Angel Eyes (37 page)

He rose, went down the aisle to the door to the head. He knocked on it. "Tori?"

his hand twisted the turnplate, and the narrow door opened inward. He saw Tori hunched over the stainless steel John, her body racked with dry heaves.

When she turned to look at him, her eyes were filled with tears. "Get-Get the hell out and leave me alone!" she managed to say.

One of the Mall flight crew was coming up behind him, and Russell stepped inside, quickly shut the door.

"Oh, God!"

He knelt down beside her, held her head and shoulders while the spasms went on and on. At last she collapsed against him, and he winced as pain shot through the spot where the bull's kick had caught him.

He reached up, managed to get a paper towel soaking wet. He gently wiped her face, her lips, her neck. She used the water he gave her to rinse out her mouth.

Russell could feel her heat, her softness, combined with the peculiar tautness she possessed. He felt a stirring inside him, the accelerated beating of his heart, and cursed himself for being a fool.

How could he let this happen? She was soft and vulnerable, lying meekly in his arms. Strong, capable Tori Nunn. He had her just where every man would want her. But that wasn't it, not at all. What he was feeling was something else, something new, and because he was already at war within himself as to the nature of it, he was at a loss as to what to do.

He was aware of the cloudlike swirl of her golden hair, still matted here and there with the blood of the terrifying beast she had brought down. He could not put aside me memory of her vaulting over the barrier into the red dust of the corrida.

He was aware of the delicate curve of her cheek, so like-yet so unlike-her mother's.

Her lashes fluttered against the bare flesh at the hollow of his throat. Her breathing, the beating of her heart, the heat of the insides of her wrists so close to his own, merging. He had seen the glint of the long knife as she had vaulted atop the beast, as she had plunged the blade with a matador's unerring skill into its skull. Jesus, but he had been frightened.

He had never known the meaning of terror until that moment. And something, he was certain, had happened to him then. In the instant when he was showered with the beast's blood, was assured of its death and, in consequence, the continuation of his own life, he had come to understand what ten thousand sleepless hours closeted in the Mail's operations room could not provide.

At last, he knew what it meant to have his head thrust down a hole, black, dank, menacing, and in that horrific darkness, come face to face with himself. So close to death, the veneer he had worked so assiduously to apply to his life had been stripped away. He had always considered that veneer to be a perfect confluence of sophistication, urbanity, and cunning. The exact mix required for the complex dance of quid pro quo the director of the Mall was required to perform.

But now he saw that he could no longer live with the true nature of the life he had built for himself: the dense macabre, a malevolent minuet designed and dictated by Bernard Godwin, the man to whom he paid constant homage. The man who owned Russell Slade completely.

And at last he came to the core of it all: he had been certain that he had challenged Cruz to prove Bernard Godwin wrong, to prove himself to Tori; but in the end he understood that he had faced death for himself. Because he could no longer stand himself, the old Russell Slade, boy genius, perhaps, but a man filled with insecurity at not being part of the veteran network presided over by Godwin, a man on the outside, forever cut out of the field operative's loop-isn't that why he had been so intensely jealous of Tori? Yes, Russell Slade had been just the man Bernard Godwin could subtly manipulate in almost any way he chose.

The horrific truth was that by appointing him director of the Mall, Godwin had made it possible for him to continue running his own agendas while giving the appearance of having moved back into an advisory capacity. Russell was filled with shame.

He felt Tori's arms around him, her fists clutching him, and something inside himself gave way. He put his head down, much as the beast in the corrida had done for the matador's killing sword, and his lips sought hers.

It was not a conscious gesture. Dazed by the ramifications of his revelation, Russell hardly knew what he was doing. His lips came down over Tori's, he felt hers soften, and searched for her tongue with his.

Then her mouth broke away. "No," she gasped. "No, please." Their eyes locked, and Russell was shocked not by how beautiful her eyes were, but by how he had never really noticed their beauty before. They were like misty jewels, translucent, luminous, a blue that was not truly blue, a green that was not quite green, and that special color appeared to him now like a doorway through which, more than anything, he longed to step.

"Tori-"

"Russell, I-"

The moment had seemed so right, but now he recognized how wrong it had been. He had the strong sense that if he insisted, she would give in, he had felt her melting against him. But if she did acquiesce, he knew that he would never know why. Was it vulnerability, despair, a need to be close to someone after two terrible losses? Or was it something else, a feeling, perhaps, that at some point she would not be able to control?

It was of paramount importance for Russell to know-and for him to be assured that Tori, too, knew what she wanted. Otherwise, what was the point?

Russell rose, pulled her to her feet. He did not say he was sorry, because he wasn't. He left her without a word, went forward to speak to the pilot and go over their route to Tokyo, feeling it was important for him to be aware of these things in case anything went wrong along the way. He always liked to know where he was. Which was ironic, considering the whirl of conflicting emotions flooding him.

When he returned to the main cabin, Tori was back in her seat. He ordered sandwiches and hot coffee, and when they were served, he and Tori consumed it in great quantities while she briefed him on her expertise: the tangle of modern-day Japan.

"The central issue in understanding the Japan of today," Tori said, "is to keep in mind that no one person is ultimately in charge of the country. Absolutely no one in America seems to get this, not the President, nor anyone on Capitol Hill, in business, or, God knows, the Pentagon. They're all so mystified by this new Japan that they had such a major hand in creating, and so self-righteously pissed off when nothing much happens in response to their requests.

''Putting aside for the moment the fact that they're not asking the right questions, what they're all looking for-and not finding-is a place where the buck stops. The truth is that no one in Japan will take responsibility for the buck stopping because, more often than not, buck-stopping is synonymous with loss of face.

"Japan's society is unique in all the world-in all history, for that matter. It is a country 'governed'-although that's too precise a term for so amorphous a concept-by a loosely knit organic conglomerate of entities including the prime minister and his ruling party, the Diet, the samurai bureaucracy, the corporations of the business world, and the Yakuza. The death of the great Tokugawa shogunate at the dawn of the Meiji era in the late 1860s, the nineteenth-century intervention of the Western world, and the post-World War Two MacArthur constitution, made certain this uneasy alliance would continue into the twenty-first century."

Russell watched her while she talked. He wondered what she must be feeling, how deep the facade she presented went. She appeared quite herself now, as if the incident between them had never happened. But could that be so? Could anyone be in such iron control of their emotions?

He had to admit to himself that he found Tori Nunn to be a complete enigma. She was like a code to which he was increasingly drawn yet could not break. Being close to her, working with her in the field, had given him no insight, no new understanding of her underlying psyche. Instead, he had merely bedazzled himself.

His attraction to her was suddenly so strong it had the potential to become an obsession. Up until now, Russell Slade's sole obsession had been the Mall. When he had been appointed director, Bernard Godwin had taken him to dinner, during the course of which he had said. Now you 'II know what it means to have a mistress, one who occupies you heart and soul. I trust you will be up to the task of managing her.

Russell thought that because he had uncovered some of the lies his mentor had so easily told him, he had Bernard under control. But just the opposite was true. Bernard Godwin had attached invisible strings to him-just as he had to Tori-and he had been pulling those strings all along. Of course Tori and I fought like brother and sister, Russell thought. Bernard made certain that both of us saw him the same way: as a father figure. We were both "bred" to please him.

And now, watching her explain to him the inner workings of Japan, he knew he wanted to draw closer to her still. He saw how she still idolized Bernard, how she would do anything he asked. Russell, feeling his heart filling up with emotion, wondered when he would cut the strings Bernard had so painstakingly attached to her. He knew he must begin by telling her the truth about Bernard, that he was ready to sacrifice her if it came to it. But not now; Tori was not yet ready to hear anything negative about Bernard Godwin, her spiritual father. Besides, Russell thought, on a purely selfish level, there were more important matters to resolve.

In the electric moment when he and Tori had been closeted together, everything had changed. A door had been unlocked, and once opened, it could never again be closed. The world was different now, at least the world as Russell Slade knew it. And, in the coming days, he would have to determine just what he was going to do about it.

Tokyo. They had traveled almost nine thousand miles on the transatlantic route, touching down for refueling in Cartagena, Santo Domingo, and Frankfurt. They were only through Japanese Customs and Immigration, and Russell was already feeling like an alien. The Japanese had developed the uncanny ability of being extremely polite while firmly keeping you at arm's distance. And by so doing, they neatly managed to lock you out of anything of importance. Everything here was form; there was no substance. It was as if the entire country were in the process of enacting a gigantic Kabuki play.

Smiles without meaning; cardboard bows; saying yes when they meant no; an obsession with minute detail while talking around the edges of major issues. Could there be a more unfathomable people, a more opaque culture on the face of the earth? Russell asked himself on the long, traffic-choked drive in from Narita Airport. Well, the Chinese, yes, of course, but in a fit of self-mutilation, the Chinese had dealt themselves out of international play for years to come, so they didn't count.

"We going directly to Hitasura's?" Russell asked.

"No. I think it would be advisable to learn a bit more about hafnium first. If Hitasura is Estilo's buyer, I want to go into the first meeting with him with as much armament as I can."

For once Russell found himself in agreement with Tori. And, much to his surprise, it wasn't an altogether disagreeable feeling.

"This guy Deke is a little weird," Tori said.

Russell glanced at her. "How weird?"

"You tell me," Tori said as she led him down the steps into a grimy tattoo parlor somewhere in the incomprehensible tangle of Shinjuku. The sun was out, but you'd never know it this deep in the heart of Tokyo. There was only reflected light here, a colorless illumination bounced off ten thousand panes of glass.

Russell peered at phoenixes, dragons, lissome seminude ladies, spiders, serpents, warriors out of history and demons out of myth. All were on display in astounding detail on the walls of the shop, which was lit with sodium lamps, giving it the appearance of a highway or an industrial park.

A Japanese who improbably seemed to be in his late teens looked up when they walked in. He made no sign of recognition, returned to his work on the back of a very heavy individual. He had a punk's spiky haircut and a laborer's ink-stained hands. He wore sandals, long-legged Day-Glo surfer shorts, and a T-shirt cut off just above the navel that had pepperdine U. volleyball team emblazoned across the back.

"Greetings from Tokyo General, dudette," he said without looking up.

"Howzit, Deke?"

"Bitchin'." Deke dipped a small circle of needle-sharp wooden picks into colored ink, applied it beneath the skin. He was an artist with his canvas. "As ever."

Tori stood behind him. ''Got a problem for you.''

"Solution's my middle name, dudette."

Tori displayed the dark metal pellet in its plastic envelope. "A to Z." When he nodded, she slipped it into the pocket of his shorts.

"One hour," he said. "I just opened." Deke opened for business after noon, worked late into the early hours of the morning. He dipped the picks into the ink, applied it. "Go get a milkshake or something, you dudes are making my client nervous."

When they returned, just over an hour later, there was no one in the tattoo parlor.

"Where'd this weirdo split to with my evidence?" Russell said suspiciously.

"Deke's space goes all the way to the next street," Tori told him. "In the back of the shop is his lab."

"Isn't this kid a bit young to be running sophisticated diagnostic tests? I mean, he might set his diapers on fire."

Tori smiled. "Deke is young," she said. "But he's also brilliant. Don't let his age prejudice you. In Japan it's often best to keep an open mind."

At that moment Deke appeared. He had on thick rubber gloves, a heavy apron, and was grasping the pellet at the end of a pair of metal tongs. Around his neck was a filtering mask. He peered at Tori. "You still playing v-ball, dudette? We got a bitchin' game going this P.M."

"I'm a little short on play time this trip," Tori said. "Catch you next." She nodded at what he was holding. "First, you scope the traces of white shit on the pellet? "

"Colombian, mon. Happenin' premium stuff." Deke smacked his lips. "Mmm mmm good."