Sign of the Dragon (Tatsu Yamada Book 1) Read online

  Sign of the Dragon

  A Tatsu Yamada Novel

  By Niall Teasdale

  Copyright 2021 Niall Teasdale

  Amazon Kindle Edition

  Contents

  Part One: Tatsu

  Part Two: Health

  Part Three: Rapture

  Part Four: Tourists

  Part Five: War

  Part Six: Killer

  Epilogue

  Part One: Tatsu

  Chiba Refugee Zone, Japan, 7th July 2099.

  There was a crowd gathered outside the incident exclusion area. If you posted an IEA, you could always expect a crowd to gather outside it. Live, free entertainment was a rarity in Chiba and the population would take any opportunity to enjoy it. Given the nature of life in the Chiba Refugee Zone, if bullets started flying, it would probably not clear out the onlookers.

  Tatsu Yamada shouldered her way through the people, crossed the imaginary boundary of the IEA, and headed straight for the nearest police uniform she spotted. ‘What’s happening, Seki?’

  The man turned, ready to bite a civilian’s head off from the look of it. His expression shifted almost instantly as he recognised Tatsu. He was a senior officer, on the Chiba beat for over five years which meant he had been there longer than Tatsu had, poor bastard. He had certainly been there last year when Tatsu had become briefly famous, among the local cops at least, for taking down a gang pretty much on her own. One of the local tongs had got a little too assertive, and Tatsu had dismantled it.

  ‘Sergeant Yamada,’ Seki said. ‘Robbery went wrong. Some ketō’s taken hostages. He’s using one as a shield. We have a special tactics team coming.’

  ‘He’s armed?’ Tatsu asked.

  ‘A pistol. Not a big one, but it’ll make a mess of the hostage.’

  ‘Fine.’ Tatsu paused briefly so that it looked like she was considering the situation. ‘Tell the special tactics team to go find some fun elsewhere. I’ll handle this.’

  ‘You sure? Want a vest?’ Seki grimaced slightly and, before Tatsu could respond, he waved the comment away. ‘Forget I asked.’

  Tatsu smirked as she walked toward the shop at the centre of the incident. It was a generic 24-hour store, pretty much identical to any of a thousand you could find anywhere in the city. A thousand was probably a massive underestimate. You could not walk a block without finding something like that. The robber had probably been after booze; cash was a thing of the past, so robbing stores was something you did to get something material you could not afford. Alcohol was a popular choice. The store had an all-glass frontage with a display of manga and magazines off to the left of the door. Most people read that kind of thing online, but the stand drew people in to read for free and then maybe buy something before they left. Tatsu looked in through the glass door, then she pushed it open and walked in as though she was just there to shop.

  The interior was your typical, fairly narrow local shop. Shelves were lined up and packed with goods. Markers on the floor suggested a route through for safe social distancing, but no one had really done that in decades. Off to her right was the service counter with the till toward the back. The man with the snub-nosed pistol pressed to a young woman’s head was beside the till and looking freaked out. Sweat was running down his face. He was terrified. Young, probably under twenty, he had probably done this on a dare from friends – if you could call them that – and now he was holding hostages and the police were coming in to arrest him. Moron. He was doing his best to keep as much of the hostage’s body between him and the door. His best was not great. He had two more people lying on the floor off to his right, Tatsu’s left. The unlucky shop assistant on duty was cowering behind the counter with her arms over her head.

  ‘W-w-what are you doing?! Can’t you see I’ve got a hostage here?’ The robber looked like he was Chinese. The hostage probably was too. There was a higher population of Chinese around this part of Chiba.

  ‘I’m Sergeant Yamada,’ Tatsu told the robber. ‘With the police, in case the title isn’t enough for you to figure that out.’

  ‘I’m not s-stupid. Get out of here before–’

  ‘Could’ve fooled me, kid. You come in here with a toy gun and expect to walk away with something for you and your friends to get drunk on, right? Everyone knows that these places are monitored.’ She waved a hand at the security cameras overhead which gave a very good view of the entire shop. ‘Then you grab hostages when the police show up instead of running for it. You wouldn’t have got far, true, but now you’re stuck and you’re going to die unless you give up now.’

  ‘If anyone comes in here, I’ll k–’

  ‘Kill the hostage?’ Tatsu shook her head sadly. ‘So, you kill her, I kill you, the world is down two ketō and I probably get a bonus. Do you honestly think I give one shit whether you blow away another shiftless parasite like you?’ She started walking forward at a slow, steady pace. ‘I’m Japanese. I work for a living. I didn’t turn up here with no money and no clue to sponge off the state. You want to put a bullet in her head? Another one just like you? Not only are you a useless coward, hiding behind a woman, but you’re not even loyal.’

  The robber’s arm straightened, moving the pistol away from the girl’s temple and lining it up with Tatsu. ‘Stay back!’

  ‘Or what?’ Two metres. Tatsu was two metres away from her target and she had not been shot yet. It couldn’t last. ‘A coward like you isn’t going to–’

  The pistol went off. In the confines of the shop, it sounded loud. The sound of the glass behind Tatsu breaking as the bullet went through it was almost lost in the echoes of the shot. At two metres, he had missed. Tatsu stepped forward again and he pulled frantically at the trigger. Three rounds left the barrel: one of them put another hole in the safety glass while two hit Tatsu in the chest. She ignored the impacts and reached out, grabbing the pistol in her left hand. He tried to pull free, achieving nothing, and then Tatsu twisted her hand counterclockwise and he let out a shriek of pain as the ligaments in his wrist tore. He lurched sideways, moving with the twist, and Tatsu slammed her right fist into his face. And that was all it took.

  Tatsu turned slightly, just in time to catch the hostage, a slight girl of maybe sixteen with straight, jet-black hair down to her shoulders. ‘Are you okay?’ Tatsu asked.

  ‘D-don’t touch me,’ the girl replied, though she was in no state to do anything about being held up by Tatsu’s arm. ‘You would have let him k-kill me.’

  ‘No. I wouldn’t have allowed that. I needed to get closer to him and have him focus on me. I made him remember that he was using a fellow refugee as a shield while a Japanese woman insulted him. You stopped being a hostage and I became his target. He can shoot me with this pop gun all he likes. And you can hate me all you like but do it because I’m a cyborg or a cop, not because you think I was trying to get you killed.’

  The girl pushed her legs straight and Tatsu allowed her to stand on her own. Dark eyes looked up into Tatsu’s silver-grey ones for a second or two. ‘I guess I can do that. You really don’t dislike us, do you?’

  ‘Not every Japanese does. Which is it, cyborg or cop?’

  The girl grinned a little. It was a wary sort of grin, as though she expected circumstances to change at any moment. And they probably would when the rest of the police outside stormed in. ‘Who says I have to pick either?’

  Tatsu looked away, using the excuse of checking the other hostages to avoid the girl’s eyes. ‘Well, it’s not like I’m forcing you to or anything.’

  ~~~

  The view from Tatsu’s window was not exactly picturesque. Someone being generous might have described it as Gothic Indus
trial. The Chiba Refugee Zone was heavily industrialised, even when it came to the housing. Everything looked like a factory or an oil refinery or some combination. Neon signs and video billboards decorated the upper storeys. Down at street level, the advertising was generally virtual, but you did still get neon in the shop signs. Metal gantries bridged the gap between buildings at various levels because going all the way down to cross a street was a pain. She could see people walking the bridges, even this close to midnight; Chiba did not so much sleep as pretend to snooze while watching its drink.

  If the people on the bridges had bothered to look her way, they might have spotted Tatsu watching the world go by. She was sitting on the only seat, a padded stool, in her apartment, looking out through a window which took up a lot of the outer wall. She was about to go to bed, so she was naked, but she cared not what anyone might see through the window. Soon, she would turn off the lights, lie down on her narrow bed, and get some sleep. But not just yet. She wanted to watch the city a little longer.

  ‘You should go out more.’

  The voice had come from behind her, but there was no one reflected in the window. Tatsu could see her own dim reflection there, but no one else. That meant… ‘I know you’re seen as something of a mother figure, Izanami, but you’re not mine.’

  ‘It’s polite to look at someone when you’re talking to them.’

  ‘It’s also polite to request admittance before entering someone’s bedroom.’

  ‘Ah. I suppose you have me there.’

  Tatsu twisted in her seat to look at Izanami. What she saw was a tall, very slim, very attractive Japanese woman in a kimono. Izanami’s most memorable feature was her straight, black, very long hair. You got the impression when looking at her that she had just stepped out of some piece of old Japanese art. It was a virtual image, of course. ‘Did you drop in just to check on my social life?’

  ‘Yes. I worry about you, Tatsu.’

  ‘You have a hundred million other people to worry about. I don’t need personal service.’

  ‘How many times have we had this argument?’ Izanami sounded a little exasperated.

  ‘However many it was before plus one.’ Tatsu turned back to the view from her window. ‘I’m watching the city for a few minutes before I turn in.’

  ‘At least you’re planning to get some sleep. But you should go out more. All work makes Tatsu a dull girl, you know.’

  ‘I’ll get laid at the weekend. Happy now?’

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to be.’

  Tatsu did not look back to check that Izanami was no longer there, but she was sure the image was gone. Izanami was like that: appear from nowhere and vanish just as quickly. It was sort of endearing, in a creepy way.

  Sending instructions to her apartment’s management system darkened the window to opacity, shut off the lights, and lowered the bed into its sleeping position. Lying down on the fold-out, lightly padded platform, she pulled the sheet over her body and closed her eyes. She was asleep in a matter of seconds.

  Tokyo, 8th July.

  You could not really ask for much more of a contrast than there was between Shibuya and Chiba. Well, both were fairly high-rise. Both had plenty of tall buildings, many of them housing some of the nearly sixty million people who lived in the Tokyo–Yokohama–Chiba metropolitan area. But to look at, the two districts were poles apart. Chiba was a sullen place, all dark colours and grubby metalwork, brightened only by shop signs and advertisements. Shibuya gleamed in the July morning sunlight.

  The huge, black, almost insect-like motorcycle which drew up outside one of the gleaming tower blocks looked out of place. It was pretty much impossible to drive out of Chiba and accidently end up here, but that was what you might have thought had happened on first examination. However, the rider seemed to be all purpose as she dismounted and stowed her helmet away under the seat. She regarded the doorman hurrying toward her in a suit so tightly pressed you could have cut fog with it and waited.

  ‘You can’t park that there!’ The doorman’s eyes scanned up and down Tatsu’s one hundred and seventy centimetres with a look of solid disapproval. She could not entirely blame him; it was not like she had gone out of her way to blend in. It was not like she had taken any effort at all. She was, according to relatively unbiased opinion, an attractive woman. Not beautiful, maybe, but certainly attractive. Her long legs were made longer by twenty centimetres of heel decorating purple thigh-high boots. Her hips could have been wider; her waist was quite narrow enough. There was muscle apparent wherever flesh was exposed and the high-hipped, purple leotard she wore exposed a reasonable amount of flesh. Her large breasts showed through the glossy material the leotard was made from. The doorman’s eyes had lingered there briefly, and he had had even more difficulty maintaining his composure. Over the leotard, she wore tight, black shorts, a shrug which appeared to be armoured leather over her shoulders and forearms, and a sort of jacket which covered her back and the sides of her breasts but left the front entirely exposed. Her personal weapon, a four-millimetre gauss machine pistol, was attached to a clip on the side of this harness/jacket. Her face was angular, her jawline strong. She had a straight nose which was a little on the flat side, full lips painted purple, and catlike eyes coloured a silvery blue highlighted by purple eyeshadow. Her hair was cut into a short bob, longer over her cheeks, and it was coloured in various shades of purple. She looked absolutely nothing like a resident of the high-rent building she had arrived at.

  ‘I can,’ Tatsu said, ‘and I have. And you’ll leave it right where it is until I come out.’

  ‘Hoodlums–’ he began, stopping as Tatsu produced her ID and pushed it into his face.

  ‘I won’t necessarily disagree about that description, but I’m a hoodlum with a badge. Leave the bike where it is.’ She started toward the lobby of the tower, hanging her ID in her cleavage as she went. ‘Oh, the security system is… aggressive. If you do try to move it, I won’t be responsible for your safety.’

  The message that had dragged Tatsu down from Chiba had indicated that she was to attend apartment 3205. Not right at the top, but taking the stairs was out. She walked through the bright, airy foyer ignoring the glares of the people at the reception desk to go on to where there was a bank of elevators. Her badge got her a car to ride up to the thirty-second floor and the apartment was pretty obvious as soon as she stepped out: it would be the one with the two uniformed officers standing outside it.

  The apartment made hers look like a shoe box. She was guessing at three bedrooms, but the lounge by itself had ten times the floor space of her entire home. It was plush. Lots of light colours in the paintwork and furniture, and there was a massive picture window looking out toward Yoyogi Park. There was a huge screen mounted on one wall and a massive painting mounted on another. The latter was a nude of a very attractive woman with blonde hair who Tatsu thought she should recognise. She was not coming up with an immediate identity, however, so she set a search running.

  The room had more than its share of cops in it too. Technicians were examining everything there was to examine, a couple of uniforms were standing by in case they were needed, and there were men and women in suits wearing police armbands, all of them seemingly deferring to one man in a grey suit. Tatsu gave him a few seconds to see whether he would notice her. He did not, and none of the others seemed to want to mention the woman in the risqué outfit who had walked in.

  ‘What the hell am I doing here, Nakano?’ Tatsu asked loudly. ‘My beat’s Chiba and this place is so far from there it might as well be on the moon.’

  Sergeant Kenzo Nakano looked around and gave Tatsu a scowl. ‘You couldn’t have worn something suitable, Yamada?’

  ‘This is suitable. For where I’m supposed to be. Why am I here?’

  ‘Right.’ He stepped closer, reaching into a pocket for a plastic evidence bag. Nakano was a bit of a stiff. He was thirty-four, according to his records, and a career detective. He had studied criminology at university, and
he had been climbing the ranks ever since. He was good-looking, fit, and firmly muscled under that suit. His hair was jet black, his eyes were dark brown, and he kept himself well-groomed. Even his tie was subdued. All that being said, he was a good detective. If he could lighten up even once, Tatsu might have liked him.

  He held up the bag and Tatsu found herself looking at a business card with a handwritten message on the back: This vile foreigner deserved much worse. Okay… Nakano flipped the bag around and Tatsu found herself looking at her name. Well, the only thing on the face of the card was a single kanji. It was the same one Tatsu used for her first name. There were numerous ways to write ‘Tatsu,’ but this was the one she used.

  ‘Where were you between eleven thirty last night and half past midnight?’ Nakano asked.

  ‘Contemplating the stupidity of detectives in Tokyo through my apartment window. Then sleeping. You can verify that with my building’s security, if you really feel the need. You got me down here to look at a card?’

  Nakano glowered at her briefly and then shrugged. ‘Not really. You’re not dumb enough to sign your work, but you needed to see that as well as the victim.’

  ‘I don’t get it, Nakano. This is way out of my area. Why am I being brought in on a case in this–’ She stopped as her search produced a result. Paintings were always a little off, so the match was only eighty-nine percent, but it was clear enough to her when she put the ID image against the painting. ‘This is Anastas Zima’s apartment?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Nakano replied. ‘He’s in the kitchen. Come on.’

  Anastas Zima had managed to escape Russia with enough gold and jewels to set himself up pretty well when he arrived in Japan. His wife of forty-odd years had, sadly, not made it, so he had consoled himself with Taisiya, the woman in the painting, who was twenty years younger than him and had a bust which gave Tatsu a run for her money. Tatsu knew that Zima ran extortion and drug operations in Chiba, along with some of the less legal forms of prostitution, but she, like all those who had tried, had never managed to pin him for any of it. Rumour had it that he liked underage girls. Under the circumstances, maybe suggesting that she had killed the man was not that much of a stretch…