Floating City (44 page)

“Either way, we’re in trouble. We’re running out of time. I’ll go see him myself right away. I can make a morning flight.”

“You’ll have to take the evening plane. I’ve had a message. It came in an hour before you arrived. You’re to be at the 315 rendezvous point at noon tomorrow.”

“That’s beside the Bird Lawn at Holland Park.” Vesper leaned forward, looking concerned. “Three fifteen. You know the code as well as I do. He’s going to want the update on Serman, and I’m not going to be able to give it to him.”

“He won’t take kindly to bad news.”

“Not at this late date. He’s never lost in his life.”

“But we’ve lost now,” Celeste said, “haven’t we?”

Ushiba met Tanaka Gin in the underground food courts at the Ginza branch of Mitsukoshi, Japan’s most famous department store. Mitsukoshi’s food courts were legendary, stretching in any direction for as far as the eye could see, or so it seemed. If it was edible, it could probably be found here. Everything was on display, from fresh-cut bamboo, vegetables, herbs, breads of all descriptions and varieties, to prepared foods in astonishing abundance.

Tanaka Gin liked to spend odd hours cruising the prepared-food stalls, gobbling down samples while his mind worked on a problem his chaotic office made it impossible to solve.

Ushiba had never seen Tanaka Gin sit down and have a proper meal. One could assume that at some point during the day or night he must do that, but that was a dangerous assumption to make about the Tokyo prosecutor. He was like a shark, always on the move, not so much restive as reluctant to allow inertia to catch up with him. Bodies at rest, Ushiba had often heard him say, were difficult to get into motion. He might have been speaking somewhat metaphorically about the bureaucratic red tape he daily battled against, but Ushiba did not think that was the sum of it. Upon contemplation, it seemed to Ushiba that Tanaka Gin had a horror of the world spinning on without him. Like a child who fights sleep while his parents’ party is in progress, Ushiba suspected the prosecutor had an instinct that connected rest with death.

“How is your case against Yoshinori progressing?” Ushiba asked when he caught up with Tanaka Gin at a stall selling Thai spring rolls.

“Adequately.” Tanaka Gin took a spring roll, dipped it into a sticky orange sauce, and devoured it in two bites. “I think my biggest problem will be in keeping him alive until the trial.”

“Yoshinori wants to die?”

“His life is over.” Tanaka Gin took another spring roll as he headed to the next stall. The smell of frying peanut oil was as luscious as the sumptuous sweep of a woman’s naked thigh. “He knows it and we know he knows it. The matter has now passed beyond him to others. He is aware of this as well. It does not sit well with him that the life he has lived for so long now finds him all but superfluous.”

“I can only imagine the departmental questions if he dies prematurely,” Ushiba said in a neutral tone of voice. “Would you like me to talk with him?”

Tanaka Gin paused with a sliver of grilled fish fin halfway to his mouth. He glanced at what he was about to eat, popped it in his mouth, wiped his fingers on a tiny square of waxed paper given to him by the woman who was offering the samples.

“You have thought this matter over completely.” Tanaka Gin’s dark eyes lingered on Ushiba’s beautiful face for some time. “This is not a decision to be entered into lightly.”

“I do not want to end up as Yoshinori has, feeling superfluous.”

“I seriously doubt that was ever a possibility for you, Daijin.”

It wasn’t often that Tanaka Gin called him by his title. That, along with the switch in tenses, told Ushiba that things had changed between them. He was on Tanaka Gin’s team now, like it or not. He would have to play by the prosecutor’s rules or suffer the immediate consequences. Ushiba nodded. He was prepared for whatever lay ahead. Akira Chosa’s betrayal of their special friendship had sealed all their fates. Now, in a way, their karma had been intertwined with Tanaka Gin’s. As improbable as that would have seemed to him even a month ago, it was now reality. But that was all right. He had become Daijin not merely because of his intelligence, ingenuity, contacts, and good fortune. He had also proven himself adaptable to all kinds of situations and pressures. And he would adapt again, as the need arose.

They moved along the food courts, pausing here and there as Tanaka Gin saw fit. As for himself, Ushiba ate nothing. He rarely did these days, and when he managed to get something down, it came right up again an hour later. His body, racked by disease, was beginning to reject the staples of life. There was nothing to be done now but to play out the string. He was grateful that Tanaka Gin did not comment on his lack of appetite or on his increasingly gaunt countenance. He had long ago put away all mirrors in his house, refusing to watch himself waste away day after day. But perhaps that had been a mistake, because this morning when he had caught a glimpse of himself in the polished marble of his office lobby, he had started as if he had seen a ghost. In a very real way, he had, for he had been shocked to see how much like a cadaver he already looked, as if a good part of his physicality were already locked away beneath the ground, embalmed and entombed.

“I wonder if you would entertain a request,” Tanaka Gin said. “Over the next weeks we will have much to discuss, and the long hours may prove inconvenient for me because you and I live on opposite sides of the city. I wonder if you would consent to be my guest for this time. I have a large house with a separate wing for guests. You could have absolute privacy, but I could have access to you when I need to take down your testimony or have you look over the depositions of others. How does this arrangement sound to you?”

Ushiba could not help closing his eyes for an instant. He was abruptly dizzy, and he hoped without the prosecutor’s knowing, he moved closer to a stall dispensing
bento
boxes of sushi so he could grip its side to steady himself.

Of course he understood why Tanaka Gin was making this offer. It was to help Ushiba, not himself. He was well aware of how far along Ushiba was. He knew Ushiba lived alone, and that at the end he might not want to be. Tears welled behind Ushiba’s eyes before he gathered the strength to clear them without a drop escaping. It was an odd thing to contemplate, but at the end of his life of power and influence it just might be that Tanaka Gin—a man who was an enemy of the Godaishu—might turn out to be his only true friend.

“I couldn’t possibly inconvenience you to that extent,” Ushiba said, watching Tanaka Gin take up a pinch of gray baby eels and munch on them. “My presence would throw your household into chaos.”

“Hardly, Daijin. Since I live alone, and have a cleaning woman in twice a week, your stay would be no inconvenience whatsoever. The woman has barely enough to keep her busy as it is. Besides, she’s something of a show-off. She’s always complaining I have no company she can cook for.”

Ushiba waited until they had moved to the next stall before bowing in acquiescence. “In that case, I accept your generous offer. But only because it will make your job easier.”

Tanaka Gin smiled. “Of course. It is gracious of you to accommodate me in this way.”

This rather formal dance of words was necessary to save face all the way around. Ushiba could not disclose his gratitude for a gesture that Tanaka Gin could not admit existed. If he did expose his true reason for making the offer, he would admit to Ushiba’s humiliating weakness, and this was unthinkable.

“I’ve got a great deal of work ahead of me, and frankly, considering how overworked my staff is, I’m going to have to rely on you, Ushiba-san.” He wiped his hands, turned to face the Daijin. “To be completely honest, now that the door has been breached, the skeletons are going to tumble out at an astonishing rate. The tentacles of Yoshinori’s octopus are far-reaching. We are now not only compiling evidence implicating politicians and financial houses in illegal donations for favors rendered, but systematic bid-rigging with construction companies who paid Yoshinori to keep them working on the vast public-works contracts that the Americans have wanted in on for years. The Americans have accused us of running a closed shop, and they’ve been right. And it’s becoming increasingly clear that this is just the beginning. We’re very likely to find the same dirty situations in wholesale markets and retail franchises.”

Tanaka Gin glanced around the crowded food court with the kind of forced casualness that gave Ushiba the impression he was concerned about security. Perhaps his suggestion that they meet here was not such an arbitrary decision.

“In fact, Daijin, I admit to having a personal reason for enlisting your help. One of my lieutenants has uncovered a document in Yoshinori’s home. I know it is just one document in a sea of paperwork, but this one is different. It is a personal letter from Yoshinori to one of his political party precinct bosses. It makes reference to an entity called the Godaishu. Does this name mean anything to you?”

“It doesn’t, no,” Ushiba said with his heart beating so loudly he was terrified Tanaka Gin would hear it.

“I’m not surprised. It doesn’t to me. The references were vague, but my lieutenant thinks he overheard Yakuza using that word. If we can tie Yoshinori and his branch of the Liberal Democratic Party in to the Yakuza, it would mean a major breakthrough in cracking the Yakuza’s stranglehold on legitimate business.”

Ushiba said nothing for some time. They had left the food courts and were riding the silent escalators up to street level. The Ginza was filled with sunlight, neon, and a heady surge of shoppers, tourists, and hurrying businessmen. None of this panoply seemed alive to Ushiba, who, increasingly, felt as if the world were closing down, his senses, if not his mind, diminishing to the point where someone would have to thrust a
tanto
into his chest in order for him to feel anything. For a long time now, the only taste he could recall was that of his own blood.

Tanaka Gin had a car waiting for him to take him back to his office. “Will you ride with me, Daijin? My driver will take you anywhere you want to go.”

“Thank you,” Ushiba said, ducking down to enter the car’s interior. “I need to return to my office for the rest of the afternoon.”

Tanaka Gin settled in beside him. “I can have my driver be at your home anytime you wish this evening to help you in packing.”

“Eight would be convenient.” Ushiba closed his eyes for a moment as the force of the vehicle’s acceleration dizzied him. He was finding that sudden shifts in gravity, no matter how incremental, were affecting him substantially, causing him to feel as if he were falling into a great abyss. He now found elevators a menace, disorienting him for minutes at a time, but he had yet to figure out a way to avoid them at work.

The feeling of vertigo subsided slowly, and he came back to himself. He began to focus his mind on why he had asked for this meeting. Now was the time, he could feel it. If he was going to tread this new path, this was the moment to take the first step. Again, he felt the absence of Mikio Okami more acutely than he did his present surroundings. How present events would have been altered had the Kaisho been here now. Of all the decisions in his life, Ushiba regretted most his acquiescence to the plan to oust Okami. If he had known someone—Chosa or Akinaga—would take it one step further and try to assassinate the Kaisho, he would never have agreed. But he hadn’t, and now, with Chosa and Akinaga, the two powerhouses of the inner council, apparently at each other’s throat, he felt increasingly helpless to stem the rising tide of an internecine war. This feeling had been the prime motivating factor in his coming down on Akinaga’s side when Chosa had overstepped his authority by enlisting the council’s third
oyabun,
Tachi Shidare, to destroy Nicholas Linnear. The power-grabbing had to end. Mikio Okami had known that when he had set himself up as Kaisho, and now Ushiba knew as well. He just prayed he hadn’t learned the lesson too late.

“Gin-san,” he said slowly, “I have been thinking about what you have just told me. I have knowledge of a tangible connection between Yoshinori and the Yakuza.”

Tanaka Gin half-turned toward him on the seat. His face was very grave. “Chief Minister, if this is the case, then I owe you a debt of gratitude I can never fully repay.”

“Repayment is not at issue.” Ushiba could feel his world sliding away from him. What would ensue from this moment he could not say, but certainly a new order was about to take hold. “What I can tell you is that Yoshinori has had direct business dealings with Akira Chosa,
oyabun
of the Kokorogurushii clan.”

In the expression on Tanaka Gin’s face, he could see it was done: their fates had now been set in stone, and they all trod upon a path strewn with unknown consequences.

“It’s painfully simple,” Tachi said to Nicholas. “Michael Leonforte killed my father.”

Niigata had gone out to the toilet on unsteady legs. The radiation had made his bones brittle as well as hollow.

“Three years after I left, I returned home from Kumamoto to make my peace, to show my father who I had become. To this day I don’t know whether he understood what it is I do. Perhaps it is better that way; he lived his life in the way he had to. In any case, what was important to him was my one act of rebellion at school. He never looked at my arm, but I knew he was aware of the scars there and he was proud of how they had come to be there.”

Tachi kept an eye on the back door, watching, Nicholas supposed, for Niigata to return. “My father had many business interests in Vietnam. He used to take me with him when he went. It would drive my mother to distraction because it was so dangerous. ‘Danger,’ my father always said, ‘is a beast best mastered at an early age.’ And he was right. I learned from him how to protect myself, how to lay low and how to retaliate. I learned to negotiate—which is retaliation’s brother—and to compromise when the need arose. The best thing my father ever did for me was to put eyes in my back.”

The fire cracked and sparked, licking at the cast iron pot in which the remains of dinner simmered happily away. The escaping steam sounded like a disapproving parent.