Zero. Part 21

"The magic word," Kaeru said. "Opium. They have no idea what those packages really contain."

"And n.o.buo Yamamoto," Shiina said, staring at Masashi. "Is he living up to his end of the bargain?"

"The Yamamotos and the Takis have been friends for years." Masashi used a word for friend that connoted that kind of lifetime a.s.sociation that is rare outside of j.a.pan. "You leave n.o.buo to me."

"Without him we cannot move," Shiina reminded Masashi.

"I said leave n.o.buo to me."

"Good," Shiina said. "All is going according to schedule. Within ten days, we will be ready. j.a.pan's new era will begin."

The men bowed ceremonially. Then Daizo looked at his watch. "I must get back to the men." He took Kaeru with him, leaving Masashi and Shiina alone.

"If I had a son," Kozo Shiina said, still gazing at Masashi's musculature, "he would look just like you."

"You," Masashi said. The place stank of sweat. His black-gloved hands gripped the gleaming chrome of the weighted bars. He grunted as he flexed, pushed the weights up their track. He let out a breath as he eased them down. His muscles easily held one hundred pounds off the stack. "You are my father's enemy.""I was," Shiina corrected. "Your father is dead."

"I am the heir to his legacy," Masashi said. He licked at the sweat coating his lips. "I am oyabun of the Taki-gumi. I am what Wataro Taki left behind."

Kozo Shiina watched bim without moving. Being in such close proximity to Masashi recalled the physical power of his own youthful body. Time was his only enemy now. But he had known that long ago.

Masashi let the weights all the way down, climbed off the Nautilus saddle. He took a towel off the rack on the wall, wiped himself down as he moved. When he was standing in front of Shiina, he pushed the towel into the old man's face.

"Here," he said, "drink that in. Remember what I have that you no longer do."

Masashi threw the towel away. "You're old, Shiina. And you're weak. You need me to be your arms and your legs. Without me you're just a helpless old man filled with dreams of glory. Without me your dreams won't come true." He bent over the seated man. "I urge you to remember that the next time you think about taking over my meetings. These are my men. They are loyal to me. Perhaps you have forgotten that you are here on my sufferance."

"I make my contribution," Shiina said calmly. "As does everyone else."

"Just make sure," Masashi said, "that you don't overstep the boundaries of that contribution."

Outside, on the docks, Kozo Shiina stepped into the interior of his waiting car. He could still smell Masashi's sweat on his face. The agony and shame of his own body's inadequacies were never more apparent to him.

With a small grunt, he settled himself in the back seat, signed for his driver to go. When they were back in the main hub of the city, Shiina began to give directions to the driver.

In the Shinjuku district, he said, "Pull over here and wait. I'm expecting someone."

The driver got out of the car, stood on the crowded sidewalk. Kozo Shiina glanced at his wrist watch. It would be a while before he could get to someplace where he could wash off Masashi's sweat. The rage that he had deliberately suppressed at the warehouse now emerged. Shiina's hands closed into fists. Masashi's arrogance was sometimes difficult to take, even for one so disciplined as Kozo Shiina. In his youth, Shiina had never tolerated any form of insult. He recalled a time at college when he had been taunted by an uppercla.s.s man. He had been rash, then. He had gone after the mat immediately and had been thrown into the mud outside the cla.s.srooms for his efforts.

But that had not been the end of it. Shiina had bided his time. He had considered many alternatives. In the end, he had chosen the most elegant-and therefore the sweetest- one. Near the end of the term, when that uppercla.s.sman, along with the most promising seniors, was scheduled to take the all-day examination that would dictate whether or not he would be considered for a position at the most prestigious bureaucratic ministry, Shiina had crept into the uppercla.s.s-man's room and had reset his alarm clock.

The bey was three hours late for the exam and was thus disqualified. Even his wealthy father's pleas for leniency fell on deaf ears. His son's career was ruined.

Now Shiina saw the man emerge from the building and head toward the car, and his fingers relaxed. He smiled to himself. All at once, Masashi's crudeness was forgotten; the sweetness of elegant revenge suffused his mind like a rare perfume.

As instructed, the driver had the rear door open as the man approached. He ducked his head inside, sat down beside Shiina. A moment later, the car was heading out into the noonday traffic.

"As I said when I received your call," Shiina said to the man beside him, "I am entirely at your disposal." He smiled easily. "We will go to a teahouse I know. Very private and comfortable. There we will drink tea and eat rice cakes. And you will tell me how I can be of service to you."

"That's very kind of you, Shiina-san," the man said. "I'm certain that I can outline an arrangement that will suit both of our desires." He shifted in his seat, and a shaft of sunlight illuminated his face.It was Joji Taki.

At 8:22 a.m., Lillian was picking up a public phone on M Street in Georgetown.

She dialed a local number, waited for the clicking, then the computer tone.

She dialed an overseas number she had committed to memory.

After the third ring, a voice with a distinct Parisian accent answered.

Lillian identified herself, but not by name.

"I must speak with him," Lillian said in fluent French. , "He is not here,"

the male voice on the other end of the . line said diffidently.

B "Then contact him," Lillian snapped. She glanced at the ; pay phone, read off its number. "I will be here for the next ten minutes," she said. "Have him call me." "I will see what I can do, mad-"

She slammed down the phone. She immediately picked up the receiver, but surrept.i.tiously kept the engage lever down. She pretended to talk while she watched the window-shoppers strolling by.

While she waited, she attempted to keep her thoughts calm. Bui all she could think of was Michael heading into the midst of terrible danger. She was just barely able to hold herself together as it was, what with Philip's death and Audrey's abduction. Now this. It was too much to bear. She closed her lids tight against the tears burning her eyes.

Within nine minutes of her call, the phone rang. Startled, Lillian jumped, heart pounding. She lifted the engage lever.

"Allo?" Still in French.

"Bonjour, madame," the cultured voice said. Unlike the first voice, this was not that of a native Frenchman. "How are you?"

"Terrified," Lillian admitted.

"This is to be expected," the voice said. "You're not having second thoughts, are you?"

"I am thinking of the danger," Lillian said. "At last."

"It means that you are alive," the voice said. "Revel in the acuity of sensation danger brings."

"What time is it where you are? I can never get it straight."

"Just after four in the afternoon. Why?"

"You will soon go home to your wife," she said. "I want to picture that right now. It is important, sometimes, to summon up unpleasant feelings."

"Nothing will happen, Lillian."

"Nothing will happen to you. How easy it is from your vantage point."

"From my vantage point," the voice said, "nothing is easy. I want you to remember that."

Lillian watched the traffic slide by as if it were a television show. She was already distancing herself from the humdrum of life.

"When will you have it?" the voice said in her ear.

"Tomorrow night." Why was her heart hammering so? "But it will still be a long way from you." Was it because she knew how dangerous this man could be? Not to her, of course. But to others.

"You will take care of that," the voice said softly. "I have complete confidence in you. And as for your family, I have a.s.sured you that I had nothing to do with your husband's murder."

"Have you heard any word about Audrey?"

"I'm afraid not. Her abduction is still as mysterious as Philip's death."

For an instant, he sounded like Jonas. But then these two men had so much in common. Lillian put her forehead against the phone box. "I'm tired," she said.

"I'm so tired."

"It is almost the end now," the voice said. "In three days we will meet, and it will be all over. Forever."

"And what about my children?"

"I will do all in my considerable power to keep them safe from harm. Like G.o.d, extending His arms around them."

"Shall I put all my faith in you, then?"

He laughed easily. "Why," he said, "I thought you knew. You already have."

"Do you want to go to bed with me?" Michael asked.Eliane laughed. "Possibly. Yes." They were in the kitchen, where she was preparing dinner. "What makes you ask?"

"I wondered why you invited me here."

"Because I wanted to," she said simply and directly. This was something she did so well. She went across to the refrigerator, got out some greens.

"What about your boyfriend?"

"What about him?" She tore off a sheaf of lettuce leaves.

"He's Yakuza," Michael said.

She turned, stopping what she was doing. "How do you know that? I didn't tell you."

"Sure you did. You mentioned giri, a Yakuza term. Or is giri something from your other life in the big city?"

"What do you know about the Yakuza?" Eliane said, resuming her cutting.

Michael got up. "Enough that I'd be nervous if your boyfriend walked through the door right now."

Eliane smiled. "After the way you saved me this afternoon, I wouldn't imagine anything would make you nervous."

"Guns make me nervous," Michael said, taking a bite of raw vegetable.

Eliane watched him while he ate. "The papers are full of Yakuza. But where did you learn about giriT'

"I studied in j.a.pan for several years," Michael said. "My father sent me there. He served in the American armed services in Tokyo just after World War Two."

Eliane looked down at the vegetables she was chopping. "What did you study in j.a.pan?"

"I learned how to paint," he said.

"But that's not all," she said. "I saw the katana in the back of your Jeep. Do you know how to use it?"

"I learned many things in j.a.pan," he said. "But the most important was how to paint."

"Is that what you do for a living? Paint?"

"Partly. It's what makes me the happiest. But I also have to earn a living."

He told her about the fine-arts printing business he had created.

She smiled as she resumed her chopping. "It must be wonderful to be able to take a brush in your hand and create something." She laughed. "I envy you.

Blank anythings terrify me. Blank pages, blank canvases. I always have the urge to paint them solid black."

"If you do that," Michael said, "they disappear."

"They lose their threatening quality that way, don't they." She pushed the pile of chopped shallots aside, began on the mushrooms. "Their anarchy is controlled-or at least contained."

"Anarchy?"

"Yes. Don't you ever find a blank canvas intimidating? I mean, there are so many directions in which you can go. It's bewildering."

"Unless," Michael said, "you know what you're going to paint before you ever get to the canvas."

Eliane frowned. "Do you always know what you're going to do before you do it?

Isn't that boring?"

"Have you already answered your own question?" He smiled. "I know how I'm going to begin. After that..." He shrugged.

She appeared to be considering something. "How well do you know the Yakuza? I know you said you lived in j.a.pan for a while. Did you ever meet any Yakuza?"

"Not that I know of. But perhaps they're not so different from other people I met in j.a.pan."

"Oh they're different, all right," Eliane said. "Yakuza are a breed apart.

j.a.panese society considers them outcasts, and they revel in the role created for them. The word Yakuza is composed of ideographs for three numbers. Added up, it is a losing number in gambling. Yakuza think of themselves as doomed.

Fated to be heroes within their own tightly knit cosmos."

"From what I know of them," Michael said, "they're too dangerous to be soromantic."

She nodded. "They're very dangerous." She put down her cleaver, turned on one of the stove's gas burners, on which she had put a pot. "Maybe I shouldn't tell you this, but"- she gave him a fleeting smile-"you are bound to protect me forever, right?" When Michael said nothing, she went on. "The truth is, my boyfriend makes me nervous. You're right. He's Yakuza. For a while it was a kick dating him, you know? No, I suppose you don't."