Rules of the Hunt by Victor O'Reilly

trust
each other.   I asked specially for
Tanabu- san ."
    I know your
lips and your tongue and your loins and every inch of your exquisite body,
thought Adachi, but trust?   Here we are
in uncharted waters.   "I am honored, sensei ," he said to the
prosecutor, but including Chifune in the remark.   He bowed again toward her.   "It will be a pleasure," he added,
somewhat stiffly.   He felt decidedly
disconcerted.
    Chifune said
nothing.   She did not really have
to.   She just looked at him in that
peculiar way of hers and smiled faintly.

     
    *           *           *           *           *

     
    Adachi's
apartment was not a ninety-minute commute away in some godforsaken suburb.   It was a comfortable two-bedroom,
one-living-room affair of reasonable size on the top floor of a building in the
Jinbocho district conveniently close to police headquarters.   The area specialized in bookshops and, for
some obscure reason, cutlery shops selling an intimidating array of very sharp
instruments.
    Just up the
road was Akihabara, where anything and everything electronic could be
purchased.   Turn in the other direction
and there were the moat and grounds of the
Imperial
Palace
and, nearby, the Yasukuni Shrine, the memorial to the war dead.
    The area had
character and amenities, and it was on a subway route.   It was a nice place to live.   Occasionally, Adachi jogged up the road and
rented a rowing boat and paddled around the moat of the
Imperial
Palace
.   Other times, he took his ladder and went up
through the roof-light onto the flat roof with a bottle of sake and sunbathed.   There
was a low parapet around the edge of the roof, so he had a modicum of privacy.
    He also used
to make love on the roof from time to time, but the advent of the police
airship rather took the fun out of that.   It tended to hand around central Tokyo quite a lot, and he had been up
in it and knew what you could see from a thousand feet with good surveillance
equipment.
    Like most
Japanese homes, Adachi's was decorated in a mixture of Japanese and Western
styles but all blended in a distinctively Japanese way.   Western furniture, where used, was modified
for the shorter and slighter average Japanese physique.   In Adachi's case, since he was tall, it was a
modification he could have done without.
    Adachi had
been reared to sit upright on the floor when required like any civilized human
being, and could maintain that position for hours without any discomfort.   But his present posture was less traditional.   He was sprawled out on the tatami mat floor of his living room with
his head on a pillow.   The room was in
semidarkness, lit only by two candles.
    Facing him,
slightly to one side, was Chifune, also on the floor but sitting in a manner
considered more appropriate for her sex.   Her legs were tucked under her and she was resting back on them, her
hands in her lap.   She looked submissive
and demure, every Japanese man's dream, which only goes to show, thought
Adachi, that what you see is rarely what you get.
    She was
wearing a short Western skirt of some soft beige material, and in that position
it was well above her knees.   She had
removed the matching jacket.   Her blouse
was cream-colored and sleeveless.
    She was truly
delectable.   The Beretta automatic pistol
she carried in a holster tucked inside the waistband of her skirt in the small
of her back had been removed and place in her purse.   She also carried a silencer, Adachi knew, and
two spare magazines of hollow-points.   The weapon was more than a precaution.   It was meant to be used.   Still,
she did not look in a shooting mood at the moment.
    Adachi tried
to remember where he had left his revolver and when he had last trained with
it, but neither answer came quickly to mind.   Those were tomorrow's problems.   He looked through the skylight at the glow that was the
Tokyo
night sky when it was cloudy, and
missed the stars.
    He