The Nicholas Linnear Novels (143 page)

By contrast, Itami was splendidly attired. But then, Akiko thought, she would be so even in the company of the greatest ladies in Japan.

They met in one of the sixteen-
tatami
rooms where Akiko was led as soon as she was dressed and properly coiffed. The young woman who had first seen her to her room had knocked quietly and politely on the
shōji
, entering only when she was bade, to kneel behind Akiko, spending almost an hour brushing, combing, and putting up her hair with the implements. Akiko had handed her the
tsuge
wood
kushi
that had been Ikan’s, the matching set of
kanzashi
that had been presented to her by Shimada.

Handed the mirror by the servant, Akiko was struck by how much she resembled her mother. How many years had it been since she had had her hair like this? She could not remember, could not even say whether she liked herself this way.

A tea set separated them, of superb workmanship and material of equal quality: the porcelain was translucent and as thin as skin. The intricacies of the ceremony Itami was performing with the tea served a dual purpose. It alleviated the tension and uncomfortableness strangers inevitably feel when first they meet. It also served to focus their attention on Zen, on the formation of harmony.

At the end of the ceremony, if they were not exactly friends, neither were they strangers.

“It pleases me that you have come,” Itami said. She had a pleasant, well-modulated voice and her manner, though formal in the sense of ancient tradition, was nevertheless fueled by a genuine warmth that served to put Akiko at her ease. “My son has spoken of you several times.” There was more that she wanted to say on this score, Akiko sensed.

“You have arrived at a fortuitous time,” Itami continued, “for while Saigō is not here, he is scheduled to arrive in a week’s time. You will stay, of course.”

“I could not think of intruding for so long,” Akiko said. “But I thank you for your offer.”

“An offer is nothing unless it is accepted,” Itami replied. “As you can see, this house is large—some might say overlarge for one woman. My days are sometimes lonely; one’s life can be filled with too much contemplation. It would please me greatly to have a companion. Will you favor me?”

“If you wish it, of course. I have never seen such a beautiful house. It is exhilarating to be here.”

“Now you are exaggerating,” Itami said, but Akiko could see that she was pleased by the genuine compliment.

Late in the afternoon of the next day, Itami said, “After poor Yukio’s untimely death, I was afraid that Saigō had turned his heart away from women. He loved her so; his spirit was crushed by her death. Of course, it came on top of my husband’s death and, well…he and Saigō were always very close.” And Akiko thought, filial piety binds us all, twisting us to its will.

She found herself liking the older woman immensely. She had contrived to make Akiko at home without voicing the usual battery of questions directed at the woman to whom a son is attracted: What is your family? Where do you come from? What is your father’s station? And his father’s? So on. Rather, Itami seemed content to accept Akiko at face value, and this touched Akiko deeply.

“Today,” Itami said, “all things are different. The time when the immutability of Japan was assured is gone. Modern times have assured that it will never come again.”

There was a silence then as the two women walked side by side through the groves of lemon and plum trees. Pink and white chrysanthemum bobbed their heads like a Greek chorus in the following breeze. Overhead, white clouds drifted, below which slate gray plovers swooped. The sun felt warm and comforting on their backs.

“Tomorrow my son comes home.” Itami had stopped to peer at a lizard basking on a rock. Akiko paused beside her. “Perhaps it would be best if you left early in the morning.”

Akiko studied the words as if she were an archaeologist who had stumbled over what might possibly be an important find. “I care about Saigō,” she said after a time. “Very much.”

“Yes,” Itami said. “I know. Still, I think best if you were not here when he arrived.”

“Why is that, Itami-san?”

The older woman turned to face her. “My son is evil, Akiko-san. Sometimes I think that it was a blessing that Yukio-san died so early, so tragically. I did not wish her involved with my son. When she met Nicholas Linnear I hoped that would be the end of it. But, like you, she came back to Saigō. I do not want the same mistake to be made twice.”

“Do you fear for my life, lady?”

Itami stared hard into Akiko’s face. “No, Akiko-san. I fear for your soul. My son is the bitterest of fruit; with his ideas he is a poisoner and it is best to stay away from him lest you, too, be poisoned.”

“It has not hurt me so far,” Akiko said lightly.

“It would be a mistake to make a joke of this, my dear.” Itami began to walk again. “If you decide to stay I will not seek to stop you. I have learned that nothing ever changes in this regard and that it is folly to attempt to turn the will of another. I could not do it with my husband or my son or even my sister-in-law. I have not the power, certainly, to do it to you. Still I speak from the heart and ask you to at least listen.”

Silence once again engulfed them, eventually to be broken by Akiko’s words. “Itami-san, I wish to see him.”

The older woman’s head bowed. “Of course you do, my child.”

Only the four of them were at the wedding: Saigō and Akiko, hand in hand, Itami, and the Shinto priest, who presided. The ceremony took place in the north garden, amid the scents of lemon and rose. The day was clear and bright as crystal. The sun was strong overhead, its warmth pouring down over them like a benediction.

Then Saigō took her away to Tokyo and she saw Itami only infrequently. She could not be at the funeral, when the body was shipped back from America in a sealed coffin that Itami did not want opened after she heard the account of how he died. But Itami wrote her, saying all she wanted now was to have him buried deep, next to his father who had loved him in a way that she could not, who had twisted his spirit in a way she could not forgive him for.

As for Akiko, there was no question but that she do what Saigō had asked of her before he departed for America. Even had he not talked with her, she would have known what to do.

“I know how to do it,” she had told him triumphantly, on a day just shy of their eighth anniversary. “It will mean change for me. Total change.” And she held up the photograph for him to see.

For a long time he said nothing, merely looked from her to the photo and back again. “It will destroy him,” he said. “Utterly and completely. Should I not come back.” His face creased. “But I will.”

Akiko knew better. Saigō was dead the moment he boarded the JAL flight for America for his final confrontation with his cousin, Nicholas Linnear. But this knowledge did not allow her to stop him or even hint to him of his fate. He was a warrior, and to deny him battle was to destroy him on the spot.

When the news reached her, she was already five weeks in Switzerland. She grieved even as she worked out the details of the revenge he would have wished.

She wanted to exercise during her long internment in the Swiss clinic but she was forbidden to do so at least for the first week. After that it was at her own discretion, they said, believing that she could do nothing while the swath of bandages blinded her. They were wrong, but then the Swiss are a peculiarly insular people.

Guided to the gym each day just before lunchtime, Akiko performed ninety minutes of hard physical exercise to keep her superb body in shape. In the late afternoon she did the same. And because she was used to the night, she arose by herself and, using her hearing, guided herself away from the nurses, back into the gym for further work.

She was desperate for physicality, throwing her entire being into it. For one thing, it took her mind off the consequences of what she had done. If the doctors had not been successful here, she would be lost. They had assured her of their talent and she had seen examples of their handiwork herself. Rationally she had been satisfied. But now that it had been done, now that there was no turning back, now that the Akiko she had known all her life was gone, doubts returned to plague her. What if…? What if…? What if…?

So she toiled hard in the garden of mind and spirit, building on the foundations with which Kyōki had provided her, that Sun Hsiung had drilled into her. Now that Saigō had been killed, there was nothing else for her.

And at last there came a morning when darkness began to lift. Layer by layer, searchlights turned black into shades of gray, lightening from charcoal to slate to dove.

Hazily the room appeared, its shape and character emerging slowly from behind gauzy veils. The shapes had been drawn, the overhead light extinguished. Only a small lamp was on, its soft glow fiery to her eyes, unused to light for six weeks. It hurt to see and she was forced to blink rapidly, bringing some of the darkness back so that she would not be overwhelmed by the candle-power.

Everything appeared strange and different. Distant, as well, as if she were a new arrival from another planet. She took the mirror that had been placed in her hand by one of the nurses and shone it on herself.

What she saw there was no face in the rain but the first true blossom of her vengeance.

She saw Yukio staring back at her, blinking furiously in the first light of a new day.

*Free to kill and to restore life.

**Taking opportunity by the forelock.

***Adaptability to all circumstances.

[1. A sorceress 2. A maiden in the service of a shrine]

“H
ELLO, MATTY?”

“Who wants to know?”

“Croaker, Detective Lieutenant, NYPD.”

“Nah. He’s deader than a doornail.”

“Then you’re speaking to the grave. This is your lucky day, Matty.”

“Who the hell is this, anyway?”

“Matty, I got the dame we spoke about last year. Remember the conversation? Alix Logan. Key West.”

“I don’t—”

“You said the situation’d gotten hotter than Lucifer’s hind tit.”

There was a sharp inhalation. “Christ on a crutch, it
is
you, Lieutenant! You ain’t dead. I went to Saint Luke’s to light a candle.”

“I appreciate that, Matty. Really I do.”

“Where the hell are you, Lieutenant?”

“Information, Matty,” Croaker said into the phone. “I need information like a junkie needs his fix. I’m pulling in my markers—all of them. After this we start clean.”

Matty the Mouth, Croaker’s main snitch, thought about this for a minimum amount of time. “It could get me killed.”

“It almost did me, Ace. You’ll be protected. I’ll make sure Tomkin’s people won’t get near you.”

“It ain’t Tomkin I’m worried about, Lieutenant. That bastard deep-sixed almost a week ago.”

“What?”

“Whassamatter, don’t you read the papes or nuthin’?”

“I’ve been avoiding them like the plague. I even told Alix the radio in the car was busted. We got into a mess in North Carolina. I didn’t want her to know how bad it was.”

“Ain’t heard nuthin’ about nuthin’ in N.C.”

“In Raleigh.”

“
Nada,
Lieutenant. And I’d know.”

Croaker turned his head, watched Alix in the car by the side of the highway. They were very near the Lincoln Tunnel, almost back in New York. “What happened with Tomkin?”

“Croaked from some mysterious disease. Taka-something. Japanese sounding.”

“That’s very funny.”

“It is? I don’t get it.”

“Never mind. Private joke.” The recorded message cut in and Croaker fed the box with some more change. “About the Raleigh incident.”

“Total blackout.”

“Yah.”

“I ain’t surprised, Lieutenant. Tomkin was just the tip of the shit pile in this one.” Noise came through the line. “Hold on a minute, will you?” Muffled, Croaker could hear him say to someone else in the room, “Do like I tell you, for Chrissakes, and go to a fuckin’ movie or somethin’.”

In a moment he was back on the line. “Sorry. Wanted to clear the room. This’s risky enough as it is.” He coughed. “Told you I’d do some more nosing around, and I did. What I found I didn’t like. In fact, I was sorry as hell I’d given you the Key West info. When the papes reported you’d bought it, I thought sure as hell it was my fault so I went straight to Saint Luke’s.”

“And all that time I thought it was friendship, pure and simple, Matty.”

“Life ain’t that way, Lieutenant. You know that’s well as me.”

Croaker could not help thinking of Nicholas Linnear and the friendship he had with the man. Were there any of the usual strings attached to the relationship? He was sure there were not. That was part of what made their friendship so special, so binding. Fleetingly, he wondered where Nicholas was now and what he was doing. The last he’d heard of him he was back in West Bay Bridge. Probably off on his honeymoon now, he thought. Croaker knew that he would have tracked his friend down long ago were it not for the fact that he wanted this danger kept away from Nicholas—at least until he could define it.