Second Skin (34 page)

‘No,’ Asada said thoughtfully. ‘And his infirmity would explain why he was not at the CyberNet launch dinner.’

‘If he is so unwell,’ Morimoto said, recognizing his chance and seizing it, ‘then he should no longer be guiding a
keiretsu
of Sato’s size and influence.’ Heads nodded in agreement. Everyone in the room knew his views on Tanzan Nangi. Morimoto thought Nangi had too much power, but that might simply be because of jealousy. Before ‘retiring’ into the business community, Nangi had been a high-ranking minister of MITI. Though he had made his mark at the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, he had become far more well-known as head of Sato.

‘Now we have come to the crux of the matter,’ Mick said. ‘Control of the parent company, Sato International. Up to now Sato, as a privately held
keiretsu,
was untouchable for takeover even by such an exalted group as we have here.’ His eyes sparked and his words ramped up in speed and emotion. ‘But the CyberNet and Denwa Partners has changed all that. Sato is in such dire financial straits it had to seek outside financial backing in order to launch the CyberNet.’

‘But we are only minority shareholders,’ Asada pointed out. ‘Sato still has majority ownership.’

‘Only under certain conditions,’ Mick said. ‘Under the agreement, a bridge loan Denwa made to Sato must be repaid within ninety days. If it is not, we can gain a foothold into the company. I intend to see that the loan is not repaid. In fact, I can guarantee it. In return, I ask that you elect me president of Denwa Partners. In that capacity, as part of our agreement with Sato, I will automatically go on Sato’s board of directors when they are in default of the loan payment. That is all I need to eventually gain complete control of Sato and the CyberNet. Once on the board, I can work on the other members individually until I get a majority to vote Nangi out and elect me as the new chairman of Sato International.’

Again, a silence enveloped the room. As Mick watched the expressions on their faces, he knew he had gambled and won. He had gambled that these men – the Dai-Roku – would have no love for the well-known liberal Nangi, that they were jealous of his power, and that they feared Nangi’s partner, Nicholas Linnear.

Everything he had told them was the truth, up to a point. But he had another, hidden agenda. He wanted control of Sato International. Despite its current financial woes, it remained the single most influential
keiretsu
in Japan and overseas, and its clout could do wonders for opening the legitimate doors of business for Mick. Sato was his ticket into the real world, a world in which he longed to become a player – a mover and a shaker. Too long had he pulled the strings of clandestine activities from the shadows of mountainous Vietnam. That Sato International was co-owned by his nemesis, his dark twin, Nicholas Linnear, made his longing all the more potent. That he was becoming the seed of Linnear’s destruction was an irresistible lure.

Having given them enough time, Mick now said, ‘Here is our chance to seize the present for Japan and to break Sato International’s stranglehold on the future.’

‘What about Linnear-san?’ The naked fear in Asada’s face bespoke their capitulation. They wanted in; they wanted Mick to guide them. They had seen his future and had made it theirs.

Mick smiled, said softly, ‘Leave Linnear to me. I know how to handle him. I promise you, he won’t interfere with our plan.’ He leaned forward. ‘Now which of you are with me? Think it through. This is, without hyperbole, the opportunity of a lifetime. Do we use Denwa to seize control of Sato?’ He looked around the table. One by one, they nodded solemnly. There was not a dissenting vote among them.

Later, when they had all gone, including Machida, Mick sat smoking a cigar, staring up at the ceiling. The table was bare, save for a multicolored runner down the middle. Its gleaming cherrywood surface gave off the sharp, pleasing odor of lemon wax. In the kitchen, Honniko was supervising the last of the staff cleanup.

It was at times like this that he thought of Koei. His six months with her had been difficult, painful even, in some ways. But, like prison, he would never be able to forget. She had despised him, of this he was certain, and it should have been enough for him to turn her out. Alliances were all well and good, but what did one need with a woman who would as soon spit at you as climb into your bed? And yet it was this very hatred that had meant the most to him. He missed it when she was gone, or anyway, he missed the menu of small humiliations and degradations he found himself composing in order to keep that black emotion burning. It became like a bitter taste at the back of his mouth, as from ash in the vicinity of an incinerator.

He was roused from this unsavory reverie by Honniko, who had re-emerged from the kitchen. She had changed out of kimono and obi into a smart, smoke-gray Armani suit without lapels. She wore almost no makeup at all, and this naturalness seemed to accentuate the oriental cast of her eyes. Her blond hair was even more startling in this context.

‘A masterful performance,’ she said.

‘Do you think so?’ He blew out a cloud of aromatic smoke as his head came down. ‘It was a good presentation, yes, but all I did was tell them what they most wanted to hear. I put a hook in their noses and led them along, but they were ripe for foment. They don’t like the uncertainty of the present, they long for the past and fear for the future.’

He rolled the cigar between his lips in a curiously obscene gesture. He sucked in more smoke, let it out slowly. ‘But I was also lucky.’ He snapped the minidisc Honniko had delivered to him earlier between two fingers. ‘The procedure I drew up to get this from Sato’s R&D could have gone wrong in so many places.’

‘I don’t see how. You were prudent at every stage.’

‘Prudence is the crutch by which man rationalizes defeat.’ Mick twirled the minidisc between his fingers. ‘It is an inadequate arsenal.’

She came and sat beside him, ran fingers through his hair. ‘Does it matter? You got everything you want.’

‘I have the CyberNet technology, but I never wanted or needed it.’ He twirled the minidisc between his fingers. ‘I had this stolen from Sato as a ruse, to distract them from the true assault on them that will be coming through the contract Sato signed with Denwa Partners. I don’t want anyone at Sato thinking about that contract now. Let them run themselves in circles trying to find out who stole their precious data – and why. For all the good it will do them.’

He inhaled his cigar, blew out a cloud of blue smoke. ‘But as for having everything, I don’t. I don’t have Linnear’s head. Not yet.’ Then he grinned, a sudden boyish gesture she had come to know well. ‘Want to see the fruits of our labor?’

She hitched her chair forward. ‘You bet.’

He drew out a soft-sided attaché case from which he took a notebook computer outfitted with a CD-ROM and minidisc drive. He switched it on, slipped the mini-disc in, and booted up. When the computer came on-line, he switched to the minidisc drive.

‘This is it,’ he told her as his finger hovered over the
ENTER
key. ‘Once I press this, the CyberNet data will appear on the computer screen.’ He sucked some smoke into his mouth, savoring its bite. Then, as the smoke drifted from his partly opened lips, he hit the button. The drive light switched on and the computer began its processing.

Almost immediately, the screen was filled with lines of data: complex formulas, operating instructions, data codes, cipher overrides, the entire CyberNet matrix, along with an index of files.

‘Ahhh!’ Mick let out a long sigh of satisfaction as he scrolled through. Then he chomped down on his cigar so hard he almost bit it in two.

‘What the fuck?’

The screen was wiping itself of the data. Mick’s fingers flew over the keys, trying everything he knew to save the data to the hard drive before it was lost. He managed to save almost three-quarters of it before the screen purged itself.

He accessed the minidisc to download the rest of the data, but he got an
ERROR
message. He switched the screen to the minidisc itself, discovered to his consternation that the minidisc was reading devoid of data. He tried another way to access the data, same result. He removed the minidisc, closed down the computer, then rebooted it and started the procedure all over again.

This time, not only could he not get the contents of the minidisc to download, some of his own computer’s commands were malfunctioning. He switched to his C drive, accessed the built-in diagnostic, discovered that a virus was busy dismantling the software on his hard drive. He booted up his antivirus program, but that had already been overridden and destroyed.

‘What’s going on?’ Honniko asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Mick said, hunched over the keyboard. But there was nothing he could do. ‘Somehow a virus has been introduced into the computer that’s destroying everything on my hard drive.’

‘Even the CyberNet data?’

As he nodded, a single word popped up onto his screen. He could not wipe it off, no matter what he did.

‘SMILE.’

He sat there, staring at the computer. Then, with a string of curses, he swept it off the table. It crashed to the floor. He stood up, leaving it there.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go home.’

At that moment, his cellular phone rang.

‘What is it?’ he barked into the mouthpiece.

‘I’m out at the Keiji,’ Jōchi, his lieutenant, said in his ear. Keiji Hakubutsukan was the Criminal Museum in Kanda, the quarter of Tokyo that is part of both the High City and the Low City.

‘What are you doing there?’

‘I think you’d better get over here and see for yourself.’

Mick would have made a remark concerning Jōchi’s enigmatic call, but he heard the degree of agitation in his voice. Jōchi knew they were on a secure line and could speak freely. Something monstrous must have hit the fan.

‘We’re just finishing up at Tamayama,’ Mick said. ‘We’ll be there. By the way, the shipment to my brother got off on schedule?’

‘Right on time. This new shipper is aces.’

Mick hung up and, to Honniko’s inquiring gaze, said, ‘Jōchi’s found something over at the Criminal Museum.’

‘At this time of night? The museum’s been closed for hours.’

‘Let’s go,’ Mick said, grabbing his ankle-length raincoat. ‘It sounded urgent.’

There was something magical about Tokyo late at night, Mick thought as he roared down the rain-slicked street. The eighteen-hour-a-day crowds were gone, replaced by lumbering trucks that, by law, were allowed to make deliveries only at night. Teenagers, too, were evident, in their black leather jackets, their spiked hair and pierced flesh, thundering high and hard on their motorcycles. Mick thought he understood their obsession with self-mutilation. Everywhere, things were melding. Youths in Brussels, St Petersburg, Saigon, and Pittsburgh were all the same. They wore the same clothes, played the same on-line games, watched MTV. Man required self-definition, and the more you peered into TV, ramped up your computer, played video games on your CD-ROM with a net-pal in Timbuktu or wherever, the more difficult self-definition became. And the more reason there was to find permanent methods of setting yourself apart.

‘I am not a number. I am a free man.’

That’s what it boiled down to, this trend, moving from tattooing to piercing to branding and back again.

They arrived in Kanda to the roar of a group of far-off motorcycles, echoes bouncing off the high-rises like steel balls in a pachinko game. Jōchi emerged from the shadows of an alleyway at the side of the Criminal Museum. He looked both ways along the deserted street, beckoned silently to Mick, who got out of the car and followed him. Mick took Honniko’s hand. Her heels clacked along the pavement, sounding unnaturally loud in the darkness.

Jōchi switched on a powerful flashlight as he led them deeper into the alley. They passed a pair of gargantuan green metal Dumpsters that looked as if they hadn’t been emptied in years. Between them was a small camp of homeless men. A fire was burning through a metal grillwork. The homeless – those who were not asleep in their filthy rags – peered at them out of rheumy, incurious eyes. The reek of alcohol and rancid bodies lay like a suffocating blanket.

Mick did not hurry by, as most people would have, averting their eyes and holding their breath. Instead, he slowed, studying these folk carefully. Though he would rather slit his throat than admit it, he had more in common with them than he did with the men of the Dai-Roku. They belonged to the High City, the part of Tokyo once ruled by shoguns and their daimyo. Mick was a part of the Low City, the dark, unseemly corners where humanity crawled on its belly when it moved at all, the steaming, unsightly boils that grew without the benefit of light or privilege.

‘Mick, come on!’ Jōchi urged. ‘Now is not the time for a sociological survey of the soft black underbelly.’

They continued on, and at last they came to the far end of the alley. Here, a soot- and grime-encrusted concrete wall abutted the side of the museum. Jōchi shone the flashlight’s beam, revealing a figure sitting up against the wall. His position seemed so natural that at first Mick thought he was merely sleeping. But, on closer inspection, he saw the stiffness of the limbs, the bloated nature of the fingers. And then, as the flashlight’s beam moved, he saw the unnatural pallor of the face.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he breathed. ‘It’s Nguyen.’

Jōchi nodded. ‘It’s Van Truc, all right, the man who picked up the CyberNet minidisc from the American McKnight.’ The beam held steady. ‘We’ve been looking for him ever since he delivered the minidisc to Honniko.’

‘He seem okay to you then?’ Mick asked as he moved cautiously around the body. There was a smell here, coming from the corpse in waves.

‘I guess,’ Honniko said. ‘He seemed calm enough. You know, cool, but then I didn’t know him.’

‘I think you’re the only one who did,’ Jōchi said to Mick.

‘That’s right. I recruited Nguyen in Saigon. He was perfect: deeply venal, committed to money.’ Mick glanced at Jōchi. ‘What the hell killed him?’