The Miko - 02 (20 page)

Even though Nicholas’ new job was temporary, she had been terrified that it would turn out to be a permanent position. She knew only too well how persuasive her father could be when he set his mind to it. She had been terrified too of his going away. So soon after the terrible nightmare with Saigō, who through Justine herself had almost succeeded in killing Nicholas, she felt that being alone was a kind of exquisite agony.

She knew that whatever it was Saigō had done to her had scarred her for life, despite all Nicholas’ efforts to exorcise that particular devil from her. True, she was free from Saigō’s arcane grip over her, but she could never be free of the memories.

In the deepest shoals of night, when Nicholas lay peacefully sleeping beside her, she would awake with a shivery start, into a nightmare.

I almost murdered him, she found herself repeating to herself as if there were a stranger alive inside her body to whom she must make sense of this. How could I? Another repeating riff, an agonizing counterpoint. I’m not even capable of killing a fish, let alone another human being, my own love.

That, of course, might have been her salvation: the conviction that
she could not kill
and therefore was not responsible. But the nightmare continued to stalk her. Had not Nicholas stopped her, she would most assuredly have killed him. Just as Saigō had programmed her to. She was not concerned with responsibility. Only with a guilt greater than any she had ever known.

But, oh, she ached for him even as she feared for him every moment he was in Japan, every moment he was with her father. For she knew intimately all the myriad ways Raphael Tomkin had of getting what he wanted. He could be bullheaded or subtle, as the occasion warranted. He could get you even when you were certain he wouldn’t.

She shuddered now within the confines of her new office. Oh, Nicholas, she thought. If only I had been able to make you see what he’s like. I don’t want him to steal you away from me.

Because the thought of Nicholas permanently wedded to Tomkin Industries was more than she could bear. She wanted her father out of her life, had struggled all through her formative years for just such an objective, even going so far as to change her last name to Tobin. And she knew that if there was a chance that he would come back into her life she would move heaven and earth to prevent it.

Angry now as well as lonely, she dialed Mary Kate’s extension. If Nicholas had phoned at this moment, she would have spat at him for putting her in such an impossible position, for making her fear for him and them both.

Justine was told that her friend was in a meeting, so again she left a message, hoping they could have lunch and celebrate. Then she asked Min to come in. Together they began working out logistics, departmental and otherwise, so that Justine could get on with her first projects for Millar, Soames & Robberts.

It took all of Nicholas’ training to cover his true feelings. The shock had been so great, so totally unexpected that he had taken that one lurching step backward, losing for an instant his centrism, exhibiting a certain paleness of complexion, a momentary flaring of the nostrils as animal instinct threatened ascendancy; he was certain no one had noticed. His face closed down like a steel trap as the soft mix of voices from all around him faded….

And he was back in New York, his long
dai-katana
drawn, its gleaming blade arching away toward Saigō. He took a step forward and his cousin said, “You believe that Yukio is alive, somewhere, and thinking every so often of the old days with you. But, oh no, this is not so!” He laughed as they continued to circle each other with murderous intent. He looked into Nicholas’ eyes as he said, “She lies at the bottom of the Straits of Shimonoseki, cousin, precisely where I dumped her.

“She loved you, you know. With every breath she breathed, with every word she spoke. And at last it drove me out of my mind. She was the only woman for me…without her there were only men.” His eyes blazed like coals, red-rimmed and mad. He was bleeding heavily.

“You made me kill her, Nicholas!” he blurted out in sudden accusation.

For months Nicholas had lived with that pain, a black cyst of torment he rarely let out into the light of day. And now to see…It was not as if Akiko Ofuda looked like Yukio: a family resemblance, a sister even. Her face
was
Yukio’s. And as for her figure, well, certainly there were differences. But Nicholas had last seen Yukio in the winter of 1963 on that long, terrible journey south to Kumamoto and Saigō. And when he had returned at last to Tokyo, alone and confused, everything had changed. Satsugai, Saigō’s father, had been murdered. Then the Colonel, Nicholas’ father, died. Shortly thereafter, Cheong, his mother, had committed
seppuku
with her sister-in-law, Itami, as second.

Now, staring hard at Akiko Ofuda, Nicholas wondered wildly whether Saigō had lied that one last time. Was it possible? He was a master of twisted truths. He had been dying when he told Nicholas. What would that have made him do? Lie or tell the truth at last? Whatever would hurt Nicholas the most. Truth or fiction? Nicholas could not tell.

Yet how Akiko had stared at him from the moment he was close enough for her to see him. Though there were more than a hundred people at the affair, her eyes had locked on his. She had created the aura of mystery, hiding her face until he was quite close. She had used her fan deliberately. Why? If she were not Yukio, why would she have any interest in him? And yet to turn up here as Sato’s soon-to-be-wife…The wild coincidence did not escape him. Nicholas, quite rightly, did not trust in coincidences as a force of nature.

All through the ceremony, as the traditional sakē cup was being passed from Sato to Akiko, Nicholas’ mind was preoccupied by the bizarre puzzle. But the more he thought, the more he seemed to become entangled in a mare’s nest of questions without answers. It was clear to him that he would get nowhere until he could speak to Akiko herself. And yet his mind would not stop turning over the possibilities: was she, wasn’t she? His eyes stared at her bleakly. That face, her face. It was as if he had suddenly stepped into a haunted house and now, confused, could not find his way out again. It felt precisely as if all solid ground had fled.

Was the ceremony long or short? He could not tell. He was suspended in an agony of not knowing. Hope, fear, anger, and cynicism all mixed inside him. His own thoughts and memories took precedence over outside events. His body went through the proper motions like an automaton.

And always he found her looking at him. Those eyes he had known so well, had loved so desperately, so wildly, so utterly passionately in the dark days of his youth locked with his. He tried to read some kind of emotion there and, because he was a master of this as well as of many other things, he was dismayed to find that he drew a blank. Did he see mockery there or love, desire or betrayal? He found he had no way of knowing and this, too, was as frightening as this
kami
resurrected from his past.

All Nicholas could think of was getting a chance to talk to Akiko. But quickly he saw just how difficult it was going to be to get her alone. With the ceremony’s end, clusters of friends immediately gathered around the couple, wishing them well, offering their congratulations.

Others began to drift away down the narrow dirt path toward the edge of the lake below, where striped pavilions had been erected the night before.

There was no space for him. The best he could do was to offer his own congratulations to them both. Sato was smiling hugely, being very American about it, pumping hands just like a canny senator in his re-election bid.

Tomkin grunted at Nicholas’ elbow, said, “I’m about ready for him to pass out the cigars.” He turned his head away. “You go on to the reception. My gut still hurts; I’m going back to the hotel. I’ll send the car back for you.”

Alone, Nicholas began to walk down the path circling the cliffs. Ahead of him he could see Sato and Akiko, still surrounded by well-wishers. There was laughter and gaiety now that the stiff formality of the ceremony had been dispensed with.

He saw her descending through the darkness and light, the moving shadows of the pines painting abstract symbols upon the delicate curve of her back. A slight swaying of the shoulders and hips, appearing and disappearing as he descended behind her.

The wedding, the crowds, the swirling chattering talk faded so that he was alone with her and the elements. He was acutely aware of the sunlight, the shadows, the scents of pine and cedar, incense and wild lemon, but only as they pertained to her.

Her passage was like the return of the plovers after a long, sere winter when the ground was rimed with frost and only the glowing hearths emanated warmth.

Once Nicholas had likened Yukio to the fading pale petals that fall on the last of
hanami
’s three days. Although many said that at
hanami
’s peak, the second day, the cherry blossoms were most beautiful, still, to almost every Japanese the third-day petals were most affecting. For it was on that last day when one truly understood the ineffable nature of beauty’s transience.

But now what was he to think? His whole reality had been turned upside down.
Was
Akiko Yukio? How could she still be alive? Had Saigō pulled one last diabolical trick from beyond the grave? Had he kept Nicholas from her all this time when she was alive and…

He could not go on with that thought; the idea made him sick to his stomach with the intensity of longing and bitter frustration. Then he managed to get hold of himself. He knew where he was and what he would have to do in order to find the answers to all these questions. He would have to allow his Eastern side complete ascendancy. Time…and patience. He knew that he would have to employ them both if he was to successfully break this maddening riddle. Meanwhile he would just have to ignore his breaking heart.

He had been watching Alix Logan for over five months now. Through the sun-drenched streets of Key West, along the narrow, flat beaches, in and out of the small clothing and jewelry boutiques. He had even gone with her when she went to pick up her dog, a large brindled Doberman. He cringed when he saw the neat white and black sign hanging from a crosstree on the lawn: Gold Coast Obedience School, and in smaller letters beneath: Police and Attack Training Our Specialty. And the one thing he had learned from all that time on the job was that there was no conceivable way in to her.

Alix Logan was a looker. She had a slender model’s body, long thick hair the color of honey, streaked nicely now by the Florida sun. Her eyes were an intense green. He had seen them only through the compact Nikon 7 x 20 binoculars, flattened by the lens’ prisms into ovoid orbs as large as the sun.

For just over five months she had been his universe, this powerful man with the wide shoulders and the cowboy’s pushed-in face. He had dogged her for so long and so intensely that it was as if he were living with her. He knew what she ate, what her tastes in clothes and men were. What she liked, what she didn’t like.

Her favorite item was a hot fudge sundae with coffee ice cream and two cherries. What she disliked most were the pair of monsters who shadowed her constantly. At least that was how she thought of them. He had heard her call one just that, “Monster!” as she accosted him on the pier one bright cloudless afternoon, rushing into the shadows to deliver her impassioned message to him directly, using her small fists on his burly chest for emphasis.

The monster stared at her impassively from out of his close-set brown eyes.

“I’m fed up!” she screamed at him. “I can’t take it anymore. I thought it’d be all right down here. But it’s not. I can’t work, I can’t sleep, I can’t even make love without you monsters breathing fire on my back.” Her honey hair whipped in the salt wind. “Please, please, please, just leave me alone!”

The monster turned his face away from her and, crossing his massive arms across his chest, began to whistle something from a Walt Disney movie.

The man with the cowboy’s lined face witnessed all this from the small boat he sat in, gently rocking at pierside while he worked on his fishing tackle, a stained canvas hat scrunched down low over his forehead, putting his face in black shadow. They knew him here as Bristol and that was how he liked it. He also responded to “Tex,” a rather unimaginative nickname Tony, the dockmaster, had given him, owing to his face.

“Tex” Bristol. If you thought about it for more than a moment, it was idiotic. But then, he thought, this whole scene was something for the books.

He finished his work on his rod and prepared to shove off. On the pier, Alix Logan, tears trembling like diamonds in the corners of her eyes, was stalking stiff-legged away from the monster, toward the gangplank of a pleasure boat.

He cast off, heard the twin screws of the engines thrumming liquidly behind him. He picked up speed, the thought of martin in his head.

Far from shore, he had to laugh. For someone dead and buried, he was leading a remarkably action-filled life.

Akiko Ofuda Sato felt the press of her husband’s hand in the limo on the way home from the reception. Felt the heat emanating from his body, the pressure of his lustful spirit so close beside her. He made no overt move, but in all other aspects she felt the electricity crackling through him as they drew closer and closer to home.

Multiple images, thronging her mind in such profusion they tumbled end over end over each other, of her voyeuristic nights in the house, of the bodies of all the gifts she had presented him with over the long months, made her gasp inwardly with a manufactured excitement. She squeezed Sato’s hand, the edges of her lacquered nails scratching gently along the warm flesh of his palm.

Once inside, she went immediately to the bathroom and, doffing her kimono, removed all her undergarments. Naked, she carefully wrapped her kimono around herself, tying the
obi,
checking her makeup in the mirror. She reapplied eye shadow and lipstick.

The master bedroom was in the
omoya,
far from the six-
tatami
room where he had received his gifts. Those women had never been allowed into this section of the house. They were outsiders, after all, not family.