Floating City (7 page)

“Spoken like a true woman.”

Ushiba stubbed out his butt, got up, and went over to the kitchen window so he could drink his humiliating milk in privacy. Having to ignore Chosa’s cruel wit was bad enough. He did not want to think about Nicholas Linnear or the pitched battle Chosa was precipitating. Instead, he peered through the glass. All he could see was a thicket of steel, tinted glass, and ferroconcrete. It was quite a sight, a testament to how successful his policies had been, how far and how fast Japan had grown.
Too fast,
he thought now.
Like a child who has learned to run before he can walk, Japan now stumbles in its prodigious efforts to outproduce the West.

Ushiba turned back to the
oyabun.
“Linnear is
not
like other men.”

Chosa was very relaxed now; this worried Ushiba, who turned back to the window. He knew what that studied calm portended: imminent action.

“Rubbish. I happen to know the origin of Linnear’s intense hatred for the Yakuza. I intend to make it his Achilles’ heel. Men who hate deeply are careless men.”

Ushiba felt the knife twisting in his stomach, saw his grimace reflected grotesquely back at him. With a convulsive gesture, he brought the cup to his lips, drained it. The milk would not be enough, he knew. Just as the regulations he was putting into effect would not be enough to stem the tsunami of the economic slide.

The present was bitter, indeed, for him. The bureaucracy had failed in its promise to protect Japan’s central banks, three-quarters of whose assets were in equities and real estate. With the Nikkei at less than 60 percent of its value of just a few short years ago and property values at ten cents on the dollar, the banks’ assets were perilously low.

The present invidious cycle that had developed was proving resistant to Ushiba’s best efforts to break it. The economic malaise had caused a flood of corporate bankruptcies, putting even more pressure on the banks’ monetary reserves. This, in turn, had made investors so fearful they were continuing to sell equities at an unprecedented rate, despite the government’s assurances as to Japan’s overall economic health.

The trouble is,
Ushiba thought sourly,
after all the scandals of corporate and bureaucratic kickbacks and illegal payments, the man in the street believes we deserve everything we’ve brought on ourselves
—
and he’s justified in that opinion.

He turned around, abruptly disgusted with these self-pitying musings. What was he so worried about, anyway? They had the Godaishu. Whatever disasters were lurking short-term for Japan, they would not affect the Godaishu. The men who comprised the Godaishu, global in design, generating assets from all over the world, were insulated against any short-term setback; even the involvement of Nicholas Linnear. If Chosa said he had a way of neutralizing Linnear, Ushiba had no choice but to believe him. Anyway, he
wanted
to believe him.

He also wanted more milk, but he would not ask his friend. What good would it do, anyway? he asked himself bitterly. Everyone, Chosa included, thought his pain stemmed from a bleeding ulcer. Good. He had fooled them all. How quickly they would be rid of him if they knew he had stomach cancer.

Inoperable. That is what he had told his physicians when they had described the aftermath of cutting him open: an invalid who could not even digest food on his own, riddled with bags, tubes, and hoses like some subhuman beast. No, no. That humiliation was not for him. Better the silence of the grave.

“One thing I know for certain,” Chosa said, “is that the Godaishu has a better chance of reaching its goal now that Mikio Okami is gone.”

Ushiba was pensive. “Okami lost faith in what he had set in motion. Why? I ask myself this question over and over. Okami always was a patriot. He understood that purges needed to be implemented in order to stem the moral decay that had rotted Japan ever since the Americans forced us to adopt a constitution they wrote for us.”

“What does it matter? Okami is history,” Chosa said with finality. “Whatever he thought no longer matters. We have our future laid out in front of us. It is our karma, my friend, and we are so close I can taste victory.”

Ushiba, wishing he possessed the
oyabun’s
surety of the future, said, “Be that as it may, we still have problems that must be solved. The Americans, first and foremost, must be dealt with. Already their dominance in fiber optics and telecommunications is threatening our future. The twenty-first century will be dominated by those companies that can transmit data most quickly and efficiently.”

“Another reason to fear Linnear. His company, Sato-Tomkin Industries, holds multiple patents on proprietary telecommunications technology that for now we can only dream about. Sato-Tomkin is currently in mainland China, India, and Malaysia laying miles of fiber-optic cables that will one day transform those countries into true competitors of ours.”

“Once again, I warn you. Linnear is ninja and he is exceedingly clever,” Ushiba said. “I have attempted to intimidate him with no success. He quietly brings to bear a force greater than the one leveled at him.”

“It’s not your job to worry about Linnear.”

“No, but it’s my duty to protect the Godaishu. Going after Linnear presents an unconscionable risk to us all. To involve him in our affairs now—”

“He is Okami’s protector,” Chosa snapped. “He’s already involved.”

They were on a bus ride to nowhere. Or so it seemed to Nicholas as he sat beside Bay. The old crate that would have passed for a bus twenty years ago bounced along a potholed tarmac road. The interior stank of animals and urine; at every jounce the dozen or so caged chickens let out a chorus of raucous squawks that made the yellow bird jump in anxiety. The yellow bird was in a tiny bamboo cage beside the driver’s head, wired from the ceiling of the bus. Nicholas had heard it said that Vietnam was the one country where people took birds for walks and ate the dogs for dinner. Shindo had cautioned him never to ask what kind of meat he was being served.

Perhaps this four-wheeled death trap was being used as a truck to transport these chickens to market, for there were no other human passengers and none were waiting for it along the dark, pitted road. How Bay even knew of its existence was beyond him, but it had been waiting for them three blocks from the spot where she had tied up the boat. Twenty minutes later, they were out of Saigon proper, heading southwest.

“Where are we going?” he had asked Bay.

“The Iron Triangle.” By which, he surmised, she must mean Cu Chi. This region had become infamous thirty years ago for its miles-long network of multilevel tunnels that allowed the Viet Cong to control the area just sixty-five miles from Saigon. The Vietnamese had begun the tunnels during the 1940s in their war against the French. The hard-packed red earth of the area made it ideal for digging, and decades later, the network had undergone extensive expansion and renovation until it stretched all the way to the Cambodian border.

Nicholas said, “Bay, I want some answers now. What was your relationship with Vincent Tinh?”

Bay stared out the window. Her hair, bound in a long, thick tail, wound over her shoulders. She seemed a strong, motivated woman—no wonder her pose as a man had proven so successful. She had the kind of face that, though entirely feminine, would need minimal makeup to turn her into a convincing male persona. This almost androgynous nature made her all the more intriguing, especially because she carried it so unself-consciously.

“He never employed me, though he tried,” she said at last. Her head was still turned slightly away from him, but he could see her in ghostly reflection in the dark window. “He tried to make it with me as well. But I knew his reputation, knew that if I said yes to any one of his proposals, I would be sucked wholesale into his world.” Her fingers fidgeted in her lap. “That I couldn’t afford. I’m an independent operator—a kind of go-between, sometimes even a mediator between... factions.”

“By ‘factions’ I assume you mean drug warlords, arms merchants, terrorists, and the like.”

Bay said nothing for a long time. The bus rattled on, the chickens squawked, and the yellow bird hopped from perch to perch as if stung by jolts of electricity.

“Whatever you may think of me,
Chu
Goto, I have worked very hard to gain an enviable position. I am beholden to no one, yet many people of influence owe me favors. I wonder if you understand the importance of this? Perhaps not. My country is different from all others. It takes time, patience, and acceptance to understand the nature of Vietnam. I promise that judging us by your standards can only end in disaster for you.”

For someone else, perhaps, it would have been easy to dismiss the words of a woman. But for Nicholas, time, patience, and acceptance were three virtues of paramount importance. Also, he had learned the necessity of “seeping in,” of absorbing by immersion the strange, the bizarre, and the frightening. Vietnam was a terrifying culture to the outsider, and terror had a habit of placing its hand across one’s eyes at precisely the wrong time. Bay was right: it would be a disaster for him to judge her as he might a Japanese or an American.

“I appreciate your insight, Bay,” he said carefully. “Can you tell me anything about Tinh’s death?”

“It was no accident, but I imagine you already know that.”

“Yes.”

“Do you also know that he was murdered in the Chinese manner?”

“Chinese? I don’t think I understand.”

“Once upon a time, the Chinese warlords of the Shan mountains eliminated their enemies in the manner in which Vincent Tinh was killed. They shot them, then left them to be found in the acid that helps refine the tears of the poppy into opium. It served as warning to others who would try to betray them.”

“You mean they don’t do it anymore?”

Bay ducked her head so that her hair swung across one shoulder. “In a manner of speaking. They no longer exist. They have been supplanted by one man who now virtually controls the poppy trade.”

“Really? I have never heard of such a man.”

“I’m not surprised.” Bay’s eyes watched his with neither fear nor judgment. “To speak his name is to court instant death.”

“All right. I accept that. But is this man responsible for Tinh’s murder?”

Bay’s eyes, dark as coffee, held his. “I will tell you a story about this place where we are headed. It is called Cu Chi. You have heard of it?”

“Yes, I have.”

“During the war, the Twenty-fifth Division of the U.S. Army established a major base of operations in Cu Chi in order to deal with the VC menace so close to South Vietnam’s capital. No one knew how the VC were able to maneuver at will so deep inside enemy territory. Months of grunts being found murdered in their tents every morning finally led to the discovery of the tunnels beneath the base camp, but at a horrific cost in human life. By sheer chance, the Twenty-fifth Division had made camp directly atop the tunnels.”

Nicholas thought about this for some time. “Was Tinh operating too close to the man who now controls the poppy trade?”

“The poppy trade is not all he controls.”

No wonder Chief Inspector Van Kiet had refused Shindo’s bribe, Nicholas thought. He was scared shitless. “Bay, do you know this man’s name?”

“Chu
Goto, or whatever your real name is, I told you that I was an independent operator. That does not mean I cannot precipitate enemies should I become foolish.”

They were interrupted by a guttural noise from the bus driver. Bay quickly went forward and Nicholas heard them speak briefly. Even from that distance he could discern the note of urgency in their voices.

When Bay returned, her face was pale. “We’re in trouble. There is a police roadblock ahead. I believe they are looking for us.”

“Why? We’ve done nothing.”

Bay jerked her head. “Nothing except leave the scene of a murder, show up unescorted in a highly restricted area, conspire to trade in contraband materials—and those are just three of the legitimate charges that could be leveled at us.”

“Yes, but—”

“Thirty years in prison without a trial or hope of parole. It’s a lifetime. And your government,
Chu
Goto, has no formal diplomatic relations with Vietnam. If you are caught, you have absolutely no recourse.”

She was leading him toward the rear of the bus, where the driver had opened the accordion door.

“And that’s not even counting the obvious—that the police are on the take from people far more powerful than we are. If they catch us, we’ll be lucky if we aren’t executed on the spot.”

Her last words were cut off by the wind as she jumped into the night. Nicholas leapt after her without hesitation.

For a moment, Chief Minister Ushiba was blind with the pain. Then his vision cleared and he was able to see the simple wooden edifice of Yasukuni.

The hoarse shouts of patriots in years past still echoed through the smoggy afternoon, oblivious to the modern din of passing traffic.

The Yasukuni Shinto shrine, near the moat surrounding the Imperial Palace in the heart of Tokyo, had become a memorial for Japan’s war dead, and to the bravery of kamikaze deaths, one of the war machine’s most notorious sacrifices to a victory in the Pacific that had been doomed by superior will and radiation.

Ushiba resisted putting the flat of his hand against his gut, swallowing a pill instead. Now he took three a day instead of one, and he struggled to keep his mind sharp in the face of the potent painkiller. Where would it lead? He suspected that he was already an addict, unable to face each day without the mask of calm the narcotic provided, damping the level of his suffering to tolerable levels.

He lit a cigarette, drew the smoke deep into his lungs. As he moved toward the shrine, he willed his legs into their normal stride, thinking as he did of the history of Yasukuni, how in the latter half of the 1930s it had become the focal point for the government-propagated right-wing demonstrations used to whip up the population into a militaristic frenzy.

Recently, a high court decided that ministers were forbidden to worship at the shrine in an official capacity because it violated the postwar constitution insisting upon a distinct separation between religion and the state. But, of course, that was an American-written constitution, and many ministers chose to ignore the court decision.