The Nicholas Linnear Novels (230 page)

“What are you doing?” Tomi asked.

“When we last met, the Pack Rat insisted we do so here. Partly, it was security. So much noise makes even the most sophisticated electronic surveillance impossible. Partly, it was his hangout. He came here, he told me, when he needed to work out solutions. But he always played this one machine. I wondered why, until he opened a door back here where they keep the tokens.”

“Nice little scam,” Tomi said.

“Maybe,” Nangi said, “it was a lot more than that.”

Tomi had said of the Pack Rat,
Obviously, considering what he did, he’d need twenty-four-hour access to everything important.
That was what had jogged Nangi’s memory of the Pack Rat’s pachinko parlor open all day and all night.

He took the key that had been taped to the Pack Rat’s big toe and, reciting a prayer, inserted it into the hole. It fit, sliding all the way in. Nangi tried to turn it to the right. Nothing happened; the key wouldn’t move. His heart sank. Then he tried it to the left.

The door fell open.

Nangi put his hand inside, felt around. And there it was, taped to the metal top of the receptacle that received the tokens. Nangi feverishly pulled it free, took it out and looked at it. It was an audio microcassette.

Jackpot!

Nicholas rocketed west along the Long Island Expressway at ninety-five. Justine was curled in the Corvette’s passenger seat, the borrowed blanket still across her shoulders. Every so often, as Nicholas glanced at her, she twitched in her sleep and made a little crying sound. He put one hand protectively on her hip.

It was four-thirty in the morning, the sky the color of the inside of an oyster shell. Clouds along the horizon in the south were tinged pale orange.

Nicholas had the top down. The wind felt good ruffling his hair; it took the stink of the fire out of his nostrils.

He and Justine wore borrowed clothes; everything had been burned in the fire.

Every twenty seconds or so Nicholas glanced at the miniature radar detector hidden behind the Corvette’s sun visor, even though he knew its beeping would alert him to a police car waiting to pull over impatient drivers just like him. It gave him something to do beside stare at the ugly, featureless highway.

He made the trip back to New York from West Bay Bridge in an hour and fifteen minutes. Justine woke up as he slowed for the toll for the Queens-Midtown Tunnel.

“What time is it?” she asked, stretching.

“Too early for you to be up,” Nicholas said as they entered the tunnel. “Go back to sleep.”

Justine rubbed her eyes. “Too many dreams,” she said. “Too many ghosts stalking me.” She looked over at him. “Nick, I dreamed of Saigo. And then he turned into you.”

Nicholas shivered, thinking of Kansatsu-san saying,
The Darkness is what you have shunned for all your life.
And his own answer,
That would mean that Saigo and I are the same.
“This man Senjin is not Saigo,” Nicholas said. “I want you to understand something. Saigo was evil. Senjin, this
dorokusai,
has transcended evil—or good, for that matter. The concept of morality is irrelevant to him. He lives, or thinks he lives, beyond such considerations.”

“Which is it?”

They had emerged into Manhattan, and Nicholas headed downtown.

“I’m not sure I know,” he said. “But then again, I don’t know that it matters. What’s important now is what’s in Senjin’s mind. When I know that, I’ll know him.”

He went straight down Second Avenue all the way to Houston, then cut west. In SoHo he turned onto Greene Street, pulled up in front of a line of industrial-looking buildings. Up until five or six years ago they had been factories owned by dry-goods manufacturers and other companies of light industry. Now they had been converted into spacious, and all too often chicly-designed, co-op loft apartments.

Nicholas took Justine up to a metal door lacquered a deep sea-green. Punched into it was a vertical line of three Medeco locks, surrounded by thick brass anti-pry-bar plates. Beside the door was a series of buzzers below an intercom grill. High up, Justine could see the glass lens of a video camera.

Nicholas pressed a button that said, enigmatically, Con Tower. In a moment a buzz sounded and the door popped open automatically.

The door closed behind them and they were immersed in pitch-blackness. A minute went by, another. Nicholas did not move, and neither did Justine. She knew better than to say anything. She could feel Nicholas relaxed beside her, and that was enough to reassure her.

Light popped on without warning, and Justine blinked. She saw them surrounded by images of themselves. The hallucinatory, almost vertiginous perspective changed only after a door cut flush into one of the mirrored panels opened inward. Nicholas took her through.

Inside, Justine found herself in a large but warm space. The ceiling was as high as a cathedral’s. The walls were curved, creating concave and convex spaces, untraditional, mysterious, which reminded Justine of the hills and dales of the human form. Enormous canvasses hung on some walls, modern paintings of voluptuous sun-dappled countrysides in the post-Impressionist manner.

The space was furnished comfortably and eclectically in contemporary leather, chintzed antiques and functional copies of antiques, none of them Oriental. Scattered throughout were antique Japanese lacquerware, writing boxes. Against one concave wall stood a life-size statue of a Kabuki actor made up as a woman complete with wig and costume. In the center of the room, a large lacquered and gilded wood Buddha sat on an ancient Buddhist plinth. Oddly, the place was not a jumble, but through some unknown magic, a harmonious whole.

There was a menacing-looking Japanese man standing in the middle of the room. Justine could feel his tension, realized that he was making no secret of it.

“You’re here fast, Tik-Tik,” the Japanese said. “Too fast.”

Then she recognized him. “Conny?” she said. “Conny Tanaka?”

“Hai!”
Conny bowed, seemed at a bit of a loss when Justine rushed into his arms.

Nicholas laughed. “You should see your face, Tanaka-san.”

Conny groaned.

“This place is new,” Justine said. “It’s spectacular!”

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” Nicholas told her.

“Tik-Tik?” Conny was scowling. He glanced at Justine. “Don’t think I’m not happy to see you.” He kissed her, then turned back to Nicholas. “I read what you gave me, Tik-Tik. I’m fast, but I gotta confess, not this fast. Why are you here now, when I didn’t expect you for a couple of days yet?”

“The timetable has been accelerated.” Nicholas flopped down onto an excellent reproduction of a Louis Quatorze sofa. “The
dorokusai
burned down our house last night.”

Conny barked an epithet in Japanese that Justine could not understand. “I’ll get tea,” he said.

Justine turned to Nicholas. Her eyes were opaque with fear. He could see her trembling. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“There was no point, before,” Nicholas said. “What would you have done, except be frightened? You needed your sleep.”

“But Nick, how did he know where I was going?” She seemed to be begging him to tell her this was all a lie or, at least, a nightmare from which she would eventually awaken.

“I’m afraid you must have told him,” Nicholas said. He was careful not to tell her that he had somehow made her lead him to the cache of So-Peng’s emeralds. That bit of humiliation would be too much for her now.

“Oh, my God! Nick, what else did I tell him? I can’t remember anything!”

“How can I know that?” he said softly.

Justine’s shoulders slumped. She felt abruptly exhausted. It was odd how mentally enervating terror could be, she thought. Then Conny returned with a laden tray, and Justine felt some sense of equilibrium returning.

Each crisis brings its own tea ceremony, she thought. It was very civilized, but it was practical as well. In the time it took to perform the many small but important tasks associated with the ceremony, the spirit could free itself from turmoil, settle in to the accepted pathway of thought that would lead to a victorious strategy.

When the tea had been made, the formalities observed, the tea drunk, Nicholas told Conny what had happened and what he surmised had happened. This was the part Justine was hearing for the first time as well, and she shuddered as if swallowing bitter wine.

“What do you want me to do, Tik-Tik?” Conny asked after Nicholas had finished.

“You’re already doing it,” Nicholas said, looking directly at him. “But I need cash, credit cards, driver’s license, the works. The office can fix all that up for me. There’s still a great deal I have to do, and I’ve got to do it alone. Will you take care of Justine while I’m out?”

“Nick!” Justine cried before Conny had a chance to reply. “I want to be with you. I don’t want to sit here feeling useless while you—”

Nicholas came and sat beside her. He took her hand. “Not useless,” he said in that tone of voice she knew so well, which she listened to without question. “All of us here have our parts to play. But it is essential that we do play them.”

Justine, looking into his eyes, nodded.

“Maybe you lost this guy when you came here,” Conny said. “I wouldn’t want to try to follow you around town. If you’re lost, you can stay lost. Avoid—”

“He’ll find me, Conny,” Nicholas said. “No matter what I do, he’ll get here. It’s just a matter of time.”

“But we can—”

“Forget about avoiding the inevitable,” Nicholas said. “It’s a waste of energy, and we’re all going to need a lot of that very soon.” He hunched closer, trying to ignore Justine’s terrified face. “The object here is to play a game.
Our
game. It isn’t Hide and Seek, it’s Three-Card Monte. Illusion’s at the heart of this. We show this bastard a seven of diamonds, and when he’s close enough to give us a shave, he finds out it’s really the ace of spades.”

“The death card.” Conny nodded. “It’s a good plan.”

“It had better be,” Nicholas said. “It’s the only one that’ll possibly work.”

Conny cleared the teacups, disappeared behind an antique Japanese screen depicting white herons in flight above a gold and green sea.

Nicholas turned to Justine, stared into her eyes a long time. Then he said, “I wonder whether you know just how precious you are to me.”

“Nick, Nick.” Justine put her head against his chest. Hot tears welled in her eyes. “I’m so frightened. I feel like I’ve just gotten you back. Now, knowing Senjin is so close, I’m terrified. I—”

Nicholas put his hand gently over her mouth.

“Shhh. Be still. Be calm. Have faith.”

“Memo to myself,” the Pack Rat’s voice crackled through the microrecorder’s speaker. The entry was dated, as were all the subsequent entries. “Re: computer virus attack on Sato. Gave floppy record of attack to Mickey for analysis. Said to call her forty-eight hours…Memo to myself: Called Mickey. Right now she’s got nothing. Says architecture of virus is like nothing she’s familiar with. That’s the bad news. The good news is she’s hooked, fascinated with the project. She wants to run this sucker down, taken herself off all other private projects. Call daily…Memo to self: Called Mickey. Nothing…Memo to self: Called Mickey. Nothing…Memo to self: Mickey says this virus mutates. From what she’s been able to piece together so far, it seems the virus actually
feeds
on the host security system, using it as it adapts to it, to actually penetrate the security to get to the protected files…Memo to self: According to Mickey, the virus is not designed to destroy or scramble host programs. It’s a mole virus, meant as a communication link between the protected files and the user of the virus. This is getting crazier and crazier. Mickey agrees. She’s flipped over this thing, working on it eighteen hours a day…Memo to myself: I think Mickey’s close to breaking the virus. From data she’s rerun from the magnetic copy Nangi gave me, she’s certain now the attack on Sato’s computer was a test run. She’s also fairly certain the virus is not yet perfected. She says she knows one guy—and only one—who could have come up with this amazing supervirus that adapts to different security programs. He’s a certified genius, she says and, guess what? He works at Nakano’s R and D department. Coincidence? Must call Nangi soonest…”

The tape was over, but a kind of energy, invisible, pervasive, filled the room. The first dated entry was the day Nangi had first met with the Pack Rat in the electronic jungle of Akihabara; the last entry was the day before he disappeared.

Nangi sat staring at the tiny black microrecorder. They were at Tomi’s office at police headquarters. Tomi was pacing back and forth with so much agitation that Nangi, despite his preoccupation with the revelations of the tape, said, “What’s the matter with you?”

Tomi gave a sad little laugh. She stared at him. “Nothing,” she said through tight lips, “except that if this Mickey’s right, I think I know who created the supervirus.”

Nangi picked his head up. She stopped her pacing, put her hands on her hips. “Don’t look at me like that. I even know what the virus is called. MANTIS. It’s an acronym for, let’s see, Manmade Non-something, Nondiscriminatory Tactical Integrated Circuit Smasher. I think that’s right. According to my friend, it’s an adaptable virus. It actually uses the security program to piggyback into the computer’s core. That word—
‘adaptable’—
is what stopped me cold.”

Nangi said, “Your friend created this MANTIS?”

His quiet voice made her wince. She nodded. “His name’s Seji Kikoko but everyone calls him the Scoundrel. He works for Nakano, in their R and D department. I’ve known him for years. He’s an old, trusted friend. I’m just—I can’t believe he knows what his program’s being used for.”

“He must.” Nangi looked at her. “This virus is so new, so radical, he’s the only one who could possibly evaluate its results.”

Tomi nodded. She slumped heavily into a chair, ran her hand through her hair. She was obviously devastated. “I’ve got to talk to him, find out—”

“Not yet,” Nangi said.

Tomi cocked her head. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that at this moment we are in way over our heads,” Nangi said. “We’re in the middle of a conspiracy far larger than I had imagined.” He looked at her. “Now I know what it’s like to be standing in front of a bull’s-eye. Nicholas was right. It’s one of the things he told me in the car on the way to the airport. He and I have been targeted for months. This kind of operation was a long time in the planning.”