The Miko - 02 (61 page)

He came swiftly across the room and sat close to Nicholas, breaking the host-guest barrier. “I have had some news.” His voice was very soft but urgent. “Concerning
Tenchi.
Of course the
keiretsu
has official protection from the government concerning the project.

“But privately I enlisted the aid of several members of the Tenshin Shoden Katori
ryu.
Ninja such as yourself to safeguard our secret.” He paused for a moment, looking around. He nodded his head and rose.

Together they went through the open
fusuma
, into the garden. The bees were out, descending on the peonies. The gray plover was long gone from his spot beneath the boxwood tree. The sun wove in and out from behind silver and purple clouds.

“A
sensei
was killed there not long ago, along with a student. Now my contact—whose
ryu
name is Phoenix—informs me that a second student was killed only yesterday. It now appears from what this man tells me that the
ryu
has been infiltrated.”

“Infiltrated?” Nicholas echoed. “The Tenshin Shoden Katori? Are you certain?”

Sato nodded. “But Phoenix was not calling from Yoshino. He’s in the north. In Hokkaido.” Sato’s face was grave. “I fear our last stand against the Russians has begun, Linnear-san. You were quite right about their involvement. It took Phoenix some time to evaluate his situation. The death of the
jonin
; he was their spiritual leader.” He cocked his head. “Did you know him? By the purest chance he had the same name as the hero we were discussing once, Masashigi Kusunoki.”

“It’s been many years since I’ve been at the Tenshin Shoden Katori,” Nicholas said.

Sato looked at him oddly for a moment, then shrugged. “His death was totally unexpected, and they were thrown into chaos for a time. It took all of Phoenix’s skill to return absolute order in such a short time. Meanwhile, it seems the Soviet agents were doing their work.”

His beefy shoulders were bent as with an incalculable weight. “We cannot allow
Tenchi
to be infiltrated, Nicholas-san. The knowledge that the Russians are so close fills me with dread. They have the power to destroy us—all of us—if they discover
Tenchi.
”

“What has happened?” Nicholas said in a voice a good deal calmer than he felt.

“Phoenix is pursuing one of their agents—the last remaining one within the
ryu.
The man has fled north with a top-secret profile of
Tenchi.
He is now on Hokkaido. Phoenix has allowed him to go even though the man murdered one of his students in the process. He believes the agent will lead him to the Soviet local control. But you cannot imagine just how dangerous this maneuver is. This agent
must
be stopped by any means before he can pass on that profile.”

Viktor Protorov, Nicholas thought. I must be at this Phoenix’s side when he infiltrates the Russian’s base. Sato will have his secrets back and I will have Protorov. “Where is Phoenix now, precisely?”

Sato glanced at him. “I fathom your intent. But if you go, I must also.”

“That is impossible,” Nicholas said sharply. “Purely from a tactical point—”

Sato raised his hand. “My friend,” he said softly. “There has already been too much murder here for me to allow it to go on. Three human beings—people I counted as friends as well as valued work colleagues and indispensable parts of my
kobun
—have ceased to exist because of me. That is a heavy burden for anyone to bear.

“While you were gone, funerals for all of them were held, as well as temporary burials. Miss Yoshida had no family, so it was not so bad in her case. But the others—Kagami-san and Ishii-san—both did. They will of course obey my orders to keep the police out of it. We do not need the
Kempeitai
in here, stomping around in their efforts at investigation.

“But I do not like it. I want these people to have proper burials in their family plots. Can their
kami
be at rest until then?”

Nicholas thought of the afternoon with Miss Yoshida, the sight of her kneeling within a long stone’s throw of where his own mother and father were buried. He resolved to be at her final burial, to light joss sticks before her gravestone, and to say the prayers of reverence for the safekeeping of her spirit.

“I know where this is all leading,” Nicholas said, “and I cannot allow it. You’ll stay here where it’s safe.”

Sato’s laugh was hollow and without humor. “Have you so soon forgotten the
Wu-Shing
, my friend?”

“That’s what Koten is here for,” Nicholas said stubbornly. “Do you doubt that he can do the job?”

“This has nothing to do with Koten or anyone else.”

“I am responsible for your safety, Sato-san. This is what you wanted; it is what we have sworn to.”

Sato nodded gravely. “What you say is true, Nicholas-san. You are sworn to protect me and I am sworn to consummate the merger of our
kobun
without difficulties. But this oath only goes so far. I am the final arbiter of my life and death. You must accede to this. You know you must.”

There was a silence for some time. A brace of plovers broke cover past Sato’s left shoulder, racing into the clouds. The wind was picking up and a heaviness was returning to the air. Unless the wind direction changed abruptly there would be rain again, a good deal of it.

“Then the oath that binds us is severed.” It was a desperate ploy. One which Nicholas feared would not work.

“Are you free to walk away then?” Sato smiled. “By all means do so. I will not think ill of you.”

“I can force you to stay here.”

“And where would you go, my friend? Only I know where Phoenix would meet us. You could roam all of Hokkaido without ever finding either him or the Soviet agent.”

There was a deliberate silence.

“Then you’ll still join me.”

“I seem to have no choice in the matter.”

“Good. We will take Koten and fly to the north island. From there a rented car will take us to our final destination.”

“Which is?” Nicholas said warily.

“A
rotenburo
—an outdoor hot bath—my friend.” Sato smiled with real warmth. “And why not? You appear to be in need of some relaxation!”

In the middle of the night the phone sang shrilly in her ear. Justine, who had had trouble falling asleep, started awake. Her mouth was dry and her throat sore, as if she had been straining for something or constantly calling out in her dreams.

She brushed her hand out to the receiver to stop the racket, picked up her watch off the nighttable. Just after three-thirty. Jesus! She heard squawking from the phone, picked it up as if it were alive.

“Justine?”

“Rick, what’re you—”

“Don’t tell me you forgot.”

She put her hand to her head. “I don’t—”

“Haleakala. The dormant volcano. You promised I could take you up there.”

“But it’s three-thirty in the morning. For God’s sake, Rick—”

“If we leave now we’ll make it in time for the sunrise. That’s the time to be up at the crater.”

“But I don’t want to see the sunrise. I—”

“You’ll never know until you’re there. Come on now, we’re wasting precious time. We’ve got to be there by five-thirty.”

Justine was about to protest some more but suddenly she felt too tired to try. It seemed easier just to go along with him. Besides, she thought wanly, maybe it will be fun.

It certainly proved to be nothing she had expected. For one thing, just the drive up the winding slope of the volcano was fascinating. The summit was two miles up, and she could see the terrain changing before her eyes as they ascended. Rick had cautioned her to dress warmly in slacks and sweater, a jacket as well if she had one. Walking out to the car in the cool but balmy night air she had felt faintly ridiculous being so overdressed. It seemed inconceivable to her that there could be any place on this tropical paradise where the temperature was hovering at thirty-five degrees Fahrenheit.

But as they rose, as the terrain metamorphosed from palm tree laden, to the dominance of spiky desert cactus, to long stands of stately pine trees more appropriate to Maine or Vermont, she was obliged to roll up her window and don her jacket.

Near the crater itself, Rick switched on the heater. They had already passed the tree line, and now she looked out on black desolation. Long ago, massive lava slides, spewed up from the depths of the earth, had rolled slowly downward, inundating all in their paths. Now hardy grasses peeped up here and there through the dark mounded lava. But otherwise there was nothing. As the car made one switchback after another, Justine glanced back over her shoulder. From this vantage point she could look across the vast undulating slopes of Haleakala’s base, down to the shoreline, the crescent beach just beginning to glimmer with an odd kind of phosphorescence and the utterly black feathery silhouettes of the slender-boled palms.

She had said not a word to Rick on the long drive up, huddled on her side of the front seat as if she expected him to deliver a blow to her face. She was shivering by the time he pulled the car into the wide blacktopped parking lot. She put it down to the unnatural cold.

As they got out she could see the looming spectral shapes, spiderweb gantries, towers, and electronic equipment belonging to various institutions from both the military and the private sectors, used for ongoing weather and seismographic study.

Signs bade them to walk slowly, cautioning those with heart conditions not to come up this high at all. And indeed as they began to walk Justine felt a lightness in her head, a certain feeling that her lungs were not getting their quota of oxygen. A fierce wind tore at them, sent paper flapping, making breathing that much more difficult.

She was grateful when they reached the shelter at the top of the wide stairs. This was a stone and masonry edifice whose entire eastern face was composed of large panes of glass.

From this eyrielike observation post they stared out on the blasted landscape of Haleakala’s craters. The area resembled photographs Justine had seen of the moon’s surface more than it did anything she had come to associate with her own planet. With no visual fix, distances were impossible to judge. Five miles looked more like five thousands yards. It was fantastic.

People gathered in this small place just as the ancient Hawaiians had centuries before to watch the rising of the sun. It was on this very spot, legend had it, that the sun was caught and held hostage, released only when it promised to move more slowly over the Hawaiian Islands to fill them to the brim with its light.

There was nothing in the sky but darkness. There was no hint of change, of the ending of night. But the sun was coming. They all could feel it like a shiver down their spines.

And then like a foundry being fired, one bright red spark speared upward over the intervening rim of Haleakala’s crater. There came an exhalation in concert from the assembled as light came into the world, clear and direct and adamantine.

It was a color that had no earthly analog; it took Justine’s breath away. She felt as if all gravity were gone and, unmoored, she was about to float away.

Pale fire crept across the blasted plain of the crater. Long, sweeping shadows, impossibly black, scored the face of the lava like newly etched cracks. There was no gray, only the darkness and the light.

Then, without any of them knowing quite when it happened, the multifaceted illumination they had all been born into and knew well returned to Haleakala and, just as if it had been some man-made show, the event was over.

“Now will you forgive me for dragging you out of bed?”

Justine and Rick leaned on the wooden railing, the last two still inside the observation post. Behind them they could hear the muffled cough of engines as cars started back down the serpentine drive to warm sea breezes.

“I’m tired,” she said. “Take me back.”

Outside, she saw a lone couple at the rim of the crater. Their arms were around one another’s waists, their bodies glued together. Justine stopped to watch them, her attention caught. The woman was tall and slim, her copper red hair pulled back in a long ponytail. The man was dark haired and large; muscular even through his windbreaker. When the woman moved she did so with the fluid grace of a dancer. The man had somewhat of the same quality, but Justine had lived with Nicholas Linnear long enough to be able to identify another of his dangerous breed.

“What are you staring at?” Rick followed her gaze and his head went down, his gaze swinging away.

I want that, Justine said to herself, still staring at the lovers moving, embracing above the jagged lava cliffs. Sunlight bathed them as if they were gods. Tears burned behind her lids and she thought, I will not cry in front of him. I will not!

She turned away from the lovers and from him, walking quickly down the stairs so that she was gasping for breath by the time she reached the asphalt parking lot. By comparison, everything here looked banal and uninteresting. She got into the car and leaned her head against the window, closing her eyes. Just below the level of the lot, Rick stopped the car and got out. “These are silverswords,” he told her. “They only grow upcountry.” He pointed to a fenced-off patch of ground where two or three vertical plants soared from the dark earth. True to their name, their spiky leaves were a peculiar silvery gray. “It’s said that they take twenty years to bloom and then once they do, they die.”

Justine was staring at the beautiful plants when Rick said this, and despite her resolve she abruptly dissolved into tears. Great wracking sobs broke from her trembling lips and she sat down hard on the path, her head in her lap.

“Justine. Justine.”

She did not hear him. She was thinking of how sad life was for the silversword and, then, of course how ridiculous that notion was. No. Life was sad for her. At her father’s funeral she had felt only relief, had thought she was reveling in that relief.

But now she knew the truth. She missed him. He was the only father she would ever have. He raised her and in his own way, she supposed, even loved her. Now he was gone without mourning or a sense of the diminishing of the quality of life. Or so she had thought. She was so smart. Oh, yes. The truth was that she was a moron. She could no more understand her own emotions than she could anyone else’s. That’s why she was useless to Gelda. Useless as well to Nicholas.