Floating City (3 page)

For instance, who had constructed the Chi-Hive hybrid? Certainly Tinh had lacked the requisite knowledge and expertise in advanced computer design even to attempt such an audacious leap of faith. Indeed, merging two parallel but undoubtedly different precepts of cybernetics was a feat beyond an overwhelming majority of technicians. Sure, there were a million cyber-techies out there who could burrow their way into an existing system, but it would take a theoretician of remarkable talent and insight to do this job.

Whom had Vincent Tinh found for such a difficult task?

And then there was the question of Tinh’s curious death.

According to Chief Inspector Hang Van Kiet of the Saigon police, Vincent Tinh had been killed accidentally while trespassing on property he did not own. The said property was a vast creaking warehouse in the northern district that stored barrels of sulfuric acid, salt, gasoline, bicarbonate of soda, and potassium permanganate. In other words, it was a drug factory. Nicholas knew that Van Kiet was lying.

Last week Shindo had interviewed the chief inspector. Van Kiet, a wily-faced, slender Vietnamese with the yellow eyes and teeth of a back-alley predator, had doggedly kept to his story that Tinh’s death had been accidental. When Shindo had pressed him, he retaliated by intimating that because Tinh had trespassed it was far better to leave the matter where it lay, in a closed file.

Shindo had wisely not revealed that a friend of a friend had smuggled him a copy of the autopsy report, which showed that while Tinh had, indeed, been burned in a vat of sulfuric acid, the coroner had also extracted twenty-five heavy-caliber machine-gun bullets from his flesh. This was information, Shindo had decided, that Van Kiet was better off not knowing he possessed.

Shindo had sized up the chief inspector quickly—this was a necessity in his business—and reported that he suspected Van Kiet knew far more about Tinh’s demise than he was willing to share. Shindo made it abundantly clear to the chief inspector that he was willing to barter U.S. dollars for information.

Van Kiet’s face had closed as tightly as a vise and he had abruptly terminated the interview, an odd and downright discourteous reaction for a Vietnamese. This was very bad news, indeed. It meant that the chief inspector had been impolite out of a sharply honed instinct for survival.

Law and order had no meaning in present Saigon—at least none that would make sense to any civilized human being. This was a city—indeed, a country—so inured to the dogs of war that its society had been reshaped by the utter lawlessness that was one of war’s major byproducts. A ferocious form of negotiated anarchy ruled here. As a result, the police had less power than the army, which, in turn, had less power than the dark, mercenary forces that swirled at the periphery of society—hidden yet subtly defining it. These were men who, as children, had been bred and nurtured by the frenzied chaos of a centuries-old war waged variously against the Chams, Cambodians, French, Chinese, Russians, and Americans.

It had been a war that, like a great serpent shedding its glittering scales, periodically transformed itself until, at the end, it had become some perniciously mutated form of psychedelic happening: an absurd agglomeration of dropped napalm, mind-altering drugs, massed ordnance, high-decibel rock ’n’ roll, a cornucopia of destructive hardware, a release from poverty, mass confusion, a concentrated discharge of hatred, an eerie, macho game of chicken. In short, it had been the ultimate clash of high-visibility mass murder and animistic death concealed by night.

Every official in Vietnam was on the take; it was simply a way of life. But Van Kiet had demurred. Why? Fear was the only emotion strong enough to overcome avarice. There was, then, the ominous threat of corrupt power in very high places, pulling strings that made even the chief inspector of the Saigon police jump. That had put the investigation on a whole new and dangerous plane, which was why Nicholas was here now, and why Shindo resented him.

Shindo continued to smoke and did not look at Nicholas. He was slim, of average height with the closed, set face of an old man. It was a face quickly forgotten, even if seen at length; it had no distinguishing feature. This was a distinct asset in his line of business; others in his profession had to work at being invisible. He wore a white shirt, gray polyester slacks, and a dark patternless tie as narrow as a knife.

Nicholas, languidly drinking his beer, watched the cockroach, which was surely more at home in this third-world tomb than he would ever be. Dark light spun off its pale carapace, deforming it. He looked upon the insect benevolently, as a kind of compatriot from whom he could better learn to survive in this steaming jungle of a city. His visits to Saigon had been infrequent, unlike Shindo, who came here often. Shindo had many Vietnamese friends, acquaintances, and contacts.

From an adjacent room Nicholas heard the heavy rhythmic thuds of bodies on a bed, the animal grunts, the liquid sucking sounds of fierce coupling.

Shindo removed a gun from a holster at the base of his spine. It was an army .45 of American manufacture, nine years old, maybe more, and must have cost a small fortune, but he was right not to trust his life to any of the cheaper Soviet- or Chinese-manufactured handguns for sale in the back alleys of Cholon.

“I have bought a gun for you,” Shindo said unkindly. “Do you know how to fire one?”

“I do. But I never use firearms.”

Shindo grunted, ground the butt of his cigarette beneath his heel, lit another. “This is Saigon. It’s not like Japan, it’s not safe at all. Even a baby in diapers can have a gun.” He was clearly disgusted. “What will you do when one is aimed at you?”

Nicholas was a ninja, but he was also
tanjian,
a hereditary member of a syncretic psychic discipline far older than any martial art. The essence of Tau-tau was
kokoro,
the membrane of all life. Just as in the physical world the excitation of the atom was the basis for all movement—not only human, but light, heat, and percussion—so, too, did the excitation of
kokoro
give rise to psychic energy. Thought into action was at the core of the
tanjian
’s training.

Akshara and Kshira, the Way of Light and the Path of Darkness, formed the two primary teachings of Tau-tau. Nicholas had been trained in Akshara, but all the while Kansatsu, his
sensei,
was secretly embedding within him certain principles of the dark side. Some believed that it was possible for one highly disciplined mind to contain both Akshara and Kshira, but invariably, over the centuries, the dark side proved too powerful, overwhelming those adepts who sought to embrace it, corrupting them without their being aware of it, and so it was rarely taught.

However, as he delved deeper into Akshara, Nicholas began to understand the lure of Kshira, because it became clear to him that the Way of Light was somehow incomplete. This was how he had formed his theory that in the beginning of time Tau-tau was fully integrated, the light and dark hemispheres one far more powerful discipline. Somewhere during the centuries, the ability to harness Kshira had been lost.

For uncounted centuries the goal of
tanjian
adepts was to form Shuken, the Dominion. Shuken was the whole, the perfect integration of Akshara and Kshira. Without Shuken, which was the one key, adepts who attempted to study both paths of Tau-tau were invariably destroyed by the dark side. Thus had Kansatsu met his fate, overwhelmed by the potent evil of Kshira.

Was this, too, the fate Kansatsu had planned for Nicholas? Surely there was a time bomb ticking inside Nicholas’s head, readying itself to destroy him. And so, he was desperately trying to discover the secret of Shuken.

But Shuken had proved a highly illusive state. It was achieved only through
koryoku,
the Illuminating Power. Nicholas had been told that Mikio Okami possessed
koryoku,
which had been a crucial factor in his rise to power, his dominion over all other Yakuza
oyabun.
Because of this, Nicholas had a personal stake in finding Okami alive and in good health: he wanted to extract from him the secret of
koryoku
and, through it, Shuken.

“Put the gun away. You have other things to concern you,” Nicholas said, his thoughts returning to Shindo’s resentment of him.

Shindo, firing up another cigarette from the butt of the last, seemed as distant as a statue of Buddha. The weapon disappeared as if it had never existed, but it was clear from his movements that he had a certain facility with guns.

“Did you have friends in the war?” Nicholas asked, trying to connect with the PI. Shindo regarded him for a moment through a haze of curling smoke. He lounged against the greasy wall like a pimp in a brothel. “I knew people... on both sides.” He took a drag of his cigarette, blew smoke in a furious hiss. “I suppose that surprises you.”

“Not really. In your business—”

“Now you have real reason to distrust me.”

So that was it. Shindo felt Nicholas’s arrival on his turf was an expression of his employers’ lack of faith in him.

“If that was the case,” Nicholas said, “I would have terminated your contract immediately.”

Shindo’s shoulder came off the wall, as if he might evince some interest now. “What do you know of the war, anyway?”

Nicholas considered a moment. “So much has been written about how traumatized Americans were by the war, but it seems to me there was something else far more sinister at work, something most people either did not want to talk about or did not get. Kids from all over—from the inner-city ghettos and dying small towns—were given unlimited use of deadly weapons. They were trained to use submachine guns, hand-held rocket launchers, flamethrowers, and were told killing was more than okay; it was expected of them. I think for some of those men the war became an intoxication almost beyond imagining, a better high than pot or heroin; it was a mind-altering experience. But how could it be any different? These kids were thrown into a reality beyond law and endowed with the power of life and death.”

Shindo was watching him now through eyes slitted by smoke and emotion. “Yes,” he said after a time. “It was just like that.”

The couple next door had finished their sweaty exertions, and Nicholas could hear drifting in through the open window a few bars of a singer lamenting in Vietnamese-tinged French something about a soul alone and in torment. The sentiment, exaggerated by a voice filled with perverse sexual pathos, seemed perfect for Saigon.

There was a peculiar note in Shindo’s voice, and Nicholas wanted to identify it. “The war was very personal for you.”

Shindo walked across the room. “I had a lover. Once, he was a soldier. A grunt who served here.”

“And survived.”

“In a manner of speaking.” Shindo watched the glowing end of his cigarette. The song, building to a crescendo, cascaded through the room in a ghostly swirl. “In the end, he didn’t want to live anymore. He couldn’t. The demons the war had embedded in him were eating him alive.”

It was odd, Nicholas thought, how one could tell a perfect stranger what was otherwise unthinkable. “What happened?”

“What needed to happen.” Shindo seemed carved out of the humid night, as if he belonged here rather than in Tokyo. “I’ll tell you what’s funny. The people who were here, who were fighting the war—and now I mean both sides because, in the end, there was no difference, really—they
needed
the war. Insanity had become the norm for them, their reality, and they were sunk so far in it they couldn’t get out. They dreamed of the war—it drew them like a flame, fed their worst instincts, buried their humanity beneath a foul bed of killing lust—and they never wanted it to end.” His eyes lifted from the tiny ember to Nicholas’s face. “What happened was this: I killed him in the manner he asked me to.”

The contralto, nearly finished, was abruptly drowned out as another couple threw themselves into sexual convulsions, louder this time, so that Nicholas had the impression that the man was taking the woman quite violently up against their common wall. If they weren’t careful, they’d be electrocuted by the live wires as had a man and his whore earlier that day, or so the leering proprietor had informed them. Sex and death, never far apart, were almost indistinguishable in Saigon, Nicholas thought.

The cockroach was unperturbed, unlike Nicholas. But then it hadn’t understood Shindo’s story. The floor was vibrating to the ancient ritual, and Nicholas was sure he could smell female musk. He moved across the room, away from the disturbance, away also from the open window, which could announce his presence in this native area as surely as if he’d been centered in a gilt frame.

“He’ll be here soon, if he’s coming at all,” Nicholas said. “Time for you to leave.”

“I still think it’s a mistake for you to see this man alone. We know nothing about him.”

“I’m the one who knows the ins and outs of the neural-net chip. If he’s suspicious and quizzes you, we’ll be dead.”

“We can both—”

“No. He told me it had to be one-on-one. If I were him, I’d turn tail the moment I saw the two of us.”

From his new vantage point Nicholas could see a wedge of the teeming street.
Cyclos,
three-wheeled cab-bikes, whizzed by alongside old Soviet-built trucks belching clouds of noxious diesel smoke. Flocks of cyclists squeezed by on either side of the larger vehicles, and every so often a so-called marriage taxi rumbled by, old American gas-guzzlers from the fifties or sixties, finned like a spaceship, wide as a boat. Packs of ragged street urchins played dangerous games of pickpocket with businessmen seeking to open low-overhead, high-volume manufacturing in newly booming Saigon by day and an unbridled sexual smorgasbord in Cholon by night. Soldiers in their khaki uniforms rubbed shoulders with saffron-robed Buddhist monks, scantily dressed prostitutes, and a legion of amputees and the deformed. There were always the maimed in Vietnam, young adults scarred by the war and children deformed by its aftermath, dioxin-based chemical defoliants such as Agent Orange.