Floating City (24 page)

“A kind of shield.”

“Not really. Think of the design of an aerodynamic vehicle—a car or a plane. The force of wind is encouraged to slide up and over the vehicle. Think of us as that vehicle. I did much the same thing with the shock wave of the blast.”

Shidare was close now. His glossy black eyes focused directly on Nicholas. There was nothing there; not a hint of emotion nor a glint of intent. He cocked his head to one side. “I am told, Linnear-san, that you study aikido,” he said in the old formal manner. “Tell me, are you familiar with
jiyu waza?”

“Tachi—”

“It’s all right, Seiko-san,” Nicholas said. “The
oyabun
has spoken and so has chosen his path.”

But she did not want her warning to go unheeded. “This is not what we agreed upon, Tachi. I beg you not to flex your muscles. Not here. Not now.”

“Please be still, Seiko.”

Nicholas regarded Shidare with increasing interest. He had silenced Seiko with a simple phrase. Was she intimidated by him because of his stature as one of the three Yakuza
oyabun
on the Kaisho’s inner council, or was she merely respectful of a man she admired?

“I regret that I have no
gi
or
hakama
to offer you as traditional garb for aikido, but your bathing suit will do.” Shidare gestured with a long-fingered hand. “Shall we go outside onto the sand?”

“He’s been asleep for thirty-three hours, healing.” Seiko’s tone was more accusation than plea. “What is the matter with you?”

Shidare glanced at her briefly. “I told you to be still.”

They went outside, into the red sun that squatted just over the horizon. A late-afternoon breeze stirred the palm trees and cooled the humid air. The sky was that yellow-blue hue Nicholas associated with Vietnam; blue-green waves crashed onto a wide, white beach. He tried to calculate exactly where they might be. Then there was no more time for contemplation as Shidare, gliding forward in a blur, delivered a vicious
mune-tsuki,
a low blow to the abdomen that Nicholas only partially deflected.

Nicholas went down, and Shidare locked onto his right wrist, twisted it, and using Nicholas’s own rising momentum, spun him over and down. He felt some pain come into his body, but he welcomed it as a wake-up call. He had been asleep too long; the intense projection of
tanjian
energy that had shielded him and Seiko from the brunt of the small antipersonnel explosive had drained him to the point of total exhaustion. It was good to feel alive again.

He rolled, avoiding a kick that would otherwise have struck him in the ribs. He scissored his ankles, but Shidare danced away.

In what seemed like the same movement, the
oyabun
grabbed Nicholas’s right wrist with both his hands. Nicholas, still off-balance, took a chance, beginning a
tenkan,
pivoting on his right foot, dragging his left backward, putting enormous pressure on his lower back and thighs, reducing the leverage in his arms. But now, as he spun back and to his left, he had Shidare stretched out and vulnerable. Nicholas completed the turn, went into
tsugi ashi,
coming across in front of the
oyabun’s
body, sliding under his extended arms. Dropping to his right knee, Nicholas flicked his wrist, launching Shidare up and over him. At the apex of the arc, his left fist shot upward, burying itself in Shidare’s right side just above his kidney.

He could hear the
oyabun’s
surprised grunt of pain even before he hit the sand and skidded away. Nicholas rose, but Shidare was already regaining his feet, the grimace of pain quickly wiped from his face. He came at Nicholas with his right hand dragging behind him, the shoulder slightly lower, as if he were struggling to regain sensation.

He was very close when his right hand whipped in front of him and the miniature
naginata
swept toward Nicholas with appalling speed. The short, curved spear that the
oyabun
had somehow concealed beneath his baggy Italian suit was an instant from cracking Nicholas’s forearm.

Nicholas was left no other choice. He opened his
tanjian
eye and, projecting his psyche outward in one violent push, caused the
oyabun’s
arm to falter just long enough for Nicholas to counter the unexpected strike with a
tegatana.
Using the outer edge of his massed fingers as a sword blade, he chopped at the inside of Shidare’s wrist.

Shidare stepped back, a look of stupefaction on his face. His weapon fell to his side as his black crow’s eyes focused on Nicholas. Then the world seemed to shift on its axis, colors bleeding like neon in the rain, gravity and perspective warped out of time, and the space around them darkened with the fall of an unnatural night.

In disbelief, Nicholas saw the blank rock face of Shidare’s eyes cracking open. He had the sensation of spiraling downward. Beyond, swimming in their depths, he recognized the color–no color that established the astonishing kinship. Then he felt the projection from Shidare’s psyche, and a moment later their
tanjian
minds met in the space between them in a form of wary greeting invisible to all onlookers. It had been several years since Nicholas had come across another true
tanjian.
They were so rare that after Kansatsu, his
tanjian
mentor, had died, he had searched in vain for another skilled mind. To find one here, now, in such an unexpected place, was both exhilarating and profoundly disturbing.

Nicholas saw Shidare’s hand come up, the
naginata
extended between them. He raised his own arm and carefully closed his fingers over the end of the weapon. The
naginata
had once been used by itinerant priests who needed to defend themselves against bandits and other brigands. Now the flow of
tanjian
energy surged through the forged steel as, centuries ago, the Buddhist
ki
—the life force—had empowered it.

Shidare bowed abruptly, deeply and formally. “Tomoo Kozo was a fool,” he said in a clipped fashion that left no room for interruption or contradiction. “You did us all a service by killing him. I, for one, am in your debt.”

Seiko’s eyes, narrowed in confusion, moved from Shidare to Nicholas and back again. Just a moment ago these men had been determined antagonists, and now they were motionless, the fierce tension of hand-to-hand combat all at once drained out of them. Nicholas had opened his
tanjian
eye, of that she was certain. But what had happened after that? Wouldn’t he have used his psychic energy to defeat Tachi? But she sensed no victory here, no defeat, only two men moving toward one another.

Seiko touched Nicholas’s arm briefly, as if in the young
oyabun’s
presence she was abruptly shy. “Three times death has brushed you, Nicholas. Four is an evil number. In Chinese, it is synonymous with death.”

Nicholas looked past Shidare to Seiko. “Can’t we enlist your father’s aid?”

‘‘I’m afraid that’s out of the question.” Shidare gestured. “Let’s walk along the beach.”

They strolled down the white sand toward the turquoise surf. Salt and phosphorus were thick on the air, and Nicholas could see fishing boats far out on the water.

“In case you’re wondering, this is a part of Vung Tau, the Bay of Boats.” Shidare pointed. “We are about two hours by fast car southeast of Saigon. This is quite a cosmopolitan part of Vietnam. As far back as the fifteenth century, when Le Thanh Tong was busy dismantling the kingdom of the Champa, Portuguese merchant ships were plying their trade here. For decades afterward, foreigners in Vietnam came here for R and R.” He pointed behind them to a tile and stucco villa. “My house was built in the 1930s. Seiko’s father arranged its reconstruction for me a year ago.”

Wondering how much more there was to Seiko that he did not know, Nicholas said, “How well do you know her father?”

Shidare gave a grunt. “No one knows him well. I suppose that is his wish. He is like one of the old kings here, or a statue of a king, so far removed from what we consider human existence that it is difficult even to find a way to connect with him.”

Nicholas turned to Seiko. “Why won’t he help us?”

“Because he and I are cut off from one another.” There was a look on Seiko’s face that Nicholas had never before seen. “He has never been able to deal with my... emancipation. As far as he’s concerned, I should have been married long ago, with two children and another on the way. ‘Where is my grandson?’ he would shout at me. ‘You have destroyed my future!’”

She turned her head away from Nicholas, into the breeze off the South China Sea, and sunlight spun off her hair. “That was some time ago, of course, when we were still speaking. Now he’s remarried, and his twenty-one-year-old wife has given him two fine sons, who, I am certain, he believes will be fruitful and multiply. Thus will his future be salvaged.”

“He won’t even speak to you?”

Seiko shook her head. “He views the way I lead my life as a personal insult to him. As far as he’s concerned, he has no daughter.”

Nicholas looked past her to where Tachi Shidare strode beside them. Tachi shrugged, as if to say, “Yes, it’s sad, but it’s her karma. What can one do?”

“After this third attempt on your life, Seiko asked for my help.” Tachi had the easy Western style of an increasing number of young Japanese. This automatically made him more worldly but also, perhaps, less deeply dependent on the fundamental sensibilities that made his country unique. Nicholas, seeing the future encapsulated in this man, wondered how beneficial the trade-off would be for the Japanese and for the rest of the world.

“Good. The way things are going I can use all the help I can get,” Nicholas said. “To begin, everything I’ve learned so far points to a place known as Floating City.”

Tachi nodded. “I’ve heard of it, but like Seiko, I know of no one who has been there and survived. Even the mountain tribes are terrified of it. Trading is done through third-party intermediaries.”

“Like this woman Bay, who Chief Inspector Van Kiet shot to death.”

“Apparently.”

“I think we should talk to Van Kiet.” Nicholas felt the creaming surf rush over his bare feet and ankles, its soft coolness refreshing him. “Seiko, you have influence with him. Could you set up a meeting?”

“I could try, but Van Kiet despises me—I have no doubt because I am a woman doing what he considers a man’s job.”

“Far better to let me contact him,” Tachi said with a smile. “He’ll be willing to speak to you when I get through with him.”

It happened in the middle of the night when not even the rubber-booted fishmongers at Tsukiji market were up and about. Frankly, Naohiro Ushiba had sunk so deeply into the cynicism that was a byproduct of his disease he had ceased to believe that the police were capable of such an audacious gambit.

Ushiba had known Yoshinori for most of his adult life. Dubbed the “minister’s sword,” Yoshinori had had a say in the making—and, in several cases, the breaking—of the last eight prime ministers.

That he had apparently been under investigation for some time and had now been arrested said a great deal about how Japan was changing, and how even the most powerful figure of the leading Liberal Democratic Party was not beyond the clutches of the Tokyo prosecutors.

Ushiba had responded to a call from Tanaka Gin, the Tokyo prosecutor with whom he had been working on cleaning up the scandal-ridden investment and business sectors.

“We have detained Yoshinori,” Tanaka Gin said in his customary laconic style.

Ushiba’s heart raced. This would send enormous shock waves throughout the LDP and, indeed, all of Japanese politics. “On what charges?”

“Tax evasion, donations to secret political accounts he controlled, payments to businesses suspected of being owned by the Yakuza, possibly in exchange for services rendered or favors granted.”

Ushiba was so stunned he could think of nothing to say. His shock was not in the revelations but in that Yoshinori had been caught in these transactions.

“I may be out of line telling you, but this is the real thing,” Tanaka Gin continued. “We have Yoshinori with ironclad evidence. You know what that means: an ever-widening investigation. I can envision a mad scramble within the right-wing factions of the LDP to distance themselves from him, because who knows where this inquiry will lead. Proclaiming themselves the only guarantor of a democratic and free-market system won’t save them these days as it has in the past. This embarrassment can’t be swept under the rug like the Recruit and Lockheed scandals.”

“You have been investigating Yoshinori for some time.” It was not an accusation, but a statement of fact.

“I have many inquiries in my jurisdiction. You know that.”

Ushiba’s mind was racing. Tanaka Gin was not one to cavalierly bend the rules of his tempered-steel world. He had kept the Yoshinori investigation secret until the moment he had been ready to move. Now he was telling Ushiba more than he, Ushiba, really needed to know. What was his purpose in carefully laying this groundwork?

“This is something more than a courtesy call,” Tanaka Gin said. “Yoshinori wishes to see you. You and he are old friends, are you not?” Ushiba, recovering quickly, did not miss the warning tone in Tanaka Gin’s voice. He had spent enough time with the man over the past several months to know that he was exceedingly clever in his dogmatic way, and absolutely incorruptible. In short, he was quite astoundingly the right man in the right job.

“Yes,” Ushiba said. “He and my older brother were classmates. He’s like an uncle to me.”

“He loaned your brother money once, didn’t he?”

“That’s right. It was a personal favor. My brother’s business fell apart, leaving him with a mountain of debts. Yoshinori put him back on his feet. My brother repaid the loan within two years, but Yoshinori refused the interest fee. My brother bought him a car, instead.”

“We have that, too,” Tanaka Gin said without a trace of irony. “I’ll pick you up myself in twenty minutes. Will that be satisfactory?”