Zero. Part 42

He went down toward Tumer-Karsk's apartment. The front door was locked. He stepped back and shot out the lock. Immediately, he kicked the door open, rolled out of the way.

But there was no answering fire. Philip picked himself up, scuttled crabwise into the apartment, his revolver held in the standard two-handed grip before him.

The windows were open, curtains blowing in. The bed was unmade. There were papers scattered all over. Some of them whirled like oversized confetti in the draft Philip had made opening the front door.

Heard a noise coming from the tiny bathroom and threw himself lengthwise across the threshold.

Jonas was in there. He was holding his shoulder, which was oozing blood from around his grip. Jonas's face was pasty white.

"You okay?"

Jonas nodded. "The b.a.s.t.a.r.d shot me, then went out the window."

Philip made a move to follow Karsk's escape route, but Jonas said, "Forget it.

He went across the rooftops like a bat out of h.e.l.l. You'll never find him."

Philip climbed out the window. The apartment rose above the height of the rest of the roof. Asphalt rooftops stretched away in every direction. Jonas was right. Karsk had disappeared as if into thin air.

"I have something for you."

"What?"

Michiko came silently across the room, knelt on the tatami. The bandages had come off, and one needed to be very close indeed to see the scars. She placed an engraved kyoki wood box on the low table between them.

"A present."

"Michiko-"

But her voice deflected him. "First," she said, "tea."

He watched her as she slowly, gracefully, seemingly effortlessly, brewed the green tea. She used the whisk to make the pale froth on its top. Turning the cup, turning. Now her fingers guided her, so subtly that unless one was looking, one would not suspect that she was blind.

Finally, she held out the cup for him to take. She used to love to watch him drink the tea she made for him. Now she listened as he took his first sip.

Only when he had finished it all and had given her back the cup did she prepare the second pot. This time it was for them both. "Will we make love today?" she asked when they were drinking."We always make love when we are together," he said. "Among many other things." He c.o.c.ked his head, perhaps sensing something. "Is today different?"

"I am different." Her eyelids were lowered.

Outside, the rumble of traffic came to them like a distant storm: a harbinger of great change, but not yet near enough to affect them.

"The tea is delicious."

"Domo." Thank you.

"There is nothing different about you." He put his cup down. She heard, and c.o.c.ked her head.

"Michiko," he began, "what happened in the sumo stadium-"

"I understand," she interrupted. "You lost a good friend and compatriot in Ed Porter."

"That's true," he said. "But I was speaking about you-"

"Ah." She smiled, so sweetly that he was disarmed. "But there is nothing to say. I am the lucky one, neh? I am here. I am alive."

"But if I hadn't told you about the furo-"

"Then we would never have discovered that David Turner is a Russian NKVD agent."

Philip bowed his head in concession. He knew better than to continue this line with her. In any case, whatever guilt he felt was a purely Western emotion; it had no place here.

He took a moment to clear his throat of all his roiling emotion. "The Taki-gumi has accepted your father's arrival," he said. "Not even his most rabid enemy would ever suspect that Wataro Taki and Zen G.o.do are one and the same."

"My father has taken a woman," Michiko said. "They will be married inside a month."

He looked at her, knowing that there was something on her mind. "Is that strange? Your father has been essentially alone since your mother died some years back. Are you jealous of this new woman?"

"She is pregnant, I think." Michiko kept her eyes lowered. It was the only sign she gave that there was something wrong with her sight.

"Is that why they are getting married?" He wanted to get to the source of her discomfort.

"I don't think so. No." She seemed inordinately still. "Understandably, my father wishes to have sons. His sons will one day control what he has created."

"Rather than you, his daughter?" He was on a fishing expedition.

"I have no desire to follow in his footsteps," she flared. "Whatever gave you that idea?"

"Michiko," he said softly, "what is it?"

"I want you inside me," she said. "Now."

She was wild, almost brutal. It was as if whatever was inside her had sucked all tenderness out of her so that she engulfed him with every fiber of her being.

Utterly spent, they fell asleep in each other's arms. When Philip awoke, she was already preparing tea. He rose, sat down opposite her. She had not put on her kimono or even her underkimono, which was unusual.

"Michiko?"

"Drink now." She held out a cup to him. It was not the one he had used before.

It was much lighter, much finer, a celadon green. It had on its side a gold-billed heron. A black fish was struggling between its jaws, and its spread wings were beginning to open. It was the cup he had almost broken the night of Zen G.o.do's supposed death; the signal they had agreed upon that would alert her, in another room, to his presence in the darkened house.

He saw that the kyoki wood box was open. Was this its contents; his present?

He stared at her inquiringly.

"Drink," she said. "Half the tea."

He did so.She waited until he put the cup back into her cupped hands. She finished off the rest of the tea. Then she carefully wiped the cup with a silk cloth, felt for the kyoki wood box, placed it inside. He was right. It was his present.

But why?

She closed the lid, slid the box toward him. "This is to remember me by," she said softly. Her face was pale, a ghostly reflection half seen in a mirror.

"What do you mean?"

"I am going away," she said. "Back to my husband."

"But why? Did your father order this? Does he know about us?"

She shook her head. "This is my doing. Mine alone. We are both married. There are vows-important vows, holy vows, if we are true to our spirits-which must be preserved. For a time we forgot them. But not forever."

"Not forever," he said, his heart sinking. "But for now. Why not now?"

"It is impossible."

"Michiko-"

"Why must you make this more difficult? You must accept-"

"I can't!"

"But you must!" Her voice was trembling; she was close to tears. "If you care anything about me, you will dress and go. Now. Without saying another word.

Without looking at me again."

He was stunned. "Am I crazy? Am I waking up from a dream? Was there nothing between us?"

"This must be because there was something between us."

"I don't understand."

She was bent over so that her hair cascaded over her face, over the kyoki wood box. She was silent.

In a moment, he rose, went into the bathroom. He stared into the mirror and wondered what it was he saw there. Whose face was that? What deeds had that person done while he was somewhere else? He could not say. Or perhaps, more accurate, he did not want to remember. Suddenly, he was so cold that he began to shiver.

When he emerged, he was dressed. The shivering, like an ague, had pa.s.sed.

Michiko had not moved. He crossed to the table, picked up the box. It seemed lighter than air.

Then he did as she had asked. He said nothing. And he did not look at her again.

BOOK FOUR

ZERO.

THE ABIDING SPIRITSPRING. PRESENT.

PARIS.

TOKYO.

WASHINGTON.

SAINT-PAUL DE VENCE.

Lillian went into Ungaro. But everything seemed a bit too way-out for her, and she wound up at Dior. She was feeling exceptionally fine. Having made the break from the deadening circle of Washington life, she felt weightless, as if she had managed to escape purgatory. If only I knew that Audrey was safe, she thought.

Dior had always been her favorite. The designs were always tres chic-never outre. The elegance of line was timeless, and this was something to which she responded wholeheartedly.

The fashion house was on the Avenue Montaigne, just steps from the Plaza Athenee. As she surveyed the delicious array of clothes, Lillian felt again that shivery thrill of being far, far from a prison of her own making.

She bought a sequined evening gown, which she asked be sent to the hotel after it had been altered, and an elegant but discreet casual dress, which fit her perfectly and which she decided to wear out.

Back on the Avenue Montaigne, she was at first undecided as to which way to go. She could head down the Rue Francois Ie to the Cours la Reine, which ran along the Seine. That way she would pa.s.s closer to the Grand Palais and the Uni-versite. Like her children, she loved the water, and the Seine was no exception. But then she remembered that she would also have to pa.s.s the bateaux station, watching all the gay tourists piling onto the boats for their mediocre meal while traveling up the river. She couldn't bear the thought of that, so she headed up toward the Rond Point.

At the Champs-Elysees, she turned to look toward the Place Charles de Gaulle.

The Arc de Triomphe glowed a cool white. Even with the traffic streaming around it-or, perhaps, because of it-it seemed grander now than the first time she had seen it. But then all of Paris had that effect on her, it seemed. It grew more beautiful, more desirable, every time she visited. That was its most endearing quality. Every large city in the world had a facade it paraded before visitors that made it exciting. But the more one returned, the more the seams showed, the more tarnished the facade became. Until image and reality separated, and one could never think of the place in the same way again.

That would never happen here, Lillian thought as she began to walk down the Champs-Elysees. Here the facade only hinted at the pleasures to be entertained. The more one came to Paris, the more one enjoyed it.

She could see the obelisk at the Place de la Concorde, rising in the near distance. Strolling down the wide avenue, beneath the ancient chestnut trees, Lillian felt the air of centuries rolling over her. She breathed in deeply and sighed. There was a sense of history-and, with it, a sense of place- with which everyone was attuned. She could hear the soft hooting of the bateaux.

For just an instant she was unaccountably swept up in the utter contentment here, as if she had joined a family whose members, though outwardly forbidding, had turned out to be warm and generous.

The Place de la Concorde was blue with the diesel fumes of the tourist buses lined up like tin soldiers while their progeny swarmed outward toward Rue Royale and Sainte-Marie Madeleine.

Lillian went quickly onward, past the Orangerie and into the Tuileries. Men leaning against the trees were ostensibly watching a group of boys playing boules on a large patch of bare earth. In reality, they were eyeing the fashionable Parisian women striding by. Lillian was happy that she was wearing the Dior dress. In Washington, where power was the only citywide obsession, being well dressed in the Parisian sense was a talent that had atrophied.

Maybe it was the cra.s.s-ness of the new world that had done it, or perhaps America's national obsession with disposability.

In any case, one needed only to walk the streets here to see how people should be clothed. Even the elderly were chic, not only in the manner of their dressbut in their hair style and makeup as well. As often as not, one could not tell the difference between a sixty-five-year-old and a forty-year-old. That was another manner in which the city remained timeless. There were no traces of the aging self-consciousness: as in the graying of America. The Parisians would laugh at such an idea.

Lillian sat down on a bench, watched the children at play. They were very involved in the game, and she wondered what significance winning this match would have in their lives.

All of life is a game, Philip had once said to her. It was early on in their relationship, while they were still in Tokyo, and she had not understood what he meant. His refusal to explain it had only made her resent her own ignorance. Now, of course, she understood it perfectly. She remembered how her discovery of the answer had, in some profound way, also been the answer to her own nature.

She had always believed that she was half a person. That falling in love would produce in her mate her missing half. But her marriage to Philip had, rather, the effect of defining her own limitations. Which certainly, before she had met bun, she had no idea of. Being married to Philip had described the boundaries of the world in which she lived. And for that, she supposed, she must always be grateful to him.

But when it came to Philip, there was so much else to take into consideration.