daily Express,” Bond said dryly.

“Right. Anyway, the pilot radioed ahead to Heathrow; the normal procedure should a passenger die on board. Under international law, when a passenger dies in flight, the death is taken to have occurred at the destination airport. The authorities were waiting for the plane; the Port Health Authority doctor examined the girl and pronounced her dead. The body was removed from the aircraft by an Uxbridge funeral director that we use. A hearse brought her here, where she was identified and tagged. Finding next of kin was quite a performance. I understand her immediate family is in Japan, am I correct?”

“Yes.”

“Anyway, after failing to reach her parents, we finally got hold of her great uncle.” Lodge consulted his notes. “A Shinji Fujimoto. I must say that he was rather uncooperative. He didn’t want us to touch her body at all—just wanted her sent back to Japan. He was informed that it was a matter of law that we do a post-mortem in this country. Permission was granted, reluctantly. I was called in from Tooting yesterday morning, and I performed the post-mortem yesterday afternoon.”

“And what were your findings?”

“It is my opinion that the cause of death was a highly virulent form of West Nile disease. Do you know it?”

“No, but it sounds as if I’m about to become an expert.”

“Pretty serious stuff. Victims normally experience fever, headache, aching muscles, sometimes rashes or swollen lymph glands. Some individuals experience more severe symptoms like neurological damage, encephalitis and coma. In extreme cases it can be fatal. When we heard about the outbreak of West Nile in New York City a couple of years ago, we were all a bit concerned. They actually think that the virus came into New York via Asian mosquitoes that had been brought into the country accidentally inside a shipment of tyres.”

“I remember reading about that. Didn’t someone die?”

“There were a couple of deaths, but in the majority of cases it just made people ill. West Nile doesn’t do what happened to this girl. The symptoms were similar, but they were magnified ten-fold. The onset was apparently very rapid. As I understand it, she boarded the plane in good health and became ill during the flight. She was dead within twelve hours. That’s very fast. Normally, West Nile would take days or weeks to go through that kind of cycle.”

Bond whistled appreciatively. “Is there a cure?”

“Unfortunately not. Look here.” The doctor gestured for Bond to step around the desk and look at the laptop. Lodge punched some buttons and a cross-section of brain tissue appeared on the screen. “The mechanism of death, that is, what actually killed her, was that her brain suffocated. The high fever caused the meninges, the membranes surrounding the brain, to swell from the inflammation. An abscess was formed and grew very quickly, cutting off oxygen and blood flow to the rest of the brain. See this?”

The doctor pointed to indistinct blobs as Bond said, “Mmm hmm.”

“She went into a coma, which is why the flight attendant thought that she was sleeping. At some point her brain simply shut off and she began to asphyxiate. The cause of death? I suppose I would say “natural” or “accidental.” Depending on what the toxicology report says.”

Bond sat down again and thought for a moment. “Were there any unusual marks on her body? Needle marks?”

“No,” Lodge said. “As far as I could see, there was no evidence of drug taking. No herpes simplex virus, which can be a cause of encephalitis. However, speaking of mosquitoes, she did have a fair number of insect bites and they looked to me like mosquito bites. Mostly on her arms and legs.”

“Could that have been it?”

The man shrugged. “West Nile disease is normally carried by mosquitoes, and humans are infected with the disease when they are bitten by them. And while the symptoms are similar, whatever this was, it was certainly not West Nile. I’m not ruling anything out, but in my experience a mosquito isn’t capable of transmitting a disease that has this kind of reaction.”

The sound of a crash in the back of the building caused all three men to turn towards it.

“What the hell was that?” Lodge asked.

“I’ll go and see,” Greenwell said as he stood and left the room, still holding a mug of coffee.

Lodge grinned at Bond. “Our guests back there are restless, perhaps?”

Bond did not acknowledge the joke. Instinctively, he rose and went to the door. There was a shout of surprise from the back of the building.

Lodge looked alarmed. “Was that Bob?”

The Walther PPK was in Bond’s hand; Lodge could have sworn that the weapon had materialised from thin air.

“Which is the way to the post-mortem room?” Bond asked.

Lodge replied, “Go through the lobby and into the other office. There’s a door at the back of the room that opens into a corridor. Go right, and then left. You can’t miss it.”

“Stay here.” Bond peered into the dark lobby and saw nothing. He darted across and into the empty office behind reception. The door to the corridor was ajar. Bond crept to it and listened.

Silence.

He went through the door and into the hallway, where he found Greenwell’s broken coffee mug. He heard something—a noise, a scuffling—coming from the post-mortem room. Bond moved slowly towards the door, which was also ajar. He carefully leaned in to look and felt a significant drop in temperature.

Greenwell was unconscious on the floor next to the postmortem table. Two men were bending over a nude corpse that was lying on one of the mobile metal carts. They were attempting to wrap it in a blanket. Bond could see twenty refrigerator doors lining the wall in rows behind them. Three were open. One had obviously contained the woman’s body that they were wrapping. The other two cubicles were empty and were also open at both ends. The other side of the refrigerated cubicles opened into the body reception room, which was where bodies were delivered from the outside.

The two men were wearing surgical masks and from where Bond was standing they appeared to be Asian.

One of the men must have sensed Bond’s presence, for he suddenly whirled around, his pistol spraying fire at the door. Bond ducked back into the hall and crouched. He heard the men shout to each other in Japanese. Bond dared to look low around the open door and saw both men climb into the open refrigerated compartments so that they could escape through the body reception room.

Bond fired the Walther at one of the men, but the intruder pulled his legs in just in time to avoid being hit. As Bond got up to run into the room, a third man who had been hiding against the wall beside the open door kicked the Walther out of Bond’s hand. Before Bond could register surprise, the attacker struck him with two lightning fast tsuki punches to the chest. Bond fell backwards and crashed into a metal table with a scale used for weighing dissected organs.

Then Bond was hit with a powerful blow to the solar plexus, knocking the breath out of him. He fell to his knees, gasping for air as his assailant stood back, ready to kick. The young man wore sunglasses and a surgical mask. His hairstyle was a “punch perm,” short and permed into tiny skull-hugging curls.

Acting quickly, Bond reached up to the metal table and grabbed the first thing he felt, which happened to be a metal tray covered with dissecting instruments. Bond flung the tray at the attacker just as the man’s right foot left the ground for the kick. The tray bashed loudly into his boot, scattering the instruments over the tiled floor.

This gave Bond the time he needed to get to his feet, but not enough of an interval to defend himself against a perfectly executed mawashi-geri, or roundhouse kick, to the chin. Bond fell back again, this time knocking several metal trays off the post-mortem table. He hit the floor next to Greenwell, who was moaning softly.

This boy is a professional! was the only thing Bond was capable of thinking.

When he looked up, the “boy” had slithered through a refrigerated cubicle and escaped with his friends.

Bond got up and went to Greenwell. “Are you all right?”

The man nodded and put a hand to the back of his head.

“Who’s the corpse?”

“It’s the McMahon girl,” Greenwell answered.

Without hesitation, Bond retrieved his handgun, dived into one of the refrigerated cubicles after the men, and crawled to the other end. He unlatched the door, then jumped down into the body reception room. The door to the car park was just closing. Bond hugged the wall and looked outside.

The back of the building was adjacent to a driveway where hearses and ambulances could pull up to drop off bodies. Beyond that were bushes, hedges and trees lining the edge of the cemetery. A black Toyota was pulling out of the driveway into Kingston Lane. The man he had fought was just jumping into the back seat as the tyres squealed. The light had diminished greatly, but Bond could still see well enough to take a shot at the driver. He held the gun with both hands, assumed a modified Weaver firing stance, aimed carefully, and squeezed the trigger. The Walther recoiled with a satisfying jolt.

The Toyota swerved out into the street and crashed into a telephone pole. The horn blared.

The two remaining men jumped out of the car and fired in Bond’s direction. The bullets flew around him. Bond leaped for the pavement and rolled behind a tree that would shield him from the gunfire.

“Mister Bond?” Dr. Lodge called from the body reception room.

“Call the police!” Bond shouted. “And get back inside!”

Bullets sprayed around the tree, then at the open door of the building. Lodge disappeared from view.

Bond was pinned down. He was safe but he couldn’t move to either side of the tree for fear of taking a bullet. He knew that the thugs wouldn’t wait forever; they would have to move eventually. He just had to be patient.

When a siren could be heard approaching, the two men decided to go for it. Bond heard their footsteps as they ran off across Kingston Lane and into the cemetery, which was growing darker by the second.

Bond swung out from behind the tree and fired. One of the men jerked, cried out, and fell to the ground. The other man leapt to the side, taking cover behind a large gravestone. Bond began to run towards him, but the man reached around and fired his handgun, forcing Bond to take cover behind another tree.

As the police cars pulled into the front car park with sirens blaring, the gunfire ceased. After a few seconds, Bond carefully looked around the tree and could faintly see the man running. Bond raised the Walther to shoot, but at this light and distance, hitting him was unlikely. He let him go.

Bond sprinted to the man who was down and examined him. It was the same man he had fought in the post-mortem room. The bullet had caught him in the upper chest, a direct hit. Bond pulled off the surgical mask. He was a young Japanese, probably in his early twenties. Bond searched his clothing and pulled out a Dutch passport and a Colt 1911 A1 semi-automatic from underneath a light jacket.

Lodge came running outside with a torch. “Mister Bond, are you all right?”

“I’m over here. There were three of them. One’s in the car. The third one got away.”

Lodge crept warily up to the body and directed the torch on it. “Who is he?”

“I don’t know. Shine your torch on his passport here.”

Lodge took it and read it. “Somebody Hito. He lives in Amsterdam. Lived. What did they want?”

“It looked to me like they were trying to take Ms. McMahon’s body.”

“But why?”

“That’s a very good question.”

Then Bond noticed something unusual on the dead man’s neck. “Shine that torch over here.”

The light illuminated something sinister and extraordinary. Bond carefully unbuttoned the man’s shirt and opened it. The dead man’s entire upper torso was decorated in an elaborate, colourful tattoo depicting dragons and waterfalls.

It was a signature of the Japanese mafia, the dreaded yakuza.

FOUR

YAMI SHOGUN

THE MBB-KAWASAKI BK 117 EUROCOPTER LEFT BEHIND THE LAND MASS OF Hokkaido, the northern-most island of the cluster that make up Japan. It flew north-east towards the Kuril Islands, the so-called “Northern Territories” that Japan and Russia have been in dispute over since 1945. The Sea of Okhotsk stretched to the horizon ahead of them, while Russia lay hundreds of kilometres to the left and the Pacific Ocean expanded endlessly to the right.

Yasutake Tsukamoto shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He was not usually a nervous man. He was one of the most feared and respected men in Japan, the reigning oyabun, or father, of the Ryujin-kai. As kaicho, or boss, he had hundreds of men under his thumb, all willing to do his bidding. They were prepared to die for him. And, as the Ryujin-kai was one of the strongest and most powerful yakuza organisations in the country, with tentacles that reached into Japanese communities worldwide, Tsukamoto had no reason to be afraid. He was superior to every man in his organization—except one.

He always felt uneasy going to see the Yami Shogun. Even after all these years …

Tsukamoto didn’t enjoy the flight across the sea to Russian territory. He hated the fact that Russia had occupied the islands since the 1945 Yalta Conference because they rightfully belonged to Japan. He hated doing business with Russia at all, but circumstances with the Yami Shogun dictated that it must be so. After all, the master was exiled from Japan and could not set foot in the country without being arrested. The deal the master had made with the Russian Organizatsiya ensured that he would have a safe haven where he could live with his private army, train them and prepare them for the battle yet to come. The Yami Shogun hated the Russians as much as Tsukamoto did, but business was business. Tsukamoto thought that one day the time would come when business partners would have to change.

The Kuril Islands were an ideal spot for the Yami Shogun to hide. They are considered a mysterious no man’s land by both Japan and Russia. While they are governed as part of Sakhalin Oblast, in many ways they are still culturally tied to Japan. The islands are heavily forested and contain many active volcanoes. Hunting, fishing and sulphur mining are the principal occupations of the inhabitants, among them the Ainu, an ancient race believed to be indigenous to the area.

Eventually the helicopter approached the island called Etorofu by the Japanese and Iturup by the Russians. The helipad was on private property hidden amongst the trees. The property owner was associated with a mining operation that worked a nearby quarry; if anyone at the firm were questioned, they would have no knowledge of who that owner might be. If someone dug deep enough, they might discover that the owner was a Japanese corporation called Yonai Enterprises. It was a legitimate diversified company, involved mostly in chemical engineering.

It was also a front for one of the biggest yakuza gangs in Japan.

It was not unusual these days for yakuza to infiltrate “Big Business” in Japan. It was an unspoken and accepted part of the way society worked. Many kaicho and oyabun were heads of or sat on the boards of directors of large, influential companies. Any formidable yakuza gang in Japan had to flaunt its wealth and management skills.