The Nicholas Linnear Novels (96 page)

But it was not really of budgets, Tanya, or even the Family that Minck was thinking now. He had sunk deep into an odd kind of reverie that, increasingly, had become his habit over the past several months.

In fact he was wondering how a highly intelligent, well-trained operations officer named Carroll Gordon Minck could find himself in such dire straits.

It was somewhat of a shock to him, because after his nightmare ordeal in Lubyanka he never thought he would feel this way again. In those bleak, bloodfilled days, the memory of Kathy was all that he had allowed himself to dwell on. Anything to do with the Family was strictly no go since at any given moment he could be dragged from his steel cot and shot full of God only knew what new blend of chemicals—psychedelics and neutral stimulators—so that he would be transported and talking before he knew that he had opened his mouth.

The Russians were at last as intimate with Kathy as he had ever been. But they knew no more about the Family than they had the day the snow had worked against him and they had pulled him in.
“Gde bumagie! Kak vass zavoot!”

When he returned to America, his relationship with Kathy was irreparably damaged. He had shared their most intimate moments with too many people for whom he felt only fear and loathing. It was as if he had sat down to discuss his sex life with the man who had just raped his wife. There had been a silent explosion in his head. He did not love Kathy any less on his return from his own private hell, but he found that he could not touch her without being torn out of time and place back to the dank, fearful cell deep within Moscow. That his mind would not allow, so they remained apart to the night she was killed. And of course by that time he had convinced himself that they had stripped him of his capacity to savor sexual release.

Then this whole godawful mess had begun. But still it was beyond him to understand how he had gotten from there to here, hopelessly in love with a woman whom he should not—
could
not—love. Was it only two weeks ago that he had clandestinely flown down to see her for the weekend? Oh, Christ, but it felt like two years. He stared blindly down at his hands and had to laugh at himself. Needed to do that lest he slit his wrists in utter frustration. What an idiot he was! And yet he could no more stop loving her than he could cease to hate the Russians. What elation filled him when he thought of the gift she had brought him—a simple enough pleasure, but one that he had been certain would never be his again. How could he possibly give that up?

And how he longed to confide in Tanya. He could whisper the secrets of the world into her ear without a qualm…but not his. No. This he could not allow her to know.

Because it was a clear sign of weakness in him. Then she would look into his eyes with that stern, Slavic gaze too serious to dismiss and tell him what he ought to do. And Minck knew what he ought to do; knew that he should have done it months ago. The woman he loved had to die,
had
to, for the sake of security. Every day she remained alive, a potentially damaging leak was walking around.

How many times during these past few months had he picked up the phone and begun to dial the coded mobile number? And how many times had the termination order died in his throat, leaving him with the acrid taste of ashes in his mouth. He could not do it. And yet he knew that he must.

“—in here.”

His head came up. “I’m sorry; I was—”

“Lost in thought,” Tanya said. “Yes, I could see.” Her eyes, Mikhail’s eyes, held his steadily. “I think it’s time for the pool.”

He nodded, sighing. She was fond of saying that giving the body a good workout did the same for the mind.

Tanya switched on ARRTS, the Active / Retrieval / Realtime / System, an advanced network that the Family had had installed for Red Station at the behest of its director. The system would now monitor all incoming and outgoing communication. In this mode it had been programmed by Minck to deal with the first three nominal levels of data on its own. For levels four through seven, it would hold before contacting Minck, wherever he was, for instructions on how to proceed.

They took the lead-lined elevator up three floors to the rec level, passing through two distinct modes of electronic security checks. Stripped down, Minck had a hard, lean body that looked at least ten years younger than it was. It seemed a perfectly normal body until one came close, and then one began to see details forming, the hard rills and scars, the patches of dead white skin, hairless and glossy. Lubyanka had been hard on him.

He hit the water in a quick flat-arced dive, the surface barely rippling at his smooth entrance. In a moment Tanya followed him into the Olympic-size pool. Both wore brief nylon suits. At these, and perhaps other times as well, Minck found himself admiring her lithe, muscular body. He so constantly relied on her steel-trap mind, her unerring cunning at trapping the Russians at their own game, that these infrequent moments always struck him anew like revelations from out of the blue. She had the wide shoulders and narrowish hips of the dedicated female athlete, but there was nothing masculine about her. Just powerful. And Minck never made the typical man’s mistake of equating the two.

They kicked full out for ten continuous laps up and back the long pool, using each other’s speed and stamina to spur themselves on.

Eventually Tanya won, as she always did, but by less of a margin than she had several months ago.

“Close,” he said, between breaths. He wiped the water off his face. “Very damn close.”

Tanya smiled. “You’ve been training harder than I have. I’ll have to remember that in future.”

Reaching upward, he pulled himself to a sitting position on the tile rim of the pool. Water scrolled off him, and his dark hair was plastered down across his forehead, giving him the look of a Roman senator. His clear gray eyes were unnaturally large in his face. He had recently shaved off his thick handlebar mustache and as a result looked astonishingly boyish for his forty-seven years.

Tanya, still treading water, waited patiently for him to begin. He had had a dour expression on his face ever since he had had the conversation with Dr. Kidd in New York. She had not been privy to the dialog and Minck had been particularly unforthcoming about it. She just hoped that was the only thing weighing on his mind now.

He was a man to whom, in far different circumstances, she could find herself intensely attracted. He had that quality she most admired in people: the expression of intellectualism through his physicality.

“It’s this goddamned Nicholas Linnear,” Minck was saying now with his characteristic abruptness. “I think we’re going to have to deal with him sooner than later.”

Now she knew how the conversation with Dr. Kidd had gone, but she said nothing of that.

Minck’s gray eyes leveled on her. “I don’t for a moment think I’m going to like the bastard; he’s too damn independent for his own good. And of course he’s monstrously dangerous.”

“I’ve read the file,” she said, pulling herself up beside him. “He’d never even contemplate aggression.”

“Oh, no,” Minck agreed. “Absolutely not. And that’s our key to him. He’s a naïf on our territory. We must therefore make quite certain he stays in our bailiwick so that we can reel him in when he’s given us everything we want.”

He ran his hands down his nearly hairless thighs. “Because should he be allowed to return to his own turf, then God help us. We’ll lose him, the Russians, and the whole ball of wax.”

“Hello?”

“Nick. Nick, where have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you all day!”

Mumbled something into the receiver. His eyes seemed glued shut.

“Nick?”

Images enwrapped him. He had been dreaming of Yukio. A marriage ceremony before the tomb of the Tokugawa, a black kite wheeling in the sky, gray plovers darting for cover. Yukio in her white kimono with the crimson edging, the two of them facing a Buddhist priest. Low chanting filling the boughs of the pines like snow.

“Nick, are you there?”

Taking her hand, the chanting growing, loudening, her head turning, the shock of a yellowed, drowned skull. Recoiling, stumbling backward, then seeing that it was Akiko…Akiko or Yukio. Which one?
Which one?

“Sorry, Justine. Sato’s marriage was yesterday. The reception went on until—”

“Never mind that,” she said. “I’ve got fantastic news.” It was only now that he heard the note of excitement like a line of tension feathering her voice.

“What is it?’

“I spoke to Rick Millar the day you left. Remember he’d been romancing me for that dream job? Well I took it! I was so excited I started Friday!”

Nicholas ran a hand through his hair. It was barely light out, dawn was not far away. Still he seemed enmeshed in the events of yesterday much as if a new day were not dawning; he seemed somehow trapped back at that heartstopping moment when Akiko had slowly lowered her fan. That face! He felt haunted, an outcast from time, doomed to relive that terrible moment over and over…until he found the answer.

“Nick, have you heard anything I’ve said?” There was an edge to her voice now, all the elation punctured out.

“I thought you wanted to work for yourself, Justine,” he said, his mind still far away. “I can’t see why you’d want to tie yourself—”

“Oh, Christ, Nick!” Her voice, sharpened by anger, broke in on him. It was all abruptly too much for her: his taking that loathsome job, his being so far away from her, her fearful loneliness through the long nights while the deathless ghost of Saigō returned to hover over her, and now his inattention, mirroring her father’s self-absorption when she needed him the most. And, oh, she needed Nicholas’ support now! “Congratulations. That’s what you’re supposed to say. I’m happy for you, Justine. Is that so hard to say?”

“Well, I
am
glad, but I thought—”

“Jesus, Nick.” It exploded inside her like a burst dam. “Go to hell, will you?”

Nothing at the other end but dead space, and when he tried to dial her number it was busy. Just as well, he thought sadly, slowly. I’m not in much condition to make a success of apologizing.

He lay back in bed, naked on top of the covers, and wondered in how many ways his memories were betraying him.

Miss Yoshida’s discreet knock on his hotel room door came at precisely nine
A.M.
She was right on time.

“Good morning, Linnear-san,” she said. “Are you ready to go?”

“
Hai.
But I confess I haven’t had time to purchase—”

Her arm came around from behind her back, producing a long, wrapped package. “I took the liberty of bringing you joss sticks. I hope you will not be offended.”

“On the contrary,” he said. “I’m delighted.
Domo arigato,
Yoshida-san.”

It was Sunday. Greydon was up in Misawa visiting his son and Tomkin was in bed trying to shake the fever his flu was gifting him with. Now there was time for family obligations.

In the smoked-glass-windowed limousine, heading out of the city, Nicholas saw that she had changed her makeup. She could have passed for twenty, and he realized that he had no clear idea of her age.

She was very quiet, almost withdrawn. She sat on the other side of the backseat, deliberately leaving a space between them that might as well have been a wall.

Several times Nicholas was about to say something, then seeing the look of concentration on her face, thought better of it. At last Miss Yoshida settled her shoulders and turned to him. Her eyes were very large. She had chosen to wear traditional Japanese attire, and somehow the formal kimono,
obi
, and
geta
served to further transform her, peeling back the years.

“Linnear-san,” she began, then, apparently overcome, closed her mouth. He saw her take a deep breath, as if screwing up her courage, in preparation to begin again.

“Linnear-san, please forgive what I am about to say, but it is disturbing to me that you use
anata
when you speak to me. I entreat you to use what is proper,
omae.
”

Nicholas considered this. What she meant was that no matter how far the emancipation of women had come in Japan—and there was certainly a good degree of lip service, at least, paid to this concession to the changing ways of the modern world—women and men still used different forms when speaking. In effect, men ordered when they spoke, women pleaded.

Anata
and
omae
meant the same thing,
you.
Men used
omae
when speaking to those on their level or below. Naturally women fell into that category. Women always used
anata,
the more polite form, when speaking to men. If they were ever allowed to use the less polite form it was invariably the
omae-san
version.

And no matter what anyone said, Nicholas knew, this divergence engendered in women a certain subservient way of thinking.

“It would make me happy, Yoshida-san,” he said now, “if we were to both use the same form. Can you deny that you as well as I deserve the same politeness in conversation?”

Miss Yoshida’s head was down, her liquid eyes in her lap. The only outward sign of her agitation was the constant twisting of her fingers.

“I beg you, Linnear-san, to reconsider. If you ask this of me I cannot of course refuse. But consider the ramifications. How could I ever explain such an egregious social breach to Sato-san.”

“This isn’t the feudal past, Yoshida-san,” Nicholas said as gently as he could. “Surely Sato-san is enlightened enough to understand.”

Her head came up and he saw the tiny sparks that might have been incipient tears at the outside edges of her eyes. “When I joined Sato Petrochemicals, Linnear-san, I was the Office Lady. That was my title, no matter my functions. One of the requirements for Office Lady was that I possess
yoshitanrei
.”

“A beautiful appearance? But that was ten years ago. These days I cannot imagine that the same holds true.”

“As you say, Linnear-san,” she said softly, bobbing her head in obvious acquiescence. She could not have made her point more forcefully.

“All right,” Nicholas said, after a time. “We’ll settle on a compromise. The
anata
form will just be between us, when we are alone together. No one need hear this blasphemy but us.”