Masuyo turned back around and hissed, “Who are you?”
The woman took off her sunglasses. Victoria Steers said, “Hello, Mama.”
Masuyo sucked in a breath. “You are dead.”
“Yes, you’re right. To the world I am dead.”
Masuyo smiled triumphantly. “But now you have placed yourself in my power, you stupid child. You will get me out of this prison, or I will tell the world that you are really alive. And all your enemies will gather and crush you.”
“There is no need for histrionics,” said Steers calmly. “We actually came here to free you from this place. Walter has come to support me in that endeavor.”
Masuyo eyed the man closely and nodded. “Yes, I see him now behind the beard and long hair. Two peas in a pod, Daughter. Well, how do you plan to free me?”
The visit here had been arranged with the FBI’s and the CIA’s full blessing, although Steers was awaiting her own punishment by the American authorities and was technically under arrest and in custody. This visit was a reward for Steers’s helping the U.S. government. It had also been approved to avoid a potentially embarrassing incident for China, which the current U.S. administration intended to hold over Beijing’s head to gain the upper hand on certain disagreements between the two superpowers.
In response, Steers reached up and lifted the back of the blond wig. When she brought her hands back down, she was holding a small plastic tube with a screw-top. Inside the tube was a small quantity of liquid.
Masuyo looked at the tube and then up at her daughter. “What is this? You play stupid games when time is of the essence.”
“They seek the death penalty against you,” said Nash.
“I am aware of that.”
“It’s by lethal injection,” interjected Nash.
“Not exactly what you did to poor Hiroko-san, but close enough,” added Steers.
“What?” snapped Masuyo. “You talk of that foolish old womannow?”
“Hiroko-san was not foolish.Youare the foolish one,” retorted Steers. “All your life you worked and sacrificed for your masters, and at the one moment when you truly needed them, they abandoned you. Do you see now, Mama, finally, howyouare the fool?”
“I am. . .I am sure they are at this moment conceiving of. . .of a plan—”
“There is no plan. There is nothing. Except for this.” She held up the tube. “You can either await the executioner’s injection at some point in the future. Or take the honorable way out and secure your death how, where, and when you and only you choose it. I give you this opportunity though I owe you nothing. Nothing,” she said again.
“So you, too, abandon your mother in her hour of need?”
“Hiroko-san was my mother. I called you Mama as a mere technicality. You were never a mother to me. You were the opposite of a mother. You are vile and disgusting and you raised me to be the same.”
Steers paused and looked at Nash, who nodded in support. Then she looked back at the woman. “But in this you have failed, Masuyo. I am not you. I will never be you. I am Victoria, my father’s daughter.”
“Your real father—”
“My father was Joseph Steers, a good man whom you murdered for no reason other than that you are evil beyond all comprehension.”
Steers set the tube in front of her mother and sat back looking expectant. “It is your choice,Masuyo. You can let them kill you. Or you can make your own choice.”
She and Nash rose.
Masuyo crumpled and gasped, “No, Daughter, do not leave me here alone. Please. I will do whatever you tell me—”
“Itellyou to make a choice. Now.”
“Only cowards take their own lives.”
“Goodbye, Masuyo. We will never see one another again. And your executioner will decide your time of death. I hope it is the most agonizing wait of your amoral life.” She reached for the tube.
But before Steers could take it, a desperate Masuyo grabbed the tube, unscrewed the top, and swallowed the contents. She looked up wide-eyed at her daughter.
