“Any advice for a condemned man?”
Nogami motioned around the room. “The walls have more eyes and ears than a theater audience. If I dared cheer for your side, I’d be forced to join you out on the field. No thanks, Mr. Pitt. I’m greatly saddened by your predicament, but you have nobody to blame but yourself for dipping your oars in dangerous waters.”
“But you will see what you can do for my knee.”
“As a doctor I’ll do my best to ease your pain. I’m also under orders by Kamatori to see that you’re fit for the chase tomorrow.”
Nogami shot Pitt’s knee with some unpronounceable drug that was supposed to deaden pain and wrapped it with athletic tape. Then he gave Pitt a small bottle of pills. “Take two of these every four hours. Don’t overdose, or you’ll become groggy and make an easy mark for Kamatori.”
Pitt had carefully watched as the nurse went back and forth into a small supply room for the tape and pills. “Do you mind if I borrow one of your empty beds and relax for a while. Those Japanese sleeping mats aren’t built for these bones.”
“Okay by me. I’ll notify your guard robot that I’m keeping you under observation for an hour or two.” Nogami looked at him steadily. “Don’t even think of trying to escape. There are no windows or rear exits in here, and the robots would be all over your ass before you took two steps toward the elevator.”
“Not to worry,” Pitt said with a friendly smile. “I fully intend to save my strength for tomorrow’s fun.”
Nogami nodded. “Take the first bed. It has the softest mattress. I use it myself. The one Western vice I refuse to give up. I can’t stand those damn tatami mats either.”
“The bathroom?”
“Through the supply room to your left.”
Pitt shook the doctor’s hand. “I’m grateful to you, Dr. Nogami. A pity we see things through a different lens.”
After Nogami returned to his office and the nurse sat back down at her desk with her back to him, Pitt hobbled to the bathroom, only he didn’t enter but merely opened and closed the door with the required sounds to allay any suspicions. The nurse was busy filling out papers at her desk and did not turn to observe his actions through the door of the supply room.
Then he quietly searched the drawers and shelves of medical supplies until he found a box of plastic bags attached to thin tubes with eighteen-gauge needles on their ends. The bags were marked CPDA-1 Red Blood Cells with anticoagulant solution. He removed one of the bags from the box and shoved it inside his shirt. It didn’t make even the slightest bulge.
A mobile X-ray unit stood in one corner of the room. He stared at it briefly, an idea forming in his mind. Using his fingernails, he worked free a plastic manufacturer’s nameplate and used it to unscrew the rear panel. He rapidly twisted off the connectors to a pair of six-volt dry-cell rechargeable batteries and removed one, slipping it down the front of his pants. Then he ripped out as much of the electrical wiring as he could without an excess of suspicious sound and wrapped it around his waist.
Finally he stepped softly into the bathroom, used it, and flushed the toilet. The nurse didn’t even look up as he settled onto the bed. In his office, Nogami seemed absorbed, talking in hushed tones on the phone.
Pitt stared at the blank ceiling, his mind at ease. It wasn’t exactly what Jordan and Kern would call an earth-shattering master plan, but it was all he had, and he intended to play it to the hilt.
49
MORO KAMATORI DIDN’T merely look evil, he was evil. The pupils of his eyes never changed from the violent black poisonous stare, and when the tight lips parted in a smile, which was seldom, they revealed a set of teeth laced with more gold than the Comstock Lode.
Even at that early hour—at five o’clock the sky was still dark—he had a fastidious arrogance about him. He was immaculately dressed in a hakama, baggy trousers that were almost a divided skirt, and an Edo-period kataginu, a brocaded silk style of sleeveless hunting jacket. He wore only sandals on his feet.
Pitt, on the other hand, looked like a refugee from a rag picker’s bin. He was clad only in a T-shirt and a pair of shorts cut off from the bottoms of his flying suit. His feet were clad in a pair of white sweat socks.
After being awakened and escorted to Kamatori’s personal study, he stood shivering in the unheated room, taking in every detail of the walls that were filled with antique weapons of every historic era from around the world. Suits of armor, European and Japanese, stood like soldiers at attention in the middle of the room. Pitt felt a wave of revulsion in his stomach at the trophies neatly spaced between hundreds of swords, spears, bows, and guns.
He counted thirty mounted heads of Kamatori’s hapless human victims staring sightlessly into space from unblinking glass eyes. Most were Asian, but four had Caucasian features. His blood iced as he recognized Jim Hanamura’s head.
“Come in, Mr. Pitt, and have a cup of coffee,” invited Kamatori, motioning Pitt to a vacant cushion beside a low table. “We’ll talk a few minutes before—”
“Where are the others?” Pitt interrupted.
Kamatori stared coldly. “They are seated in a small auditorium next door, where they will view the hunt on a video screen.”
“Like an audience watching a bad late-night movie.”
“Perhaps the last to run the hunt will profit by the mistakes of those who go before.”
“Or perhaps they’ll close their eyes and miss the show.”
Kamatori sat very still, the barest hint of a smile touching the corner of his taut lips. “This is not an experiment. The procedure has been refined through experience. The prey wait their turn tied to chairs, and if need be, with their eyes taped open. They have every opportunity to witness your demise.”
“I trust you’ll send my residuals from the reruns to my estate,” Pitt said, seemingly gazing at the heads adorning the walls, fighting to ignore the horrifying display while concentrating on a rack of swords.
“You put up a very good facade of courage,” Kamatori observed. “I’d have expected no less from a man of your reputation.”
“Who goes next?” Pitt asked abruptly.
The butcher shrugged. “Your friend Mr. Giordino, or maybe the female operative. Yes, I think hunting her down will raise the others to a furious pitch, inciting them to become more dangerous as prey.”
Pitt turned. “And if you cannot catch one of us?”
“The island is small. No one has eluded me for more than eight hours.”
“And you give no quarter.
“None,” said Kamatori, the evil smile widening. “This is not a child’s game of hide-and-seek with winners and losers. Your death will be quick and clean. That’s a promise.”
Pitt stared the samurai in the eye. “Not a game? Seems to me I’m to play Sanger Rainsford to your General Zaroff.”
Kamatori’s eyes squinted. “The names are not familiar to me.”
“You’ve never read The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell? It’s a classic story of a man who hunts his fellow man for sport.”
“I do not taint my mind by reading Western literature.”
“Glad to hear it,” Pitt said, mentally adding a slight edge to his chances of staying alive.
Kamatori pointed toward the door. “The time has come.”
Pitt held his mark. “You haven’t explained the ground rules.”
“There are no ground rules, Mr. Pitt. I generously give you an hour’s start. Then I begin to hunt you armed only with my sword, an ancestral weapon that has been in my family for several generations and has seen much enemy blood.”
“Your samurai ancestors must be real proud of a descendant who stains their honor by murdering unarmed and defenseless.”