Satisfied there was no immediate pursuit, Ma?l had gotten back on course. He was driving fast, but not so fast it would cause someone to report him. There were very few people around, but Tokyo never slept, at least not completely. Convenience stores were always open, 24/7, and there were many. Driving too recklessly could prompt some bored cashier to call the police, not to mention the always present risk of encountering a police patrol. That would be bad.

  So far however, everything was going fine.

  “What’s the plan? We are going to have to ditch that thing somewhere and the sooner the better.”

  That thing was her car, of course.

  “We’re heading to Enoshima. It’s a small peninsula south of Tokyo,” she said pointing at the map on the navigation screen. I have a ship waiting for us there. As long as we can get on board before morning, we should be able make for international waters before anyone picks up our trail. The only problem is the car. They’ll find it almost as soon as they start searching for it, but if we hide it away from the pier, we’d have to walk back there and that would take too long.”

  “I got us a car cover back at Don Quijote, that should buy us at least a week.”

  “That was good thinking.” she said. “‘It might not be enough though. There is always someone checking the plates. We’ll probably get a couple of days at most. Then the plates will be flagged by the system and reported to the police. Still, it’s better than nothing.”

  Japan was a very organized society, and people had little to no tolerance for failure to comply with the rules. God help you if you threw garbage in the wrong bin, let alone did something as egregious as abandoning a car in a parking lot, Ma?l reflected. On the whole, it made Japan a remarkably pleasant place to live, but it certainly wasn’t helping their situation.

  “Are the plates even visible under the car cover?”

  “No, but the guards will lift the cover to check them. Don’t bet on people not doing their job. Best-case scenario, they’ll wait a couple of days.”

  “And what happens when a car stays longer than expected?”

  “Well, they just report an abandoned car with the plate number to the police and the police will send the owner a notification.”

  “So, after two or three days, they would know exactly where we left the car? How long do we need to get away from Japan by boat?”

  “Five or six days at least. We can enter international waters within a day, but that would only protect us from the police. As you’ve seen, the people after me don’t care about the law.”

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  That much was clear. The man on the bike had pulled a gun without even a warning. Whoever was after Kaori wouldn’t care much for lines on a map.

  “To be safe, we’ll need a solid week” she added.

  “How about driving the car into the sea?”

  “Too risky. We might be caught immediately. There are always people around early in the morning, fishermen leaving the ports, dockers… It would be almost impossible to sink a car without someone alerting the authorities on the spot. Not to mention that it IS my car, and I plan on getting it back once the situation gets under control.”

  The man has no chill, but he has a point, she thought. There is no way to ditch the car in Enoshima without letting people know we are leaving by sea. Maybe dropping the car inland and walking across the bridge to the yacht port would force their pursuers to consider other means of transportation, but a simple check with the harbor would reveal the missing ship, and when that happened, they needed to be well on their way or they would get caught.

  Kaori was still battling with the issue when Ma?l stopped the car on the side of the road.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Look at that car.” Ma?l said, pointing at a beaten-up heap of trash sitting in an unkempt parking lot. The old Toyota was surrounded by weeds and had a thick coat of dust. “That’s our car!”

  Did Ma?l plan to steal the car? Weird. Did Ma?l even know how to hotwire a car? And even if he did, odds were good that rust bucket wouldn’t run at all.

  “You want to steal… that?” she asked. Her voice was thick with disappointment. “That thing might not run at all.”

  “Not quite. You said that the parking would report our license plates after about 3 days, right? Normally, that would mean finding your car, putting them immediately on our track. But what if instead of our license plates, they found these license plates?”

  “But… wait, no you’re right, this should work. As long as the license plate numbers haven’t been reported to the police, they’ll just send a letter to the owner of the plates; if nothing happens for a week or so, they’ll consider impounding the car. Assuming everything goes right, we could get a couple weeks before they identify my car. This is brilliant!”

  “There’s still a risk someone reports the plates stolen, but given the state of the car, I doubt anyone’s checking on it.” Ma?l explained. He headed for the car armed with a toolkit he had procured earlier at Don Qui. His instincts had been right; a man should always have tools.

  Lifting the plates of the old car was simplicity itself. Just had to pop the seal with a flat screwdriver and remove a couple screws. Putting the seal back on the new car was slightly more challenging, but a bit of superglue did the trick. As long as you didn’t inspect it too closely, it would look perfectly normal.

  A few minutes later, they were back on the road, driving what was now officially an old Toyota Camry. If the Lexus was offended, it did not show, and they arrived at Enoshima without further delays. They made good time; it was still only 4:30 a.m.

  Finding a place to ditch the car turned out to be rather easy. The nearby temple had a large parking lot, and while it was still on the mainland, they only needed a five to ten minute walk to reach the port. Better still, no one had been around when they parked the car and placed the cover on. They left the license plate visible by wrapping the cover around it: if someone saw the plate, they wouldn’t bother removing the car cover.

  There wasn’t a hint of pink visible; now, they had a chance.