Chapter 13 #3
Singapore was busy and efficient. Dev Tanaka's dojo occupied a shophouse in the east of the city, the kind of building that had seen the city change as it stood firm and hadn't let progress move it.
Dev was on the training floor when they arrived.
He registered them the moment they came through the door.
It was the same Shinobi recognition Dan had seen in Noor, but sharper, and it ran deeper.
Dev had been more thoroughly trained. His involvement went further.
He knew more, and his face went carefully blank.
He's running scenarios and calculating exit strategies.
Raven didn't give him time to run them. She introduced herself in the register of address that indicated rank and training lineage. The specific Shinobi greeting that could only be answered correctly by someone who'd trained under the same doctrine.
Dev answered correctly, with the respect of her rank present.
Dan stood alert and to the left, slightly back while Raven worked.
She was better at this kind of approach.
The careful establishment of trust through shared reference, the methodical revelation of information that made cooperation feel like the only rational choice.
The story unfolded in the way these things did: incrementally, each piece landing before the next was offered.
Dev's involvement had been unwitting—or mostly unwitting.
He'd been passing information through a contact he believed was connected to a legitimate martial arts organization.
Recruitment of the most talented, the best at certain skillsets.
The information had been used in ways Dev hadn't known about and hadn't chosen, and he was pissed.
Dan recognized the expression on his face.
The feeling of having been used without knowing it.
It leaves a mark on a person.
Dev gave them what he had. His contact’s name and how and where he’d reached out to them. He also gave a location reference that Ring no doubt immediately began processing through Raven's earpiece.
“Is there anything else you can give us?”
Dev drew a deep breath and put his hands on his hips.
“Maybe. There was a man who was quiet and watchful here just before contact was made about the recruitment deal. I recognized it in his movement, his silence, and the precision of how he spoke to my assistant. I didn’t get his name; he was allegedly here to find a new dojo, but I do believe he was one of us. I hope that helps.”
“It does,” Raven acknowledged. “Can you describe him?”
“Tall, over six feet. Scars on his face. He wore sweats and a hoodie. I didn’t recognize him.”
“Everything helps, thank you,” Raven said as she exchanged looks with Dan across Dev's shoulder. They were getting closer.
* * *
The hotel between Singapore and Buenos Aires was in Kuala Lumpur.
It was also a crew rest stop for twelve hours and not worth unpacking.
They sat in the hotel bar and reviewed Ring's latest cross-referencing on her tablet.
The bar was quiet at that hour, mostly other travelers in transit, nobody paying attention to the two people looking at a screen.
Ring's voice came through Raven's earpiece, and she narrated what was relevant.
"The Maddox Venn ID from Noor checks out. Ring traced the funding channel. It connects to a shell company in Luxembourg that also appears in Dev's contacts' financial trail."
"The network is bigger than the five profiles."
"Yeah, I’m sure it always was." She scrolled. "He wants to know if you have independent intel on the Luxembourg connection."
Dan looked at the shell company name. At the pattern of transactions Ring had mapped.
"Tell him I tracked a payment from that entity to a Warsaw cell three years ago. I didn't know what it was connected to."
“He can hear you. Hold on.” She listened to Ring's response.
"The Warsaw connection is now in the dataset. He's building something."
Dan huffed. "Ring is always building something."
She almost smiled as she set the tablet down.
He was aware that the distance between them was small. He couldn't say when it had started closing. It had been gradually, incrementally weaving together the way trust rebuilt itself in people who'd been trained to distrust everything.
He reached across the table and took her hand in his. “You said it was a certainty.” He’d existed on that sentence since she’d said it.
“It is. I …” She took a deep breath. “I don’t want to hurt you, but what you did broke me.
It broke me hard. Getting you back, it’s righted my world, but when it did, all the broken pieces fell all over the place.
I’m putting them back, Dan. I’m working hard to make sure I’m not being untruthful to myself and to you.
My feelings for you have changed and morphed into an intensity I didn’t know I could have.
Please give me the time to make sure I am pieced together, that my mind and my heart are in tune.
“As I said, I’ll wait forever.” He squeezed her hand. “We should get back to the plane.”
She stared at him and then smiled. “You won’t have to wait forever. I promise.”
* * *
Buenos Aires was in the throes of autumn. The southern hemisphere's version was golden-lit and edged with a chill in the night air. The city had wide boulevards, European facades, jacaranda trees bare of blossoms but not yet bare of leaves.
Kade Yamamoto's signal came back within a half hour of them sending the approach.
Dan felt the wrongness immediately. "He answered too fast.”
Raven was already agreeing. "The location he specified … Ring said it’s a warehouse district, south of the city. Two access routes, both visible from the right position."
Dan rubbed a hand over his face. "He thinks we're Scroll."
"Yeah, and he’s prepared for us. But why?"
“I’m willing to bet he’s been dodging them." Dan looked at the address. Thought about Kade Yamamoto at nineteen. The guy was quiet, precise, carrying the specific damage of someone who'd been given intense attention and then had it withdrawn. "This is a survival instinct; it isn’t Scroll."
"I agree. Ring says there are three confirmed choke points and limited egress. He’s built a kill box."
"We go in," Dan said. "Prepared."
Raven looked at him and rolled her eyes … again, before she drawled, "Obviously." Her tone obvious with the unsaid meaning: I'm an assassin, Dan.
He almost smiled.
* * *
The warehouse had concrete floors and metal shelving, with dim light from dirty windows.
Dan catalogued it in the first three seconds.
There were three entry points, a mezzanine level above with sightlines to the entire floor, and two entities held positions up there.
He could sense the stillness of trained people waiting.
Kade stepped out of the shadows at the far end.
He was bigger than Dan remembered and harder. The years of mercenary work were visible in how he carried himself. He had the economy of someone who'd survived things that shouldn't have been survivable. His face was closed, and his decision was already made.
"Thirty seconds," Kade said. "Tell me who sent you."
"Nobody sent us," Raven said. "We're not Scroll."
Dan stepped forward into better light. Giving Kade something to recognize.
"We trained under the same man," Dan said. "We're not here for the Scroll. We're here because of them."
The silence stretched.
Above, on the mezzanine, the stillness fractured.