“The United States,” Blaine said.
“Toward this end, five hundred American newborns were kidnapped from the United States between the years 1945 and 1948. The planning was elaborate. Deals were struck with doctors to arrange the babies’ apparent deaths shortly after birth. Since both the doctors and hospitals were carefully selected and well spread out, no pattern was ever detected.”
“That’s monstrous,” Patty snapped.
“So was what the United States did to my country, Miss Hunsecker.”
“I see you’re acquainted with me, too.”
“Quite well. Quite well, indeed.”
“Because of my father. My father was one of these babies, wasn’t he? That’s why he’s dead.”
“Please. We are getting ahead of ourselves. First you must understand our work with the infants. When they reached the age of eighteen months, certain chemical compounds we had discovered that stimulated areas in the brain connected with superachievement and power were injected into their brains. In other words, we altered the chemical balance of the infants’ brains to create the types of personalities desired. With proper programming — and early training — loyalty could be assured as well. Of the five hundred infants in the experiment, two hundred either died or were pronounced unfit. With the three hundred still remaining, we were able to accomplish our acceptable margin of error of one complete success in every three — ninety-seven to be exact — all working in concert toward the goal of virtual economic takeover by Japan.” Takahashi’s gaze turned strangely distant. “They were called the Children of the Black Rain, after the awful force that created the need for their existence in the first place.”
“Which must make you one of the fathers, Takahashi.”
“My mother was pregnant when your bombs fell.” Takahashi slid a hand across the white skin lining his face. “And this is what emerged from her womb as a result — a freak, to use your terminology. There were plenty of us, many much worse than I. We would provide guidance. We would direct the actions of the Children of the Black Rain when our time came, when the original aging founders of the operation passed to their destiny. A smooth transition had to be assured. The plan could not suffer the burden of a different generation coordinating it. So it became our lot to extract revenge for the White Flashes your country set upon mine.”
“But something went wrong, didn’t it?” Blaine challenged.
The albino seemed reluctant to speak. “For some in our number, victory was not enough. They wanted a revenge more fitting the black rain you set falling from our skies. They had been selected for the same good reasons I had been, but all the time they were plotting their own vengeance — without the support or knowledge of the rest of us. Infiltration, yes. Takeover, yes. Virtual enslavement, yes. But accomplished through a much more drastic means, with far more dire results. You see, they knew quite well how the Children of the Black Rain had been created in the first place. And modern technology afforded them the ability to advance the procedure beyond anything the rest of us had ever conceived of.”
“And so the Omicron legion was born?…” Takahashi nodded. “Their own private army, soldiers who could fight their battles for them and become the builders who ensured that, long term, their twisted vision would come to pass. The chemicals we had used to create the Children were replaced by incredibly advanced microchips that, once implanted into the brain of subjects deemed fit, would create the ultimate warrior.”
“Ultimate monster, you mean,” Patty said. “Which makes you a monster, too, because you let it happen. You were a part of it.”
Takahashi stood up and turned sideways, speaking as much to the night as to Blaine and Patty. “And that is why I have chosen to fight it. The small group of rebels in our midst moved against the rest of us before we had fully grasped their plan. All the others who stood apart from them were wiped out. I alone remained — and was able to ascertain exactly what their plan was by lashing out at the traitors. I killed them all, at least thought I had, but obviously their plan accounted for just that eventuality, because one remained at large — one whose identity I had no idea of and could not uncover. This failure left me with no choice other than to destroy the Children of the Black Rain I had devoted my life to protecting. I retained six professional killers of considerable prowess to accomplish that feat.”
Patty gazed up at him, her eyes showing an uneasy mix of rage and frustration. “And one of them killed my father. Forced his car off the road and made it look like an accident. You are a monster, Mr. Takahashi. There could have been other means, other ways.”
“Which wouldn’t have worked any better than the ones I chose to employ did, I’m afraid.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your father isn’t dead, Miss Hunsecker.”
“What?”
Patty stared at Takahashi for what seemed like a very long time. She continued to stare at him even as he spoke again.
“General Berlin Hardesty was the first on our list, and several others followed almost immediately. But we underestimated the Children’s ability to mount a response. They let me think I was succeeding, while all the time I was playing into their hands. The contingency must have been set in place for sometime, a complex communications network made even more complicated by the fact that the very nature of their operation required that the Children not be in contact with one another. But they found a way to spread the word of warning. In the case of your father and many others, we killed doubles, replacements.”
“If my father’s alive, where is he?” Patty demanded. “Where can I find him?”
“Undoubtedly at one of the underground bunkers the Children of the Black Rain have constructed all across your country. But he is not the man you knew as your father, Miss Hunsecker. A child of the Black Rain has no love for anything but the ruthless movement that spawned him.”
“No more ruthless than a man who would send killers after me and my brothers.”
“You were stirring up trouble, casting attention on a pattern of killings we could not afford to have attention drawn to. Please try to understand.” Takahashi came closer to her. “Your father is one of them. Your father is part of a plan to destroy your country as you know it today.”
“I’ve heard that before,” said McCracken. “From the disciple I killed in Rio. Now I’d like to hear how.”
The slightest bit of color seemed to flush into Takahashi’s cheeks. “If it was black rain that forced us to remake our country, so it would be black rain that forces you to remake yours.”
“Nuclear weapons?”
“Nuclear power plants.”
Blaine went cold.
“A dozen or so of them sabotaged, forced into a complete meltdown,” Takahashi continued. “A dozen or more melt-downs, each three or four times the potency of Chernobyl.”
“My God,” Patty muttered.
Takahashi looked her way. “He was not there for us when the black rain fell in 1945, and He will not be there for you when it falls so very soon.”
“But it makes no sense,” she continued. “All these years my father and the others were laying the economic groundwork to take over the country only to destroy it?”