Floating City (53 page)

“In
ninjutsu
there are only black or red, good or evil; there is nothing in between. I suppose that was how I saw everything. I never fully understood how my father could have been best friends with a Yakuza
oyabun.
Expediency was one thing. I knew he had been ordered to work with Yakuza, but he was under no obligation to befriend one. And in a very real sense I was angry at him for that. It was the most difficult emotion to bear, and the one I buried the deepest. I revered my father, I loved him, but I also hated him for taking Mikio Okami as a friend.”

“Just as you took me for a girlfriend.”

Seiko was still in his mind. He knew he might never have reached this point of self-revelation without her.
I hate you
for your righteousness, for not understanding that there are so many shades of gray between black and white.
She had known him better than he knew himself. He mourned for her. How was it, he wondered, that your own nature was the most opaque?

They stood very close, and he could feel time beginning to collapse, the years scattering like dead leaves in winter.

“Why?” Koei whispered.

That one word summed up everything in their lives that had wounded them and had not allowed that wound to heal.

“How alike we were,” she said. “This should have made us closer. Instead, we wound up hurting each other.” She lifted her head. Her huge eyes peered up at him. “I didn’t want to lie to you, but how could I tell you what I myself could not face?”

“You couldn’t. It was karma, and we all suffered in our own way.”

She extended her hands along his arms. “I’ve been waiting such a long time for this moment. My whole life, it seems.”

His lips were very close to hers. In the periphery of his vision the vipers coiled and twined sinuously. He felt her thigh insinuate itself between his, felt the pink tip of her tongue along his lips.

A heat was rising and the serpents sensed it. Roused from torpor, they raised their flat heads, tasted the musk on the air with the tips of their forked tongues.

The coiling kraits were in some way attuned to her vibrations. Their shiny bodies banged against the bamboo, making the cage shudder, and their hypodermic fangs, normally folded back against the roofs of their mouths, became erect.

He unbuttoned her gauze blouse, held her breasts in his hands. When his thumbs stroked her nipples, her head came down, and gasping, she bit the side of his neck. Their blood was boiling, strands of each other entwined in their minds. His
tanjian
eye was blazing, reflecting them both in its light.

Her nimble fingers unbuckled his belt, slid his trousers down. He gathered her skirt until it bunched around her hips. She was naked underneath. He pushed her back against a wall and she lifted one leg, hooking her heel against the small of his back. She guided the tip of him into her at the moment his lips came down over hers. Their mouths opened, and she opened fully.

She groaned into his mouth, made little sounds, vibrations that set the serpents to writhing. She arched up against him, canting her pelvis, fitting herself to his thrusts, climbing onto him, into him as deeply as he was into her.

She breathed like an engine, her mind empty of thought and of pain. Something inside her was freed, loosened in the well of the aura they created together, the intense pleasure that heated her groin and breasts and belly. Dazed, she recognized it as herself, a pure spirit that had survived the scars of bitter circumstance.
I exist,
she thought in dizzy wonder.
Oh, God, I am alive!

She was intimate with the mechanism of sex, but this was a different kind of engine entirely. Consumed in the moment, she was outside time. The past no longer had the strength to shackle her in memory and habit; the present no longer imprisoned her in loneliness and resignation. It was as if she had awakened from a long, sorcerous slumber and now, empowered by that abiding spirit, was uncoiling toward a distant horizon.

She came in a rush, lurching drunkenly against him, sweat streaking her face and breasts, needing her own heat as well as his, thrusting against him as frantically as he thrust against her. And as she let go, she felt something rush into the space that had opened up, something mysterious, unique, her own, and she embraced it even as she clutched him to her, feeling him shudder powerfully, his thighs trembling, his aura expanding, washing over her like a tide at the edge of the shore.

“I was so wrong,” she whispered in the heat of the serpent shed, “to do some of the things I have done.”

Nicholas, still dazzled by what had just occurred, held her against him. She was still breathing fast, and he could feel the trip-hammer of her pulse as if it were a new source of energy.

All around them the vipers had come alive, the lovemaking scented on the tips of their tongues. The inside of the shed shifted and shook as the serpents expended themselves against their cages.

There was a silence for a time. Outside the shed, the clouds were building in the west, looking bruised now, heavily laden with rain.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“You know. Waiting for you.”

“What happened after I... after we separated?”

She looked beautiful and poignant, much as, Nicholas guessed, Shizuka had looked to Minamoto no Yoshitsune during their brief exile together in thirteenth-century Yoshino.

“I had had enough of men.” She stared out at the coming rain. “The truth was after you left me I couldn’t bear to have another man touch me. The thought of sex left me cold as a stone. I never laughed, and in my heart I wanted to die.”

“Koei—”

She turned around and her face was so full of feeling that he was struck dumb. “No, don’t,” she said. “By that time I was already dead. And I knew I had only myself to blame. I knew how important honor was to you, so I suppose I must have understood the risk I took in lying to you.”

She watched him, rooted to the spot. “For a time, I thought I would become a nun. That seemed safe and comfortable. How naive I was!” She gave an ironic laugh. “All I lacked was faith, the essential ingredient. In the end, I went to Yoshino and trained as a
miko,
a sacred Shugendo shrine dancer.

“In fact, I did not dislike it. Shinto’s naturalism caught me up, and if I wasn’t exactly happy, at least I wasn’t constantly overwhelmed by memory.

“Then Tomoo Kozo came for me. He told me that, in my father’s name, he had brokered a marriage. This marriage, he said, had grave significance for the future. It was my duty, he said, to my father, to him, to the Yamauchi clan.

“At first I thought, ‘Well, I am dead. What does it matter?’ But after six months I knew that I had been wrong on both counts. I wasn’t dead, after all, and it mattered a great deal. I couldn’t marry this man, I couldn’t go to my parents, and I couldn’t return to Yoshino where Kozo had found me so I did the only thing I could think of. I ran to the Kaisho.” She looked at Nicholas. “It was Mikio Okami who sent me here.”

“Okami knew about us?”

“Oh, yes. I resolved to tell him everything. It was past time. The burden of keeping those terrible memories pent up was crippling me. But, as it turned out, the Kaisho knew most of it anyway.”

“Why was that?”

She seemed surprised. “I thought you’d know. Anything that affected you was of particular interest to him. Because of that he was willing to protect me.”

A distant boom of thunder along the horizon leant the air a sudden chill. The sun had disappeared. “There’s something else I need to tell you,” she said at last. “The man Kozo wanted me to marry, who I was with for six months, is Michael Leonforte.”

Nicholas felt as if he had been delivered a blow to the stomach. “The same Leonforte who is Rock’s partner in Floating City?”

“Yes. He and Rock met in Laos. Michael was something of a lone wolf. He had been recruited by a group of American spies working inside the Pentagon to secure the major drug pipeline from the Shan States in the Burmese highlands. They picked the wrong man because instead of fulfilling his assignment, Leonforte went AWOL, commandeering the pipeline for his own use. In 1971, Rock was one of the people sent out by the spies under the guise of Special Forces to bring him back dead or alive. Instead, Rock and another man—a Vietnamese named Do Duc—went AWOL themselves and joined him.”

Do Duc, Rock, and Mick Leonforte had been partners?
Good God,
Nicholas thought,
no wonder Rock wants me dead—I killed Do Duc.
Van Kiet thought Rock was after him because he had seen through the computer scheme—the second-generation neural-net chip Nicholas was supposed to have. Now he could see the outline of a conspiracy that was far wider, far more sinister, than he could have imagined. One Leonforte was dealing drugs and arms illegally obtained from the U.S. government from a hidden fortress in Vietnam, while another Leonforte had been the head of Looking-Glass, the most invisible spook outfit in America’s history. Were these the same spooks who had been after the drug pipeline during the war in Nam? If so, they had it—which meant that an arm of the U.S. government was trafficking in drugs.

“What was Kozo doing linking the Yamauchi with Mick Leonforte?”

“It wasn’t the Yamauchi—it wasn’t even the Yakuza, per se. It was the Godaishu, I didn’t know it then—no one beyond two or three people did—but plans were already under way to oust Okami from the position of Kaisho. At first, the plotters—Chosa, Akinaga, and Mill’s Daijin, Naohiro Ushiba—meant only to oust him. But, somehow, the plan was changed and he was marked for assassination. Kozo, acting on Akinaga’s orders, contracted with Do Duc to murder Okami and the people who had secretly joined him, Dominic Goldoni and C
hu
Dich. Because of you only Goldoni was killed.

“You see, Floating City became extremely important to the Godaishu—the new Godaishu, run without interference from Okami. In fact, the involvement with Rock and Michael was the breaking point between the two factions. Akinaga and the rest of the inner council wanted to forge a permanent partnership with Floating City; Okami bitterly opposed it. He knew Rock and Michael and he wanted no part of them. They were revolutionaries even among those beyond the law. They saw themselves as emperors. Godlike, they presided over Floating City, reinventing business deals and justice alike.”

Rain began to beat against the corrugated tin roof of the shed, making the vipers slither and hiss. Fat drops rolled off the eaves, soaking into the hard-packed earth. Then the sky turned black and the downpour began in earnest.

“Because of the reputations of these men, Akinaga and Kozo felt it imperative that a direct link be made with them. If I was married to Michael Leonforte, they believed, he would never renege on a deal with them.”

“So they were willing to sacrifice you.”

“You know they could never see it that way.”

“And Leonforte? How could they know whether he was even interested in marriage?”

“It was the barter they were all interested in—all the men. Love—or even sex—never entered into it. It was meant to be a straight business arrangement.”

Appalling as this sounded, brokered marriages of this sort had existed in Asia for centuries. “I still don’t see it from Mick’s point of view.”

“No one could,” Koei said softly. “It just goes to show you that no matter how smart you think you are you can’t anticipate the skein of life. Against all odds, Michael fell in love with me.”

When Tanaka Gin appeared at Akira Chosa’s door, he was trailed by three of Chosa’s bodyguards, who clung to his vicinity like crabs to coral.

“Prosecutor,” Chosa said, opening the door to his apartment, “is this a social call? It’s an odd time for you to be working.”

Tanaka Gin showed Chosa his badge. “Official business.”

Chosa, who was dressed in an informal silk kimono, said, “It’s almost midnight.”

“You have been at Ink Stick up until now. I did not want to interrupt your pleasure.”

Chosa shrugged and stood aside. “There are two women in my bedroom who will be very disappointed if you stay long.”

“I won’t be staying,” Tanaka Gin said, walking past the
oyabun.
“But then neither will you.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Tanaka Gin, who had been contemplating the life-size wax replica of Marilyn Monroe, turned around because he did not want to deprive himself of the pleasure of seeing this Yakuza’s face when he read off the charges against him and handed him the written indictment. He tried not to think of the two women, probably naked, waiting for the
oyabun
to return. He was not celibate by nature but rather by a supreme act of will. Youthful excess had taught him a sobering lesson about himself. It was far too easy for him to drown in a sybaritic lifestyle that, as a responsible adult in a job that demanded scrupulous morals, could only destroy him.

To his credit Chosa appeared stone-faced while Tanaka Gin rattled off the list of charges against him. But when Tanaka Gin handed him the next document to read, the color drained from his face.

“These are lies! Who would concoct such a litany of falsehoods?”

“Please, we have hard evidence connecting you to Yoshinori-san. We have eyewitnesses, direct and independent corroboration.” Tanaka Gin smiled, a glow of satisfaction expanding inside him. “You are our doorway, Chosa-san, into the domain of the Yakuza upper echelons. We are going to root out all corruption like decay from a tooth.”

“If it’s corruption you’re after, look to your own department, Prosecutor,” Chosa spat out, “I could name names, if I chose, and list criminal acts that would make your stomach turn.”

“Are you thinking of becoming my witness, of turning on your friends?” Tanaka Gin was curious at this response.

“I’m not stupid. I know where these charges come from,” Chosa said, carefully folding the indictment. “I assure you as of now I have no friends.”

“Then you should welcome the opportunity to work with me.” Tanaka Gin made a curt gesture. “Come with me, please.”

Chosa made a show of looking toward the front door. “Am I to deduce that you came alone on such a momentous occasion? Your career will be assured, Prosecutor, with my conviction.”