The Kaisho (33 page)

For a long time she stared, dazed, at the powerful mounts of the hunters, their round eyes wild with fear and the scent of blood.

The tragedy of it is, Tanzan Nangi thought, that it ends here, in Tokyo, a place that was alien to her, a place she could not understand let alone like, the place that finally came between her and Nicholas.

Nangi stood looking down at the closed coffin, which lay in the side chapel of St. Theresa’s, the single Roman Catholic church in Shinjuku, four blocks west of the wide Meijidor. This was Nangi’s church, the place of worship he had introduced Justine to when she was at a low ebb in her life.

For a while, at least, it had seemed some form of solace for her, but not lately. Lately, it appeared, she had taken up with her old friend and boss Rick Millar.

The highly polished surface of Justine’s closed mahogany coffin acted like a mirror, reflecting facets of recent history that, until the moment he had watched the police and fire units disentangling what was left of Justine and Millar from the charred remains of the car, had eluded him. How was he to know that Rick Millar, asking to find Justine again, had wanted to take her back with him to America? How was he to know that after spending the night with him Justine would accept?

Nangi tried to look away from her face, could not. Just as he tried to hate her for what she had done to his friend, and could not. Not simply because he was a devout Christian, or Shintoist, but because he so well understood the many layers of human relationships. Because he also had to ask himself what Nicholas had done to her to drive her into another man’s promises of love and protection.

He stirred, hearing a taped choir begin its ritual of psalms, no less holy or beautiful for being prerecorded. Of course, he knew part of the answer: Tau-tau. He had sensed what Nicholas had perhaps not: that Justine was profoundly terrified of what Nicholas would become once the legacy of his mother had been revealed to him, once he took the first step down the path to becoming
tanjian.
Even Nangi had little knowledge of the mysteries to which Nicholas had been exposed up on the Hodaka, that sheer face of ice and snow in the Japanese Alps, where he had been taught by his mentor and his enemy, Kansatsu. Nangi only knew that whatever transpired there, Nicholas had returned a changed man. He was ready now to burrow into himself, to find the secret of his people, no matter how dark, how terrifying. Nangi and Nicholas spoke of many things, were close friends, shared secrets and fears and triumphs without reservation—save the Tau-tau, whose workings were forbidden to outsiders.

Nangi could understand this, even admire the bonds of discipline that veiled Nicholas’s inner heart from even those closest to him, but he was quite certain that Justine could not. Nicholas trusted her as he did no other, and so he had taken for granted that she would understand—just as he had been sure she would come to love Japan as he did. That he had been wrong on both counts was not so much a surprise as a tragedy.

And here,
Nangi thought now as his gaze caressed the form inside the coffin,
is the ultimate result. This was her karma. I should have seen it.
He felt tears burning his eyes, but he would not lift a hand to wipe them away. He wanted to feel their heat, their weight, their slightly acid sting, as they slid down his cheeks, not only for himself but for Nicholas, who was not here and must never know the true nature of his wife’s last thirty-six hours.

He leaned a bit more heavily on his walking stick, its carved dragon’s head digging into the palm of his hand.
I did see it,
he thought now,
and I did nothing. But what was there to do? Who would listen? Who ever believes his own fate?
What had happened was meant to happen.

The choir swelled to a passionate crescendo, the trained voices magnified by the stone chapel and the clever acoustics that brought to the sharp ears of the priests even the clandestine whispers of sinners.

Nangi became aware that he was no longer alone in the chapel with Justine. He turned, his leg paining him, and saw Seiko, Nicholas’s assistant. She somehow made him think of Gelda, Justine’s sister and only living relative. He had tried all morning to locate her in the States, to no avail. She had apparently dropped out of sight.

Seiko came silently toward him only when she was certain that he had recognized her.

“Pardon me for disturbing you, Nangi-san,” she said, bowing, “but you wished to hear news of Linnear-san as soon as we received any.”

Nangi listened intently, aware that she averted her eyes from the coffin. Was it merely the Buddhist’s abhorrence of burial rather than a clean cremation or was there some other reason? Because he had been Justine’s friend and sometimes confidant, he knew of her suspicions that Nicholas and Seiko were having an affair. He did his best to calm her, assuring her of Nicholas’s loyalty to her, but sensing the depths of Seiko’s anxiety here, he could not help but wonder where the truth lay.

“Linnear-san is no longer in Venice,” Seiko said.

“What?”

“He checked out hurriedly late last night.”

“What forwarding address did he leave?”

“None, apparently.” Seiko was worrying her lower lip with her small, white teeth. “The hotel’s concierge has no idea where he went.”

Nangi watched her for a long moment, and this scrutiny made her all the more nervous. Perhaps she would have preferred to continue this conversation out on the impersonal, sunlit street, but Nangi, only now becoming aware of how much he had missed being immersed in the minutiae of business, would not allow it. Tension, he had invariably found, was a fecund medium for inadvertent revelation.

“How often did you leave messages for him?” he asked after a time.

“Three.”

“And he never answered?”

“No, sir.”

“So the last time you had any communication with Linnear-san was when he left the office the day of his departure for Venice?”

He caught the slight hesitation, turned it over in his mind as if it were a vintage wine ripe for tasting. “No, sir. I met him at the airport just before flight time.”

“Was this at his request?”

“No, sir.” Seiko shifted from one foot to another. Her deep brown eyes moved, and in their movement was revealed the wall between herself and Justine. “After Linnear-san left for the day, I received a coded fax from Vincent Tinh in Saigon. It seemed urgent enough to get it to him before he left for Venice.”

Nangi noticed that Seiko had begun to perspire though he felt no particular heat inside the chapel. In fact, it was quite cool.

He held out his hand and she put into it a copy of the coded fax. He read it twice without comment as he always did any document that entered his purview. On the surface there seemed nothing alarming. Obviously, Nicholas had agreed since he had not contacted Nangi about it.

“What do you make of this?” he asked abruptly.

This time Seiko was ready for him. “In Linnear-san’s absence I faxed Vincent Tinh to ask for clarification on this one point regarding the shadow government in Saigon. I got no reply.”

“As to that I’m not at all surprised,” Nangi said, though he was pleased with her initiative. This was just the kind of action Nicholas was training her for. “Tinh surely wouldn’t have had time to follow up on the rumors.”

“That is not what I mean,” Seiko said, licking her lips. “I have received no return fax at all from Tinh-san.”

The voices, all sopranos now, were building to another crescendo, and mounting it, the confluence of heavenly sound, repeating ever more slowly, began to die away, until at last it was held in the air only by acoustics and echo.

Nangi took his time digesting the possible ramifications of this bit of unsettling news. “I think,” he said, “we had better return to the office immediately and see if we can locate Vincent Tinh.”

It was bright outside, the sky a lusterless white without shape of cloud or brilliance of sun. It was as if they were inside a glass sphere, entombed within a postmodern megalopolis that lay beyond the glass and reinforced steel sky-rises all around them.

Still, they were obliged to squint even for the short walk across the sidewalk to Nangi’s chauffeur-driven BMW limo. He stood there with her for a moment while the driver held the rear door open.

Justine had confided in him her fears about an affair between Nicholas and Seiko. Nangi had done his best to reassure her, but Justine had seemed oblivious to rational argument.

And why should she be? He knew from experience that love was not so ephemeral a thing as most people supposed. It was solid, even weighty, with its own imperatives that, like a layer of makeup, drew transformations from out of thin air. The areola of love was like the kiss of an angel, invisible in itself, yet discernible by the intimations of its eminence.

The tangled expression on Seiko’s face was articulate even if the rest of her was not. All at once, he understood Justine’s concerns, could view them as something more than fictional. Seiko’s relationship with Nicholas was something more than assistant to boss. What it was he was powerless to say, but its mere existence was evidence enough that he be attentive and reactive.

He turned to Seiko. “If there is a problem in Saigon, I’m going to need your expertise. I want you to be prepared.”

She gave him a curiously formal bow. “I am honored, Nangi-san.”

Inside the car as it drove off, he handed her a small filigreed sterling silver pillbox. It was of English manufacture, a fine example of Western turn-of-the-century silversmithing. It had been a present from Nicholas, and it was important to him. But not as important as a human being.

Seiko held the pillbox in her open palm, her eyes filled with its beauty. She knew of its existence, even something of its history, and her hand trembled slightly to hold it.

“Seiko-san, I want you to take care of this for me.” And when her eyes met his, questioning, Nangi went on, “For some time it has been empty. I no longer need the pills it used to hold, and I think you will agree it is not the same without something to fill it up.”

The car slowed in heavy traffic. A haze was building as the shortening afternoon blurred into an early-winter twilight, blue and gray and umber. Somewhere a police siren sounded, cutting through even the efficient soundproofing of the BMW.

“It seems to me that you have something of significance with which to fill this box,” he said into the growing silence. “Something precious, something as yet tentative that requires its own time, its own place. Something to put away, yet not to forget.”

He knew by the expression in her eyes that she understood all the implications: that he had divined her love for Nicholas, that he did not necessarily disapprove, that she must nevertheless ensure that it did not interfere with what she must do for Nicholas—and for Nangi—at Sato International.

With a great deal of reverence, Seiko slowly opened the pillbox, stared down into it for long moments, before swinging closed the lid. She put the box carefully away.

“Words cannot adequately express my feelings, Nangi-san,” she said quietly.

And both of them were so caught up in the moment that they failed to notice the white Toyota that swung in behind them as they lurched through the intersection at the Meijidori, and which followed them all the way back to the Shinjuku Suiryu Building, Sato International’s headquarters.

It was not going to be easy getting in to see Davis Munch, Gaunt decided, after his third hour of the federal bureaucratic runaround. Even with all his ins—and knowing the right people to go to to cut through the red tape—he was having no luck.

Munch, the Pentagon special investigator seconded to Rance Bane’s Strategic Economic Oversight Committee, was a busy man. Not only that, he had apparently decided that he did not want to see Gaunt. That was something of a deterrent, but in the end, Gaunt had already vowed, it wasn’t going to stop him from seeing Munch. Nothing was.

He had taken some time after his thoroughly unpleasant meeting with Terry McNaughton to review his options as the lobbyist had outlined them. He had headed down to the C & O Canal towpath in Georgetown, always his favorite spot to clear his head of the political doublespeak and figure out a plan of attack.

It was peaceful there, reminding him of the best times he had spent in this citadel of influence, the real reason he had wanted to make a life for himself in government, and how that reason had gotten submerged in the day-to-day power struggles endemic to Washington. This was shark city, where even people who purported to be your friends would turn on you at the first sign of political pressure.

He had walked along the Potomac, deep in thought. Despite McNaughton’s dire warnings he was not yet about to abandon ship. Leaving a friend—and he certainly considered Nicholas Linnear a friend—to the wolves was just not his style. For one thing, what would his father have said? For another, he owed Nicholas plenty for believing in him when he supposed even he had given up on himself. Nicholas had found him sometime after a rather nasty political purge had flung him out of his cozy White House sinecure.

Stupidly, he had taken it personally. Against convention and sound advice as old as George Washington, he had tried to mount a counterattack. In the process, he had made several high-powered enemies who had closed the doors of State and Commerce to him, departments that would otherwise have remained open to take this particular political orphan in. Only a minor post in Defense, bean-counting third-world arms sales, was offered him, a job too mean and humiliating even to contemplate.

Those were the days in which, as far as he was concerned, Washington was the only town that mattered. Nicholas had proven him wrong. Now he wouldn’t take a political post here for anything. Only in hindsight did he realize that he had quit here even before Nicholas had convinced him to move to New York. How ironic that, in Nicholas’s defense, he was obliged to return.

He stared into the slow-moving waters of the Potomac and knew he couldn’t jump ship. He also knew that McNaughton’s second option, going down with the ship, was out of the question. So where did that leave him?