The Miko - 02 (40 page)

She seemed dead to the world. Not even the beautiful setting beside the great beach house on Gin Lane just east of Southampton where she and Gelda had grown up seemed to affect her. She was as anesthetized in her own way as her older sister was in hers, lying almost insensate in her Sutton Place apartment, having consumed God only knew how many quarts of vodka this last year following the death of Lew Croaker. He had been the only man able to get through her tough exterior, leaving her so very vulnerable. Now that he was gone, Justine had just about given up on her sister. Only a miracle could save her, and Justine had none up her sleeve. She couldn’t even manage her own life, let alone Gelda’s.

Oh, but how she felt betrayed! As if the solid-seeming earth beneath her feet had abruptly split apart, hurling her downward into a pit of nothingness. Now that Nicholas had done this to her, now that he had become another in the long line of men who ultimately betrayed her, she felt only despair. Even rage was denied her. It was as if some vital spark had gone out within her. Her head came down, her mane of hair falling over her face. Those assembled studiously looked away from her grief, not understanding its source at all.

Nicholas felt a longing to return to Japan that was so intense even had he not received Sato’s disturbing telegram he would in any case have been on the next flight out following Raphael Tomkin’s funeral.

He put one hand in his trousers pocket and felt again the flimsy sheet of yellow paper. He did not need to bring it out in order to recall its contents: LINNEAR-SAN. V.P. OF OPERATIONS, MASUTO ISHII, THIRD VICTIM OF WU-SHING. FEET SEVERED. CHEEK TATTOOED WITH IDEOGRAM: YUEH. KO-BUN IN GRAVE JEOPARDY. WE SEEK YOUR AID. SATO.

Yes, Nicholas thought now, there was no doubt.
Yueh
was the third of the
Wu-Shing
punishments. Only two remained. And Nicholas feared that he knew who the next two victims would be.

Now it was more imperative than ever for him to return to Tokyo. Tomkin’s last wish was to have the Sphynx merger consummated—and as quickly as possible. That Nicholas knew he would accomplish. But first he had to deal with the creature enacting this deadly ritual, for he saw that there would be no merger without the cessation of this danger. He had his duty to Tomkin to perform and he saw now what must have been inevitable since the advent of the
Wu-Shing.
That he must stand against it.

The black day had come that Akutagawa-san had both feared and foreseen when he had begun Nicholas’ training in the dark side of
ninjutsu.
And he knew instinctively that he would need to use everything he had learned over the years just to survive.

He spent almost all the time before the ceremony meeting the assembled executives from Tomkin Industries’ far-flung offices. Bill Greydon had taken care of those Telexes so they had been prepared and were ready to meet their new president.

Only once did Nicholas think of Justine and that was when he caught a glimpse of her with a handsome, blond-haired man who seemed to have stepped off a fashion layout page. That would be Rick Millar, her new boss. Nicholas made this observation with an odd kind of detachment. He knew that he was now so caught up in the people and events on the other side of the world that he had, in a very real sense, cut himself off from Justine. His feelings toward her were like fish in a tank; he watched them with cool curiosity, removed from their heat.

There had been no question of him dropping Tomkin Industries. He could do that for no one person. His mother, Cheong, would certainly have understood that. And so would the Colonel. There was always
giri
to perform in life. And the debt of honor outweighed all other considerations…even one’s own life.

It did not seem at all odd to him that only six months ago he had wished to wreak vengeance on the man for whom he now felt
giri.
The forces of life were constantly in flux, and woe unto the man who stood fixed and unyielding in his attitudes.

Tomkin had been responsible for Croaker’s death…and he hadn’t. What did that mean? Nicholas had no idea as yet, but one thing was clear to him now. Whatever Tomkin had done in that regard did not have the mark of a personal vendetta. At least in that Croaker had been mistaken. But where was the truth in this whirlpool?

Executives from Silicon Valley, San Diego, Montana, Pennsylvania, upstate New York, Connecticut, Manila, Amsterdam, Singapore, Berne—there was even one diminutive silver-haired gentleman from Burma, where the company was involved in hardwood foresting—spoke with him in seemingly endless array. All were friendly, all were unknown to him.

Until Craig Allonge, the chief financial operations officer in New York, came up to him.

“Thank God for a friendly face,” Nicholas said. “Stay here and don’t move. I’ve got a job for you when this is all over.”

In the limo returning to Manhattan Nicholas dialed the Washington number Greydon had given him. He spoke for several moments, then replaced the receiver. He turned to Allonge. “First stop is the office,” he said. “Give me a quick course in how to pull information out of the computer, then leave me alone. Get your passport—I assume your Japanese visa’s up to date? Good. Pack a small bag. I need you to go over the last five years of this company’s life with me so don’t plan to sleep on the plane.”

But Nicholas was quicker by far than Allonge was, and while the lanky Texan frantically sorted through his files as they began their takeoff four hours later, he sank into
getsumei no michi
, his eyes closed to exclude all distractions.

In the middle level of consciousness that was fully as much feeling as it was cerebration, intuitive expansion was paramount.

He bypassed the enormous inflow of cataclysmic events during the past several days. Deep within the moonlit path he began to explore the center of his dilemma. His Eastern side, so much more dominant these days, had conveniently broken it off from the mainstream of his thoughts, carefully surrounding it with opaque walls so that no feelings could seep out from it…or seep in. Thus could he continue with the multitudinous decisions of daily life without his judgment being affected or colored by unwanted emotion.

And finally on the horizon of his imagination he came to the citadel of the unnameable emotion that had been haunting him from the moment Akiko Ofuda Sato slipped her fan away from her face and revealed herself to him. True consciousness had not been able to bring him here, nor could his dreams. It was only
getsumei no michi
, the riverbed of all emotions, that had fetched him up on this far shore.

He felt fully the trepidation he had put away and, yes, the fear like a great funnel of forces trying to wrest control from him. For just an instant he was quite certain that, like staring at Medusa’s face, he would be paralyzed if he allowed himself to recognize what was within the citadel.

Then, recalling one of his most basic lessons in the mists of Yoshino, he penetrated that fear. He went completely through it.

And on the other side discovered that his love for Yukio had never really died at all.

Just before sunset, Sato was sitting cross-legged in his study. The
fusuma
were pulled back, revealing a small moss garden that was carefully nurtured through the seasons. There existed more than a hundred varieties of moss; here were represented a score.

Pale light, golden and flickering as the sun descended through the broad-boughed trees, touched the mossed rocks here and there, giving the garden a soft-spectral quality.

He heard movement behind him but he did not stir.

“Sir?”

It was Koten’s oddly high-pitched voice. There was no one else in the house. Akiko had gone south to visit her ailing aunt, who had not been able to make the trek north for the wedding, and Nangi was home preparing for his Hong Kong trip. Both he and Nangi had been filled with foreboding at the discovered death of Ishii-san just hours after Nicholas Linnear had taken off for America. As if the gods had been made angry at his departure.

Sato had tried to bring himself to articulate to his long-time friend some of the fears that had overwhelmed him at the shrine, but Nangi was Sato’s
sempai
just as Makita-san had been Nangi’s, and there were some matters one did not bring up with elders.

“Sir?”

“Ah, yes, Koten-san,” he said shortly. “What is it?”

“A phone call, sir.”

“I don’t want to be disturbed.”

“Excuse me, sir, but the gentleman said it was urgent.”

Sato thought a moment. Perhaps it was that young Chinese he had hired in Hong Kong to “oversee” Nangi-san’s movements. Since Nangi-san was determined not to speak of the situation, Sato had found it prudent to take his own measures to discover what had gone wrong in the Crown Colony.

He rose, nodding to Koten, and walked out of the room. The study was for contemplation and as such it had no telephone. Entering his office, he went around to the side of the desk and picked up the receiver.

“Yes? This is Seiichi Sato.”

“It is Phoenix, Sato-san.”

“Ah.” Sato’s heartbeat picked up considerably. “Just a moment.” He put down the phone and padded silently to the doorway to his office. Taking a quick look around the hallway, he closed the door, then returned to the receiver.

“What have you to report?”

“I’m afraid the news is not good.”

Sato’s stomach contracted. First the All-Asia Bank and now this. Big risk, big reward. Both he and Nangi had known this going in. And
Tenchi
would provide them with the biggest reward imaginable. But the downside was rushing to meet them with hellish speed.

“Kusunoki was murdered.”

“I already know that.” Sato was impatient; the risk he was taking made him so. And the thought of failure.

“But did you know that it was done by one of his own pupils?”

The line between Sato and Phoenix seemed to groan in agony as if many conversations were vying for control.

“I think you’d better tell me all of it,” Sato said, gritting his teeth in anticipation.

“Naturally, the
muhon-nin
found with him had been suspected of killing the
jonin.
It has now been determined that he did not. The Soviet spy lacked the prowess to accomplish such an unthinkable deed.”

“Then who
did
kill him?”

From out of the silence Phoenix said, “If we knew that, he would already be undergoing punishment.”

“Then it is likely that there is another…Soviet infiltrator.”

“I admit the possibility exists.”

Sato was abruptly furious. “You are the best there is. That is why I hired you to guard the secrets of
Tenchi.
If I wanted unthinking thugs I could have pulled them in from the Yakuza clan across town. Amida, what are you doing down there?”

“Have faith,” Phoenix said. “All is well. I am assigning myself to this matter personally.”

Phoenix, like Kusunoki, was a ninja
sensei.
Sato was mollified. “You
will
keep in touch.”

“Each day at this time I will call you at this number.”

“Excellent. I’ll make certain I am here.”

Sato replaced the receiver and, on the other side of the house, the miniature voice-activated tape machine connected to the listening device Koten had secreted in Sato’s office turned itself off, its store of information increased.

Nicholas and Allonge deplaned at Dulles International in Washington.

“Mr. Linnear?”

A handsome blonde with the slender spread-legged stance of an athlete.

“You
are
Nicholas Linnear?”

She had a European accent that should have been spiky but was not. She had somehow managed to soften the vowels, clear up the guttural slurring that would have been normal. He thought she must have gone to school for that.

“Yes.” The accent was definitely Eastern European, and immediately he began to catalog her facial structure.

She reached inside her Burberry, opened up a black lizard card case. “Would you come with me, please?”

“Was it your mother or father who came from Belorussiya?”

He saw that her eyes were sky blue, azure, really. They were quite intelligent. And she was superb at hiding things. He found that despite the inconvenience she was causing him he liked her.

He took her opened card case from her hand and peered down at it. “
Gospadja
Tanya Vladimova,
vstraychayetzye
Craig Allonge.
On rabotayet dla Tomkina Industrii.
”

The shock registered on her face even as she nodded at the mystified Allonge in response to the introduction. She brushed her thick hair back from the side of her face and he saw that her nails were square cut and clear lacquered. Obviously she worked with her hands, and this interested him.

“It was my father who was born in Belorussiya,” she said in the same language.

“Do you take after him in more ways than just looks?”

“He was a very dedicated man,” she said. “Extremely dogged when the occasion called for it. He was a rural policeman. My mother was from Birobidzhan.”

There was an immediate flash in her eyes, a kind of challenge and a hint of something more. Nicholas knew how it must have been for her family inside Russia. What with a White Russian for a father and a Russian Jew for a mother there must not have been many options open to them. Her father had taken one obvious one; had others in the family taken the other?

“How many of you were dissidents?” he said softly.

She gave him an odd searching look for a moment and he was made peculiarly uncomfortable. Then it was gone, her face had cleared, and like the blank face of a computer terminal, she began again. “Enough so that my father had a great deal of time to grieve.”

“Excuse me,” Craig Allonge interjected in English. “Nick, what’s going on?”

Nicholas smiled. “Nothing, really. Miss Vladimova is merely seeing that I fulfill a clause in Tomkin’s will before we jet off to Japan.” He put his hand on the other man’s shoulder and squeezed. “Take a break at the airport. Stretch your legs, get something real to eat. I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”