The Nicholas Linnear Novels (209 page)

Then Senjin went back to where Justine lay, bound, on the porch.

Her drugged eyes opened, her irises huge. “Where did you go?” she asked.

Senjin said nothing. He wound a silken cord around her neck.

The horned moon, melon-colored, bloated as it neared the horizon, seemed alive, malevolent, a mute, unforgiving witness to what was about to take place.

“The sex act,” he said, “can often be cruel, brutal, inhuman. It can so easily become a weapon. Some speak of it as rape, not the act of love. But love and sex are so far apart that they’re not in the same lexicon.”

“Sometimes,” Justine said, her lips opening. “Only sometimes.”

Senjin looked directly into her eyes. “But sex is only interesting when it is used as a weapon,” he said, thinking more about himself, about this moment, suspended in time, than he was about the missing emeralds.

There was blood on his hands, blood in his nostrils. The proximity to death, the act of killing, made him feel more alive than ever, close to the edge where eternal mystery reigns, where the end becomes the means to controlling the destiny of others, and in so doing, of ensuring his own destiny.

He began to tighten the cord around Justine’s neck.

“You look like someone I should avoid at all costs,” Kusunda Ikusa said, eyeing Killan Oroshi as the Pack Rat began to record. They were in Ikusa’s office in the Nippon Keio Building in Nishi-Shinjuku.

Killan laughed. “I always try to read your mind, if not your heart.”

He swung his chair around to face her. “Every once in a while it occurs to me that I should kill you before you have a chance to destroy me.”

“Perhaps one day you’ll try,” Killan said, apparently unfazed. “It would be fun to play that game with you.”

Ikusa scowled. “Death is no game, Killan. No matter what I do, I can’t seem to make you understand that.”

“Oh, I understand, all right,” she said. “I just don’t give a shit.”

“One day,” Ikusa said, “you’ll see that it’s the same thing.”

Killan Oroshi dropped her coat onto Ikusa’s desk, took a chair near him. She was facing the large window behind his desk, and she said, “Tokyo is like the sister I always wanted and never had. I don’t think I could survive without her wildly beating heart: the postpunks strutting their stuff in Ueno, the eternal electronics bazaar in Akihabara, the city of neon signs and deified symbols that mean nothing at all. Japan is the land of the empty hand, of the primitive, the sexual throbbing just beneath the obsessively ordered surface. Welcome to the future: the postatomic society.”

Kusunda Ikusa watched her with the gravity of an incumbent politician observing his rival’s election campaign. “It is a pity you were born a woman,” he said. “You have such a male mind, and worse for you, a man’s ambition.”

“Ambition—or the lack of it—is my father’s ruination,” Killan said. “I have to make up for that lack. He never would be dependent on you if he’d had an ounce of conviction. He let others talk him into deals that destroyed Nakano’s reserves. Then his only recourse to bankruptcy and seppuku was Nami.”

“He could count himself lucky that Nami’s Chiyoda Central Bank stepped in, lending Nakano Industries enough capital to get itself back on its feet.”

“With
your
policies implemented by
your
officers.”

Ikusa shrugged. “You yourself have recounted the bad deals.”

“Not my father’s fault!” she cried. “Others made those decisions.”

“Sometimes, it’s possible to forget just how young you are,” Ikusa said. “Then you make a naive statement like that. One would almost think you love your father, rather than hate him. He was the chairman of Nakano, Killan. His was the ultimate responsibility for all decisions implemented by the company.”

“You ruined Nakano. Broke it into fragments.”

“Did you expect us to throw good money into a situation that was fast deteriorating? We had to protect our investment. That meant getting rid of the old regime, installing a new one.”

“Handpicked by Nami.”

“We knew what we wanted of Nakano when your father came to us,” Ikusa said. “It was a business deal, plain and simple.”

Killan laughed. “There’s nothing plain and simple when it comes to Nami.”

Again Ikusa shrugged. “Think what you will. The outcome will be good for you. I promised you a position of importance within Nakano in exchange for your help.”

“But I don’t want that.” Killan got up, stood in front of Ikusa. Though she was dwarfed by his bulk, she was not overwhelmed by it. On the contrary, by the way in which Ikusa gave her his attention, her eminence seemed to grow within the confines of the office. “I want to be inside Chiyoda.”

Kusunda Ikusa laughed. It was a heavy, rumbling thing not so much different than the sound presaging an earthquake.

Killan’s expression appeared cast in granite. “It is a mistake to mock me,” she said.

“Oh, Killan, I do not mock you.” Ikusa wiped his eyes with a sausagelike finger. “I am merely astounded by the scope of your ambition. Every time I think I’ve calculated your limit, you step past it.”

“I’m only making the logical choice,” she said. “Nakano is nothing. Not now, anyway. It’s a shell that Nami has filled up. It doesn’t interest me. Why should it? Chiyoda is where all the money, all the action’s at. Chiyoda, as a central bank, owns many conglomerates because it holds their purse strings. Chiyoda is where the power resides, and I want in.”

Kusunda Ikusa ran a finger along the line of her jaw. “Even though you speak like an adult, in some matters you are only a child,” he said at last. “I can’t fault your mind. But you must accept that there’s more information than you or even your father know.” He grunted. “Now that the merger of Nakano and Sphynx has been effected, we have moved into our end phase. The shell of Nakano will begin to fill up, not with personnel, but with intelligence, the greatest intelligence-gathering network the world has ever seen. And it all emanates from what you quite rightly call the shell.

“Nakano is research and development, that is what we left when we began to dismantle it as Chiyoda’s money began to be used. We used your father’s company as bait, Killan. Even he never understood.

“We wanted—needed—Tanzan Nangi’s Sphynx technology. But how to get it? Nangi had made too many fail-safe provisions against a takeover; he could not be coopted, the damnable man is incorruptible. We had to catch him unawares. So we set the Nakano shell with its legendary research and development department as bait. Then I applied pressure on Nangi.

“The result is the merger between Nakano and Sphynx. Nangi believes he will exercise certain options to take over Nakano. He wants their R and D as much as we want Sphynx. But he won’t get them. Instead, we’ll own Sphynx, and that will be the end of Nangi. The warrants he will exercise are worthless because, as of a week ago, the R and D department was moved from Nakano Industries into a semidormant subsidiary not covered by the warrants. That was all right with Nangi because as far as he knows, the subsidiary owns only rusting refineries in Kobe.”

The Pack Rat’s hands were trembling. Ikusa had set a trap for Nangi all along! He double-checked his recorder to make sure he was getting every word they spoke. He wanted to get out of there immediately, get this information to Nangi, but something made him pause, his sense that Killan Oroshi was more than either he or Kusunda Ikusa knew. She had a part to play in this drama, and he was determined to discover what it was.

Kusunda Ikusa laughed. “Be patient, Killan. Be content with the post I have secured for you at Nakano. You’ll find an outlet there for all your restless energy. Chiyoda will always be there. Besides, isn’t there a risk? I wonder what your revolutionary friends would say when they found out where you’d be working. No doubt they’d believe you’d been coopted by the establishment.”

“Fuck them,” Killan said. “They’ve become boring, anyway. They’re little people with minds as dogmatic as those in the establishment they hate so much—the same establishment that feeds and houses them, I might add. Of course, they don’t recognize the irony of that—or the hollowness of their so-called philosophy. They want to bring down the establishment by violent means, but what do they mean to replace it with? They can’t tell you because they don’t know.”

“You’re so young,” Ikusa said, “to understand so much.”

“We’re both young, Kusunda. That’s
our
curse, isn’t it? Another thing to bind us together so we can gather the courage to ride the dragon’s back.”

“Come here.” Ikusa gestured.

“Not yet,” Killan said. “Be patient.” Mocking him. “I want what I want, Kusunda.”

“I cannot get you inside Chiyoda,” Ikusa said. “Not yet.”

“All right. I can accept that. What I can’t accept is a shitty publicity job at Nakano.”

Kusunda Ikusa sighed. “What would make you happy?”

“For the time being? Though it’s a secret to the outside world, I know the emphasis you’re putting on new product development. That’s the new thrust of Nakano—you want to go head to head with Sato International. A formidable task, since Sato is number one in its fields of electronics, computers, and chip manufacture. I think you’re going to need all the help you can get. I want to be involved in the battle.”

“But Killan, you are no scientist.”

“No, but I know how to reach people. If I can work with the Nakano R and D staff, I can devise the best ways to market Nakano’s arsenal of upcoming products.”

Ikusa thought for a moment. “Your suggestion has merit,” he said at length. “I will take it up with Nami.”

“Which means you’ll set it up,” she said.

“You give me credit for wielding more power than I do,” Ikusa said, but he was chuckling, obviously pleased.

“You know I’m right.” Killan slipped onto his lap. The chair squealed beneath their combined weight as slowly it turned. Ikusa held the girl to him, his face lost in her hair.

In this position, the Pack Rat could look directly into Killan’s face. He saw that her eyes were open, burning with a hatred so intense that it made him shudder. And then he understood that it was not hatred of Killan’s father that he saw filling her eyes, but her hatred of Kusunda Ikusa. She was still the dangerous revolutionary at heart, despite the convincing lies, the show of disaffection.

He remembered Ikusa’s words,
Every once in a while it occurs to me that I should kill you before you have a chance to destroy me.
The Pack Rat now knew what Kusunda Ikusa obviously did not: this was Killan Oroshi’s goal.

In Mariko’s bleak dressing room at The Silk Road, Tomi said to Nangi, “This is where she was found, where she was tortured, raped, and ultimately killed.”

Nangi crossed the room with some difficulty. It was late, and his leg was giving him some pain. “Right below this network of pipes?”

“Yes.”

“The murder occurred some months ago.”

“Almost ten. But it seems nothing much has changed since then. The girls are superstitious. No one’s willing to use this dressing room now.”

Tomi watched as he looked upward, something she had never done. He seemed to be examining the pipes.

“Would you do me a favor?” he asked. “Get down on the floor in approximately the same position in which you found Mariko.”

Tomi did as he asked. To do so she had to slither herself between his legs.

Nangi said, “Was there any evidence that Mariko was either tortured or raped elsewhere in this room before being dragged over here?”

“None,” Tomi said. “It all happened here, where we are.”

Nangi nodded, as if satisfied with something. He tapped a point on a horizontal pipe with his cane, extended the cane down until the tip almost touched her. “This point is just about where your neck is. You are more or less the same height Mariko was, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t remember seeing any neck bruises in the photos of Mariko’s corpse.”

“You’ve got an excellent memory,” Tomi said, impressed all over again. “There weren’t any.”

Nangi moved the cane over, began tapping the pipe rhythmically now. “It is also approximately where the neck of the person who tortured and murdered Mariko would be when he was raping her.”

“That’s logical,” Tomi said. She was at a loss as to where this was leading.

Nangi had his free hand beneath the pipe. He kept tapping the pipe with the head of his cane, then pulled up a chair, lowered himself into it.

Tomi sat up and he poured what was in his hand into hers. Tomi looked at it. It was rust. She looked up at Nangi. “So the pipe is rusty. That’s only normal for a dump like this.”

“Exactly,” Nangi said, “but come here. Look at the spot that was just above your neck.”

Tomi rose, stood on tiptoe. “There’s no rust there.”

“The only spot on the pipe where that’s so,” Nangi said.

Tomi turned to him. “Do you know what this means?”

“I’m afraid I’m getting to know this murderer far better than I’d like to.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“I’ve made the connection between Dr. Hanami’s and Mariko’s deaths,” Nangi said. “To understand, you must recall the note found on the unfortunate girl’s body.”

“‘This could be your wife.’”

“Yes. I told you I thought it was a warning. Now I know it to be a warning for Dr. Hanami. He was being blackmailed by the tanjian, the
dorokusai.”

“Are you telling me that this tanjian who attacked me and Mr. Linnear in Dr. Hanami’s office is the same person who murdered Mariko?”

“Tortured, raped, and murdered her, to use your own words,” Nangi said. “Yes, that’s precisely what I’m telling you.”

“But how could you possibly know that?”

“This told me.” Nangi tapped the shiny spot on the horizontal pipe. “This was made by a rope, weighted at one end, abrading the metal, flaking off the rust.” Tomi remembered the line buried in the forensic report about flecks of rust found on some of Mariko’s wounds, specifically around her upper torso. “The
dorokusai
will use a specific methodology, self-asphyxiation, during the sex act.”

“But there’s no such term as self-asphyxiation,” Tomi pointed out. “Long before death, the autonomous nervous system will kick in. The person’s grip on the rope will loosen and he will continue to breathe.”