Zero. Part 38

"But always remaining in her memory was the presence of that ghastly snow-clad figure in the forest glade on that storm-swept night: Megami Kitsune, the fox-G.o.ddess."

The geese had landed on the snow-covered field. Their honking filled the air with a melancholy sound. Their waddling gait seemed ungainly and comical compared to their grace in flight.

Philip, with his arm around Michiko said, "Is it this fox-G.o.ddess you are afraid of?"

She looked at him with sad eyes and mutely nodded her head. They walked away from the shrine. The last of her joss stick had burned. The geese had quietened, and now only an occasional gust of wind, soughing through nearby branches, brought sound to their ears. A rabbit, frightened by their presence, bolted ahead, its white tail bobbing as it bounded away.

"What I am afraid of-" Michiko stopped, turned her head away as if gathering her courage. "I am afraid that I am like the young girl. I am selfish. I want you. Yet you are married, just as I am married. Sometimes I lie awake at night cold with the dread of my transgression."

"It's mine as well," he pointed out.

She gave him a bleak smile, but she did not respond when he hugged her to him.

As Michiko said, there had been much to do while her father, Wataro Taki, was tending the orange groves in Kyushu. He had already prepared for them files of intelligence on the three most powerful Yakuza families in Tokyo. But this was all background, and useful as it was, he had left it up to Philip and Michiko to ferret out the current activities, inclinations and long-range goals of these three families-or, as they were known in Yakuza society, -gumi.

One of the three families was known as the Taki-gumi, so it was clear to Philip that Wataro wished to take over the operations of this clan. As he had explained to Philip, the overriding power of the Jiban in both business and bureaucratic circles had forced Wataro into the only avenue of power he saw open to him: the underworld of the Yakuza. Here, outside the confines of the rigid j.a.panese caste society, Wataro saw his opportunity to build a power base within j.a.pan.

As the oyabun, the boss, of the Taki-gumi, doors into business, the bureaucracy, even the government, would be open to him in the decades to come.

For Wataro the visionary understood what few others did: that the Yakuza were still in a stage of infancy. Under his guidance and leadership, he could bring forces to bear against the Jiban. The Yakuza, he felt, possessed the enormous potential for good, if taken in the right direction. Already he could see the Communist influence in the worker riots along the docks. If, for instance, he could use the Taki-gumi to help quell these riots, in which dozens of j.a.panese policemen had been killed, the government would owe him a great debt.

This, too, was part of his strategy. For he also saw the Yakuza as his best base from which to expand into .legitimate businesses, the government and, eventually, even the bureaucracy, the Jiban's stronghold. Only then, when he had enough power, would he strike out and defeat the Jiban.

But that strategy, he cautioned, would require great patience and discipline.

Like the Jiban's scheme, Wataro's plan would need decades to come to fruition.

And the first step was to establish his power base by taking over the Taki-gumi. What was less clear was how he meant to handle the remaining two families.

Though there was certainly rivalry among all three, it became increasingly clear that the aftermath of the war and the occupation of the country had in some basic sense united the clans-even if temporarily and a bit shakily. They had begun to close their ranks against what they saw as outside interference: The American Occupation Army had already begun a serious crackdown against Yakuza crime.

Perhaps the intense work of trying to figure out the convolutions of thefamilies' alliances, rivalries and competing territories, both overt and covert, made Philip oblivious to the changes taking place inside his own household. Or perhaps the continuing anxiety he felt over not being able to crack the puzzle of Colonel Silvers's murder caused him to be inordinately distracted. Or again it might have been his mounting obsession with Michiko.

When he was with her, Philip felt as if he were sinking deeper and deeper into the continent of Asia, into a mythic realm beyond the pale of mere mortals. He had once read H. Rider Haggard's She, and now he was beginning to feel more and more like the hero of that novel, stumbling across a lost civilization ruled by a G.o.ddess of extraordinary beauty and power.

In any event, it was not until many years later, when he was on Maui and running from his pursuers, that Philip began to put all the pieces together.

Only then did he see the enormity of the puzzle that had haunted him for decades.

As it was, he paid scant attention to Lillian when she told him that she had gotten a job with the American emba.s.sy in Tokyo. That David Turner had recommended her. That the amba.s.sador liked her work so much that after six weeks, she had been promoted into his personal staff.

In increasing number, Lillian began reading the books David Turner recommended to her: The Octopus by Frank Norris, U.S.A. by John Dos Pa.s.sos, The Goose-step and World's End by Upton Sinclair. There were also, on occasion, books about the Scottsboro boys and the Haymarket riots. It was a library of philosophical thought heavily weighted toward socialism, but Lillian was too engrossed in the experience of learning to notice.

The world, formerly defined by the iron-bound limits her father had imposed upon it, was opening up to her. Through her dinners with David Turner and through the reading he recommended, she was in a very real sense going back to school. A school run by, to her, the most fascinating professor in the world.

She began to be exposed first to all of the world's economic systems, then to the more complex geopolitical factions. She learned about the history of her own country through its great writers: Norris, Dos Pa.s.sos and Sinclair. These great minds revealed to her the other side of capitalism-the darker side that General Hadley, her father, had ensured that she would never see.

She read of the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, as well, and the Spanish Civil War, so that gradually, like the sun rising after a long, arctic night, she became witness to the entire panoply of the imperative of revolution on a worldwide scale.

She became aware of how capitalism exploited the people in her own country-mainly the workers, who were meant to benefit from the system. She saw how a handful of greedy capitalists controlled the lives and fate of tens of millions of people throughout America. She came to understand, at last, how the oppressed were unaware of their terrible oppression-how that knowledge was being systematically kept from them by the same handful of greedy capitalists-just as this knowledge had been kept from her by her father!

And in the end, she could agree with-and sympathize with the cause of-the cadre of right-thinking intellectuals (the moral vanguard, as David Turner referred to them) whose responsibility it was to bring about a revolution to free the ma.s.ses from this invisible-and insidious-enslavement.

Though Philip was slow to pick up on the changes being wrought in her, realization finally did come.

The argument began mundanely enough. He had come in typically late and, instead of finding Lillian in bed asleep, he saw the light on in their bedroom. Lillian was sitting up in bed, reading a magazine. Turner strictly forbade her to bring home the books he gave her. His explanation-and a perfectly reasonable one it seemed, too-was that he did not want Philip to question Lillian on who she was seeing and why. "After all," Turner said with a grin, "your husband might think that we're having an affair."

"Where have you been?" she asked, closing the magazine.

He was prepared for this. In fact, he was surprised it had taken her so long to broach the subject. "Working.""Hardly," Lillian said, staring at him. "I called Jonas."

He was not ready for this. It should have been very simple. Lillian was a simple woman. "You've been checking up on me? Why?"

"Because it seems that you need checking up on." She folded her arms across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "I want to know where you go and what you do so that you're never home."

"Since you're suddenly so chummy with Jonas," Philip said, beginning to undress* "get my itinerary from him."

"Spoken just like my father." Was there an odd note of triumph in her voice?

"He was always adept at keeping the real world at arm's distance from me. I was like a prize horse to him, one that he had to put blinders on whenever he took it outside."

Philip looked at her. Was this truly the same woman he had married just over a year ago? he asked himself. What's happened? "I'm not your father," he said, hanging up his jacket and taking off his tie.

"I said you were like my father."

"Is this a debate?" He did not think she even knew what a debate was.

"If you want it to be," she said.

Which should have been the first tip-off. This kind of semantic wordplay was far too sophisticated for the woman he had married. The only area in which Lillian had formerly been sophisticated was fashion. In other respects, she had been more like a country girl, simple and straightforward in her personality. At least this was how Philip had seen her. It was part of what had attracted him to her. But now that he was emotionally estranged from her, it was hardly surprising that he should be slow in discerning the changes being wrought in her.

"I don't want it to be anything," he said. He came and sat beside her on the bed, took her hand in his. "Lillian, I've been working very hard these last few months. Silvers's death put us all on edge."

"This has nothing to do with Silvers's death," she said. She searched his face with the intensity of an archaeologist digging for signs of life. "What's happened to you, Phil?" she asked. "It's like we're no longer husband and wife. We never go out. We never make love anymore."

"I know," he said, stroking the back of her hand. "I leave you alone too much."

"It's not that," she said in a peculiar tone of voice. "After all, I have my job at the emba.s.sy, and I'm given more responsibility every day. I handle the trafficking of all the sensitive dispatches now, including my father's. And when you're not home for dinner, I fend for myself."

Now Philip recognized the peculiar intonation. Where was that little girl of softness and light he had fallen in love with? Sometime when he hadn't been looking, she had been replaced by a hard, self-sufficient edge. Was that confidence he heard in her voice now? Impossible. That would mean that she had changed more radically than he could imagine.

"What does that mean, fend for yourself?"

"Is that a trick the CIG taught you?" she said. "To turn the questioner's questions around? I asked you where you'd been."

"Who are you seeing, Lil?" he asked quietly. "Is it Jonas?"

"You're being idiotic."

But whatever else she had picked up, she had not yet learned to be a competent liar.

"I want the truth," he said, wondering why it was so important. He was having an affair, why shouldn't she? But he knew why. Somehow, he could not consider his relationship with Michiko an affair. It was far from a fling by a discontented husband. What, then, he asked himself, was it? He had no clear answer.

"The truth," Lillian said, "You want the truth? Why? I don't think you'd recognize the truth if you heard it. You're too enmeshed in your secrets, Phil. They've taken you over completely."

"You're exaggerating.""Am I? Just look at yourself," she said. "You talk to me without saying anything at all. You won't answer my questions-"

"Your prying, you mean."

"You won't answer my question," she persisted. "You won't account for your time, even though much of where you go is not, apparently, related to your work. What am I to think? What would you think if the situation were reversed?"

"Do you want to know what the real trouble is, Lil?" Philip said. "It's that you want me to be someone I'm obviously not."

"It's convenient to lay this all at my feet," she said. "Does that a.s.suage your conscience any? Well, forget it. I won't allow that. You're half of this marriage; the fault is at least half yours."

"The fault for what?"

Lillian closed her eyes. "I love you, Phil," she whispered in a bleak voice.

"G.o.d help me, but it's the truth." Her eyes snapped open. "If you're cheating on me, I don't think I could forgive you. But I couldn't leave you, either.

You're still the man I want, the man I need."

"Maybe you need too much of me," he said. "There's a part of me you'll never understand."

"Is that because I can't?" she said. "Or because you won't let me?"

He said nothing. The truth was that he was afraid to reply.

Lillian shook her head sadly. "That's what's wrong between us, Philip. Don't you see? There's not enough understanding between us. We don't try to know each other. And because we won't try, we'll never know what we're capable of together."

"That isn't altogether true," he protested.

"Of course it is." There it was again, that curious note of confidence. "You'd much prefer to remain unknowable. It appeals to your sense of secrecy. You and Jonas huddle together, plotting your schemes. It seems to me that the two of you enjoy hatching those secrets and keeping them between you."

"That's business. I think you're taking this far too personally, Lil."

"No, I'm not," she insisted. "You don't think of it as your business. You love it, and I find myself competing with it for your time. But competing with what? The shadows. And I know that given a choice between the shadows and the light, Philip, you'll always choose the shadows."

"Then why can't you accept that?"

"Because it's wrong," she said. "That's no way to live your life. You're like the parts of capitalism-the brutal, power-hungry, war-hungry aspects-we're not meant to look at too closely, that others want to keep hidden."

"What others?"

Lillian shrugged. "People like my father."

He stood up. "That must mean me as well," he said, angry despite himself.

"Since you say that I'm like your father."

"How I wish you weren't," she said.

"I'm not, Lil," he said. "I wish I could get you to believe that."

"But don't you see how much alike you two really are? You both crave secrets.

You thrive on them. I don't think you'd be able to survive without them. And living in a world built of secrets leaves me out."

"It doesn't."

"By definition, Phil, it does." Her words were measured, controlled. "The first question I asked you when you came in is where you had been."

"Lil-"

She lifted her hand. "It's all right. I didn't expect an answer. I had hoped that you would want to tell me. That you would want to make everything all right between us." She paused, and in the silence he heard her urging him to prove her wrong. In time, she nodded. "But I didn't really expect anything at all."

Philip was preparing the way for Wataro Taki's return from Kyushu. The difficulty lay in the fact that the official American occupation policy of trying to break up the Yakuza had caused the three Yakuza families to formalliances among them. This was not the norm for them.

An enemy with alliances was far more dangerous than an enemy standing alone.

Accordingly, Philip and Michiko had worked on a scheme to break apart the alliance by pitting the three families against one another. Though this would entail considerable loss of life among the three families, it would be a relatively simple thing subsequently, then, to take over the Taki-gumi with a minimum of additional bloodshed.

They presented their complex plan to Wataro Taki upon his return from Kyushu.

He was looking fit and strong, but his features were so different that Philip was not certain it was the same man until Wataro Taki spoke.

"Good morning, Doss-san."

Philip continued to scrutinize this man. Had he once been Zen G.o.do? "What's happened to you?" he asked.

Wataro Taki laughed. "It is good that you did not recognize me. Michiko did not know me either when she met me last night. I warned her not to say anything to you so I could get your honest reaction." His smile faded.

"Frankly, I was concerned about my face in my new life. So I did more than pick oranges while I was away. I had myself reborn." He put his fingertips up to his cheekbones. "The doctors cracked the bones to reshape them, cut away flesh here and there, moved pockets of fatty tissue."

His face was coppery, burned by the sun and wind he had encountered during his long hours in the orange groves in the south, so that one had to come very close to him to see the network of tiny scars that were still healing.

"Within a month," he told them, "all trace of the scars will be gone."

But just as impressive as the alteration of his face were the changes in his body. He seemed longer, broader, certainly more muscular. He seemed, in short, in every way a younger, larger person than the man named Zen G.o.do, who had departed some eight months previous.

"I am concerned, too, about Michiko. She is, still, after all, Zen G.o.do's daughter, even though she is a Yamamoto by marriage. Therefore, I will hire her. And after I have become oyabun of the Taki-gumi, I will adopt her as one of the Taki family. If anyone asks about my close involvement with her, well, she is married to n.o.buo Yamamoto, neh? A very powerful businessman who can extend my clan's power base into legitimate business."

Wataro Taki listened carefully to their proposal as they sat drinking tea in the new house they had bought for him. Michiko had spent upward of two months laundering the proceeds from the sale of the G.o.do family house, so that when she bought this one, no one could trace the origins of the money she paid.

In the end, he rejected their scheme. "Too much blood must be spilled," he said gravely. "Not that I harbor any softness in my heart for these bandits who are bleeding their brothers. But it is inefficient to destroy even part of that which one wishes to appropriate.

"I have been thinking long and hard these past several weeks since you sent me your last detailed update on the three families, and I believe that I have found a method of taking over the Taki-gumi without destroying a single life.