Zero. Part 37

The DC-10 was at the limit of its ground s.p.a.ce. The forces at play in the jet fluctuated, and the two antagonists lost their balance.

Eliane hit her head on the corner of a crate. Ude recovered, grabbed Eliane by her blouse, whirled her over onto her back, shoved her forward.

Now Eliane's head and shoulders were out of the open hatch. The DC-10 was lifting off the ground. Half dazed, Eliane felt herself being maneuvered out of the jet. It was a long, lethal way down.

Only her hips and legs were still within the luggage bay. The wind, whipping at her cruelly as the jet picked up speed, made both breathing and seeing extremely difficult. She kicked out, connected with Ude's knee.

Ude turned, picked up the length of chain. With a cry of hatred, he whipped it around Eliane's neck. But at the same time, Eliane was using her hands in the helix, an atemi, a percussive strike. Ude, intent in his bloodl.u.s.t, did not see it coming until it was too late.

His own momentum combined with Eliane's desperate blow. The edge of her hand caught him lengthwise just over his heart. He heard a rib crack, then he was engulfed in a sea of pain.

Immediately, Eliane twisted the chain, wrenching free his grip. She kicked out and, with a cry of total surprise, Ude was catapulted out of the hatch.

Falling like a spent cinder onto the tarmac of the runway.SPRING 1947-AUTUMN 1948 TOKYO.

Because of Colonel Silvers's death-because of the violent nature of that death-General Hadley became directly involved with Central Intelligence Group affairs in the Far East. MacArthur, who made the appointment, saw it as a kind of penance. The CIG was, by and large, Hadley's creation. It was a direct outgrowth of the OSS, the American wartime espionage network that had proved so successful.

But times had changed. It had been President Truman's opinion that such an organization had no place in peacetime. If General Hadley, whom the president held in the highest esteem, had not argued long and vociferously for its inception, it would never have come into existence.

Hadley had pointed out that the CIG-understaffed and underbudgeted as it was in the proposal that President Truman was considering-would be the only organization standing between the United States and a wholesale infiltration of Soviet agents into levels of American government, industry and even intelligence agencies such as the FBI.

The chaos of the world war had made it virtually impossible, Hadley had said, to trace the backgrounds of the thousands of repatriated individuals showing up in hospitals and refugee centers. Further, the Soviet NKVD had become adept at creating convincing legends for their agents that would survive the kind of cursory inspection that was the most the American government could currently provide. He was perfectly serious when he told them of a school for deep-cover agents within the Soviet Union that was known as Little Chicago. There, the NKVD provided its elite with an authentic reproduction of an American city, legendary for the verisimilitude it provided its inhabitants.

Though the president was not inclined to believe that there was, as he put it, "a communist agent under every bed in America," Hadley had been so eloquent and had presented so much doc.u.mentation, that Truman had given him the go-ahead to put the CIG together.

It was only right then that, months later, Hadley be the one to clean up the mess the rotten apple inside the CIG's Tokyo station had caused. This Far East outpost of the espionage organization had gained tremendously in stature since j.a.pan was so close to the Soviet border.

Because Silvers had been so high up in the organization, wholesale changes were effected throughout the CIG. Code books were burned, dead-drop and cutout procedures were altered, agents were recalled from their infiltration a.s.signments for fear that their ident.i.ties were known to the enemy. But that was only the beginning. Entire networks had to be dismantled. The extent of the damage Silvers had caused was, in Hadley's own words, "inestimable."

For the first several months after Silvers's death, Hadley himself took the CIG's Tokyo station helm. But because there was so much cleaning up to be done, he a.s.signed Jonas to handle the day-to-day running of the office, on a temporary basis.

Jonas, with David Turner's steadying a.s.sistance, got the organization back on its feet and running so efficiently that Hadley made the appointment permanent. Along with it came a promotion for Jonas to lieutenant colonel.

For his part, David Turner volunteered to continue his irregularly scheduled meetings with Silvers's contact within the Jiban. He reasoned that it could only be to their advantage to continue getting intelligence from the Jiban.

But now, he worked with the knowledge that the cabal of j.a.panese ministers was providing legends-fict.i.tious backgrounds-on its enemies and pa.s.sing these individuals off as war criminals beyond the jurisdiction of the war-crimes tribunal.

Jonas and General Hadley pointed out that this was impossible. It was their theory that the Jiban had had Silvers murdered because Silvers had got wind that Philip was onto him. He had communicated that fear to the Jiban, trusting that they would find a way to extricate him from his predicament. Instead, they killed him.

That being so, the Jiban must be aware that the subsequent sweep-out at theCIG was because its infiltration had been blown.

"What if we leaked intelligence that this sweep-out was caused by another factor," David Turner posed. "A factor totally unrelated to the Jiban."

"We have had some serious setbacks recently in a couple of northern networks,"

Jonas said. He turned to Hadley. "Sir, what do you think? It would be a positive if we could keep the Jiban on the line. The more information we can ama.s.s on them, the closer we'll come to discovering their ident.i.ties."

Hadley turned to Philip. "What do you think, son? You're our resident expert on the j.a.panese way of thinking."

"Jonas is right," Philip said. "The more names we can compile from the Jiban's intelligence, the better chance we have of working backward to discover the makeup of the Jiban." Through Wataro Taki, Philip knew the names of some of the Jiban. But he was unable-or unwilling-to explain to these men how he had come into possession of those names. "Don't forget that each name the Jiban gives us is another enemy of theirs. Through our contacts in j.a.panese politics, it will be possible to at least narrow the range of ministers who must belong to this secret society."

"Then it's worth the risk," Hadley said. "I can get out some convincing scuttleb.u.t.t as to why we're cleaning house here. With their connections, the Jiban is sure to pick it up. There's a chance, though, that they won't believe it. Then it'll be Turner here who'll be in jeopardy. His next meeting with the Jiban's contact would surely be his last."

"I'll take that chance, General," Turner said. "Besides, it's in the Jiban's interest to believe the story. They still have enemies they want disposed of."

"That's another thing," Hadley said. "We've got to make the Jiban believe we're continuing to terminate the men named in their intelligence."

"Without actually doing it," Philip added.

"Why don't we put these ministers up at our safe house?" Turner suggested.

"We've got all the comforts of home, and it'll keep them out of circulation while we disseminate the stories of their 'deaths.' "

"Good idea," Jonas said.

"We're agreed, then?" Hadley looked around the room. They all nodded. "Good.

But there can be no foul-ups," he warned them. "We're already on shaky ground with the president. He doesn't want to hear any negative publicity at all."

So it was agreed to allow Turner to continue his rdv's with the Jiban in the hope of eventually ama.s.sing enough evidence to incriminate all its members.

"What is it?" Michiko put a hand on his shoulder. "You haven't said a word in hours."

Philip stared at the paper on which he had been doodling. Pencil lines ran around and around in endless circles. Mirroring his thoughts on Silvers's murder. He could not get over the feeling that he was missing something vital.

Though it was clear that General Hadley, Jonas and David Turner felt the matter was best left undisturbed, Philip could not let it go.

Who had killed Colonel Harold Morten Silvers? Hadley said that the door was unlocked but closed when he arrived. That was at eleven p.m. Silvers was already dead. But if the door was unlocked, that meant Silvers had to have known his killer, because he had let him in. The colonel would never have opened the door to a stranger at that time of night.

The others suspected that Silvers's contact in the Jiban had been responsible for his murder. But that simply did not wash. Philip was certain that no j.a.panese had used the katana to chop up Silvers. It seemed, then, that someone wanted to implicate the Jiban in Silvers's murder. Who?

What had happened because of Silvers's death? Philip asked himself. General Hadley had taken over CIG Tokyo station command, at least temporarily. Jonas had been promoted. Turner was still in place. Did any of those changes make a difference? Hadley had been brought directly into the CIG's Far East field.

Turner's position was status quo. Jonas, of course, had been elevated faster than anyone would reasonably have predicted before Silvers's death. But the suggestion that Jonas had murdered their CO in order to move up in rank was preposterous.What, then, am I missing? Philip wondered for the thousandth time. He looked up now into Michiko's concerned face and smiled thinly. "Did you ever feel as if you had an itch you couldn't scratch? I'm sitting here with a bunch of facts concerning Colonel Silvers's murder and I can't seem to make any sense of them."

"You've been at that stone wall for months now," Michiko said. "My father will be returning from Kyushu in a week, and we still have much to do to prepare the way for him."

"I can't get this out of my head," Philip said, staring at the circles he had drawn. They were beginning to make him dizzy.

"What you need," she said, "is to get out of the house.' She threw him his overcoat, put on hers.

"Where are we going?"

"Into the country," she smiled at him. "You'll see soon enough."

As they set out, she said, "Hold on," taking the car through a series of evasive maneuvers. It was not something either of them had to be reminded of; it was something they each did automatically.

She took him north, into the foothills of the j.a.panese alps, which were strung like a spiked belt across the island. It was still cold here, the roads were icy, and here and there, patches of glossy snow lay like wafers along the yellow-brown ground.

As they rose in elevation, the snow became more plentiful, until it lay in connecting swaths around a countryside reluctant to thaw. Open fields, white and reflective in the low afternoon sun, gave way to stands of pines and cedars. Men and women at work beside the road bent to their tasks, oblivious to the cars speeding by.

At length, Michiko turned right onto a dirt path. There had been no sign, but an ancient bamboo-and-wood gate stood open at the entrance to the highway.

They rumbled down this track, b.u.mping against ruts, stones and patches of slick ice. Finally, Michiko brought them to a stop.

Out from the dense shadows of the cryptomeria they went. Across the snow field. The sky was white in their eyes, where the sun hung, trying vainly to warm the land. Their breath clouded the air, their shoes crunched and cracked the thin layer of ice that had formed over the snow. There was a hush through the field that Philip found quite extraordinary. It was as if the purple mountains etched in the distance had gathered up all sound, flinging it far away.

They came to a rock shrine. Piles of small stones stood in front of it.

Michiko left him and, going toward the shrine, went down on her knees. She took a joss stick out of her pocket. Planting it beside one of the piles of stones, she lit it. A thin trail of the incense wafted upward, but the wind took it away from Philip so that he smelled only the country air.

"What is this place?" he asked.

"It is the shrine of Megami Kitsune, the fox-G.o.ddess." Michiko was still kneeling. She seemed to be whispering a prayer.

"Who is she?"

Michiko raised her arms. "Megami Kitsune is very powerful. She commands all that you see here."

Philip felt a little thrill go through him. Wasn't he the stalker of the red fox? Hadn't he killed a red fox when he was a boy in Pennsylvania? Hadn't it been the red fox that, in fact, had brought him to this very spot? He shook himself like a dog that wishes to rid itself of the cold.

"You mean that she is the G.o.ddess of the fields?" he asked.

Michiko rose. Her prayers were done. She came back to him. Her face seemed inordinately pale, as if it were a mirror reflecting the whiteness of the snow all around them.

"You do not understand." She linked her arm with his. "Megami Kitsune controls the actions of men and women; of lovers."

"Like us?"

Michiko lifted her head up to him, kissed him very hard on the lips. He couldfeel her mouth trembling a little under his, and he reached out to hold her close.

A line of geese, black against the white of the smoky sky, made its way toward the snow field. They appeared to have come from the shadows of the mountain range in the near distance. In a moment, Philip could hear their honking cries.

"One summer a very long time ago," Michiko said softly, "in a small village not far from here, there lived a girl. She was the only child of a stonecutter, whose wife had died in childbirth. She was willful and headstrong. This was not surprising, for the stonecutter treated her as the sole light of his life. Though he often wished to discipline her for her frequent bad behavior, he could not. There was already enough sadness in their lives, he would think, and he would let her have her way.

"One day, an old, blind man arrived at the village. The man was sick with a fever and could not walk. Instead, he was carried on the back of a young, handsome man.

"It happened that the stonecutter was just returning home when the old man on the boy's back came up the street. Being a kind-hearted man, the stonecutter offered his house for the pair to stay for as long as the old man needed to recover his strength.

"The boy thanked the stonecutter profusely. When he brought the old man inside the house, the girl took one look at the boy and fell madly in love with him.

Thereafter, though her father sent her to fetch the village physician, though the physician gave her specific instructions on how she must care for the old man, the girl only had eyes for the boy. By day she followed his every move with her mind as well as with her eyes. By night her dreams were filled with his virile presence.

"The stonecutter went to his neighbor and friend the woodcutter and arranged for the boy to work in the village, because he and the old man had no money and the boy was adamant about paying the stonecutter and the physician for the services they had provided. It was true that the girl did many of the things that the physician instructed her to perform on the old, blind man. But it was just as true that she spent hours leaning out of her window to watch the strong back of the boy as, stripped to the waist, he worked at chopping wood for the village's houses.

"This particular summer was the hottest anyone in that village could remember.

And perhaps the stifling heat contributed to the old man's eventual death. On the other hand, the girl was certainly not blameless. She neglected to feed the old man some of the potions the physician had prescribed for him. She failed to wipe him down with a cool cloth at regular intervals.

"And yet, even at the funeral, over which the boy and her father presided, along with the village priest, the girl could think of only one thing: the boy. She watched the back of his head when he was turned away from her, the bold silhouette of his face when the priest instructed him in some of the rites.

"The next day, the woodcutter took the boy into the forest. Neither of them returned. A rising storm from the southeast deterred a search party from venturing out into the night. But it did not prevent the girl from hanging out the window. When news that the two were missing flew through the village, her heart had turned to stone. But she thought only of the boy, not the woodcutter, whom she had known from birth, who had brought her presents on each of her birthdays, who had sworn to care for her if ever her own father should meet with an untimely end.

"Long after her father had gone to sleep, the girl, drenched to the bone by the wind-driven rain, still hung from her window in hopes of spotting the boy.

She had set a lantern in her room where she was certain it could be seen through her open window.

"In the hour of the rat-sometime between midnight and two in the morning-she started. She had heard a voice.

Perhaps it had only been the wind? But no! Now she heard it again. It was theboy's voice, calling to her!

"Without another thought, she raced from the house. The storm beat at her, but she did not care. She heard the boy's voice and she followed it, through the streets of the town and out into the countryside.

"The storm was at its height. The wind howled, the rain poured down in torrents. The ground was a slick mora.s.s. More than once, the girl slipped and fell face down in the mud. Always, she picked herself up and, hearing the calling again, pushed on. Deeper and deeper into the woods she flew, until she no longer knew where she was. She no longer cared. The thought of life without the boy was impossible for her to bear.

"At last, the forest gave way to a clearing. She saw a shadowy figure there and, joyously, she shouted the boy's name.

"The figure turned. It was, indeed, the boy. She ran into the clearing and threw her arms around him.

"And then, with a howl of anguish and disbelief, she lurched backward. Only to peer into the boy's face. It was true, she saw, though she pinched herself to make sure that she was not dreaming. The boy's face was as white as a sheet of ice, and as glossy and cold. In fact, as she reached out, her fingers trembling, she discovered that it was a sheet of ice.

"As impossible as it seemed, the boy was frozen solid.

"The girl's heart broke. She called out the boy's name one last, desperate time, then she threw herself upon him, clawing at the ice with such ferocity that she tipped him over.

"The two of them crashed to the forest floor, and to her astonishment, the ice shattered, showering her with chill fragments. On her hands and knees, the sobbing girl fought her way through the ice shards in search of the boy. But there was nothing. And soon, the wind-driven rain had melted all the ice away.

"In time, she staggered to her feet. She felt frozen herself. Her heart was encased in ice. She moved with a shambling, uncoordinated gait to the edge of the clearing. There, she threw her arms around the trunk of a tree to steady herself.

"She turned to take one last look at the place where her would-be lover had broken apart. She gasped.

"For on that very spot a kind of gray smoke was coalescing. And as the girl watched, it turned from transparent to translucent to solid. In solid form, it had a shape. And the girl recognized the comely form, the high cheekbones, the long eyes, the flowing hair, stippled by a light that seemed to emanate from all around her.

"A profound fear took possession of her and shook her like the grip of a wild animal. But her utter desperation momentarily overcame her terror. 'The boy!'

she called out. 'What have you done with him!'

"The figure turned, and a grin so horrifying emanated from it that the girl cried out and was forced to throw an arm across her eyes. "The boy,' a voice like a knife cut came to her. 'There is no boy. There never was a boy. Nor an old, blind man.'

"Now the girl could see that the figure was frosted in snow. On her shoulders, her arms and legs glistened a pure snow of a white so luminescent and brilliant that for an instant the girl was blinded.

" "There was only me, who knows only eternal sadness and despair. I am come to lead you to that which is your reward.'

"Then the painful light was gone. The girl blinked her eyes. The glade was deserted. She returned home, but no one recognized her, not even her father, whom she discovered weeping for his daughter lost in the storm.

"It was not until she looked in a mirror that, horrified, she at last understood. Her white face was filled with the lines and sags only time can produce. In the s.p.a.ce of a heartbeat, she had gone from being a girl in the ripeness of youth to an old woman.

"She left the village the next morning, for she could no longer tolerate the presence of anyone she had known and who now did not know her. In time, she came to a mountain pa.s.s much traveled by those journeying from Tokyo to Kyoto.There, she settled in a long deserted anjitsu, a simple building used by itinerant priests. And there she spent the remainder of her days, dispensing food, aid and comfort to weary travelers using the mountain road.