The Rising Sea (NUMA Files 15)

“Good,” Han said. “In the meantime, I’m going to conclude my business with Ushi-Oni.”

49

HAN MET Ushi-Oni in the tunnel, where the former Yakuza assassin stood with the Honjo Masamune gripped in his palm.

“Austin and Zavala have been chained up,” Oni said. “But you should kill them immediately.”

“It’ll have to wait.”

“Why?”

“Because if you kill them now, rigor mortis will set in,” Han explained. “In addition, their bodies will begin to cool down. They’ll be cold and stiff by the time the authorities find them. Two minor details that will make it easy to establish a time of death well before the assassination took place. Which will effectively rule them out as suspects and give instant credibility to every conspiracy theorist who suggests an alternate, perhaps Chinese, cause of the incident. I would expect a man like you to know these things.”

Oni stepped forward, his eyes wild. “A man like me knows you don’t leave loose ends around. That’s why I’ve never been caught. And it isn’t about to happen here and now.”

“Lower your voice,” Han said,

reestablishing control over the situation.

Oni did as he was told but continued to fume. “Mark my words,” he said. “They’ve seen you, they’ve seen me. As long as they’re alive, we’re all in danger.”

“They’ll be dead in less than twelve hours,” Han said. “You can be the one to kill them, if you want. But you’ll do it when and how I say. Otherwise, you’ll generate more ‘loose ends.’ For now, they live. In the meantime, I need to get that sword out of your hand before you hurt someone with it. Come with me.”

Han turned deeper into the mine. Oni hesitated. “Why don’t we speak outside?”

“Because it’s pouring rain and I need my people to examine that trinket you’re carrying.”

“I’ve become rather fond of it,” Oni said.

“You won’t be when you hear the story behind it.”

Han led Oni down the hall to another section of the mine that his people had taken over and modernized. He opened the triple-sealed door and held it wide.

Oni shook his head. “You first.”

“Very well.”

Han stepped inside another laboratory. This room was smaller and cramped in comparison to the production room where the robots were assembled. It was filled with machines that would have been familiar to any metallurgist.

“What is this place for?” Oni asked.

“My people use these machines to analyze ore samples we’ve taken from mines and quarries around Japan. Mostly abandoned ones,” Han admitted. “Centuries old.”

They’d been at it for nearly a year. Retrieving, testing and storing what they found. The fruit of the effort sat in labeled metal canisters stacked on the far side of the room. The number of containers had grown continuously, looking now like thousands of beer cans in an overzealous supermarket display.

“What are you looking for?” Oni asked.

“A rare alloy that we believe to be present here in Japan.”

“And the swords? What do they have to do with it?”

Han figured Oni would have put it together by now. “These weapons were crafted by the masters of Japanese swordmaking. Based on the legends that describe their strength, flexibility and resistance to corrosion, it’s possible they were made with trace amounts of that alloy. If we’re right and we detect the alloy in the swords, all we have to do is find out where the ancient swordsmiths mined their ore and we’ll be on the right track.”

As he spoke, one of Han’s men was using a device known as a plasma mass spectrometer to analyze the blade on one of the swords that Oni had recovered.

The plasma torch flared behind a dark pane of glass, still bright enough to illuminate the room in a garish light. The sample was subjected to several seconds of the high-temperature torture before the beam was extinguished.

When it was removed from the spectrometer, the tip of the weapon was glowing red, melting and deformed. As it cooled, the computers analyzed the particles melted and blasted from the surface of the blade and printed out a report.