Zero. Part 53

"They're all dead. I have no more enemies." Shiina could hear the crackling of the flames, which had consumed the Katei doc.u.ment, like wind chimes in the air. "Who are you?" he whispered. "Really?"

"I am Zero," the voice said.

"Zero?" Shiina started. "Zero is the absence of Law."

"It is also the creation of Zen G.o.do. A legend he created. It is, in essence, his spirit. It is Zero who has destroyed you as you sought to destroy Zen G.o.do."

"Again Zen G.o.do! Zen G.o.do is dead, I tell you!" Shiina screamed. "I attended his funeral!"

"Then how is it that you are dying?" the shadow asked. As he spoke, the figure moved into the flickering light and Shiina knew who it was. Impossible! he thought. It's impossible!

With that, he leaped forward, thrusting the katana of Prince Yamato Takeru.

The point of the sword ripped the gun from the shadow figure's hand. Now,grinning fiercely, Shiina slashed quickly upward and from left to right, aiming to open up the figure's rib cage.

Behind him, Michael threw the weighted chain. It snaked out, wrapping around Shiina's moving wrist. Michael pulled, and the katana was jerked away from its target.

Shiina whirled even as he stumbled. Then he did a startling thing: He let go of the sacred sword. Michael relaxed the tension on the chain, and Shiina was able to disentangle himself. At the same time, he s.n.a.t.c.hed up Masashi's fallen sword. He attacked.

Michael, cursing himself, ducked wildly, felt the razor-sharp edge of the katana rip open the shirt across his back. He dove for the sacred katana, took it up.

But now Shiina was upon him, striking blow after blow. Their bodies were entangled so closely they might have been one monstrous form. It was all Michael could do to defend himself. Once, twice and yet a third time, he felt Shiina's weapon begin to slip through his defenses.

Michael summoned all his remaining strength, but now Shiina's sword was almost at his throat and he knew that he was on the point of death. There may come a time, Tsuyo had said, when all you have been taught here will be useless, when you will battle as a warrior must, but to no avail.

Then, strength will fail you, and it will be the time of zero: where the Way has no power.

Staring up into the lined, grim face of this implacable enemy, Michael knew that this time had come. He was in zero and, like Tsuyo, his sensei, before him, he was lost. He was at the ultimate precipice where man and warrior merge and, defeated, are helplessly whirled away on the currents of an uncaring fate. It was the time of the ultimate fear. A place where courage was a concept that was yet to be born.

Shiina could sense that the end was near. His nostrils as flared as a predator's when scenting the blood of its victim. He completed two lightning strikes, then, shifting tactics, employing the air-sea change, he went for the killing blow. He arched his body upward, away from Michael's.

At that moment, a shot resounded in the room. Shiina cried out as the bullet fired from the shadow figure's gun smashed into his shoulder.

Michael reacted instantly, using the distraction to slash upward with the sacred katana.

Shiina felt the blade slice through the muscles of his side, and rea.s.serting his formidable powers of concentration, he blocked out the pain, dedicating himself anew to his vengeance. He screamed the samurai's km, the bloodcurdling battle yell, struck at Michael's blade with his own.

But Michael was a changed man. He had dwelled in the land ruled by fear, and he had survived. He had aceemplished what even Tsuyo had not: he had triumphed over zero. And this time, Michael had prepared himself: He had watched the crucial spot, where Shiina gripped his weapon. He antic.i.p.ated the angle of the strike and, sweeping it aside, drove the katana of Prince Yamato Takeru through his enemy's heart.

Blood fountained. Audrey was screaming. Perhaps, Michael thought, she had been screaming for some time. Shiina's mouth was open wide, his body toppling over, as he grudgingly gave up his life. Michael pulled the sword free. Light shone dully off its dark and wet surface.

Kozo Shiina lay crumpled beside the corpse of Masashi Taki. Tatters of what had been Mount Fuji drifted down upon him, a soft shroud not unlike the pink petals of the quince blossoms outside his study window. His eyes were blindly fixed on the sword, which he had coveted so much and which had been the instrument of his death.

For a long time, there was only silence. The rhythmic undercurrent of the machines made it seem as if they were in the bowels of the earth, some monstrous cavern out of a nightmare or a fantasy epic.

Michael and Audrey stared mutely at the figure kneeling beside the corpse of Kozo Shiina. He was no longer a shadow, though to them he could easily havebeen a ghost.

"Is it really you?" Michael said at last.

"Daddy?" Audrey whispered.

"Are you two all right?" For the moment, Philip Doss was too overcome to say anything more. He had not been so near his children for some time. And Michael, defying death over and over again. Had it not been for Michael ... He could still feel the power left in Kozo Shiina's old frame, he could still feel the proximity of his own demise. And then the situation had been reversed, and it had been Michael who had been close to death. In the end, it had taken two generations of the Doss family to end Kozo Shiina's life.

But now, as he looked from his son to his daughter, he began to realize that the truly difficult part lay ahead of him. His new life beckoned: not only to him, but to his children as well. It was such a radically different life that he was terrified that they would not be able to accept it, that they would reject him and what he had done out of hand. Battling Kozo Shiina and the Jiban for forty years was nothing compared to this awesome task. After all, this was his family. He did not know what he would be without them. He could not bear to contemplate such a thing.

"Daddy! Oh Daddy!" Audrey hurled herself into his arms with such force that she almost knocked him over. She wrapped her arms around him. "We thought you were dead. It's so good to hold you. I never thought-oh my G.o.d! Oh my G.o.d!"

She would not let him go.

"It was a ploy," Philip said. "Only a ploy." He kissed her hair, her cheek, her closed eyes. He could feel the hot wetness of her tears and was astonished to find how moved he was. His love for her burst through the years of restraint that his job, his secret life, had created in him. He felt as if his entire insides were melting, as if he were seeing his daughter, a tiny, crying infant, for the first time. He remembered that moment in a flash, like fireworks, that made him relive it all over again.

He rocked back and forth with her in his arms, and now his love was mingled with a sense of sadness and regret for those times lost to him forever when he was not there to hold her, to bathe or feed her, to sit her on his knee, to tell her stories or to ease her fears and hurts. All that was gone, washed away on a tide of his own making. But he had this, now, and his sense of grat.i.tude was overwhelming.

At last, he opened his eyes, saw Michael staring at him.

"How could you do it, Dad?" Michael was surprised at what he said. He thought he had gotten over his feelings. But now that his father was alive and in front of him, he saw that he had not. "How could you have cheated on Mom?"

Audrey unwound herself from her father's embrace. She looked from one to the other. "What do you mean?"

Michael told her about his father and Michiko, about how their love affair had continued for years, even after Michiko's father had forbidden it.

"I don't understand," Audrey said. "You cheated on Mom?"

"We cheated on one another," Philip said. "I would say that we never should have married in the first place, but you two are the best argument against that." Philip steeled himself for what was to come. Truth had its own rewards, but in this case he dreaded what he had to tell them. They could hate him for it or they could disbelieve him. Either response, he knew, would have devastating results, not only for himself but for them as well.

"The fact is, your mother has a lover of her own," Philip said. His heart was breaking as he saw the expressions of pain on his children's faces. "A man she has known since our courting days in Tokyo. A man named Yvgeny Karsk."

Michael started. "Karsk?" he said, bewildered. "Masashi spoke of him. Karsk is a general in the Russian KGB. He's the one who provided Shiina with the nuclear device."

Philip nodded. "That's right." He told them of his first encounter with Karsk in Tokyo in 1947. "I have been tracking him ever since. Your mother is working for him now, I'm afraid. She's left Washington with some extremely damaging intelligence.""I don't believe it," Audrey said. "It can't be true."

"I'm afraid it is, Aydee," Philip said. "I know it must be a terrible shock-"

"How long have you known about Mom?" Michael asked.

"I suspected something of the sort for some time," Philip said. "I knew there was a leak at BITE, but it took me a long time to put all the pieces together.

Then I had to devise a way to expose her."

Audrey's face was white with shock. "This can't be happening," she whispered.

She reached out. "Michael, I must be having a nightmare. Please, please wake me up."

"Aydee," Philip said, "I'm sorry. Your grandfather has taken over BITE pending an investigation of the theft."

"What about Uncle Sammy?" she cried.

"Uncle Sammy had a heart attack," Michael said, putting his arm around his sister. "He's dead."

"Dear G.o.d." Audrey put her head in her hands.

Philip looked at his son. "I don't expect you to forgive me," he said, "I used you, just as Michiko used Eliane. We both did what we felt we had to do. If it was not the right thing, then I'm sorry. We needed you two, but we asked you to pay a terrible price. Your lives were not your own. Michael, I-"

"Time," Michael said, waving him away. "Just give me some time. Right now, I don't know how I feel."

Audrey raised her head, looked at her father through tear-streaked eyes. "I want to see her," she said in a quavery voice. "I want to hear Mom's side of everything."

"If only you could," Philip said. "But the truth is, no one knows where she is. She met Karsk in Paris. We traced her to the Plaza Athenee, but that was easy-she always stays there when she's in Paris. This morning she vanished, Karsk with her. His people seem genuinely puzzled. They don't know where he is, either. It's as if the two of them fell off the face of the earth. It's very serious. What your mother stole is vital to us."

Audrey shrank away from them both. She hugged herself tightly. She began to shiver. Michael's face was drawn and lined. He, too, was in a kind of shock.

He could not imagine his mother being a spy. But then, weeks ago he could not have imagined it of his father. He felt cold and frightened. Life had become like a stormy sea. He felt buffeted, out of control, with no respite in sight.

He could only imagine what was going through Audrey's mind.

"Right now," Philip said, "we need to get you two to a doctor. You've both been through a terrible time."

"Worse than you know," Audrey said softly. "Oh, I wish Uncle Sammy were here to tell us everything was all right."

Perhaps she did not fully understand the impact of her words. It is true that children have the power to hurt their parents more deeply, more completely than anyone else. And now Audrey had done this to Philip. In the s.p.a.ce of a heartbeat, she had made clear to him just how inadequate he had been as a father, how incomplete his relationship with his children had been. It was a bitter truth to hear, but Philip had once been told that even angels make mistakes.

He wanted to tell her again how sorry he was. But he sensed, correctly, that words would be ineffective. Time, Michael had said. Just give me some time.

Perhaps that's what they all needed now.

At that moment, Eliane returned. "We haven't been able to find Shiina," she said. "But Joji is taking charge of the Taki-gumi soldiers. I've called n.o.buo and told him the good news. He's sending technicians over to take charge of the nuclear device, which will be turned over to the U.S. government. We-" She saw Shiina. She looked at their stricken faces. "Are you all right?"

Philip nodded. "I found Michiko and Tori on my way here," he said. "I want you to go get them." He gave her directions. "I'm taking my children out of this charnel house."

The rain had left the city with a scrubbed and shiny look. Everything in Tokyolooked new, bright, ultramodern.

Philip took Michael and Audrey to meet Michiko. She met them at the front door. She was wearing a peach-colored kimono with a flame-red underkimono. On her kimono was embroidered a pair of herons in flight. Michael was astounded at how much of the daughter was in the mother. In both women he saw beauty, grace, elegance and a kind of delicacy that was heightened, made poignant by the steely strength underpinning it. He saw quite clearly that Michiko was the formidable person that Eliane aspired to be. He wondered how difficult it must have been for Eliane being brought up by such a powerful woman. Then he asked himself whether he was being fair to Michiko. He still did not know whether he wanted to like her.

Michael could see Eliane standing just behind her mother. She held Tori against her shoulder, stroking her back in a circular motion.

Michiko smiled, bowing to them. "Welcome," she said. "I am so pleased that you have come."

Perhaps it was the way in which she held her head, but Michael had an immediate sense about her. They took off their shoes, putting them in the wooden cabinet in the vestibule. When Michiko turned, Michael understood. She was blind. He looked at his father, who nodded at him.

The ma.s.sive wooden beams of the ceiling made a comforting mesh over their heads. There were flower arrangements in various places, small but exquisite designs that Philip told them Michiko had created from cuttings from her garden.

She led them down a wide corridor, into a large, twelve-tatami room. Pale green walls were broken by deep brown wooden columns. A tokonoma, a raised platform, was in one corner. A scroll hung on the wall there. Its ancient calligraphy read, "Sunlight paints, but darkness falls. In all, change is apparent even to the blind man."

Or woman, Michael thought as Michiko bade them sit around a low table of a very dark, highly grained wood.

The shoji screens had been pushed back, revealing part of Michiko's garden.

Beyond a polished wooden porch, box-leaf and gumpo azalea ma.s.sed beneath the rustling branches of a lion's-mane dwarf maple tree. There was a large stone beside them that looked to Michael like a ship riding a placid sea. A tile overhang above the porch toned down the sunlight so that all the tones within the room were muted, and therefore richer.

Eliane wore a celadon-green kimono with just a thin line of deep hunter green peeking out from beneath. She turned Tori around so that the guests could see her. She introduced them all. Tori giggled, squirming until Eliane let her go.

She went across the reed mats, put her hands on Philip's knees.

"Grandfather," she said in j.a.panese, "will you pick me up?"

"Tori," Eliane said. "Have you forgotten your manners so quickly?"

Philip grinned, hoisted her over his shoulder so that she squealed in delight.

"This is a dream," Audrey said. "Another time, another world."

"No," Philip said, twirling Tori. "Just another life."

"It's what you wrote me," Audrey said. "The end of whatever your life had been up until now."

"I died," Philip said seriously, "in order to be reborn." He put the child down. "I would like to think that I have left all my mortal sins behind in my other life."

"We will have tea now," Michiko said. She had six porcelain cups, a steaming pot, a reed whisk, in front of her on the wood table. There were green tea leaves in each cup.

Slowly, surely, with a kind of grace that caused the onlooker to become first interested, then engrossed and, finally, enraptured, she poured the boiling water into the first cup. Taking up the whisk, she turned the tea to a pale green froth. She served Philip first, then Michael and Audrey. The fourth cup was for Tori, the fifth for Eliane. The last was for herself.

They waited for her, then all drank at once in a kind of solemn quietude. Even Tori, feeling the emotions in the room, was still and watchful."I want to know what you have to say about this," Audrey blurted out.

Michiko turned her head in her direction, and Michael saw that Audrey, for the first time, realized that the other woman was blind.

"I don't think that it is for me to give an opinion," Michiko said. "First, you must make your peace with your father. When that is resolved, I will be here. I will answer whatever questions you might have. It is your right to know everything."

"But that's not fair," Audrey said. "How can I know how to react if I don't know what you think?"

Michiko smiled. "What I think is not relevant to the situation. You have a great deal to absorb. Your life has been turned inside out. I do not envy you, but I do think that this will test your strength of character. Eliane has told me how you saved her life, so I already know of the power of your spirit."

"I don't know about that." Audrey had never heard the word power used to describe herself.

"But others do," Michiko said. "You were put in dangerous circ.u.mstances. You have already shown your resilience and your strength, if not to yourself then to those around you." She smiled again. "It is said that the spirit reveals its true nature grudgingly."

Now that people were talking again, Tori had become bored with sitting still.

She went over, sat in Audrey's lap. Without thinking, Audrey put her arms around the little girl.

"h.e.l.lo," Tori said, putting her face up to Audrey's. "h.e.l.lo." Then she went on in a string of j.a.panese.

"She is just learning English," Eliane said.

"We are all just learning, neh?" Michiko said.

Michael was watching Michiko with a kind of intense scrutiny. She seemed to sense this, for she smiled at him and said, "You have brought something with you, Michael. Is it a present?"

"Not a present, no." He glanced down. At his side was the sword he had wrested from Kozo Shiina's death grip in the warehouse the night before. It was the katana of Prince Yamato Takeru. Once it had been the soul of the Jiban. Now it had become a symbol both of its broken dreams and of the continuity of the history of j.a.pan.