The Miko - 02 (44 page)

And so engrossed was he in his reading that he did not notice until it was very close a small bobbing light flitting like a will-o’-the-wisp through the trunks of the cedars. Immediately, he doused the pencil flash, but it was already too late. The light had stopped its rhythmic movement and now shone still and fierce at a spot on the path directly below where he sat.

Cursing the excitement that had narrowed his normally keen senses, he refolded the papers, stuffing them back into his jacket. He hid the flash and, climbing down off the rock, moved slowly off the slope. Far better, he felt, to emerge himself from the forest than to have the source of the light come up to find him. Especially if it was one of the
sensei
from the
dōjō.
Tengu girded himself for such an eventuality, bringing his
ki
up to a sufficient level so that he could call upon its power at a split second’s notice.

But as he emerged onto the serpentine pathway he saw that it was no
sensei
who had inadvertently seen his light but merely a young girl.

She was dressed in a gray and green kimono, rope
geta
on her otherwise bare feet. She carried a small kerosene lantern in one hand, a
janomegasa,
a brightly colored rice-paper parasol, in the other.

Moisture beaded his face and he became aware of the soft pattering of the rain. He had not felt it at all within the sheltering arbor of the forest. He saw the rain in beads, sliding down the oiled rice-paper
janomegasa
, dripping dolefully into the earth.

“Pardon me, madam,” he said, bowing mainly to hide the flood of relief in his eyes. “I hope my light did not frighten you. I was out collecting wild mushrooms when I—eh—?”

She had taken a quick step toward him, raising the level of the lantern so that its compact glow spread upward across her face.

With a quick painful lurch of his heart he recognized her. It was Suijin, the female student from the
dōjō.
What was she doing here? he wondered even as his small blade snickered out into his right palm.

But the lantern was already falling, Suijih’s now free hand gripping the bottom of the
janomegasa’
s lacquered bamboo haft, pulling it down and away from the spread top in a blurry glitter.

His eyes only had time enough to register the transformation from harmless bamboo to thousand-layered steel edge before the foot-long blade pierced his chest and, slashing downward, rent his heart in two.

Suijin watched only his face as component by component it fell apart and his hot, pumping blood spilled. His eyes showed bewilderment, rage, shame; then they crossed and all human emotion was wiped from the slate of his face. Like the small and defenseless warrior she had as a child once made out of mud, twigs, and lichen, he flopped this way and that, without coordination, without the divine spark. Now, as then, she placed the flat of her hand across the tautness of her lower belly, wondering what magic lay within her womb, the anvil of creation.

Now there was only a twisted mass at her feet, a waxy parody of what had once been alive. She stuck the point of the blade into the wet earth to free her hands as well as to clean the gleaming surface, black with blood.

Raindrops pattered all about her as she dropped down. Her nostrils dilated as she caught the freshening scent of the wood, the spoor of animal life. The rain fell heavier, turning the traitor’s cheeks to putty.

She had suspected that there might be another one, even at the moment of Tsutsumu’s death. Strictly speaking, it should have been none of her business at that point. Her mastery over her
sensei
, Masashigi Kusunoki, had been her graduation from the
dōjō
, and if experience had taught her anything, it was never to look back. Accomplishments were strictly the province of the present. Those who sat back to gloat over their achievements often died with those thoughts.

And yet despite this knowledge, she had returned. Studying the contents of the traitor’s pockets and experiencing again the feeling of outrage that had fired through her breast when she had observed him this morning rifling the
sensei
’s most closely guarded secrets, she knew that somehow Kusunoki had been different. He had gotten to her in some way she was at a loss to explain. She felt keenly his loss, and all at once in the midst of this vast mountainous forest he had loved so dearly, with only the gusting wind and the swirling rain for companions, she was weeping silent tears, her chest constricted and her heart full of an unnameable anguish, a burden abruptly too terrible to bear.

When the spasm subsided—for that was how she thought of it the next day—she completed her meticulous search of the corpse. She found the sheaf of papers half stuck to the traitor’s hip and she had to be extremely careful in peeling the top sheet away from the damp skin.

Quickly now, protecting the papers from the wet, she refolded them, put them away in a dry place within her kimono. Kusunoki’s violation had become her own. She did not look at the papers; she had no interest in them. They were the property of her
sensei,
and whether he was dead or alive their place was still where he had put them.

She stood and pulled her blade from the earth. It was clean and shining again. She reattached it to the top of the
janomegasa
and with it disappeared into the wood above to change into her student’s
gi
for the last time. The glowing lights of the
dōjō
beckoned her; or was it Kusunoki’s
kami
? She did not know. The papers were safe with her, and soon they would be back in their rightful place.

Justine had a surprise waiting for her at Millar, Soames & Robberts when she returned there the morning after the funeral. Mary Kate Sims was no longer in her large corner office. In fact, Mary Kate Sims was no longer a vice president at the advertising firm.

She was about to go and see Rick Millar to get an explanation—neither Min nor anyone else she knew at all seemed to be around—when he strode into her bare office.

“I’d heard you just came in,” he said, a concerned look on his face. “I thought I told you to take a couple of days off. There’s no need for you to—”

“Work’s the best tonic for me right now,” she cut in. “I hate hanging around the house staring at shadows. I’m always afraid I’ll turn into a cat.”

Rick nodded his head deferentially. “Okay. It’s just as well you’re here anyway. I’ve got something to show you.” He began to propel her out the door.

“Just a minute,” she began, “there’s something—”

“Later,” he said, taking her down the hall toward the elevators. “This’s more important.”

A floor above, he led the way around a turning. “Here it is. What d’you think?”

Oh, holy Jesus, Justine thought. It can’t be. “What the hell is my name doing on Mary Kate’s door?”

“Your office now, Justine. That spare office downstairs was just temporary. Surely you knew that.”

She turned on him, flaring. “Temporary until you got rid of Mary Kate.”

“Absolutely not. She left of her own accord. She tendered her resignation at closing yesterday.”

“I don’t believe you,” Justine said hotly. “If she were thinking of leaving she’d’ve told me. We’re friends, remember?”

“Let’s go into the office, shall we?” Rick prompted. He closed the door after them.

“You’ll damn well tell me the truth or I’ll walk out of here right now!” Justine shouted. On top of what had happened to her father, what had happened with Nicholas, this was just too much to take. It was all piling up like the weight of the world. Her head was spinning and she found herself holding onto the edge of the knurled wooden desk with white knuckles.

“The truth is Mary Kate wasn’t, er, well, working out. She had gotten into a number of scraps with the senior executives. I had spoken to her, of course…more than once. But”—he shrugged—“Well, you know Mary Kate.”

“I know she wouldn’t take too much of your bullshit, Rick.” Justine shook her head. “I don’t believe this. What you’re telling me is that you had every intention of firing her when we had lunch together. You were interviewing me for her job!”

Rick shrugged again. “It happens all the time, Justine. And, anyway, what’re you so steamed about? The better girl won. You can run rings around Mary Kate. You should be—”

“What a bastard you are to do that to me!” She stepped up to him and slapped him across the face. “To us!” She gathered up her things. “You’d better find someone else to do this kind of shit, because it’s not going to be me!”

“Nice touch,” Rick said, smiling. “If you’re angling for more money, I’ll go along with it. I’ll have to twist some arms but there won’t be any—”

“Are you out of your mind?” Justine backed away from him, heading toward the door. “I don’t want one dollar from your firm. Get the hell out of my life!”

Downstairs on the milling sidewalk, she realized that she had nowhere to go. She couldn’t face the apartment, empty and lonely, most of all couldn’t face the clothes, the belongings, the photos of Nicholas there. She could not think of going to Gelda’s; that kind of depression would put her over the edge. And as for returning to her own free-lance business, the idea of starting up again seemed beyond her at the moment.

Confused, she crossed the avenue and went into a coffee shop. She could not taste the coffee set before her, which was perhaps just as well. Tears slid down her cheeks as she stared at the blurs of color hurrying by outside. I’ve got to do
something,
she told herself.

She went to the closest branch of her bank and withdrew five thousand dollars. She kept half as cash, the rest she converted into traveler’s checks. She did some clothes shopping after that, stopping into a luggage store to buy a lightweight suitcase. She charged everything. Cosmetics were no problem, but by the time she did that number she realized that she would have to go back to the apartment after all for some essentials she just could not buy duplicates of. She made it as quick a stop as she could. But still she was struck by the difference. It no longer felt like home. Everything seemed out of place or missing. The comfortable had become disquieting and sad. She wiped the tears away and got out of there, locking up as if she were going away forever.

It was only when she was already airborne, on her way to Honolulu and thence Maui, that she realized that, indeed, one item had been missing from the apartment.

The long black lacquer scabbard that sheathed Nicholas’ prized
dai-katana
, the supreme long sword, was gone from its spot on the bedroom wall. So, of course, was the deadly weapon.

Instinctively, something inside her began to wail.

Minck saw the concern on Tanya’s face as she returned from putting Linnear back on his flight east. She had heard and seen everything, secreted behind the panel of the mirror that was, in the adjoining room, a rectangle of one-way glass.

“Carroll, I don’t understand what you’re doing,” she said. “You’ve as good as killed him, sending him against Protorov like that. That wasn’t the plan…unless I missed something.”

Minck was not in a good mood, despite his success with Nicholas. “Come with me,” he said brusquely. He led her through to the opposite end of the rambling house. Here, in an area that was restricted even to some of his own staff, Minck took her through several windowless laboratories and into a steel-walled cubicle. It was very cold in there.

He flipped on the fluorescent overhead light. Tanya squinted in the harsh purple-blue illumination. Still, she saw the draped corpse immediately. It would have been hard to miss since its bulk dominated the small room.

Carefully she strode over to the head and pulled back the white muslin cloth. “Oh, God,” she whispered. “It’s Tanker.” That was not his real name. She turned to Minck. “When did he come in?”

“While you were out.”

She came away from the blued body. “I wondered why you created that ‘signature.’ Anyone with a knowledge of how it all works would have known that in signals only code names are used, not real ones.”

“Then let’s be thankful that that’s one area in which our Mr. Linnear is ignorant,” he said acidly. “Because of this beauteous package dropped on our doorstep in Honshū I now have to deal with our brother services who were obliged to transfer Tanker here.”

They stood in the dim hallway with the door closed at their backs. “We now know that Croesus is Protorov’s code name, however.”

“Tanker was the only one close,” she said.

“Obviously he got too close.” Minck closed his eyes. “Now, like it or not, we must make do with Mr. Linnear.”

“Do you think that’s wise?”

“That remains to be seen. But wise or not, our time has run out. I’m afraid that were we not to send Mr. Linnear into the lion’s den, the lion would eat us all for supper.”

“He may still do that.”

For a time Minck was silent. “I take it, then, that you disapprove of my improvisation.”

Tanya knew that she was on thin ice here and she thought her words out carefully. “I think he’s an amateur. Amateurs have proven in the past to be highly unreliable as well as disconcertingly unpredictable. They’re not under discipline.”

“Uhm. True enough. But that’s also one of his great advantages. Protorov cannot connect him with us as he did Tanker or as he would you.” Minck had the manner of a country yokel, sitting on his back porch of a Sunday, sleepily passing the time with a neighbor. It was as if nothing of moment was in the air. “And after all, he’s quite frightening, you know.” He seemed to be musing. “Up close like that I believe he’d frighten the devil himself.” His eyes opened and he looked at her. “Even kill him if he was given just cause. If he or those around him—those he cared about—were put in jeopardy. Mr. Linnear strikes me as an extremely loyal fellow as well as a deadly one.”

“You think he’ll be provoked enough to bring Protorov down.” It occurred to Tanya that this had been his goal all along.

“Yes,” Minck said. “I have sent our Mr. Linnear out, rather cleverly I might add, to bring me Viktor Protorov’s head; to end our feud once and for all. I don’t like this KGB connection with Colonel Mironenko. In fact, it scares me like a rattling skeleton at my door. I begin to imagine the connection between Protorov and Mironenko as being highly significant. The paranoid in me sketches out a scenario wherein the KGB and the GRU would somehow unite.”