Zero. Part 29

"I want to know about the Katei doc.u.ment," Michael said. He had come out of his bedroom, had seen Eliane curled up on the couch, a mug of steaming tea between her hands. "Fat Boy Ichimada said that I should ask you what it is."

It was nearing dawn. Somewhere a bird was calling. The sky behind the volcanic mountains was already pearlescent. They had slept for a few hours. But, exhausted as they had been, the excess adrenaline pumped out by the battle at the compound in Kahakuloa had robbed them of slumber.

Michael's nose was bandaged. The flesh was bruised and swollen, but the cartilage had not been torn.

"But of all the power places I've been," Eliane said, "the energy here is the strongest. The Hawaiians say that it was in this valley that their ancient G.o.ds gathered. Here, those G.o.ds loved and fought, hurling lightning, thunder and great cascades of rain at their whim."

Michael sat on the couch next to her. He took the mug of tea out of her hands, turned her to him. "Eliane," he said, "who are you? Where did you learn to handle a sword like a sensei, a master?"

Her eyes caught the first of the morning's pale light; her cheeks were pink.

She disengaged herself, stood up. She went across the room to where a pair of faded jeans was draped over a chair. She began to pull them on.

"Don't you think there was a meaning to why we met?"

She ran her fingers through her hair, turned to look at herself in a mirror hanging on the wall.

"You can't tell me you believe it was coincidence," Michael continued. "I came here to find Fat Boy Ichimada. Your boyfriend worked for him-"

"I know you meant to get into the compound all the time. To find out who killed your father."

"Yes."

"As long as you've decided to begin telling the truth," she said, "I'll admit to you that I wanted to get into the compound too. I don't have a boyfriend."

She came back to the couch, sat down.

Michael looked at her. "Who are you, Eliane? Ichimada knew you."

"I am Yakuza," she said. "Or at least I come from a Yakuza family. My mother is Wataro Taki's daughter. Well, stepdaughter, really. He adopted her a long time ago, many years before I was born."

Michael watched her with the utmost care. She must know who I am, he thought.

She must have known all along. "Did Masashi send you?" he asked.

"I don't work for Masashi," she said. "I despise him. As does my mother."

"But you came here nonetheless. Why?"

"I came to try to find the Katei doc.u.ment. Before Masashi's people do."

"Ichimada said that my father stole the Katei doc.u.ment from Masashi Taki."

"I heard that. Yes."

"What is the Katei doc.u.ment?"

"It is the heart of the Jiban, a clique of ministers formed just after World War Two. A clique Wataro Taki was dedicated to destroying. The Jiban had a long-range plan for the future of j.a.pan."

"What kind of plan?"

"No one knows," Eliane said, "except the members of the Jiban. And now perhaps Masashi. Because he's made some kind of deal with the Jiban."

"And what does this Jiban want?"

"Independence for j.a.pan. They want freedom from the oil-producing countries.

But most of all, they want freedom from American dominance."A warning bell went off in Michael's head, but he could not think why. Too much had happened all at once. His head was filled with a thousand unanswered questions. Such as his father's message: Do you remember the shintai? And where had he seen the red cord that Ichimada had mentioned?

"Why did you come to Maui?" Eliane asked.

"Because my father apparently made a call to Fat Boy Ichimada the same day he was killed."

"Is that what Ichimada was talking about just before he died?"

"I don't know," Michael said, not altogether truthfully. He was sitting by the side of a half-naked woman to whom, he had to admit now that he was surrounded by silence and peace, he was attracted. But could he trust her? That was another matter entirely.

"Why didn't you tell me you were Yakuza right away?" he asked.

"Maybe for the same reason you didn't confide in me." She was watching the sunlight streak the volcanic mountains of lao Valley as if they were the canvas of a G.o.dlike painter. "I couldn't trust you. Your motives. I still don't."

It was a kind of confession, but it did not make Michael feel any more comfortable. The cleverest of your enemies, Tsuyo had cautioned him, will seek first to become your closest friend. With friendship comes confidence, trust, and a lessening of vigilance. These are the most effective allies of your enemy.

"How was your father killed?" Eliane asked. "That was a terrible thing."

"I don't know," Michael said, "That's what I've come to Hawaii to find out. I was hoping Fat Boy Ichimada could tell me. Now I'll have to find Ude and ask him."

How can I guard against the clever enemy, sensei? Michael had asked.

In the same way that the badger protects itself, Tsuyo had said. By testing your environment constantly. Test, too, those who seek to be closest to you.

There are no other ways.

"Did you love him?" Eliane asked. "Your father?"

"Yes," Michael said. Then: "I wish I had taken the time to know him better."

"Why didn't you?"

I was too busy learning my complex lessons in j.a.pan, Michael thought. He shrugged. "He was away a lot of the time when I was growing up."

"But you respected him."

Michael wondered how he should answer that question. It was so complex. Philip Doss was not the vice-president of a successful company to whom his child could point with pride. On the other hand, he was certainly a self-made man.

"For most of my life," he said, "I never knew what my father did. So in that respect it's hard to say." The mountains were all lit now, the fire of a new day across the tops of the dense foliage. "Now that I know, I still find it difficult to understand. I admire him. He had great strength of conviction."

"But?" She had heard something in his voice.

"I'm not sure that I approve of what he did."

"What was that?"

"What about your father?" Michael asked, changing the subject.

Eliane had taken up the mug again, and she was holding on to it as if it were a life preserver. "I respect him."

"But?" Now it was his turn to hear something.

"But nothing." Eliane was staring straight ahead.

"All right," he said. "If you don't want to talk about it."

But she did. Very badly. The trouble was she had never had anyone to tell it to. Certainly, she could never have unburdened herself to her mother. "My father never paid much attention to me." She stared into the dregs of her tea.

"I was always my mother's responsibility. Running the family business was his.

He resented it every time she spoke up. He never saw her as having a business head. But, of course, she does. She always did." She put the cup down. "I never spent much time with him until I was much older." It was hard doing this, Eliane realized. Harder than she ever could have imagined. But sheneeded to do this so badly. It seemed as if she had spent her whole life searching for someone in whom to confide. "But there was someone else. A man who was a friend of my mother's. He came and saw me. I used to think it was because my mother asked him to. I imagined she was trying to make things easier for me. But gradually I came to realize that he loved me, that he came to see me on his own." Eliane had to close her eyes. She felt tears burning behind her lids, and she fought to keep them back. "My mother always wanted me to believe in this man. In someone. But especially in him."

"Why?"

Eliane was hunched over, her arms tight against her sides. "Because she did.

Because it was so very important after my grandfather died to have someone to believe in." In the slow sunlight seeping into the room, he saw that Eliane was weeping silently. "I don't want to talk about it anymore."

"Eliane-"

"No," she whispered. "Leave me alone."

A strange separation had stolen in along with the sunlight and pushed them apart. Oddly, it was as if their reminiscences about their fathers had driven them apart rather than drawing them closer together.

That should not happen with shared truths, Michael thought.

Yvgeny Karsk was smoking a cigarette. While he waited for the phone to ring, he watched his wife. She was packing his bags with the precision with which she did everything.

"I want you to use the dacha while I am away," he said, blowing smoke into the bedroom. "It will be good for you to get away from Moscow for a while."

"It's still too cold for the country," his wife said. She was a handsome woman: dark-haired, slender, neat, well dressed. And she had borne him three sons. He had chosen well.

Karsk ground out the b.u.t.t and immediately lit another cigarette. "So? What do you have your fur for?"

"The sable," she said with efficient practicality, "is for the opera or the ballet."

Karsk grunted. He liked the way she looked on his arm. He especially liked the way the younger officers looked at him jealously. Yes, he decided, he had chosen well. "Do as you wish, then," he said. "You always do in the end. I just thought that with my leaving and the boys away in school, it would do you some good. The winters are always so bleak in Moscow. And so long."

"It is you who longs for Europe, Yvgeny, not I," she pointed out. She brushed down a suit before packing it in his hanging bag. "I am perfectly content here."

"And I am not?" Said a bit angrily? Or a bit defensively?

His wife zipped up the hanging bag, turned to face him. "Do you know something, Yvgeny? You are having an affair and you don't even know it."

"What do you mean?" Now he was angry.

"You have a mistress," his wife said, "and her name is Europe." She came and stood in front of him. Then she smiled and kissed him. "You're such a little boy," she said. "I think that's because you're an only child. Psychologists say that only children need more than those who have brothers and sisters."

"That's nonsense."

"Judging from you," she said, "it's quite true." She kissed him again to show him that she meant what she was saying. "Don't be guilty about having your mistress. I'm not jealous."

After she left the bedroom, he stood by the large window, looking out at the Moskva River, which ran through the city. As one of the four chiefs of the KRO, the Counterintelligence Department of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, Yvgeny Karsk was afforded many privileges. One of which was this rather large apartment in a new high-rise overlooking the Moskva.

The view, though spectacular, with sparkling lights and gilt-covered onion domes, did not please him. There was still ice on the river, though it was well into April. Winter, which gripped the city in a stranglehold, was loathto relinquish control even after its time had pa.s.sed.

Karsk lit another cigarette even before the last one had burned all the way down. His throat was raw and aching, but he could not seem to make himself stop. His smoking was a kind of penance, he thought. But for what?

For not believing in G.o.d. His mother had believed in G.o.d, but his training for the KGB had taught him to ridicule G.o.d as a concept for the weak of spirit.

Religion was the opiate of the ma.s.ses, an ephemeral concept at best, by which a small group of people-priests-were able to control the many. Organized religion-any religion-was potentially dangerous and counterproductive to the scientific dialectics propounded by Marx and Lenin.

It was the same with reforms, he mused. They were all well and good-in their place. No one would dispute the need to make the Soviet economy more efficient. Or the need to abolish the abuse of perquisites within the government. But one had to consider the ramifications of reform very carefully. Once one opened the door to such radical thinking even a crack, as was being done now, was it then possible to keep the door open only that wide?

Won't the reforms, by their very nature, tend to swing the door open to its widest?

And then, Karsk wondered, where will we be? In the end, one will be hard pressed to differentiate us from the United States.

Karsk leaned against the window frame, feeling the cold seep into him from the chill Moscow spring, waiting for Europe.

The telephone rang. He could hear his wife in the kitchen, beginning to prepare dinner. He glanced at his watch. The phone continued to ring; she would not pick it up. She was at the other end of the apartment and could not overhear the conversation. He heard the water in the kitchen begin to run. He picked up the phone.

"Moshi moshi?" h.e.l.lo?

"I called the office," Kozo Shiina said. "Your duty officer had the call transferred."

Sergei is very efficient, Karsk thought. He was never worried about leaving the day-to-day running of the office in Sergei's capable hands.

"What news of Audrey Doss?" Karsk asked.

"Nothing yet," Shiina said.

"I must know of her whereabouts," Karsk said, frowning in annoyance. "It is essential."

"I am doing everything I can," Shiina said. "I will let you know as soon as I hear something. Do you have any information on who killed Philip Doss?"

"No," Karsk said. "I have drawn a total blank."

"Hmm. It bothers me," Shiina said. "Who killed him? I don't like unseen players. All too often they turn out to be enemies."

"Do not be concerned," Karsk said. "Whoever it is cannot stop us now."