Floating City (17 page)

Nicholas lost himself inside her, unable to help himself as she was unable to quell her ecstasy. He tried to control his
tanjian
power, keeping it tightly bound, but it was desperate to be loosed and would not obey him. It emerged from undercover, wrapping them in a protective cocoon that kept their desire aflame for far longer than it would otherwise have been possible. Afterward, they slept as if dead.

It was deep in the night when they awoke, and it was like returning to consciousness after a high fever. They were both disoriented, but part of this must have been the desire to keep a hold on a state of being that was fast evaporating.

From the open windows a riot of sounds drifted up from the streets: chickens squawking, motorbikes revving, trucks rambling, rock ’n’ roll blaring from a club down the block, the chanting of a Buddhist prayer. A heady mixture of incense, grilling meat, perfume, vinegar and cloves, fermented salt fish, human sweat, and diesel fumes turned the atmosphere oppressive and cloying.

“Am I awake?”

He pushed damp hair off his forehead. “Yes.”

Her eyes filled with tears, and covering her bare breasts with her hand, she rolled away from him. “I’m sorry. I have no excuse for my actions. I—”

His hand closed over her haunch and he felt her shudder as she let go with a tiny cry. A muscle in her buttock quivered.

“Ah, Buddha, what is happening to me?” She was weeping now. “I wanted you so badly, so desperately, that I would have killed, I would have done anything—”

He put his palm across her mouth. “Hush, now.” He pulled her up against him, rocking her gently. “I felt it, too, even—yes, you were right—that evening at Narita.”

She leaned against him. “I feel as if I’ve drunk a quart of Scotch.”

Her breath came against his chest, and he could feel her heartbeat as if she were within him. Somewhere deep inside him he suspected that it was dangerous to allow himself this intoxication, to be this close to her, to involve himself in the form of magic he now believed she represented. On the other hand, the challenge was irresistible.

Apart from the fact that she was his best lead to Abramanov and the person or people behind Vincent Tinh’s murder, and thereby Abramanov, the psychic union they had undergone had made her precious to him.

Now he was confronted with someone who responded to his psychic emanations on a wholly elemental level. What did Seiko possess that allowed her this gift? Was it
koryoku?
Her sensitivity to auras seemed to fit Celeste’s description of Okami’s power—the edge that had allowed him to keep several steps ahead of his enemies for more than ninety years. And Nicholas had learned that, contrary to popular belief,
koryoku
was not a discipline one learned, but was rather a natural ability lying dormant in a select few people, waiting to be born.

The aftermath of so much energy had left a metallic taste in his mouth. What they needed was to return to normality as quickly as possible.

While he showered, Seiko went to an all-night bazaar. She brought back fruit, vegetables, and an enormous paper box of steaming noodles. She also had a handful of clothes for him that more or less fit: several sets of underwear, khaki trousers, a white, gauzy shirt, a pair of sturdy hiking boots, two pairs of sweat socks, a military-style, waist-length jacket.

She stir-fried the vegetables in sesame oil, and they ate in the yellow-and-chrome kitchen that looked as if it had been transplanted from an American house built in the early seventies.

They were both famished. They said nothing while they ate, eyed each other warily.

“You have some explaining to do,” Nicholas said as he pushed his empty plate away from him. “There are too many things about you I don’t know.”

“Then we’re starting from the same place.”

“No, you know quite a bit about me—that I’m ninja, and
tanjian
as well. You made it your business to find out about Justine and my relationship with her.”

“All right. I plead guilty.”

She sat facing him. Her face devoid of all makeup was quite striking, softer, with a hint of innocence that he already knew was spurious. But he could feel their attraction as if it were a rope that glittered in his mind. Unaccountably, he was reminded of a film he’d seen with two Spanish gypsies engaged in a blood feud. Armed with knives, their wrists had been bound by a single length of cord, isolating them to the radius of a small circle. In that circumstance only one could survive.

“I want to ask you to do something... unorthodox.”

Her mouth pursed, and she licked her lips. “Haven’t we already done it?”

“Perhaps, in a way. I want to look inside you.”

“No.” She stared down at the bits of food left on the plates. “It would be something like rape, wouldn’t it?”

“I don’t know. I’m not qualified to say.”

Her head came up and her eyes locked on his. “Why do you want to do this?”

He told her about
koryoku,
and a bit of why he was looking for it, that her reaction to the projection of his
tanjian
eye made him curious as to whether she possessed
koryoku.

“I’m not psychic,” she said. “I don’t have visions or premonitions. In that area, I am perfectly dull.”

“Let me try, in any case.”

“What will you see?”

“I can’t know that yet.”

“Everything? My life as it is, as it has been?”

“I don’t have that kind of power. No one does.” He nodded. “Give me your hands.” She slid them into his; the fingertips were chill. “Don’t be afraid.”

His
tanjian
eye opened and her eyes closed just as if he had given her a spoken command. He felt her relax as his psychic energy flowed into her. He surrounded her in a shell of warmth and protection, until she relaxed further; her brain was almost in delta rhythm, a dreaming pattern of deep sleep. Then he went in.

In objective time, his probe lasted no more than a tenth of a second, but it was enough for him to tell that she did not possess the Illuminating Power. He would have to find Mikio Okami for that.

He closed down his
tanjian
eye and her eyes opened slowly. “How do you feel?”

“Fine. I—feel good.” She squeezed his hands. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“No.”

“And my life...?”

“I know nothing more about you than I did before. I told you, I can’t read minds.”

She nodded, slipped her hands from his.

He looked at her curiously. “You’re not at all the woman I hired.”

“That was in Tokyo.” She rose, cleared the dishes. “Here in Saigon my Vietnamese side takes hold.”

“You said your father is Vietnamese. He’s still alive?”

She put a pot on for tea, got a paring knife, and went to work on the fruit. “Yes. He’s a politician, although that word doesn’t really apply here. Vietnamese politics is so inextricably bound up with influence peddling, selling your services to the highest bidder, and changing ideology at the hint of a coup that the word has lost all conventional meaning.” She looked up from the fruit, gave him an odd look. “My father has worked for many different people. He’s nimble, which is how he has survived and prospered for so long.”

“Is he why Van Kiet takes orders from you?”

“Partly.” She neatly skinned a longan. “But I have my own influence here.”

“Does that extend to knowing the woman I was with?”

“Bay? Yes, of course. She was well-known here as a rep for an international arms dealer.”

“She told me she was an independent go-between.”

Seiko laughed harshly. “This is Vietnam. No female could have that kind of power.”

“You seem to.”

“I never said I was independent. Even with my father’s influence that would be impossible.” She sliced a cinnamon apple, arranged it on a plate with the longan and two bananas sliced lengthwise. “Women have no rights of their own here. If they gain any respect at all, it is granted grudgingly and, I’m afraid, temporarily.”

“So you have two employers: Sato International and...”

Bringing the plate over to the table, she set it between them. “I work for a man named Shidare who has a number of interests here.”

“Shidare? Then he isn’t Vietnamese.”

“Not many of power are.” She shrugged. “But that’s the way it’s almost always been here. Nothing inherently Vietnamese has any permanent worth. We’ve only become important in world geopolitics because of our location. We’ve been a pawn for decades in a game we can barely imagine, let alone understand.”

“Now you sound bitter.”

“Am I?” She took a piece of longan between her fingertips, studied it. “Vietnam has spent all of its modern history being invaded by one people or another. We’ve been left with no culture. Our music is French, our cuisine is an agglomeration, and we all aspire to look American. What would you have me feel?”

“I can’t say. To be frank, I can’t imagine such a situation.”

“I suppose I feel it more acutely because I’m half-Japanese, and when I’m in Tokyo, I see the things I have yet don’t have at all.”

“Seiko, I can’t have you working for two companies at once. That’s a gross breach of security.”
And, to be frank,
he thought,
there’s a good deal of suspicion back in Tokyo that you aided and abetted Masamoto Goei, one of the team leaders of my Chi Project, who was caught trafficking in the Chi neural-net chip with Vincent Tinh.
Here in Saigon, with all that had occurred, he was finding it all too easy to forget about what Seiko might have been accomplice to in Tokyo.

“Will you fire me, then?”

“Only if you force me.” What good would firing her do? He needed to find out if she was telling the truth. Whom was she really working for besides him? It was imperative he give her the impression that he trusted her. If he didn’t, he feared he’d never find out the truth about her. “You’ll have to choose one job or the other.”

“I don’t want to leave Sato—or you,” she said almost immediately. “But I need—
we
need—an aegis for the time we’re here. You’ve seen the value of such an arrangement this morning. When we return to Tokyo, I’ll sever all other ties. Is that satisfactory?”

“Only if I can find the right person to run Sato-Tomkin here. Remember, Nangi sent you to Saigon to take Vincent Tinh’s place.”

Seiko nodded. “Agreed.”

Nicholas felt unaccountably relieved. What was it about this tough but strangely vulnerable young woman that drew him against his own better judgment? He knew he’d better find the answer to that question as soon as possible. In the meantime, he decided to extend his trust of her another notch—or, as Nangi would say, increase the length of rope she would fashion into an incriminating noose.

“When I was with Bay, she mentioned something curious. I think it must be a place: Floating City.”

Seiko’s head came around quickly. “What did she tell you about it?”

“Almost nothing. Just that where we were in Cu Chi was a halfway point between Saigon and the Floating City.”

“She should not have mentioned it.”

“She was dying, Seiko. She obviously thought it was important. It’s obvious you do, too. What is Floating City?”

Seiko got up, went to the refrigerator with the rest of the cut fruit. But after she’d put it away, she stood with her back to him. At last, she turned around.

“Some information is very dangerous here.”

“So Bay said. Yet she felt I needed to know.”

Seiko came back to the table, sat next to him. “Floating City is a kind of citadel.”

“Citadel?”

She nodded. “In the strict, old-fashioned sense. It’s an armed city, a place of virtual sovereign independence within Vietnam.”

“Have you been there?”

“No, I haven’t. And no one I know has.” She slipped her hand into his. “Some have tried to break in, others have made attempts to steal in. None have been successful.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because all have been found hanging upside down in the jungle perimeter of Floating City, their genitalia removed and stuffed into their mouths.”

There was silence for a long time. The usually raucous street sounds seemed dim and remote as if, like the poster of Jimi Hendrix, they belonged to a different time.

At length, he squeezed her hand. “You said Bay worked for an international arms dealer. What is his name?”

“Timothy Delacroix.”

Nicholas kept his face impassive but his mind was racing. Delacroix was a man he had heard about from Lew Croaker. Delacroix claimed to have done business with Vincent Tinh and a company he believed to be Sato International. As Nicholas understood it, Delacroix dealt in anything and everything in the ordnance game. And somehow he had access to even the most advanced American military weapons—the same inventory that Nicholas had pulled up on the computer screen at the Paris office of Avalon Ltd., where he had also encountered the entry for Torch 315.

“Is Delacroix here in Saigon?”

“Yes. It is rumored that he has regular dealings with Floating City.”

“You mean it’s his arms source. Interesting.”
Is there some connection between Delacroix and Avalon Ltd., Torch, and Floating City?
Nicholas asked himself.
Is this why the Kaisho directed me here?
He made a quick decision. “I want to meet him.”

All the softness, the innocence, seemed to have drained out of Seiko’s face over the last several minutes. “I wouldn’t recommend contacting him. Frankly, I wouldn’t recommend trying to get in touch with anyone connected with Floating City.”

“Why not?”

“Abramanov, the man you were supposed to meet, lives there. You were betrayed in the Cu Chi tunnels. By whom I do not know, but it would be foolhardy not to suspect that the people of Floating City saw through your cover as Mr. Goto.”

Nicholas knew she could be right, but what other choice did he have? He had to see Delacroix and find out if Floating City was Vincent Tinh’s connection with the dark underside of the Southeast Asian black market, where Sato-Tomkin’s corporate reputation had almost been destroyed. He had to find out what Delacroix knew of Avalon Ltd. and Torch 315.