Flashback

Nick found himself salivating from just looking at Sato’s dinner laid out on the table, but it was the smell of the nabeyaki udon broth that really made his stomach rumble.

He gulped some sake, rose painfully, and said, “Where’s the lavatory?”

There were two doors on the aft bulkhead. The flight attendants had come in through the one on the right. Sato pointed to the door on the left.

A few minutes later, Nick stood in front of the wide mirror. This aircraft lavatory was three times the size of the bathroom in his cubie and had an actual bath as well as shower. The face and figure staring back at him looked out of place in the lemon-soap luxury of the executive-jet lavatory: Nick’s shirt was torn and bloodied, his tan jacket and chinos filthy—the left pant leg ripped and blood-soaked with white bandages showing through—and Nick had scrapes and new scars on his cheekbone and right temple. He’d received nine stitches along that cheekbone at the CHP barracks and the effect was moderately Frankenstein-like. They’d scrubbed off the worst of the grime there, but Nick still washed his hands and face vigorously in the plane lav, handling the thick hand towel gingerly, as if he didn’t want his dirt and blood to contaminate it.

Nick removed the Glock from the crossdraw holster, made sure the safety was off and that there was a round in the chamber, and set the heavy pistol back in place. If Omura-sama was correct—and Nick had believed him—then Sato was escorting him home to a death sentence. And one that would be carried out soon, probably tomorrow afternoon or evening when Nakamura arrived home to his mountaintop above Denver.

But Nick had his pistol now. An oversight? A test?

Either way, the 9mm Glock was real and his to use. But use how? Come out shooting, kill Sato first, then move from one hanging oxygen mask to the next until he could get onto the flight deck and demand that the pilot fly him…

Where? There was no nation in this hemisphere now that did not have extradition treaties with the New Nippon.

And what if Val had made it to Denver and was waiting for him?

But all this was academic, since Nick knew the door to access the flight deck could probably take repeated RPG rounds without opening or giving way. And that the crew was almost certainly armed, but wouldn’t even need that. All they’d have to do was keep the plane at altitude—assuming that some of his rounds either made it all the way through Sato or missed and depressurized the aircraft—and shut off the oxygen to his compartment. They could do that, of course, even if a stray round hadn’t depressurized the compartment. Nick shook his head and stared at the much thinner, almost gaunt by his standards of the last five years or so, and visibly beaten-up figure in the mirror. He was too tired. Too many nights with too little sleep. It was hard to think.

When he came out, there was a cluster of little plates and a bowl and a replenished glass of sake on his side of the small table as well.

“This meal was so good that I took the liberty, Bottom-san,” grunted Sato. “I personally do not enjoy the poached egg with the noodles in nabeyaki udon, but most people do. I had them serve it to you on the side. The slices of cooked octopus in the tako su are garnished with sticks of pale green cucumber, bathed in ponzu sauce and topped with sesame seeds, sliced scallion, and a drizzle of wasabi mayonnaise. I believe you will find that the sauce has an engagingly smoky, citrus taste that complements the octopus. Why are you smiling, Bottom-san?”

“No reason,” said Nick, although he’d come close to laughing at Sato’s impersonation of an eager maître d’. “I guess I’m more hungry than I knew, Sato-san. Thank you.”

Sato nodded abruptly. “The pepper tuna and sunomono are similarly sauced with ponzu and wasabi mayonnaise,” he said. “The black pepper–crusted tuna, seared on the outside but still raw, then sliced thin, is a favorite of mine. I hope you enjoy it, Bottom-san.”

“I am certain I will, Sato-san,” said Nick. He was still standing and he realized that he was bowing his thanks, and bowing low.

Sato grunted and Nick settled into his chair, giving out his own involuntary grunt from the pain in his ribs. The smell from the bowl of broth and other food brought tears to his eyes.

Galina Kschessinska, aka Galina Sue Coyne, was of a kind that Nick had interviewed many times, sometimes as eager witness, although more often as perp or accomplice. In any of the roles, the clinical description of the Galina Kschessinska type remained the same: malignant narcissist.