The Nicholas Linnear Novels (127 page)

Of course he could always try to brazen it out. But he suspected that would be an unwise course for him to take, the result being the same as if he walked out. Nangi was hard. And he was Japanese. But if he were fair he could make a satisfactory employer.

Su decided to tell the truth. “The Royal Albert has been paying me ten thousand Hong Kong dollars a month to keep them informed of all All-Asia transactions.” He held his breath. He could hear his accelerated heartbeat like surf in his inner ear.

“I see.” Nangi tapped the eraser end of a new pencil on Su’s desk top. Then he looked up. “As of now, Mr. Su, your salary is doubled.” Great gods of the west wind, Su thought. A thin line of sweat broke out at his hairline. “In six months we’ll review the matter and, based on the bank’s overall position, it will be reevaluated upward…or downward. The same will hold true a year from now.” His eyes were searching Su’s face. “If, at that time, the bank has performed up to a schedule of profit I shall work up for you before I depart, you will receive a ten percent stock equity in All-Asia pursuant to your signing a lifetime contract.”

Nangi saw with satisfaction that all color had drained from Su’s broad face.

“I will immediately sever all ties with the Royal Albert.” Su’s voice was thin and reedy. His eyes seemed glassy.

“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” Nangi said. “You’ll take your ten thousand a month and within sixty days ask for a raise. God knows, you’ve earned it.”

Su’s face clouded. “Sir. I don’t think I understand.” Relief was flooding through him like a spring torrent, muddying his thoughts.

“From today on, Mr. Su, you will provide the Royal Albert with precisely the information I feed you. At the same time you will relay to me just what is going on at our competition. I will want to know every major and minor deal on their boards. I will want to know their capital outlay, their spread, and their investment goals for one year, five years, and ten years.” He cocked his head. “Are you getting all this, Mr. Su?”

Su had recovered sufficiently to smile. Oh, gods of all four quarters, he prayed silently, tonight I will offer a feast to each and every one of you. “I’m with you, Nangi-san,” he said in his best idiomatic English. “This is sounding more and more like a task I will enjoy immensely.”

Then concern flooded his face again. “But I cannot be expected to achieve these great gains with the depletion of capital that currently plagues us. The bank is on the verge of insolvency if we were to have to redeem on any kind of an extended run. And even if the run does not materialize—may all the gods hear and make it so!—it would take more than twelve months for us to recover sufficiently from these setbacks so that I can make even a semblance of headway.”

“Two items will help us here,” Nangi said, unruffled. “First, we will have additional capital available to us within seventy-two hours.”

“May I ask the source of this capital?” Su interjected.

“Just be prepared to invest part of it wisely for a maximum return with a minimum of time factor.”

Su was already shaking his head. “Big risk in that. Too much for us in our current position.”

“Not with the information you’re going to be getting from the Royal Albert.” Nangi was smiling now as he rose. “Ride their back, Mr. Su, as the temple dog rides the great dragon. Let
them
take all the risks, do all the work while you make our money grow for us risk free.” He nodded his head.

“Congratulations! This is a big day for you. Shall we go and celebrate?”

Tanya was manning the ARRTS terminal when the cipher came in. That was luck, pure and simple. But if someone else had been on, which had been far more likely, he or she would have merely starred the unreadable entry and she would have been flagged down immediately on her return.

The “Spearfish” situation, as she had somewhat ironically designated it, was her baby. She was its monitor principally because it was a personal matter of Minck’s and not business.

Well, that was not strictly true. “Spearfish”
had
been business up until perhaps a year ago. It should have been terminated then, as Tanya had argued. In fact, as far as anyone else in Red Section or anywhere else in the Family was concerned, it was terminated. Only Minck and Tanya knew otherwise.

The moment Tanya became aware that “Spearfish” had crossed the line it never should have, into the personal sector, she had come alert. One of her jobs, unspoken and all the more crucial for that, was to protect Minck. In her judgment he had picked a particularly dangerous time to pull something like this, though she knew when personal feelings were allowed to interfere with business there was no good time for it.

Thus she became “Spearfish”’s guardian while acknowledging the foolhardiness of the enterprise. Some things could be kept in cold storage better than others. But nothing could be well kept for long out in the open.

When she knew that Minck would not go for the termination she had switched tactics, arguing for a closed shop. That was out of the question as well, he said. “Spearfish” could not be penned up.

Then she had gone for the box, eight men in two shifts. But Minck had said “Spearfish” would find that distasteful as well. It limited freedom, he said. Tanya had kept her mouth shut, knowing that that was precisely the purpose of the box. It was normally used on more serious tags but it could work just as well on friend-lies such as “Spearfish.”

Finally, she did what he had asked her to do in the first place: put two men on it. But she would not let it go at that. She kept in constant touch. “Spearfish” was highly volatile and she wanted no mistakes made. The only time she laid off was when Minck himself went down. He thought that even she did not know. But she did.

Now she watched the glowing green letters springing up on the terminal screen, marching across in dedicated rows. When the message had ended, she watched the pulsing letters hanging there for a moment before she pushed the decode button. The word “REALLY?” came up and she hit a six-digit key ultimate access sequence. Now the decoded message wrote itself across the screen. Now she had one minute, no more, no less, to digest the message. If she did not depress the “print” key by that time to get a hard copy, ARRTS would dissolve the cipher as if it had never existed.

She went pale as she read the terse message, so stunned that she had made no conscious decision whether or not to print before her time ran out and the message disappeared from the screen. That did not matter much since it still glowed behind her eyes.

Silently she cursed Minck and his personal problems. Because the cipher had turned “Spearfish” from a potential problem into an active one. She depressed the “send” key, composing her reply as she did so. When only the date appeared, she was reminded that codes were changed weekly and this was the day to get a new one. That meant Tony Theerson.

She got up and went down two floors. The Boy Wonder had his digs in an otherwise unused corner of the floor. His only companions were the jumble of cardboard and wooden crates, shipping labels, and huge rolls of brown wrapping papers. And his cipher machines.

Though Minck had Theerson working on the Soviet Alpha-three ciphers almost around the clock, it was also his devilish little brain that composed the Red Section’s own codes. He said they were unbreakable; Tanya believed him.

When she came in on him he was sitting up on the Army cot he had asked be installed in his work space. Tanya suspected that the Boy Wonder had no private life whatsoever; he certainly slept in the building enough. Also, because of the time differential between Washington and the areas he monitored, primarily Russia and Asia, he tended to have odd sleep-wake patterns.

“Hey,” he said in his laconic way.

“Want some coffee?”

He offered up his bare arm; he was dressed in a T-shirt with “Depeche Mode” written on it and a pair of faded blue jeans. “Just slip the needle in this vein, Doctor.”

Tanya laughed as she crossed to the coffee machine and filled two mugs. She gave him one. “Had a hard night?”

He sipped at the strong French roast and groaned, his eyes closing in ecstasy. “Food of the gods.” He downed more coffee. “I’m having a bitch of a time breaking this new one.” He meant the Alpha-three. He put the empty cup aside. “Frankly, I don’t think I’m going to get it.” He rose and stretched, yawning widely.

“It’s that time again, I’m afraid,” Tanya said. She had hardly touched her coffee, preferring tea. But she had not wanted to appear unfriendly.

The Boy Wonder groaned again. “You mean another week’s slid by? Oh, God.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “I need a shower.”

“Business first, personal hygiene later,” Tanya said, putting down her cup. “I’m on an open line.”

“Gotcha.” Theerson poked through a box of floppy disks. He pulled one out, gave it to her. “This one’s a doozy.”

“They all are,” she said, heading for the door. “Good luck.”

He grunted sourly. “With this monster I’m gonna need it.”

The last she saw of him he was putting on his Walkman headphones as he sat down to work. With the Boy Wonder, business came before anything. Tanya decided to draft a memo to Minck suggesting he give Theerson some enforced vacation time.

Back at the ARRTS console two floors up, she inserted the floppy Theerson had given her and punched the “enter” button. The word “FILE:” came up and she typed in, “SPEARFISH.” She waited for the cycle to complete, then entered her reply. The machine would automatically use the new cipher, ARRTS having replaced the old code with the new one in the receiver.

TRANSMIT HOURLY UPDATES. WILL BE MOBILE SOON. WILL GIVE BACKUP WITHIN THIRTY-SIX HOURS. TERMINATE ‘SPEARFISH’ WHEN SITUATION STABILIZES AND YOU ARE CERTAIN OF TARGET VISIBILITY.

Then she went away to make her report.

Nicholas sat on the backless stone seat in Sato’s garden. He had been there for perhaps an hour, ever since his hosts had retired. He had made a show of going to his room so that they would not be obliged to share his insomnia. But he hadn’t even bothered to undress, merely waited fifteen minutes before returning to the now deserted garden.

With infinitesimal slowness, light came into the garden. In a way it was a shame, since before only cold moonglow had distinguished shadow and illumination, causing the flower scents to dominate. Now as vision took hold, the perfumes seemed to fade.

Nicholas became aware of the presence behind him the moment it crossed the threshold of Sato’s study and stepped down onto the glowing pebbles. The predawn atmosphere was aqueous with white mist. There was no sound save the waking of the birds.

He knew that it was Akiko without having to turn around or hear her voice. Their
wa
had locked hours before and that had been enough to mark her in his mind. The system was as primitive as it was sophisticated. As Akutagawa-san had said, urban life had bred it out of modern human beings.

Because of this, too, he knew that she was dangerous. He did not know in precisely what way or even if it was to him in particular. He knew she was
sensei.
Very few individuals would have been able to make that determination from mere visual observation and the imprint of her spirit—even other
sensei
without all of Nicholas’ skills and ability. But he was different.

“Nicholas-san.”

Her low voice shivered him and he willed himself to remain calm. Still his pulse beat hard in his temples and he felt a sudden rush of blood to his head.

“Where is your husband?”

“Snoring on his princely pallet.”

What was in her voice? Nicholas strained to hear all of the echoes and nuances, even those she might not know were present. Had he found derision there?

“Isn’t your place beside him?” It was the petulant comment of a jealous lover, and he cursed himself.

“My place,” she replied as if she heard no overtones, “is where I choose to be.” She paused as if uncertain whether to go on. “Do you think that unJapanese of me?”

He shook his head. “Untraditional, perhaps, but not unJapanese.”

In the ensuing silence she said, “Won’t you turn around and face me? Am I so difficult to look at?”

Her words stirred the hair at the base of his neck and he wondered how carefully she had chosen them. Slowly, his heart beating faster than he would have wished, he turned toward her. He melted inside.

Just the first hint of dawn blushed her face in radiant light. She had changed into a pale yellow kimono with ice green and silver thread embroidered in the shape of stands of pine trees. A lone golden heron flew at full wing over her left breast. Her hair was down, a gleaming blueblack cascade stretching straight down her back. She wore no jewelry whatsoever. Her nails shone with clear lacquer but were cut short as would befit one of her training. He thought he could discern the slightest tremor in her face, a fleeting tic along the upper lid of one eye. Then both were gone and she was in control again.

“Was that so hard?” she breathed into the soft wind. Mist swirled at her back, danced around his shoulders.

“You are beautiful to look at, Akiko.” He had not meant to make any such admission. Immediately he felt as if he had lost a battle.

She came toward him, gliding along the pebble path. She seemed to him to be emerging from out of the ending of the night. “Why do I feel as if I have been with you before?”

What she said startled them both. It was as if, naked, they were embracing and Sato had walked in on them. Blood flooded Akiko’s face and her eyes flicked away from his face. The tremble was back within her.

All sense of reality had slipped from Nicholas’ mind. Lost within the white mist, he saw only her. Yukio rose before him, a
kami
who had been granted a second life. Then he, too, reached out for the stability of the Void, seeking an answer to the unanswerable. As if in a dream, he rose from the hard stone seat and came toward her until they were but a hand’s breadth apart. He fought with himself to say the words that had been roiling through his consciousness ever since she had slipped the fan from in front of her face. They were words he longed to say, words that would free him, perhaps, from his inner torment but which would also certainly make him vulnerable to her.