The Miko - 02 (82 page)

Had Nangi been able to see himself objectively at that moment he would have understood that he had lost more than the friendship he held most dear. He had also lost the Eastern sense of acceptance and resignation, that belief in the course of a cosmic sense of life. He had lost his place in the scheme of things, and that was a serious matter, indeed.

His mask slipped back on his face when Craig Allonge brought Justine into the fiftieth-floor garden where Nangi wished to receive her. The Tomkin Industries executive did not remain long. He made the introductions, then left for his business lunch.

So, Nangi thought, looking her over, this is Raphael Tomkin’s daughter. Is she still in love with the
gaijin
Linnear? he wondered. He had heard about their icy demeanor at Tomkin’s funeral.

“May I offer my personal condolences, Miss Tomkin?” Nangi said, inclining his head. “I knew your father personally and admired him greatly.”

Justine almost said, That’s Miss
Tobin,
but already the distinction she had created herself years ago seemed artificial and meaningless.

Instead, she nodded. “Thank you, Nangi-san. Your generous bouquet was most appreciated.” She looked around. “It’s beautiful here.”

He nodded in return. “May I get you a drink?”

“A gin and tonic would be nice,” she said, sitting down on one of the chairs near a stand of green bamboo. What’s going on here? she asked herself. He seems old and shaken. She knew from Nicholas that she could not ask a direct question.

She sipped at her drink, studiously ignoring Nangi’s limp as he went from the bar to a chair near her.

“It is somewhat of a surprise to see you here in Tokyo,” he said after he had seated himself. “Is there something specific I can help you with? You have only to ask. I will assign a young lady to take you shopping to all the finest stores. At night, a male escort will take you—”

“I’ve come here to see Nicholas,” she said, stopping him in midsentence. She resented the assumptions he had made about her simply because she was female but she had the presence of mind to show none of this. On the exterior she was cool and calm and thus, in Nangi’s eyes, gained enormous face.

He was impressed despite himself. “I see. Well, that is an admirable reason for traveling all this distance.”

And as he paused, Justine felt her insides go cold. How she longed to scream out, What’s happened? Is he all right?

“Do you know where he is at the moment?” She was quite surprised to find that her voice was steady. Nicholas would be proud of her. But with that thought, tears brimmed her eyes. What has happened? she asked herself again.

“Unfortunately, no,” Nangi said. “I myself have just returned from a lengthy business trip. I am being filled in now as to events that have transpired in my absence.”

He’s so damned calm, Justine thought. How does he do it? She was unaware that she was matching Nangi stride for stride.

Every moment that Nangi sat talking with this
gaijin
his respect for her increased, grudgingly at first, then more freely. Because of her
wa,
he decided to tell her what she would otherwise find out hours from now.

“I am afraid that there has been some sort of mishap, Miss Tomkin. In my absence Sato Seiichi”—he used the Japanese form—“has been killed in an auto crash.”

“Oh, my God.” Justine’s hands gripped each other in her lap, her drink forgotten beside her. “Was he…alone?” Her voice had gone quite low.

“I understand your concern,” Nangi said. “And, yes, my information is that he was alone in the car at the time of the mishap.”

Justine’s eyes closed, a muscle tic beginning in one eyelid.
Mishap,
she thought. He uses the word like doctors use the word
expired
, to tidily explain away something dreadful.

“I’m…I’m terribly sorry, Nangi-san,” she said. “Please accept my condolences. I have heard many stories of Sato-san’s prowess in business and personal life.”

Nangi stared openly at her, amazed. Where was the gush of disgusting emotionalism he had expected from this barbarian? Where was the embarrassing reference to Sato and Nangi’s closeness that would have humiliated him? Neither had come. Instead she had expressed the proper sentiments in the proper manner, honoring both of them as well as Sato-san.

“I appreciate your thought, Tomkin-san,” he said, his voice softened by emotion. “You are welcome to return to your hotel. Or, as I said before, I will assign company personnel to take you about the city, as you wish. In any case, you will be informed the moment we have word of Linnear-san’s whereabouts.”

“If you don’t mind, I’d prefer to stay here,” Justine said. “That is, if you don’t think I’ll be in the way.”

“Absolutely not,” Nangi said, and rang for Kei Hagura. He had learned his lesson; no woman was summoned.

In the dense forest surrounding Itami’s house, Nicholas began his search, employing several of the simple implements he had taken from his aunt’s kitchen with her blessing.

He was searching for any of several kinds of holes in the ground, and it took him some time. The forest was thicker than it had been when he had been here as a young boy. But that could only be his imagination, for one is never as alert to one’s surroundings when at a place one despises.

The sky, when he could catch a glimpse of it through the arching canopy of branches and leaves, seemed odd and yellow. It was certainly no longer day, yet it was like no twilight he had ever seen before. Too, the atmosphere felt different. It was as heavy as lead, windless, not a blade of grass stirring. Even the insects were quiescent. He saw no birds.

At length he found what he had been searching for and went to work. Most of the time was spent up in a tree, waiting. When he was finished and quite satisfied, he set off.

In little time he found an outcropping of rock and settled down on it to wait.

And that was how Akiko found him, sitting in the lotus position. Darkness was encroaching, long shadows as blue as ice creeping along the woodland carpet, over rocks and toadstools, moss and wildflowers. It was the time of the evening when, normally, the changeover from diurnal to nocturnal was being made. Larks and finch giving way to whippoorwills and owl, boar and rabbits to foxes and weasels. There was little stirring.

She stopped before him. She had emerged out of the dense foliage as just one more shadow, approaching. “I regret that I could not bring you back your
dai-katana
,” she said.

“Would you have killed me with it?”

She answered him only in the most oblique fashion. “Come down off your lofty perch,” she said, “and we will speak together.”

With deliberation, Nicholas descended. He was thinking of Masashigi Kusunoki. Ever since Sato had mentioned that name in connection with the Tenshin Shoden Kaktori
ryu
, it had stuck in his subconscious like a thorn. Although he had been away from Yoshino for quite a long time, still he knew of no
sensei
either in Japan or outside it who went by that name.

Yet he knew that Sato had not lied, and that he had not been lied to. For what possible purpose would either thing have been done? He could think of none. Masashigi Kusunoki existed—or had before he had been murdered—yet he did not exist. Who had he been, and who had killed him?

Had it been Akiko, his pupil, who had sat before him across the
tatami
, speaking of mundane matters, hiding her intent with what Kydki, the madman, had taught her so that the
sensei
felt only the glow of her
wa
, and was thus put off his guard? Was that what she was about to do with him now?

Grass verge served admirably as their
tatami.
Darkness, stealing in over the hills and tree tops, shrouded them, nocturnal creatures that they were, gentling them in its webbed cradle. They were home again in the blackness of the night. The merest trace of starblaze smeared their faces in cold blue highlight.

“I would have found you out even without the tattoos,” he said.

“No one but you would have understood their true nature.” Her head inclined slightly.

“Yes,” he agreed. “I know the legend of Hsing, the shape-changer; the
akuma
he created with
jahō.
”

She was laughing at him. “And you believed all of that?”

“I believe in the
Kuji-kiri
,” he said. “In the
Kobudera
, and in the
Wu-Shing.
I knew one
mahō-zukai…
” He had kept his inflection up so that she would know that he had not finished. She was no longer laughing. “You knew him too, Akiko-san. Saigō.”

He had brought the key in his pocket and now he had offered it to her. He thought that she had taken it but might not yet be ready to use it on herself. He continued.

“Now I know the truth. Your twin dragons spoke to me with tongues of fire. Before he was murdered by his jealous compatriots, Hsing had branded his
akuma.
Hsing was
sensei
to many arts; tattooing was only one of them.

“He did this, so it was said, so that he might be able to identify his pupil for all time, so that they would be inexorably linked on the wheel of
karma.

“Did you have a
sensei
, Akiko-san, who marked you so with such skilled hands? I cannot think you went to a common parlor off the street.” He might, of course, have said more, mentioned Kyōki by name, but in doing so he would give up an enormous advantage.

“So you know about
Wu-Shing
,” she said, inserting the key he had given her. She nodded. “Perhaps it is a relief to me that someone else knows. That that someone else is you.” And all the while she thought, Amida! I can’t believe it. I look upon him and my love for him is so strong that I need to clasp my old hate to me with white fingers; I must concentrate on it every single moment or it threatens to slide away from me like sand.

“Hsing’s
akuma
had just cause to enact the age-old vengeance. As do I. My family name is not Ofuda—”

“No,” Nicholas interrupted deliberately. “It is Sato. And Sato-san, your husband, is dead.”

She inclined her head. “I suspected as much. I am sorry.” Her eyes blazed in the cruel starlight. “Sorry I could not end his life by my own power, using the fourth state of the
Wu-Shing.
”

“
Kung
,” Nicholas said, using the Chinese word for “palace,” the eunuch’s punishment. “You would have castrated him before you killed him.”

“He deserved no less,” she said with venom. “As does his friend, Tanzan Nangi. He has yet to experience my terrible power. Together they conspired to destroy my real father, Hiroshi Shimada.”

Nicholas was truly surprised. “Your father was Vice-Minister Shimada?” He knew the name well and in a quite personal way because Shimada had been one of the Colonel’s prime postwar targets. “But his wife bore him only two sons.”

“His mistress was my mother,” Akiko said proudly. “She was
tayu oiran
in the
Yoshiwara.
She was the best there was.”

“Shimada committed
seppuku.
There was a huge scandal—”

“Cleverly concocted by Nangi, Sato, and their mentor, Yoi-chiro Makita.”

Nicholas knew that this was patently untrue. The evidence against Shimada had been overwhelming and incontrovertible.

“They made up lies, half-truths, innuendoes. It was enough”—her face was twisted with her hate—“
more
than enough in an atmosphere that bordered on phobic hysteria when it came to the subject of the war.” He felt a gathering of her forces. “But it was your father, Colonel Denis Linnear, who insisted on making these falsehoods public knowledge. Linnear had wanted my father out of the way ever since he had championed a hard line against SCAP’s interference into MCI policies.”

Nicholas remembered what his father had told him on the day Vice-Minister Shimada was found near his wife in a pool of blood. “Never rejoice over the death of another human being. Rather take satisfaction that a source of evil has been expunged. In this case elements within MCI were perpetuating the power factions begun years ago by members of the prewar
zaibatsu,
in their
kanmin ittai
, control associations. If a man aligns himself with evil, we have our duty before us. We must act. Mankind could not long tolerate life without this weeding-out process.”

“There was nothing false in the accusations leveled against your father, Akiko,” he said. “You cannot deny the symmetry of crime and punishment.” But his words seemed distant to his ears for he found it enormously difficult to disassociate himself from the face so close before him. It seemed to make no difference that he knew that she was not, in fact, Yukio. That was an intellectual response, and what he was feeling was emotional. It bypassed the intellect, the rational completely. What did he see inside her that caused him to react this way?

It did not vitiate in any way the danger he felt himself to be in; it merely clouded the issue, turning the translucent into the opaque.

And he was truly amazed in an entirely different manner as well. Despite what Itami had told him, despite what he already knew of Akiko, plus what he suspected, it came as a shock to probe and feel nothing but the glow of her
wa.
Harmony. Whatever she was actually feeling toward him he could not say. He felt no aggression, no animosity, nothing negative whatsoever. And again he found himself wondering whether this was what the mysterious Masashigi Kusunoki had felt just before Akiko had reached out with
beijaho
and had freed him from life.

“They used the Colonel,” she said. “You must see that.” Eyes like stones. “They fed him their garbage and he ate it all up.”

“Whatever Sato and Nangi deserved had no bearing on the three innocent people you destroyed in the process,” he said, ignoring her line.

“Don’t talk to me of innocence,” she spat. “There is no innocence inside that company at all. Two are guilty; all are equally to blame.”

Nicholas thought of Miss Yoshida and he was as sad for this woman sitting not a handsbreadth away as he was for her. Look what can become of life, he thought. After this, there is no hope.