June 6, 2440, 10:25 AM
The first mistake everyone made was watching the garage.
That was why Matt had given them something worth watching.
Four armored SUVs sat nose-out inside the rear garage of the Marmaduke Logistics facility in Ikejiri. All four carried rotating diplomatic plates. All four had darkened windows. Each contained somebody positioned where a principal ought to be sitting and dressed well enough to survive a long-lens photograph.
Nobody needed to believe the decoys after opening the doors.
They needed to believe them at sixty meters through tinted glass.
Tansho stood beside a bank of security monitors and watched the watchers.
“Three press teams in the alley. Two corporate. At least three diplomatic services.”
Matt pulled on a black leather glove.
“Only three diplomatic?”
“Three that aren’t embarrassed to let us see them.”
“That sounds more like Tokyo.”
Tansho checked another screen.
A drone hovered above the building across the street. Another had been pretending to inspect rooftop equipment for fifteen minutes. There were more farther out, some press, some corporate, some whose operators apparently believed changing altitude every few minutes constituted subtlety.
Matt smiled.
People tended to think surveillance failed when the target disappeared.
That was amateur thinking.
The best surveillance failure happened when the observer remained absolutely certain he knew where the target was.
T’mari walked out of the changing room in matte black riding leathers, helmet tucked beneath one arm.
Matt stopped fastening his glove.
T’mari noticed.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You are staring at me.”
“Yes.”
T’monn came out behind her.
“You are supposed to be concentrating.”
“I can do two things.”
L’tani T’all stepped into the corridor fastening her jacket.
“Apparently not.”
Matt looked at her.
“I liked you better before you started learning sarcasm.”
L’tani slowly licked her upper lip and watched his face.
Cosmo had him figured out.
L’tani apparently had too.
“They are assembled,” Tansho said with a chuckle.
Matt recovered enough dignity to look toward the monitors.
“Then let them go chase the ghosts.”
Tansho’s fingers moved.
The rear bay doors began to rise.
Two superbikes shot under them before they were fully open. The four armored SUVs followed, close enough together to look deliberate, with two more superbikes closing the formation behind them.
Anyone watching the garage now had exactly what they expected to see.
A protected diplomatic convoy.
T’mari’s counter-surveillance drones launched from the roof at the same time.
The four security men Matt had assigned to them looked like someone had handed them Christmas presents early.
Tony was especially pleased with himself.
More than twenty outside drones converged on the convoy as it cleared the property, fighting for angles around the bikes and SUVs.
Tony drove his drone straight into the middle of the cluster.
Matt watched the tactical display.
“Tony.”
The short-range EMP fired.
Its effective radius was only about twenty-five feet.
That was enough.
The surveillance drones dropped from the sky almost simultaneously.
Matt stared at the display.
Either Tony had a macro set up to trigger at exactly the right moment or he really was that good a pilot.
“Please remember not to do that too near our bikes,” T’mari said with a sigh.
Matt looked at her.
She had designed the things. Matt had approved them. Neither fact meant she wanted Tony experimenting with their minimum safe distance while she was sitting on a motorcycle.
Matt turned toward D’ren and S’ola.
“You two, go up front and be seen. Tansho will bring you to the house later.”
He tossed D’ren a roll of bills, then another to S’ola.
“Also, welcome to one of the most ass-backwards technically advanced countries in the world, where they would rather you pay in cash than thumbprints and an online reservation still means somebody faxing it in by nine in the morning.”
S’ola caught the money.
Matt pointed toward the street.
“Now go buy shit. You have earned an afternoon off.”
Tony’s voice came over the channel.
“I’ll keep an eye on them.”
He was having far too much fun with his new toys.
Matt looked toward the pages.
“That is what they are worried about.”
D’ren grinned.
S’ola looked considerably less reassured.
Matt pulled on his helmet and nodded toward the other two riders waiting with three deliberately ordinary black Kawasakis.
He almost wished he had spent the money for superbikes for this part too.
Mere sport bikes would have to do.
Matt would ride with T’mari behind him. The other two riders would carry T’monn and L’tani T’all.
Nothing armored.
Nothing marked.
Nothing anyone watching the diplomatic garage had a reason to care about.
Rodney waited at the side door.
Matt swung onto the Kawasaki and felt T’mari settle behind him, her arms coming around his waist. He turned the key, synced the heads-up display in his helmet, then checked the mirrors.
T’monn was secure behind the second rider.
L’tani sat behind the third, already looking much happier about this than either her mother or sister.
Matt nodded.
Rodney looked toward the drone tenders.
Apparently he got a thumbs-up.
He flung the side door open and threw himself out of the way.
Matt laid into the throttle.
The Kawasaki shot through the one-meter-wide doorway, bounced down four concrete steps, and hit the street.
The other two bikes came out behind him.
Six blocks later they slipped into the motorcycle lane and joined the on-ramp pattern.
Three black Kawasakis drew no attention beyond a few irritated riders who gave Matt the finger for riding better than they did.
Perfect.
Twenty minutes later Matt rolled down the exit ramp and back into Ikejiri traffic.
Two blocks more.
His heads-up display showed no police nearby.
He resisted the urge to do a wheelie.
Had it been just him, he would have.
It was not just him.
He signaled, turned into an alley, and saw the bay doors of Shirokawa Express beginning to rise.
Matt rolled inside and killed the engine.
He got off, then turned to watch the others.
One look at T’mari and T’monn told him they were not going to be his roller-coaster wives.
L’tani climbed off wearing a grin.
He had been right about her.
T’mari removed her helmet.
“Where are we exactly, and what is Shirokawa Express?”
“We are in Japan.”
She stared at him.
Matt smiled.
“And Shirokawa Express is, or was, an independent courier company that operated in Tokyo.”
“I hope you didn’t use Tansho to make that ‘was’ a reality.”
“Nothing so sinister. They were going broke and Marmaduke Logistics bought them out. I retained most of the staff and gave them raises. They opened this location sixteen years ago.”
That was the clean version.
The less clean version was that Matt had originally used Tansho to investigate the fraud helping drive the company into the ground.
He had fired the drivers involved.
Then there had been the Yakuza thug shaking the company down.
Tansho had dealt with him.
Matt had sent the thug’s boss a politely worded message explaining that if his organization intended to operate in Matt’s territory, it would begin paying Matt for the privilege.
Tansho had helped the boss see reason.
Matt had not asked very many questions about how.
“I’ll explain the full business arrangement while we change,” Matt said.
He racked his helmet and offered T’mari his hand.
“This isn’t what I expected,” T’monn said.
She stepped out of the freight cage and looked around the receiving room.
A V’ren page brought over a chair.
T’monn had learned enough of Matt’s customs by now to take the seat without being told why.
One boot came off.
Then the other.
Her daughters were receiving the same attention nearby.
Matt had already handled his own boots and was watching them with obvious approval.
Another protocol test passed.
They followed him out of the receiving room and into a more formal sitting room.
T’monn stopped.
The center of the building had collapsed sometime in the past, but nobody had rebuilt it.
Instead, the old brick had been reused to create an enclosed garden.
Fruit trees rose through the open center. A koi pond reflected the surrounding walls. Stone paths disappeared between plantings, and beyond them stood what T’monn was reasonably certain was a shrine.
She had met Gary. She knew he sometimes traveled to Japan with Matt.
That made her think the shrine was living, not decorative.
“It is beautiful.”
She took Matt’s hand.
“It is,” he said. “I have Gary and Sayaka to thank for most of it. They get here far more often than I can.”
Later, showered and changed, Matt stood before the mirror in a fresh kimono.
Black, with emerald trim.
He slid the House Th’ron dagger into place.
Then the House T’all dagger.
For the first half of the morning, Tokyo’s surveillance services had been chasing armored SUVs while Matthew Johnathan Boone Marmaduke bounced a Kawasaki down four concrete steps and vanished into traffic.
Now he looked into the mirror.
The anonymous motorcyclist was gone.
The High Lord had returned.
He knew he would make an impression.
