Zero. Part 34

The Australian continued to speak directly to Jonas, ignoring her. An American brigadier, a Pentagon attache, approached her, but it was as if he spoke in an alien tongue. When she did, in panic, open her mouth to respond, what came out seemed to her like an inarticulate squeak.

Her cheeks were flaming. Even before she overheard the Australian ADC say to Jonas, "I say, that quiff's one fine-looking animal, what?" And wanting only to die when the shock wore off enough for her to realize that he was talking about her.

She broke away from the leash of Jonas's arm and made her way to the ladies'

room. It seemed grossly unfair that this was the only place where she could find surcease from a world dominated by men.

She had stared at herself in the mirror. Now that she was alone, she recognized that coldness in her stomach as disguised fury. Her anger was not directed at the Australian, who-pig though he was-meant nothing to her. Or even at Jonas-who should have known better, but didn't; you could reasonably expect a dog to fetch, but not to speak.

In the sanctuary of the ladies' room, she had wept with an abandon she could never show even in the privacy of her own bedroom; it was Philip's bedroom, too, after all.

How she had hated Philip at that moment, for abandoning her. For consigning her to this seemingly endless purgatory of being alone. For binding her with love to a life she despised.

Morning found their bodies still entwined. The ti leaves that covered them were turning brown; their scent was gone.

Michael stirred, opening his eyes. A beetle crawled across his forearm, disappearing into the mulch beneath the rock overhang. He touched Eliane, and she started awake. Her wide-open eyes stared into his, and Michael shivered at the absence of emotion there. It was as if a cold wind had pa.s.sed between them. In a moment it was gone, and Eliane had come back from whatever eerie place she had been inhabiting.

"Good morning," he said, kissing her on the lips.

She put her hand up. A fingertip traced its way down the line of his jaw.

"Did you sleep well?" he asked.

She nodded. "I did not dream. That hasn't happened for many years."

"I dreamed all night," Michael said. "Of battles and warriors armored in circular shields made from the sh.e.l.ls of giant sea turtles."

He began to get dressed, and as he did so, he took off the dried ti leaf garland.

"Leave it there." Her hand stayed him. "Until we're home."

He looked at her, and she gave him a small smile. He remembered the sounds from the darkness of the night, the movement he had thought he had seen just outside then-sanctuary.

"Eliane," he said, "last night I heard noises. I even thought I saw something moving. What happened out there"--ie raised an arm to point-"when we were making love?"

"I don't know. Nothing. Or perhaps a night creature. There are wild boar and mongeese all through the wilderness here."

"Boar and mongeese are diurnal," Michael said. "They wouldn't be around at night. Besides, you turned my head away."

She stood up. "Whatever it was doesn't matter." She began to get dressed.

Michael picked up the ti leaf garland that lay around his neck. "You said that we had to wear these to protect us. Protect us from what?"

She shrugged. "It depends on what you believe. The kahunas say that the G.o.ds still move here-the ancient warriors who fought and bled and, perhaps, died here centuries ago."

"Are you saying that's what I heard?"She shrugged again. "Why not? Their spirits are all over this island."

"Feeling a power is one thing, seeing spirits is something else again."

"If you don't believe it," she said, "then it didn't happen. But I'll tell you one thing. The G.o.ds who fought here were armored in the sh.e.l.ls of giant sea turtles."

Michael wasn't sure whether she was making fun of him. She leaned over, kissed him on the lips. "Don't look so quizzical. It's the truth. Look it up in any history of Maui."

Michael thought about this while he finished dressing. "Dreams don't exist,"

he said. "They take form from what's in your subconscious, not from what's around you."

"The human mind isn't rational, Michael. You should know that already. Yet you're expecting a square peg to fit into a round hole. It just won't go, no matter how hard you try to force it."

He said, "The spirit world is what fascinates you, isn't it? But you know that it's no subst.i.tute for real life."

"What are you saying?"

"Just that this obsession might be another flight from reality."

"Like the bulemia and the anorexia?"

He shrugged. "You're the only one who can know that."

"I don't know anything," she said sadly. "Because the only lesson I've ever learned is never to trust anything." She began the long, precipitous descent to the valley floor.

"Not even yourself?" Michael asked, scrambling after her. "Especially not myself," Eliane said.

Michiko was kneeling before the shrine of the fox-G.o.ddess when she became aware of someone behind her.

"Michiko?"

Joji's voice.

"Yes, my brother." Her head continued to be bowed in prayer. "How are you?"

"I must speak with you."

"When I finish my prayers," she said, "we can take a walk around the garden."

Joji glanced surrept.i.tiously at the guards, standing uncomfortably close, watching Michiko, watching him, and said, "No. I must speak with you in private." He had turned his head so that the guards could not read his lips.

"If this is about Masashi, my answer is the same as before."

"Michiko, I beg of you. I know who these guards are. I must see you alone."

Hearing the note of desperation in his voice, she said, "All right." She considered the options. "In the hour of my bath," she said at length. "At six o'clock. Do you remember that part of the fence that was in need of repair?"

"The place where the foxes used to come?"

"Yes," she said. "I put morning glories up instead of repairing it. It is important for the foxes to be here. It is a sacred spot for them." She smiled because she did not want the guards to think that they were speaking of anything serious. "The hole is big enough for you to fit through. Come to the kitchen entrance just before six. I'll arrange for the cook to let you in."

At a quarter to six, Joji slipped through the ragged hole the foxes had made in the bamboo, edged his way to the kitchen entrance of his stepsister's house.

As arranged, the cook, an old woman who had been in the Yamamoto employ for years, opened the door, ushering him inside. She took him silently through the house. At length, she knelt in front of a sliding door, knocked very softly.

Apparently hearing an affirmation from inside, she beckoned for Joji to enter.

He went across on his knees. The room was all of stone. Steam swirled white, and he immediately began to sweat. He could see Michiko's bare back as she sat upright in the tiled tub.

"I have sent the girls out," Michiko said. "Whatever you have to say, say it quickly, Joji. We have little time."

"I know where Masashi is holding Tori." For a moment Joji thought she hadn't heard him. Then Michiko gave a stifled cry. "Where?" she whispered. "Oh, whereis my granddaughter?"

"At the warehouse in Takashiba. Do you know the place?"

Michiko nodded. "Of course I know it. It is half owned by n.o.buo's Yamamoto Heavy Industries." She turned to face him, and he could see how pale she was.

"But how did you find this out, Joji-chan?"

He told her, then, how he had tried to enlist the aid of Kai Chosa, how he had finally gone to Kozo Shiina, what Shiina had told him to do, what had transpired at the warehouse in Takashiba when he and Shozo had gone there.

Michiko hung her head. "Oh, you stupid, stupid boy," she said in a sigh.

"None of this would have happened," he pointed out, "if you had agreed to help me against Masashi. But when I saw Tori, I understood everything. I knew why you had to refuse to help me."

"Oh Joji," she said sadly, "you don't understand anything. I had hoped to spare you all this. I had hoped that at least you, of all the family, would not become involved and be imperiled."

Joji stared at her. "What do you mean?"

"Months ago, your brother Masashi made a deal with Shiina."

"What!"

"Keep your voice down, Joji-chan, and listen to me. If Shiina says he is your ally against Masashi and he tells Masashi that he is his ally, he must be up to something. But what?" She thought a moment. "Buddha," she said. "It was Shiina's idea for you to invade the warehouse at Takashiba?"

Joji nodded.

"Masashi is going to find out, of course. Perhaps he already knows. Masashi will be after you. That's what Shiina must want. If Masashi kills you, only one Taki brother will remain. Knowing Shiina, he has already devised the method by which he will eliminate Masashi. Then he will have what he's wanted all along: the destruction of the Taki-gumi!"

"Oh no!"

"Quickly," Michiko said, rising. "Get my towel. You must take me to the warehouse. We must rescue Tori. Once I know she's safe, perhaps we can deal with Kozo Shiina in his own perverse manner." She smiled as Joji dried her.

"Yes," she said, "that would suit me very well. Kozo Shiina has a great many sins to atone for."

"My time is over here," Michael said. They had made their way back to Eliane's house in silence. Once inside, they had gone their separate ways to shower and change. Now, they met in the kitchen. It was just before eight o'clock in the morning. "I'm off for Tokyo in a couple of hours."

Eliane was fixing fresh-squeezed juice. "You're going to have some trouble at the airport," she said, shoving the morning's Honolulu Advertiser at him. The banner headlines told of the "Ma.s.sacre in the West Maui Mountains," as the newspaper had named the battle at Fat Boy Ichimada's. "The local police are going to be swarming all over Maui, not to mention every available agent of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. The INS is the federal agency most involved in cracking down on the Yakuza activities on the Islands. You'll never get through Immigration."

"There's no problem there," Michael said. "I spoke to my contact in Washington this morning. He's squared everything with the Feds. We'll be left alone-that, I can guarantee. Anyway, I'll be better off in Tokyo. That's my turf. I can use my contacts there to find Ude. He must be long gone by now."

"Maybe," Eliane said. She split a papaya, scooped out the dark, bitter seeds that looked like caviar. She handed hint half a papaya, along with a spoon.

"Thanks."

"And maybe not," she went on. "There's a chance he's still on the island, and if so, I think I know where he would be."

"I don't hold out much hope of that," Michael said, setting aside the fruit.

"But if there's any chance at all, let's take it."

In the Jeep, he said, "Why didn't you mention this possibility before?"

Eliane was driving, racing along the narrow road. She overtook a tour bus loaded with j.a.panese tourists. "The truth is, it just occurred to me. When youtold me that your people had fixed it with the Feds so that we wouldn't be involved in the Ichimada investigation, it came to me. Ude couldn't get off Maui the night of the fight at Fat Boy's; it was far too late. And it's a sure bet that yesterday the airport was crawling with INS agents, who would recognize him on sight. The Yakuza here are well connected among the local police, but they're terrified of the INS."

"But even if that's true," Michael said, "how could you know where Ude would hide out?"

"That's not so difficult to work out. Now that Ichimada's dead, the family will be in disarray. Fat Boy refused to groom anyone who might eventually take his place. He believed in katamichi, the method the Yakuza bosses used in the old days to weed out the dross: He allowed his underbosses to jockey among themselves for position. "Let the best man win!" Fat Boy was fond of saying.

Then he would figuratively cut the legs out from under whoever was left."

They were out of lao Valley now, swinging around toward Wailuku and the east side of Maui.

"But there is a man named Ome," Eliane continued. "He is centrally located-meaning his turf is in and around the airport. His people took care of that area-import and export-for Ichimada. It's logical to a.s.sume that Ude would go to Ome, especially if he's been in contact with Masashi. Ome is Masashi's man."

They had pa.s.sed through the ramshackle part of town and now were on the road they had come down the day they had met. Eliane slowed, searching for something. Apparently, she found it, for she pulled off the road and came to a stop.

"There." She pointed. "Use the gla.s.ses."

Michael could see a paved road winding through the mountains. If one took it heading north, one would come to Ka-hakuloa. He saw the buildings shimmering in the cool, bluish light, the ancient graveyard he and Eliane had pa.s.sed on their way down from Kahakuloa when they had first met.

He saw a copse of trees, then, moving the gla.s.ses upward, saw the house built into the side of the mountains. In the gla.s.ses' heavily magnified viewing field, the house looked as if it were no more than a dozen yards away. A car was parked out front. There was no activity around the house, but it was impossible to see inside.

Michael was about to get out to take a closer look at the house when the front door opened. A pair of Yakuza soldiers came out. They went to work on the car, inspecting it inside and out. Michael kept them in view.

Within minutes, one of the soldiers went back inside. He returned, accompanied by another man. The soldier was loaded down with paraphernalia, which he heaved into the trunk of the car. Michael saw that the second man was j.a.panese, with a scar running down his right cheek. He described the man to Eliane, who said, "That's Ome. Do you see any sign of Ude?"

"No," Michael said. Then, "Wait. There's someone in the doorway to the house."

In a moment, a figure emerged. He was half carrying a woman. She was bound hand and foot. The man turned toward Michael as he bent to untie the woman's ankles. In so doing, his face became visible.

"Is it Ude?" Eliane asked.

"Yes," Michael said. Now his fingers gripped the gla.s.ses with a terrible strength. "He's carrying someone. A woman, I think."

"A woman?" Eliane said. "That makes no sense. Ude came here alone."

"Well, he's not alone now," Michael said. "This will make it easier for us.

He'll have someone else on his mind when we-" He gave a strangled cry as he saw Ude pull the hair back from the woman's face. His scalp crawled.

"It's Audrey," Michael whispered hoa.r.s.ely. "That b.a.s.t.a.r.d has my sister!"