The Nicholas Linnear Novels (110 page)

She had been old, ancient even. And Nangi knew all things must eventually turn to dust from whence they first came. But his spirit was bitter and sere without Obā-chama’s bright eyes and chirrupy voice.

Though he could not understand it fully then, Obā-chama’s death sealed his fate, or a good part of it at least. After Gōtarō’s death Nangi had made an unconscious pact with himself never to allow that degree of openness—and therefore vulnerability—to spring up between him and anyone else. But somehow Obā-chama had charmed him out of that pact, with this inevitable result.

Though Nangi was to sleep with many women in his time, he would feel nothing for them in his heart. The double deaths from his past were like eternal
kami
hovering in his mind, reminding him of how evil and unfair life could be. These, of course, were very Western concepts, but Nangi could never admit such anathema to himself. Thus his
karma
was complete. This struggle between his Japanese nationalism and what a tiny part of him might suspect was his ultimate reason for turning to Christianity would plague him to the end of his days, an eternal punishment perhaps for submitting to Gōtarō’s sacrifice, for lacking the courage to overcome his terror and do for his friend what Gōtarō had finally done for him.

The birds were gone now, but the splendor of the autumnal foliage crowned the maple with a mantle of searing colors. Voices drifted over Nangi like
kami.
Mariko was busy preparing the traditional gifts of foodstuff for tonight’s
tsukimi
—the moon-viewing ritual of contemplation and peace.

Nangi’s gaze moved over the top of the swaying maple to the brilliant sky swept new by the gathering winds swirling aloft. Soon the moon would rise, showering this small space with silver and blue light. And through the open
fusuma
the chill of night would slowly creep in.

*Sokaijin
means, literally, “escape to the country.” The term was used for the thousands of refugees streaming out of the smoking cities into the rural and therefore safer villages of Japan.

**The bond between school and university classmates.

***The military, then secret police.

[1. A gap; an opportunity presents itself, enter swiftly 2. Spies]

H
IS HEART LEAPT WHEN
he saw her. She broke through the cordon of milling people, her long legs pumping, and raced into his arms.

“Oh, Nick,” she cried into his chest, “I thought you were never coming home.”

He lifted her head up so he could drink in the colors of her large eyes, the swirled sienna and bottle green that could have been hazel but was not. The bright crimson motes danced in her left iris. He saw that she had been crying.

“Justine.”

His sigh set her off again, and he felt the slow crawl of her hot tears as their lips crushed together and her mouth opened under his, her sweet warm breath mingling with his, and he thought, It’s good to be home.

“I’m sorry about how that call ended,” she said. People were shouldering roughly past them and he became aware that they were blocking the egress from the incoming flight. He moved them quickly off to the side.

“So am I,” he said. “I was distracted—there was so much to do over there and not enough time to do it in.”

She had done something to her hair, he saw. It was as tangly and wild as a lion’s mane. Too, there were garnet highlights here and there as the overhead lights spun off it.

“I like it,” he said, his arm still around her.

She looked at him. “What?”

“Your hair.”

She smiled as they began to walk toward the glass doors. “All that matters is that you’re home safe and sound.” She put her head against his shoulder, forcing him to shift his bags to a more comfortable position.

He found it odd and somehow unsettling that she had said nothing at all about her father. But, considering what was ahead, he did not think this the best time to question her. Instead, he said, “Tell me about your new job. Are you happy there?”

“Oh, yes,” she said and immediately launched into a description of the three major projects Rick Millar had her working on. In so doing she was transformed again into the exuberant little girl she often could be. It was interesting how all shyness evaporated from her at these times. She seemed supremely self-confident and mature. Nicholas found himself wondering how a job could have changed her in so short a time.

But when she was finished, the self-consciousness returned. She could do more things with eyes than anyone else he knew, and now as she lifted her head and stared at him, he saw the shyness and the need for his approval. There was that peculiar coolness swirling in the depths that he recalled vividly from their first meetings that was far better than a verbal warning to keep him at arm’s length.

He swept her up, laughing. “But of course I think it’s wonderful! It’s about time you came out of your shell.”

“Now, listen, Nick, I didn’t say I’d keep at it or—”

He set her down. “But you said that you enjoy it.”

She abruptly had an air about her so fragile and insubstantial that he hugged her to him as if she were a lost child.

There was a gleaming silver limousine waiting for them as they emerged from the swinging glass doors. Nicholas stopped, but Justine tugged at the crook of his arm.

“Oh, come on,” she said. “I decided to splurge part of my new salary. Indulge me.”

Reluctantly, Nicholas gave his bags over to the uniformed chauffeur and, ducking his head, slid into the plush back seat next to Justine. She gave instructions to the driver and they slid out into the slow-moving traffic on their way to the Long Island Expressway.

“I see Gelda decided not to meet her father.”

Justine looked away from him. “You didn’t hear my asking to look at the coffin.”

“That was all taken care of ahead of time. There was no reason for us to be there.” Silence in the car, like a beaded curtain between them. “Your father—”

“Don’t start this again, Nicky,” she said sharply. Her head turned and he saw the anger in her eyes. “I never for a moment understood why you went to work for him. My father, of all people! He was such a despicable man.”

“He loved his daughters.”

“He didn’t love himself; he didn’t know how to love anyone else.”

Nicholas put his hands between his knees and clasped his fingers. This might be a bad time to tell her, he thought. But he could think of no good time. She had a right to know; he wasn’t that Eastern that he could keep this from her.

“Your father gave me complete control of the company.”

Thrumming of the powerful engine, deep and rich, the slide of Queens’ semi-urban sprawl drifting by them. And a feeling of helplessness.

“That’s a bad joke, Nick,” she said. “Don’t even make it.”

Mentally he sighed, steeling himself for the storm. “It’s no joke, Justine. He wrote a codicil to his will six months ago. His sixty percent of the voting shares makes me the new president of Tomkin Industries. Bill Greydon was a witness, and he witnessed my signing the codicil in Tokyo.”

“You
signed
the bloody thing?” She was twisted around on the seat, her back stiff, pressed tightly into the opposing corner. “You agreed to that…!” She shook her head in disbelief, for the moment words failing her. “Oh, Christ but it’s madness.” Her voice had turned throaty as if her throttled emotions were aswim in her words.

She put her hand up to her face as if to block out the image of him sitting so close to her, as if that would erase what he had revealed to her. “Oh, God, no. No, it can’t be.” She tore her hand away from her eyes and glared at him, her chest heaving with her rage.

“I thought it was finally over. I thought my father’s death would once and for all put an end to it, that it would sever me wholly from how he had chosen to live his life. Because as sure as we’re both sitting here, Nick, Tomkin Industries was built on the blood and bile of everyone my father felt he had to defeat in his climb up to the top.” She gave a small, bitter laugh and looked as if she were going to spit. “The top of what? Can you tell me that, Nicky? What was it that was so important that he treated my mother and Gelda and me as
…things
, useful to him when he needed us but beneath his notice when he was otherwise occupied—by getting to the top.”

Nicholas said nothing, knowing that his best bet was to allow her to run her course.

“And now”—that laugh came again so chill that it seemed to border on hysteria—“now when I’m finally about to get my life into some kind of order, you tell me that I’m again bound to Tomkin Industries
body and soul.
”

“I only said that I had signed the codicil.”

“And of course that has nothing to do with me,” she cried. “We’re going to be married in a month, or has going
home
made you forget so soon?”

“Justine, for God’s sake—”

“No, no. This involves me as well as you. But bastard that you are, that never occurred to you, did it? Admit it, damnit!” Her eyes were fiery and her cheeks were pink and burning with her anger. “You know how I felt about my father; you knew how I felt about his company. I thought that you working for him would be temporary. I thought…Oh, Christ!” She put her head in her hands, her rage dissolving into tears of helplessness. “Oh, how I hate you! Look what you’ve done to us!”

Nicholas put his head back against the plush velvet, closed his eyes. “It
was
supposed to be temporary, Justine.” His voice was soft, gentle, assuring as he used the opposite side of
kiai
to manipulate his tone. “But life is fluid, events cause us to change our plans. There’s a flow to—”

“Oh, don’t you dare start with your idea of
karma
,” she snapped. “I don’t want to hear any of that obscure mumbo jumbo. Try it out on your Japanese friends, not me!”

“Justine,” he said simply, “we’re both exhausted. A great deal of thought went into my decision and I—”

“But not about me, not about how
I
felt!”

“There’s more to it than what you want, Justine,” he said, abruptly angry.

“Now you listen to me. I spent all my life listening to what my father
told
me, listening to what a long succession of boyfriends
told
me. And I obeyed them all just like a good little girl should. But that’s all over and done with. Because, you see, there
isn’t
more than what
I
want. I’ve never in my life had what
I
wanted; I was always afraid to try for it because of what my father
told
me, what my boyfriends
told
me; how to behave, what to do, what not to say.

“Now it’s me and only me. I control my own life; I control my own destiny, not my father, not anyone else. Not even you, Nicholas.”

She leaned toward him, moving out from her corner of the seat. Her skin was red, her normally full sensual lips pulled taut and thin. “At last I’m free, and no one is putting me back in my cage again. I won’t be chained to anything,
especially
something so heinous as Tomkin Industries.”

“Then we have something of an impasse,” Nicholas said.

But Justine was already shaking his head. “Oh, no, Nick. That’s your definition of this situation. But the truth is this: as long as you’re involved with my father’s company I don’t want to see you, I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to know you exist.”

In the great spacious hall of martial arts on the thirty-eighth floor of the Shinjuku Suiryū Building, Masuto Ishii was working up quite a sweat. While others spent their lunch hours over
soba
and Suntory Scotch, Ishii used that time to give his physical self a workout.

Three times a week he rose before dawn to run ten miles along twilit streets before returning to his tiny bachelor’s apartment in the Ryogoku district, showering, and dressing in impeccable dark suits for work. The other four days he spent the early-morning hours in this same gymnasium. Since he allotted his section chiefs forty-five minutes for lunch, he felt a duty to conform to the same spartan schedule. That was too little time for a whole panoply of exercises, so midday he confined himself to the repetition of one or two difficult maneuvers culled from the various disciplines with which he was conversant.

Thus when Akiko found him he was in the midst of the
irimi
variations of
jo-waza,
stave
aikido.
There was no one else about, the vast Sato staff emptying out of the building like locusts upon the gleaming field of Shinjuku at precisely twelve-thirty. For a time she watched him intently.

Long muscles rippling, filmed with a light sheen of sweat that lay on his chest like mineral oil, his oval head down, the bull-like chest barely moving as his concentration deepened. She remembered the long, lingering look he had given her on her wedding day. She had seen the veiled lust in his eyes then and had wondered: had it been her he had wanted to get at, or was it the symbol of what his superior was about to possess? For Akiko sensed Ishii’s adoration of power as strongly as if it were animal spoor. Not for him the quiet contentment of home and family, of his secure position as number-two man at Sato Petrochemicals. In his heart he was no man’s right hand but, rather, wished only to select his own line of command from top to bottom.