Angel Eyes (14 page)

"Then the army comes in, and disperses them," Valeri pointed out.

"Only until the young people become their own army."

Bondasenko thought about this for some time. He knew that Irina's position in the Ministry of Education allowed her to observe firsthand many of the Western trends of which he was as yet ignorant. He would do well, he knew, to listen to her advice. "Your criticism I can take. It's constructive. It's Mars Volkov's criticism that must be silenced." He rose, but did not take his eyes off her. ''Please keep that in mind tonight when your head is snuggled comfortably into his chest.''

Two days after Kakuei Sakata's public suicide, a certain envelope arrived by mail. It was odd: square-shaped, of heavy handmade paper. Honno Kansei took it out of the mailbox on her way to work. The letter was from Kakuei Sakata.

It was dated the day he had killed himself. There was a folded piece of note paper inside. Honno opened it on the subway to Kasumigaseki, discovered a small key and nothing else. No note, no explanation.

Now she began to feel a wind rising, the first chill brush of the maelstrom that Sakata had spoken of. For thirty-six hours the television, radio, and newspapers had been filled with reports and spectacular photos of the death of Kakuei Sakata. And swirls of speculation rippled outward from that one violent and chilling act of social conscience. She had seen her boss, Kunio Michita, interviewed on the news, in much the same way that the former prime minister had been publicly grilled several years before, except that Michita was so telegenic, he emerged with increased face. One channel preempted its favorite nighttime soap opera to present a half-hour special live from Sengakuji, the site of Sakata's suicide.

That morning, Honno went to work and, with the key in the moist palm of her hand, brought Kunio Michita his mail and his cup of freshly brewed coffee. She watched Kunio Michita, a small, dapper man with silver hair and a neat mustache, pick through his mail. She dutifully took down the dictation he gave her, reminded him of his full day of appointments, meetings, conference calls, and interviews. In private he gave off conflicting signals. While he seemed genuinely upset at his go-between's unexpected death, he also appeared almost buoyant at the prospect of the media coverage. He was exceptionally skilled in front of the cameras, and he knew it. In fact, from his first interview on television, widespread support for him, both financial and otherwise, had begun to pour in. It was beginning to look to Honno as if Michita had found his metier at last.

''Our bid for the Osaka Ceramics has been approved,'' Kunio Michita said, "so, would you inform our contracts department. ''He rubbed his hands together. "That makes sixteen bids this year we've successfully negotiated." He handed her a thick file. "And I've decided to close our petrochemical division. We've got to gear up Michita Satcom to beat the satellite delivery deadlines. I have a hunch the government will give us a fat incentive for those moves." He handed her another file. "Also, the Kaga people will be here at noon, so I want you to make certain that everything is in readiness for the signing. Our joint venture with Kaga will give me great face." He still had not looked at her. "Oh, by the way," he touched his forehead, as if his memory had just been jogged, ''I want you to squeeze in another appointment. I've got to see Aoki at Tandem Polycarbon at noon. Our new dye process is perfect for their entire new line of products."

Honno was overwhelmed. "Thank you, sir."

"Eh?" Michita at last glanced up at her. "What are you talking about?"

"Well, last week in the staff meeting I mentioned that I'd heard about Tandem's new product line and thought our dipole dye process would be a perfect match for it."

"Really?" Michita's attention was already on other matters. "I can't say I remember that. Perhaps you are mistaken. I've got a memo here from Fujinami. Just got it. Shows research. He really did his homework. If the deal goes through, he's in for a promotion. Remind me, would you?"

"But sir-"

"Eight-thirty," Michita said, consulting the clock that dominated his desk. "It's time for my first conference call. You have set it up, I trust."

Honno retreated from his office. Mr. Fujinami had been in that meeting last week. He had heard her idea, used it. She should have thought to put her ideas in memo form. Perhaps then Michita would have listened to her.

Honno sat at her desk and slowly unwrapped her fingers from around the key Sakata had sent her. Her sweat glistened on its surface.

Honno counted her blessings. She was in the heart of Tokyo, her favorite place on earth. She was secretary to the country's most successful businessman, and her face among friends, associates, and colleagues was great. Actually, she was lucky to be at Michita Industries during this past year of enormous expansion.

It seemed to her as if every time she looked up, Kunio Michita had negotiated another winning bid on a lucrative new government-sponsored project. The new focus on Michita Apparel was another example of how Michita always managed to have one division or another eligible for government incentives in high-speed growth industries. Six months ago Honno had been certain that Kunio Michita's massive string of good luck would rub off on her. It hadn't.

What had happened just now? She had gone into Kunio Michita's office fully intending to tell him of the key's existence, to give him a chance to explain to her the reason behind Kakuei Sakata's suicide. But now she knew that she would not do it.

Honno suspected that, at the very least, she should tell her husband, Eikichi, about the key, because some sixth sense was already warning her that the Tokuso should be notified. Her connection with the Tokuso-the Tokyo District Special Prosecutor's Office-was a personal one. Eikichi Kansei, her husband, worked there as deputy assistant to the chief of the Tokuso. "I am," he loved to tell her, "up to my armpits in investigations into political bribery, extortion, and influence-peddling." His job made his heart sing.

Everything in its place and a place for everything, could be Eikichi's prosaic but simple philosophy. He was a supremely organized man, a scion of one of Tokyo's best families, who, by virtue of hard work as well as his father's considerable influence, had gone to the right schools, had made the right contacts, and had ended up in the right job: prestigious, enviable, honorable.

Eikichi's mother had spoiled him while he was growing up. But because he wanted to live up to and even surpass his father's expectations for him, he was a fanatic, almost obsessive worker. From the time he had graduated university in the top five percent of his class, he had been on his own. On the other hand, with the generous annual stipend provided by his grandfather, he never had to worry about working for a living.

Eikichi's world had always been defined by two linchpins: money and influence, both of which his family had in abundant supply; and, with a good degree of accuracy, one could say that he took these things for granted, rather than seeing them as the blessings they were.

Honno knew all about Eikichi when she had been introduced to him by a mutual friend, and she had been attracted to him precisely because of his highly structured, rigidly compartmentalized life. She had never had much stability in her home life, and the idea of being married to a brilliant organizational wizard struck her as most appealing. Besides, the prestige accorded her by being Eikichi's intended bride changed her life overnight. Nine months ago, from the moment they had gotten married, her phone would not stop ringing, and she was obliged to install an answering machine to handle the flood of invitations from her friends and associates to lunch and dinner for her and Eikichi.

Eikichi was everything Honno could hope for in a husband. He was already cool, aloof, displaying all the signs of ittai, that special intimacy that came from the fusion of two spirits into one. He never praised her, and would never think to, since this would be akin to praising himself, which would have been unutterably embarrassing. His deep male silences, his coolness to her, proved the existence of their ittai feeling, their extreme intimacy. Like all her friends her age, she never referred to him by name at home. Rather, she called him "Oto-san." Papa. This was not particularly her choice, but what the culture dictated she do. Anyway, it was difficult for Honno to put into words, or even coherent thought, just what her relationship with Eikichi was. It was ittai.

Eikichi's private life was as rigid as his professional one. He liked his meals set out on the table at a certain time, and expected Honno to have remembered and have prepared his favorite foods each day. On those occasions when they went out to eat, Honno was expected to follow his lead in conversations, and to know when, in business discussions, it was time to remain silent. If she harbored opinions about business matters-she was, after all, the personal secretary to Kunio Michita-she was to keep them to herself. Every month, like clockwork, Eikichi had a dinner party at his home for his business associates and contacts. Honno was expected to arrange everything, and then, like a geisha, blend into the background.

No, the same stubborn streak that prevented her from confronting Michita kept her from alerting Eikichi. Besides, she had never told him about her friendship with Kakuei; she would never have known how.

The key. The key seemed everything to her. A message from beyond the grave, a terrible responsibility thrust upon her. She felt giri, the obligation too great to bear, weighing upon her. For some reason, Kakuei Sakata had chosen her to carry out his last wish. Why her? Honno did not know. Perhaps when she learned what it was this key opened, she would begin to understand.

Sakata had been a complex man. In their frequent talks together, he had impressed her as someone who understood the subtleties of the feminine mind. He was not like most samurai, disdainful of the contributions a woman could make. "Times have changed," he once told her. "Women were once thought to be unclean. My father, who made sake, would not see my mother for many months during the crucial stages of brewing because he was convinced that she would in some way pollute the process and spoil the sake." He laughed. "Samurai tend by nature to live in the past. But the past was not always what it was cracked up to be."

Sakata was not prone to deep male silences when he was with her. He spoke to her often and at length. He seemed to derive pleasure from these talks, as if to him they might be a form of intimacy. Honno had listened, answered his queries, and eventually, at his prompting, spoke about herself. She was happy, too, to be with him, but without quite knowing why she should feel this way. It was odd for a man to talk to her so much and in such detail, as if her opinions were of some value to him. Kakuei liked modern-day Japan, or at least admired some of its new strengths. ''We are more resilient now,'' he told her. ''And so are better able to deal with adversity. For younger people, such as yourself, there are perhaps options that we oldsters never had. It's only when this newfound resilience is abused and turns into corruption that I, like Mishima, mourn the loss of the old Japan, as uncompromising as the blade of a katana."

The truth was, they liked each other, and she had counted Sakata as one of her few friends. Honno could not fail that trust now.

She felt a growing terror of the evidence that Sakata had left behind him: the dark heart of the maelstrom that had so abruptly, so cruelly overtaken him. What would it do to her if it had destroyed a samurai?

But she knew that she could not back down. Her feet were already set upon this particular path and there was no turning back. Giri dictated that she find the evidence that had destroyed Kakuei Sakata.

What, then, was she to do about the key? She could hardly handle this situation on her own.

Honno could think of only one answer, and it scared her to death.

Mars Petrovich Volkov was an altogether different breed of animal than Valeri Bondasenko. For one thing, he wasn't Ukrainian, or a member of any other Soviet ethnic minority. He had been born and raised in Moscow-in the White City, not so far from where Valeri now made his home. Accordingly, he possessed that sangfroid peculiar to Muscovites which only a Parisian or a New Yorker would fully understand. Everyone else would have resented the kind of arrogance Mars Volkov exhibited were he not so smooth a talker and a genuinely sympathetic listener.

Mars Volkov liked to think of himself not as a lifelong politician or even a party member, though there was no doubt that he was both, but as a problem solver. "I am like a cryptographer in the KGB," he told Irina when they first met, "locked away in some subbasement of the Lubyanka, struggling to make sense of the incomprehensible. But unlike my somewhat clinical counterpart, I deal with real people in the full light of day."

This was not, strictly speaking, the whole truth, or in any event it was not as simple as that. For Mars Volkov sought to convert the subversive into the patriotic. Like Valeri, he dealt with the gray areas of daily life in the Soviet Union. It was he who decided the new coats of paint with which to cover the old.

And that, fundamentally, was where he and Valeri differed. For it was Mars's considered opinion that the old should not merely be repainted, but be done away with entirely. Valeri found this idea at best dangerous, at worst subversive.

Irina was up on all the latest rumors. It was all well and good for Valeri to be paying lip service to Mars's growing power in the Congress, but Irina knew who ultimately held the advantage: Valeri Denysovich Bondasenko. These days, though he was continually trying his best to pound home his views to the rest of the Politburo, Mars, like all of Valeri's previous enemies, was definitely coming out second best. Irina wondered how long it would be before Mars was removed from his seat in the Congress of People's Deputies, shipped off to God only knew where, far from Moscow, the center of power. No doubt that would be determined, in part, by how successful she was in the aftermath of her seduction.

Mars Volkov looked like a movie star. A Russian movie star, to be sure, but a movie star nonetheless. He was tall and slim, with the pale eyes and high cheekbones common to the people of the windswept northern Steppes. His hair was blue-black, very straight, and he wore it slicked back from his wide forehead. He had a generous, thin-lipped mouth, and a firm chin. His only oddity was his rather small ears. But this lack of perfection somehow enhanced his overall appearance, rather than detracted from it. In sum, he was more than attractive; he was desirable.