Zero. Part 11

"Father," G.o.do said, his head bowed, "I am surrounded by enemies."

My son, his father's voice echoed in his head, turn over the coin of success and you will find an enemy.

"Father," G.o.do said, "they have already murdered Yamamoto-san and Nakajima-san. Now they seek to destroy me."

Then, his father's voice rumbled, you must destroy them first.

Nearly a week after his wedding, Philip met General Had-ley in the austere precincts of the Meiji Jinja Temple. All around was Yoyogi Park, looking stark and barren in the sere winter. The temple, another of Tokyo's myriad Shinto shrines that seemed to girdle the city, had been built in 1921 to honor the Meiji Emperor. Its architecture was eclectic, an odd but affecting combination of Greek, Middle Eastern and Far Eastern styles.

"There seemed no point in your coming to my office," Hadley said. It would have been superfluous to say that meeting at the CIG headquarters was out of the question. "Let's walk."

They went up the wide stone steps toward the columned entranceway to the shrine.

"Did you find out the source of the CIG intelligence on Yamamoto, Nakajima and G.o.do?" Philip asked.

"Yeah," Hadley said. "I did." His cheeks were pink and well scrubbed. He looked at if he got a face ma.s.sage daily. "Silvers's contact is a man named David Turner."

Philip waited while a pair of j.a.panese matrons in black-and-yellow kimonos went past them, into the temple. Between them they carried a garland of snow-white origami cranes, which they would place before the image of the temple's spirit to show the sincerity of then: prayers.

"David Turner is a four-eyed paper pusher," Philip said. "What's someone like that, Silvers's administrative adjutant, doing with his finger in the CIG field intelligence pie?" he asked. "It makes no sense."

Hadley shrugged. "I can't say. As head of the Far East theater for CIG, Silvers is free to use whatever intelligence-gathering methods he chooses.

Frankly, son, no one back home in Washington really cares that much. They're all too busy trying to find ways to fight Beria and his NKVD." Hadley was speaking of Lavrenty Beria, Stalin's chosen successor to Feliks Dzerzhinski, the creator of the Soviet intelligence apparatus the NKVD, Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del, the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, which eventually would become the KGB. "We believe that within the NKVD is an apparat known as the KRO. We suspect that officials of the KRO are responsible for training NKVD operatives for exportation into the United States as deep-cover spies. However, so far I have had little luck in persuading the president that any such apparatus exists, let alone poses an immediate threatto our security."

The general looked into the distance. "The problem is that elements within our government still see the Russians as heroic allies of the war. But that isn't anything new. Patton and MacArthur have been screaming about the Soviets for years. Trouble is, n.o.body listened. Anyway, we had to work with the Russians during the war. h.e.l.l, they fought like sonsof-bitcbes. Got to give them that.

But at some point we've got to begin looking beyond all that. I've no doubt that the Russians already have."

At the moment, Philip was unconcerned with the Russian NKVD. "If I'm to make any headway at all," he said, "I'm going to have to ferret out David Turner's intelligence sources."

Hadley looked at Philip. "You've got very little time left. From what I hear, Jonas is almost done with his proposal on the Zen G.o.do directive. When he's finished, you'll have to terminate G.o.do."

"Can't you order the CIG directive put on hold?" Philip asked.

"Negative, son. I've done as much as I can without awkward questions being raised. There's a limit to the amount I can meddle in CIG affairs."

Philip thought of the j.a.panese matrons, walking like a pair of blackbirds into the temple. He wished he had the faith to follow them into the shrine and pray to the Shinto kami for guidance. He already had two deaths on his conscience that might have been wrongful. He could not countenance another.

"If you're still concerned that you're acting on tainted intelligence," Hadley said, "you'd better put a tail on this Turner, p.r.o.nto. That's the only way you'll ever get to see who it is he meets with."

But it was Michiko whom Philip met.

It so happened that Ed Porter, the CIG aide, frequented Furokan, a bathhouse in Chiyoda. Because it was only two blocks from the Imperial Palace and central to the occupation force's headquarters, all the high-ranking American bra.s.s went there to relax.

They liked it because it was fully staffed by j.a.panese women schooled in the old, traditional ways. A man could feel like a king within minutes of putting himself in their capable hands.

Porter was one of Colonel Silvers's most successful lotus-eaters, CIG parlance for intelligence gatherers. He, like his commanding officer, was aggressive and slightly paranoid, two traits that served him well in the CIG, an aggressive and excessively paranoid organization.

Porter found the Furokan bathhouse a treasure grove of intelligence. It was here that three times a week he confirmed or dismissed every high-level rumor pa.s.sing through the military.

Michiko also found Furokan a treasure grove. She worked there twice a week, ostensibly as a bath maid. It was a.s.sumed by the bathhouse's patrons that none of the j.a.panese employees understood English. This was, by and large, correct.

Michiko was the exception.

As she moved from general to lieutenant colonel, she gleaned the cream of the intelligence that had allowed her father to prosper so magnificently in postwar Tokyo.

It did not take Michiko long to identify Porter. He was the youngest man by far at Furokan, and he did not have the expertise to act like an aide. The second time she noticed him at the bath, Michiko contrived to be his bath maid. She had already taken a peek in his wallet, memorized his name, rank, status, etc. Then she did some research on him and discovered the CIG connection.

It was through Porter that Michiko found Philip. Porter had an ego that, as with most young men, responded well to being ma.s.saged. Being administered to by a totally submissive woman was a high Porter disliked coming down from. He was like an addict. And like an addict, he always craved more. It was not s.e.x he wanted from Michiko. After all, he could get that on just about any street corner; there was no great thrill in that.

But having a beautiful female scrub him, oil him, ma.s.sage him, relax him and take care of him as no one else had ever done brought him to a place beyondhis wildest dreams. Still, it wasn't enough. He wanted her to know who he was, what he did. He needed her to know just how important he was. Then, all that she did for him took on an entirely new dimension.

He began to teach her English. It made Michiko secretly smile. Not only because she already was fluent in the language, but because his arrogance-the arrogance, she had come to believe, of all Americans-caused him to speak to her at a speed and with a vocabulary that, had she indeed been a beginner, would have precluded her from understanding most of what he said.

As it was, she learned a great deal. Including what it was Philip and Jonas were doing in Tokyo.

Her approach to Philip was totally different from the one she had used with Ed Porter. But that was dictated mainly by the fact that she met him at the Temple of Kannon in Asakusa. This was a Friday, the fifth day in a row that she had followed him here.

She had watched him from a safe distance, day after day, this tall man with the sad eyes, wondering what in the world he was looking at and why. In the end, she realized it was the remains of the temple that drew him. And this knowledge somehow absorbed her own cynicism about him-about his American heritage-so that when at length they did meet it was on a kind of equal footing, which startled her.

The fact was that Michiko herself came here to the ruined temple often. It was always to pray. And to remember.

"Am I disturbing you?" Philip asked on the day they met. It was a damp morning, the low clouds like slabs of wet rock cemented across the sky. Mist swirled about them as if called up from the center of the earth.

He spoke in idiomatic j.a.panese, and this too startled her. She lowered her head. "Not at all," she said. "Like all j.a.p-anese, I am used to being surrounded by people."

He stuffed his hands in his pockets, hunched his shoulders. He watched her out of the corner of his eye. The shadowless light, oyster-gray, as dull as lead, lent her features a lambent quality. The mist shrouded the lower part of her body. It was as if she were an extension of the elements all around her, as if she embodied their timelessness. The grace with which she moved and spoke was wholly natural. She seemed to Philip more an apparition out of some kwaidan, the ancient j.a.panese tales of the supernatural, than a flesh-and-blood woman.

"I don't know why it is," he said, "but I find myself coming back here again and again."

"The Temple of Kannon is an important artifact for us," Michiko said. "She is the G.o.ddess of pity."

"Why do you come here?" he asked.

A j.a.panese would never ask such a question, which might cause embarra.s.sment.

"No reason," she said, "in particular." But her emotions got the better of her, and seeing this place again, she was overwhelmed by the agony of the spirits who had died here.

"You are crying," Philip said, turning to her. "Are you all right? Have I said something to offend you?"

She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak. A brace of plovers swooped and darted overhead, calling to one another. A dog barked, running at the heavy military traffic pouring through the streets several blocks behind them.

"There were high winds the night of March ninth." Michiko was stunned to hear herself speaking. Astoundingly, she was about to voice all the things that had been in her heart for so many months. Trapped there in darkness, never heard.

And now that she had begun, she was powerless to stop. No, she did not want to! It was this tall stranger with the sad eyes who somehow had become her touchstone. Precisely because he was American, she did not feel the reticence to bring emotion to the surface that j.a.panese, brought up with many family members and only rice-paper walls to separate them, naturally felt. Now her heart, given wing, was speaking its mind. It was as if she stood outside herself, observing the two of them struck like an artist's rendering in a bleak and forbidding landscape. "My sister, Okichi, was hurrying home from thefactory where she worked. She, like my brother, believed in the war. She would take neither my father's money nor his advice. After her husband was killed in Okinawa, she continued to work long hours for the war effort.

"That night in March, the air-raid sirens began to scream.

The fierce winds drove the liquid fire through the city. Okichi was in Asakusa, and she, like so many others, raced toward this temple, seeking safety in the arms of the G.o.ddess of pity. She found only death."

A long strand of blue-black hair had come loose. It whipped at Michiko's white throat, but she ignored it. It was as if, Philip thought, something over which she had no control was compelling her to speak.

"Okichi was dutifully wearing the hooded air-raid cloak the j.a.panese government had dispersed to the populace to protect their ears from noise.

Unfortunately, it was not fire-r.e.t.a.r.dant. Her hood caught fire as she was inundated with sparks and flame. Likewise the blankets wrapping her six-month-old son strapped to her back."

She was panting with the emotion running through her. Her breath clouded the chill air in front of her face. "The huge, ancient gingko trees surrounding the temple, splendid and full in summertime, were h't up like Roman candles.

The temple's wooden superstructure, saturated with caustic chemicals, collapsed inward on those crowded into it seeking shelter from the fire storm.

Those who were not crushed or asphyxiated as the oxygen rushed out of the interior were roasted alive."

The ensuing silence rang in Philip's ears tike ethereal shouts. All the while Michiko had been recounting the horrifying death of her sister, he had been staring at the scarred earth, the burned-out pillars, the fallen walls. How different it appeared now than on his first afternoon in Tokyo, when Ed Porter had given them the statistics of the fire bombing. It had all seemed so impersonal then, so far away. And yet something had been drawing Philip back to this spot.

He crouched at Michiko's side, picked up a length of charcoal. There was no way of telling what it had once been. Staring out again at the gaping wound in the earth that had once been the ancient Temple of Kannon, hearing Michiko's choked words, he wondered all at once how he had come to this wasteland. And precisely what it had taken to turn beauty into nothingness.

There was a zone of emptiness here that gripped him in the same way he was gripping the length of charcoal. He found himself once again returned to the bitter winter twilight when he had tracked the red fox to its den. Saw again the furred body slamming into the red clay wall as the .22-caliber bullet struck it in the chest. But now, for the first time, he experienced what it was like to be the hunted. The death and destruction of this place were somehow changing him.

Now he could hear the screams of the burning women, now he could see the bright kimonos, crimson and gold, disintegrating beneath the sheets of orange Same. He felt the temperature of the air reach scorching levels. He gasped with them as the air was sucked out of the burning ulterior.

All at once, Philip Doss was weeping.

For the innocents who had perished so unjustly here. For the children who had lost life even before they had had a chance to understand it. But also for the lost child within himself who had suffered in boyhood, who had spent so many years hating life that he had never even said goodbye to his father.

It was hating life, he realized now, that had brought him to this spot, this zone of emptiness. It was what made him what he was. How much more wretched was he than the young ones who had been burned alive in the fire storm! It was one thing to have life abruptly taken away, quite another to feel that life was meaningless. And so he felt a kinship with the death and destruction that had been wreaked here. Now he understood that he had been drawn back to this ruined temple because it echoed so accurately that ruined place inside himself. Looking into that blackened pit where thousands had sought protection, and had found only death, was like staring into his own soul.

It was the hatred of life that had caused the wanton destruction that men knewas war. It was the hatred of life, Philip saw now, that allowed men to blindly obey other men not more mortal than themselves. He had been the good soldier, accepting facts as truth-and killing on the sole strength of those facts. Now he knew those facts to be lies. What was he to do about those lives he had taken without cause, without the mitigation of justice?

At that moment, he felt fully as dead as those poor souls who had perished in the fire bombing of the Temple of Kan-non. And he heard their silent cries more clearly than he did the mundane street sounds that surrounded him. He felt more alone than he could ever have imagined. How could he go home and explain to Lillian what he was feeling or what he had done? She would never understand, and never forgive him for making her feel excluded from so private a part of himself. In a sense, he saw now that his marriage to Lillian was just a dream, a fantasy that part of him needed to cling to in order to survive.

But there was another part of him coming to the fore now, a part that felt increasingly in tune with j.a.pan-the sights, sounds, smells, customs. With its people. Philip was quite certain that at this moment he understood the j.a.panese way of life more completely than he did any other. And he began to despair further in his utter solitude. He was like a scarecrow, in the middle of a fertile field, calling out without anyone hearing him.

And then he felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up into Michiko's eyes and saw that tears were trailing down her cheeks. Stunned, he realized that she was feeling lost as well. He wanted to catch those tears in his hands; they seemed as precious as diamonds.

He rose and took her fingers in his, realizing that this zone of emptiness might be inhabited by someone other than his own featureless ghost.

BOOK TWO

TENDO.

THE WAY OF HEAVENSPRING, PRESENT.

TOKYO.

WASHINGTON.

MAUI.

When he was young, Kozo Shiina had surrounded himself with mirrors. When he was young, his muscles were firm, his skin glistening; the river of life ran through him in a torrent. When he was young, Kozo Shiina was proud of his body.

Once, the sweat of effort burnishing his supple skin had provided him with a kind of exultation impossible to duplicate by any other method. Once, the building up of his body had provided the ultimate defiance of time and mortality. Once, lifting weights had made him high. And afterward, licking the sweat rolling off his lips, staring into the mirrors, seeing an endless parade of Kozo Shiinas, naked and strong, he had been convinced that he was a reincarnation of leyasu To-kugawa himself, the creator of modem j.a.pan. He had stared into the face of perfection and had thought himself a G.o.d.

Now that he was old, he had banished all mirrors from his sight. Now the force of years, like breakers pounding the sh.o.r.eline, was too apparent to be denied.

Now Shiina knew with a certainty like an ice pick through his heart that he had missed his opportunity to end life in the proper manner, at the height of his physical beauty. Now he knew that he would allow the decay of time to complete the act he had not been heroic enough to perform when the blossom of his body was in full flower. When death was still pure, when it would serve the samurai's ultimate purpose: to sow his death like a seed, and use it as an example for others.

Now he must content himself with what was about to occur and trust that it was reward enough for almost forty years of suffering. Of course he had been right about the Americans: their occupation of j.a.pan, the new const.i.tution they had drafted in 1946, had forced the j.a.panese to become a nation of middle-cla.s.s businessmen with middle-cla.s.s tastes and habits.

Because the Americans insisted that the new j.a.pan make no provision for defense in its own budget, j.a.pan had no defense burden weighing down its economy. How it angered Shiina when the young, affluent merchants of his acquaintance lauded the Americans for allowing the new j.a.pan to become so affluent that now even the burgeoning middle cla.s.s was rich beyond the imaginings of their grandparents of a generation ago. It angered Shiina because they failed to see what to him was so obvious. Yes, America had allowed j.a.pan to become affluent. But in return, j.a.pan was America's va.s.sal, totally dependent on America for its defense. Once j.a.pan had been a nation of samurai who knew how to wage war, who created their own defense network. Now that was all gone. America had brought its brand of capitalism to j.a.pan and, in so doing, had emasculated an entire culture.

Which was why Shiina had created the Jiban in the first place.

It was nearing summer. Less and less, the chill of the long winter invaded his home. The songbirds could be heard with increasing frequency as they flitted through the stand of quince trees outside his study.

Kozo Shiina, sitting with hands across his bony knees, remembered one particular summer more vividly than all the rest-1947, two years after the destruction of j.a.pan.

The heat had been rising in almost palpable waves, and the air was very wet.

Eight ministers had gathered at Shiina's summer villa on the sh.o.r.e of Lake Yamanaka. These eight, plus Shiina, const.i.tuted the Jiban. It was amusing to them, then, to be known as a local political machine, since their combined power was so far-reaching that they were anything but local. Secretly, however, the Jiban was known as the Society of Ten Thousand Shadows. This was a more serious reference to the sacred katana, symbol both of the traditional j.a.panese warrior's power and of his exalted status in society.

The katana, or longsword, was made by a Zen artisan who folded and refolded the heated steel ten thousand times in order to make a blade that was so strong it could pierce armor, so supple that it was virtually impossible tosnap in two. Each folding of the steel blade was called a shadow.

The Jiban's katana was a weapon of astounding design and quality, forged sometime in the fourth century by the most famous of j.a.pan's legendary Zen swordsmiths for Prince Ya-mato Takeru, who slew his twin brother for imagined infractions of simple courtesy. He also singlehandedly destroyed the savage k.u.maso tribes to the north of the capital.

This sword was by far the oldest, and therefore the most revered, sword in all of j.a.pan. Because of its extraordinary history, it belonged in a museum. The soul of j.a.pan resided in that blade.

"Here is the symbol of our might," the young Kozo Shiina had told the eight ministers, lifting the katana aloft. "Here is the symbol of our moral obligation. To the Emperor, and to j.a.pan itself."

Behind him, in that summer of 1947, gusty rain was turning the lake as opaque as the inside of an oyster's sh.e.l.l. Mist rose off the skin of the water like perspiration off a kabuki actor.

We all wear masks, the young Kozo Shiina thought as he addressed the founders of the Society of Ten Thousand Shadows. If we are not actors, then we are nothing. He stared at the ancient sword. Here is the mirror of ourselves. We hold it up to the light, and call it life. "If we cannot animate the essence of our spirits," he said, "then we shall fail in returning j.a.pan to its former glory."

It had been impossible that day to tell where gray water met gray sky. It was impossible, even, to tell where the zenith of heaven lay, so uniform was the color that spread across the countryside.

"We cannot-we shall not fail. We know our duty, and each of us will do what is necessary to purify j.a.pan. Not for the first time has the sacred soil of our country been contaminated by the Westerner. Capitalism has come to j.a.pan like a phoenix with a voracious appet.i.te. Capitalism is destroying us. It eats us alive, transforming us until we no longer remember our heritage, until we no longer know what it means to be j.a.panese, to serve the emperor, to be a samurai."

And yet, where the lake waters failed, where the hills and the sky failed, the mountain did not. Mount Fuji rose in ghostly splendor, a deep and abiding shade, etched against the grayness as if with charcoal sweep from some celestial palette, crowned at its majestic summit by a crescent of glistening snow. Fuji the sacred. Fuji the redeemer.

The young Kozo Shiina was naked to the waist. His magnificently muscled body commanded their attention. He wrapped a hachimachi, the traditional headband of the warrior in battle, across his forehead, tied it in back.