The Miko - 02 (54 page)

When she knew that Minck would not go for the termination she had switched tactics, arguing for a closed shop. That was out of the question as well, he said. “Spearfish” could not be penned up.

Then she had gone for the box, eight men in two shifts. But Minck had said “Spearfish” would find that distasteful as well. It limited freedom, he said. Tanya had kept her mouth shut, knowing that that was precisely the purpose of the box. It was normally used on more serious tags but it could work just as well on friend-lies such as “Spearfish.”

Finally, she did what he had asked her to do in the first place: put two men on it. But she would not let it go at that. She kept in constant touch. “Spearfish” was highly volatile and she wanted no mistakes made. The only time she laid off was when Minck himself went down. He thought that even she did not know. But she did.

Now she watched the glowing green letters springing up on the terminal screen, marching across in dedicated rows. When the message had ended, she watched the pulsing letters hanging there for a moment before she pushed the decode button. The word “REALLY?” came up and she hit a six-digit key ultimate access sequence. Now the decoded message wrote itself across the screen. Now she had one minute, no more, no less, to digest the message. If she did not depress the “print” key by that time to get a hard copy, ARRTS would dissolve the cipher as if it had never existed.

She went pale as she read the terse message, so stunned that she had made no conscious decision whether or not to print before her time ran out and the message disappeared from the screen. That did not matter much since it still glowed behind her eyes.

Silently she cursed Minck and his personal problems. Because the cipher had turned “Spearfish” from a potential problem into an active one. She depressed the “send” key, composing her reply as she did so. When only the date appeared, she was reminded that codes were changed weekly and this was the day to get a new one. That meant Tony Theerson.

She got up and went down two floors. The Boy Wonder had his digs in an otherwise unused corner of the floor. His only companions were the jumble of cardboard and wooden crates, shipping labels, and huge rolls of brown wrapping papers. And his cipher machines.

Though Minck had Theerson working on the Soviet Alpha-three ciphers almost around the clock, it was also his devilish little brain that composed the Red Section’s own codes. He said they were unbreakable; Tanya believed him.

When she came in on him he was sitting up on the Army cot he had asked be installed in his work space. Tanya suspected that the Boy Wonder had no private life whatsoever; he certainly slept in the building enough. Also, because of the time differential between Washington and the areas he monitored, primarily Russia and Asia, he tended to have odd sleep-wake patterns.

“Hey,” he said in his laconic way.

“Want some coffee?”

He offered up his bare arm; he was dressed in a T-shirt with “Depeche Mode” written on it and a pair of faded blue jeans. “Just slip the needle in this vein, Doctor.”

Tanya laughed as she crossed to the coffee machine and filled two mugs. She gave him one. “Had a hard night?”

He sipped at the strong French roast and groaned, his eyes closing in ecstasy. “Food of the gods.” He downed more coffee. “I’m having a bitch of a time breaking this new one.” He meant the Alpha-three. He put the empty cup aside. “Frankly, I don’t think I’m going to get it.” He rose and stretched, yawning widely.

“It’s that time again, I’m afraid,” Tanya said. She had hardly touched her coffee, preferring tea. But she had not wanted to appear unfriendly.

The Boy Wonder groaned again. “You mean another week’s slid by? Oh, God.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “I need a shower.”

“Business first, personal hygiene later,” Tanya said, putting down her cup. “I’m on an open line.”

“Gotcha.” Theerson poked through a box of floppy disks. He pulled one out, gave it to her. “This one’s a doozy.”

“They all are,” she said, heading for the door. “Good luck.”

He grunted sourly. “With this monster I’m gonna need it.”

The last she saw of him he was putting on his Walkman headphones as he sat down to work. With the Boy Wonder, business came before anything. Tanya decided to draft a memo to Minck suggesting he give Theerson some enforced vacation time.

Back at the ARRTS console two floors up, she inserted the floppy Theerson had given her and punched the “enter” button. The word “FILE:” came up and she typed in, “SPEARFISH.” She waited for the cycle to complete, then entered her reply. The machine would automatically use the new cipher, ARRTS having replaced the old code with the new one in the receiver.

TRANSMIT HOURLY UPDATES. WILL BE MOBILE SOON. WILL GIVE BACKUP WITHIN THIRTY-SIX HOURS. TERMINATE ‘SPEARFISH’ WHEN SITUATION STABILIZES AND YOU ARE CERTAIN OF TARGET VISIBILITY.

Then she went away to make her report.

Nicholas sat on the backless stone seat in Sato’s garden. He had been there for perhaps an hour, ever since his hosts had retired. He had made a show of going to his room so that they would not be obliged to share his insomnia. But he hadn’t even bothered to undress, merely waited fifteen minutes before returning to the now deserted garden.

With infinitesimal slowness, light came into the garden. In a way it was a shame, since before only cold moonglow had distinguished shadow and illumination, causing the flower scents to dominate. Now as vision took hold, the perfumes seemed to fade.

Nicholas became aware of the presence behind him the moment it crossed the threshold of Sato’s study and stepped down onto the glowing pebbles. The predawn atmosphere was aqueous with white mist. There was no sound save the waking of the birds.

He knew that it was Akiko without having to turn around or hear her voice. Their
wa
had locked hours before and that had been enough to mark her in his mind. The system was as primitive as it was sophisticated. As Akutagawa-san had said, urban life had bred it out of modern human beings.

Because of this, too, he knew that she was dangerous. He did not know in precisely what way or even if it was to him in particular. He knew she was
sensei.
Very few individuals would have been able to make that determination from mere visual observation and the imprint of her spirit—even other
sensei
without all of Nicholas’ skills and ability. But he was different.

“Nicholas-san.”

Her low voice shivered him and he willed himself to remain calm. Still his pulse beat hard in his temples and he felt a sudden rush of blood to his head.

“Where is your husband?”

“Snoring on his princely pallet.”

What was in her voice? Nicholas strained to hear all of the echoes and nuances, even those she might not know were present. Had he found derision there?

“Isn’t your place beside him?” It was the petulant comment of a jealous lover, and he cursed himself.

“My place,” she replied as if she heard no overtones, “is where I choose to be.” She paused as if uncertain whether to go on. “Do you think that unJapanese of me?”

He shook his head. “Untraditional, perhaps, but not unJapanese.”

In the ensuing silence she said, “Won’t you turn around and face me? Am I so difficult to look at?”

Her words stirred the hair at the base of his neck and he wondered how carefully she had chosen them. Slowly, his heart beating faster than he would have wished, he turned toward her. He melted inside.

Just the first hint of dawn blushed her face in radiant light. She had changed into a pale yellow kimono with ice green and silver thread embroidered in the shape of stands of pine trees. A lone golden heron flew at full wing over her left breast. Her hair was down, a gleaming blueblack cascade stretching straight down her back. She wore no jewelry whatsoever. Her nails shone with clear lacquer but were cut short as would befit one of her training. He thought he could discern the slightest tremor in her face, a fleeting tic along the upper lid of one eye. Then both were gone and she was in control again.

“Was that so hard?” she breathed into the soft wind. Mist swirled at her back, danced around his shoulders.

“You are beautiful to look at, Akiko.” He had not meant to make any such admission. Immediately he felt as if he had lost a battle.

She came toward him, gliding along the pebble path. She seemed to him to be emerging from out of the ending of the night. “Why do I feel as if I have been with you before?”

What she said startled them both. It was as if, naked, they were embracing and Sato had walked in on them. Blood flooded Akiko’s face and her eyes flicked away from his face. The tremble was back within her.

All sense of reality had slipped from Nicholas’ mind. Lost within the white mist, he saw only her. Yukio rose before him, a
kami
who had been granted a second life. Then he, too, reached out for the stability of the Void, seeking an answer to the unanswerable. As if in a dream, he rose from the hard stone seat and came toward her until they were but a hand’s breadth apart. He fought with himself to say the words that had been roiling through his consciousness ever since she had slipped the fan from in front of her face. They were words he longed to say, words that would free him, perhaps, from his inner torment but which would also certainly make him vulnerable to her.

What to do? The moment was here. In Japanese society one had very few moments alone with another man’s wife. This moment would never have come but for Akiko. What did she want of him? Was she Yukio? Did she want to hear him call her name? If so, why was she torturing him so? He was assailed by questions which led to riddles which in turn brought him to enigmas. It seemed to him now that all his life had been an enigma, a fitfully understood succession of events from which he had constantly turned away.

“Who are you?” he said hoarsely. “I must know.”

Her eyes searched his. “Who do you think I am?” There was no coyness; rather he sensed a deeply buried desperation he could put no name to.

“I don’t know.”

Somehow the distance between them was closing. There seemed to be no conscious volition on either of their parts.

“Tell me,” she whispered. “Tell me.”

He could feel her breath on him, smell the scent of her, feel the heat of her flesh from beneath the silk kimono. Her eyes were half shut, her lips partly open as if some emotion inside her was on a runaway tear.

“Yukio…” Her name was torn from his heart like a tattered battle pennant. It was irrational that he should utter her name, irrational that he should think this was who stood before him. Yet he said it again, “Yukio, Yukio…,” seeing her eyes flutter closed as if in thrall, felt the melting of her upper body in against his, her head coming back, the long arch of her neck merging with the image, the memory he had carried with him for so many years.

There was a burning inside him as he reached for her, to embrace her or to stop her from falling he did not know. All his organs had turned to water and were boiling up. There was a fever in his brain. There was no control.

His lips came down over hers and he tasted her essence as he felt the dart of her tongue inside him.

For the first time in her life Akiko was open to the universe. Nothing in all her long, arduous training had caused this ignition inside of her.

She was so dizzy that she was doubly grateful for his strong arms about her. All breath had left her as he had uttered her name. And it
was
her name! How was that possible? But, oh, he tasted wonderful and, oh, how she ached for him! Her thighs were like water, unable to support her. She felt a kind of ecstasy at his touch she thought only possible in orgasm.

What was happening to her? Swept away, still a dark part of her mind yammered to be heard. What strange force had invaded her mind? What had turned her plans of vengeance inside out? What made her feel this way about a hated enemy? And why had she lied to him? She was not Yukio; she was Akiko.

And then with the power of his
wa
surrounding her, with her heart beating in her inner ear like thunder, with the press of his hard chest against her breasts, the answer exploded in her mind with the force of fireworks.

As Akiko she was nothing. She had come from nothing and nothing was her future. As Yukio she was someone. Here there was more for her than
kyomu
, that which Kyōki preached: nihility.

From the moment she had left Sun Hsiung’s loving tutelage she had felt herself to be
doshi gatai,
beyond salvation. Without any other anchor in her life what else could she expect?

Now, abruptly, with Nicholas Linnear’s appearance, Yukio had become a reality. She was no more idea, no more means to an end, no more two-dimensional schemata. She lived.

The force of Nicholas Linnear’s love for her had brought her back from the dead.

Justine saw him on her second day at the hotel. The first time was near the pool bar in the shade of the overhang and she thought that she must be mistaken. But the second time was at the crescent beach while she was wading out into the jade ocean, snorkel and mask in one hand, black fins on her feet. This time there was no doubt. It was Rick Millar.

At first she couldn’t believe it. After all, she was six thousand miles from New York on a rambling world-class resort in the midst of a 23,000-acre pineapple plantation. She was in West Maui, in one of the most remote areas on the island, far from the strip of high-rise hotels at Kaanipali where most tourists to this paradisiacal spot stayed.

She watched, transfixed, the tide lapping around her waist as he headed into the surf toward her. His body was lean and trim, with narrow hips and wide shoulders. He did not have the wrist and chest development nor the overall muscle definition that Nicholas had. But then Rick was a tennis player, not a human killing machine.

Tears erupted through her quivering lids, stinging her eyes, and she turned away, out to sea and the hazy outline of Molokai.

“Justine—”

“You’ve got some helluva nerve coming here.”

“I’d only heard about the famous Tobin temper before. Everything they said was an understatement to the real thing.” His voice was deliberately light, bantering.