The Nicholas Linnear Novels (151 page)

But the longer he examined his idea, the more he liked it, and the more he felt that by employing it he would gain the upper hand over this Oriental barbarian.

“It is our considered opinion,” he began cautiously, “that we want nothing untoward to happen to Mr. Liu. In fact, we want him precisely where he is, undisturbed.” Now he reached into an interior jacket pocket and drew out the mate to Nangi’s contract.

“This becomes null and void,” he said, “the moment we agree on one point. All evidence amassed against Mr. Liu and, indeed, this Succulent Pien will be destroyed—copies, originals, negatives, everything, will be delivered to an address that I will provide. In addition, you will sign an agreement that from this day forward you will make no move against either of them nor employ, either directly or indirectly, anyone else to do so.”

“But I do not want that contract voided,” Nahgi said. This was a terrible risk, but he judged the potential rewards more than worth it.

Lo Whan stood stock still. It was as if Nangi had slapped him across the face with the document. His surprise cost him face and he did not like that. “What is it you want, then?” he said testily.

“I want us to go back to the original agreement I proposed to Liu. That is, in exchange for a thirty percent interest in the
keiretsu
—a strictly
nonvoting
interest—you agree to provide capital over the next three years in semi-annual payments on January first and July first of each year.”

“We already have a great deal of capital invested in you, Mr. Nangi,” Lo Whan pointed out. “Thirty-five million dollars worth.”

But Nangi was already shaking his head. “That was for the inconvenience your Lieutenant Chin caused the All-Asia Bank. As of now, you have no investment at all.”

Lo Whan’s eyes locked with Nangi’s. He was burning inside with anger and loss of face. He had no intention of being defeated here on his own soil. He had only one last, desperate recourse. “I wonder,” he said, “whether you have lost your interest in why we have taken such exquisite pains to acquire a sizable portion of your
keiretsu.
”

A vague premonition sprang up inside Nangi but he forced it down. He is bluffing, he thought. Carefully, he said, “Mr. Liu has already delineated the Communist point of view. The Oriental Alliance.”

“Yes. We are both familiar with Liu’s, er, drawbacks.” He cocked his head. “Surely you don’t think we’ve told him everything.”

Nangi was silent.

“There are currently in Peking two distinct factions. We have the Maoists on one side and the so-called Capitalist Roaders on the other. In the fifties, as you no doubt know, the Soviets rejected Stalinism. Mao, an avowed Stalinist, bitterly accused the Russians of revisionism. That ideological rift between the two countries has, more or less, stood until the present. However, those currently in power have been clandestinely seeking an accord with the Kremlin for some time now.”

Lo Whan shifted his buttocks as if he were uncomfortable. “Others, perhaps not content with the current flow of the river, are seeking to dredge an alternative course. They, it is whispered, seek a propaganda weapon to use against the Soviets and, thus, against those in power in Peking.”

Nangi now saw the precarious spot his adversary was in. Lo Whan need not spell out in so many words to which faction he belonged. His masters were not yet fully in power in the north.

His heart beat fast. Did the Communist know about
Tenchi
? “It seems to me,” he said, “that there was little good that came out of Mao’s reign.”

“I will not debate ideology with you,” Lo Whan said. “Your
keiretsu
may hold the key to the future of our country. The Oriental Alliance was not a lie. It was simply not the whole of it.”

Nangi felt the triumph surging through his veins. I have won! he told himself. There are no more cards for him to play; he is truly defeated now. He may know
Tenchi
exists but he does not know its secret. And now he never will.

“There is nothing more to do,” Nangi said, “but to amend the documents.”

Lo Whan’s back bowed. He felt one hundred years old. “Then you have doomed us and yourselves to a pact that must have diabolical consequences. I dare not contemplate what the outcome of a full alliance between my country and Russia might be.”

He spoke, but it was as if Nangi had not heard him. Nangi’s own personal triumph had made him drunk; the ancient enmity between these two people impossible to overcome.

It took them almost forty minutes to make all the required changes in the two contracts, to initial the changes and to resign the documents. Lo Whan drew out a pad and commenced to draw up the final clause, which he had verbally outlined to Nangi. At that point Nangi excused himself and went picking his way over the black rocks, to make his call to Fortuitous Chiu. When he returned, both signed the two copies Lo Whan had made. Nangi was now enjoined from interfering with Liu or Succulent Pien.

Both men put their documents away. They stood on the rock promontory, in neat silk suits despite the hour, solemn despite the joyous yelps of people on the other side of the cliff.

Applause came ringing from the ocean theater, where killer whales were jumping through hoops and seals were spinning striped balls on their upraised noses.

With care, Nangi extracted the red envelope that Liu had given him. He presented it to Lo Whan.

“And now,” came the electronically amplified voice of the master of ceremonies, ringing through the rocks’ faces, “ladies and gentlemen, the thrilling finale!”

Tony Theerson, C. Gordon Minck’s Boy Wonder, had one of those beehive minds so sought after in the highest levels of computer technology. Perhaps it was because, when you came right down to it, his mind was tuned more to the binary byways of machines than it was to the ephemeralia of human thought.

It was a rare day, indeed, when the Boy Wonder felt any more complex emotion than hunger, thirst, tiredness, or the mild discomfort of a full bladder. Elation came with the final dissolution of a difficult code—he had ranked them in his mind, giving them names he had made up—into orderly rows of words, sentences, paragraphs, which he then turned over to Tanya Vladimova and Minck himself.

In fact, orderliness to a degree a normal human being would find intolerable was Tony’s way of life. The clutter of his office was evidence enough of that. His idea of orderliness resided in his computers’ memory banks and in his own genius mind.

For Theerson was aptly nicknamed. No one else on this side of the Atlantic had any chance of deciphering the Soviet Alpha-three ciphers except the Boy Wonder. They were absolute ball-breakers which, not coincidentally, was Tony’s designation for the highest difficulty codes he was given to crack.

And like other geniuses of his ilk, Theerson was thrown by factors either unknown to him or inexplicable. His whole life was a crusade to make the unknowable knowable.
Logic rules
! said a brass plaque in his office.

Thus when he finally cracked the most recent of the Alpha-threes, when the English words swam upward onto his terminal screen from the belly of his own private farm of beasts, he assumed that a glitch had sprung up. He cleared the screen and called up the program from scratch.

And got precisely the same message.

That meant no glitch, but he rechecked his functions back down the line until he reached each and every input. The result was still the same: no glitch.

For a long time he sat staring at the message. It was like reading Martian. It made no sense, it had no logic. Just like, he thought, the lyrics to a rock and roll song.

“It’s bad,” he said after the melody had faded off his lips. “It’s very, very bad.” He was abruptly aware of how shaken he felt.

With that, he punched for a hard copy. When it clattered out he folded it up and wiped the screen of words. It was time, he thought, to see Minck.

When Theerson found him, Minck was contemplating the end phase of his vendetta against Viktor Protorov. In fact he was enormously pleased with himself. Sending Tanya Vladimova in against his archenemy was a step he had longed to take years ago but could never bring himself to do. The entrance of Nicholas Linnear into his life had changed all that.

In the innermost sanctum of his mind, Minck tended to think of himself much like the god Wotan that Richard Wagner had depicted in the
Ring
cycle—one-eyed and full of pride, and thus flawed; a loving god, and a vengeful one.

It would never have occurred to him to go after Protorov in any direct fashion. It would have been unthinkable, for instance, for him to board a plane for Japan himself, a Webley pistol in hand to hold to his enemy’s head and pull the trigger.

That was not at all because Minck was a coward; he was far from that. Battle did not faze him, hardship, both emotional and physical, had been a way of life for him for many years. Rather he saw this kind of personal revenge as being overshadowed by his duty to Red Section, to the people who worked for him and thus depended on his skills to guide them and keep them whole in a world that wished to blow them apart; duty to his country.

Much of this was indeed true; however, it was to Minck’s benefit not to dwell too deeply on the other—baser—motivation. He suspected now that he was perhaps closer to feeling like a god of Wotan’s stature than he had realized. The Valhalla syndrome afflicted many of his kind throughout the world, for it was Minck’s firm conviction that he possessed a power fully as great as the spear Wotan had fashioned out of the World Ash Tree, the spear by which he controlled all creatures, even the giant Fafnir, the spear by which he need only touch someone to end their life. The agents of Red Section were Minck’s spear; they were his power.

Tanya Vladimova was part of that, to be sure, but he loved her too much to be able to commit her to entering the den of a lion of Protorov’s cunning. Oddly, he loved her in just the way Wotan loved his daughter, Brunnhilde; she was closer to him than any other human being in the world. With her, he played out his plans, he spun his variegated web. He could not bear the thought that he might send her to her death at the hands of his enemy. He had held back, waiting as patiently as any Japanese for the right moment. Which was now. Already she must be landing in Tokyo, his weapon against the fall of night.

Abruptly, he looked up, aware that someone was standing in the open doorway to his office. Few had clearance onto this level of the building, fewer still were allowed to roam unescorted through the set.

“Yes, Tony,” he said, switching off his train of thought as he would a faucet, “do you have something for me?” A flicker in the Boy Wonder’s manner alerted Minck and he beckoned with his hand. “Come in, come in.” All his senses were questing now.

Theerson came across the bare wood floor and sat in a cane-backed chair in front of Minck’s desk. “I just cracked the latest Alpha-three.” The paper in his hand wafted back and forth, lifting and falling in his grasp.

“Are you going to show it to me or just use it as a fan?” Minck saw the Boy Wonder wince and his heart beat fast. What was wrong? “You’d better let me see that,” he said, holding out his hand.

Almost reluctantly, Theerson passed it over. He sat staring at his hands in his lap. He felt useless and impotent.

Minck’s gaze went from him down to the sheet of paper. This is what he read:

NEWEST PENETRATION VIA LINNEAR, NICHOLAS. AMATEUR STATUS. WARNING: HIGHLY LETHAL. OBJECTIVE: TENCHI; YOUR DEATH. SANCTIONED BY THIS OFFICE. ACCESSED FILE ON LINNEAR FOLLOWS. AM LINNEAR’S BACKUP. WILL ADVISE ON ARRIVAL TOKYO.

VOLK.

Volk
, Minck thought. A wolf in the fold. His mind had gone numb with the thought that Tanya Vladimova, his Tanya, was a Dig Dug. A Soviet plant. But how? Oh, Christ!

He slammed his fist down on the desk with such force that Tony Theerson jumped as if struck with a needle. “Get out of here,” Minck growled. “Get out of my sight!”

The Boy Wonder jumped up and retreated across the room. He had seen Minck in a fury twice before and had no desire to get in the way of it now.

At the door, Minck stopped him. “Hold it!”

Reluctantly, Theerson turned to face his master. “There’s something I don’t understand. Tanya knew that you were working on the Alpha-three codes; she knew you were the best at breaking them. Why in Christ’s name would she use them?”

The Boy Wonder shrugged. “For one thing, I don’t think she had a choice. The Alpha-threes are still by far the most secure ciphers the Soviets have.” He shuddered when he said the word
Soviets
; he still could not believe the truth. “She knew that my success was spotty. In fact, not too long ago we spoke about it. Now that I think about it, she even asked me how I was coming on the latest one.” He nodded. “That would have been this one here. I told her it was the worst yet. I didn’t think I’d crack it. Maybe twelve hours after that I got the first breakthrough; it came like a bolt of lightning. After that it was just a matter of a lot of donkey work, much of which the computers did.”

Minck contemplated the Boy Wonder. He had not even bothered to say something as fatuous as “There must be some mistake!” He knew Theerson too well; the man just did not make mistakes. He might not be able to break every Alpha-three but when he did he knew whereof he spoke.

“You did a fine job, Tony.” His voice was as bleak as a winter’s day.

Theerson nodded sadly. “I’m sorry. Really I am.”

Minck waved him mutely away. When he was again alone, he rose and, taking the hideous message with him, went into the now windowless room next door. Dhzerzinsky Square greeted him, as ugly as all Russian architecture was to him. Above, the dark, crepuscular sky. Across the square, Children’s World, where gift wrapped presents were presented. Back across the square, the black Zil entered the rat’s hole of Lubyanka. He had returned, running for his life through the
snyeg,
all sound muffled, all life stifled.

How much information had he unwittingly provided the Russians? How many steps ahead of him was Viktor Protorov? For the message was clear enough:
Volk
reported to him. Tanya and Protorov. How had he done it?
How?