“Nakamura,” said Nick, naming the eighth superdaimyo. Was the don just being a wise-ass, or did this correction mean something?
“Both the Denver PD and the FBI thought that the key to Keigo Nakamura’s murder had nothing to do with local suspects—the mooks I’ve been reinterviewing—but with internal Japanese politics and rivalries,” said Nick. “We just didn’t know enough about those politics or deadly rivalries to make any sort of educated guess, and interviews with Mr. Nakamura and others didn’t help. Those keiretsu… or what you’re now calling zaibatsu again… are essentially above the law in modern-day Japan, or maybe I should say modern-day feudal Japan, so the Japanese police authorities weren’t of any help either.”
Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev gave that toothy, not-really-amused smile again and flicked cigar ashes into the mayonnaise lid. “You don’t even really know who Hideki Sato is, do you, Nick Bottom?”
“He’s Mr. Nakamura’s chief security guy,” said Nick, willing to play the stooge to get more information from this egoist.
Noukhaev laughed softly. “He’s a professional assassin and the head of his own daimyo family—one of the top forty daimyos in Nippon today and not necessarily out of the line of becoming Shogun on his own. Have you heard of Taisha No Shi?”
“No,” said Nick.
“It means ‘Colonel Death,’ ” Noukhaev said. “Do you remember Soong Jin?”
“Not really. Wait… that Chinese actress-turned-warlord about eight years ago?”
“Yes,” said Noukhaev, drawing deeply on his shortening cigar. “Soong—that’s her family name—was China’s last, best hope for reuniting. After she left the movies, she had an army of more than six million fanatics, plus the support of four or five hundred million more Chinese. She also had about six hundred bodyguards, including sixty or so of the best security people in China.”
“And she died in… I can’t remember. Some sort of boating accident,” said Nick.
Noukhaev’s smile looked sincere for a change. “She died when Taisha No Shi—the man you know as Sato—went to China and killed her,” said the don. “Whether on Nakamura’s orders, we do not know.”
“Colonel Death,” repeated Nick, drawing out the syllables. “Sounds cheesy to me. But if you’re suggesting that Sato works without Nakamura’s permission and direction, I find that hard to believe.”
Noukhaev nodded slowly. “Still, Nick Bottom, you need to appreciate that one of the foremost assassins in the world has been assigned to stay with you during your… ah… investigation. Were I in your position, I would treat that fact with sobriety and ponder its implications.”
“Whatever you say,” said Nick. He was tiring of this asshole’s sense of self-importance. “Do you want to tell me something I can use about Keigo Nakamura’s murder?”
Noukhaev smiled thinly. “I just did, Nick Bottom. ‘If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain to be in peril.’ ”
More fucking Sun Tzu, thought Nick. He was beginning to realize that it was Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev who was acting like a second-rate Bond villain. They always tried talking the hero to death rather than just pulling the trigger when they had a chance.
“Can you tell me any questions that Keigo asked that seemed unusual?” asked Nick to change the subject. “Odd? Out of the ordinary?”
Don Noukhaev smiled. “He did ask me if I would distribute F-two the way I’ve distributed flashback. His tone suggested that the fantasy drug was a reality… or would soon be one.”
F-two again, thought Nick and something in him leaped with the hope that Keigo Nakamura had known something no one else did about the fantasy-directed superdrug. With F-two, Nick’s imagination could structure a whole new life with Dara and even with Val, not the surly sixteen-year-old Val but a cute little five-year-old. As Nick understood the promise of the drug, with Flashback-two, there would be no bad memories, only happy fantasies that felt as real as real life. On all levels. And the F-two believers always insisted that unlike being under the flash—where you were always a little separate from the experience, floating above your original self even as you reexperienced things—F-two would be totally immersive.
“What did you tell him?” asked Nick.
Noukhaev laughed. “I told him that I’d sell and distribute any drug that people wanted, if it were real… which F-two isn’t. We’ve all heard the rumors of it forever. It’s an impossible drug. Take heroin or cocaine if you want fantasies, I told him.”
“And what did Keigo Nakamura say to that?” asked Nick. Part of him was crestfallen that the rumors of F-two were still just fantasy rumors. But Keigo asked the poet Danny Oz if he would use F-two. What the hell was Keigo Nakamura up to?
“Keigo changed the subject,” said Noukhaev. “Which I am going to do as well. Are you aware, Nick Bottom, of who wants all this land that used to be New Mexico, Arizona, and southern California?”
“I would take a wild guess and say Mexico… or Nuevo Mexico or whatever the hell the reconquistas call themselves hereabouts,” said Nick. “Given that it’s their goddamned troops, tanks, and millions of colonists squatting on most of it and fighting for the rest.”
Noukhaev blew blue smoke and shook his head. The lined, rugged face looked mildly disappointed—an aging tutor discouraged by his pupil’s thickheadedness. “You’ve truly been away, haven’t you, Nick Bottom? Lost in your flashback dreams and your incessant self-pity? The first man ever to lose a wife.”
Nick felt his face flush and his anger grow, but he held it down, attempting to ignore the adrenaline surge that made him want to smash in Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev’s head with…
With what? The chair he was sitting on was the only loose thing in the room that he could use as a weapon, and it was just too damned light to be of any real use. And Nick had no doubt whatsoever that Noukhaev had a pistol in his belt under that loose white shirt he wore outside his trousers.
But Nick didn’t have to answer the rhetorical insult and decided to change the subject.
“All right,” said Nick. “If not Mexico, who? Japan?”
“What would Japan do with all this space—mostly desert—with their declining birthrate?” asked Noukhaev, obviously enjoying his little performance as schoolteacher. “I know that foreign events isn’t your forte, Detective First Grade Nick Bottom, but put your addled shoulder to the wheel… think! What aggressive and thriving political entity needs Lebensraum and more Lebensraum? And is used to deserts?”
“The Caliphate?” said Nick at last. It was not a statement, just some dumbfounded syllables. He heard himself repeat the idea. “The Global Caliphate? Here in the Southwest? That’s… absurd. Absolutely ridiculous.”
Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev clasped both hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair, the cigar firmly clamped between his strong teeth. He said nothing.
“Worse than absurd,” said Nick, waving his hand as if batting away a fly. “Impossible.”
But… was it?
The world’s Muslim population, according to CNN or Al Jazeera–USA or wherever the hell Nick had heard it, had just reached 2.2 billion people. Of those, according to polls the network had quoted, more than 90 percent claimed membership in the Islamic Global Caliphate, even if they were in nations that weren’t yet technically part of the expansive regime with its tripartite capitals in Tehran, Damascus, and Mecca.