Floating City (40 page)

“What are you going to give him?”

“Only as much as I have to, that the first body to be brought out has been identified as a foreign national, which is why our lot have been brought in.”

Major turned back to Croaker. “Been at this charnel house since before sunrise. Less stress. My doctor must be as mad as a hatter.”

“Look, Tom, I can see you’ve got your hands full, but do you have a minute to talk? I need some help.”

“Help is it? Fancy a drink? There’s a pub on the King’s Road.” Major rubbed his eyes with his thumbs and, with a heartfelt groan, stretched his back. “Glad you came along. I could use a break. Brain gets stale working in the same mode for hours at a time.” He told one of the remaining engineers where he’d be, then he and Croaker set off up Flood Street.

“D’you have a place to kip for the night?”

“If you mean a hotel room, no. I just got in.”

“A rolling stone, eh?” Major grinned. “Just like you, Lewis.”

Major was the one person Croaker had ever known who called him Lewis. Even his father had called him Lew. They reached the King’s Road and turned right.

“Well, you can bunk down with me if you’ve a mind to.”

“I don’t want to upset the missus.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that, old son. Moira moved out more than two years ago.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s the frigging job.” Major opened the door to the pub, and the familiar beery smell hit them. “Can’t be married to a person and a job all at once. At least, not a job like this one.” He shrugged. “Her most common complaint was that the phone was more important than she was. Quite right she was, too. I miss her, but the truth is I’d miss the job more.”

They sat at a wooden table stained dark with age and smoke. Major ordered pints of ale and plates of food, sausage rolls to start, then shepherd’s pie. Croaker closed his eyes and tried to mentally calm his stomach.

Over the meal, Croaker outlined whom he was following and a heavily censored version of why. Basically, he told Major that he was working on a case involving illegal international arms traders. This story had the twin virtues of being a half-truth and of particular interest to Major, who, when he was not helping the Metropolitan Police in sorting out mass-murder sites, was most often involved with arms brokers who used London as a staging area for illicit shipments to the Middle East.

“Eaton Square is a pretty posh spot,” Major said when Croaker told him where Vesper had gone from the airport. He had, of course, mentioned nothing about her frequent changes of disguises. “There’s pots of money involved, anyway.” Major forked up a mouthful of shepherd’s pie. “You say this woman’s somehow involved with an American company called Morgana, Inc.?”

Croaker nodded. “It’s a very good bet they’re somehow linked with Malory Enterprises, in Hammersmith. Morgana’s books say it’s in the arms shipment business. And the kind of merch they move comes straight from Uncle Sam’s storehouse, which is closed up tighter than a duck’s ass.”

Major took a long swig of ale and his gaze turned inward. He was silent for so long that Croaker was prompted to say, “What’s up, Tom?”

Major’s eyes refocused on Croaker. “I was just thinking... It’s odd, really...”

“What is?”

“The names of the companies. Morgana and Malory. They’ve put me in mind of a legend. Morgana was Merlin’s sister and, it was said, a powerful magician in her own right. Only her magic was far more elemental, derived from the tradition of the druids. The legend had been told and retold many times, but the most renowned version,
Morte d’Arthur,
was written by Sir Thomas Malory. Not many people know this, but he was something of a blackguard—a poacher, extortionist, and finally, a murderer. He wrote the book in prison.” Major looked at Croaker. “What’s bitten you, old son?”

Croaker had gone white. The heavy food seemed to have congealed in the pit of his stomach. “Tom, according to Malory’s legend, where did Arthur have his court?”

“Camelot. Everyone knows that.”

“And the secret place where he was meant to rule?”

“Avalon.” Major cocked his head. “It was a kind of fairy city, floating in the mist. Some say it was druidic, Morgana’s home. What are you on about?”

Croaker’s mind was running at full bore, but the rational part of him was having a hard time keeping up with the intuitive side. He remembered John Jay Arkham telling him that Vesper’s education had been funded by the Avalon Foundation,
as in King Arthur.

“There’s a company my partner infiltrated that’s also in the arms racket,” Croaker said. “It’s tied in to an international cartel that’s made up of members of the American Mafia and the Japanese Yakuza.” His eyes locked with Major’s. “What’s worse, last year my partner and I discovered that certain members of the U.S. government are also implicated. This company’s name is Avalon Ltd. I have been under the impression that Avalon and Morgana-Malory were competitors.”

Major was shaking his head. “Looks to me as if it’s just the opposite: they’re all part of one gigantic organization.”

Croaker knew he had come upon a major breakthrough. Ever since he had gone into hiding, Okami had been directing Croaker and Nicholas toward Avalon Ltd. Why? He had been assuming that Avalon was owned and operated by the Godaishu. Then, when he had come upon Morgana, his first thought was that Okami and Goldoni had put into play their own arms network to try to put Avalon out of business. Now that he knew Avalon, Morgana, and Malory were all one, he had to ask himself who was cornering the market on international arms shipments. The most obvious answer was the Godaishu. It fit. This would also be why Okami would be directing them toward Avalon. Vincent Tinh, the head of Nicholas’s company in Saigon, had been murdered—by Rock, Nicholas had told him. The man who had spirited the body away had been a Yakuza giving Avalon as his company and a fictitious address in London. It was now virtually certain that the Godaishu had direct ties to Rock and Floating City.

But Johnny Leonforte had been the Godaishu’s American head and he had been killed last year. Who was directing the continued pipeline of stolen U.S. government weapons out of DARPA? It had to be the man who had hired Leonforte in the first place, and who oversaw DARPA: Sen. Richard Dedalus.

“I don’t know.”

The old woman, her back bent, hobbled down the stone path, stopped before the red torii, and pulled the thick hemp rope, setting the bronze bell to tolling.

“Even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you.”

The old woman, standing before the Shinto shrine, clapped her hands twice, bowed to the
kami
she had just awakened, and began her prayers.

“You’re dead men.” Zao looked from Nicholas to Tachi. “You have no idea—” The under
oyabun’s
jaw dropped open as Tachi pulled back the sleeve of his shirt, revealing his
irizumi.

Zao looked up into Tachi’s face. He was seated in a chair, his wrists tied behind its back. Then his face screwed into a mask of hatred. “Whoever you are, you’re no one here in Kyoto. You don’t matter to me.”

Nicholas, who had been looking out the window at the old woman praying at the shrine, now gave Tachi a look, and they retreated to a far corner of the room. They had come to this Love Hotel because it was anonymous and traditionally no questions were asked of its patrons. It was on a small side street in the Gion quarter, an ugly ferroconcrete building in a neighborhood otherwise made up of old restaurants that surrounded the beautiful, parklike Shinto shrine, one of Kyoto’s many local surprises.

“This is getting us nowhere,” Nicholas said. “And we’re working against time.”

Tachi nodded. “I know. You can be sure his people have been mobilized and are combing the city for him. If his
oyabun
has been informed...”

Nicholas knew the end of that thought. If Tachi should somehow be implicated in Zao’s abduction, it could cause a major struggle for face between him and Zao’s
oyabun.

“He knows time is on his side,” Nicholas said. “We have to get him to give us the information and get clear of Kyoto before his people find us.”

Tachi turned to him and said, so softly that Zao could not hear, “Don’t worry. He’ll give us what we want to know, and when it’s over, he won’t remember he told us a thing.”

Tachi stood with his legs slightly apart, his hands at his sides, the fingers loosely curled. He took deep breaths. Meanwhile, Zao stared up at him as if he were a lunatic.

Nicholas, concentrating, could feel the marshaling of Tachi’s psyche, an edgy curling as of an adder about to strike. But it was only when Tachi began the chant that Nicholas began to sense the enormity of what was about to happen.

In his mind’s eye he could almost see the confluence of two streams, the light and the dark, Akshara and Kshira, the two polar opposites of Tau-tau. And now, magically, he saw swimming before him
kyu,
the sphere of Tau-tau. Within it, he saw Akshara, the path of light, his own discipline, as well as its dark counterpart, Kshira. And now as he watched the two halves curling and twisting like strands of DNA, he recognized both and all his worst fears were realized. Because there were dark beads within the structure of Kshira that he recognized. Kansatsu, his teacher, his enemy, had indeed spiked his teachings of Tau-tau’s Akshara with kernels of Kshira. Like deeply buried time bombs set to detonate on proximity, these precepts had become part of Nicholas, and only integrating the light with the dark would save him now.

Nicholas was transfixed. He was certain that what he was witnessing was Shuken. Tachi possessed
koryoku,
the Illuminating Power, the one path to integration, to Shuken. Nicholas had longed to learn the secret of
koryoku
from Mikio Okami, but the Kaisho had disappeared too quickly.

Shuken. The sphere,
kyu,
swirled in coruscating patterns as Tachi tapped into
koryoku
to conjure the Dominion. The chanting continued; the atmosphere of the room turned gluey and fluid. But Zao, for his part, was aware of nothing. His eyelids fluttered and his breathing became regular, then deep. Nicholas was aware of his brain activity slowing through alpha, then into delta and theta.

That was when Tachi indicated that Nicholas should ask Zao the questions he would not answer before. Zao spoke as if awake and alert. He was not in a trance nor was he hypnotized. He had, Nicholas realized, been incorporated into the sphere that he could not see but which rotated in the thick atmosphere just in front of his face. Within the sphere, where Akshara and Kshira were no longer estranged enemies but rather two halves of one whole, Zao believed what Tachi wished him to believe. Perhaps he thought he was asleep and dreaming, or that he was speaking with V. I. Pavlov. It did not matter; Zao told them how Pavlov had come to see him at the Ningyo-ro, how he had taken the Russian home with him and, the next day, driven him to where he needed to go. Names, places, deeds, he revealed everything.

At length, when Nicholas was done, Tachi ceased his chant. The sphere,
kyu,
spun away into ten thousand strands, which broke up into a million fragments, winking like fireflies in the room before vanishing altogether.

Nicholas and Tachi looked at one another across the body of Zao, and what passed between them even Nicholas could not describe.

They left Zao in the room alone, the door ajar so that someone would eventually find him.

Seiko watched Nicholas and Tachi leave the Love Hotel. They appeared to be in a hurry. She had on an ankle-length raincoat and was carrying a large handbag. She stood well back in the shadows of the Shinto shrine, and they did not see her. She resented the fact that the two of them had apparently bonded. She was jealous of the psychic link between them, but she also felt cheated because when it came to the crunch, they had both treated her like a woman. Apparently, the interrogation of the Yakuza Zao was too dangerous for her.

She left the grounds of the shrine and entered the hotel. She went upstairs, found the only open door. Zao was twisted in his chair, trying to free his wrists. He stopped when he became aware of her, jerked around. She turned down the lights so that the room was almost dark.

“Who are you?”

She said nothing, just stood there regarding him levelly.

Zao gave her a twisted smile. “Sweetheart, I’m awfully uncomfortable. Do you think you could do something about that?” He spread his legs lewdly. “That’s why you’re here, aren’t you? To soften me up. Do your business, then leave.” The smile turned into a sneer. “And when you go, tell the shits who hired you that it won’t work.”

Seiko went to a table, set her handbag down on it.

“Who the hell are you, anyway? I know all the whores in Kyoto.”

He watched as she dug deep into her handbag, extracted a pair of rubber surgeon’s gloves. Lightly powdering her fingers, she snapped on the gloves with practiced motions.

Zao had gone silent. He was watching her with the paralytic fascination a rodent has for a poisonous serpent.

She put both hands into her bag, rattled around in there for what seemed a long time.

At length, Zao said, “You’re not a prostitute, are you?”

Seiko gave him a long, slow smile. “I’m a doctor.”

“Doctor?” He said it as if he were repeating a word wholly alien to him. “I don’t need a doctor.”

“You certainly won’t when I get through with you.”

“What does that mean?” His gaze was riveted on her forearms at the spot where they disappeared into her bag.

It was interesting seeing the expression on his face as she removed her hands from the bag. One was holding a long, thin object.

Zao gave a tiny indrawn gasp. “A hypodermic. What are you going to do?”

“Don’t worry. You won’t feel a thing.” Seiko smiled again. “Ever.”

Zao recoiled, almost tipping the chair backward.

“Now keep those legs open, dear.”

Zao clapped his knees together. “Don’t touch me.”

Seiko paused, holding the object high. She looked down on him as a reproving schoolmaster would on an unrepentant truant. “What’s the matter?”