Floating City (39 page)

“How are things in your world of politics?” Ken said at length. “It seems to me that a Daijin must be adept at that game in order to gain his position and keep it.”

“To be truthful, it’s become wearying. Too many factions, too many battles to be fought on too many fronts.”

“You’re getting old,” Ken said in his blunt fashion. “People who feel the way you do should know better.”

“Know better?”

Ken nodded. “You should get out before you make a fatal mistake and the force of your own politics runs you over.”

Ushiba suppressed his natural instinct toward anger at such brash and impolite analysis. The fact was, if he were to be brutally honest with himself, Ken was being considerate. He was telling Ushiba what Ushiba was too prideful to recognize on his own.

“You’re right, of course.” Ushiba put away his half-eaten plate of sushi. His appetite wasn’t what it had been even six months ago. “When the game becomes a burden, the rules change and the hunter is most in danger of becoming the hunted.”

“Animals are bred to smell blood,” Ken said, one cheek distended with fish, rice, and ginger.

Ushiba smiled. “I remember when that could be said of me.”

“It still could, if you want the rewards of the game badly enough.”

Ushiba looked at him with renewed interest. Ken must surely be in his early forties now. Despite this, his face remained unlined, his hair as dark as it had been when he was twenty. His passions certainly burned just as brightly as they ever had.

Ushiba straightened his back, unmindful of the pain that emanated from his gut. “One is born smelling the blood.”

“That’s right,” Ken said, finishing off his sushi. “It’s bred in the bone, taken in with mother’s milk.”

It was an odd phrase, and something in his tone caused Ushiba to wonder whether Ken was referring to Kisoko. She was Mikio Okami’s sister, after all. She must have been born smelling blood, too.

Ken pointed to Ushiba’s food. “Are you going to finish that?”

Ushiba shook his head and watched with dismay as Ken reached over and happily began to chomp the sushi. One had to make allowances for people not used to the conventions of the outside world.

“So what brings you here, Daijin?” Ken said around a mouthful of food. “You obviously need my mother’s advice. Which faction is plaguing you today?”

“There is someone who has made a mistake,” Ushiba said carefully. Kisoko knew of his secret affiliation with the inner council because she was the Kaisho’s sister, but Ken was another matter entirely. “A grievous, headstrong error that must be corrected.”

“We’re talking now of punishment, I imagine.”

There wasn’t much that got away from the man. “Punishment, yes. But it is difficult for me because of my... relationship with this man.”

“He deserves punishment?”

“Without question.”

Ken nodded as if he took the Daijin’s verdict on faith. “Then devise a punishment to fit the crime.”

“I wish I could. But the truth is my mind is blank.”

Ken was silent for some time as he consumed the last of the Daijin’s sushi. At length, he said, “Come upstairs with me. I want to show you something.”

They took the small elevator at the back of the house to the second floor where Ken’s private dojo and weapons collection took up almost half the space.

The old windows had been replaced when the dojo had been built. In their stead, oversize panes of glass had been installed that let in light without sacrificing any of the privacy that both Kisoko and her son held dear. The highly polished hardwood floor gleamed. Ranged along one wall were rows of
katana, dai-katana,
the large samurai’s swords;
wakizashi,
long knives for committing seppuku; shorter
tanto;
and other more esoteric weapons, some of which Ushiba had never seen before.

Ken rolled himself to the wall and, using his heavily muscled arms, levered himself out of the wheelchair and onto the floor. He tucked his useless legs into the lotus position, then moved on his knuckles, his muscles rippling tightly. His torso acted as a pendulum, swinging back and forth, making his progress seem smooth and effortless. Nothing, Ushiba knew, could be further from the truth.

Ken set himself down in front of a series of
kyokiwood dansu,
long low chests made to house
katana.
Ken opened a top drawer, pulled out a spherical object wrapped in silk. As he unwrapped it, Ushiba padded in stocking feet to where Ken sat and knelt beside him.

Ushiba watched in wonder as the object cradled in Ken’s palm was revealed. It was a skull, burnished by age to a deep ocher and sienna. It gleamed, so Ushiba knew it had been periodically waxed in order to keep it from becoming brittle.

“This,” Ken said, holding the artifact aloft, “is the skull of Masamoto Musashi, whom I consider the finest swordsman in the history of Japan.” Musashi had gained worldwide notoriety for writing
The Book of Five Rings,
a seventeenth-century text on
kenjutsu,
the technique of swordsmanship and strategy.

Ken’s nimble fingers turned the skull around. “Do you know that it was Musashi’s closest friend who stripped his head of flesh and viscera and sold the skull? It was all he had to keep himself alive.” Around the skull rotated, revealing in turn each noble view. “Was he a villain, Musashi’s friend, or merely a victim of expediency? Or, again, did he do Musashi the ultimate service by seeing to it that his memory would not be buried with him, but would remain alive and revered centuries later?”

Ken brought the skull down, delivering it into Ushiba’s hands. “Hold it, Daijin. Feel Musashi’s power undiminished by either death or time. Is this not the meaning of immortality?”

The skull weighed more than Ushiba had imagined, its density perhaps due to its aura of power and influence. Ken was right. In its contours, indentations, and ridges Ushiba could visualize the complex electrical patterns that had made Musashi’s brain unique, and for this moment, he was without the pain of his cancer or the certain knowledge of his imminent death. Here was, as Ken had said, existence beyond death. And if it was not existence precisely as humans knew it, perhaps it was something more, beyond the mind’s imagining.

“It has moved you, Daijin.” Ken made no attempt to take back the skull. “You feel what I feel. This close to Musashi there is no suffering.”

“No.” Ushiba was transfixed. “There is no pain, no death, no time.”

“Daijin,” Ken said quietly, “you must punish Akira Chosa for his crime.”

For a moment, Ushiba, dazed by the aura pushed out by Musashi’s skull, did not believe what he had heard. Then he raised his gaze to Ken’s face and knew there had been no mistake.

“How did you know?”

“Intuition fed by fact. Chosa was here not too long ago to see my mother. I believe she might have killed him had I not intervened. She thinks he ordered Mikio Okami killed.”

“Perhaps she knows something I do not.” The skull was abruptly too heavy for him, and he transferred it back to Ken’s waiting hand. “Too many people are eager to claim responsibility for an act that remains unfulfilled.”

“And yet the Kaisho no longer sits in the seat of power. He has been banished. Isn’t that enough to gain stature from the act?”

Ushiba nodded. “In our less-than-perfect world I imagine it is.” He looked searchingly at Ken. “Why did Chosa come to see Kisoko?”

“To ask her what she knew about Okami’s relationship with Col. Denis Linnear... and what she knew about Koei.”

“Koei? Why would he want...?”

“Punish him.” Ken was staring at the skull of Musashi. “Who better than you to devise the fitting penance.”

“I told you, my mind is blank.”

“Then may I suggest a path.” Ken’s soft eyes swung from contemplation of the skull to appreciation of the Daijin’s beautiful face. “It is sitting right in front of you, Daijin, like Musashi’s skull. If you see it, you will recognize the path.”

“What...?”

“Your friend, the Tokyo prosecutor. Tanaka Gin.”

Being in London at this time of the year was like living inside a cloud bank. Mist rose from the Thames, obscuring the office buildings of the City and putting the enormous ravens of the Tower into a pet. There had been a bombing in the City that morning, and Harrods had been cleared by IRA threats of another. As it was, the streets around the blast site were cordoned off while work crews labored to sweep the debris away and forensic specialists combed the twisted girders of the bank to discover the methodology of the terrorists.

The perpetual mist sometimes lifted to reveal the scraggly tops of bare trees in Hyde Park and St. James’s, sometimes occluded into a rain so invariable it seemed to have no beginning, no end. Through it all, indefatigable Londoners plowed through the slick streets and stalled traffic, their black umbrellas as crisp and neat as public school uniforms. Rising and falling like a tide from the underground, they performed their chores with the stoic precision of a drill team.

For all that, parts of London seemed to have taken on a decidedly American look. Whereas once Piccadilly Circus had been both tacky and quintessentially English, it now sported enough American stores hawking their wares at a frenetic pace to make a fair stand-in for New York. It had gone beyond the pale, from garish to a kind of queasy forgery, and like all counterfeits it had taken on a frightening life of its own.

Once again, Vesper had surprised Croaker. He had expected her to go straight from Heathrow to Hammersmith, where Malory Enterprises was located. Instead, he had followed her into Belgravia, where she got out of her taxi on the King’s Road, then walked southwest to Eaton Square. The town house she entered had an excellent view of the spires of Holy Trinity Church just north of Sloane Square.

He had almost missed her at Heathrow. On the way to baggage claim she had stopped in the ladies’ room, and the only thing that had tipped him off was the square carry-on that swung from one hand. Ten minutes later, she had reappeared in a shoulder-length blunt-cut red wig. She had ditched the doe brown contacts and her amazing cornflower blue eyes blazed in her heart-shaped face. Her makeup was decidedly grunge: aubergine lipstick and heavy black kohl on her lids and lashes. Though the red jade choker was still around her throat, she had replaced her shoes with a pair of shiny black plastic boots that came up over her knees, her jeans and shirt with a clingy black rayon dress that ended where her thighs began. When she bent over to retrieve her luggage, any man behind her would have an instant heart attack.

The problem with London was that his federal badge was useless here; worse, flashing it might actually get him into trouble with the local constabulary, who, he knew from experience, could become testy about Yanks poaching on their turf. He almost regretted turning down Bad Clams’s offer of help here. On the other hand, he had made the acquaintance of a chief inspector in New Scotland Yard when the chief inspector’s quarry had split to New York, where Croaker had tracked him down and had expedited extradition with the federates.

The chief inspector’s name was Tom Major, though behind his back Croaker had not been able to resist referring to him as Major Tom. Major was a ruddy-complexioned man in his late forties with the closed, hard face of a Yorkshireman, a handlebar mustache, and the kind of mien one found only in retired boxers, which as it turned out he had been during his stint in the army. He had a ready smile and a willingness to consume ale in quantities even Croaker had found astonishing. He also had an inexplicable fondness for overstuffed pastrami sandwiches.

Major was not at New Scotland Yard, but when Croaker identified himself, Major’s sergeant directed him to a site on Flood Street in Chelsea. Croaker was obliged to take an exorbitantly expensive taxi—though he reminded himself that he was back on Senator Dedalus’s expense account— because the tube didn’t run into Chelsea, and he could make neither head nor tail of the bus routes.

Flood Street, not surprisingly, ran southward into the Chelsea Embankment, which snaked along that section of the Thames. Perhaps owing to its relative inaccessibility, Chelsea remained one of the last enclaves of civilized residences that had once made London famous the world over.

He found Tom Major overseeing a contingent of police engineers digging up a front yard where a body had been unearthed by the new owner planting an elm tree. Neat rows of iris and tulip bulbs, sleeping during winter, were laid out atop piles of earth. Sheets of plastic had been set down upon which at least three partial skeletons had been painstakingly arranged as the bones had been unearthed.

“No wonder this garden grew like the devil,” Croaker heard one of the police excavators say.

Major was crouched over one of the plastic sheets, moving earth and roots away from a skull with the end of his pen while a photographer shot a series of photos from every conceivable angle.

“Thomas.”

Major looked up, an annoyed expression on his face, which evaporated as soon as he saw Croaker. “Christ Jesus,” he said, standing and brushing off his trousers. “Will you look who’s risen from the grave.” A couple of the engineers stopped to glance over at the two men, but were soon back at work. “What brings you to sunny London, old son?” He stuck out his hand, gave Croaker’s hand a firm squeeze. “It wouldn’t be pleasure, not at this time of year.”

“Business, I’m afraid.”

Major looked Croaker up and down, then sniffed loudly. “Didn’t bring me a pastrami from the Stage Deli, did you?”

“Sorry, no. I didn’t think I could get it past Customs.”

Major laughed. “It’s all right, old son. My cholesterol’s sky-high. All that steak and kidney, although my cardiologist reckons I’ve got to cut down on the stress.” He pointed to the remains at his feet. “Look at this. Remarkable what one human being can do to another, isn’t it?”

One of Major’s minions came up. “We’ve finished the prelims on all the neighbors, Guv. What now?”

“Go home, get some sleep.” Major gestured. “Tell the lads the same. But have the new owner in DCI Hollworth’s office in Lucan Street at nine sharp tomorrow. I’ll have to liaise with him before this case turns nasty.”