The Miko - 02 (70 page)

As for Akiko, there was no question but that she do what Saigō had asked of her before he departed for America. Even had he not talked with her, she would have known what to do.

“I know how to do it,” she had told him triumphantly, on a day just shy of their eighth anniversary. “It will mean change for me. Total change.” And she held up the photograph for him to see.

For a long time he said nothing, merely looked from her to the photo and back again. “It will destroy him,” he said. “Utterly and completely. Should I not come back.” His face creased. “But I will.”

Akiko knew better. Saigō was dead the moment he boarded the JAL flight for America for his final confrontation with his cousin, Nicholas Linnear. But this knowledge did not allow her to stop him or even hint to him of his fate. He was a warrior, and to deny him battle was to destroy him on the spot.

When the news reached her, she was already five weeks in Switzerland. She grieved even as she worked out the details of the revenge he would have wished.

She wanted to exercise during her long internment in the Swiss clinic but she was forbidden to do so at least for the first week. After that it was at her own discretion, they said, believing that she could do nothing while the swath of bandages blinded her. They were wrong, but then the Swiss are a peculiarly insular people.

Guided to the gym each day just before lunchtime, Akiko performed ninety minutes of hard physical exercise to keep her superb body in shape. In the late afternoon she did the same. And because she was used to the night, she arose by herself and, using her hearing, guided herself away from the nurses, back into the gym for further work.

She was desperate for physicality, throwing her entire being into it. For one thing, it took her mind off the consequences of what she had done. If the doctors had not been successful here, she would be lost. They had assured her of their talent and she had seen examples of their handiwork herself. Rationally she had been satisfied. But now that it had been done, now that there was no turning back, now that the Akiko she had known all her life was gone, doubts returned to plague her. What if…? What if…? What if…?

So she toiled hard in the garden of mind and spirit, building on the foundations with which Kyōki had provided her, that Sun Hsiung had drilled into her. Now that Saigō had been killed, there was nothing else for her.

And at last there came a morning when darkness began to lift. Layer by layer, searchlights turned black into shades of gray, lightening from charcoal to slate to dove.

Hazily the room appeared, its shape and character emerging slowly from behind gauzy veils. The shapes had been drawn, the overhead light extinguished. Only a small lamp was on, its soft glow fiery to her eyes, unused to light for six weeks. It hurt to see and she was forced to blink rapidly, bringing some of the darkness back so that she would not be overwhelmed by the candle-power.

Everything appeared strange and different. Distant, as well, as if she were a new arrival from another planet. She took the mirror that had been placed in her hand by one of the nurses and shone it on herself.

What she saw there was no face in the rain but the first true blossom of her vengeance.

She saw Yukio staring back at her, blinking furiously in the first light of a new day.

*Free to kill and to restore life.

**Taking opportunity by the forelock.

***Adaptability to all circumstances.

[1. A sorceress 2. A maiden in the service of a shrine]

“H
ELLO, MATTY?”

“Who wants to know?”

“Croaker, Detective Lieutenant, NYPD.”

“Nah. He’s deader than a doornail.”

“Then you’re speaking to the grave. This is your lucky day, Matty.”

“Who the hell is this, anyway?”

“Matty, I got the dame we spoke about last year. Remember the conversation? Alix Logan. Key West.”

“I don’t—”

“You said the situation’d gotten hotter than Lucifer’s hind tit.”

There was a sharp inhalation. “Christ on a crutch, it
is
you, Lieutenant! You ain’t dead. I went to Saint Luke’s to light a candle.”

“I appreciate that, Matty. Really I do.”

“Where the hell are you, Lieutenant?”

“Information, Matty,” Croaker said into the phone. “I need information like a junkie needs his fix. I’m pulling in my markers—all of them. After this we start clean.”

Matty the Mouth, Croaker’s main snitch, thought about this for a minimum amount of time. “It could get me killed.”

“It almost did me, Ace. You’ll be protected. I’ll make sure Tomkin’s people won’t get near you.”

“It ain’t Tomkin I’m worried about, Lieutenant. That bastard deep-sixed almost a week ago.”

“What?”

“Whassamatter, don’t you read the papes or nuthin’?”

“I’ve been avoiding them like the plague. I even told Alix the radio in the car was busted. We got into a mess in North Carolina. I didn’t want her to know how bad it was.”

“Ain’t heard nuthin’ about nuthin’ in N.C.”

“In Raleigh.”

“
Nada,
Lieutenant. And I’d know.”

Croaker turned his head, watched Alix in the car by the side of the highway. They were very near the Lincoln Tunnel, almost back in New York. “What happened with Tomkin?”

“Croaked from some mysterious disease. Taka-something. Japanese sounding.”

“That’s very funny.”

“It is? I don’t get it.”

“Never mind. Private joke.” The recorded message cut in and Croaker fed the box with some more change. “About the Raleigh incident.”

“Total blackout.”

“Yah.”

“I ain’t surprised, Lieutenant. Tomkin was just the tip of the shit pile in this one.” Noise came through the line. “Hold on a minute, will you?” Muffled, Croaker could hear him say to someone else in the room, “Do like I tell you, for Chrissakes, and go to a fuckin’ movie or somethin’.”

In a moment he was back on the line. “Sorry. Wanted to clear the room. This’s risky enough as it is.” He coughed. “Told you I’d do some more nosing around, and I did. What I found I didn’t like. In fact, I was sorry as hell I’d given you the Key West info. When the papes reported you’d bought it, I thought sure as hell it was my fault so I went straight to Saint Luke’s.”

“And all that time I thought it was friendship, pure and simple, Matty.”

“Life ain’t that way, Lieutenant. You know that’s well as me.”

Croaker could not help thinking of Nicholas Linnear and the friendship he had with the man. Were there any of the usual strings attached to the relationship? He was sure there were not. That was part of what made their friendship so special, so binding. Fleetingly, he wondered where Nicholas was now and what he was doing. The last he’d heard of him he was back in West Bay Bridge. Probably off on his honeymoon now, he thought. Croaker knew that he would have tracked his friend down long ago were it not for the fact that he wanted this danger kept away from Nicholas—at least until he could define it.

He refocused his attention. “You’d better give me all of it, Matty.”

“What I got ain’t good. The government’s involved.”

For a moment Croaker thought someone had lobbed a grenade in his direction. Stupidly, in shock, he said, “Which government?”

“Ours. Jesus, who else’s?”

“I don’t get it.”

“You think I do? All I know is that this’s gone way beyond you or me.”

Croaker’s mind was spinning furiously. “Now I see why you weren’t surprised about the blackout in Raleigh. Only the government’d have that kind of clout. D’you know who in the government?”

“Know a character, Minck by name?”

“Never heard of him.”

“Neither had I until I did some heavyweight snooping. He runs what’s called a ‘closed shop’ in the trade.”

“And what trade might that be?”

“Why, spying, of course, Lieutenant.”

“What the hell’s this got to do with Tomkin and Angela Didion’s murder?”

“You said you’d got the dame with you. Ask her. She was a witness. The only one.”

“Yeah? Then why’s she still walking around, safe and sound?”

“She alone in Key West?” Matty asked shrewdly.

“No. They had a bracket on her. But it was to keep her safe.”

“You know that for a fact?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Croaker said. “She tried to off herself one afternoon. One of ’em stopped her. I saw the whole thing.”

“Something doesn’t make sense,” Matty conceded. “But I’ll be damned if I know what it is.”

“You give me all of it?” Croaker asked, feeding his last quarter into the slot.

“One other thing. It’s not the same topic, but since you been on the moon for a while I thought I’d pass it on. Your buddy Linnear’s been named head of Tomkin Industries.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Why would I do that? He’s in Tokyo now—you know, Japan—finishing off some big business Tomkin had going with a company called Sato Petrochemicals.”

Jesus, Croaker thought. What’s happening here? The whole world’s turning upside down.

He cleared his mind, fast. “Do me one more favor, will you?”

“Now it’ll cost you, Lieutenant. We’re all square, like you said. What’s the deal?”

“I need a place for me and girl to flop. Your place.”

“Thousand a week or any fraction thereof.”

“You’re getting to be a wise guy, Matty. This’s an emergency.”

“I kinda understand that, Lieutenant, but you gotta see things from my point of view, too. Times’re tight. I gotta live just like anybody else.”

“You forget I’m not on the payroll right now.”

“I’ll take your marker.”

“You sonuvabitch.”

Croaker could feel his smile through the phone. “Yeah,” Matty the Mouth said. “I know.”

At precisely six
P.M.
Hong Kong time, Tanzan Nangi sitting high up in the offices of the All-Asia Bank, picked up the telephone and dialed the number Liu had given him at the end of their first meeting.

All afternoon he had glumly watched the ants far below queuing up before the entrance to the All-Asia’s Central District branch in order to withdraw their life’s savings. Suddenly the All-Asia was poison; it would swallow their money whole. The Chinese were pulling out.

The mechanism by which such enormous masses of people were so instantly galvanized was a mystery to Nangi, but he had no doubt as to who was behind the run. The Communists were turning the screws.

“How long can we expect to hold out?” Nangi had asked Allan Su just after the doors were closed at three. Police had been called to disperse the mob who had been on line when the bank was closed.

“At this rate,” Su said, “no more than forty-eight hours. I’ve just been on the phone with our other branches in Wan Chai, Tsim Sha Tsui, Aberdeen, and Stanley. It’s the same all over, more or less. We’ll have to go to the vault tonight.”

“Don’t do anything yet,” Nangi said, fist against his cheek. “Not until I give you the word.”

“Yes?” The female voice was quiet and well modulated.

“Mr. Liu, please,” Nangi said, hating this moment, hating the Communists more now than he ever had.

“Whom shall I say is calling?”

At seven-fifteen that evening, Nangi’s car pulled up in front of the Sun Wa Trading Company on Sai Ping Shan Street in Sheung Wan. It was a long store front painted a garish glossy vermillion. The Chinese, Nangi reflected, did not comprehend the subtlety of pastel shades. Instead they surrounded themselves with childlike primaries. They were as superstitious about color as they were about everything else.

He stepped out into the crowded street, inhaling the scents of five-spice powder, star anise, dried fish, soy, and chili. They made him long for home with an intensity that was almost painful. But he knew that part of the pain was from the knowledge of what he was about to do.

Squaring his shoulders, he concentrated on walking as normally as possible so that he would not be further shamed in front of his enemies.

Inside, the atmosphere was gritty with spice powder residues, bringing a tickle to his nostrils. At first the place seemed deserted; it was past the time when the regular employees had gone home.

Nangi paused in the dimness and looked around without seeming to. He spotted a shadow amid other shadows, moving slightly.

“I have brewed fresh tea especially for this occasion.” It was unmistakably Liu’s voice.

Nangi moved in his direction, mindful of the crates and cartons scattered about. He sat down on a plain wooden chair opposite the Chinese. A scarred table was between them. On it were only two items: a pair of identical documents. Nangi did not have to touch them to know what they were.

“Tea first,” Liu said amiably. “I want this to be as painless as possible.” He was positively exuding good fellowship now that his triumph was imminent.

They both drank. “Black Tiger tea,” Liu said. “From Peking. Only a very small quantity is produced each year. Do you like it?”

“Very much,” Nangi said, almost choking on the brew.

Liu inclined his head slightly. “I am honored.” He continued to sip. “I understand that there was a disturbance in front of the All-Asia this afternoon,” he said conversationally.