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“Flooded,” Joe said.
“I expect the lower levels are all flooded,” Kurt said. “Without the pumps running all these years, the seawater would seep in. If all else fails, we could risk going down and swimming through the tunnel.”
“You’re forgetting the iron pipe we’re chained to.”
“It’ll be rusted to nothing down there, especially if that’s saltwater.”
Joe shifted position and looked down. “Let me get this straight. You want to drop into a flooded mine shaft, search for a flooded horizontal tunnel, swim through it in pitch-black conditions, with our hands in chains, and no idea where it leads or whether it’s caved in or blocked by debris. All on the chance it comes out somewhere advantageous.”
Kurt feigned offense. “I didn’t suggest there was a high probability of success. Just that it was an option.”
“Try zero probability,” Joe said. “In fact, if there’s such a thing as a negative probability, I’d go with that. Even if we made it through and found another vertical shaft, we’d have to scale the walls with our bare hands.”
“I was thinking we could come up in the elevator we saw on the way in,” Kurt said. “I realize the machinery doesn’t operate, but the framework would make for an easy climb. If we can find the air shaft we passed on the way in.”
“Another big if,” Joe said. “We’d be more likely to swim ourselves into a dead end, drown down there and never be found.”
“At least Han wouldn’t be able to dress my body in the clothes those robots are wearing and frame us for the most blatant assassination since the Archduke of Austria in 1914.”
“Hopefully, this one won’t start a new war.”
“The war is already on,” Kurt said. “It’s all about influence. And Han is going to pull off a masterstroke if we don’t do something about it.”
“Come up with a better plan than suicide and I’m with you.”
Before Kurt could reply, the beam of a flashlight appeared in the tunnel as two people came toward them dragging something along the ground.
Only when the glare of the flashlight was pointed away did Kurt recognize Ushi-Oni’s jaundiced face and another of Han’s men. Carried between them, held up by the arms but with his legs dragging on the ground, was the lifeless form of Superintendent Nagano.
They tossed Nagano down and chained his hands around the pipe. The jailer with the keys unlocked Joe and pulled him to his feet.
“Am I first for breakfast?” Joe asked. “Fantastic. Steak and eggs will do just fine.”
Oni backhanded Joe, striking him across the face and sending him to the ground. Before Joe could spring to his feet, something sharp and cold jabbed him in the back. He felt it split the wetsuit right between his shoulder blades. He dropped back flat on the ground, the tip of a sword up against his skin.
“Han ordered me not to kill you yet,” Oni said. “But if you stand too quickly and impale yourself . . . that’s on you.”
Kurt could see the sword plainly; it was a different weapon than the one Oni had been carrying earlier. “Don’t get up,” he warned Joe. “It’ll run you through.”
“Quite content to lie here,” Joe said, as he waited until the sword was pulled back and then slowly got to his hands and knees. When he turned around, he was face-to-face with a figure of malevolence.
“Don’t think I’ve forgotten you,” Oni said. “Every time I move, I feel agony. Every time I sweat from this endless fever, I blame you. I will pay you back for the pain you’ve caused me. Count on it.”
“Technically, it was the Komodo dragon’s fault,” Joe said. “I was just an innocent bystander.”
“The plan is for your facsimile to die in a car crash,” Oni said. “That means I get to burn you alive. You won’t be so funny when you’re screaming for death.”
Joe was dragged off and Kurt could do nothing but watch him go. He hoped Joe had caught the clue that Ushi-Oni had inadvertently handed him.
When Joe and his captors had vanished down the tunnel, Kurt turned to Nagano. “Superintendent, are you all right?”
Nagano looked up through a mask of pain. Kurt saw no overt injuries to his face, but his hand was bandaged.
“He killed the monks,” Nagano said. “He slaughtered them.”
“Ushi-Oni?”
Nagano nodded. “They had the swords. We thought we’d trapped him, but . . . He killed my men. He took my fingers.”
