The Nicholas Linnear Novels (226 page)

At that moment he almost turned and walked away, but he could not. She rooted him to the spot as much as did his anomie, an ironic juxtaposition that he could not yet come to grips with.

Nicholas did not know what to do.

Then the door opened and, in a billow of fragrant mist, Justine came out. She was wrapped in a bathsheet, a towel turbaned about her hair. She stopped dead when she saw him.

“Oh, my God, Nick!”

Then she was in his arms, sobbing, kissing him all over his face, her warm, damp body pressed close to his. He could feel the tremors of her muscles, smell her through the soft scents of the soap and the shampoo and the body talc.

Nicholas, enfolding her, warmed by her, felt his love for her, felt that it had never died. But whether it had merely receded on its own by time and circumstance or he had pushed it away, he could not say.

He recognized that, in a way, his withdrawal from her—indeed, from everyone around him—had been a necessary part of his awakening to his own destiny: the knowledge that he was tanjian. And this thought saddened him in a way he could not fully explain and was, as yet, unprepared to explore.

All he knew was that he was drenched in Justine once again, just as he had been so many years ago, when they had first met along this stretch of beach only a few yards from where he was now standing, their feet wet, their psyches wary, suspicious of each other and any incident that would so wildly, willfully bring two people together with such breathless abandon.

All he knew was that he was whole once more, and a kind of exultation, fierce and undeniable, gripped him, so that he held her to him all the tighter.

“Dear God, I love you, Justine.”

And she was crying. “Nick, Nick, Nick,” she whispered as if the mere evocation of his name would assure her that he had really returned to her. “I was so afraid that I would never see you again. I—”

“Why?” He pushed her a little away from him so that he could look into her face. He wanted to see, he needed to see that she was all right. “Where would you get an idea that I wasn't coming back?”

“I—I…” Justine shook her head, the towel turbaned over her hair coming down around her shoulders, her dark hair, damp, tangled, an erotic web, coming free. “I don’t know. I think—”

And he could see it in her eyes, the green hidden and murky in the dominant brown, the red motes in her left iris dull, remote. He could see the Tau-tau lurking there like a spider crouched in its web, and his heart broke, and he had to fight the fear because this was so new to him that he lacked the confidence to know whether he could free her, really free her as he had from the ninja hypnosis that Saigo had once worked on her.

“Someone told you,” he said. “Someone put it into your mind.” To shock her because he knew this much: that he would need her help, he could not exorcise the Tau-tau on his own.

“Yes…” Justine looked bewildered, as if he had pulled her roughly out of a deep sleep. “I remember…something.” She looked into his face. “Like a dream or a painting in smoke, shimmering, shifting, dancing away when I try to look it full in the face.”

He saw the fright steal into her face, darken her eyes, obscure the red motes. “Nick, what’s happening to me? I feel…I feel like I’m living in two separate worlds. I feel, I don’t know quite how to say this, but as if I’m locked up and have been set adrift at the same time. Crazy, huh?”

“Not nearly as crazy as you think,” Nicholas said. “Why don’t you get dressed, and I’ll see what kind of food—”

“Don’t leave me.” Justine reached out for him. “Please, I—Nick, I don’t want to be alone now that you’re here. I just want to look at you, touch you. I— It feels like it’s been so long since I’ve seen you, years instead of weeks. I—” She held her head. “I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

“Get dressed, honey,” Nicholas urged her. “You’ll get cold standing around like that.”

Justine smiled, slipped into jeans and a black cotton turtleneck sweater. “Better?” She came over to him. “Nick, what is it? What’s happened?”

He put his arms around her. “Remember Saigo? Remember what he did to you, hypnotizing you?” She nodded. “Somewhat the same thing has happened, I think. Though you don’t remember it clearly, the
dorokusai
who is after me came to the house in Tokyo. He spent some time with you.” He saw the puzzled look on her face. “You don’t remember someone new, a stranger coming to the door?”

“No,” Justine said. “There was only the cyclist. But I don’t remember what happened to him.”

“What cyclist?”

“I— Well, I almost ran him down, I think. I was coming out of our driveway and didn’t see him. I was lucky and so was he; he just went into the cryptomeria on the other side of the road. He said he was okay but I insisted he come and have some tea.” She gave Nicholas a little smile. “I was practicing being more Japanese, thinking to myself his refusals were just his way of being polite. He came, though.”

“And then what happened?”

“What?” Justine looked startled. “Oh, I don’t know, really. I can’t seem to remember. I guess he came with me to the house, had some tea, and left.”

“No, that’s not all that happened,” Nicholas said. “The cyclist was Senjin Omukae.”

“Yes. That was his name. I remember that now.”

“He’s the
dorokusai,
Justine.”

He felt her begin to shake all over again. “Oh, Nick.” Tears welled in her eyes. “Nick, what’s happened? What’s he done to me? I can’t remember…”

“I know exactly what he’s done,” Nicholas said, although he didn’t. “I’ll take care of it.” Although he had no way of knowing whether or not he could. He wondered, then, how much he could—or should—tell her of his own new circumstances. Would it make her feel more secure or just deepen her fright if he were to tell her that he himself was a tanjian? He did not know.

He led her into the living room, where there was more light and more space. He poured her a whiskey, brought it to her.

“But what has he done to me?” Justine insisted.

“He wants to get to me through you.”

She took a sip of the scotch, shuddered. “Maybe he wants me to kill you, like Saigo wanted.”

“I doubt it,” Nicholas said. “This one wants me all to himself. There would be no satisfaction for him in a murder by proxy.”

Justine’s eyes were wide and staring. “Nick, do you realize what we’re talking about?”

Nicholas knew that he had never loved his wife more deeply or completely than he did at that moment. He kissed her hard on her lips, feeling hers soften, open beneath his. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Senjin had one chance to kill me, up in Dr. Hanami’s office, and he didn’t do it. Good for me; too bad for him. There’s an old Japanese saying: If you fail to kill an enemy, you had better dig two graves.”

Justine collapsed into his arms. “Oh, God. Death and more death.” She put her head against his chest. “Isn’t there another way? Oh, there must be.” She looked up at him. “Can’t we just run away somewhere, anywhere, I don’t care where, I swear it, just so long as—” But she stopped, seeing the look on his face, which confirmed her own inner sense.

“No, I see this is the only way now. Because of your life, Nick, and how you’ve got to live it. All right, then.” Slowly she covered his hand with hers. “I accept whatever must be, whatever is to come. Karma. Because I love you and only you.” She drew his hand down to her belly. “But I want you to remember that whatever happens, our future—or part of it—is in here, waiting for its time. Promise me you won’t do anything to jeopardize that future.”

“Justine, are you saying—” But he already knew, could tell with his gift, just as Senjin had, that she was pregnant. “My God, a baby.”

“Are you happy?”

“Yes. Oh, yes!” He kissed her. “When are you due?”

“Early in the spring.”

“A baby,” Nicholas echoed, his hand still on her belly.

“This one we’ll keep, Nick.” She pressed herself hard against him. “That’s my promise to you. This baby will live, grow up, be our future…together.”

Nicholas picked her up, carried her over to the long modular couch. They lay together, entwined, twinned, each reaching for that part the other had withheld during the past bleak months out of anger, frustration, and fear, but not indifference, never indifference.

Above them, in their floating city, the angelfish rippled their translucent fins, darting serenely in and out of the vertical water plants, while Gus the catfish slept, sated, in his niche between two plastic spars of a mock shipwreck.

The heat rose in them, the same delicious fire they had first felt when they coupled frantically, knowing little about each other except that they burned to be closer than close.

Justine’s fingers were already unbuttoning his shirt, pushing it back off his chest and arms. He licked her lips, her ears, and, when he pushed aside the turtleneck, the hollow of her throat.

“I want you.”

Nicholas began to lift up her sweater, but she moaned, “No, no, I want you now. This instant.” Unbuckling his belt, pushing all his clothes down as he worked at her jeans.

She wore nothing underneath, and he was inside her almost immediately as she urged him on top of her with her fingertips and her thighs. She thrust up hard, once, twice, three times.

“Oh!” she cried, her neck arched, her eyes fluttered closed. “It’s been so long.” Her hips moved with his, and she grew hotter, her inner muscles working at him frenziedly, her mouth whispering “Yes, yes,” almost a religious chant or a prayer of thanks, her hips bucking out of control until he could do nothing else but explode inside her, filled with her, and her with him, all they had now, but everything they ever wanted.

Kusunda Ikusa was in the Imperial Palace East Garden, but he wasn’t there to jog. This was the only part of the palace open to the public, filled with traditional flower-bearing shrubs and trees, tiny ornamental buildings as old as the palace itself. From here one had an excellent view not only of the Imperial Palace, but the circular path around it, a favorite track for many of frenzied Tokyo’s avid joggers. Of course, they ignored the pall of exhaust fumes from the monstrous convergence of vehicular traffic beyond the moat.

It was just past six on a pink pointillist morning, and Ikusa had no difficulty in discerning Masuto Ishii in the shell-colored haze. Ishii was Sato International’s vice-president of operations, a key man in Tanzan Nangi’s operation, perhaps even in his strategies, and when he had called late yesterday, Ikusa had immediately agreed to meet him.

Ikusa was wary as he approached the little man, but not as suspicious as he might have been in other circumstances. Normally, Nangi’s people were notoriously loyal in a land known for its loyalty. But the Nakano deal, especially the detonation of the bomb Ikusa had left hidden in the contract, had shaken a lot of leaves off the tree. For the first time in its history Sato International was in real trouble. Everyone knew where the trouble came from and what it would take to get rid of it. Ikusa, so secretive before, had wanted this public now; he wanted Nangi’s confidence shaken, his people anxious.

So, in a sense, Masuto Ishii’s call had not been unforeseen. The one surprise was that it had come from someone so high up in the Sato
keiretsu,
someone so close to Tanzan Nangi. Ikusa was inclined to take that as a very good sign. Over the course of the last several days—ever since he had done away with the man spying on him and Killan—he had allowed his feeling of elation full rein. He was on the verge of obtaining everything he could hope for, everything he ever wanted. The thought sent shivers down his spine.

The two men made their ritual greeting at the break of day, with the city waking all around them. They began their circumnavigation of the garden. Ikusa could feel the nervousness emanating in waves from the other man.

Though he had familiarized himself with all of Sato International’s top management months ago, in preparation for his raid, Ikusa had brought Ishii’s file up on his computer screen just before meeting him to make certain he remembered every detail.

Ishii had been at Sato for twenty years, and was an integral part of its growth during that time. He was a small, almost tiny man, wiry, with quick, intelligent eyes magnified from behind thick glasses. His only vice appeared to be gambling, an all too common Japanese pastime, as far as Ikusa was concerned.

Ishii was a quiet, family man, but he was by no means meek. There was a story about him that during the communist riots down by the docks just after the war, he had, as a twenty-year-old boy, swung a crowbar into the side of the communist leader’s head. “Anyone who wants to overthrow the Emperor has to kill me first,” Ishii was reported to have said. The dock workers were back at their jobs that afternoon.

“Ishii-san, it comes as some surprise that you would want to meet with me,” Kusunda Ikusa said as they passed a sheared dwarf azalea in full flower. “Aren’t I considered by some to be the enemy?”

Ishii responded to his ironic tone with the trace of a smile. “Enemies are often a matter of semantics,” Ishii said.

And Ikusa thought, What you mean is a matter of convenience. But he said nothing, confident that he could allow Ishii to do all the work at this meeting.

The day had just begun, and already it was growing hot. Ikusa could see Ishii sweating beneath his dark gray pinstripe suit. The collar of his white shirt was damp.

The little man did not disappoint Ikusa. He said, “May I speak candidly, Ikusa-san?”

“Of course. We are all part of one family now.” Radiating benevolence. “There is no difference between us.”

“The matter is simple, really. That is, it is a straightforward one.” Ishii mopped his perspiring brow with a handkerchief. “It involves money.”

Ah, Ikusa thought, seeing the point at which he could ford the stream. He disguised the distaste he already felt for Ishii’s weakness of character. “If I can be of assistance.”

“I’m afraid I am an inveterate gambler. Often, I regret to say, my desire exceeds my means.”

“Have you tried to curb this desire of yours, Ishii-san?”

“Oh, yes,” the little man said, mopping his brow again. He could not seem to keep it dry. “Many times. Nangi-san was kind enough to pay for my rehabilitation.”