Zero. Part 47

"I think I made a mistake," Eliane said, starting to rise. "If you were really Michael's friend, you would never ask that. I want only what is best for him.

I'm here to protect him, to help him in any way I can. Maybe he doesn't know you as well as he thinks he does."

"Relax, Eliane," Michael said, appearing from out of the throng of teenagers in Pancake Heaven. He was wearing jeans and a leather jacket. With his stubble of beard, he fit right in here. "Stick and I know one another as well as two human beings can. What he did here, I asked him to do."

"What?"

"That's right," Michael said, smiling. "Now that I know whose side you're really on, it's time you and I finally got to know each other."

Tori was dozing in Michiko's arms. There was a great deal of excitement surrounding her, and she was aware of it. But she was also very tired. Fearwas an exhausting emotion, and Tori had been frightened for days now. Only the daily calls from her granny had kept her from being hysterical.

Now, riding her grandmother's hip, feeling the slow beat of her heart, she felt warm and protected. It was time to sleep, and to dream. Tori loved to dream: the colors of light filtering through high trees, the sounds of birds flitting from branch to branch, the smells of spring.

Tori was aware of motion as Michiko hurried down-dimly lit corridors, Joji at her side. She was aware, too, of sounds. Deep-breathing sounds, like those from a very large animal, perhaps as large as a dinosaur, though Tori was old enough to know that dinosaurs were no longer alive. Then what was making those deep, even sounds?

She opened her eyes, turned her head in order to see if what she had been told was wrong, if indeed there was a dinosaur still alive down here. She saw the shadow moving toward her. It was too small to be a dinosaur, but she recognized it anyway and she said, "Granny ..."

Michiko and Joji were carefully retracing their steps, alert for any sounds of oncoming men. But the heavy machine thrumming, which Tori, in her childlike way, had attributed to breathing, became more insistent.

"Wait, Joji," Michiko whispered. "Did we just pa.s.s a doorway on our left?"

Joji went back. "Yes."

"I want you to take a look in there," Michiko said. "I want to know what Masashi is up to in here."

"Michiko-chan," Joji said nervously, "I do not think this is wise. We have Tori. Let us be off as quickly as we can. The longer we remain here, the greater the danger grows."

"I agree," Michiko said. "But n.o.buo has been terrified for weeks. He thinks that he hides his fear from me, but I can sense it, in the way he walks in short, choppy strides; I can hear it in the manner of his speech around the house. What does Masashi want from n.o.buo, I have asked myself over and over. I have no answer. But the answer is surely here, Joji-chan. We will never have another chance to find out what is happening here. We must take the risk, no matter how great we perceive it to be." She pushed him. "Now go. And hurry."

Joji ducked through the darkened doorway. Immediately, he felt a rush of cool air. The wind-tunnel effect made it dear that he was in a small room. He groped his way toward the far side, felt along the wall for a door handle.

When he found it, he pulled.

He stepped through. Now he felt the full rush of wind, and looked down. He had emerged onto a section of the catwalk that overhung the vast inner s.p.a.ce of the warehouse's bas.e.m.e.nt. He was quite near the spot where Masashi and Kozo Shiina had stood watching the unloading of the Soviet nuclear device some time before.

Joji could see men in radiation suits walking swiftly below him. He peered at them. There were markings on their suits. With a start, he recognized the Yamamoto Heavy Industries crest.

The device was visible. The Yamamoto technicians had it out of its lead-lined container and were beginning to lower it gingerly into the nose pocket of what looked to Joji like some kind of missile or bomb casing.

Joji's heart nearly stopped at the sight. He went quickly back through the doorway. His mind was filled with the manner in which he was going to tell Michiko what he had seen. He was halfway across the small, darkened room when he heard voices. They were coming from the corridor where he had left Michiko and Tori, and a vertiginous feeling of terror gripped him.

He moved quickly, clinging like a lizard to a soot-encrusted wall. He moved his head slightly. He saw Michiko. She was clutching Tori tightly to her breast. Beside her was Masashi. He had her katana.

Joji strained to hear what was taking place.

"You have already caused me such difficulty," Masashi said. "Your presence here is difficult to understand. I wonder how you found out where I was keeping your granddaughter." Joji could see him shrug. "On the other hand, that does not matter. What is important is that I have seriouslyunderestimated you. I will have to make certain that never happens again. I am operating under a deadline. Interference at this last, critical stage, even from my stepsister, cannot be tolerated. It must be dealt with in the only manner that will have any meaning now."

The sound of the rain was a roar as it bounced off the wood-and-thatch roof of the temple. They were in the northern suburbs, and one could see trees again.

Michael parked near the shrine complex. He looked out at the buildings shrouded in mist and rain and felt as if he had come home. So close to Tsuyo, he felt strength flooding back into him despite his painful cuts and bruises.

He kept the engine running, otherwise in this weather the windows would fog.

"Eliane," he said, "you're going to have to tell me everything. Why didn't you want me to know your real name?"

"Do you want the truth?" It was Michael, she suddenly realized. Or, more accurately, her feelings about him that had changed everything. When she was with him, she forgot everything: circ.u.mstance, obligation, family. Giri. She closed her eyes for a moment and thought, Dear G.o.d, I am going mad. I am trapped between my fear for my daughter's life and my love for this man. I don't know what to do. Save me. Please save me.

"I always want the truth," he said. "That's all I've ever wanted from you. But it's been the one thing you've seemed incapable of giving me."

"That's because you seem to want some easy answer," she said, fighting the swirl of emotions that threatened to engulf her. "Something a movie heroine would say to a movie hero, one sentence that will make everything all right and understandable. But real life isn't so cut-ana-dried. It's ten thousand subtle shades of gray, one overlapping the other."

She stared out the window. Michael sensed that she was distraught, that whatever she was going to say next had been on her mind for some time. He wanted to make this moment less difficult for her, but he did not know how.

At last she said, "I didn't tell you my real last name because I could not be sure I could trust you."

Michael stared at her. He wanted to grab her and shake her and say, Trust me?

But it was me who couldn't trust you.

"I was told that I should trust you, that I had to trust you. But I could not know-nor could anybody else, for that matter-who you were loyal to. Was it to Jonas Sammartin? Your father? Someone we did not even know?"

And then Michael saw the maze of uncertainty within which she must have been operating. He saw what he had not been able to even moments before: that he and Eliane were like two blind mice sniffing the air in enemy territory. My G.o.d, he thought, how did we come this far without tearing each other apart?

"You said that you were told certain things about me," he said. "You also seem-seemed-to know Uncle Sammy. You'd better explain that."

Eliane sighed. "This is where the layers of gray begin to overlap." She took his hands in hers. "No son wants to hear this, Michael. But now you've asked for the truth, and I see that I have gone as far as I can in withholding that truth."

Her eyes were large. He stared into them, seeming to get lost within their depths. Later, when he replayed this moment in his memory, he would recall the feeling her eyes imparted to him, and the hurt, anguish and disruption would be a.s.suaged somewhat.

"The truth is that your father and my mother were lovers." Michael did not know what he was expecting, but it certainly wasn't this. "What do you mean?"

He said it mechanically, without thinking, filling up a silence too dreadful to allow.

"They met in 1946," Eliane said. "They worked together when your father was in the CIG. Until there came a time when her adopted father, Wataro Taki, forbade her from seeing Philip Doss again."

"And that was the end of it," Michael said, somewhat relieved. "Well, that was a long time ago."

Eliane held his hands tighter, as if he were a child who she knew would be inneed of comforting when the pain hit. "No," she said softly. "It wasn't the end for them." It was raining harder now. The windshield wipers slewed the water back and forth. The drumming against the car's top was very loud. "My mother disobeyed Wataro Taki. She had never done such a thing-had never even contemplated doing so- before. But now she felt that she must. She could not let Philip go."

Michael was staring blankly out at the downpour. "You mean all this time, up until his death, your mother and he were . . ."

"Michael," she said, "do you remember I told you about the prayer that was taught to me when I was little? It went, 'Yes is a wish. No is a dream. Having no other means of crossing this life, I must use yes and no. Allow me to keep hidden the wish and the dream so that someday I may be strong enough to do without them both.' "

"I remember."

"It was your father who taught me that prayer." He turned to her. "Yes, your father. But it wasn't until I was much older that I understood the true nature of what he meant. You see, Michael, we are the wish and the dream. Your father sent you to become a warrior. My mother did the same. Was it coincidence? For many years I thought so. Until my mother took me to meet my adopted grandfather.

"Surely I had seen him as an infant, even as a young child but I had no memory of him. Now that I had been through the most arduous martial arts training, he wanted to see me It seems to me now that what he told me is as important for you now as it was for me then. He said that for many years my mother, Michiko, was his right arm. Philip Doss was his left arm. But times changed, and one must make way for the future. 'You are the future, Eliane,' he told me. : "Then he told me why I was given a Caucasian name instead of a j.a.panese one.

This was my eighteenth birthday, and it was my present from him. He said that he had requested that I be named Eliane. Because I was the future. For the Takigumi and j.a.pan. I was to be a living symbol of the internationalization j.a.pan must have in order, not only to prosper in the coming century, but merely to survive. It is difficult for j.a.panese to move away from such ingrained notions. Therefore, I was to be the reminder."

Eliane took Michael's hands, placed them against her breast. "Now I pa.s.s my grandfather's words on to you. Your father should have been the one to do it.

But he is not here. I am a poor subst.i.tute, but I will have to do. We are the future, Michael. We were trained to answer the call to battle that our families knew was imminent."

"And here we are," Michael said, "immersed in the battle that killed my father, and I don't even know whether I want to be a part of it."

Eliane smiled. "I said the same thing when Wataro Taki recruited me."

"But I thought you said that you weren't Yakuza."

"I'm not," she said. "I never was. Just as my mother never really was. But that didn't stop your father from doing the same thing."

"What did Wataro want you to do?" Michael asked.

"He wanted me to become his new right arm," she said. "He wanted me to keep the peace among the Yakuza families without arousing the attention of the police. But by keeping the peace I knew he meant preserve the Taki-gumi's place of preeminence among the clans.

"I thought it was an impossible task, especially for a female, but Wataro was far more clever than I was. He had already devised his strategy. Together, we created a myth: He provided the history, and I gave that history substance.

"I became Zero."

Lillian took Yvgeny Karsk shopping. This was a great plea-sure for her. These days, with the constant terror she felt for the safety of her children, such pleasures were to be cherished.

Karsk was lean and long; he had the body of a swimmer, certainly of anathlete. Time had had a difficult go of making inroads in his form. What he lacked was a sense of style. That wasn't difficult to understand. Russia might be the mother of many things, Lillian thought, but style wasn't one of them.

They blitzed the Rive Broke. She took him to Givenchy for suits, to Pierre Balmain for jackets and slacks, Charvet for dress shirts, Daniel Hechter for sports clothes (of which, shockingly, he had none). For shoes there was Robert Cler-gerie, ("Don't be boring, darling," Lillian told him. "Everyone wears Bally, why should you?"), Missoni for ties, socks, pocket squares and other accessories made of their remarkably patterned fabrics.

They were finished by dinnertime, but Karsk was flagging long before that. "I never knew what hard work was before this," he said, only half jokingly.

"What are you talking about?" Lillian said. "This is a short day. We didn't meet until lunchtime."

"If we had actually gone to lunch," he said, "instead of embarking on this insane shopping spree, I should feel a whole lot better."

"Don't be an idiot," she said. "Now you're the best-dressed spy in all of Europe."

He winced. "I wish you wouldn't do that." She burst out laughing. "You ought to see yourself. Really." He turned to look at himself in a store window. "No.

No," she said. "That expression is gone now."

"I'm sure I won't know where to wear half of what you made me buy."

"I didn't make you buy anything," Lillian said. "You did it all yourself. And quite happily, I might say."

Karsk sighed deeply. He knew she was right about that. He did have some of the most alarming capitalist tendencies. He remembered what his wife said about Europe being his mistress. He knew what she meant by that: He loved being in Europe more than he did being in Russia. But that did not mean that he did not love his country.

"Can we have some dinner now?" he said. "Or at least a drink? That's what I had in mind when I called you this morning."

Whatever you like. Pick the spot."

They took the mttro, since the dinner hour coincided with a driver shift change and taxis were almost impossible to get.

Karsk had chosen the best Moroccan restaurant in town for the location. It was out of the way, down a long, dimly lit side street populated only by cl.u.s.ters of students smoking and popping gum. Karsk had had many clandestine meetings at the place and he was comfortable there. He didn't care much for the food; it always gave him indigestion.

The owner was a heavy-set man with a greasy face but an otherwise neat appearance. His one delight in life seemed to be welcoming returning patrons.

Therefore, he was solicitous of Karsk's needs and always offered him a table in the darkest corner of the restaurant. As usual, Karsk sat facing the door.

He ordered drinks for them both.

"Now," Lillian said, putting her hand lightly over his, "I am content to be with you. In those new clothes you look like a true European. Tu es tres chic, mon coeur."

"Merci, madame."

The drinks came, and they both sipped slowly, savoring the quietude.

"I had my people develop what you delivered to me," Karsk said.

"And?" Lillian kept her face neutral. "Is it what you wanted?"

"Well, yes and no."

"Really?" She blinked. "How so?"

"What was developed is right on target. BITE's core data > on its covert operations inside the Soviet Union. It is poten- j tially the most damaging information we have ever been able to obtain about America's clandestine Russian networks. As far as it goes, that is. There's less than one tenth of what we were expecting. What you've given us is a tantalizing hint of an enormously exciting breakthrough."

"I know."

Karsk took a long moment to clear his head. He was aware of his pulse poundingand the beginning of a headache behind his right eye, which was a sure sign of excess tension. Very carefully, he said, "What do you mean by that?"

Lillian smiled. "It's simple, really. I gave you exactly what I meant to give you." She raised her eyebrows. "You didn't think I'd just hand over whatever you wanted, did you? There was a great deal of risk involved for me, as well as a major decision to drastically change my life. I can't go back to America.

I knew that the moment you asked me to obtain this intelligence for you. So did you. You must have expected a quid pro quo."

Karsk was sitting ramrod straight. His drink and the mood of quiet relaxation were forgotten. "I expected-" His voice was so clotted with suppressed anger that he abruptly broke off, began again. "I thought you were doing this out of a sense of duty."

"Duty?" Lillian almost laughed in his face.

"Yes," he said. "Duty." His manner was becoming stiffer by the moment. "I have a sense of what is ideologically right. I was certain that you did as well. We are fighting a war, not of weapons or battalions, but of thought, of freedom for the common worker from the domination of the elite."

"Stop it," Lillian said so sharply that he was taken aback. "Next you'll be trotting out the ghosts of Marx and Engels. You're mistaken if you thought I was working for you for ideological reasons."

Karsk saw the waiter approaching out of the corner of his eye, impatiently waved him away. "What other reason could you have?"

"My own," Lillian said. "By working clandestinely for you all these years, I had the satisfaction of knowing that I was undermining what those I hated the most-my father, Jonas and Philip-were doing. Why else do you imagine that I never asked Philip for a divorce? Being married to him was part of my cover for you. It was perfect, in fact. Or, I should say, almost perfect. Because there is a price to pay for every joy in this world. And mine was watching my husband being unfaithful to me for decades. He never stopped seeing that j.a.panese b.i.t.c.h Michiko Yamamoto."

"If you hated him," Karsk said with an edge to his voice, "his dalliances shouldn't have mattered to you."