The Nicholas Linnear Novels (228 page)

Albemarle put down the phone. He studied Shisei for a moment, just to see whether she was taking her instructions seriously. Then he went and knelt beside Johnson, who was staring at Howe. He peered down at the .357 Magnum, then at Howe’s right hand.

“What are you looking for?” Shisei asked.

“Usually these handguns aren’t used much, but they have to be kept in working order,” Albemarle said.

“There looks to be traces of gun oil on the senator’s fingers,” Johnson said.

Albemarle stood up, looked at her. “That’s crucial to establish, because if Howe fired the gun, it’s suicide. If it was put in his mouth, it’s homicide. Big difference, especially for me.”

“But not for Howe,” Shisei said.

Johnson barked a laugh.

“You’ve got some sense of humor,” Albemarle said.

“I wasn’t being funny,” Shisei said. “Just making an observation.”

Five minutes later they heard the sirens and a commotion downstairs. Detectives, uniformed police, a forensics team, a cadaverous doctor from the Medical Examiner’s office all trooped into the room. They worked swiftly, efficiently, taking photographs, prints, measurements, statements from Albemarle, Johnson, and Shisei.

Of course, they found Howe’s permit for the .357 Magnum. The assistant M.E. said to Albemarle, “This is only a prelim, off the top of my head, Phil, but if this doesn’t turn out to be a suicide, I’m a monkey’s uncle.”

Shisei looked over the scene with some satisfaction. She knew that the doctor’s final report would not note anything out of the ordinary, certainly nothing to point to homicide.

The fact that hours earlier she had driven Howe home, had taken his gun out of the drawer in his desk, put it in his hand, shoved the barrel into his mouth, put her forefinger over his, squeezed slowly, until the report of the explosion cracked the silence of the night, would never be revealed. It was nobody’s business but hers.

She stood in one corner, out of the policemen’s way, waiting patiently for Detective Albemarle to take her back to the precinct. She wanted to be there when they released Branding.

Her work here was almost done, but there was still the question of Branding. Cook, she thought, have you lost faith in me? Do you still love me?

She was impatient now to find out.

Senjin watched Nicholas and Justine making love with the kind of envy one feels for a peer whose ease with other people makes him the constant center of attention.

It was the envy, perhaps, that made Senjin want to kill Nicholas now, to forget his vow, to wreak wholesale vengeance of a sort that would appease his growing appetite for chaos.

He was stopped from exercising this self-indulgence by a new element. Reaching out with the projection of his will, as he had in Dr. Hanami’s office, he encountered not that withdrawn, uncertain psyche that had caused him to feel such elation, but a black, featureless wall beyond which nothing was discernible.

Nicholas had ceased to exist, as far as Senjin’s gift was concerned.

What had happened? Senjin was certain that he had effectively destroyed Nicholas’s one avenue to salvation when he had ritually murdered Kyoki, the tanjian living in the castle in the Asama highlands. But where had Nicholas gone after Asama? He had not immediately returned to Tokyo the broken man, as Senjin had thought he would. Had he gone farther into the Alps? And if so, why?

In the end, Senjin knew, the answers to these questions did not matter. All that need concern him was this new and wholly unexpected element: Nicholas had somehow come to terms with his being a tanjian. For the featureless wall that blocked out any psychic foray was only possible from a tanjian.

That meant that Nicholas knew Tau-tau. Senjin considered. Why hadn’t he been told of this? Again, his training told him that this did not matter. He needed to reassess the situation, fashion a new strategy accordingly.

Kshira, the sound-light continuum, teaches: yang, the First Son, inciting motion, light gives birth to fire, and thought gives birth to light; thunder gives birth to sound, and anger gives birth to thunder. Yin: the Mother, yielding, fluid, the earth is the receptacle for thought, the crucible of idea.

One cannot exist without the other, Kshira teaches. But Senjin knew better, for yin gave to yang weakness as well as strength, a weakness Senjin saw as fatal. Thus had he spent so much time in ridding himself of yin: the Mother, yielding, devoted.

He had sought to stop the cosmic order of yin flowing into yang, to still the eternal flux of the two forms of energy. Thus had he become
dorokusai,
the scourge of tanjian.

As he watched from the rafters like a predatory owl in the crotch of a tree, Senjin assumed the position of repose. He watched Nicholas and Justine asleep, entwined, and he thought of himself, as Justine had said, as a cloud drifting above the jam-packed earth, separated from the joy, cares, and desires of those whom he observed. Kshira allowed him to see this, but his own special philosophy made it so.

He inhaled deeply. Death was not in the air. At least, not yet. There were private hells, degradations of the state of being alive that needed to be traversed before Senjin could allow death to come to Nicholas Linnear.

But there was purpose here, and Senjin’s nostrils dilated as if he could scent it. Senjin had come for the remaining emeralds. He had hoped that Justine would be able to tell him where they were. But now that Nicholas had appeared, Senjin saw another path, a powerful attack, both a way for him to know if the emeralds were here inside the house and the first hell for Nicholas to inhabit on his journey toward his own demise.

With the stillness of the dead, Senjin left his perch and, keeping to the shadows, went about his business. When he was finished, there was light where none had been before, and there was heat, a warping of the atmosphere, sucking the oxygen out of the house.

A moment after Senjin left, Nicholas awoke with a start. He coughed, his lungs already filling with smoke. Flames licked along the floor, devouring the night.

Killan and the Scoundrel stood on a street corner on the seedy outskirts of Tokyo. Across the dark, infrequently traveled avenue they could see the flickering neon entrance to a dive called the Kan.

“Kusunda said that I should come alone,” Killan said for the fourth or fifth time. She stood on one leg, then the other, a sure sign that she was nervous. “Maybe you shouldn’t have come.”

“I wasn’t going to let you do this on your own,” the Scoundrel said, also for the fourth or fifth time. Then, “Do you think he’ll give us what we want?”

“Of course he will,” Killan said, with the wholehearted conviction of the revolutionary. She scanned the sparse traffic in both directions. “What other choice does he have?”

The Scoundrel said nothing, fingering a bulge beneath his nylon windbreaker.

When Killan had played the tape she and the Scoundrel had created from carefully culled excerpts of the tape the Scoundrel had found in the apartment next to his, Kusunda Ikusa had smiled.

“Where did you get that?” he had said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Killan told him, her voice full of authority. “What matters is I have it. Interested?”

“Naturally.” Ikusa’s eyes, half hidden in his folds of flesh, regarded her with reptilian solidity.

“Don’t you want to know what I want for it?” Killan asked, growing impatient.

“Whatever it is, it is sure to be outlandish.” That smile again, as if he did not have a care in the world.

Killan said, “I want authority. Not just an entry-level job at Nakano, not a job in publicity convincing jerks they ought to buy your new products.”

“I thought—” Abruptly, Ikusa’s jaw snapped shut; he wasn’t smiling now.

“The trouble with you, Kusunda,” Killan had said, “is that you see me as a female. You make beautiful noises about my abilities, my mind, my ambition, but you always temper that by saying it’s a pity I wasn’t born a man. Do you understand how that makes me feel, how it shames me? No, of course not. How could you have any idea?

“Well, you’re going to understand now, because I’m going to extract a heavy price to save your face. I want a position of authority within Nakano.”

“Once a revolutionary, always a revolutionary,” Kusunda had said. “Well, I suppose it was inevitable, but I must say you’ve disappointed me, Killan.” He pursed his pouty lips. “On the other hand, I know you now. Like all revolutionaries, you long for the respectability you can by definition never have. Because once you do, you’ve been coopted by the establishment, you’re a part of it, the revolution’s washed away on the tide of inevitable change.” He made a dismissive gesture. “Take your position, then. Anywhere in the consumer division. Which job do you covet so much?”

Killan had smiled thinly, but the venom so long held in check had come to the surface. “You think you know me so well, but you don’t. There’s more. I don’t want a position in the bogus consumer division you’re setting up as a front, but in the area where it’s really happening: the R and D. I want a piece of what’s going down with MANTIS. Ten percent of profits.”

Killan thought she had seen all the blood drain from Ikusa’s face. She had so desperately wanted him to ask, Where did you find out about MANTIS? But all he said was an address and a time. “You bring the tape,” he said, “and I’ll have a contract for you to sign.”

It had been that simple.

“What if he doesn’t show?” the Scoundrel asked now.

“He’ll show,” Killan said, moving from one foot to another. “What other choice does he have?”

“We should have insisted on seeing the contract before the meet,” the Scoundrel said. “I should have handled the negotiations.”

“Are you kidding?” Killan said. “You’re invisible in this. I don’t want Kusunda to know how I found out about MANTIS. You’re my strength
and
my weakness, so stay back in the shadows when we see Kusunda coming. I don’t want him recognizing you.”

It was now two minutes past the time Ikusa had set for the exchange of documents. A black Mercedes turned a corner, headed their way. The Scoundrel retreated to the shadows. As it came closer, they could see that its windows were heavily tinted.

It was less than a block away. “Here he comes,” Killan said confidently. She had stopped shifting from foot to foot.

The Mercedes, very close to them now, abruptly began to accelerate.

“Are they crazy?” the Scoundrel shouted.

The Mercedes jumped the curb, headed directly for them.

“God in heaven!” Killan breathed, rooted to the spot.

The Scoundrel ran at her, grabbed her hard around the waist. At the same time he jerked the bulge beneath his windbreaker. He lifted the pistol as it came free, aimed it at the windshield of the careening Mercedes.

He put two shots into the glass, then they both jumped to avoid the heavy grill. The Scoundrel, his heart pounding so hard he thought he was going to have a stroke, hit his shoulder on the Mercedes’ off-side fender as it shot past, then they were both up and running as hard as they could.

They heard what sounded like a crash but they did not stop, did not even turn around to see what had happened. They gained their car, which they had parked out of sight. The gears ground as the Scoundrel hurriedly started up. They shot forward, racing down a deserted street. The Scoundrel was still gulping air. Killan began to cry in terror and relief.

Smoke filled the house. It was so thick, so acrid, that Nicholas knew immediately that the fire had been deliberately set.

“Get down!” he yelled in Justine’s ear. “Keep down!”

They were on the floor of the living room, and already the crack and spark of the flames filled the house, eating even the atmosphere. It was impossible to see clearly, and Nicholas had to pause a moment to remember the layout of the house he had not been in for years.

There was a great deal of glass—an easy exit—but getting to it was a problem. Flames were everywhere, and they were in the center of a huge space. But the smoke was as serious a problem: the longer they delayed, the worse it would be for them.

He glanced up. The angelfish, as if sensing the danger or merely feeling the heat, were huddled in the center of the tank, fins rippling in agitation. Gus the catfish was traversing the gravel as if frantically searching for something.

Nicholas took Justine’s hand. He could see the fear in her eyes, but also the trust in him. He closed his eyes, went into himself, centering. He found
Getsumei no michi,
that special place where he could see without his eyes, where hidden strategies were eventually made manifest to him. And saw the way out.

“Let’s go!” he yelled, leading the way as they sprinted around the sectional, leaping over an easy chair and through a narrow patch of flames. The sudden, sickening smell of singed hair.

Six feet beyond, he knew, lay the sliding glass doors and safety. He rushed them forward, but a sudden sharp crack filled the air.

Nicholas felt the collapse of a wooden joist, eaten through by the ferocious fire. He did not need to see it coming. He jerked Justine sharply toward the kitchen, moved himself. The heavy, flaming joist crashed down, the edge of it slamming into the meaty upper part of his left arm. His skin began to burn, and Justine cried out, wrapped her hands around the spot.

She screamed as an explosion resounded. She covered Nicholas with her body. Glass fragments shot at them as one of the kitchen windows cracked in the fierce heat.

The smoke was much worse now. Justine started to cough, and Nicholas felt her falter. He scooped her up in his arms, leaped over the flaming joist. He turned sideways, crashed through the safety glass of the slider out to the porch.

The night exploded into ten thousand fragments, but the shards were not sharp, and they clattered off Nicholas and Justine like sleet.

On the beach Justine bent over, retching and gasping oxygen into her lungs. Nicholas took slow, deep breaths.
Prana.
He had ceased to breathe in the normal manner the moment he woke up.

He stroked Justine’s hair, holding her shoulders. All the hair had been burned off his left arm, but otherwise he was unharmed.