Zero. Part 54

"Yet it must have a purpose, neh?" Michiko said. "An inanimate object is just that. It is neutral, free from prejudice or the taint of choice. Its purpose is what we choose to give it. And only when it unites with a human spirit is its ultimate end made manifest. Only then are its mysteries solved." She was facing him, and Michael had the sudden impression that she was seeing him more clearly than anyone else in the room. "Is that why you have brought something with you today?"

He knew that it was. It was as if her spirit were a beam of light, banishing shadows from the deepest recesses inside him. Michael lifted the sword. He knew what he wanted to do, but he could not. He looked at his father. He imagined what he would say to him: You gave this katana to me many years ago.

I always thought of it as a present. But now I know that I was merely the caretaker. He would hand it back to his father, bowing. I swore to protect it, and I have. It was taken from me, and I have gotten it back.

In truth, Michael had been unsure why he had brought the sword with him, but Michiko's words had reached down into his core, unlocking what was in his heart. Michael looked at her as if for the first time. It was impossible now not to compare her with his mother. He felt the lack of tension and antagonism, and he thought, It is because of Michiko, because of the serenity of her spirit. Did he resent her for possessing what his mother did not? He could not say. He only knew that every gesture, every word Michiko had uttered here had served to further the spirit of wholeness of the family. This was a concept that was alien to Lillian. She had fought Philip on everything, believing that was the only way to a.s.sert herself. Here was an entirely different way.

And Michiko had shown Michael the Way: the path to banish zero, the placewhere the Way of the warrior has no power. Michael knew now that if he did not return the katana to his father, the rift between them would never be healed.

Philip's graduation gift had served its purpose. Now it was time to give his own gift-the katana he no longer needed-to his father. Perhaps Michiko knew all this. Or perhaps she had merely wished to draw Michael into the family circle. He saw that it did not matter. In the end, her sense of the family spirit had prevailed, and he suspected that someday he would be immeasurably grateful to her for that. She had shown him the way to feel forgiveness; it was as if she had given him back his father. But not now. Not yet. The anger, the resentment at what Philip had put them all through was too vivid, too much an open wound, for Michael to absolve his father of all the wrongs he had committed in the name of his beliefs-in the name of revenge.

Audrey, her arms around Tori, had been thinking about what Michiko had said.

We are all just learning, neh? She turned to Philip. "Dad, everything you told us about Mom is true?"

"Unfortunately, yes."

"She's in France?"

"We don't know," Philip said. "She did fly to Paris. She did stay at the Plaza Athenee. Then yesterday, she checked out. Karsk disappeared. Who knows where both of them have gone."

Audrey's heart was beating fast. She held Tori to her. It was like holding the future in her hands. "I think I know where they went."

Out of the tense silence Philip said, "How could you possibly know, Aydee?"

"First," she said, "I want you to promise me something. If I tell you where she is, if you find her, I don't want anything to happen to her." She raised her head and looked at her father. Her eyes were fierce. "I don't care what she's done. I don't care what anybody thinks she's done. I don't want her hurt."

Philip considered this. "All right. You have my promise."

Audrey nodded. She felt Tori's head against her breast. The warmth was a great comfort to her, somehow gave her a sense of the tightness of what she was about to do. "There was a place she used to talk to me about. It was our secret. A hotel she loved, an old place high up in the mountains of the south of France, just outside of Nice."

"Do you remember the name of it?"

Audrey blinked back tears. Tori, sensing that something was amiss, turned around in her arms and touched her cheeks. "Why is she crying, Mommy?" she asked. "Should I be sad?"

"I think you should kiss your Aunt Audrey," Eliane said softly. "That will make her feel much better."

Tori threw her arms around Audrey, kissed her with that combination of earnestness and selflessness present only in a child.

Audrey, weeping openly now, hugged Tori to her. She looked beyond the child to where her father knelt tense and anxious. "It's called the Monastery," she said. There was an odd kind of finality in the air that Audrey was to remember all her life, a stasis of emotion as rich and as palpable as the colors of the women's kimonos.

Outside their window was a pear tree. Lillian could see that it was an old, venerable thing, gnarled, twisted, ugly. But it had grandeur. And now, in spring, its unlovely shape was softened, made beautiful by the blossoms that had burst in profusion like stars on a suddenly clear night. It was as if the tree's soul were being bared during this one special time of year.

She and Karsk had arrived in the Monastery de Bon Coeur in Saint-Paul de Vence in the dead of night, after having driven ten hours straight from their intermediate lodging in an auberge on the banks of the Rhone. Lillian, who had never come this way, found the Rhone Valley a most depressing place. An industrial pall hung in the air, and the sight of the giant cones of the nuclear power plants was somehow unnerving.

The Monastery was set on a wooded hilltop promontory outside of Saint-Paul deVence, a small village in the most southerly district of Alpes-de-Haute Provence, part of what was known as the Loup Valley. It was an area filled with fantastic vistas across spectacular natural gorges. It was not more than an hour outside of Nice, which was how Lillian had originally stumbled upon the place. Originally built in the fifteenth century, the Monastery had not been used as such for many hundreds of years. Thirty years ago, an enterprising chef had moved his kitchen and his family north from the clutter of tourist-laden Nice. His new enterprise proved so successful that he expanded the Monastery de Bon Coeur into a hotel within two years.

The place still contained the original chapel, with its white stone crucifix and its scarred wooden carvings of John the Baptist on one side and the Apostle John on the other, a clear linking of the Old and New Testaments.

Within the walls of the ancient, fortified structures were fantastic fruit and vegetable gardens said to continue the traditions of the original tenants.

Beyond, undulating fields of violets ma.s.sed, guarded by groves of olive trees so old no one in the vicinity could remember a time when they had not been there.

Lillian found this an enchanting spot, a place so old that it was able to scrub away the veneer of newness she often discovered encrusting her soul.

There was no television here, no radio, and if one needed a phone, one sought it out in the proprietor's vast pantry.

This was not to say that the Monastery de Bon Coeur was in any way an austere place. On the contrary, the proprietor had gone out of his way to make it as luxurious as possible. But old-world luxury was counted in the finest quality linens, made exclusively for the hotel, as well as the choicest food in the restaurant. The rooms were large, light, with exceptional views across the foothills of the pre-Alps of Gra.s.se. They were furnished with carefully chosen antiques and fine paintings. The service was extraordinary.

On this morning, the second since their arrival, Lillian was roused by Karsk's stirring in bed beside her.

She turned over. "Where are you going?"

"It's nearly nine," he said, looking over at the table where the BITE intelligence lay, still wrapped in its shroud of secrecy. "I want to begin transcribing the BITE intelligence."

Lillian, hearing the birds chirping, smelling the rich aroma of coffee brewing, embraced him. "Not now," she said, pulling him back down. "Not yet."

"There is work to be done," Karsk said. But he did not stop her from sliding down his body. And then the pleasure began. They were here, safe from everyone. One hour more or less was going to make no difference at all. In fact, while he was extremely excited by the thought of the cornucopia of intelligence Lillian had brought him, he realized that it was the victory that was important to him. He wanted to revel in it as long as he could. Besides, he was not looking forward to transcribing the intelligence. It would be a long, wearying task, and donkey work had never held any interest for him.

There was such a plethora of data that it required total transcribing. There was no hope of keeping even a small fraction of the names, dates, places and plans in one's mind just by scanning it.

The pleasure was building, and Karsk closed his eyes. The image of his wife appeared before him, a stable, sensible woman. But unexciting. Certainly, when compared with Lillian Doss, she faded into obscurity. A life with Lillian Karsk could be interesting, he thought. Then he was awash in pleasure, and he turned off his contemplative mind.

Perhaps he dozed a little afterward. He remembered drifting off on a soft breeze, bird sounds filling the room. It was quiet. It was peaceful. And there was Lillian's moist warmth half covering him.

He must have been sleeping, if ever so lightly, because the door to their room had opened without his being aware of it. Even so, his acute sense of danger, which had served him so well over the years, lifted him toward consciousness.

The movement within the room brought him fully awake.

Lillian sat up in bed and said, "Dear Christ.""h.e.l.lo, Lillian," Philip Doss said. He held the .357 Magnum he had used to shoot Kozo Shiina. His face was sad. He had waited forty years, it seemed, for this moment. He had played and replayed it in his mind, but now that it had come, he wished only that he did not have to face this task. "How does it feel?" he said. "You thought you'd outsmarted everyone. Your father, Jonas, me. All the men. Even Karsk, I imagine, because that's the kind of creature you are. But you've lost. You've lost everything."

Lillian summoned up all the bravado she could. "How did you find us?"

Philip smiled. "Audrey told me about this place. When she said that you had told no one else about it, I knew this was where you'd come."

Karsk had never opened his eyes further than slits. He was fully as stunned as Lillian, but he kept his composure. His right arm, thrown out on the sheets as he dozed, was half-hidden beneath a pillow. It now gripped the revolver that was his constant companion.

"Poor Masashi Taki," Philip was saying. "He was so confused when I died. As he was meant to be. It was a tremendous gamble, but it was all we had at the time."

"We?" Lillian's voice was weak with shock.

"Actually, my 'death' was Eliane's idea. You've heard of Eliane, haven't you?

Michiko's daughter? Yes, I thought so. The three of us planned my 'death.'

Eliane drove the car that 'chased' me on Maui. We procured a corpse. He was beside me in the car as I was being 'chased.' I got out at the last minute, and when the car crashed and burned, I had 'died.'

It was the only way to stop Ude. He was very close to getting me. I made some mistakes." He shrugged. "I guess I'm getting old. We all are, Lillian. Look at you. Naked in bed with a KGB executive." He shook his head. "I hope your deal with them is bound in steel. It's going to have to be in order for you to survive."

Philip kept moving around the room. "When I became suspicious of you, I knew I'd need proof. I knew I needed to do something to make you bolt. But what? I knew I needed to be careful, that you'd spot a setup in a minute. Then your father told me about the investigation into the BITE leaks, and I knew that it would only be a matter of time before you felt they'd come too close to you. I needed you to make the move, but you're a woman. Your ties to your family are very strong. So, one by one, I took them away from you. I arranged my death. I had Audrey taken. I had Jonas enlist Michael."

"You're insane." Lillian had regained some of her composure. "You had your own daughter kidnapped? I don't think so."

"Quite frankly," Philip said, "it no longer matters what you think. But when you take the time to think about it, you'll see the truth of it. Would you have been so eager to bolt if it had meant leaving Audrey and Michael at home?"

Lillian knew he was right. Christ, she thought, where did I go wrong?

"Now you're all alone," Philip said, flicking the muzzle of the gun. "Of course you'll have Karsk, but he doesn't really count."

Karsk used the movement of the .357 to whip his revolver out from under the pillow. He shot quickly once, twice, seeing Philip duck, roll to the side.

Then he heard another sharp report and pain filled his chest. Lillian screamed, scrambling over him, smearing herself with his blood.

"Are you still alive, Karsk?" Philip said, bending over him.

"He's dying," Lillian said. She should be feeling something, she knew, but she did not. She was absolutely numb inside. She was also terrified of Philip.

Philip saw this. "Don't worry," he said. "I promised the children that I would see no harm came to you." He looked at Karsk then. "I did not intend to kill him," he said, "but it's a kind of retribution, I guess. For what he did to us in Tokyo. For murdering Silvers." He saw the expression on Lillian's face. "Oh yes, I worked that one out right away. Karsk thought that by using a katana, he would implicate a j.a.panese as Silvers's murderer. But no j.a.panese would ever have cut and hacked the way Silvers had been attacked. That meant he had been killed by someonewho did not know how to use a katana. Then I remembered that it was Karsk who pushed for the j.a.panese-national-as-murderer explanation. That set me to thinking. Just like Karsk's 'miraculous' escape set me to thinking. Your intervention turned out to be unfortunate for him. It took me a long time to figure it all out, but at last I was fairly sure what was going on. I only needed the means to bring it all out in the open."

Philip reached down, touched his wife for the last time. "Don't worry, Lillian. Perhaps you're not all alone, after all. You'll have Mother Russia."

He laughed. "I don't know what kind of reception your new masters will give you, coming to them empty-handed. But whatever it is, it will be a more fitting fate than death."

He backed away from the bed, where the two lovers lay. He took up the intelligence that Lillian had stolen and the preliminary notes Karsk had been working on. "Goodbye, Lillian," he said. "In retrospect, I guess I wasn't much of a husband to you. But then you were never much of a wife to me." His face was more than a little sad, watching the rage suffuse her face. It was such a familiar look. "We betrayed each other over and over again. I suppose we both deserve everything we got."

Philip was at the open doorway now, but the muzzle of the .357 never wavered from her direction. "The only difference between us is that I picked the right side."

"Perhaps," Lillian said. "For now."

Philip smiled. He used the gun to make the sign of the cross. "They were good at blessing people here," he said. "Once."SPRING PRESENT KILLINGTON, VERMONT.

Tell Michael to think of me when he next has green tea. Tell him to use my porcelain cup. He always treasured it. I'm thinking of the place where you and he almost died. Even in summer, alas, there is not a single heron . . .

Michael and Eliane walking into the old stone-and-wood lodge. Even though it was spring, the memory of that winter's snowstorm so many years ago shone bright and vivid in his mind.

The place was the same, yet to Michael, it seemed so much smaller, so much less imposing than he had remembered it. He looked over the reception desk.

Even the moose head did not seem nearly as large. He saw that it was also mossy with dust.

"Is it the same," she asked, "as you remember it?"

"Yes and no," he said. "It's like an old movie that you ioved when you were a kid. You see it again as an adult. It's the same, of course. But it's not the same at all. It hasn't changed; you have."

He took her around the waist. "Eliane," he said softly, "I don't know how you survived it all. The pressures must have been monstrous."

"I might not have survived," she said, "if not for Audrey. All my fife I had been surrounded by men-or in the case of my mother, someone who was stronger than most men. I was trained to survive and be victorious in a man's world.

And all this time I longed for-and never knew it!-another female personality whom I could talk with. Who would understand what I was expected to do, who would not berate me for feeling less than adequate, who would be sympathetic to whatever my weaknesses were. With the men, I was never allowed weaknesses.

My grandfather, my father, even my husband, before he died, expected me to act a certain way."

She put her head on his shoulder. "When I was about to kill myself, I was three quarters gone. I did not even recognize Joji. But then Audrey came and sat beside me. I felt her . . . femaleness. I felt her sympathy. And slowly she drew me back into myself."

"Thank G.o.d she was there. You know, in many ways you and she are very much alike. Kindred spirits. I can see why you responded immediately to each other."

"Michael," she said softly, "I'm so sorry for what I had to do to you-for lying over and over again."

He stroked her cheek. "We've been through that already."

"I know. But I can't forget it."

"Don't try," he said. "Just try to understand it."

She looked up at him and smiled.

He leaned down and kissed her hard on the lips.

There was a thin, young girl behind the desk. She was sorting mail into guest-room boxes. She smiled at them. "Flier," she said, handing Michael one.

"We're going to close for the summer for renovations. When you come back next year, all this is going to be different. We're going to have an indoor pool, a sauna, a conference room, a real gourmet restaurant. Even a Bogner boutique.

Isn't it exciting?"

Michael didn't think so, but he did not want to dampen her enthusiasm. He wanted this place to remain just the way it was-small, musty, damp, in need of a good cleaning. This was a place of his youth, an important place. It was disquieting that next year at this time, it would exist this way only in his mind.

He leaned his elbows on the stone slab of the counter and looked around. At last, he said, "Do you have a package for me? My name's Michael Doss."

The girl put her stack of fliers down, said, "Let's see." She disappeared into a small cubicle, returning some minutes later with a small parcel. She put it down on the counter, pulled off a yellow tag. "It says here," she said, "that I've got to see some ID. Then you'll have to sign for it."

She peered at Michael's pa.s.sport, took down its number. Then she tore the yellow slip in two, said, "Sign right here."Michael took the package outside. He and Eliane walked across the gravel drive to where Philip and Audrey were waiting beside the rental car. He opened the package. "It's your porcelain cup," Michael said.

Philip nodded. "The one Michiko gave me years ago. It has always been special to me."

Tell Michael to think of me when he next has green tea.

Michael was turning it around in his hands.

"I sent it here for you," Philip said. "It was my one safety net. After I sent the audio tape of Shiina and Karsk to Ma-sashi, I couldn't be sure what would happen."

Tell him to use my porcelain cup.

"And now that Masashi has destroyed the Katei doc.u.ment, we need it."

"But it's just a cup," Audrey said. "There's nothing in it, is there?"

"No," Philip said. "As you can see, it's empty."

"Then how-"