Zero. Part 51

Switching sounds, electronic beeps and clicks. Then: "Moshi moshi?" j.a.panese for h.e.l.lo.

"I called the office." No wonder it had sounded so familiar. It was Kozo Shiina's voice!

Masashi and Kaeru, staring at one another, listening to the conversation between Shiina and Karsk, two friends of long standing, discussing the destruction of the Taki-gumi, the bargain between Shiina and Karsk that would bring about the destruction of the American economy, the enlistment of Joji Taki to get the Taki brothers to kill each other.

"Shiina is working for the KGB?" Masashi's face was white with rage. "That G.o.dd.a.m.n sonofab.i.t.c.h!" With a snarl, he swept everything off his desk top.

"You mean working with the KGB," Kaeru said as calmly as he could.

"Idiot! No one works with the Soviets," Masashi said with contempt. He was shaking, unable to sit or even to stand still. "They are masters of manipulation. My father used all the resources of the Taki-gumi to fight the Soviets. The thought of them on the soil of j.a.pan made him ill. It makes me ill." His fist hit the desk, making the wood groan. "Now to find out that I am in league with them. It is too much!"

"This is the man who suggested you murder your brother Hiroshi, the man who has urged you to kill your brother Joji," Kaeru said. "Shiina has used you for his own ends." He was watching Masashi for renewed signs of anger. "The Russians get two birds with one stone. They use us to launch a preemptive strike against their enemies the Communist Chinese, and they get what they have been wanting for decades, a toehold in j.a.pan. After the strike, Shiina will need them to stay on j.a.pan's side. With what they know of his own machinations here, they will very effectively be able to blackmail the Jiban.

And since the Jiban will have become the ruling power in this new j.a.pan ..."

"The KGB will be the power behind the Jiban" Masashi said. "They will run j.a.pan." He strode back and forth like an animal desperate for escape. "I cannot allow that. I will kill Shiina and scuttle the entire project first."

"I hope you're prepared to act on that," Kaeru said. "Because that's just what you'll have to do."

"Kozo Shiina is a dead man. He's here in the warehouse now, fussing over n.o.buo's nuclear engineers. I couldn't get him to leave. The meddler wants to be here when I bring Eliane in." Masashi looked down at the result of his rage, strewn across the office floor. His gaze fell upon the ca.s.sette recorder and its contents. He bent down, picked it up. "What I'd like to know," he said, calmer than he'd been for some time, "is who sent me this tape?" He looked at Kaeru. "I've got a guardian spirit looking out for me, neh?"

There was a single road from the temple, narrow and twisting, cut into a mountainside. Michael drove hard and fast, against the wall of rain and the diminishing glow of the Yaku-za's taillights. It was a nightmarish drive, made without benefit of headlights, which would surely reveal his tail to the Yakuza.

Here and there, partial washouts had strewn rubble and muddy earth across the road. Encountering the first of these, Michael's Nissan fishtailed dangerously. A ma.s.sive tree trunk reared into his vision range as the Nissan continued its skid. He pumped the brakes desperately, found some traction and geared down.

The Yakuza headed southwest when they came dowrt off the mountain road. They went across the bridge spanning the Sumida on Route 122. The Yakuza's car was going very fast. But he had not tried any evasive maneuvers, and Michael was certain that he had not been spotted.

Then the Yakuza turned off 122 at Takinogawa, and Michael almost lost him at a traffic-clogged intersection. Still heading southwest. Into Toshima-ku, into neon-spangled Shinjuku, and southeast to Minato-ku. Then they were into side streets and Michael had to be extremely careful because at this time of thenight, areas away from the effervescent new-wave cityscapes were relatively dark and deserted. They slid past Shiba Onshi Park and, abruptly, he could smell the river. They were out onto Takashiba Pier.

The Yakuza had turned a corner and slid to a stop in front of a line of warehouses. Michael cut his lights and let the Nissan drift around the corner.

He watched the Yakuza, the box with what should have been the Katei doc.u.ment under his arm, get out of the car. Eliane got out on her own. The Yakuza did not hold a gun on her. Together they went across the street to where a man was waiting for them. He came into the light to greet them. It was Masashi Taki.

Michael sat in the Nissan thinking, Was everything she told me a lie? She's working for Masashi. His hands felt cold; his mind was numb. Was the battle at the Shinto shrine a performance for my benefit? He remembered her saying, You seem to want some easy answer. One sentence that will make everything all right and understandable. But real life isn't so cut-and-dried. It's ten thousand subtle shades of gray, one overlapping the other.

He took several deep breaths, calming himself. Then he slid out of the car.

Joji said, "It's useless. This place is a labyrinth, a warren of corridors and rooms. We'll never find Michiko in time."

"In time for what?" Audrey was grateful for any conversation. She had tried to start one several times, but Joji had put his hand over her mouth each time, even though they were catching sight of fewer and fewer Yakuza. They all seemed to be heading downward, to a level below the one she and Joji were on.

Conversation, Audrey felt, was her only weapon now against confusion. The more she could get Joji to talk, she figured, the more she would get to know about him. In truth, he seemed far removed from a villainous type. For one thing, he hadn't wanted to keep her under lock and key as Masashi had. For another, she had caught sight of a gun he had tucked into his trousers. He hadn't tried to use it to threaten her. Audrey found herself wondering what he would do if she were to get it away from him. Perhaps that was the true test she was looking for.

"Masashi's people are arming some kind of bomb or missile," Joji said. Out there"-he pointed to a spot beyond the inner wall of the hallway-"is a catwalk overlooking a cavernous s.p.a.ce. Not long ago, I saw men in radiation suits working on the nose cone."

"Radiation suits?" Audrey said. "As in nuclear radiation?"

Joji nodded. "G.o.d alone knows what my brother is up to. But it's far more deadly than I had thought. Masashi's power comes from a man named Kozo Shiina-a man your father knew, I believe. Shiina's group, the Jiban, has powerful connections both inside j.a.pan and throughout the world. The Jiban wants more s.p.a.ce for the j.a.panese, and that means moving into Manchuria and China, just what was planned in the years before the war in the Pacific. It seems clear now that Shiina has provided the nuclear device and my brother has provided the manpower."

"But what do they want to do with the bomb?" Audrey asked.

Joji pressed his fingers against his eyes. "I don't know," he said. "But I have an idea that is straight out of a nightmare." He looked at Audrey. "They are going to drop the bomb on China."

"That's ridiculous," Audrey said. "They'd never get away with it, would they?

I mean there's radar, an international-alert network, so that something like that can't happen without other nations' advance knowledge."

"That's true enough," Joji conceded. "Of course they would be stopped. Yet they must have figured out a way. It's the only answer that makes sense."

Audrey saw the gun sticking out from Joji's trousers. The handle was well within reach. Should she make a grab for it? She decided against it, wanting to find out without coercion the truth or falseness of Joji's story. "Come on," she said, pulling at him. "Let's find your Michiko. Maybe she will be able to tell us."

The rattle of the rain was like a million heartbeats. Michael, on the second floor of the warehouse in Takashiba, watched the silence.

There was a lacquer-and-rice-paper screen in gold, black and blue depicting aserene, mist-enshrouded Mount Fuji in moonlight. The surrounding landscape was aglow, as if the great mountain, acting as a mirror, reflected that light, bathing everything in its immediate vicinity. The screen cut the room in two: pale shadow, dim light. In back of it was an old step-cupboard, common in many j.a.panese farmhouses, and a window overlooking the harbor. In front of the screen was the main part of the room, which contained a large hibachi, a j.a.panese oven, used to cook and serve food. Quite near was a stone-and-kyki-wood table on which was set a bronze pot from whose spout steam was wafting. On the table were a pair of celadone-green cups, waiting to be filled. Buckwheat-hull pillows lay on the tatami.

Michael had come up one flight of stairs from the entryway. Stick Haruma had given him a length of chain, weighted at either end.

Michael crouched, ready. He listened to the silence piling up on his eardrums.

The sense of danger was very strong.

He saw the brush of the shadow as it pa.s.sed behind the moon over Fujiyama, and he sprinted to his right. Behind him, the rice-paper screen was sliced open by the force of the longsword's thrust. Michael turned and, holding the weighted chain in front of him, rushed through the gap in the screen.

Shadow on the wall, oblique and elongated, waiting for him to step through from one life to another, from one reality to another.

"Eliane!" He tightened his grip on the chain.

"I suppose," she said, raising her longsword in an oblique angle, "that this was inevitable." Her voice and her face were so sad.

"You told me that you had been sent to protect me," Michael said. "But all along you were working for Masashi. You lied and lied to me. And then you lied some more. I don't know how I could have believed you for a moment."

"If only I could have told you. I had no other choice," she said, circling him. "Masashi is holding my daughter hostage. So you see that no matter how I feel about you, no matter what I have sworn to do no longer matters. There is nothing I wouldn't do in order to save my daughter's life."

"Including killing me."

"Masashi has the Katei doc.u.ment." She was slowly closing the s.p.a.ce between them. "As soon as he delivers it to Kozo Shiina, it will be over. I will have my baby back."

"Do you really believe that?" Michael was desperate. He did not believe that he could defeat Eliane. "Masashi knows how dangerous you are. Do you think he will allow you to live?" His only chance was to avoid the conflict. To convince her . . .

"I have to believe it," Eliane said. "It's the only thing that keeps me going.

I cannot allow him to kill my daughter."

"Together we have a chance," Michael said. "All we have to do is go after Masashi together."

"But that is impossible," Masashi said from just behind Michael's left ear.

And Michael, already feeling the bright rush of pain in bis head, knew that Eliane had been the decoy all along. Holding his attention while Masashi homed in for the kill.

"Get out of here," Masashi said to Eliane. "The men are ma.s.sing downstairs. We are almost ready to begin. Make yourself useful there." He was watching Michael lying insensate on the floor. "Much of what he said rings true. You're much too dangerous. I should have realized that long before this. My father created you out of myth, and myth is what you became in the end. Whether because of his storytelling expertise or your physical prowess, you have taken on the mantle of the supernatural."

He stole a glance at her, saw that she had not relaxed her attack pose. He flicked his left wrist, and the blade of his katana reared upward into the light. "Would you take me on now? Would you see which one of us can spill more blood, which one of us can outlast the other? This would be a battle of attrition. I would see to it. That is a battle you can never win. I have the stamina. I have the superior strength. Besides, there is Tori to consider.

Little Tori. I saw her today. She was crying for her mommy.""b.a.s.t.a.r.d." Eliane gritted her teeth in anger. "How I would like to raise my sword against you."

Masashi flicked the blade point again. "Then come on."

Despising herself, not wanting to look at Michael, at what she had done to him, she turned and went out of the room. But Masashi's laughter foUowed her down the corridor.

She went blindly down a flight of stairs, then another. She collapsed in a corner, sick at heart. No matter what she did, it was wrong, evil. Where was the warrior's shining', n.o.ble path? That was for fairy tales, she saw now. The real world would not tolerate such benevolence. It was a cruel and unforgiving place.

How could she be part of the hope and the dream? she wondered. If she was truly the future, then she wanted no part of it.

She took her sword and turned it hilt outward. She pressed the blade in until the tip touched her lower belly. She was being ripped apart by her guilt and her devotion to giri. If she stayed here, silent and acquiescing, the man she loved would be destroyed, and perhaps her country as well. If she screwed up her courage to return to that vile room where Masashi crouched over Michael, if she killed Masashi, she knew that at the same moment she would be murdering her own daughter. Death called to her. It was her only salvation now. I am release, it said. I am relief from all pain, all suffering, all responsibility. In my arms, duty is but a dream. I am calm, peace, eternal sleep. Freedom beckoned from this last, dark quarter, and she found herself ready to follow its siren call.

So Eliane prepared herself to die.

If you should fall into unfriendly hands, there will be a finite amount you can tell them. Uncle Sammy instructed him from a podium. Information is deadly, son. Uncle Sammy looked like an English sheepdog. That is, in our business. Just like Nana, guardian of the Darling children in Peter Pan.

What business was that? Michael, tucked in bed, safe and sound, wanted to know.

Uncle Sammy lifted his paws above the top of the podium. They were not the paws of an English sheepdog. They were the black, taloned paws of a Doberman pinscher. With a growl, the animal leaped at Michael. . .

Who raised his head, groaned and opened his eyes. Looked directly into Masashi's eyes.

In a room where Mount Fuji, rent through its center, still shone. Michael blinked sweat and blood from his eyes. After a moment, he could see.

Masashi taking the box and placing it on the table. He leaned over it so far that his face was close to Michael's. Michael tried to move, found that be could not. "Once," Masashi said, "there were three brothers. One went to war for his oyabun and was killed. The second went to war for his oyabun, and he too was slain." Masashi's hate had turned his eyes colorless. "Now it was the third brother's turn to go to war for his oyabun. This he did, as willingly as his two brothers before him. But before he did, he swore an oath to avenge the deaths of those who had gone before him."

His were the eyes of the wolf, the predator. "Your job," Masashi said, "was to lead us to this." His fingers were wrapped around the box. "And now that you have, you are going to die."

Michael, looking into Masashi's opaque gaze, had no doubt on that score. He had encountered a fair number of martial-arts sensei; he knew the difference between a boast and a threat.

Masashi,opened the latch, raised the lid of the box. For a seemingly endless time, nothing registered on his face. Then he reached in, pulled out the scroll. "The Katei doc.u.ment." He recognized the seal on the outside. He looked at Michael, his eyes ablaze. "Now I have it all. At last I have the means by which to turn Kozo Shiina to my will. Shiina enlisted the aid of the Soviet KGB. He meant to sell me out to a Russian named Yvgeny Karsk as soon as he had used the Taki-gumi's manpower. But I have outmaneuvered him. I have the Kateidoc.u.ment. Without it, Shiina's power within the Jiban will erode. In order to keep that power, he needs me."

"Where is my sister?" Michael said. "Where is Audrey?"

Masashi put the scroll aside. "It seems that I no longer need you." He dragged Michael to the hibachi. He opened up the copper top, exposing the coal-driven fire within. The light, flickering across his face, lent him a spectral cast.

"Time to die."

It was Audrey who saw Eliane's crumpled figure first. She stopped them. "Is that her?" she asked Joji. "Is that Mi-chiko?"

Joji started, peering into the gloom of the corridor. "My G.o.d," he said, "that's her daughter, Eliane! What is she doing here?" Then he caught sight of the longsword, and he called to her as he ran.

Eliane, her mind lost in the iron resolve required to settle the spirit, to steel the will for the advent of death, was aware only of a man running toward her. Shadows raced along the wall, nearing her.

"Stay away!" she cried. She was terrified that it was Masashi come to stay her hand, to bind her yet again to the torment he defined as life. "I am already dead!"

Audrey caught up with Joji and, from some intuitive sixth sense, pushed him back. She saw Eliane's anguished face, and she knew what she must do.

"Get back!" she said. "Joji, do as I say. If you want to save her, get back around the corner, where she can't see you."

When Audrey was certain that Joji would stay where she had directed him, she turned to Eliane. Her heart hammered painfully against her chest. She knew that she was staring death in the face. Eliane's features were those of a skull, drawn and hard and shining with an odd, lambent light.

Audrey was appalled. She remembered Michael talking to her about the storm in the mountains of Yoshino so long ago. She remembered his voice as he told of seeing Seyoko disappearing into the wind and the rain, whirling down the abyss. Michael had described her face, but Audrey had not understood. Now she did. Dear G.o.d, she thought, how has he been able to sleep at night?

"Eliane."

"Who are you?" Eliane said. "Get away from me!"

Audrey, desperately trying to remember everything Michael had ever told her about j.a.pan, knelt on the floor of the corridor. She was perhaps two arm's lengths from the other woman.

"I am Michael Doss's sister," she said slowly and carefully. "Do you know him?"

There was a flicker behind Eliane's eyes. She peered at Audrey for the first time and, recognizing her, said, "Good G.o.d, you're still alive. Well, that's something. I thought I had destroyed you, too." Then, in an agonized voice: "Yes, I know him. I destroyed him."

Audrey bit her lip to stop herself from screaming. She fought down panic.

"What do you mean?" she said as calmly as she could.

"My mother ordered me to find Michael and stay close to him, to help him. But then Masashi kidnapped my daughter. He made my father and mother do what he wanted. He made me do what he wanted. I brought him the Jiban's sword; I brought him Michael and the Katei doc.u.ment. Now he has them all. He has all the power. And he will kill Michael. I know he will."

Much of this, coming out in a rush, was difficult for Audrey to understand.

But enough of it jibed with Joji's story to convince her once and for all that he was telling the truth.

"Do you mean that Michael isn't dead yet?"

"Perhaps," Eliane said. "I don't know." She gave Audrey a despairing look.

"Leave me alone to die in peace."

"Then there's still a chance," Audrey said, ignoring her. "Eliane, listen to me. Joji is with me. He found out Masashi was keeping your daughter here at the warehouse. He came here with Michiko to save her. Your mother and Tori are together. Here."

Eliane lifted her head. Those terrible dead eyes seemed to burst with an innerfire, her breast began to rise and fall and color returned to her ashen cheeks. "Can this be true?"

Audrey called for Joji. He came at once, and the effect he had on Eliane was astounding. She dropped her sword, rose to hug him to her, "Oh Joji!" she cried. "Tori is safe?"

He looked over her shoulder at Audrey, who nodded emphatically. "Yes," he said, holding her. "She and your mother are quite safe now."

Then Eliane tore herself from his warmth. She whirled, and her face was stricken. "Dear G.o.d," she whispered. "Michael! What have I done?"

This battle was no different than if the two of them had katana. Find the locus of the battle, Tsuyo had taught him. Direct yourself there.

Michael was full of pain, but he must not concern himself with it. If he allowed his mind to dawdle for just an instant over the pain, he would be defeated.

Which was, of course, Masashi's purpose. This was the supreme battle of endurance, Where defeat was not measured in the cessation of a heartbeat but in the breaking of a will.