The Nicholas Linnear Novels (128 page)

What to do? The moment was here. In Japanese society one had very few moments alone with another man’s wife. This moment would never have come but for Akiko. What did she want of him? Was she Yukio? Did she want to hear him call her name? If so, why was she torturing him so? He was assailed by questions which led to riddles which in turn brought him to enigmas. It seemed to him now that all his life had been an enigma, a fitfully understood succession of events from which he had constantly turned away.

“Who are you?” he said hoarsely. “I must know.”

Her eyes searched his. “Who do you think I am?” There was no coyness; rather he sensed a deeply buried desperation he could put no name to.

“I don’t know.”

Somehow the distance between them was closing. There seemed to be no conscious volition on either of their parts.

“Tell me,” she whispered. “Tell me.”

He could feel her breath on him, smell the scent of her, feel the heat of her flesh from beneath the silk kimono. Her eyes were half shut, her lips partly open as if some emotion inside her was on a runaway tear.

“Yukio…” Her name was torn from his heart like a tattered battle pennant. It was irrational that he should utter her name, irrational that he should think this was who stood before him. Yet he said it again, “Yukio, Yukio…,” seeing her eyes flutter closed as if in thrall, felt the melting of her upper body in against his, her head coming back, the long arch of her neck merging with the image, the memory he had carried with him for so many years.

There was a burning inside him as he reached for her, to embrace her or to stop her from falling he did not know. All his organs had turned to water and were boiling up. There was a fever in his brain. There was no control.

His lips came down over hers and he tasted her essence as he felt the dart of her tongue inside him.

For the first time in her life Akiko was open to the universe. Nothing in all her long, arduous training had caused this ignition inside of her.

She was so dizzy that she was doubly grateful for his strong arms about her. All breath had left her as he had uttered her name. And it
was
her name! How was that possible? But, oh, he tasted wonderful and, oh, how she ached for him! Her thighs were like water, unable to support her. She felt a kind of ecstasy at his touch she thought only possible in orgasm.

What was happening to her? Swept away, still a dark part of her mind yammered to be heard. What strange force had invaded her mind? What had turned her plans of vengeance inside out? What made her feel this way about a hated enemy? And why had she lied to him? She was not Yukio; she was Akiko.

And then with the power of his
wa
surrounding her, with her heart beating in her inner ear like thunder, with the press of his hard chest against her breasts, the answer exploded in her mind with the force of fireworks.

As Akiko she was nothing. She had come from nothing and nothing was her future. As Yukio she was someone. Here there was more for her than
kyomu
, that which Kyōki preached: nihility.

From the moment she had left Sun Hsiung’s loving tutelage she had felt herself to be
doshi gatai,
beyond salvation. Without any other anchor in her life what else could she expect?

Now, abruptly, with Nicholas Linnear’s appearance, Yukio had become a reality. She was no more idea, no more means to an end, no more two-dimensional schemata. She lived.

The force of Nicholas Linnear’s love for her had brought her back from the dead.

Justine saw him on her second day at the hotel. The first time was near the pool bar in the shade of the overhang and she thought that she must be mistaken. But the second time was at the crescent beach while she was wading out into the jade ocean, snorkel and mask in one hand, black fins on her feet. This time there was no doubt. It was Rick Millar.

At first she couldn’t believe it. After all, she was six thousand miles from New York on a rambling world-class resort in the midst of a 23,000-acre pineapple plantation. She was in West Maui, in one of the most remote areas on the island, far from the strip of high-rise hotels at Kaanipali where most tourists to this paradisiacal spot stayed.

She watched, transfixed, the tide lapping around her waist as he headed into the surf toward her. His body was lean and trim, with narrow hips and wide shoulders. He did not have the wrist and chest development nor the overall muscle definition that Nicholas had. But then Rick was a tennis player, not a human killing machine.

Tears erupted through her quivering lids, stinging her eyes, and she turned away, out to sea and the hazy outline of Molokai.

“Justine—”

“You’ve got some helluva nerve coming here.”

“I’d only heard about the famous Tobin temper before. Everything they said was an understatement to the real thing.” His voice was deliberately light, bantering.

“Did you give Mary Kate back her job?” She felt the pumping of her heart like a weight of granite hanging inside her.

“It wasn’t her job to give back, Justine.” He was closer to her than she wanted him to be. “I told you I had found the better person to fill it.”

She whirled on him, her eyes blazing. “You used me, you bastard!”

He remained calm. “You know, the trouble with you is that you’re a scared child in a woman’s body. Come off it, Justine. I didn’t use you any more than I’d use anyone else. It’s the wrong term. Mary Kate wasn’t working out. In the adult business world you don’t fire an executive—at any level—until you’ve hired his or her replacement. I’d be remiss in my duty to the company if I’d gone about it in any other way.”

“But we’re friends.”

“That’s incidental. But if it means anything to you, I’m sorry that had to enter into it.” He smiled, testing the waters. “There was nothing sinister in it, I assure you. I’d seen some of your free-lance work, I spoke to several of my executives who’d used you over the past year. They all thought you were great.” He smiled again. “All of them warned me about your temper, by the way.”

“I see that didn’t deter you.” She wished now that she hadn’t been crying when he came up.

“I liked your work too much. You’ve got a singular mind when it comes to advertising concepts. That’s an invaluable quality.” He looked away for a moment and his expression gave him the appearance of a little boy. “Anyway, I thought I could tame you. I saw it as a challenge.” His eyes swung back. “I’d give anything if we could start over from the beginning.”

“Is that why you followed me?”

He shook his head, standing his ground as a large wave made it through the coral reef out at the headland to the crescent bay, began to surge toward them. “Not really. I found that the office seemed very empty without you.”

When the wave hit, it rose the water up to chin level, knocking them sideways, forcing them together.

Nangi put his ruined legs up on the chaise as he settled back and stared out at the South China Sea as it ran up onto the pale yellow beach at Shek-O. He was on the south side of Hong Kong Island, nearer to Aberdeen than he was to Central District, the “downtown” and financial hub of the Crown Colony.

Shek-O was one of the four or five areas within Hong Kong reserved for the truly wealthy in this teeming city of enormous wealth and abject poverty.

But things had changed in the year and a half since he had been here.

For one, the beautiful old hotel at Repulse Bay had been torn down in order to erect another group of high-rise houses. It was not solely that Nangi had spent many a glorious sun-spangled afternoon at tea, doing business on the expansive Colonial porch of that hotel, that he mourned its passing. It was just as much the thought of the old ways passing, the sunny, serene days transplanted by the lust for profits that the building boom had created during five or six years of me Crown Colony’s high-speed growth in the middle and late seventies.

That was what had ultimately brought him here. The collapse of that real estate boom. And in that light the destruction of the Repulse Bay Hotel was even more bitter.

Now Nangi was alone in the tile and stucco villa watching a young nubile Chinese girl brave the pollution of the South China Sea as she ran down the beach and into the mild surf. No one else was about although a pitcher of iced tea and two tall glasses sat on a pebble glass-topped table at Nangi’s left elbow.

He saw the girl’s bobbing head in the water. She had not bothered to tie up her hair or to wear a cap. The dark tail of hair flung down her naked back, spreading out in the water like a sea anemone, tendrils waving on the tide.

Wu-Shing.
The words kept intruding on his conscious thoughts and that was a problem. Three deaths; three questions to be answered. Nangi wondered what connection there could be between the
Wu-Shing
murders and
Tenchi.

These days, when anything unexplainable occurred he immediately thought of
Tenchi.
That was logical enough. He knew the Russians would stop at nothing to wrest
Tenchi
from Japan…if they knew what
Tenchi
was. As for the Americans, he could imagine them attempting to sabotage the operation. Ever since the end of the war America had been dependent upon Japan to be its anti-Communist watchdog in the East. But America wanted Japan subservient so that, like a willow, it would bend to the will of the victorious country. And it was true that Japan was dependent on America.

But
Tenchi
would change all that. Nangi feared that if the Americans got wind of the operation they would move as quickly as the Soviets to short-circuit it. This could not be allowed.

For the first time in many decades Japan found itself totally alone and, oddly enough, it was a frightening experience. He was becoming increasingly aware that he could no longer cling to his dreams of what Japan had once been. All that was gone now, wiped out by the atomic sunshine and the period of high-speed growth in which he had played such a crucial role.

He closed his eyes, knowing that there were no easy answers in life, nothing was so neat in reality as it was in fiction. One problem at a time, he thought. I must surmount the Chinese obstacle before I again think about ancient and arcane punishments.

Though he had been alone in the villa when he had arrived, he now heard the soft footfalls, opening and closing of doors that foretold the commencement of his assignation.

He reached for the pitcher of iced tea and poured himself a glass. It was bracing and delicious, just the tonic for this already steamy day.

Nangi did not turn his head as his keen ears picked up another’s approach but remained where he was, sipping his drink, staring out at the girl now emerging like a water nymph from the rolling South China Sea.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Nangi.”

By mutual agreement they spoke only English here. It was foreign to both of them but at least they hated it with an equal passion.

“Mr. Liu.” Nangi nodded his head to no one in particular. He heard the creak of the chaise beside him, the musical clink of ice against glass and only then turned his head.

Once this man’s ancestors must have been purebred Manchu, for he had the long, high-domed skull structure peculiar to them. He was tall for an Oriental; he knew it and used this advantage as an intimidating tool even when he was seated.

Liu was smiling now as he sipped at his drink. He put his head back against the chaise. “And how is the business climate in Japan these days, Mr. Nangi?” Liu had the habit of beginning topics as if they had been spoken about previously.

“Very strong,” Nangi said shortly, thinking, I’ll give him nothing to chew on until I’m ready. “The forecast is formidable.”

“Ah,” the Chinese said, moving his head. “Then your, ah,
keiretsu
is not so much involved in the heavy industries that began your country’s great economic leap forward.” He put down his sweating glass, laced his fingers across his small potbelly. “It is my understanding that these industries such as steel manufacturing—long the very core of your economic progress—are in serious financial straits in these days of worldwide recession.”

Nangi said nothing for a moment, wondering just how well this man was informed. He might know the worst of it or again he might be fishing in order to corroborate unconfirmed reports. It was essential that Nangi answer him without giving anything away.

“There is no problem with our steel
kobun
,” he said carefully. “We have seen nothing but profits from it.”

“Indeed.” With that one word Liu made it clear that he did not believe Nangi’s statement. “And what of coal mining? Textile manufacturing? Petrochemicals, hm?”

“This topic is of no interest to me.”

Liu turned his high head like a dog on point. “And yet, Mr. Nangi, it is of interest to me why you would wish to sell a division of your organization that in your words has only made profits for you.”

“We are no longer interested in manufacturing steel.” Perhaps he had said it a shade too quickly. But at least now he knew the extent of the Chinese’s knowledge. It was formidable and he was even more on his guard now.

“The real problem for Japan has, I think, just begun,” Liu said much as an instructor will inform a pupil. “Your golden age of unlimited global economic expansion has come to an end. In years gone by you could export your finished product into foreign markets where they were snapped up immediately over their domestic competition. It gave you not only profits, of course, but an ever-expanding level of employment in your own country.

“But now times have changed.” Liu’s fingers unlaced, spread like a starfish, and closed down again, settling back on his stomach. “Let us take as our example one of your greatest successes: automobiles. Your invasion of the United States’ domestic auto market has caused a spate of unemployment in that country and not long ago forced one of its giant corporations to the brink of financial dissolution.

“You know as well as I do how slow the Americans are to take the initiative.” He smiled thinly. “But sooner or later the deepest sleeper must awake, and when his strength is as vast as is America’s, the awakening can be quite rude. Repeatedly now you have been slapped with import quotas from the U.S. government.