The Nicholas Linnear Novels (89 page)

How Gōtarō would have loved this day! How his smile would have driven the morning mist into the lake. How his great barking laugh, so like a triumphant shout, would have echoed and reechoed through these woods so that even the small creatures in their burrows might know the extraordinary joy of this day.

Sato passed a hand quickly across his eyes, using the pads of his fingers to wipe away the specks of wetness there. Why do this to yourself? he asked silently. Gōtarō is gone.

Kare wa gaikoku ni itte i masu
, Sato’s mother had said when he brought her the news.
He has gone abroad.
And never said another word. She had already lost her husband. Now the death of her oldest son was too much for her to bear. She did not survive the war, though she was not burned by the bombs. The war had devoured her from within.

No, Sato said to himself now. Do not be like your mother.
Kare wa shinde shimai mashita.
Banish Gōtarō’s
kami. He is dead and gone.
And he turned to Masuto Ishii, speaking to him of business matters of import to both of them in order to banish his sorrow or, at the very least, to keep it at bay on this happiest of days.

Not far away, Tanzan Nangi stood with his back ramrod straight, his bony knuckles enwrapping the white jade dragon capping his hardwood cane. Pain girdled him from standing so long but he would not move. It had been his duty to be among the first to arrive here; no one else was sitting so he could not either.

Further, he would not lose face to these priests. Nangi would have preferred, of course, for Sato to have had this ceremony in a Christian church. The vestments, the sacraments, the soft Latin litany that he could understand fully and respond to were comforts to him that arcane Shintoism could not be. Ghosts and spirits were not Nangi’s way. And spending one’s life placating a bewildering variety of
kami
seemed farcical to him. He believed fervently in Christ, the Resurrection, and Holy Salvation.

He was with a younger man, in the eye of one of the main eddies. They enjoyed almost constant attention from both newly arriving guests and those who had been there for some time who, having observed a proper interval, now were returning to seek advice from Nangi or tidbits of news of MITI from Riuichi Yano, the new minister. He was Nangi’s protégé, and Nangi’s last official act before he left that organization six years ago had been to assure that Yano would succeed him.

As he smiled and spoke, thoughtfully answering all questions as best he could, Nangi kept a sharp eye out for the
gaijin.
He wished to monitor their movements from the time they arrived. One could divine much from observing the enemy at play.

Akiko, too, had one eye out for the
gaijin.
But only for one: Nicholas. This was the moment, and her eyes were like cameras, ready to record the event, to drink in expressions and emotions.

She felt her pulse racing, her heartbeat seemed to flutter her kimono. She used her training to calm herself, to gather her resources for the beginning of her revenge. She forced herself to concentrate on Sato’s presence beside her. She looked his way, saw instead Ishii staring at her with hooded eyes. He smiled and nodded, turned back to his murmured conversation with Sato.

There was a rustling through the assembled guests, just the tiniest of ripples but Akiko, her senses finely attuned, shifted her gaze. The mask of a smile was frozen on her intensely crimson lips, her white face perfect as she saw the throng begin to part at its farthest reaches.

“Ah,” Sato said, turning, “Tomkin and Linnear are here at last.”

Slowly, as if in a dream she had composed innumerable times, Akiko raised one hand, her fingers spreading open her fan of gilt, red, and jet so that only the edge of one eye could be seen. The rest of her face was hidden.

Softly, she thought, softly. Don’t give away too much. Not yet. Give him time to approach. Come closer, Nicholas. She willed him drawn to her. Come closer and begin the destruction of your life.

She could distinguish the two
gaijin
now, one broader than the other but both tall, towering above the other guests.

She could pick out Nicholas’ features as the
gaijin
continued to make their way through the throng. Tomkin wore a dark pinstripe with white shirt and rep tie. Nicholas had chosen a less conservative suit of sea green linen, a gray shirt, and a tie as blue as an ocean trough.

His wide-cheeked face was still in shadow as the two passed through the long stand of tall bamboo but Akiko could already discern the odd tilted eyes, neither truly Caucasian nor Oriental. They gave him a quality she could not understand. Once again she felt the same kind of magnetic wave she had experienced in Jan Jan and she had to will herself to remain where she was at Sato’s side.

Now they were very close indeed. Nicholas’ face sprang into the sunlight as if abruptly brought into focus in the center of a lens. The gusting wind took a lock of his dark hair, sent it curling down across his forehead. Automatically, his hand came up to push it away, a bar of shadow racing across those strong, confident features.

Not for long, Akiko whispered to herself. The moment was almost at hand, and she knew that she had orchestrated it to perfection. A sense of intense excitement—of ecstasy, almost—gyred within her, fueling her for what was about to happen.

The tiny pink tip of her tongue flicked out to moisten her lip as she watched the litheness with which he moved, the low center of gravity which propelled him with such controlled power—the training of dance or
sumō.
In her mind’s eye he became the great tiger, lord of the earth, padding with great stealth and coordination through the dense forest, prepared at any instant to make his prodigious killing leap onto the back of a lesser animal turning to flee his presence.

Now. The moment was here at last. Akiko waited until his gaze slid up, turning from Sato to her. He was understandably curious; he had never seen her before and he must want to know what kind of woman Sato was about to marry.

She felt the intensity of his gaze. He held on her fan, then her eye. Their eyes locked, and for an unfathomable instant Akiko felt suspended in time and space. All the preparations, the arduous years flew by her again in the brilliant flash of a film montage to culminate here. Now.

With a firm hand she lowered her fan, exposing her face.

When Nicholas emerged from the limousine that had brought them out of Tokyo, he was first struck by the natural beauty of the setting. On the way, they had skirted the large lake, moving away from its placid mist-covered surface as they began to wind their way up toward the cliff upon which the Shinto shrine was situated.

It was not surprising to him that the priests had chosen this spot to build their temple. Shintoism was an attuning of the soul toward nature, life’s currents.
Karma.
One’s life was a part of a much vaster skein in which every living thing, human, animal, vegetable, and mineral, played its role.

Nicholas’ spirit expanded outward, his heart soaring, as he put his feet down on the loamy pine-needled earth. The wind was fresh, and warmth was already creeping into the air. Soon the mist would disappear from the boles of the pines and the skin of the lake. The view would be fantastic then.

He was aware of the wings rushing by overhead, the rustling of the great branches, the concerted sway of the stand of bamboo. The buzz of insects was in his ears as the breeze flapped his jacket.

Then, lastly, he recognized the stir within the crowd. It was subtle and he was doubtful whether Tomkin was even aware of it. But Nicholas knew. The
gaijin
were here. Even him. Nangi had made it eminently clear that many did not consider him a Japanese.

As he passed through them, looking from face to face, he wondered what they privately thought of Colonel Linnear, Nicholas’ father. Were they proud of how he had helped in the rebuilding of Japan when he was brought in by MacArthur’s SCAP forces? Or did they secretly revile his memory because he was a foreign devil at work in Japan? There was no accurate way of knowing, and Nicholas preferred to believe that at least some of them—like Sato—still honored his memory. Nicholas knew that his father had been a great man, that he had fought long and hard against some deadly opposition to create a new and democratic superstructure for the postwar nation to rebuild itself.

“Jesus, these bastards’re small,” Tomkin whispered to him out of the side of his mouth. “I feel like a bull in a china shop.”

They were heading toward Sato. Nicholas could see him clearly, with Koten, the giant
sumō
, looking grotesque in a suit, not far away. And by his side, a slim, elegant woman in the traditional bride’s garb. Nicholas tried to get a good look at her but she was holding a ceremonial fan spread across her face. The
Tsunokakushi
hid the top of her head completely.

“If this were any other country,” Tomkin said softly, “I wouldn’t even be here. I still feel like shit.”

“Face,” said Nicholas.

“Yeah.” Tomkin tried to cover his sour expression with a smile. “Face is gonna kill me one of these days.”

Now they had come almost all the way through the mingling guests. Nicholas could see Nangi off to the right, amid a dense swirl of dark-suited men. It looked as if the higher echelons of seven or eight ministries were present.

They stopped a few feet away from Sato and his bride-to-be. Tomkin took one step forward about to greet Sato and congratulate him. Nicholas was gazing at Akiko, wondering what features lay behind the mask of the golden fan. Then, almost magically, in response to his wish, the fan came down, and all the breath left his lungs. He stepped backward a pace as if pushed by an invisible hand. His eyes opened wide and his lips parted.

“No!”

It was a whisper that seemed a shout to him. Blood rushed uncontrollably in his ears and the beating of his heart seemed painful. Tears broke the corners of his long eyes, trembling with the enormous force of his emotions.

The past was rising up like a haunted demon to inexplicably confront him again. But the dead could not rise. Their bodies were laid to rest and were decomposed by the elements: earth, air, fire, water.

She had been murdered by Saigō because she belonged to Nicholas, body and soul, and could never be his. He had drowned her in the Straits of Shimonoseki where the
Kami
of the Heiké clan etched the backs of the crabs into human countenances. She was gone.

And yet here she was standing a foot away from him. It was impossible but true.

Yukio.

W
HAT TANZAN NANGI REMEMBERED
most vividly about the war were the red skies. There seemed no gentle color left in the world when the sun rose over the vast heaving bosom of the Pacific; only slashes of fierce orange and crimson like the vast tentacles of some monstrous sea creature emerging from the seabed at the sun’s slow dawning.

The long nights of the engines’ thrumming, the constant vibration of the mighty screws of the carrier as it plowed southward past the small black humps of the Bonin Islands gave way grudgingly to days filled with blinding light. Cloud cover hung far off and mocking at the edge of the horizon.

They were only a thousand nautical miles from Tokyo yet the weather here was so much different. There was a great deal of speculation on the part of the men as to what their destination would be. They were not part of a fleet; they had no escort. They had even put to sea in the dead of night when only a scattering of bare bulbs burned here and there along the great military harbor, casting hard shadows across the gently rippling water. Hunched guards spoke in whispers and studiously ignored the careful progress of the carrier out into open waters.

They were traveling under sealed orders, that much Captain Noguchi had told them. He had meant it to squelch rumors but it only had the opposite effect.

Where were they bound?

At night, after all lights had been extinguished, the men huddled in their cramped windowless quarters to discuss issues and destinations.

It had been Gōtarō Sato who had been certain they were bound for the Marianas. Most of the other men found that idea preposterous. The Marianas were far too close to Japan for there to be any fighting and this was most definitely a war mission of the highest priority, as Captain Noguchi had made clear to them in his speech.

But the idea of the Marianas piqued Nangi’s imagination and, after the men broke up, he sought Gōtarō out. Gōtarō Sato was a bear of a man, thick-necked and round-faced. He had wide, shrewd eyes that revealed nothing, but, far from emotionless, he was given to wild bursts of great good humor. He had the ability of knowing when a dose of his absurd wit—he was a prankster—would cool tensions or allay fears.

And in those dark days, deep in the final months of the war, there was plenty of both. The Allies had already won two long, extremely hard fought campaigns, the first in the Solomons, late in 1943, and more recently in New Guinea. Everyone knew they were heading inexorably toward Japan, and they looked toward their leaders for a supreme strategy to alter the tide of the bitter conflict.

They went up on deck. Gōtarō took out a cigarette, then thought better of lighting up. The Pacific lay dark and foreboding all around them and, not for the first time, Nangi experienced an eerie chill. He was a brave man and the thought of death in battle—a
samurai
’s proud end—did not disturb him. Yet out here, with only the depths of the sea surrounding him, so very far from any land mass, his stomach was never calm.

“It’s the Marianas,” Gōtarō said, staring south, the way they were headed, “and I’ll tell you why. If the Americans are not already there, they soon will be. We have an air base there. The Islands are no more than fifteen hundred nautical miles from home.” His head turned as a sudden gust of wind came up, feathering his short hair. “Can you imagine a better target for the Allies to base and fuel their own planes for bombing runs into Japan? I can’t.”