Floating City (56 page)

Ushiba was ashen faced. “You’d better explain yourself.” He could not quite manage to hold his voice steady.

“It was I who acted on the plot to assassinate the Kaisho. That weakling Chosa tried to steal my thunder.”

“But the plot failed.”

“It drove the Kaisho into hiding; it stripped him of all power and influence,” Akinaga spat. “Okami might as well be dead; the result is the same.” He took out a cigarette, lit up leisurely. “Then I suborned Shidare. I convinced him that he had no power unless he aligned himself with a member of the inner council. He was a pragmatic young man and he agreed. So I sent him off to do away with Linnear.”

“You!”

“Of course! I knew that Shidare was
tanjian.
Only another
tanjian
had a chance to destroy Linnear, but I suppose I discounted Shidare’s youth. He failed.”

“But Chosa—?’

“Ah, Chosa!” Akinaga luxuriated in the smoke from his cigarette. “Chosa and I were due to come to blows sooner or later. His ambition was to take over the Kaisho’s position—and so is mine. The inner council wasn’t big enough for the both of us.”

“But he had too much power for you to go after him yourself.”

“Precisely. I let you do it for me.”

“But Yoshinori told me—”

“Yoshinori told you what I wanted him to tell you. The old boy always does what I ask. We have an understanding that goes back decades. We could always count on one another.”

“And I believed him.”

“Why shouldn’t you? I would have, in your place.” Now, to Ushiba’s fury, Akinaga gave him a compassionate look. “He was such a consummate actor. It was his hobby, you see, acting, a kind of grand passion. He loved it so!”

Akinaga rose, went to one of the small windows buried in the rough concrete wall. He stared down onto the narrow street where traffic whizzed by.

“Now I have what I want. With Chosa and Shidare gone, there is nothing to stop me from succeeding Okami as Kaisho.”

“But Okami still lives.”

“Yes, he does.” Akinaga was truly terrifying in his calmness. “But I know, more or less, where he’s hiding. And when I take possession of Torch from Floating City, Okami will be nothing more than a cinder floating above the rooftops, and Rock will have ringing validation of the power of Torch. Our partnership will be extremely fruitful.”

“So this is why you lobbied so hard for the Floating City partnership,” Ushiba said, stunned. “You had made a private deal with Rock and Mick Leonforte for Torch.”

The ghost of a smile on Akinaga’s face was positively eerie, and as Ushiba struggled to his feet, he could feel the chill of fear creeping through him. They were now in the situation that Okami had forestalled in becoming Kaisho: a despotic leader, one Japanese voice controlling the Godaishu. It was intolerable. “This grasping for control won’t succeed. I’ll do everything in my power to stop you.”

Akinaga turned to look at Ushiba. “Chief Minister, I fear you are overstepping yourself. You
have
no power.”

“By God, you’ve got nerve.”

“I’ve got more than that.” Akinaga’s smile turned serpentlike. “I feel sorry for you, Chief Minister, I really do. We’re of the same generation, we enjoy many of the same sensibilities, but over the course of time I’ve sounded you out. You’ve changed since Okami was banished. Sometimes, I’ve been astonished when, talking to you, I’ve thought the Kaisho resurrected. I’ve come to the sad conclusion you’re too much like him.”

“What if I am? There’s nothing you can do about it.”

“Oh, but there is.” Akinaga stubbed out his butt in a green metal ashtray iridescent as the carapace of an insect. “I’m holding all the cards.”

Akinaga walked to a black metal grid filled with books on architecture and history. From between them he pulled out a sheaf of rice paper. “You know what these are,” he said, that deadly smile pinned to his face.

“Torinawa,”
Ushiba said with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Akinaga brandished them over his head. “Yes.”
Torinawa,
which was a special rope used by samurai for binding criminals, meant, in the perverse manner of the Yakuza, a pledge from a leaderless clan to follow the orders of another. “Here I have the
torinawa
from the Kokorogurushii and the Yamauchi clans. They now follow me. I am, in effect, the inner council. And from this moment on I am the new Kaisho.”

Silence rolled like thunder through the ferroconcrete room. Ushiba wanted to run and hide, but like the good samurai he stood his ground and took his punishment. He should never have acquiesced to the inner council’s plan to depose Okami. They had portrayed him as a power-hungry despot, while just the opposite was true. Kozo was planning to murder Nicholas Linnear, and Chosa and Akinaga were plotting against one another to become the next Kaisho. Even as all of them pledged that there would never be another Kaisho.

“So,” Akinaga said, “now you understand the true nature of the present situation. I own you, Daijin, and believe me, I plan to milk your influence and contacts for all they’re worth. Within thirty hours Mikio Okami will be dead and my triumph will be complete. You will be my loyal right hand. I will give the orders and you will carry them out in the arena of international economics both at MITI and in the Godaishu.” Akinaga took two swift steps toward Ushiba. “Is all this quite clear, Daijin?”

Ushiba took a deep breath, let it go. “Yes.” That one word had a finality he could never have dreamed of before this moment.

“You’re nuts if you think I’m going anywhere with you,” Croaker said. “Every time I see you you’re another person.”

“Another time, another place, another identity,” Vesper said in the semidarkness. “For the love of God, come on!”

He did not budge. He could hear the quiet hiss of the Bunsen burner. By its eerie light he looked at Vesper, wondering which incarnation he was seeing. Watching her was like looking at someone reflected in a series of fun-house mirrors: each distorted image took you further away from the truth, the reality, until you felt as if the reflections themselves must be the reality.

Her head twisted. “I hear him! He’s coming!”

“Cut this out. I don’t—”

“Damnit, you already gave Serman away to Dedalus! D’you want to sacrifice us both as well?”

In truth, he could hear sounds echoing down the hallway. Unmistakably, they were coming closer. Was she telling the truth? Was it Dedalus who was coming?

“Give it up,” he said. “I know all about Torch. I know that Okami is in London and that he’s targeted for the fifteenth. I know you’ve betrayed him to his enemies.”

“You’ve been talking to the wrong people. I’ll explain everything to you if you’ll just move out of here before we’re both trapped.”

“You’re a liar seven times over. I’ve proved to my satisfaction you’re Dedalus’s mole inside Okami’s network. Which one of you am I to believe?”

He could hear the rising note of anxiety in her voice. “Believe me if only for this one moment. We’ve got to get out of here. Now!”

Something wasn’t computing. If she was the enemy, why didn’t she just keep him here until Dedalus came? What was he to believe? And now that tickle at his consciousness took hold.

“Jesus,” he whispered, then, pulling Serman out of his hiding place, nodded to her. “Okay. Let’s go.”

He followed her as she rushed out into the hallway. The sounds had coalesced into the click-clack of shoe soles. They seemed very close.

She ducked into the next room, which was a chemical storeroom. It was temperature and humidity controlled. She went to one of the freestanding refrigeration units, pulled it aside without any help from Croaker. Peering behind it, he could see an old screen leaning against the wall. Vesper removed this, revealing a panel that had been rough-cut into the wall.

She turned to him. “We need that hand of yours.”

As he worked his stainless-steel nails into the narrow gap to pull the panel out, she said, “Years ago, when this facility was being used for experiments on humans, some of the subjects found a way to escape.”

He edged the panel out and Vesper moved the refrigeration unit back as far as she could. Then she crawled into the opening, helped Serman through. Croaker followed her, then turning, he used his biomechanical hand to pull the unit more or less back in place. There was a crude handle on the back of the panel, which allowed him to set it in place without difficulty.

He began to move off, but Vesper held him back.

“We stay right here,” she whispered. “Those subjects never made it all the way out of here. Just sit tight.”

It was odd. He could hear her soft breathing, smell a faint scent coming off her, as from a peony, but he could not see her. Instead, he imagined her—as she had been when they had first met in the lobby of the Washington Holiday Inn; as he had seen her on Dedalus’s estate as the gardener and, later, talking with Margarite; as he had seen her coming out of Heathrow and, later, with Celeste and Okami. In some alchemical way the darkness allowed these disparate images to merge, as if she were some film star who had stepped off the screen to sit beside him and speak.

“Who are you?” he whispered.

“What does it matter? All you need to know is that I work for Mikio Okami.”

He could believe her now—or, at least, begin the process because Serman had made a deal with her—not Dedalus. Serman had been afraid that even Croaker knew that he was providing her with updates on the progress of Torch. If Vesper were working for Dedalus, Torch would not have had to have been kept from him. Dedalus did not know about Torch, but Vesper did. Vesper had arranged for Serman and Abramanov to continue their clandestine dialogue. Vesper was bringing periodic updates on Torch’s progress to Okami.

Still, Croaker felt compelled to say, “I need to know more before I can be sure I can trust you.”

He could feel her staring at him.

“Margarite says I can trust you, but I’m not at all sure.” Then she seemed to acquiesce—to the situation if not to him. “I think you’re damned dangerous and I told her so. I think she should stay as far away from you as possible. Now, though, I’m not sure I was right.”

“Why should I believe you? As Domino you did nothing but lie to me; as Vesper you have as many personalities as an oracle. Besides, when I stole your ledger out of the safe at Moniker’s, I broke your code. I saw the breakdown for Morgana, the arms merchant—the company you’re running for Dedalus.”

“Dedalus owned Morgana, all right. But what you stole were photocopies I’d taken and was in the process of sending back to Okami.”

Croaker said nothing. What she said could very easily be the truth.

“You did your own share of lying,” Vesper said. “And what’s more, you scared the hell out of me. You were following Margarite—spying on her and me.”

“Yes, we both lied to one another. Also, you failed to mention that Senator Dedalus was in charge of DARPA.”

“And you failed to mention your afternoon in TriBeCa with Caesare Leonforte,” she said tartly.

In a flash, he could see how it would look to her and to Margarite. He and Bad Clams having lunch, thick as thieves. Good God, did Margarite think he had betrayed her? Why not? He had come perilously close to doing just that. How had he planned to elude Bad Clams when it came time for him to report to the don on the Nishiki network? He’d never quite worked that out, hoping for a flash of inspiration, somewhere down the line.

“So you thought I might be working for Bad Clams. What changed your—”

He felt her hand over his mouth. He strained to listen to what was happening beyond their tiny cell, in the storeroom. He made out sounds, like the scraping of chair legs over a tile floor, and he knew they were looking for him. Deeper in the darkness, Serman huddled, shivering in mortal fear. His whole being was concentrated on listening to the sounds; he had forgotten Croaker and Vesper existed.

Dedalus’s people.

In time, the sounds faded. Even then he could feel her waiting. At last, she took her hand away, said softly, “The moment you attacked Caesare’s man in Holland Park, I knew I had made a mistake.”

“You knew I had followed you to London?”

“Before I left Washington I went back to Moniker’s. It didn’t take me long to realize someone had gone through my safe, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out who.”

“If you knew I was on your tail, why didn’t you stop me?”

“I tried. If you remember, I gave you false intelligence. You were too smart to fall for that. I should have known.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean? Margarite’s in love with you.”

His sense of relief was so profound he wanted to lean over and kiss her. “It makes no sense.”

“When it comes to love, what does?”

“I mean it’s utterly absurd, isn’t it?”

“Only if you don’t feel the same way.”

“But she and I are on opposite sides of the law.”

“Are you certain? Following your logic, then, you and I are also on opposite sides. You know that’s not true.”

She allowed him to ponder this for some time before saying, “I’m taking an enormous risk in telling you all this. I would protect Margarite with my life.”

This was like a Chinese puzzle, he thought, where you figured out how to open a series of nested boxes one by one. “I think I understand that.” He could feel her slowly unwinding, like a serpent whose coils and head had been in the strike position for a long time. “How do we get out of here without Dedalus finding us?”

“There’s only one way. We’ve got to follow the route the subjects took when they tried to escape.”

“But you said they never made it.”

“Right. We’re about to find out why.”

I saw Leonforte shoot my father down like a dog in the street,
Tachi had said.
What’s more, Leonforte liked it. He licked his lips and howled in glee, he did a little dance over my father’s body before dragging it into the jungle.

This was the man Koei had spent six months with, whom she had been meant to marry, the man who had fallen in love with her. Now, in all probability, Nicholas would come face-to-face with Mick Leonforte. If he made it into Floating City.