“I told her the truth, and she saw it for what it was,” he replied. “Brother Heinrich, go to the plane and make certain it’s loaded and the disciples are on board. Then return to me with the final packet of medicine. I need to be certain everything is going according to plan before we take the final steps.”
Brother Heinrich disappeared into the darkness, but not before glaring at Taka. The Shirosama seemed to have forgotten about both prisoners. He’d begun chanting, some strange mixture of languages that held few words Summer had ever heard, as he sprinkled gray dust on the fire in front of him, followed by the same cloying incense. White-robed brothers began to emerge from the surrounding forest, some carrying weapons, some unarmed. They lay their guns in a pile and moved to form a circle around the Shirosama, taking up the same nonsensical chant.
When Taka had been thrown against Summer the knife had been knocked loose from her bra, and was now beneath her loose shirt. With her hands bound behind her there was no way she could reach it. She would have to count on her would-be murderer.
“Your holiness!” She raised her voice, forcing herself to sound tearful and supplicatory. “If we are to die, would you let me kiss him one last time?”
She half expected Taka to react to her uncharacteristic behavior, but he didn’t move, didn’t look at her. He was kneeling in the frozen dirt beside her, every inch of him alert, and she was probably the least of his concerns.
“You want to kiss the man who tried to kill you? You are a very foolish young woman,” the Shirosama said. “Go ahead.”
Taka turned to her, his eyes dark and unreadable, waiting. She reached up, put her mouth against his and whispered, “I have a knife that’s fallen down the front of my shirt, you son of a bitch. See if you can get it.” The feel of his lips against hers was agony. The sickness deep inside her was that she wanted to kiss him anyway, no matter what he’d done.
A moment later he’d flung himself at her knees, babbling a mixture of contrition and love. Somehow, in the darkness, and even with his hands tied, he managed to reach up under her flowing shirt and grab the knife.
The Shirosama’s half-blind eyes were turned in their direction, an expression of distaste on his face. “I misjudged both of you,” he said. “You are unworthy of the great honor I chose to give you.”
“What great honor?” Summer asked. Taka was still doing a creditable job of being collapsed in grief and hopeless love, and she needed to hold the Shirosama’s attention while Taka worked on their bonds.
“The great honor of dying with me, Miss Hawthorne. Your mother would appreciate it and as one of my most generous supporters, she would have had that honor. But someone took her away and I’ve had more important things to do than try to find her.”
“Like kidnap my sister?” Summer shot back. Taka was still now, and she kept waiting for him to lean toward her, to do something about the bonds that were slowly cutting off the circulation in her arms.
But the Shirosama was no longer interested in arguing with her, or anyone. “Drag them out of the circle, Brother Shiny
a. They can watch from a distance.”
Shit, Summer thought, as one of the brethren advanced toward them. He would see that Taka had gotten his hands on a knife, and their last hope of escape would be gone.
But she underestimated the brother’s dislike of the unclean, particularly women. He came to stand over them, an expression of disgust on his pale face as if he were enduring a bad smell. “Move back,” he ordered them.
With their hands and feet tied, it was a difficult maneuver requiring a crablike effort, but Summer had given up dignity long ago, along with trust, love and the remote possibility of a happy ending. She’d put her faith in a murderer.
They moved back, a good five feet out of the circle, and the brethren took their places, kneeling in a semicircle around the Shirosama. He’d set the urn on the antique kimono, and at another time Summer would have cried out at the sacrilege.
They must have taken it when they’d kidnapped her. If Reno had only left the urn behind this would all be over, for her at least. They would have had everything they wanted and she would probably be dead. If Taka didn’t get his shit together she wasn’t going to be alive to care about antique kimono or ancient ceramics or anything at all.
For that matter, even if he did, there was no guarantee that he was going to bother to save her.
The Shirosama arranged himself in a meditative position, and then nothing happened. The chanting stopped, and they all just waited, in silence.
A moment later Brother Heinrich reappeared in the firelight. “They’re here, your holiness. Brother Neville and his wife have seen to the loading of the plane, and the advance force is already aboard. They wish your blessing before they depart on their holy mission.”
“Of course,” he said graciously. “Bring them to me, that I may touch them and send them on their way.” He turned his face toward Summer and Taka. “Brother Neville is one of England’s top scientists, an expert in biochemical weapons, and he allows his wife to assist him. Devoted followers like them assure the success of my vision. Death is nothing more than the gateway to paradise, and my followers embrace that truth. My people are everywhere—there is no way to stop what must happen.”
Taka still wasn’t saying anything, but he was very still. Either he’d given up on trying to cut his bonds or he’d already managed it and was just choosing his moment to jump up.
Either way, he’d done nothing to release Summer, and clearly he wasn’t going to. If Taka was somehow able to stop them before they released the gas, then she might survive. Otherwise she could take small comfort in the fact that at least Jilly was safe. Small comfort that if she was going to die, so would Taka. Slowly and painfully.
The Shirosama’s British followers approached silently. One was a tall, bespectacled man, the colorless kind of person who’d disappear in a crowd. The woman with him was similarly nondescript—dull clothes, glasses, dishwater hair, frumpy. Older than her partner. And then Summer realized with horror that they weren’t alone—two of the brethren were dragging someone else behind them. Someone with flame-red hair, dressed in black leather. Taka must have brought his cousin up the mountain, for all the good it was doing him.
The British scientist approached the Shirosama first, sinking gingerly to his knees in front of him and bending his tall body in half, so that his forehead almost touched the ground. Beside her, Taka had grown very tense. He must have seen Reno being dragged along behind them.
“Greetings and blessings, holy father,” the man said in a perfect upper-class British accent.
“Greetings and blessings, Brother Neville. Greetings to Sister Agnes, too. You have served me well.”
“And will continue to do so, your holiness. The world will be cleansed by blood and fire, and a new order will arise in your image.”