Zero. Part 35

Without a word, Eliane s.n.a.t.c.hed the gla.s.ses from him. She put them to her face. As she watched, Audrey squatted and urinated at the side of the road.

Her head lolled on her neck. As soon as she was finished, Ude bound her ankles again. Then, hefting her over his shoulder, he dumped her into the back of thecar. Then he got in.

"My dear G.o.d!" Eliane said.

"What is it?" Michael asked. "For G.o.d's sake, Eliane, what's going on?"

Eliane said nothing. She was staring at Audrey. Her face was white. Michael pulled Eliane out of the driver's seat, got in himself. Before she had time to settle in the pa.s.senger's seat, he had pulled out after the fast-disappearing car.

"I want to know what's going on," he said as he drove. "Eliane, what is it?"

"I don't know what's happened," she said. It was as sudden as a dam bursting.

It was as if her entire face darkened. "It's all come apart!"

"What has?"

"Michael, I was the one who kidnapped your sister."

"What?"

"I did it to protect her. Masashi had tried to get to her once. I didn't want him to try again."

"But why would he? My father is dead; she can't be used as leverage anymore."

"Philip sent her something, didn't he?"

So I was right, Michael thought. What Dad sent Audrey is vitally important.

"It was you I fought in my father's study!"

"I'm sorry that happened," Eliane said. "Your presence was an accident; I had no other choice."

"You could have told me why you were there. We could have worked something out. Faked the kidnapping."

Eliane shook her head. "Would you have believed me? I doubt it. In any case, I couldn't take the chance. Besides, I had to make it authentic. In order to confuse Masashi, I could not dare a.s.semble a fake abduction. And I did not want to implicate you in any way."

"But you took the katana my father gave me. Where is it?"

"I don't have it," Eliane said. "Your father stole it years ago from a man named Kozo Shiina. He's the leader of the Jiban. The sword, forged for Prince Yamato Takeru hundreds of years ago, is one of the Jiban's sacred symbols, along with the Katei doc.u.ment. It is said that when Shiina next uses the sword, the Jiban will have attained its goal. I think Shiina has it again."

"You gave it to him?" Michael asked incredulously.

"No," Eliane said sadly. "It was taken from me by force."

The katana was one thing; he could not get Audrey off his mind. "But if you took Audrey for safekeeping," Michael said, "how is it that Ude has her now?"

"I don't know," Eliane confessed. "I brought her here to Maui and stashed her away at Fat Boy Ichimada's hideaway in Hana. I knew he wasn't using it, and it was the last place anyone searching for her would look. Especially Masashi. Or so I thought."

Now for the difficult question, Michael thought. "Does Masashi know about the postcard my father sent to Audrey?"

"He must," Eliane said. "I know he intercepted the letter your father wrote to you."

"But I got the letter," Michael said.

"I'm not surprised," she said. "That means Masashi knows why you're here. He's using you as his ferret. You're going to find the Katei doc.u.ment, but you're going to be doing it for him. You can bet he's got us under surveillance and that he'll be there at the end, to take it from you when you discover where it is your father hid it."

Or, Michael thought, you're Masashi's agent. What better way to keep an eye on me? What better way to be in at the end if and when I do find the Katei doc.u.ment? And how can I divine the truth? You've lied and lied to me in so many layers that I'll never sort the truth out.

"This is my battle now, too," Eliane said. "Michael, I'm responsible for your sister's safety. It's because of me that she's in danger now. Ude's heading for the airport. No doubt arrangements have been made for him to smuggle Audrey out of Hawaii. Masashi will want to know what your father sent her. Andwhen she tells him, which she will, he'll have no more use for her. If we don't stop Ude here, we may never find Audrey alive."

Michael was listening with only one ear. That is, he wondered whether he could trust her and, if so, how far. He remembered what bis father had told him, that divining the truth gets harder the older one grows. It was true, perhaps.

But Michael possessed Tendo, the Way of heaven. The Way of heaven, Tsuyo had said, is truth.

"Don't worry," he said. "We'll stop Ude here."

Michael knew that when he had accepted Jonas's commission to find out who had killed Philip Doss and why, he had dedicated himself to this path for the rest of his life. And he was not about to give it up now.

There's only one way to find out for certain which side Eliane is on, he thought, gunning the engine. I've got to play this out to the very end.

Ude had parked his car moments before Michael and Eliane pulled into the Kahului airport, some distance away. Now he and the local Yakuza soldier whom Ome had provided were met by airport personnel, who climbed inside the car.

Ude started up, drove through the freight entrance. Ten minutes later he and Ome's soldier, dressed in airline-maintenance overalls, emerged onto the tarmac, riding a motorized luggage cart. On the back of it was a large wooden crate, stenciled yamamoto heavy industries: automotive parts: fragile.

The private air traffic was directed to land some distance away from the longer landing strip, used by the DC-10's arriving directly from San Francisco and the 707's of the more frequently scheduled interisland airlines.

Masashi's plane, a small DC-9, had already landed. A pax-stand, mobile stairs, was being rolled into position by two uniformed attendants as Ude and the soldier rolled through the freight gate and out onto the tarmac.

In the background Ude could see a much larger commercial DC-10, from which the last straggle of pa.s.sengers was debarking. No wonder there were so many people here.

As he watched, one of the attendants left the pax-stand to open the DC-9's cargo-bay doors. A uniformed guard sat at a gate in the wire fence that led out to the tarmac. Ude scanned the crowd as he emerged from the freight entrance.

The first uniformed attendant, finished with locking the mobile stairs in place, went to help his companion open the lower-bay doors of the luggage and servicing compartments. Why should they be doing that rather than climbing the stairs to help the plane's crew? Without conscious thought, Ude moved slightly so that he could get a glimpse of the man's face. He saw a swath of bandage across the bridge of the nose.

"Buddha!" he breathed. It was Michael Doss! "Get this crate aboard the plane no matter what happens," he told the Yakuza soldier as he bolted off the luggage carrier.

"Hey!" Ude pointed as he yelled to the guard. He was running at full speed toward the DC-9. "Those people aren't airline personnel!"

The guard left his post, began to run toward Masashi's plane, his hand searching for his bolstered sidearm.

Michael sprinted across the tarmac, ignoring Eliane's shout of protest. The jet fumes choked him, turning the air a dirty blue, unbreathable, the atmosphere of an alien planet. His eyes watered and his vision clouded. There was a hot wind pushing him backward, drowning out the guard's shouts. He ducked under the wing of the DC-9, slipped on a patch of iridescent oil, skidded into the base of the mobile stairs.

Shook himself as Ude hurtled into him. Michael went down, his hands raised to keep the blade of a tanto, a j.a.panese knife, from slashing him.

Michael tried a liver kite, finding the steel blade coming at his abdomen. Ude used the haft of the tanto to block the strike, then whirled clockwise, picking up energy from the movement of Michael's body, combining it with the momentum of his own.

Michael was aware of how frightened he was. Frightened for Audrey. The thought of her with this beast was intolerable. He bit his lip, fighting back the ragethat threatened to overwhelm him.

Ay long as there is fear, Tsuyo had said, there will be defeat. Hate, anger, confusion, fright. These are all aspects of one att.i.tude. Fear. The more a warrior can let go, the more he retains. This is difficult for any student to understand, since his labor here is to absorb. If you think only of revenge, your body will be made weak by your obsession. You will cease to have options open to you, until all strategy disappears, leaving only one thing: the thought of revenge.

But revenge for what Ude had done to Audrey was what filled Michael's mind.

Without thinking, he grabbed Ude's right wrist with his left hand, kept his circular motion going so that he took Ude's own motion, using it against him to pull him into another hand strike.

But Ude was prepared and, sidestepping, managed to bypa.s.s the brunt of the blow. But in so doing, he crashed against the railing of the cramped mobile-stairs platform.

In that instant, Michael used his legs again, scissoring them at the ankles, trapping Ude's calves between them.

Ude went down. Sirens were wailing, and Michael turned, saw the Yakuza soldier who had been with Ude kneeling in the sharpshooter's position. He dived behind the pax-stand as a bullet slammed into the metal beside his ear.

He was pinned down, and Ude was shaking himself, ready to throw the tanto into Michael's chest. Michael wanted to run, but the Yakuza had him pinned down.

Then he saw Eliane emerge from the other side of the DC-9. She hurled a small piece of luggage at the soldier. It hit him squarely on the side of the head and he went down, his gun clattering across the tarmac.

Michael turned and ran. He was thinking of muto. Muto, Tsuyo said, means without sword. If all you can do is encompa.s.sed by your skill as a swordsman, then in many, many instances you will be at a distinct disadvantage. The modern warrior must be adept at using everything-and nothing-in order to bring about victory in combat.

Muto meant this.

Eliane had used muto. And this is what it meant to him: It meant life.

Audrey, he thought as he ran, where are you?

Behind him, Ude was lurching dizzily to his feet and heading after him. Saw Eliane emerge from beneath the DC-9's wing, her angle cutting down the distance so that she was at his side.

Across the tarmac, toward the only sanctuary open to them: the DC-10 that had just come in. They raced up the pax-stand. Michael grabbed a flight attendant standing at the top, pushing her heavily backward into the interior of the plane. "Shut the door!" he shouted to the pair of flight attendants, who were staring at him goggle-eyed. Keeping one eye on the captain and copilot, who had come halfway out of their seats.

Michael saw Ude racing up the pax-stand holding a small boy to his chest as a shield. Behind him, the young mother ran, weeping, imploring him to give her back her child.

Michael yelled at the crew, "For Christ's sake, do as I say!"

But they were paralyzed with fear, and only Eliane saved him. She dived at the door, hauling it inward.

Heard the comforting thump! as the thick hatch closed and was locked.

Safe!

Jonas was at home, poring through the BITE field reports. At first, he had been dissecting those that went back over the past six years-the time when General Hadley's file had determined that the string of leaks in BITE security had begun. But then something in one of the earliest field reports had jogged Jonas's memory-back to the year before. And from there he had been backtracking.

Now that there was a pattern of sorts, he could see that he had been losing ground to the Soviets for fifteen years at least. Nothing linear; an operative here, an initiative there. And in between, minor advances against theRussians. A game of give-and-take: the norm. Now, with the field reports in front of him, he could see that it was anything but the norm.

A phalanx of paper cups filled with various amounts of cold coffee were lined up beside his papers. He had been at this for so long, he could no longer remember the last time he had eaten, let alone when he had slept. He rubbed his eyes, then rummaged in a drawer, snapped open a bottle of Gelusil tablets, ate several.

Scanned his findings. According to what he had unearthed here, Hadley's file was wrong: The leaks to the Soviets had been going on for far longer than six years. Not only that. The pace of leaking intelligence had escalated during the past year. In much the same way that the j.a.panese economic aggressiveness had shifted. Odd that both should be happening, Jonas thought wearily.

The red phone on his desk rang, and he s.n.a.t.c.hed it up immediately. It was just past two a.m.-a time when bad news is delivered.

"You had better get over here right away," the duty officer at BITE said.

"I've alerted General Hadley's office. There's a Code Blue alert."

Code Blue: highest priority.

It took Jonas just under fourteen minutes to get to the BITE offices, which was a record of sorts. At one point, he had pushed the speedometer up past one hundred.

From the car he had phoned his a.s.sistants, and they were on their way. He pa.s.sed through security and entered the compound. The building was quiet, humming efficiently along. The duty officer was waiting for him in the lobby.

Jonas saw security people all over.

"No one in, no one out," the duty officer said, "until you give the all clear."

Jonas gave the names of his a.s.sistants to the security people so that they would be let through when they arrived.

Up on the eighth floor, Jonas could hear the murmuring of the all-night monitoring of the Asian and Eastern European stations. BITE was never closed; it was always daytime somewhere in the world.

The duty officer led Jonas down the hall. In Jonas's office, he turned on the computer, accessed the central file. Immediately, lettering came on, surrounded by orange bars. core data deleted, the screen flashed over and over.

Jonas sat down at his desk, began punching in codes, getting deeper and deeper into the BITE central memory core.

"Oh Christ," he said in a moment. He pa.s.sed his hand across his face. His head hurt, and he had trouble breathing. Went back to the keyboard, did the routine all over again. With the same result.

By this time, his a.s.sistants had arrived. Jonas looked up. "It's our Russian networks. Someone has accessed all the core data about them: names, dates, contacts, sleepers, everything. And then deleted them from the central file."

"There are no hard copies," one of Jonas's a.s.sistants said. "And no backups of any kind. Unless there's an operative with total recall, we've lost all our basic data on every network, field operation and foreign a.s.set pertaining to the Soviet Union."

At that moment, the intercom on Jonas's desk buzzed.

"Yes?" Jonas said, stabbing at a b.u.t.ton.

"Someone down here wants to come up." Jonas recognized the voice of one of the security people in the lobby.

"Who is it?"

"General Hadley, sir."

Jonas, his stomach turning to water, said, "Send him up." He sent the duty officer to meet Hadley at the elevator, then cleared his office of personnel.

Jesus, Jonas thought, he wasn't supposed to get here for another couple of days.

The duty officer led Hadley into the office, then left, closing the door behind him.

"How are you, Jonas?" Hadley said. "It's been a long time since we saw eachother."

Though he was over eighty, Sam Hadley was still a handsome man. His hair was white now, there were deep lines scoring his leathery face and the backs of his hands were darkened by liver spots. But the energy of the frame, the canny intelligence of the eyes remained undimmed.

He sat down in a chair. "How long have we known one another, Jonas?"

"A long time," Jonas said.