The Nicholas Linnear Novels (172 page)

Nangi said, “Even granting that all you say is true, I cannot see what any of it has to do with Nicholas Linnear.”

Ikusa grunted, and his great body heaved, setting a fresh set of wavelets in motion. “Nicholas Linnear’s parentage may be English and Oriental, but he is an American now. One, I might add, with ties to the American intelligence community. Never forget that he was employed by a major American spy apparatus when he was captured by the Russians and tortured.”

Ikusa paused here, allowing the last word to hang in the air as if it were an accusation.

Nangi said, “Linnear-san endured much pain and suffering in order to keep the secret of Tenchi safe from the Soviets.”

Ikusa smiled, as if he had expected this response and was gratified that it had been spoken. “Your loyalty to this mongrel is well-documented, Nangi-san.”

Nangi sat very still. He had to use every ounce of his self-possession to keep from making a rash statement that might, in Ikusa’s eyes, condemn him. “As I told you,” Nangi said in a calm voice, “I know where my duty lies.”

“Americans,” Ikusa said as if Nangi had not spoken, “are masters of lies and deception. When they are your enemies, they defeat you; when they are your friends, they exploit you.”

Nangi, listening closely, knew that Ikusa had moved from the general to the specific: he was speaking about Nicholas.

“The merger between Sato International and Tomkin Industries never should have been allowed.” Kusunda Ikusa’s head moved in small increments, taking in not only Nangi, but the surrounding environment as well. “For one thing, Tenchi is too vital to Japan’s future security and independence from foreign sources of energy. I need not remind you that the fact that Japan has been totally dependent on others to provide fuel has made us terribly vulnerable. This was the spur for Tenchi’s creation.” Ikusa’s questing eyes had settled upon Nangi again. “Another reason why the merger was a mistake is that your company, Nangi-san, is privy to too many secrets—industrial, governmental, even military—to have an American so intimately involved. You have already put us in peril. It is unreasonable to think that you can continue in this vein.”

Nangi said nothing, though he now knew what was to come. Let Ikusa say it out loud, he thought. I will not help him in any way.

“Nami believes that this unsafe association with the American—both business and personal—must be ended,” Kusunda Ikusa said. “The sooner the better.”

Nangi said nothing. Apparently, Ikusa felt it advisable to speak for him.

“You have thirty days to dismantle the merger between Sato International and Tomkin Industries. But I will insist that all Tomkin personnel be immediately excluded from any and all involvement in Tenchi. This, of course, includes Nicholas Linnear.”

Nangi felt as if he had been handed a death sentence. “What about the Sphynx computer-chip
kobun?
That is our first full joint venture with Tomkin. It is they who brought us the Sphynx T-PRAM technology. The profits are enormous.”

“The
kobun
will naturally have to be dissolved,” Ikusa said, his eyes again on the environment.

“Without Tomkin’s involvement,” Nangi said, “we will be left with nothing. The technology is strictly proprietary.”

Kusunda Ikusa’s eyes slid toward Nangi. “If the Sphynx T-PRAM chip is as profitable as you claim,” he said, “you’ll find a way to, ah, appropriate the technology.”

“I will not steal from my friend.”

“I believe,” Ikusa said slowly and carefully, “that you need some time to think this through.” He lifted a hand, almost in benediction. “You need to see clearly who your friends are.”

Nangi was silent. He felt impaled upon a rock, waiting for the carrion birds to arrive to pick his bones clean.

Ikusa said, in what in anyone else would be construed as a benevolent tone of voice, “You have already said several times that you know where your duty lies, Nangi-san, so, at this juncture, there seems no need to remind you.” Nevertheless, Ikusa did. “Duty to one’s Emperor, one’s country, one’s company, one’s family. That is the proper order.” Ikusa closed his eyes, as if at last he could enjoy the heated water. “Do your duty, Nangi-san. Nami—and your Emperor—command you.”

Cotton Branding awoke with a strong sense of sexual tension. He had an erection that even urinating couldn’t dissipate.

He had dreamed of Shisei.

Of music and her legs and especially what was between them. They had made love dancing to the music, circling the formal brick patio while the band watched. Branding flushed as the dream came flooding back to him. He doused his head in cold water, as if that would drive away the wanton images.

He thought of his wife Mary, just two months dead, seeing again in his mind the footage of her being pulled out of their collapsed Mercedes, hit head-on by an eighteen-wheel truck that, out of control, had jumped the divider on 295 into Washington. The on-the-scene television reporter had said that the police had to use acetylene torches to get her out of her twisted metal and glass coffin.

Branding, hanging limply over the custom sink, gagged, vomited up what little was left in his stomach from last night. That did it for his erection. The dream, too, was gone.

He took a shower, then dressed in seersucker shorts, an emerald polo shirt, and huaraches, he padded into the kitchen. The room was huge, as was every room in the house, and, though it was still early, filled with brilliant light. Out the window, across the dunes, the blue Atlantic curled and sucked at the beach.

Coffee had been made automatically by some West German machine Mary had ordered from the Williams-Sonoma catalogue. Branding had never seen the sense in it, but this morning he was grateful for its presence. He put a frozen croissant into the microwave and, when it was warm, dropped it onto a paper plate.

He went out onto the deck, and while he sat sipping and nibbling, stared at the extension phone. Above his head gulls wheeled and cried to each other. He tasted neither the coffee (which was quite good) nor the croissant (which was not). He was thinking about whether to call Tippy North, the masque’s hostess, to ask her if she knew Shisei’s phone number or even her last name. It had been three days since he had met Shisei; an eternity.

At that moment he heard the front doorbell ring. He looked at his watch. It was barely eight o’clock on a Sunday morning. Whoever it was must have the wrong house. He continued to stare at the phone, no longer concerned with the charade of eating. The doorbell rang again. He ignored it. He was in no mood for company, and furthermore, whoever it was had a hell of a nerve bothering him at this hour.

Gulls dipped low along the shoreline, and mist lay close in the hollows between the dunes, waiting for death by sunlight. If he squinted he could see the dried remains of a horseshoe crab, its black prehistoric shell looking ominous on the clean white sand.

He heard footsteps on the wooden stairway up from the beach, and he turned his head. Someone was coming toward the house along the walkway the DEC had made him build across the dunes in order to preserve them.

Sunlight struck the figure as it emerged from the mist. The light fell obliquely, burnishing the figure as well as blurring its outline. At first he thought the person was nude. Then, as it drew closer, he saw that the figure wore as skimpy a bikini as he had ever seen. Really, the figure was all flesh.

It was Shisei.

He was so stunned that he did not answer when she said, “Why didn’t you answer the bell?”

It was as if she had walked right out of his dream.

“Cook,” Shisei said. “You said I could call you Cook.”

“Did I?” Already it seemed as if he had violated a sacred trust. Thinking of his ongoing senatorial war with Douglas Howe, he knew that he should have nothing to do with this woman. Yet he did not send her away. Instead he devoured her with his eyes.

Seeing the look on his face, Shisei extracted a white cover-up from the multicolored hemp satchel she carried, slipped it on.

Branding discovered that his need for her was so powerful it was akin to the ache one develops from an animal bite. He felt red and sore, filled all over again with the wretched pangs of yearning he had experienced as a teenager.

“Is there any more coffee?” Shisei said.

An oval of sand clung to her calf, a contrast to her smooth skin, which was somehow so erotic that Branding almost doubled over with the ache in his lower belly.

“I’ll get you some,” he said thickly.

When he returned she was draped over a chair she had brought to a position directly across the pebbled-glass table from his. He handed her a cup, sat down. Her unbuttoned cover-up had fallen open. Her body was absolutely hairless. There was something eerily fascinating about the endless expanse of cool, tan smoothness. She was, so exposed, even more of a child. Like almost all Americans, Branding equated body hair with maturity.

And yet, at the same time, she was much less the child. The bikini was three minuscule triangles of gold and chocolate animal-striped spandex. Everything underneath was as good as revealed. The shape of her body had nothing behind which to hide, and it was impossible to pretend that there was anything girlish or immature about it.

“I’m surprised to see you,” he said.

Her eyes, as dark as the coffee she was sipping, regarded him openly. “I wanted to see where you live. It will tell me much more about you than you could yourself.”

He noticed that she said nothing about how the evening at the masque had ended. It was clear she had no intention of apologizing. “Why are you so interested in me?”

“That is a suspicious question.”

“I’m not suspicious,” Branding said, not altogether truthfully. “Merely curious.”

“You are powerful, handsome, intelligent,” Shisei said. “Why shouldn’t I be interested?”

“My wife is dead sixty days.”

“Why should that make a difference to either of us?”

“Besides anything else, there is a period of mourning to be observed.” With the politician’s glibness, he returned one of her own terms.
“Kata.”
The proper form. “And I am currently in the middle of a life-and-death struggle with Senator Douglas Howe. He’s smart and unscrupulous, and he’s got smart and unscrupulous people around him. That’s bad enough. But even worse for me, he has a great deal of money and influence behind him. I can’t afford to give him any ammunition with which to smear my name.”

Shisei smiled and nodded. “I understand.” She put down her empty cup and rose to leave. “Thank you for the coffee and for your frankness.”

He had been wrong. Her skin was not like marble. It was like the first golden peach of summer, one that you could not wait to bite into, to taste the sugary, perfumed flesh while the sticky juices ran down your chin.

Impulsively leaning forward over the glass table, Branding took her hand. “Don’t go,” he said, astonished at what he was proposing. “Stay awhile.”

…took two hours to untangle the victim from the mass of metal,
the reporter was saying again, inside Branding’s mind, as the television camera tracked in for a close-up—a close-up of Mary.
His
Mary. Dear God!

He closed his eyes. Stop this, he reprimanded himself. What good does it do? Mary made that same trip religiously twice a week all year long. How could you have prevented it? How could you have protected her? The answer was that there was nothing he could have done. Which was, of course, what made the guilt so excruciating. Often he felt crucified by it.

“I’ll stay, if you like.” It was, from Shisei’s throat, purely a neutral statement.

He dropped his hand from hers. “I’ll leave it up to you.”

She strolled along the old-fashioned wraparound porch. It was the place that Mary had loved the best, the one she had designed with the architect. Every eight feet massive wooden pillars rose up to reach the overhang, which served as an exposed deck from the second floor.

Suddenly curious, Branding said, “You never told me what you do.”

“I’m a lobbyist,” Shisei said. “I work for various international environmental groups.”

Thinking of all the lobbyists honeycombing the Washington political arena, he said, “That must be tough work.”

She smiled. “It’s impossible, really. But someone’s got to do it. Anyway, we Japanese have a long history of championing lost causes.”

She put her arms around a pillar, swung herself off her feet in startling mimicry of what Mary used to do when she was happy with her charity work or satisfied with an important bill’s passage.

Branding stood up, following Shisei down the porch. He watched her, a puppy at play, her face relaxed and unconcerned, and he was filled with an odd joy that was tinged with the kind of wistfulness one feels on the first crisp day of autumn. It was, in fact, such a strange emotion that Branding mentioned it to Shisei.

She stopped as if he had physically grabbed hold of her. On bare feet she came across the porch to where he was standing. “In Japan,” she said, “everyone waits for three days in April, for the cherry blossom viewing. During that time the air is suffused with their perfume. Some go to the parks and the countryside on the first day when the cherry blossoms are in the first blush of youth. Others go the second day, when the vigor of the mature blossoms are at their height. But everyone goes the third day, when, like heavenly rain, the blossoms begin to fall. We watch them drift to the earth so that we may not forget the fleeting nature of all of life’s most beautiful creations. We feel both elation and sadness. In Japanese it is called
mono no aware,
the pathos of things.” She touched him. “Now, I think, you have felt the same thing.”

Branding did not wait for nightfall to take his cherry blossom to bed. Indoors, with the backwash of the hazy day turning the room incandescent, her eyes were glittery. Shisei approached him and slowly undressed him. He did nothing, urged to momentary passivity by her eyes and, possibly, something in her manner.

With agile hands she peeled off his polo shirt, unbuttoned his shorts. Now he was naked and she was not. Branding found that he liked it that way, drinking in her bareness while imagining what those tiny covered bits of her looked like.