Linnear 03 - White Ninja (4 page)

It saddened Nangi, too, that Nicholas should be married to someone like Justine, who was clearly unable to comprehend the subtle nuances of life hi Japan. It did not occur to him to examine his responsibility in Justine's education.

Now, as Nangi stared out of his office window, unmindful of the meeting's babble going on behind him, he felt a terrible foreboding, as if the computer attack had been an omen, a change in the wind. Because now he could feel a typhoon on its way, dark and malevolent and intent on his destruction.

In fact the analogy was quite literal, because the typhoon was specific; the force had a name: Kusunda Ikusa.

The call had come just an hour ago. An hour and a lifetime, Nangi thought. Now everything had changed. Because of Kusunda Ikusa.

'Mr Nangi? This is Kusunda Ikusa.' The voice had come down the telephone line, hollow and impersonal. 'I bear greetings from the new Emperor.'

Nangi had gripped the phone' tightly. 'I trust His Imperial Majesty is well.'

'Well enough, thank you.' There was the slightest pause to indicate that the pleasantries were at an end. 'There is a matter we wish to discuss with you.'

By 'we' Nangi was unsure whether Ikusa meant the Emperor himself or the group called Nami. But then again it was said that Nami - the Wave - carried out

the new Emperor's will. Its members had certainly done so with the old Emperor up until the moment he went to his final, glorious reward. Nami, it was said, was the true heart of Japan. It knew the will of the Japanese people far better than did any prime minister or any bureaucratic ministry. Nami defined power in Japan, but that did not mean that Nangi had to accept its ideals.

Nami was composed of a group of seven men -all of whom had ancestral ties to those families which had been most influential'in Japan before and during the war in the Pacific. They were neither businessmen nor politicians. Rather, they saw themselves as above such mundane concerns.

Nami was interested only in the overriding directive of makoto - ensuring that the moral and ethical purity of heart of Japan was kept intact. But Nami's rise to power was itself an example of how purity could be compromised. During the early 1980s, Japan's roaring economy was based to an overwhelming extent on the worldwide success of its exports - cars and high-tech hardware and software. Four years ago, however, the yen began to strengthen to such a degree that Nami became alarmed. They saw - quite correctly - that a stronger yen would make exports more costly and, therefore, the breakneck rate of exports necessarily had to fall.

In order to avoid any resulting precipitous drop in the Japanese economy, Nami had recommended the creation of an artificially induced land boom inside Japan. Nami reasoned that switching the base of the country's economy from an external source to an internal one would insulate Japan from the coming export shock.

And while they were proved right in the short term, the danger was now increased that the boom could go bust overnight. Nangi distrusted artificial means to any end. What could turn an economy on its ear overnight could itself be displaced just as quickly. Japan was now

sitting on the economic equivalent of a swordblade.

If Nami's climb to almost unimpeachable power had come with the unqualified success of the land boom, it was consolidated earlier last year with the death of the old Emperor. No one trusted a successor to be able to keep the Emperor's image as the son of Heaven alive.

But Nami's direct involvement in the affairs of the country was ominous. In Nangi's opinion, its rise hid a cabal of grasping, power-hungry individuals who had allowed then: power to warp the true meaning of makoto, purity of purpose. On the contrary, makoto had made the members of Nami arrogant, blinding them to national problems and the flaws of the Japanese as a whole. Overbearing arrogance and self-delusion were very much American traits; the fact that they had rooted themselves so firmly in the centre of Japan was of great concern to Nangi.

And now that the new Emperor needed guidance, Nami's power had at last come to the fore. The Imperial succession, though it had been a media event of unprecedented proportions in Japan, was of little concern to Nami, as was the new Emperor, Hirohito's son. After the old Emperor had died, it had been Nami which, in the shadows behind the Imperial throne, had really succeeded the son of Heaven.

And while Westerners saw the Emperor as a mere figurehead, wielding only ceremonial power as did the Queen of England, Nangi knew differently. He knew that the Emperor's will defined the word 'power'.

'Of course, it will be my privilege to serve the Emperor's will in any way I can,' Nangi said, almost by rote. 'Would you care to meet me at my office? I have a free hour tomorrow, if it would be convenient. Say, at five in the after-'

'This conference is of the utmost urgency,' Ikusa broke in.

As an ex-vice-minister of MITI, Nangi knew the ministry code words; he had used them Once or twice himself, in an emergency. Now he knew two things of vital importance: this was not a social call, and it presaged some dire crisis. But for whom? For Nami or for himself?

'I will neither come to your office nor suggest that you come to mine,' Ikusa said. 'Rather, I can offer a relaxing hour at the Shakushi furo. Are you familiar with this bathhouse, Mr Nangi?'

'I have heard of it.'

'Have you been there?' Suddenly, like a gap opening in an opponent's armour, the strain in Ikusa's voice was evident to Nangi.

'No.'

'Good,' Kusunda Ikusa said. 'I myself have never visited it, but I will meet you there at five tomorrow, since that is also a convenient time for me.' In the interval Ikusa created, Nangi noted the other man's insistence on dominance. At this early stage, it was an ominous sign. Ikusa broke the silence. 'I wish to underscore the need for absolute discretion in this matter.'

Nangi was offended, but kept his tone of voice clean of emotion. There were other ways to make the affront known and, at the same time, to begin to test the mettle of this man. 'I appreciate your obvious anxiety,' Nangi said, knowing that Ikusa would hate himself for having betrayed even a glimmer of tenseness. 'Rest assured I will take all required precautions.'

'Then, at this time, there is nothing more to say. Until five.' Ikusa broke the connection, and Nangi was left wondering whether his choice of rendezvous venue was deliberate. Shakushi meant a dipper or a ladle, a typical name for a bathhouse where one was soaped and rinsed with ladled water. But Shakushi had another meaning: to go strictly by the rules.

Cotton Branding, walking down the wide, scimitar-shaped beach, dug his toes into the wet sand each time the chill surf lapped over his ankles.

A salty wind was blowing. With a spider-like hand, he wiped an unruly lock of thin, sandy hair out of his eyes. Somewhere behind him, he heard the thwop-thwop-thwop of the helicopter rotors, that most familiar harbinger of summer on the East End of Long Island.

Branding was a tall, stoop-shouldered man in his late fifties with pale blue eyes dominating a face whose obvious' lineage more or less paralleled that of the Kennedys. He possessed the open, almost innocent look - much like an actor on a billboard in the heartland - of the American politician. He wore his authority openly, like a soldier's medal, so that anyone seeing him pass would say: there goes a power-broker, a deal-maker.

He was perhaps less handsome than he was attractive. One could picture him commanding a fast sloop out of Newport, head into the rising wind, knowing eyes squinting against the sun. But he exuded a unique kind of scent, a precious attar, which was a product wholly of power. Lesser men wanted to be near him, if only to stand in his shadow or, like Douglas Howe, to bring him down to their level. Women, on the other hand, wanted only to be a good deal nearer to Branding, snuggling into his warm skin, the better to inhale the intoxicating aroma of supremacy.

But, as must be the case in the modern world, to a great degree Branding owed his power to his friends. While he had many acquaintances among his political brethren, his true friends resided in the media. Branding cultivated them with precisely the same fervour that they pursued him. He was, perhaps, aware of the symbiotic nature of the relationship, but he was a politician, after all, and had willingly dived into a sea of symbiosis when he had entered his first election campaign.

The media loved Branding. For one thing, he looked good on TV, for another he was eminently quotable. And, best of all, he gave them the inside stories - their lifeblood - as they were breaking. Branding was savvy enough to make them look good with their producers or their editors which, in turn, made the producers or the editors look good with the owners. In return, the media hounds gave Branding what he needed most: exposure. Everyone in the country knew Cotton Branding, making him much more than New York's senior Republican senator, chairman of the Senate Fiscal Oversight Committee.

In one sense, Branding was unaware of the breadth of his power. That is to say, he was unused to taking full advantage of it. His wife, Mary, recently deceased, had been especially fond of pointing out his devastating effect on women when he walked into a crowded Washington room. Branding never believed her or, perhaps, did not want to believe her.

He was a man who believed in the American system: executive, judicial, legislative, a careful counterbalance of powers safeguarding freedom. He understood that in becoming a senator he had put one foot into a kind of professional Sodom, where colleagues were regularly indicted for all manner of fraud. These people disgusted him and, as if he saw in their heinous behaviour a personal affront to his unshakeable faith in the system, he was quick to hold news conferences vilifying them. And here, too, his ties with the media gave him an enormous advantage.

Influence-peddling, on which he was regularly quizzed, was another matter entirely. The very threads of the legislative fabric of the American government were woven into the pattern of barter: you vote for my bill and I'll vote for yours. There was no other way to do business on Capitol Hill. It was not the way Branding himself would have chosen, but he was nothing if not adaptable.

He believed in the innate good he was doing - not only for his own New York constituents but for all Americans. And, although he would never openly admit to thinking that the ends justified the means, that was, in effect, how he had chosen to live his professional life.

This strict, almost Puritan morality was, after all, the genesis of Branding's antipathy towards his fellow senator, Douglas Howe, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. It was Branding's opinion that, ever since Howe gained that lofty position, he had been throwing his weight around not only the halls of Congress but the Pentagon as well. But this was apparently not enough for Howe. It was said that the senator had meticulously gathered sensitive intelligence on the private lives of a certain number of generals and, from time to time, exercised this extortionate control over them. The abuse of power was, in Branding's mind, the most heinous crime of all and, as was his wont, he had spoken out on more than one occasion against Howe's misuse of the public trust.

Mary, of course, had counselled a more diplomatic course. That was her way. Branding had his. When they had quarrelled, it had been around their differing approaches to life.

Still, Cotton Branding had always striven to keep the professional and the personal separate. Now Douglas Howe had closed that division, threatening to lead Branding down a treacherous and potentially disastrous road.

Howe was using his own public forum to denounce Branding, and the work Branding was doing with the Advanced Strategic Computer Research Agency. Lately, the verbal fight had turned dirty. Allegations of cover-ups, misuse of the public's money, fraud and boondoggling were becoming the norm; the two were rending each other limb from limb, and privately, Branding had begun to wonder whether either of them would survive.

Within the past two weeks, he had come to the conclusion that in this instance Mary had been correct. Accordingly, he had cut back on the public speechifying, concentrating his efforts on another front. He and his media cronies had got together in private in an effort to amass a case against Douglas Howe's misuse of the public trust.

Howe and Mary: they were the only two people Cotton Branding had thought about for months.

Until Shisei.

He had met her - could it be only last night? he asked himself incredulously - at one of those innumerable social gatherings that for many formed the structure of summer on the East End. Inevitably, Branding found these f?tes to be boring. But in his line of work they were strictly de rigueur, and it was at these times that he missed Mary's presence most keenly. It was only now, in her absence, that he recognized how palatable she made these masques.

'Masque' was Branding's private, ironic name for these summer parties. They were affectation personified; evenings where appearance was all, and content virtually nil. If one looked smashing, if one was seen talking to the right people when the photographers came, that was all that mattered, save if one boorishly abrogated social custom, say by bringing an undesirable such as a commercial literary figure or a Jew.

These Draconian requirements left a bitter taste in Branding's mouth, and often when he would get fed up or one too many drinks would loosen his iron-bound super-ego, he would confess to Mary that he would dearly love to hold one of his famous press conferences in order to expose what he called 'this medieval infrastructure'.