The Kaisho (10 page)

She walked him as far as she could. She looked quite composed, even calm, now that the emotional storm had passed.

“Do you have a contact number for me while you are in Venice?”

Nicholas opened the thick buff-colored folder that had been waiting for him at the first-class Air France check-in counter. “I’m staying at a hotel called Il Palazzo di Maschere Veneziana.” He showed her both the phone and fax numbers printed on the hotel’s reservation-confirmation slip. Seiko jotted them down in the tiny leather notebook that Nicholas had given her as a present her first day on the job.

“I think that’s it then,” he said as they reached the end of the line waiting to go through immigration and security. He watched her as she stood apart, looking very beautiful and very alone. She seemed so full of pain his heart went out to her. He was about to say something, but she put her forefinger to her lips.

“No good-byes,” Seiko said. “We will see each other again.”

On the far side of the barriers, Nicholas took the few minutes as his plane began boarding to call Justine. He let the phone ring nine times, but there was no answer. He wished now that he had his last hours with her to do all over again. It was only now that the reality of the physical leaving swept over him. He longed to talk with her, at least, to tell her how sorry he was. But as he walked toward the departure gate, he consoled himself by thinking apologies were better delivered in person. There would be plenty of time for that when he returned.

Tanzan Nangi was dictating letters to Umi, his assistant, when Seiko walked in. He broke off, looked up at her for a moment, silent. Then he said, “What is your news?”

“It is not good.” She opened a file, handed over several typewritten sheets. “We have just received a formal request from the United States Senate. Linnear-san is required to appear before the Strategic Economic Oversight Committee to answer questions regarding the merging of Tomkin Industries with Sato International.”

“Good Lord, this has the smell of an American witchhunt.” Nangi scanned the documents. “I’ve read the stories on this Senator Bane. The international news has been filled with him lately. I saw him interviewed on CNN. And there was a feature about him in last week’s edition of
Time.”
He pointed. “Did this request come in the mail?”

“No, sir,” Seiko said, obviously uncomfortable. “It was delivered by someone from the American embassy. They told me it arrived this morning via diplomatic pouch.”

Nangi carefully folded the sheets, handed them back to Seiko. “Well, if we don’t know where Nicholas is, we can’t very well serve him with these papers. Seiko, draft a reply to the Committee outlining the bare bones of the current situation. You know the drill, Linnear-san’s urgent business, somewhere in Europe, currently out of touch with the office, et cetera.”

“Yes, sir.”

But after she left he did not immediately go back to his dictating. His mind was on Senator Bane and his Committee. He had been dreading something like this as Bane’s status and prestige escalated exponentially. Someone was going to become the touchstone for the senator’s righteous anger, and Tomkin-Sato was a logical choice.

The fact was that Nicholas was vulnerable. He had been an outsider brought in to run the company by decree of his father-in-law’s will after Tomkin’s untimely death. Nangi supposed that it might not be too difficult for Bane to make a case for Nicholas, a neophyte in the ranks of corporate businessmen, relying rather too heavily on the Japanese side of the merger. Hell, Nangi thought,
he
could make the same accusation and make it stick. Look where Nicholas had chosen to live for the past eight years—Tokyo, not New York.

Now Nangi was overcome with guilt. He began to second-guess himself for talking Nicholas out of returning to the States to lobby on the conglomerate’s behalf. The fact was Nangi had been selfish—not only in the area of business, where Nicholas’s presence caused the most astonishing results both in research and restructuring, but also because he was Nangi’s best friend.

What have I done?
Nangi asked himself as he sat, silent in his office.
By keeping Nicholas at my side I may have condemned him
—
and us
—
to oblivion.

Lew Croaker squinted through the glare of the tropical sun and uttered a hearty curse under his breath. The Coast Guard cutter had just appeared through the heat haze, heading straight for him.

He was aboard his sleek boat,
Captain Sumo,
which he hired out for exorbitant fees for the best sport fishing on Florida’s west coast. A mile and a half out of Marco Island, Croaker was not currently chartered. In fact, he had left port not only to try to outrun recent memories but for some peace and quiet. The last thing he needed, he reflected sourly as he cut the engines and came about, was another semiofficial visit from the CG.

Croaker was an ex-detective from the NYPD. He had retired down here with Alix Logan, a former model who, much to his surprise and delight, had fallen in love with him. Now she was gone, back to the glittery high life she missed more than she loved him. She was in New York—or was it Paris? He couldn’t keep track anymore. And even though she called him regularly, he had no illusions that her fidelity to him would last. The lure of her previous life—and all the perks that went with it—was far too strong. How had he ever thought that she would be content with him, a wide-shouldered man of forty-five with the slightly pushed-in, weather-beaten face of a cowboy? He couldn’t call himself handsome, and though his hair was still dark and thick, it wasn’t styled and slicked back like that of her once and future model buddies.
You remind me of Robert Mitchum,
Alix had told him early in their relationship.
So much character, so much history in your face.

The evening she had left, he sat behind the wheel of the vintage 1969 flamingo-and-white Thunderbird he had completely and lovingly restored and watched her plane cleave the last of the long, languorous sunset. Despair washed over him, and his first thought was to call his friend Nicholas Linnear, with whom he had shared so much danger. But it was not Croaker’s way to cry into his beer, even with a close friend such as Nicholas. Brought up in the vicious Hell’s Kitchen area of Manhattan’s west side, Croaker had seen his policeman father gunned down in an alley, seen his mother’s spirit broken. He had learned how to be tough the hard way, and for him there was no going back.

The Coast Guard cutter had throttled down, and Croaker threw his engines into neutral, then cut them entirely. He let go the electronic windlass and heard the anchor hit the water.

As he made preparations to be boarded, he considered what streak of altruism had made him accept the CG’s offer to help them from time to time in controlling the drug trade that was endemic to Florida’s seemingly endless miles of coastline. Perhaps he was not as truly quit with police work as he had convinced himself he would be when he had moved down here.

The cutter was now fully powered down, bobbing in the swell. Croaker made fast the lines thrown up to him by the small boat launched from the cutter. He peered down at the three men as they began to climb up the vertical ladder he had let down.

He had expected to see his friend Lt. Mark McDonald, who had become his liaison with the CG. Instead, he counted two young ensigns with service revolvers on their hips. These serious-looking sailors were flanking a man Croaker had never seen before. He was tall and as thin as a whippet, with dark brows and ruddy cheeks. As he came on board, Croaker was struck by the intensity of his clear blue eyes. He had a distinctly boyish look even though Croaker judged him to be somewhere in the vicinity of fifty. He was carrying a briefcase made of what looked to be a kind of dull gray polycarbonate.

The two ensigns were very formal. They saluted Croaker, then stood at military ease on their side of the ladder entry.

“Mr. Croaker,” the man said, extending his hand. “Good to meet you. My name’s Will Lillehammer.” His eyes crinkled but his mouth refused to smile. “Kind of you to let us board.” Those blue eyes were like an X-ray machine, measuring everything. “I’m on special assignment for the president of the United States.” He did not say with whom, and Croaker did not think it was the Coast Guard, even though Lillehammer was wearing a CG lieutenant’s uniform. He had a faint but discernible British accent. “Is there somewhere we can speak in private?”

Croaker looked around. Besides the cutter close to, there was a fishing boat, a brace of sailboats tacking into the wind, and a sleek Cigarette booming its way back to shore. All were quite a distance away. He spread his arms.

Now Lillehammer smiled and it wasn’t a pleasant sight. It brought into view a spiderweb of pale scars at the corners of his mouth. “You’d be astounded at the advances in electronic surveillance since you left the force,” he said.

So he’s been briefed on my history, Croaker thought as he led Lillehammer into the cabin. He broke out iced beers, and they sat on a vinyl-covered bench. Lillehammer lifted his bottle, said, “Cheers,” and took a grateful swallow. Then he drew the briefcase up onto the bench, unlocked it, and opened it. Inside, Croaker saw an array of what might have been the guts of a computer, except there was no keyboard. Lillehammer inserted an odd-looking key, turned it left, then right.

Croaker made a face.

“Getting a slight headache, are you?” Lillehammer extended a hand. “Here, swallow this.”

Croaker took the tiny white pill, gulped it down with a swig of beer. In a moment, his head cleared. “What the hell was that?”

“Electronic surveillance has become so sophisticated so quickly we’ve been forced to bring into the field counter-measures not always one hundred percent refined.” Lillehammer indicated the workings of the briefcase. “This baby will do the job, but it’s still a bit hard on the brain. Something to do with the pitch of the vibrations it sends out.” He looked down at it rather fondly. “Seems I’ve gotten used to the bastard. Doesn’t say much for my ears, I suppose.”

He finished his beer, smacked his lips. “Regards from Lieutenant McDonald, by the way. I’m certain he’s sorry I pitched him out of his own wicket.”

“Another beer?”

“Only ever have one during the day. Thanks just the same.”

“Just how British are you?” Croaker said, opening another bottle for himself.

Lillehammer laughed. “Very, actually. But where I come from I’ve gotten so used to American idioms I sometimes find myself worrying that the English part of me has gotten snowed under. Out of the office, I’m afraid I have an alarming tendency to become a flaming Brit. It’s what comes from being afflicted with an English mother and an American father.”

“And just where is your office?”

“I don’t have one.”

“You don’t?”

Lillehammer lifted a forefinger. “If you have an office, eventually everyone knows what it is you do. It took the CIA decades to work that one out.”

Croaker saw those X-ray eyes fixed on his left hand. He uncurled the titanium and polycarbonate fingers. “I imagine you’re curious about this. Everyone is.”

Lillehammer nodded deferentially. “If you wouldn’t mind.”

“I’ve long gotten over being sensitive about it.” Croaker laid open the artificial hand that a team of biomechanics and surgeons in Tokyo had grafted to what had been the stump of his left wrist.

It looked, more than anything, like a work of art: four fingerlike appendages and an opposable thumb, articulated where human joints—or knuckles—would be. They had underpinnings of titanium and boron, were sheathed in matte black polycarbonate, and were affixed to a stainless-steel and blued titanium hand: palm, back, and wrist.

“I don’t fully understand how it works,” Croaker said, “but the main servos are somehow connected to my own nerves. The hand is also powered by a pair of special lithium batteries.”

Lillehammer bent over, examining the hand like an archaeologist poring over a historic find. He said, “Do you mind telling me what happened?”

Croaker suspected that he already knew, but said, “I was in a pitched battle with one very smart bastard. He was a champion sumo and very strong. He was also an expert in kendo—do you know what that is? Japanese swordsmanship.’’

Lillehammer nodded. “I’ve been lucky enough to examine a number of
katana
close up.”

“Then you know just how sharp those sword blades can be. In the best of them, the very edge of the blade is so finely ground it virtually disappears. The sumo severed my hand with one of those.”

“And how well does this work?” Lillehammer said, tapping one of the long articulated fingers.

Croaker made a fist, very slowly, then released the fingers back again, revealing the iridescent blue titanium palm. “This is the second model—new and improved. The prototype was amazing enough, but this...”

He rose, went over to pick up one of the empty beer bottles. He held it in his right hand, pressed the tip of one articulated finger against the glass. There was a strange sound, like the tearing of thin fabric. The razor-sharp tip traced its way down the bottle, across the bottom, up the opposite side. A moment later, the bottle fell open in two equal halves.

“Remarkable combination of strength and delicacy,” Lillehammer observed.

Croaker came back, sat down. He pointed to the briefcase Lillehammer had brought aboard. “What’s that made of?”

“Dunno, really. Some space-age plastic tougher and lighter than steel. But I can tell you it’s bloody well indestructible. Couldn’t get a bullet to dent it in the lab. Couldn’t blow a hole in it with plastique, either.”

Croaker held up his hand for Lillehammer’s inspection, carefully retracted the long fingers until they were only the equivalent of one knuckle in length. Then he leaned over, took one corner of the top of the case between his left thumb and attenuated forefinger in a pincer motion. He pressed inward.

Foomp!

His fingers clicked together through the small hole they had pierced in the material.