The Chaos Kind (John Rain #11)(108)

Rain took hold of the handle. It turned smoothly. The door opened a crack. And why not? The guy lived on twenty-three gated acres, with multiple cameras and a private security force. Why would he bother locking doors?

His heart kicked up a notch. “Dox,” he said quietly into his lapel mic. “You still with us?”

“Of course. You didn’t hear me zeroing the HK?”

“We didn’t hear anything.”

“Hah, these OSS suppressors are the best. About the only sound is the action of the bolt. Anyway, you’re good to go. Lost you when you were on the other side of the trees, but I can see you again.”

“Okay. Let’s see if Grimble is in here.”





chapter

seventy-two





RAIN


Rain went in first, followed by Larison, with Livia bringing up the rear, all with guns drawn. Rain didn’t like leaving the rest of them, but Delilah was a competent shooter, and as for Manus, Dox wasn’t in the habit of handing out praise like “solid” and “force of nature” without good reason. It would be okay. Depending on how things went, the rest could come in after, with Manus staying behind as sentry and, if it came to that, trip wire.

He saw it immediately. It was impossible to miss—both because the space was enormous and because every inch of it was subsumed by a vast yet shrunken world. There were mountains and forests and rivers, the colors and textures utterly convincing. Grass and mud and rock. Hundreds of figurines, each perhaps three inches tall, fighting dozens—no, scores—of separate battles, with every manner of weapon: swords and spears and pikes, long bows, crossbows, and muskets. There were ashigaru foot soldiers and bajutsu mounted cavalry, battle flags, helmeted samurai in Azuchi-Momoyama armor of extraordinary detail. Bombs captured midexplosion, clouds of dirt erupting above the earth. Wounded men, the ground beneath them stained red, their bodies contorted so realistically Rain had to blink to be sure they weren’t writhing in agony. The room was quiet—in fact, so silent it hummed with a slight cavernous echo—and yet the scene was so comprehensive that he felt sure he could hear the din of muskets firing and swords clashing and shouts of rage and cries of pain. Bathed in natural light from a long wall of glass on the eastern length of the room and overlooking the pond, in no respect did it feel like a diorama, or like any other artificial thing. Instead, the overall effect was of an actual climactic day that had somehow been sliced from the distant past, to be reduced and reanimated here in this room.

And to the right, at the far end of the space, looking bizarrely like a giant who had blundered onto the edge of the scene, was Grimble. He was staring through a jeweler’s lamp, intent on something he was working on—a figurine, Rain thought, though he was too far away to be sure.

The surface of the scene was about four feet off the floor. And while there was enough space along each side for two people to pass, the interior would have been impossible to reach without portals accessible from underneath. Larison was squatting, no doubt after having the same thought, to confirm no one was lurking underneath, however unlikely that might be.

Larison stood, and the movement must have registered in Grimble’s ambient vision. He pushed away the jeweler’s lamp and looked up at them through an enormous pair of wireless eyeglasses, each lens half the size of a scuba mask. His thinning brown hair was held back in a ponytail, and his cheeks were so chubby they extended past his ears. There was no alarm in his expression, only curiosity.

“Who let you in?” he said.

“Larry,” Rain said. “The guard.” He started walking toward Grimble, the Glock low along his thigh, Livia and Larison following.

Grimble blinked. “He’s not supposed to do that. What do you want?”

Evie had been right—the man was looking in their direction, but his gaze was off to the side. The effect was of talking to a sightless person relying only on sound to gauge their position.

“We need your help,” Rain said.

Grimble blinked again, his eyes magnified in the giant lenses, and looked at the ceiling. He was wearing a white turtleneck, Rain saw, and what looked like a red, pleated robe.

“Are you with a startup?” Grimble said. “You can’t just come to my house. There’s a whole investing team; they handle that kind of thing.”

Rain kept walking. “We had to talk to you directly.”

“Directly, directly, directly. Everybody always says directly. It’s not fair to interrupt me. To intrude on my privacy.”

Rain stopped about ten feet away and holstered the Glock. Grimble must have seen it, at least in his peripheral vision, but the fact that Rain was armed seemed to mean nothing to him. Maybe he was used to having armed guards. Maybe he didn’t understand guns the way people who used them did.

“If that’s the Fuji River,” Rain said, pointing, “I’m guessing that figurine you’re working on is Fukushima Masanori.”

Grimble looked out the window.

“I’ve always had him holding his sword in his right hand,” Grimble said. “But recently, some of my people alerted me to scholarship suggesting Masanori was left-handed. One of my first pieces, and it was wrong, wrong, wrong. Is that a gun you have?”

Rain acted as though he hadn’t heard. He looked at the area in front of Grimble. “Then that must be Shimazu Yoshihiro. Who refused Ishida’s order to reinforce Ishida’s right flank.”