The Nicholas Linnear Novels (158 page)

Nicholas looked at him. He felt a curious ache inside. “I’m sorry he was so weak. He must’ve been thinking of the leak she represented. National security—”

“He’s still a murderer in my book,” Croaker cut in. “National security, my ass. Big goddamned deal.”

“I disagree, Lew.”

Croaker rounded on him. “What d’you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” Nicholas said softly. “Why are you here now?”

Croaker thought about that. “National security,” he said at last. It was a sigh of defeat. “I’m sorry, Nick.”

“Forget it, Lew. It only means we can all be suckered in the name of patriotism.”

“Is that what really led Tomkin to let them in?”

Nicholas looked at his friend. “I honestly don’t know.”

“Well, it sure don’t make a bit of difference to Angela. One way or another, she’s still six feet under.”

“You can’t keep torturing yourself over one death, Lew. Be reasonable. You’ve done everything you could. It’s more than anyone else would’ve done. I think Angela’s spirit can rest now.”

Croaker sat down heavily, his head in his hands. “I did nothing. I solved nothing, I’ve gotten nowhere. Just spinning my goddamned wheels in a pile of quicksand. No one’s gonna pay for Angela’s death, not now, not ever.”

Now Nicholas was concerned. “What happened to you down in Key West, my friend? I mean, really.”

Croaker’s voice was muffled. “I don’t know, Nick. Damned if I do.” Nicholas said nothing, and Croaker was forced to go on to rid himself of the oppressive silence. “My life’s come apart. I guess…” He paused, began all over again. “I don’t know what’s happened to the kid who graduated the Academy in the top five percent of his class. Then I had the law in one hand and my service revolver in the other. I knew what to do with them. I knew that I was on the right side and
they
, the murderers, rapists, addicts, armed robbers, muggers, were on the wrong side.

“That was a long time ago—or so it seems. Somewhere in the interim I seem to have lost the facility to determine the perpetrators from the law officers. I thought sure as I’m sitting here that Tomkin killed Angela. I was wrong…or was I? I don’t know anymore. Minck had her killed and I knew I had to confront him. Why, I don’t know. Did I want to murder him myself? Become the ultimate anarchist against the law I’m sworn to uphold: a vigilante? I knew when I stood before him that at least part of me wanted to. Even though I know what kind of a bitch Angela was, even though I know that she could—and you’re right,
would
have—screwed this whole spook deal Minck had cooking with Tomkin. But the end result is that they took a human life; they played God with her. They
destroyed,
Nick.”

His head came up, and Nicholas winced at the bleakness in those red-rimmed eyes. Perhaps he had been crying…for himself, for one lost soul. “No matter what she was, Nick, she had a right to live. I’m right about that, at least, aren’t I?”

Nicholas put his arm around his friend as together they sat on the edge of the bed. “She had a right to live, Lew.”

Croaker gave a little bark of confused anger. “So instead of taking Minck out myself, I wind up working for him.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Yeah, well you will in a minute, I guarantee you.” Croaker stood up, began to pace back and forth like a caged tiger. He was tense and did not mind showing it. “Reason is, see, this Minck bastard’s sanctioned someone else. It seems that Tanya Vladimova’s a KGB bug planted on him. You ain’t seen her skulking around here lately have you?”

Nicholas’ mind was on fire. There were too many things hitting him at once. “Tanya,” he said, “a Soviet spy? But why didn’t Minck contact me himself?”

Croaker pointed to the phone. “Ever think to get your messages, buddy?”

“Actually, no. I’ve had other things on my mind. I only walked into the hotel a half an hour ago. I ran right into Tanya. She—”

“Yeah? Where the hell’s she got to?”

Oh, my God, Nicholas thought.
Tenchi!
I’ve given her everything I fought so hard to keep from Protorov. Perhaps he’s won after all. But that thought, the knowledge of an almost certain war sparked by the territorial incident, was too terrible to contemplate.

“Come on!” Nicholas cried.

“Where we going?”

“To Hamamatsu-chō.”

When Tanya left Nicholas’ room, she took the fire stairs down the seven floors, not wanting to wait for the elevator or to be seen. In the street she turned north, heading away from the hotel at a rapid pace. She longed to take a taxi but was afraid to leave a trail. In any case, within three blocks she knew that she had made the right choice. Traffic choked the streets and she was far better off on foot, plowing with great power through the crowds like a salmon struggling upstream.

Up the Sakura-dōri, she found the Toranomon station of the Ginza Line. Down into the ground she went, paying her fare, riding one stop to Shimbashi, where she transferred to the J.N.R. Line to Hamamatsu-chō.

There she emerged in the midst of hundreds of other people, mostly tourists, to wait for the monorail to Haneda Airport and a flight to Hokkaido. Now she took time out to wait on line for a phone booth where, when it was her turn, she used a special code to alert Russilov that she was on the run.

“Parachute,” she said when the line opened.

It was that time of day in Tokyo, after the noon lunch stampede and before the evening rush hour, when traffic is variable. It can be good or bad according to the whim of the gods.

Nicholas decided to take a calculated risk and grab a cab to Hamamatsu-chō. It was a mistake. Sakura-dōri was jammed, and none of the alternate routes were any better. Near the Onarimon station, he had had enough and, dropping yen like flower petals onto the driver’s lap, jumped out, Croaker just behind him.

Onarimon had been on their way along the city streets but now, underground, they found themselves having to change trains twice, once at Mita for the Toei Asakusa Line to Shimbashi, thence to the J.N.R., following Tanya’s route to Hamamatsu-chō.

When they came up into the pointillist sunshine they were faced with a massive crowd that flowed down the two staircases on the departing side of the monorail station. A riot of color, voices, jostling bodies. A sea of faces; the rhythm of the heat.

“She could be anywhere here,” Croaker said. “Or she could be twenty miles away.”

“Stop being so optimistic,” Nicholas said dryly, “and go down to the far staircase. In three minutes precisely, we’ll both start up, me here, you there. We’ll get her someplace in between.”

Croaker got serious. “You really are sure she’s here, aren’t you?”

“You don’t know Tokyo, Lew,” he said. “She’s got to get to Hokkaido as quickly as possible. Haneda Airport’s her only means of doing it. This is her best shot for it.”

“But there’re always a busload of ways out of any major city. What makes you so sure it’ll be this one?”

Nicholas could not say really, because it was an intangible. He conjured up Tanya’s face at the moment he had told her that he had broken
Tenchi.
That surprise now had added meaning for him. He knew that she had not been prepared for flight. Whatever her plan had been when she had run into him at the Okura, it changed immediately he told her about
Tenchi.

“Lew,” he said earnestly, “she’s going home. To Russia. She’s running on instinct, and instinct dictates taking the most direct route as well as the fastest. It’s a hunch, but an accurate one, I think.”

“Okay, buddy,” Croaker said with a brief grin. “I’ve had some experience with your hunches before. See you in the middle up there.”

It was hot and getting hotter. So much so that Tanya had begun to sweat. Something was wrong on the monorail line. The unthinkable had occurred: a form of Japanese transportation had broken down.

Moments ago, as she glanced at her watch, she had begun to regret not shooting Nicholas Linnear where he stood in front of his bathroom mirror. But she knew quite well why she had hesitated and then decided against it. She was afraid of him; afraid that she would try it and he would somehow ferret out her intent, and stop her from bringing the secret of
Tenchi
to the summit. She consoled herself with the fact that the meeting was paramount and could not be jeopardized for anything.

She had stayed her hand and was sorry that she had not taken the risk. For she had bolted and was now vulnerable to pursuit. The thought of Nicholas Linnear as hunter filled her with dread.

That was why at the precise instant she saw him moving up the stairs at the near end of the platform she turned away and began to fight her way through the densely packed throng toward the platform’s far end.

She had been scanning the bobbing crowd at fifteen-second intervals as she had been taught at Protorov’s academy, using reflective surfaces when she could to do much of her work for her.

Her heart turned icy when she saw him rising onto the level of the platform itself. He seemed to slip through the jostling, sweating mob with the greatest of ease. Unlike her, who had to battle for every inch. She felt as if she were in quicksand, her legs frantically pumping but not seeing much result from all that furious effort. Quicksand or a dream.

But it was neither, Tanya knew quite well. So discreetly she drew out her modified Beretta, a flat, powerful weapon for close range.

She was looking over her shoulder as she had seen Russilov do. She had laughed silently at him for it but she found nothing amusing in the gesture now.

And so intent was she on fleeing from her personal hunter that she paid little attention to what was in front of her. To her those people were a quagmire through which she must force herself. They had ceased to be individuals but rather were a part of a maddeningly delaying whole. She wanted to kill them all, spill them pellmell onto the gleaming track that arced away toward Fuji-yama, blued in the industrial haze, and the safety of a plane at Haneda.

Something hit hard against her chest and she pushed back, frantic now, seeing Nicholas gaining on her.

“Stay right where you are, Comrade.”

A rough New York accent. Her head spun around, the Beretta coming up automatically, her finger tightening on the trigger.

“Put it down,” Lewis Croaker said into her face. “There’s nothing you can do with it now. There’s no place left for you to go.”

She turned for one last look at her oncoming pursuer and felt the lurch of his open hand against her weapon. Instinctively she got off a shot and was preparing for another when a single black eye rose like a tower not six inches in front of her face and erupted with the noise of the death of the world.

Croaker got off the phone and said, “We’re to stay right here until Minck’s support crew does what it has to.” He eyed Nicholas. “The police have already been contacted. No one’s going to make a move against us.”

Nicholas said nothing. He was staring down at the covered corpse of Tanya Vladimova. Cops were already on the scene, separating the observers from the participants. Moments ago Nicholas had spoken briefly to a young sergeant in rapid Japanese. There were still a battery of formalities to go through.

But he was thinking of other matters. He was thinking again of what his father had said about taking life and eradicating evil from the world. That was the dilemma, he saw now. Why was it that to do the one you had to do the other? Wasn’t there any other way? Hadn’t there been with Tanya?

There had been no other way with Protorov, he knew; with Akiko as well.
Karma.
He knew that he had still not yet learned to accept life on its own terms. He felt too much for others. Or was it only that he was reluctant to relinquish that degree of control? It was a myth, anyway. Life could never be controlled. And yet he continued to try.

Perhaps it was time to end all that, he thought.

At the Shinjuku Suiryu Building, Nicholas saw Tanzan Nangi first, even though he had been told on his arrival that Justine was there, waiting for him. He did so because he wanted at least one major element in his life settled before he saw her again. He wanted his mind totally free so that he could concentrate fully on whatever it was she intended.

He had spent three hot and sticky hours scouring the city after he left Croaker, and now he carried with him a silk-covered package.

He was shown into Sato’s huge office without undue delay. They bowed.

“Linnear-san, please sit down.”

“If you don’t mind,” Nicholas said, “I’d prefer the next room.”

Nangi’s eyes opened wide and he hesitated a moment as if Nicholas’ request had disrupted a pattern set inside him. He nodded, recovering quickly. “Of course,” he murmured.

They walked through the narrow passageway housing the
tokonoma
, its slender vase holding one purple peony. Nicholas read the poem on the scroll just above:
“No rainfalls / Without bringing life / To blossoms / On mountainside or vale.”

Nangi led him past the small alcove and into another, smaller room that was not an office at all. It was a space that Nicholas had not seen before but had known must be there.

Just before the threshold, the two of them removed their shoes. It was a twelve-
tatami
room. The walls were
shōji
screens, though undoubtedly they covered plaster and lathe. Cool light, indirect and dim, played over the expanse, and from somewhere came the silvery tinkle of water through a streambed.

There was a low lacquer table in the center of the room, several Chinese-red
kansu
chests along the wall, a cedar desk with phone. A hard cedar chair.

They knelt down on opposite sides of the gleaming black table. Nicholas looked away to admire the room as Nangi spent some time and considerable energy in getting his ruined legs to bend beneath him.

“I have come to report my failure, Nangi-san,” Nicholas said after a time.

Nangi was curious. “How so, Linnear-san?”

“While you were away, Sato and I struck a bargain. He wished the merger to go through with all good speed; I wished to aid him—and you as well—against the
Wu-Shing.
”

“You and Seiichi-san felt that we both had something to fear from these heinous crimes, then?”