Zero. Part 24

The firing of the weapons was deafening. Ude could see the three men advancing at an even pace. But when they reached the fork in the hallway, something happened. The men hurled themselves down toward the kitchen. What were they up to? Ude shouted to them, but they could not hear him.

Then he saw the blur of a shadow pa.s.s across the open s.p.a.ce at the head of the hallway. The glint of polished steel. A katana! Slashing forward and down.

"Ah!" Ude breathed. "Michael Doss." He spent a precious moment a.s.sessing the situation, then he went back down the hall. He smelled a trap, and he had no intention of walking into it himself.

When he returned, it was with Wailea Charlie. With a ma.s.sive push, Ude sent Wailea Charlie stumbling forward.

Onto the point of something sharp, shiny and seemingly endless. It went allthe way through Wailea Charlie while he screamed. Then dizziness supplanted the agonizing pain, and he fell forward.

Michael withdrew the blade and retreated down the hall. He kicked open the door and went into the last remaining room. The office. It contained an ornate desk, an oversize chair and, behind that, an open window onto the now-floodlit compound. Banana-leaf prints were on the walls.

Where was Fat Boy Ichimada?

Michael whirled, and stopped dead.

Ude was filling the doorway. "Put down the katana," Ude said, leveling the Mack-10 in Michael's direction. He had been set to pull the trigger and not let go until the intruder was in ribbons. "Michael Doss." He advanced into the room. "I think that's good. For me." He began to laugh.

"I'm going to kill you, of course," he said, watching Michael carefully as he prepared to lay the katana at his feet. Shook his head. "No. Slide it onto the desk, hilt first. I don't want it near you." He nodded when Michael had complied. "That's much better." He grinned, waving the Mack-10; he loved the power the machine pistol gave him. "You have much to tell me before I get around to the pleasure of killing you." The smile seemed plastered on his face. "I think I will enjoy the prelude even more."

"Who are you?" Michael asked.

Ude raised his eyebrows. "I am a member of the Taki-gumi. Have you heard of my oyabun, Masashi Taki? Of course you have." Keeping the Mack-io trained on Michael, he brought out the length of red cord the Hawaiian had given him.

"Look familiar? This was meant for you. Your father left it here on Maui. Now you're going to tell me what it means and where the Katei doc.u.ment is hidden."

"What are you talking about?" Michael was genuinely baffled.

But Ude was shaking his head. "No, no. You have it wrong. I ask the questions."

"But I don't-"

"This red cord." Dangling it. "What is it?"

It does seem familiar, Michael thought. Where have I seen it before? "You killed my father," Michael said. "Do you think I'm going to tell you anything?"

"Eventually you will," Ude said. "I have no doubt of it." Beginning to squeeze the trigger of the Mack-10.

"You're not going to kill anyone."

Ude whirled.

Fat Boy Ichimada was in the doorway, a pistol seeming almost lost in his great hand.

The two men shot at once. Fat Boy Ichimada's heavy frame spurted blood as it tumbled backward into the hallway.

Ude's Mack-10 was still firing when Michael lunged for his katana. Ude smashed the bottom of the machine pistol onto Michael's wrist.

Pain ran up Michael's arm and he grunted, slipping to his knees.

Ude clucked his tongue. "No," he said. "It's not going to be nearly that easy." He shoved the Mack-10 into Michael's face before retreating to a safe distance. When he saw the blood begin to stream from Michael's nose, he laughed. "You're going to tell me what I want to know." He hefted the weapon.

"I have a lot of time now-all the time in the world. There is no one around to disturb us-or to hear your screams of pain. Which will surely come when I shoot off one foot. An hour later, I'll shoot off the other. Then I'll begin on your hands. Think about that. Going through life without hands or feet.

It'll be a challenge at the very least, neh?"

"Go to h.e.l.l," Michael said.

Ude shrugged and laughed. "More fun for me." He aimed the Mack-io at Michael's right foot.

A sound was already forming in the room. All in a split second, Ude hesitated, began to turn toward the window.

Michael saw the blur, could not believe his eyes.

Eliane had climbed in through the window. Now she wielded Michael's sword asonly a master could. The edge of the blade slashed into the Mack-io, and it spun out of Ude's grip. Blood spurted.

But Eliane was already into her second strike and Ude, scrambling desperately, just missed being decapitated. He slammed into the corner of the desk, grunted heavily, then threw himself headlong into the hallway.

Michael grabbed the Mack-io, hurtled after Ude. He had to leap over Fat Boy Ichimada's body. He could see the shadow of Ude's form disappearing around a turning, and by the time he reached the front door, there was no sign of him.

Behind him, he could hear Eliane calling his name. He returned to the office.

He found her kneeling over Ichimada. She had turned him over, seemed to be talking to him. A railing sound came from his open mouth. His gaze went from Eliane to Michael.

"You are Philip Doss's son," he said with some difficulty. "Truly?"

Michael knelt down beside Eliane. He nodded. "I am Michael Doss."

"Your father called me ... on the day he died." Fat Boy Ichimada began to cough. He sighed, and his eyes fluttered closed for a moment. "He and I knew each other ... in the old days. When Wataro Taki was oyabun. Before the madman Masashi wrested power from his brothers."

Ichimada was panting. It was becoming difficult to look at him. "He knew that I was still loyal to his old friend Wataro Taki. He asked me to find you. He wanted me to ask you if you remembered the shintai."

Michael recalling his father's death poem: In falling snow/ Egrets call to their mates/Like splendid symbols/of shintai on earth.

"What else did he say?" Michael asked. "Who murdered him?"

"I ... don't know." Fat Boy Ichimada was gasping, as if his lungs had forgotten how to work. "It wasn't Masashi."

"Then, who?" Michael asked urgently. "Who else would have wanted my father dead?"

"Find Ude." Ichimada's eyes were already fixed on something only he could see.

"Ude found what your father wanted you to have."

Michael leaned closer. Ichimada sounded like a grandfather clock in need of repair. "The Katei doc.u.ment," he whispered. "What is it?"

"Your father stole it from Masashi." Perhaps Ichimada could no longer hear anyone but himself. "Masashi will do anything to get it back. Sent Ude here."

"Who is Ude?"

"Ude shot me," Fat Boy Ichimada said. "Did I get him?"

"He was bleeding," Michael said. There wasn't much time left. "Ichimada, what is the Katei doc.u.ment?"

The big man's gaze moved back from Michael to Eliane. "Ask her," he said. "She knows."

"What?"

Fat Boy Ichimada smiled at something that only he could see. A glimpse, perhaps, of the world beyond? "Faith," he said, "and duty. Now I know their meaning. They are one and the same." Then all the breath-what life was left-went out of him.

Michael closed the Yakuza's eyelids. He felt tired; he felt as if he could sleep for a week. But there was so much to think about, so many questions to answer.

He looked at Eliane. Who is she? he wondered. Another question to which he must get the answer. But not now. They had to get out of here first, get some first aid and then get some sleep.

Eliane rose, handed him the katana in ceremonial fashion.

Michael, taking it, realized that he had never thanked her for saving his life. He wiped the blood from his face. "How's your hand?" he asked.

"It probably hurts as much as your nose," she said.

"It didn't seem to hurt your grip any."

She gave him a little smile. "You're welcome."

Then, together, they began the slow, painful walk back to civilization.SPRING 1947 TOKYO.

The truth was that Lillian Hadley Doss hated her father. She had joined the USO troupe that had brought her to j.a.pan solely because of General Hadley's unrelenting badgering.

While it was true that she loved the attention lavished on her while she was onstage, it was also true that she hated every moment she spent away from home. She missed her friends, she missed knowing what the latest trends were.

She no longer had any idea what was in fashion or whether any of the American slang phrases she used were now out of style. She had a recurring nightmare that she was home talking to a circle of her closest friends and they were all laughing at her.

She hated her father for shaming her into coming to a place she despised. But she hated him even more for what she saw as his role in her brothers' deaths.

It was Sam Hadley who had instilled in his sons their sense of duty to their country. Duty! Was it their duty to die? Where was the sense in that? But, Lillian knew, there was no sense left in the world. The war had seen to that.

We were such a close family, Lillian thought. She remembered their laughter at Easter time, and how she waited through the long summer for her brothers to come home from military academy at Thanksgiving.

At Christmas, they trimmed the tree together, placed brightly wrapped presents beneath it, drank their mother's egg nog and sang carols. Was that corny?

Lillian did not think so. Ever since she could remember, she had waited all year for that tradition. Wherever the peripatetic Hadleys happened to be, their holidays were immutable. They provided unwavering comfort in a world filled with military precision. They were the family's own pomp and circ.u.mstance. After a time, these oases came-at least in Lillian's mind-to stand for the family itself.

Now, with her brothers dead, that was all gone, swept away by the tides of the stupid, stupid war. Now there was no stability, no comfort, nothing to look forward to. There were only Sam Hadley's endless, intolerable dinnertime lectures on the theories of war.

"Death," General Hadley said over dinner one night several weeks before Lillian was to meet Philip for the first time, "is a necessary-and quite beneficial-byproduct of war. In a way, it is akin to natural selection; the survival of the fittest. War is a shaking out, a condition that did-and certainly should-occur periodically throughout history. Like the great flood in biblical times, war cleanses the earth, makes it ready for a new beginning."

Lillian could not take it anymore. "No, you're wrong," she said, for the first time raising her voice in anger to her father. "War is vile. It's nothing more than oblivion for the dead and despair for the survivors. You sound just like our minister. Both of you talk about monumental-terrible-events that are a matter of life and death as if they were-well, children's exercises!"

She was shaking. She was aware that both her parents were staring at her dumbfoundedly. What had gotten into their fun-loving, cheerful little girl?

they must be wondering. "Don't you realize what your war-your precious agent of natural selection-has done? It's killed your two sons! Daddy, according to you, that means Jason and Billy weren't fit to live, to carry on the race-or whatever idiocy it is you believe!"

Lillian saw Philip as her way out, her knight in shining armor. The St. George who would, if not slay her particular dragon, then take her out of its kingdom. If he was a soldier, like her father, it was only the profession they shared. Their personalities and their temperaments could not have been more different. Besides, there was a sadness about Philip that Lillian felt rather than understood, and this drew her as surely as a magnet will find the North Pole.

It was this sadness which, Lillian immediately felt, could give her a purpose, if only she could discover its source and somehow replace it. In this way, she told herself that Philip needed her fully as much as she needed him. It wasnot a monstrous deception. But marriages based on lies-in any age-cannot long flourish. They can only dissolve. Or survive in a kind of rusting isolation.

Like reluctant explorers who prefer to roam aimlessly in a desert that is familiar to them rather than strike out for unknown territory, Philip and Lillian inhabited the cooling corpse of their marriage without knowing that anything might be amiss. Except that Philip had found Michiko. And where did that leave Lillian?

On a sunny, blowy day a week after they first met, Philip and Michiko were in his car. He had invited her to a picnic. Of course, although spring was coming it was still too cold to dine outside, but the heated interior of the car would do nicely.

Halfway there, Michiko put a hand on his arm. "There is a place I wish to take you before lunch," she said. She gave him a series of directions. The streets were crowded, and it was slow going until they were clear of the city's hub.

At length, Michiko directed him to pull over and park. They were in the Deienchofu area, a section of the city Philip was unfamiliar with. It was filled with enormous villas, all built in the traditional j.a.panese style. Lush gardens, ancient cryptomeria trees, stone-and-bamboo walls lined both sides of the street.

"Where are we?" Philip asked as Michiko led him up a stone pathway toward a ma.s.sive mansion, so heavily foliaged on the outside that it was completely hidden from the street.

"Please," Michiko said, taking off her shoes in the en-tranceway. She indicated that he should do the same.

The slate floor gave way to pale green tatami mats. The scent of new-mown hay they gave off permeated the house. Behind him were a pair of ma.s.sive kyoki wood doors, set in slabs and ribbed with wrought-iron bars. Thick, rough-hewn wooden beams crisscrossed the ceiling in an intricate pattern. The place had an ancient, almost feudal air about it, giving the impression that it had materialized whole from out of the seventeenth century.

At the end of the hall, a line of sliding doors barred their way. The doors'

center panels were made of embroidered silk depicting circular winged phoenixes in reds, oranges, golds and yellows.

Michiko knelt in front of the sliding doors and opened them. She indicated that Philip should enter.

As was the custom when coming into tatami rooms (for these were invariably the formal areas of a j.a.panese house), Philip went across the threshold on his knees.

"Welcome, Mr. Doss."

The sight of the man sitting across from him snapped Philip's head up.

"What-?"

"You are surprised," Zen G.o.do said. "That is as it should be, don't you think?"

Philip tried to still the hammering of his heart. This is the man I have been ordered to terminate, he thought.

He was a lean man, with a long, wolflike head, extraordinary eyes that held one's attention like magnets. His hair was brush-cut, dark and thick. An impeccably manicured moustache that was already colored salt-and-pepper lent him the air of a pirate. "My daughter Michiko," Zen G.o.do said. "You have already met."

Philip turned to stare at Michiko. "You're his daughter?" He could not recognize his own voice.

"I know who you are, Mr. Doss," Zen G.o.do said. "I know that you are responsible for the death of my friends. Arisawa Yamamoto and Shigeo Nakajima."

The names detonated in the air like bombs.

Michiko said nothing. She stood with her hands behind her back, as demure as a schoolgirl. Philip felt trapped, betrayed.

"You cannot keep me here," he said, beginning to rise. "I am a member of theAmerican-"