Linnear 03 - White Ninja (74 page)

'No,' Branding said. 'It won't, Shisei. That's just an illusion you're using to frighten yourself. What I want is for you to climb out of the pit you've been living in for Christ knows how many years. I'm offering hie, and life only.'

Shisei, trembling, said, 'I have played the siren with you, and the Judas. Now you ask me to abandon my acting, to give up the roles I have lovingly fashioned, to exist only as myself. I don't know whether I can do that.'

'Of course you don't,' Branding said. 'Because you're a stranger to yourself. Given a choice, don't all humans choose the known over the unknown?'

'But I am not human!' Shisei fairly shouted it, terrified, heartsick that he had at last driven her to this confession, one she had vowed long ago never to make. 'I and my brother stand apart from all humankind. We are tanjian.

We possess a gift of the mind. We see things, know things - we can do things others cannot.'

Branding, stunned, moved on a somnambulist's leaden feet towards where she huddled on the corner of the bed. 'You mean you're psychic.'

She gave a bitter laugh. 'Only in the broadest sense. Not as parlour tricksters, able to tell a stranger's birth date from holding a possession of his. No, not that. Our gift is far more potent.'

Branding sat next to her. He felt her pain as if it were his own. He gave her an encouraging smile. 'Is that your secret, the terrible revelation that you thought would make me hate you?'

'No,' Shisei breathed. Then she turned away from him. 'Oh, God, help me.' She shivered once, then said, 'No. My secret is my twin brother. My bond with him. It was my brother - not the mad artist, Zasso, whose name I invented - who imprisoned me, who felt compelled to create upon my back the centrepiece of the dreams that haunted his young life.

'It is my twin brother with whom I have been intimate in ways you could never imagine. It is my twin brother who loves me unto death, who will not let me go, who has destroyed those who would seek to love me as he loves me.

'My twin brother, who is my guardian, my ghost lover, my other half, dark, foreboding, reeking of death.'

Branding looked at Shisei spread across the bed, saw the great spider moving, breathing as she breathed, living as she lived and, for the first time, he understood the extent of her agony, the nature of the prison without walls in which she was incarcerated.

He moved to touch her. 'Shisei - '

'Wait,' she said. 'There's more. My brother called me yesterday. He's here, in America. In New York City. Something's happened. He's called for me.'

'You don't have to go.'

'But I do, Cook!' She rolled over. 'If you know anything about me, you know that I must. Kata, the rules. Giri, duty. These are still the only definitions of my life. Without them, I am nothing.'

She sat up. Her eyes were pleading, not for sympathy, that was not in her, but for something akin to understanding. She seemed to be saying, Cook, don't be Western now. Try to think like an Easterner. Be accepting. Be patient.

She held out her arms. 'Hold me, Cook. I'm frightened.'

'Of your brother?' he asked, as he enfolded her in his arms.

'Yes,' she whispered. 'But now I am just as frightened of myself.'

'I think that's a good sign.' Branding smelt her damp hair, the fault musk of her skin. It was as heady, as dizzying as throwing yourself into a field of wild flowers. He hugged her to him, feeling at last close to the core of her, that torn and battered part of her which she seemed to despise, and which he knew now that beloved above everything else.

'Cook,' she said, and a tremor went through her. 'I will have to go. In the morning. First thing.'

'Will you tell him about me?'

'I won't have to,' Shisei said bleakly. 'He will already know.'

Branding felt that peculiar sensation run down his spine, as if Shisei's spider were now upon his back. 'What will happen?'

'I don't know. My gift does not extend to second sight. I can only feel how powerful your love is. It is like a splendid ache in my heart.'

They rocked together, like children locked hi the aftermath of a disaster.

'I can't come with you, Shisei,' Branding said. 'I can't

run out on the press. And I have the Ascra bill coming on to the Senate floor later today. I'm its sponsor; I have to be there. Kata. Giri.'

'I understand.'

'But I'll be with you, nonetheless.' Branding kissed

her neck with such tenderness that Shisei began to weep

anew.

Her nails dug into the flesh of his back. 'Oh, Cook, how I love you!'

When Tomi returned to her office to pick up some notes, she was told by one of the uniforms that someone was waiting for her. She remembered the moment just over a month ago when she had been told that and had then met Tanzan Nangi for the first time.

But as she approached her desk this afternoon, she recognized the man sitting beside it. She detoured, made two cups of tea, brought them to her desk.

'Hello, Scoundrel,' she said, handing him a tea. 'How the hell are you?' But she could see in his hollowed, frightened eyes how he was.

'Domo, Tomi-san,' the Scoundrel said. Thank you. He took the tea gratefully, drank it down in three straight thirst-quenching gulps.

'If you want more, you know where the hotplate is,' she said.

Thank you,' he said again, and bowed, very formal now, so unlike his grinning, light-hearted self, a Japanese-featured Billy Idol thumbing his nose at the world.

Tomi watched him as he went to get himself more tea, turning over in her mind the change that had come over him.

When he returned, she said, 'I must say I'm surprised you've come on your own.'

'What?'

'Where's Killan?'

The Scoundrel was so startled, he spilt hot tea all over himself.

Tomi gave him a pile of paper napkins so he could brush himself off. 'Did you get burnt?' she asked.

'It's not so bad,' the Scoundrel said.

'I wasn't talking about the tea.' His head came up, and their eyes locked. 'Why isn't Killan here with you?' She said it softly, the steel inside the glove.

'Killan? Why should she be?'

'Because she's in this thing with you.'

'What thing?'

'Stop it!' Tomi said it so sharply that she froze him, the tea cup half-way to his lips. 'You came here for help. A blind man could tell you're in trouble. So let's save some time. I know about mantis, and I know what it can do. While you've beeH a very bad boy, I've been working with Tanzan Nangi. Do you know him? You should. You tested your mantis virus on his computer system.' Tomi shook her head. 'This is some really bad shit you've fallen into, Seji. I know you, my friend. I know what you're capable of - and what would never occur to you.

'That's how I know that somehow Killan Oroshi is involved. We were all so close once. The Three Musketeers, remember? Haunting movie theatres, hanging out on the Ginza, guzzling beer and pizza.'

The Scoundrel cleared his throat. 'Long time passing.'

'You're telling me, brother.' Tomi put her hands on her desk. 'OK. Bottom line. You've come to me for help. I can give it, but only if you're straight with me. The truth and nothing but the truth, so help you John Wayne.'

That brought the glimmer of a smile to the Scoundrel's lips, but it soon faded. 'You have to understand. Killan's my friend, too. I have an obligation to - '

'You owe her nothing, Seji. Look at her. She's a master manipulator.'

'You two just - '

'Forget about us,' Tomi said. 'Why didn't you come to me before this?'

'Killan said not to.'

'Killan.' Tomi held herself in check. 'I'm your friend, Seji. I would have helped you. I will help you now if you give me the chance.'

The Scoundrel's eyes broke from hers. He could not bear to look at her accusatory face. He put his tea aside, rested his face in his hands. Tomi-san, we were almost killed last night. I -1 found a tape, electronic ears, surveillance equipment in an abandoned apartment next to mine. The guy -I don't know what happened to him - was spying on me, but also on Killan and Kusunda Ikusa. There's a lot of dirt on it about him. Killan got the idea that we should sell the tape to Ikusa. She told me she could handle him. No sweat.

'Instead, he sent his car after us last night, and almost ran us down. For Christ's sake, the fucking thing went up on the pavement to get us! If I hadn't put a couple of bullets through the windscreen, Killan and I would both be dead!'

'Just hold it,' Tomi said. Her heart was hammering so hard, she could barely think straight. Could the tape the Scoundrel found have belonged to the Pack Rat? Nangi said that he had been following Ikusa. But if so, how had the Pack Rat come to spy on the Scoundrel? Then, she had the connection: Killan Oroshi.

Tomi picked up the phone on her desk, dialled an interoffice extension. 'I need a forensics team,' she said. She gave the officer the Scoundrel's address and apartment number. 'There's an abandoned apartment next door. I want it combed from top to bottom. And this is a red priority. I expect the lab results in twenty-four hours.'

Then she dialled another extension. She spoke to the officer on duty, asked him about suspicious car accidents

reported within the past twenty-four hours. He told her about a black Mercedes, that had smashed into a row of seedy stores on the outskirts of the city, killing two occupants. The odd thing was, the officer said, they'd found bullet holes in the windscreen.

Tomi asked if they'd ID'd the victims yet. The officer gave her the names, but they rang no bells. She asked if the names had been run through the computers. 'Yes, and because of what we got, we're referring the case to Homicide, your department,' he said. 'These guys were Yakuza hit men.'

Tomi thanked the officer, put down the phone, lost in thought. She looked at the Scoundrel. 'You're right,' she said. 'Kusunda Ikusa tried to have you killed. I'm taking you into protective custody right now. Where's Killan?'

'I-'

Tomi snatched up her bag, came around from behind her desk. 'You'd better tell me right now, ace, because tomorrow may be too late.'

On the way downstairs, she held out her hand. 'Give it to me.'

And the Scoundrel obediently placed in her hand the audio micro-cassette he had found in the apartment next to his.

Wherever Kusunda Ikusa looked,' he saw his own face replicated as if in a terrible mirror. On the television, he saw himself handing Masuto Ishii an envelope stuffed with yen, then Ishii's hand delivering that same envelope to Catch Hagawa. When he turned on the radio, station after station was serving up commentary on the scandal. If he opened a newspaper, he saw his face, along with the appropriate photos, reproduced from the damning videotape. Ikusa thought, I am some kind of animal, trapped in

a cage where people come to stare at me, to frown and cluck their tongues in disapproval.

The telephone had begun to ring just after the first news reports were aired. Ikusa's blood ran cold. He knew who was calling him. Nami. Nami would want to exact its own particular brand of retribution. He had had the effrontery to drag Nami into the midst of this scandal, and for that he could not be forgiven. The ties that bound him so tightly to Nami, that had once made him one of the most powerful men in Japan, were now about to strangle him.

Ikusa knew that he could not allow that to happen. He had his own path to take.

In the pouring rain, Ikusa slipped out of his house via a side entrance. He was dressed in blue jeans, a UCLA sweatshirt, scuffed Reebok sneakers and a long, hooded PVC raincoat whose deep pockets were filled with more than his fists. He went unnoticed.

Ikusa walked the few blocks to the subway, went underground. During his trip across town he had time to contemplate the fleeting nature of power. How long had he felt invulnerable? He did not know. Time ceased to exist when one was close to being a god. Curious, that. Time and power must be linked in some mysterious equation, he decided, that not even Albert Einstein could fathom.

But there was another, even more interesting element to be considered. Power was so real, so tangible when one had it, so unreal, so ephemeral when one didn't. It occurred to Ikusa, dripping water on the two seats he occupied in the rocketing subway car, that power must then be an illusion. It must exist only in the minds of men if it could be so easily granted and denied.

As Kusunda Ikusa stood in line to get off at his stop, he/came to the conclusion that the only real power a mala had was to inflict death on his fellow man.

Above ground, the sky was black. The rain beat against

the sea of opened umbrellas, the shore of the pavement, with a kind of demonic glee.

This is a city of sheep, Ikusa thought, a country of sheep, all moving in one direction with one purpose. Although he walked among them, moved through their bustling midst, he no longer felt a part of them, no longer felt the pride in their oneness, in his oneness. Now he was cut adrift, a balloon without anchor or rope, drifting aloft, a child of the invisible winds.

Ikusa paused before a shrine, rang the bell. He invoked the intervention of the Shinto spirit-gods who, it was believed, dwelt everywhere. But he felt nothing; he was cut off from even these elementals, a dead man walking among the living.