The Kaisho (14 page)

Oversize pillows in jewel-toned raw silk were strewn in areas where normally chairs and sofas would have been placed. At the far end of the living room was a short flight of marble steps up to a sitting area filled with more sumptuous pillows against a wall filled with double-arched windows overlooking the
rio.
Fairy lights winked and bobbed through the glass, entering the room along with the amorphous reflections from the sheened water.

Everything, down to the silver matchbox on the marble table, the flowers in the gemlike Murano glass bowls, seemed to have its precise place and relation to one another, as if the person who inhabited this domain had a highly developed mathematical mind.

As they entered, Nicholas made out a dim figure sitting on the window ledge up in the sitting area.

“Mikio Okami,” Celeste whispered before she slipped from his side, disappearing behind an incised teak door.

“Celeste, wait—!”

“So you have come.”

Nicholas turned at the sound of the voice. For all his age, Mikio Okami still had the power of command. Taking off his mask, Nicholas crossed the room, went up the marble stairs.

Before him stood Mikio Okami, Col. Denis Linnear’s old and valued friend and compatriot. Or had he merely been such out of expediency? In the aftermath of the war, the Occupation created its own turbulence. Those had been extraordinary times, and now and again, extraordinary measures were required to deal with them. Nicholas found himself staring into the face of one of those extraordinary measures.

“You look so much like your father!”

Okami, a bald, bullet-headed man, had the round, jovial face of a benevolent dictator. He had eyes too close together, a rather severe nose, and a mouth always on the verge of a smile. His ears were tiny, close to his head, and there was a dark mole on one side of his chin. He was of medium height, but seemed somehow shrunken within the Savile Row suit he wore. He was old, yes, but in the way of the Oriental: his skin had yellowed, like the patina on parchment, and seemed to have grown thin, so translucent that the blue veins in his temples showed clearly.

“In a strange way, it is like meeting him again.”

He extended a hand in a Western greeting and Nicholas shook it.

“It is good of you to come, Linnear-san,” he said in Japanese. “I imagine my summons came as something of a shock to you. I trust it has not proved overly intrusive.”

“Not at all,” Nicholas said. “I was in need of a vacation, in any case.”

Okami’s lips held that strange demi-smile. He ducked his head once, his only passing reference to traditional Japanese custom. “And have you enjoyed cloaking yourself as the magistrates and princelings of old Venezia used to do?”

“I had no trouble imagining myself as Casanova.”

Okami gave him a cool, appraising look, then said abruptly, “May I offer you a drink to warm you? Sambuca? Napoleon brandy? Or perhaps an espresso.”

“An espresso would be perfect.”

“Excellent. I believe I’ll join you.”

Okami went to a sideboard where bottles of liquors and aperitifs surrounded a gleaming stainless-steel espresso machine. He seemed to take great pleasure in making the coffee himself. His small, bony hands worked deftly at their tasks, and though he had to be over eighty, Nicholas could detect no unsteadiness in those fingers.

Okami brought over two tiny cups, complete with a small twist of lemon rind floating in the dark depths. They sat on the cushions, while diamond-shaped sprays of reflected light from the canal played over their faces.

“I do so enjoy my espresso,” Okami said after he had taken a first sip. Then, abruptly, he laughed. “I suppose you were expecting green tea and tatami mats.”

“As a matter of fact I make it a habit never to expect anything,” Nicholas said. “It makes for clear thought and pure reaction.”

“Instinct, eh?” Okami nodded. “It may be that everything I’ve heard about you is true.”

Nicholas said nothing, sat cross-legged sipping the excellent Italian coffee that this Yakuza had learned to make. From outside came the chug of a delivery boat, perhaps even putting in perishables for the larger of his own hotel’s kitchens, somewhere close across the
rio.

“I imagine you’re wondering what I am doing in Venice?”

Nicholas studied the old but still-powerful face.

“It’s an odd story, certainly.” Okami finished his espresso, put the cup aside. “First, you must understand something of the changing nature of the world I have inhabited for all my life. For many years, the Yakuza were interested only in what went on within the borders of Japan. I was one of the first to understand the myopic aspect of this policy.” He cocked his head to one side. “The simple fact is, in matters of business we’re not so different from anyone else. There came a time when it became increasingly difficult to make money in Japan.” He lifted a hand, let it fall to his thigh. “Well, that’s not, strictly speaking, true. What I mean is that there came a time when it became difficult for us to make
enough
money in Japan. That was when I called a meeting of the
oyabun
and said to them a phrase which your father had taught me and I, in turn, taught to them. It was simply this:
The world is our oyster.”

Okami sat back, clapping his hands over his small, round belly. “Of course, they did not understand me—not immediately, anyway. I had to provide a demonstration, and for that I had to leave the country. Since that time, perhaps twenty years ago, I have been back only rarely. Too much here overseas required my direct attention to make certain everything was done correctly the first time.” He nodded his head again. “While it’s true that we have a kind of”—and here he used a Japanese word that had no literal translation, but might best be described as the phrase
tacit understanding
—
“with
the police, the politicians, and the bureaucracy, the other
kobun
of Japan, it is never as cordial as we would like it to be. The truth is, these modern-day samurai cannot forget our humble beginnings. Since the Yakuza traditionally came from the lower classes, these highbred ministers can do nothing but look down upon us. They may fear us, yes; they may even, now and again, do our bidding because we, in turn, make ourselves of use to them. But in their hearts I have no doubt that they despise us, and if the opportunity arose where they could be fully protected, they would do everything in their power to see us annihilated.” That demi-smile again. “So I set up my base here in Venice.”

Nicholas recalled Celeste’s brief but vivid history lesson on the origins of Venice and saw now that this was no idle chatter on her part.

“It was the historically correct thing to do,” Okami went on. “And from a business point of view this city has its unique uses, not that much has changed since the time of the Medicis. Although we are nominally in Italy, Venice is still its own city-state. And it is wise to remember that when you are here, you are in Venice, not Italy or, for that matter, Europe.” He shifted restlessly on the pillows. “But now I am beginning to wonder whether I haven’t made a political blunder.”

“Something has happened,” Nicholas said.

“Yes.” Okami’s eyes went abruptly opaque, and he rose with their empty cups in his hands to pour more espresso. He did not return immediately but, rather, stood contemplatively by the sideboard, staring out at the lights of Venice.

All at once, as if making a difficult and agonizing decision, he came back, handing Nicholas his cup. He stood, looking down at Nicholas. “The simple fact is that within the next two weeks someone will try to murder me.”

A mournful horn hooted and a brief shout sounded as a boat pulled into a nearby
traghetto.
Okami broke his brief stasis, went quickly to the window, looked out. The expression on his face betrayed his nervousness.

“Someone wants me to retire. But I have no intention of doing that.”

“Okami-san,” Nicholas said, “you must be able to mobilize every man in your clan to protect you.”

Okami turned away from the window and looked at Nicholas with some surprise, as if he had just appeared out of thin air. “Oh, more than that,” he said absently. “Far more than just one clan’s worth. But this man who is coming...”

He came back to where Nicholas was sitting, squatting very close to him. Even his beloved espresso was ignored now. Nicholas recognized the strain of anxiety on his face.

“This is not the real issue, for me,” he said. “One of my
oyabun
has turned against me. Knowing this, I can afford to trust no one. I trust Celeste, of course. And telling you all this, putting myself in your hands, I am trusting you. But no one else!” For the first time, he had raised his voice. “No one,” he repeated more softly.

“I am calling upon you, upon the debt your father owed me,” Okami said. “I need your skills and your—arts—to protect me so that I may finish what I have started. And to discover the traitor among my most trusted
oyabun.”

Nicholas sat very still, absorbing what Mikio Okami was telling him. It washed over him like a tide, chilling him. At last, when he had regained control of his breathing, he said, “You have made reference twice to
your oyabun.”

“Yes.” Okami raised his eyebrows. “Didn’t you know? This is how the debt came into being. I am what your father helped me become, and from my position of power, I accomplished many, many difficult things for him.” The demi-smile. “You see, Linnear-san, here is the truth behind the myth: I am Kaisho,
oyabun
of all Yakuza
oyabun.”

Justine sat in a room at the Tokyo Hilton, the most American of the major megahotels in the city. With the heavy curtains closed against the blaze of the Tokyo night, she could be anywhere in the States—New York or Chicago; even, if she were to imagine it, London’s Hyde Park or the Serengeti’s veld could be just outside her double-glazed windows.

She sat, hunched over, her clasped hands tight between her knees, staring at the wall-to-wall carpet. She seemed incapable of movement, of even thinking in any coherent manner. Her mind was a sea of emotion, a caldron too long on a burner that was now overflowing, inundating her like the sorcerer’s apprentice in massive overload. She felt gripped by a kind of desperation such as she had not felt in many years. In fact, after she had met Nicholas, she had felt certain that she would never feel this way again.

Then, he had been her savior, her protector from the kind of debilitating desperation that had threatened to disintegrate her. Now, much to her horror, Nicholas himself seemed to be the cause of this feeling. She felt as if she were imprisoned, marooned on the shore of an alien land with no hope of reprieve. Nicholas had done this to her with his inexplicable love of Japan and its arcane concepts of
giri
and honor and its ten thousand meaningless rituals that served only to distance people—even family members—from each other.

This last thought, perhaps more than any other, had begun to haunt her from the moment she had become pregnant for the first time. She had visions—nightmares, really—of Nicholas wanting their child sent off to a Zen Buddhist monastery or a martial arts dojo, there to be immersed in the alien precepts of Eastern religion and philosophy—away from her. This thought—perhaps farfetched and even a bit paranoid—haunted her with a tenacity that was inescapable. Its horror wore away her resolve to be a mother, eroded her self-esteem, poisoned the one thing in all the world she had believed to be unassailable: her love for Nicholas.

She became, in the end, frightened of him. As strong and invincible as he had once been as her protector, now he had become by some alchemical process unknown to her a being possessed of a monstrous power. His
tanjian
origins terrified her, and the deeper he delved into the dark mysteries of Tau-tau the less tangible his humanity seemed to her.

And now that she had dared touch her anger and her fear, had seen it dragged into the light, she recognized that from the moment her daughter had died she had become a different person. She was forever restless, in sleep as well as during the day, as if she were fated to continue searching for that one special connection her daughter in her brief life had brought to her. She knew she might never find it again, true, but she was utterly certain that she had no hope of finding it here in Japan with Nicholas.

She sobbed now, alone in her anonymous hotel room, which, for all its American blandness, was calming after the interior of her house, which seemed to resonate with a black magic that threatened to suffocate all who were not initiated into its secrets.

When was it that she had realized she had nowhere to go? Had it been when Nicholas had left despite her entreaties? Or when they had had sex that last time and she had felt inexplicably abased? Or had it been far earlier, when she had lost the second baby and, secretly, had thanked God?

How she had suffered for that thought!
I am wicked and selfish,
part of her admonished even while another part felt a profound relief. How to describe the panic that had overwhelmed her when she had gotten pregnant for the second time? Just the thought of bringing another life into the world, of having once again that special connection, and then having Nicholas intervene with his Tau-tau and his martial obsessions, made her stomach cramp with dread.
I am dying inside,
she mourned.
Soon there will be nothing left to salvage.

She had hit the breaking point minutes after Nicholas’s car had pulled out of the driveway, and with a kind of violence that precluded thought, she had packed a weekend suitcase and had driven into the city. That had been an ordeal in itself, driving on the wrong side of the road in a right-wheel car—something she had never been able to get used to—on roads without signs in English. She had had to rely entirely on memory, which, in her heightened emotional state, had been somewhat less than trustworthy.

She had made it at last into the labyrinth of Tokyo and by instinct alone had headed directly for the Hilton. It was where her American friends stayed during their infrequent visits, her house being too far out of the city to be convenient.