The Nicholas Linnear Novels (144 page)

He refocused his attention. “You’d better give me all of it, Matty.”

“What I got ain’t good. The government’s involved.”

For a moment Croaker thought someone had lobbed a grenade in his direction. Stupidly, in shock, he said, “Which government?”

“Ours. Jesus, who else’s?”

“I don’t get it.”

“You think I do? All I know is that this’s gone way beyond you or me.”

Croaker’s mind was spinning furiously. “Now I see why you weren’t surprised about the blackout in Raleigh. Only the government’d have that kind of clout. D’you know who in the government?”

“Know a character, Minck by name?”

“Never heard of him.”

“Neither had I until I did some heavyweight snooping. He runs what’s called a ‘closed shop’ in the trade.”

“And what trade might that be?”

“Why, spying, of course, Lieutenant.”

“What the hell’s this got to do with Tomkin and Angela Didion’s murder?”

“You said you’d got the dame with you. Ask her. She was a witness. The only one.”

“Yeah? Then why’s she still walking around, safe and sound?”

“She alone in Key West?” Matty asked shrewdly.

“No. They had a bracket on her. But it was to keep her safe.”

“You know that for a fact?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Croaker said. “She tried to off herself one afternoon. One of ’em stopped her. I saw the whole thing.”

“Something doesn’t make sense,” Matty conceded. “But I’ll be damned if I know what it is.”

“You give me all of it?” Croaker asked, feeding his last quarter into the slot.

“One other thing. It’s not the same topic, but since you been on the moon for a while I thought I’d pass it on. Your buddy Linnear’s been named head of Tomkin Industries.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Why would I do that? He’s in Tokyo now—you know, Japan—finishing off some big business Tomkin had going with a company called Sato Petrochemicals.”

Jesus, Croaker thought. What’s happening here? The whole world’s turning upside down.

He cleared his mind, fast. “Do me one more favor, will you?”

“Now it’ll cost you, Lieutenant. We’re all square, like you said. What’s the deal?”

“I need a place for me and girl to flop. Your place.”

“Thousand a week or any fraction thereof.”

“You’re getting to be a wise guy, Matty. This’s an emergency.”

“I kinda understand that, Lieutenant, but you gotta see things from my point of view, too. Times’re tight. I gotta live just like anybody else.”

“You forget I’m not on the payroll right now.”

“I’ll take your marker.”

“You sonuvabitch.”

Croaker could feel his smile through the phone. “Yeah,” Matty the Mouth said. “I know.”

At precisely six
P.M.
Hong Kong time, Tanzan Nangi sitting high up in the offices of the All-Asia Bank, picked up the telephone and dialed the number Liu had given him at the end of their first meeting.

All afternoon he had glumly watched the ants far below queuing up before the entrance to the All-Asia’s Central District branch in order to withdraw their life’s savings. Suddenly the All-Asia was poison; it would swallow their money whole. The Chinese were pulling out.

The mechanism by which such enormous masses of people were so instantly galvanized was a mystery to Nangi, but he had no doubt as to who was behind the run. The Communists were turning the screws.

“How long can we expect to hold out?” Nangi had asked Allan Su just after the doors were closed at three. Police had been called to disperse the mob who had been on line when the bank was closed.

“At this rate,” Su said, “no more than forty-eight hours. I’ve just been on the phone with our other branches in Wan Chai, Tsim Sha Tsui, Aberdeen, and Stanley. It’s the same all over, more or less. We’ll have to go to the vault tonight.”

“Don’t do anything yet,” Nangi said, fist against his cheek. “Not until I give you the word.”

“Yes?” The female voice was quiet and well modulated.

“Mr. Liu, please,” Nangi said, hating this moment, hating the Communists more now than he ever had.

“Whom shall I say is calling?”

At seven-fifteen that evening, Nangi’s car pulled up in front of the Sun Wa Trading Company on Sai Ping Shan Street in Sheung Wan. It was a long store front painted a garish glossy vermillion. The Chinese, Nangi reflected, did not comprehend the subtlety of pastel shades. Instead they surrounded themselves with childlike primaries. They were as superstitious about color as they were about everything else.

He stepped out into the crowded street, inhaling the scents of five-spice powder, star anise, dried fish, soy, and chili. They made him long for home with an intensity that was almost painful. But he knew that part of the pain was from the knowledge of what he was about to do.

Squaring his shoulders, he concentrated on walking as normally as possible so that he would not be further shamed in front of his enemies.

Inside, the atmosphere was gritty with spice powder residues, bringing a tickle to his nostrils. At first the place seemed deserted; it was past the time when the regular employees had gone home.

Nangi paused in the dimness and looked around without seeming to. He spotted a shadow amid other shadows, moving slightly.

“I have brewed fresh tea especially for this occasion.” It was unmistakably Liu’s voice.

Nangi moved in his direction, mindful of the crates and cartons scattered about. He sat down on a plain wooden chair opposite the Chinese. A scarred table was between them. On it were only two items: a pair of identical documents. Nangi did not have to touch them to know what they were.

“Tea first,” Liu said amiably. “I want this to be as painless as possible.” He was positively exuding good fellowship now that his triumph was imminent.

They both drank. “Black Tiger tea,” Liu said. “From Peking. Only a very small quantity is produced each year. Do you like it?”

“Very much,” Nangi said, almost choking on the brew.

Liu inclined his head slightly. “I am honored.” He continued to sip. “I understand that there was a disturbance in front of the All-Asia this afternoon,” he said conversationally.

Nangi decided to test him. “It was nothing at all.”

“Enough for the police to be called in, yes?”

“Traditionally the police are summoned when more than a score of Chinese assemble in one place in the Crown Colony,” Nangi observed blandly. “It gives Her Majesty’s Government something to do.”

“Even the voracious crow knows when to quit the corner field, Mr. Nangi.”

This all had the appearance of an elaborate charade. It was as if Liu felt compelled to drag out the hoary cliché of the aphoristic Chinese. But why? Surely he knew that it would not impress a Japanese. Then it occurred to Nangi that charades were never acted out unless there was an audience.

Shadows wreathed the rafters inside the Sun Wa Trading Company. Outside, the Light had failed, so that even the skylight far above had turned opaque and impenetrable. Sawdust on the floor, the spices rich and pungent. If there was movement in the darkness, Nangi could not detect it. Yet his sense that he and Liu were not alone was inescapable.

“How bad was the run, Mr. Nangi?” Liu was pouring more tea. It seemed he was bent on carefully delineating the boundaries of his superiority.

“I am certain that you already know that, Mr. Liu,” Nangi said carefully. “All runs are bad in and of themselves. That’s obvious.”

“What is obvious to me, Mr. Nangi,” Liu said, sipping his tea again, “is that you will not make it without our direct intervention.”

“That occurred to me as well. That is why I called.”

Perhaps this was all Liu had wanted in the first place: a humbling by verbal admission, for he nodded now as if accepting a compliment. He inclined his head toward the contract. “I trust you will find each clause you required satisfactorily rendered.” He spoke as if it had been he who had made all the negotiating concessions; as if it were he who were under the gun and not Nangi.

For a moment Nangi did nothing. To make an immediate move would have cost him too much face, and he had already given up more than he could spare by agreeing to this meeting. After a suitable amount of time had elapsed, he took up the document and commenced to read. Every sentence froze his spirit, every clause to which he was being forced to sign his name made him sick at heart. The moment he touched pen to paper, effective control of his
keiretsu
would be transferred to Liu’s masters in Peking.

The Chinese had placed an old-fashioned fountain pen squarely in the middle of the table top. Nangi would be obliged to reach for it.

“We plan no immediate intervention or policy change,” Liu said. “There is absolutely no cause for alarm.”

“I was thinking of the thirty-five million dollars,” Nangi said. “It must be delivered by eight
A.M.
tomorrow morning.”

Liu nodded, unperturbed. Where were his “firm’s” prior commitments now? “If you would ask Mr. Su and whichever other bank officers you designate to appear at the All-Asia Bank’s main vault in Central, that sum will be handed over to them.”

Oh, yes, Nangi thought. I’m certain you’re quite familiar with our vaults, thanks to Comrade Chin. But what he said was, “That will be entirely satisfactory.”

And then, deliberately ignoring the fountain pen Liu had set on the table, Nangi extracted a pen of his own and signed the last page of both sets of contracts. Retrieving his pen, Liu did the same. He pushed the top copy back to Nangi’s side.

“A little more tea, perhaps?” His eyes danced in the darkness.

Nangi declined. Folding away the document, which felt hot and unclean to his hands, he was about to rise when Liu’s motion stayed him.

From within the Chinese’s breast pocket a shiny red envelope appeared. Liu handed it to Nangi without a word.

Nangi looked at him enquiringly.

“We Chinese have a custom, Mr. Nangi. It is most civilized. The sum inside that envelope is payment for transfer; transfer of ownership, of power, call it what you will. With the physical transfer there can be no loss of face because there has been an exchange, one for the other.”

Nangi nodded respectfully, as if they were two men exchanging pleasantries on a park bench. But in his heart he seethed, the anger crackling through him, making his pulse skip a beat. Nothing in his outward manner conveyed his inner resolve. To Liu and whoever else might be watching, concealed in the shadows, he was a clever businessman at the crevasse of defeat.

Carefully, Nangi slid the red envelope away next to the document that lay like a lead weight against his heart. He pushed away from the table and, taking up his cane, rose and walked awkwardly out of the Sun Wa Trading Company to where his chauffeured car was waiting for him.

There was no aspect of nightlife that interested him so he went directly back to the hotel. Food tasted like ash and stuck in his throat as if it were the contract itself that Liu and his masters had coerced him into signing. Stoically he went on eating until his plate was clean, and then could not remember what it was that he had ordered. It did not matter.

Undressed, he lay atop his bed and stared up at the ceiling, at the river of the past. As always,
kanryōdō
consumed him. Once a warrior, always a warrior, he thought. It was impossible to hang up your
katana
, even if, as in his case, it was figurative rather than literal.

The face of Makita, his
sempai,
floated through the clouds of his memory as it often did. Rather than allow them to take out his diseased stomach, he had committed
seppuku.
He had asked Nangi to be his second and, acquiescing, Nangi had taken up his mentor’s long sword and with one swift overhand strike had ended the excruciating pain of the two
wakizashi
slashes, the first lateral, the second vertical, that Makita had managed to inflict himself.

And though it had been the honorable thing to do, though Nangi had had no choice but to comply with his
sempai
’s wishes, still he was ashen as he stared at the bloody blade, his friend and surrogate father’s head on the
tatami
; he shook all over as if he had contracted ague. His skin felt feverish and dry and there was no saliva with which to swallow.

Surely, Nangi had thought, Christ could not have wished such a thing. And he had fled to church where, in the Confessional, he had spewed out what he had done in rapid-fire bursts like retching. But even that could not cleanse him and he spent the next six hours on his knees before the image of Christ on the Cross, praying for forgiveness.

It had been Sato who had come for him, persuading him to leave that sanctuary where the real world could not intrude. “My friend,” Sato had said softly, “you cannot possibly blame yourself. You did what had to be done, what any
samurai
would do. You stood by your friend when he needed you the most. What more can you ask of yourself? It was
giri.
”

Nangi’s eyes had been full of pain and self-loathing. “It was not the Christian thing to do, Seiichi-san.”

To which Sato had had no reply but to get Nangi out of there.

Thoughts of Makita inevitably led Nangi back to
mabiki
, the decades-long weeding-out process he had performed at MITI for his
sempai.
How many had he “slain” in this way, destroying any chance they had for advancement in Japanese bureaucracy? Always he asked himself that question, because always he was uneasy with what he had done.

Shimada had been the first one; Shimada had been the beginning of
mabiki.
He had paid for his greed and his shortsightedness. He could not see change coming, and thus Nangi had doomed him to humiliation or death. Shimada had chosen the honorable path and had committed
seppuku
, opening the way for Makita’s immediate appointment as first vice-minister of MITI.

Shimada had been the hardest one. After that, the
mabiki
was easier to handle, the concept easier for Nangi to accept.
Kanryōdō
’s precepts had hardened his heart.

Now, sweating in a hotel room in a foreign colony clinging with the tenaciousness of woodbine to the very tip of the Asian continent, his great dream lost to him, he wondered piteously whether he had murdered in the name of Christ.