The Nicholas Linnear Novels (198 page)

The storm hit him square in the face when he emerged like an infant from the egg, the chrysalis, the womb. He gasped, taking in long shuddering breaths as Kansatsu, pulling him free from the pile of ice and snow, wrapped him in his powerful arms and sought shelter beneath a ledge of twisted black rock…

Nicholas, upon the Hodaka again, stared at his nemesis, the Black Gendarme. It was the present, the past merely a vapor drifting above his head, a ragged war banner shredded by the sharp mountain peaks. Part of him could not believe that he was actually here. He had been certain that he would never again set foot upon the Hodaka.

But he was
Shiro Ninja,
and everything had changed.

The sky was an opalescent white, giving the impression that he was inside a mass of cartilage, cut off from the rest of the world or in another world altogether. A distant howling told him that a wind had sprung up; the first drops of rain, fat and heavy, roughly brushed his cheeks like a dissatisfied lover.

Nicholas stiffened. As it had done so many years ago, a storm was approaching. It was at his back, moving swiftly north. There was a crack of thunder, and the shell of the sky was split open by a tongue of iridescent lightning.

In a moment the rain came, part ice, part hail, beating down upon him. He took shelter beneath a ledge of twisted black rock. It occurred to him that this might be the spot where Kansatsu had held him safe and warm so many years ago.

Nicholas shivered. He was unutterably tired. His body ached in so many places he could no longer distinguish individual pain. His head throbbed where the incision had been made, and he unconsciously touched the spot beneath his knit cap. Despite the Gore-Tex parka, his layers of thermal clothing, he was cold. His teeth began to chatter.

He could see nothing beyond his shallow lair. He clung to the side of the Hodaka, at the foot of the malevolent wall of the Black Gendarme, as insignificant as an insect upon an elephant’s back. In the face of the soaring majesty of this mountain range, the elemental fury of this storm, he was nothing, less than a speck lost in time, soon forgotten.

He closed his eyes, rocking himself. It would be so easy to sleep now, encysted in the bosom of the storm, curled upon the Hodaka, ancient of the earth, to sleep the eternal sleep, and in such sleep an end to fear, to struggle, to
Shiro Ninja.

He heard the siren call and part of him responded, edging closer and closer to a surcease for which he surely longed. Death came again to him, as soft and seductive as his first lover, at once a melancholy and exhilarating reunion…

He awoke with a start. His throat was dry and raw, as if he had been breathing sulfur instead of oxygen. He blinked heavily. He could still see nothing beyond the hollow in which he crouched. He could no longer feel his feet. He squeezed his calves, pounded his fists weakly against his thighs. Numb. Totally numb.

Nicholas knew that he was dying. Even if he wanted to get up to run—
did
he want to? where would he run to?—he could not. The storm raged; night came down like a heavy cloak, the darkness of a moonless midnight.

Nicholas knew that if he fell asleep he would never awake. He exercised his mind, dredging up memory after memory, parading them across the theater of his mind, immersing himself in the detail of recall. But he was so tired. His bones ached. He was cold. His eyelids drooped and once or twice his head jerked up, his heart thumping wildly with the knowledge that against his will he had begun to drift off.

He was terrified, not only because he was losing conscious control over his body, not only because he was helpless, but because he knew that part of him welcomed death. He fought against that part of him as, years ago, he had fought against
haragei.

He thought of Nangi, his friend. He thought of Lew Croaker, the friend he had pushed away because of his own guilt. He thought of his tiny dead daughter, white-faced beneath the plastic tent that had not been able to keep her alive. He thought of Justine, of how much he loved her.

His heart broke then, and he wept bitter, crystalline tears. They froze on his eyelids, his cheeks, his lips. And still they came in such profusion that he might have been made of tears.

At last it was over. A calm after the emotional storm.

Emptiness.

Nothingness.

With his tears still frozen on his face, Nicholas drifted away into sleep. Through vapor he was falling, endlessly falling…

Until at last Death came to claim him.

“If virtue were its own reward,” Tanzan Nangi said to the Pack Rat, “it would not be a human trait. It would belong solely to the gods.”

The noise and lights of the rows of pachinko machines was deafening. All the better for them; the Pack Rat knew it was safe in here.

“I was speaking just now of Kusunda Ikusa.”

Nangi nodded. “And so was I. If Ikusa seems virtuous, it is because it will prove useful to him.”

“Not to Nami itself?” the Pack Rat asked.

“We must examine most carefully the motives of those near a nexus of power who profess too easily to pure altruism. One suspects anything in a pure form, but most of all virtue, which is not natural to man and which does not come to him without a struggle.”

Outside, in the dazzling Ginza, it was raining. Here, in the Twenty-Four Hour pachinko parlor, all was the same as it always was, day or night: bright with garish neon colors, humid, dense with the sweat of human emotion. The place never closed, which was why, the Pack Rat had said, he liked it. He came here often, Nangi knew, playing pachinko while he worked out problems in penetration, surveillance, and so forth. The nuances of his tradecraft.

“I have passed on your computer record of the virus attack to an associate,” the Pack Pat said.

“It is most frustrating. My people have gotten nowhere,” Nangi said.

The Pack Rat nodded. “Then identifying the source of the virus has become my sole responsibility. But I must tell you, Nangi-san, it is proving to be a difficult problem to solve. Its architecture is wholly alien.”

Although there were a number of pachinko machines free, the Pack Rat was waiting for a specific one. Pachinko, something of a national craze in Japan, was similar to American pinball, but played on a vertical field. It was a decades-old game, but as with almost everything, the Japanese liked it best in its current high-tech form. Some of the newest machines were equipped with tiny televisions so the player could keep up with his favorite shows while scoring.

“I always play that one,” the Pack Rat told Nangi, pointing to the sixth machine in the seventh line. An old lady was on her last game; she must have been there for hours, moving from machine to machine.

“Is Justine Linnear being guarded?” Nangi asked as he watched the Pack Rat prepare to play. Curiously, the Pack Rat had bought only one token from the cashier at the front of the parlor. Nangi wondered whether the Pack Rat was that good. Winning would give him free tokens from the machine itself.

The Pack Rat put his hands on the machine, nodded. “As you requested. I’ve put my best man, Han Kawado, on it. Please don’t worry about her.”

“It is a precaution only,” Nangi said. “I have no idea yet what this
dorokusai
is after, but one cannot be too careful. I want full security maintained.”

The Pack Rat nodded. He began to play. He won the first game, but not by much. His score only netted him a single token. He began a second game. “Getting back to Ikusa,” he said. “Seeing him and Killan Oroshi together, I can tell you firsthand there is nothing virtuous about their relationship.”

Nangi grunted. “So much for protestations of the absolute.”

“And there’s something about Ikusa’s relationship with Ken Oroshi. Oroshi, the elder by twenty years, genuflected in front of Ikusa.”

“Oroshi’s company, Nakano Industries, is in desperate financial straits,” Nangi said.

“Yeah. I’d heard that.”

“You’re among the few who have,” Nangi said. “Oroshi’s moved heaven and earth to keep it secret. Frankly, I don’t know how he’s kept the company going this long. All he’s got there now is a superior research and development department. I would give my left arm for some of his resident geniuses. That’s what gave me the idea when Ikusa started to squeeze me. That’s primarily why Nakano was the one firm on my list I was hoping Ikusa would pick. After we merge, I’m going to exercise my right of stock option immediately. Then I’ll own Nakano. I’ll have expanded, acquired key personnel, gotten three thousand square feet of prime laboratory space, something the Sphynx
kobun
desperately needs. And the best part is that I’ll have done it for virtually no money.”

The Pack Rat said, “Pardon me, but what do you need me for?”

“Insurance,” Nangi said. “I am not about to underestimate Ikusa-san. I want no interference from him or from Nami once I begin.”

The Pack Rat lost the second game. Nangi saw his expression, said, “What’s troubling you?”

“Killan Oroshi’s not what I had expected. She’s not a pawn, more of a wild card. I can’t tell whether her actions are unpredictable or premeditated.”

“Why should this concern me?”

“I’m not sure,” the Pack Rat admitted. “Perhaps it’s as you suspect, nothing but an indiscretion on Ikusa’s part. He thinks she’s having the affair with him to spite her father who she clearly despises. But I wonder. I wonder whether it’s she who’s playing the great Kusunda Ikusa for a fool.”

“That would, indeed, be interesting,” Nangi mused. “But for this kind of investigation one needs time, and I have very little of that before I sign the merger papers with Nakano. Ikusa has worked more quickly than I had imagined. Already the contracts are with my lawyers. Continue the Ikusa surveillance. This tidbit about Ken Oroshi’s daughter is interesting, but that is all. I need something with which to destroy Ikusa’s reputation—not his friendship with Ken Oroshi.”

“Ikusa doesn’t gamble,” the Pack Rat said. “He owes no debts, he takes no bribes, he gives his advice freely. He’s unmarried. He’s a prudent man.”

Nangi shook his head. “Do not make the mistake of confusing
tatemae
—the facade—with prudence,” he said. “Kusunda Ikusa is clever; he covers himself in virtue as a squid ejects ink into the water. But for whatever reason, he has formed this liaison with Ken Oroshi’s daughter. This is not the act of a prudent man, but a man so in love with power that it has warped his judgment.”

The Pack Rat reached around to the side of the machine, did something Nangi could not see. A small door opened and the Pack Rat extracted a couple of tokens. So that’s his secret, Nangi thought. He cheats. “Still,” the Pack Rat said, closing the door, beginning his third game. “I’ve got a feeling we’re missing something important, or looking at the situation from the wrong end.”

“With the recent death of the Emperor, Nami’s power has grown ten-thousand-fold. They have become a danger to Japan. This coercion they have me under is proof of that. It is Nami, ultimately, whom I must discredit,” Nangi said. “If we bring Ikusa down, Nami will follow.”

“Are we doing the right thing?” the Pack Rat said.

“As far as Nami goes,” Nangi said soberly, “it exists neither for Japan nor for the Emperor. It was created in the minds of men, and there is where its true power resides. It has no real function other than to raise its members to power. It is the guardian of this power and nothing more. But time passes, and it seems to me that that empty power—that talismanic facade—needs to be fed. The warp of the flame is never so extreme as when it exists for itself and not to light the way for others.”

“Yet the topmost ministers, the business world’s most influential chairmen, acquiesce to its wishes.”

Nangi grunted. “Such is the hypocrisy of the modern-day society in which we live. Men fear the unknown, and Japan without the old Emperor is a question mark. Nami seeks now to capitalize on the insecurity of the nation. They are predators who know well the stench of the rotting flesh upon which they feed.”

The Pack Rat watched the tiny steel ball-bearing rocket around the vertical pachinko field. “Perhaps you’re right, and Nami is our ultimate target,” he said. “But right now I feel as if I can’t get to that until I’ve unraveled the mystery of Kusunda Ikusa and Killan Oroshi.”

“I won’t tell you how to do your job,” Nangi said, “but have a care, Pack Rat. Nami is extremely dangerous. They are a law unto themselves. Remember, I need you beside me, not dead in some alley way.”

The Pack Rat won big. He was on a roll.

David Brisling watched Douglas Howe on the phone in his office, and felt a sharp stab of jealousy. That damned Japanese bitch, he thought. Nothing has been the same around here since she squirmed her way into Howe’s inner circle. He tried to stem the wild burst of envy he felt, but blurted at Shisei when she emerged, “Why wasn’t I at that meeting? As operations deputy, I should have been involved.”

“Why don’t you ask your boss?” Shisei said tartly. She turned her kilowatt smile on Brisling, held up the Louis Feraud suit. “Did you see what Dougie bought me? It must have set him back a fortune.” She laughed to see Brisling’s face flush. “The problem with you,” she said, “is that you’re a wuss. I can’t imagine what your function is.” She stuck her face in his. “Why
does
Dougie keep you around? For laughs?” Her smile deepened, changed subtly. “Or maybe it’s just to bring his suits to the cleaners. Face it. You’re a little boy in a man’s world, and you always will be.” She laughed as she left him standing there, white and trembling.

Howe, who was on the phone with General Dickerson, his stooge at the Pentagon, beckoned for Brisling to come in. He cupped his hand over the speaker. “I need you to do something for me.”

“What is it?” Brisling snapped. “You need me to go to the cleaners?”

“What?” Howe’s head came up. “General,” he said into the phone, “I’ll get back to you.” He cradled the receiver, said to Brisling, “What the fuck’re you talking about?”

“Nothing,” Brisling said sullenly. “Just something the Jap bitch said.” He watched Howe emerge from behind his desk, reach for his jacket. Phones were ringing in the ready room, fielded by Brisling’s cadre of assistant secretaries.