"This is how you’re handling the situation? A little game of Twenty Questions?"
Collins turned the laptop around to show the man in his office doorway the report it displayed. The most prominent features of the report were the photos of two female students.
Standing in the office door, Constable Takashi Nomoko blinked through his thick eyeglasses. Twenty Questions…. The reference meant nothing to him.
"It is an initial step, Inspector," he said, beginning slowly. "We are trying to determine what they knew."
"And..?" Collins fixed Nomoko with his icy blue stare.
Constable Nomoko paused before replying, his eyes wandering past Collins to the spacious windows which dominated the ample, beautifully-furnished office and the New Tokyo skyline beyond. He could see the distant ruins of the old Space Needle, burning in the fire of the waning sun, the former world-wonder remade by war into a shattered reminder of the ultimate fate of the arrogant Hegemony he still fought.
"Apparently nothing," Nomoko admitted finally, turning his eyes back to his superior.
"I could have told you that," Collins said, idly tapping a file folder which lay on his mahogany desk. "You don’t seriously think they’ll tell you what they know if you sit them down in Headquarters and serve them tea, do you?"
"What alternative are you proposing, Inspector? They are Citizens. They have rights."
"Oh, Jesus," Collins moaned, "spare me the civics lession."
The Constable raised his eyebrows. ‘Jesus?’
What a quaint reference…
Collins crossed his legs and leaning back in his chair. "I’d propose," he went on, "that you push a little button on your speed-dial and call our… Old Friend…"
Constable Nomoko’s face darkened.
"I will not," he said with an even firmness, "turn over these children to that butcher. I hesitate to hand our enemies-"
Collins cut him off, waiving Eriko Matsuoka’s Official Academy Photo toward Nomoko’s face.
"This bitch was a student at that Academy for two years," Collins said in a patronizing, contemptuous tone. "She’s had a lot of roommates. A lot of friends… Now, I’d suggest you get over your petty moral qualms, stop wasting my fucking time and resources, and show me some results."
Nomoko’s eyes again sought refuge in the outside skyline. He wanted this little encounter over with.
But if, outwardly, Nomoko seemed to squirm under the gaze of his superior; inwardly, he burned - seething with resentment at having to prostrate himself before this golden-haired, pasty-faced Nordic asshole. But, Nomoko often (perhaps too often, he now thought) consoled himself within the thought that nothing is forever. Absolutely nothing…
But Nomoko kept all of this hidden behind his passive Japanese eyes, framed and slightly magnified by those big black glasses.
"I doubt very much, Inspector," the Constable said at last, and smoothly "that Eriko Matsuoka’s nightly pillow-talk with her roommates included the fact that she was a Republic agent."
Collins looked at him.
"You know, Nomoko, you’re probably right." He paused. "Now, that’s an idea…" he finally finished, as if speaking to himself.
"What ‘idea,’ Inspector?" Nomoko asked.
The Idea had obviously not fully formed in the Inspector’s head, and he waived it away for the moment.
"We’ll get to that in a minute," Collins said. "What about Matsuoka?"
"Very well," Nomoko said, at last entering Collins’ office and closing the door behind him. "The search for Matsuoka. The scouring of the city continues. Her likeness has been posted throughout the Security Zone. All outlying villages and hamlets are being searched, the inhabitants questioned. New roadblocks have been set up.
"But," Nomoko pulled a little rectangular box from a pocket, set it on Collins’ desk, and turned it on. A light glowed at one end of the box and a huge topographic map spring into being, projected by the box into empty air, while from another pocket he pulled a laser-pointer. "We expect, however, that she is attempting to make her way out. To the Republic. The clearest way out is through the Eastern Mountains - the ‘Cascades,’ as the locals call them…" He traced a probable route on the holographic map with the pointer. "To counter this possibility - probability - we have Special Operations teams searching on land, and air assets searching from the sky. Hunter/Killer Teams are on station, of course. If she is indeed making for Republic territory, we have a fair chance of catching her."
"A fair chance?" Sitting in his high-backed desk chair, Collins looked unimpressed.
"I can guarantee nothing, of course," the Constable replied flatly. "She may already have been extricated. By air… by sea, for all we know. Suffice it to say, we are doing all we can do."
Nomoko took the liberty of an uninvited chair in front of Collins’ desk and sat down, switching off and re-pocketing his little projector as he did so.
"It’s all a very orderly process," the Constable concluded.
"A very long process," Collins said grimly. He stood up from his chair and began to pace behind his desk. "Look, Nomoko - the governor-general is breathing hot shit down my neck on this one, pal. Christ," he ran a hand through his golden hair, "a goddamned orphan - a fucking schoolgirl - takes out the Chief of Intel while his fucking bodyguards watch the fucking door… Broad-fucking-daylight, too. In the middle of the fucking capital -"
Collins cut himself off. He was starting to rant… He stopped pacing, put his hands in his trouser pockets and stared at the carpeted floor, assuming an attitude of deep thought.
"The general was clumsy," Nomoko replied from his chair. "A fool."
"I don’t give a flying fuck about Jin," Collins growled between his teeth. "Frankly, I’m glad the old pervy-fuck’s dead. He was outliving his usefulness, anyway. No… it’s not the fucking general I’m concerned with." He looked a Nomoko now. "It’s the symbolism, Nomoko, the symbolism."
Nomoko raised his eyebrows as Collins sat down again.
"Look, if they can get one of their little cunt-bitch DCAs that close to our heart, that high up the chain," Collins explained in a fast clip, "then our glorious leaders stop feeling safe. And when our glorious leaders stop feeling safe - guys like you and me stop being safe. Right?"
Nomoko bowed his head in acquiescence: He could hardly argue.
"So, Nomoko," Collins went on, "two things: Number One," he tossed Eriko Matsuoka’s file in front of Constable Nomoko, "I want this… bitch roped like a dog and dragged through the streets to the Palace. Number Two: I want this Orphanage-Academy’s students interrogated."
"The list will be ready shortly," Nomoko offered.
Collins pulled a golden case and lighter from a desk drawer. He lit a cigarette.
"Never mind the list," Collins said, blowing out smoke.
"Then..?" Nomoko blinked behind his glasses.
Collins took another drag, planting his elbows on his desk, leaning forward, looking the Constable full in the face.
"Do you seriously think," he asked, "that little Matsuoka was the only Free Republic agent enrolled at that fucking school?"
Nomoko looked at his hands, tapping the little laser pointer against one palm.
"Highly unlikely, I suppose…" he conceded gently.
"Could be a nest of spies, for all we know, right? And checking the backgrounds of war orphans more often than not futile - since, almost by definition, they don’t have backgrounds. Right?"
Nomoko nodded.
"Many, many public records have been destroyed in this war," he offered carefully - but Collins spoke over him:
"So," Collins concluded his point, leaning back again in his desk chair, "I want that fucking Academy quarantined - then taken apart piece by piece. I want the students removed and interred. I want that fucking place sterilized."
The Constable looked quizzically at the Inspector, uncomprehending.
"Then…" Nomoko began. His voice trailed off, leaving the obvious question unfinished, pausing to think.
Across from him, Collins inhaled deeply, holding the smoke in for a bit.
"All of them?" Nomoko asked at length.
Collins, exhaled, sending his lung-full of smoke sailing toward the ceiling.
"All of them," Collins confirmed. He took another drag. "You know, ‘let god sort ’em out,’ and all that." There was a wicked, crystalline glint in his blue eyes.
"Very well..." Constable Nomoko exhaled slowly and stood. "However," he went on, "that will… er… require some preparation. For one thing, I’ll need more men."
"The 85th," Collins answered easily. "They’re in town. Just pulled in from the Front. A bit beat up. Encamped in Green Lake Park. They could stand a little R&R. Use them."
Nomoko nodded behind his docile lenses: Green Lake Park… It was People’s Victory Park now. But Collins often used pre-war place names. To Nomoko it was a reminder that the Inspector really wasn’t one of them; that he wasn’t committed. Just another damned Yankee mercenary with a gilded title. And the Constable hated him all the more for it.
Nomoko turned toward the door. Then he paused and turned back to Collins. "There is one more thing," he said. "We don’t know if it has any bearing on the case before us, but…" he indicated Collins’ laptop. "May I?"
Planting his cigarette between his lips, Collins made a nonchalant gesture toward the little computer, and Nomoko pulled it to himself and tapped in a few commands.
"Our South-Western Zone Security Cams," the Constable explained as he typed, "picked up a pair of images. A Caucasian male," he turned the screen back to Collins, "seen making his way through the Old Dockyard section."
Collins leaned down and stared at the grainy, black and white pictures Nomoko had brought up: one, a partial profile of a dark-haired, thirty-some man in a long leather jacket and jeans; the other a long shot of the man’s back.
"We have yet to identify him," Nomoko went on, "and these images are not the best… But, as I said, it may be nothing."
With one hand, Collins stabbed out his cigarette while picking up the laptop with the other:
"It’s not nothing," he exhaled slowly. "It’s everything… It’s little Eriko Matsuoka’s ticket out. Shit… Fuck."
Nomoko stared at Collins, who nearly spat his next word:
"Tanner."
GABRIEL TANNER REACHED down to take Eriko’s hand, helping her up over the last rise.
They stopped to catch their breath, turning to look back the way they had come.
The sun was setting now, sinking below the jagged line drawn by the Cascades against the reddening western sky, igniting the evergreen carpet below in a spectacular tangerine flame.
Tanner looked down at the girl beside him.
Her pretty little face glowed in the fading of the sun, its dying rays highlighting her raven hair with strands of gold; but her dark eyes looked a bit sad as she gazed back over the high, wooded path they had climbed for the past two days.
