Angel Eyes (48 page)

"But Hitasura will suspect my involvement." Big Ezoe was acutely aware of Koi as he stood beside her, aware of the enormous power of her wa, and he felt as gratified as an artist with his masterpiece. "It is only inevitable. Sooner or later, he will come. And when he does, he will not be alone."

"So? Let him come." That extraordinary expression was reforming on her face, the confluence of ecstasy and despair that had about it now an air of expectancy. The air around Koi seemed to alter, as it does just before the onset of a storm. "I will welcome Hitasura with open arms."

With an enormous sense of satisfaction, Big Ezoe could see what happened: he had made of Koi a warrior whose scars he had annealed by his own form of cauterization, until, unlike Fukuda, Koi had absolutely no room for the soft emotions of pity, sympathy, or compassion.

And Big Ezoe, giving a tiny shudder, thought with enormous satisfaction, Yes, you bastard Hitasura, come. I have a surprise for you. I want you to meet my darting creation. My hard machine.

NINE

TOKYO

Tori was once again studying the photograph of Ariel Solares as he stood, smiling into the camera lens, in the tiny park near his house in San Francisco.

She kept studying the people in the background-the man and, farther away, the couple-as if in their faces she could discover what it was about the photo that Ariel had found so significant. But she could not make them out. She turned the photo over, saw the date it was taken digitally printed on the back, March 21 of this year. Was the date important? Not according to the Eyes Only dossier on me manufacture and distribution of the Japanese supercocaine she had been shown at Mall Central.

Russell and Bernard Godwin had been desperate to bring Tori back into the Mall because Ariel had determined that the Japanese had created this lethal new form of cocaine, and were beginning to disseminate it. Bernard wanted her to find out why. But Tori saw now that this was not the only question she needed to find an answer to. The new coke was in some way bound up with the hafnium pipeline. When the coke left the factory in the llano negro of Colombia, so did the hafnium. But what happened to the soft cell when it reached Japan?

And who was manufacturing it? From Deke's tests of the residue on the hafnium pellet Russell had taken from the llano negro factory, it was clear the coke being refined there was "clean." If Estilo was telling the truth about Hitasura being the buyer of his soft cell, then Ariel's intelligence was correct: the killer coke was being manufactured here in Japan. And Hitasura would know where and why.

Tori closed her eyes, went into prana, deepening and strengthening her breathing, slowing her pulse. She had to admit to herself that because her trust in Estilo had been shaken, her big fear was discovering that Hitasura was involved in what the Mall had termed "Ice Cream," the supercoke. If that turned out to be so, another important link from her past, her network, would have proved unreliable.

She knew that Russell must be impatient for her to begin interrogating Hitasura on the subject. But the crisis of Hitasura's imminent war with Big Ezoe-and the reemergence of Fukuda-was providing Tori an excuse for procrastination.

Part of her wanted more than anything to steal a moment, to take Hitasura aside, to get it over with and find out the truth. But it was not only her fear that made it impossible; this was Japan, and the iron dictates of custom made such a direct Western approach unthinkable. Tori knew that she would have to find just the right moment, just the right way to approach Hitasura.

Russell came up to her while Hitasura was receiving last-minute information on the mobile phone. "Isn't it about time you told me the origins of your blood feud with this female assassin, Fukuda?"

'' She tried to kill me once,'' Tori said, but Russell only stared at her. It's only fair I tell him everything, she thought. "Do you remember what I was doing for you when I got hurt?"

Russell nodded. "Sure. You had picked up the improbable rumor of a joint Japanese-Russian venture hidden from even the ubiquitous Japanese bureaucracy. To be frank, I thought it was a waste of your time and the Mall's money to keep you on it, but Bernard insisted. You know how fanatical he is about the subject of the Soviets. Even more so now, if that's possible." He looked at her out of his penetrating blue eyes. "I wish I had held my ground on that one. You'd still have both your hips."

Tori studied him for a moment, as if she could not make up her mind about him. "That's kind of you to say, but the fact is I wouldn't be able to do physically what I can do now without the aid of the Japanese-designed prosthesis, so you see, in a way you did me a favor." She gave him a tentative smile, as if she were afraid to allow him-and herself-to see what she was really feeling.

''Anyway, it seemed there was something to the rumor of the Japanese-Russian venture,'' she said, ''though I ran into Fukuda before I got in deep enough to find out what exactly was happening."

''How did you happen to meet her? "

''There was a man,'' Tori said. ''He was no more than a boy, really. Just twenty. But there was something about him, both personally and professionally. I had heard of him through Deke, who said he was tsukuru-hito, a 'maker.' In street slang, that means a go-getter, someone who is admired, who has great hara, great inner strength, which the Japanese prize above everything else."

"Was this young man Yakuza?"

"Now that was the most interesting part," Tori said. "He wasn't. And yet it seemed, because he was tsukuru-hito, many Yakuza sought his advice in complicated affairs of business. I suppose, in ways to circumvent international law, because the tsukuru-hito was an international lawyer. He called himself Yen Yasuwara, though it seemed to me he had taken that first name as a kind of joke. Yen was like that, sardonic, always laughing at the world through which he moved with such ease, though always in a dark way.

"He despised convention, an odd bias for a Japanese. And he hated burying his true nature beneath the countless layers that convention required him to form in order to survive in Japanese society.

"But Yen's goal wasn't to survive, it was to succeed, to blaze like a shooting star across the firmament of the Japanese business community. I use those words because of their poetic nature. Yen used them, and it's essential you get a complete picture of him.

"Yen once confided in me that his dream was to put together an international deal of such proportions that it would stand all Japan on its ear."

"Like maybe a Japanese-Russian deal?"

Tori nodded. ''That's why I went to see him. 'What this country needs is a swift kick in the ass,' he told me after I got to know him well, and I'm certain he meant it."

"Just how well did you get to know him?" Russell asked.

"Don't get ahead of the story," Tori told him. "Yen worked at Budoko Associates, an exclusive Tokyo law firm. It isn't large, but its prestige is first-rate. Yen came from the right family-his father and Budoko's senior partners were born in the same Honshu village; he went to the right schools, and got the right grades. In short, until the moment he was hired by Budoko, Yen was the very paradigm of Japanese convention.

" 'Then,' he told me, 'when I got where I wanted to go, I started the process of fomentation.' ''

"Fomentation?" Russell said. "What the hell did he mean by that?"

''I to not certain,'' Tori said. ''But making an educated guess, I'd say that Yen wanted to in some way undermine the modern system of Japanese society. Like the author, Yukio Mishima, who committed ritual suicide to protest what he saw as the softening of the powerful Japanese martial culture. Yen saw the problems hidden within the astounding economic successes of modern-day Japan. I think he saw the Japan of today as complacent. I think he was sickened by the sight of his countrymen running all over the world, buying out Tiffany's, Fred's, Cartier's, Ungaro's, you name it, gathering up real estate, building resorts-mini-Tokyos-all over Hawaii, unwrapping their endless rolls of money to snap up anything that caught their fancy. "The Japanese,' Yen said to me, 'are the technology-rich Ugly Americans of the fifties, the oil-rich Arabs of the seventies. Now we are no better than the rednecks of any culture. Progress has made a shambles of us.' "

"Christ, just what was this philosopher turned international lawyer up to?" Russell said.

"Now you're beginning to see the attraction," Tori said. "But there was another side of Yen that you wouldn't be able to see. He was enormously charismatic in a physical sense. I didn't count on that when I first approached him.

"I did it in the prescribed method. I manufactured a seemingly accidental meeting while he was away for the weekend in Kyoto. I did my homework, and contrived to bump into him on the bullet train.

"He was exceptionally charming. He had this way of engaging you in conversation that was actually a two-way street. He thrived on dialogue, not, as is true with so many people, in telling you what he thought.

"He was on his way, he told me, to the Kokedera, the famous Moss Temple, whose magnificent garden is composed of forty varieties of moss. Unless you've been there, you cannot imagine the peacefulness of that place: the mist dusting the pellucid lake, the sunlight filtered through the tall cryptomeria and black pines, spreading a light like fairy dust over the low-mounded emerald moss. It's a heavenly spot, and a holy one as well. When you're at Kokedera, it's impossible to imagine time moving. It's as if the temple's reality is so powerful it defeats even time's march.

"I don't expect I'm describing this adequately," Tori said, ''but I suspect that the effect of that singular place had something to do with how quickly I was drawn into Yen's universe. Understand, there was nothing boyish about him, save his looks. And even then the lack of lines in his face only served to keep at bay the hardness that sooner or later life inflicts on most countenances.

"At that moment, in that spot, Yen seemed perfect, just as the moss garden was perfect, almost as if he were an extension of the spirit that pervaded the place. He was irresistible."

"Tori-"

"Oh, Russ, don't tell me it's never happened to you. Haven't you ever found a woman irresistible?"

"Not while I was on the job."

Tori automatically thought of Ariel and the legacy he had left to her safekeeping. "You mean pushing the papers around your desk? I'm hardly surprised."

"Thank you very much."

"Sorry," she said. "You don't deserve that. But the old Russell Slade, the one I used to know, was so judgmental-and thought himself so perfect."

"God, no, never perfect."

"But that's just the mask you'd put on."

"Did I?" Russell was surprised. "It seems you're describing another Russell Slade."

Tori looked at him. "In a way, that's true."

"It seems to me he died somewhere in Machine-Gun City. In the red dust."

"Yes." Tori looked at him. "I never told you how you surprised me that afternoon at Cruz's apartment, when you took the lead and won him over by being the famous mole hunter." Russell laughed and Tori joined him, for the first time realizing that she was enjoying his company. "And then in the jungle, and in the corrida. I thought you'd fall apart-that's why I coerced Bernard into ordering you to come into the field with me. I was sure I could humiliate you.''

His blue eyes had turned dark. ''Just as I humiliated you when I severed you from the Mall for my own selfish reasons.''

"It almost seems as if Bernard deliberately set us against one another." And she was suddenly aware again of Estilo's story of how he had set the German twins against one another, destroying their intimate bond. But this was so different. Of course, Bernard hadn't meant her or Russell any harm. Yet it was odd how the story seemed to remain in her mind.

Russell seemed to think about what she had said for some time. He was about to say something, abruptly changed his mind. "It's funny the curves life throws you," he remarked. "No matter how organized, how ready you are, you're never prepared for what happens."

"Yes," Tori said. "That's what happened to me with Yen." She waited for him to make a comment, but he was silent. ''We had a glorious afternoon," she went on, "and then we parted company. But not forgetting why I had made contact, I doubled back and followed him.

''It was twilight, near the dinner hour at that time of the year, and I followed Yen into a restaurant in Kyoto. Someone was waiting for him."

"Don't tell me. It was Fukuda."

"Yes. She and Yen were having an affair."

"Dear God."

"You're not wide of the mark," Tori said. "Once I determined the nature of their relationship and that Yen's real purpose in coming to Kyoto was to meet his girlfriend, I backed off.

"But I got some background on Fukuda, and I began to worry. The more I found out about her, the worse the situation seemed to be. I already knew enough about Yen that I realized I couldn't let him go. If there was a Japanese-Russian connection, surely it was flowing through him. But how was I going to avoid Fukuda?

"Back in Tokyo, I contrived another ploy. I approached Yen again, this time as a client. Remember those dummy corporation papers I asked you for?''

"Yeah," Russell said. "They put our myths department in a snit. They worked straight through the July Fourth holiday for you."

''I tried to keep our relationship strictly business,'' Tori said, "but Yen wouldn't let me. He even admitted to seeing Fukuda. He said it didn't matter. He wanted me, and no one was going to stop him."

"Sensitive guy."

"The odd thing was, he was sensitive," Ton said. "Just selectively so. He was like a searchlight. Whatever was illuminated by his attention was so well taken care of. But as soon as the beam moved on, the subject was left alone in the dark."

"Like Fukuda."

Tori nodded. ''Yen said the affair was winding down, at least as far as he was concerned. It was fun, he admitted, getting off on the danger. Until it got too intense. Perhaps that was his way of giving me a warning for what I might conceive of as our future together."