The Nicholas Linnear Novels (130 page)

Liu said nothing, tapped his fingertips together to an odd internal rhythm.

“Time is of the essence for me as well as for you,” Nangi said, carefully feeding emotion into his voice. “If I decide to sign—and as you have said that must be before I leave Hong Kong—then there must be a rider that specifies delivery of enough capital to cover the anticipated run and the short-term obligations—say the next six months—the bank is required to pay.” Nangi, concealing all emotion from his face and voice, took a mental deep breath. It was sink or swim now, he knew. “Thirty-five million dollars, U.S., payable no later than twelve hours after signing.”

Liu was silent for a moment. Beneath the sounds of the quiet surf they could hear the small, comforting clinks as the women worked in the kitchen. Liu required of all his women that they be able to cook, and cook well. He tapped the side of a nail against his pursed lips.

“You drive a hard bargain. That is a not inconsiderable sum.”

“You ought to know,” Nangi said, gambling. “You’re the one who got me into this.”

Liu managed a smile. Nangi took that as a sign that the Chinese could not contain his pride and he thought, I’m leading him in the right direction.

“Perhaps, after all, something of the sort could be arranged.” Liu nodded as if in final decision. “Yes. I believe that we might be able to deduct that much from the first of the payments to the
keiretsu.
”

Oh, no, you don’t, Nangi thought. “The thirty-five million is over and above the purchase price, totally independent and non-recoverable. I don’t want the bank’s financial operations tied to the
keiretsu
in any way. Ultimately that would hamper our profit potential here, as well you know.”

Nangi’s heart thudded wildly as Liu considered the proposition. His hooded eyes revealed nothing. Nangi knew that this was his chance: an immediate bailout, an infusion of desperately needed capital in exchange for a third interest in the
keiretsu.
Troublesome but not crucial. Between them, he and Sato could veto anything the Communists wanted that they did not. Besides, working with and not against the Communists in their own country would bring its own rewards.

Liu, for his part, was taking somewhat longer than Nangi judged he needed to make the decision. He was as still as a statue, his parchmentlike skin glowing in the light. At length he stirred, as a constrictor will when it has roused itself from a long somnolence and is preparing itself to feed again.

“It can be done,” Liu said. “In that event, however, we would require that you sign over to us a somewhat larger portion of your
keiretsu.
Fifty-one percent.”

Nangi showed none of the terror that gripped his heart in that terrible frozen moment. Fifty-one percent! Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, he thought. Sato and I will lose control of our own company!

“I should not be making this offer at all, you know.” Liu’s voice had turned plummy. “My government does not easily cast that much money on the, er, international waters.” He leaned forward. “But I see that you are much like your company and that pleases me. Together we can make a fortune here and in your country.” He stood up. “It has been a long day for us both. I trust you are as famished as I am.”

He smiled down at Nangi. “This offer is one of a kind. I would caution you about that. Six
P.M.
tomorrow is the deadline. And that is absolute.” He lifted a hand, the perfect host. “And now to the food.”

During dinner Nangi spent more time watching Liu’s woman than he did his host. Liu took this as a good sign. It signified to him that Nangi was a first-class lecher and he giggled to himself, made secure.

“Let’s go inside.”

She shook her head, her long dark hair straying across his cheek and shoulder. “I want to be out here. We’re elementals now. It’s where we belong.”

Nicholas felt her soft and yielding against him; his mind was numb with disbelief. She was someone else’s wife. And that someone else was his friend. They had shared drunkenness, secrets; they had sworn to be bound together. That part of his mind—the rational part—quailed as her naked flesh slid over him. And what of Justine? Wasn’t there a matter of honor where she was concerned? He knew that his love for her was undiminished, untouched by this moment and what it held. An internal shudder wracked his soul. He should stop this, rise up and walk away into the sanctuary of Sato’s house. But he did nothing of the kind. Justine was a faraway flame, bending in the windstorm of his current emotions. He breathed a prayer to her even as he drew this creature more tightly to him.

He could not help himself. His body yearned for Akiko as if she were food, drink, oxygen to fill his lungs. He could no more disentangle himself from her than he could still his pulse.

Akiko’s yellow and green kimono lay behind her buttocks in hills and valleys of its own, the folds holding deep shadows as if they were secrets. Both of them were enfolded within his kimono—Sato’s kimono.

Her flesh was hot and moist. Her nails clawed at him, her small white teeth bit at his hard flesh as if that, too, were a sexual act. Neither of them wanted it ever to end and so their feverishness was tempered with an almost painful holding back.

Their restraint caused Akiko to whimper and moan. He felt her smaller body trembling uncontrollably against him; when his hand first made contact with the already soaking mount of her sex, her hips convulsed inward again and again, her eyes closed, and she gripped him until her fingers went white.

Around them the mist seemed to congeal and darken. The sky could no longer be seen and the air had grown heavy and dank as if with the incipience of a storm. Abruptly, thunder rumbled brokenly, and early morning seemed to turn into dusk.

Akiko was arched against him, trembling, her thighs open, her hands stroking lovingly his back and buttocks. Her tongue licked the hollow at the side of his neck.

Then an animal cry broke from her and she moaned, “I must…I must…” Twisting herself around until her hot mouth engulfed him, inching down him until her lips enclosed the very root. He wanted to do the same to her, but even with pinpoints of ecstasy sweeping through her she had the presence of mind to deflect him, keeping the insides of her thighs away from his eyes. She could not afford to let him see what lay there, grinning with power. For that would end it all. Yukio would be gone forever and nothing either of them could do would bring her back again. He would know…and he would try to destroy her.

So she sucked more heavily on him, reaching up to enclose the totality of his sex, using every technique she had learned to bring him pleasure. He gave up his grip on her, surrendering.

But, oh, how she longed to feel his lips and tongue on her as she was on him. In her mind’s eye she imagined it and shivered. Then she felt his fingers returning to the core of her and she sighed inwardly, feeling her sex like the heavy pulse of a second heart.

It began to rain as she reluctantly let him go. Immediately he moved atop her, his wet sex grazing her thigh and belly as he did so. Gently she took hold of him, guiding him. His mouth came down over one dark nipple, then another, back and form. She could not slow her breathing.

Thunder cracked overhead, approaching, and the rain picked up. There was virtually no wind and the rain came almost straight down, striking the smooth pebbles all around them in a muted roar. They could see nothing clearly but themselves.

Akiko rubbed him against her wet opening with the delicacy of a courtesan. She begged him not to tease her, yet her hands continued to tease them both, increasing the tension and them pleasure until it became unbearable for them.

With a burst of exhaled breath Nicholas tore himself from her gentle grasp and slowly moved into her. Akiko gasped and, shaking uncontrollably, arced herself up against him. She rubbed her wet flesh against his, reveling in the scrub of his hair against her body.

He hilted her and she felt connected to the universe. She felt all weight leave her heart, all hate melt like snow in the burgeoning heat of the first spring day, all blackness disappear from her sight.

She floated in the rain and the thunder like a slender reed on the riverside. Birds flew, calling, above her, the wind rippled all about her, the rain struck her and she bent willingly before its force. Water rushed by beneath her and small burrowing insects tickled her roots. She was part of the river, the forest, the sea shore, the depths of the world.

She plummeted and rose at the same time, night became day, then reversed itself. The cosmic clock beat in her ear, turning seconds into centuries, minutes into eons. Her breathing was the growth of bedrock, the metamorphosism of carbon into diamond, of fossil detritus into fuel.

She sighed and the seasons changed, she shuddered and new islands sprang into being across the bosom of the Pacific. She convulsed, crying out wildly as he shot and shot into her, as their loins ground together, as orgasm followed orgasm, and the world winked out in the blink of an eye.

The Blue Monster had changed cars three times on his way up north. The first time had been in Miami when Route 1 became I95. The second time had been in Savannah when the bastard and Alix Logan stopped to get a bite to eat. The third time had been just outside Beaufort, South Carolina. The Phoenix cipher machine was on a locking slide mount and was easy to move from vehicle to vehicle. Right now the Blue Monster would have felt naked without it.

The bastard drove like a sonuvabitch and the Blue Monster had to be doubly careful because this was strictly solo and there was absolutely no margin for error. If he lost them now it was all over for him; he knew that neither he nor anyone else would be able to find them quickly again.

He bided his time. He smoked unfiltered Camels and was patient, allowing the harsh tobacco bite to keep him awake. He took no pills.

The Blue Monster was far better than Croaker had anticipated and he arrived outside the hotel four-and-a-half minutes after Croaker and Alix Logan had disappeared inside the stone and glass lobby. It was an eastern chain hotel just outside Raleigh with an enormous tri-level shopping arcade across the six-lane highway off which its drive curled in a macadamed crescent.

Jesse James, the Blue Monster, pulled his cream-colored Aries K car off Highway 70.

He had spotted what he suspected was their car—a late-model maroon Ford four-door—and had made the turn from the middle lane, causing both voiced ire and the screeching of brakes and horns from those vehicles to the left of him as he slid across their bows, speeding toward the egress.

He lofted a rigid middle finger in their direction. After the incident five miles back he had no patience for any of these southern North Carolina hicks. The goddamned pimply kid in the dusty pickup with the straw cowboy hat and denim jacket, James thought as he rolled up into the parking lot. Probably wasn’t even seventeen and sure as shit didn’t know how to drive.

James spat out his open window. The kid was how he had come to lose the maroon Ford. Imagine. To come all this way on that bastard’s tail only to lose him at a goddamned stoplight because a candy-assed kid wouldn’t pull over to let me pass. James still seethed inside at the thought.

Then his keen eye had picked out the maroon Ford sitting in the hotel’s parking lot and he had made his move. He pulled into a space three cars down from the Ford and ambled out, stretching his legs. No point in hurrying now, he told himself pragmatically. Either this was their vehicle or he had lost them for sure.

His pulse rose as he saw the license plates. Florida. He came and stood next to the car, put the flat of his hand on the hood. Still warm. It was them all right.

He knelt down as if tying a shoelace and wiped the accumulation of mud that wily bastard had smeared across the plates, making a note of the letter-number combination. Then he rose and went up the stepped concrete path toward the hotel’s side entrance.

The young lieutenant’s name was Russilov, and the more Protorov saw of him the better he liked him. The man had initiative. The problem with most of the soldiers coming up through the strictly controlled Soviet system, Protorov thought, was that they lacked just that. Initiative.

They were all right if you gave them a blueprint. They’d follow it down to the letter or die trying. You couldn’t fault that kind of dedication. Unless you were in Viktor Protorov’s line of work. Then that kind of robotic thinking could blow a network, destroy a potential defector coming over from the other side, or expose the mouse in someone else’s house. Protorov had too many mice in other people’s houses to be satisfied with the grade of soldier that would normally be assigned to him. Bureaucrats were, of course, out altogether.

It galled him that he had to take this raw and basically unthinking talent and make it over. Beneath his skillful hands the clay of Mother Russia was reformed into individuals useful to the Ninth Directorate.

To that end he was headmaster of a school in the Urals. It was much smaller than the one the KGB itself ran—the one filled with American streets, American money, milk shakes and hot dogs, talk of the Yankees and the Dodgers, the Giants and the Dallas Cowboys. That was fairytale stuff and, besides, it had proven to be potentially dangerous. Too many Russian sleepers assimilated into American life via that school had failed to respond to their wakeup call. Life in the West presented a siren call apparently too seductive to resist for all but the most hardened personality.

Protorov preferred to keep the Soviet ethos very much alive at his academy while he expanded the minds of his pupils, broadened their outlook. In short, taught them to think independently.

The old bureaucrats in the Kremlin, had they known what he was up to, would no doubt have closed him down summarily. But the truth was they were afraid of the Ninth Directorate and afraid, especially, of Viktor Protorov. Besides, he brought them too many third world victories. It was too convenient for them to swell upon his most recent successes in Argentina, snaring England into an idiotic and draining war; and in El Salvador, egging the hawkish American administration on into what could easily become another Vietnam. They were not adept at examining their fears, anyway.