Floating City (38 page)

“Be that as it may, Pavlov’s sent us with a message for him.” Nicholas tapped the spot beneath his jacket where a gun would have hung in a shoulder holster. “I think you understand.”

The bartender shrugged, slid away from them as if he were on roller skates. He poured three whiskeys, a couple of sakes, filled some beer glasses.

“What do you think?” Tachi asked.

Nicholas shrugged. “Toss-up. But if Zao’s a regular here, the bartender’s sure to know him.”

The businessman was into a truly awful rendition of “Feelings.” Uptempo karaoke were bad enough, but ballads should be banned altogether, Nicholas thought.

Tachi finished his Sapporo, and Nicholas looked around to order refills. The bartender had disappeared. That might be a good sign, or the guy might just have had to take a leak.

A Yakuza strode into the main section of the nightclub from the black-lighted interior. By the size and quality of his retinue of
kobun
—foot soldiers—he was something less than an
oyabun.
He was wearing the uniform typical of such men: wraparound sunglasses, black sharkskin suit, white shirt with an embroidered crest on the breast pocket, striped tie, polished loafers.

“He’s coming this way,” Nicholas said, and when Tachi began to turn, added, “You’d better let me handle this. We don’t want to start a clan war.”

By the time the Yakuza was three paces from the bar, Nicholas could sense his intent and he prepared himself for it. The man, who was broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped, with an angry, closed face full of pockmarks, pushed his way to the bar, brushing up against Nicholas and overturning what was left of his beer.

He said nothing, did not even turn his head in Nicholas’s direction, but proceeded to order a Kirin from the newly returned bartender. Nicholas waited for the bartender to place the tall glass of beer in front of the Yakuza, then reached over, plucked it up, and drained it. When he was finished, he smacked his lips loudly, set the empty glass back down in front of the man.

Nicholas began to turn away when he felt an iron grip clamp his right arm just below the biceps. He turned just in time to see the surprise register for a fleeting instant on the man’s face as his fingers took the measure of the muscles in Nicholas’s arm.

“You have no manners,
iteki,”
the man said in Japanese, his face dark with his loss of face.

Nicholas shook the man’s hand from him, then bent his knees, extending his right hand palm upward toward the man.

“I beg you to countenance my words,” Nicholas said, beginning the ritual Yakuza introduction exchange.

The Yakuza’s face again registered surprise, then renewed anger. “Do you mock our traditions,
iteki?”

Nicholas ignored the question, repeated his introduction.

The Yakuza assumed the responding pose. “I have words of my own.”

“I beg you, since your position is higher, to hear mine first.”

The Yakuza nodded, straightened up, and Nicholas did the same.

“Speak, then,
iteki.”

“My name is Nicholas Linnear. I was born in Singapore. I have no clan affiliation.” The Yakuza smirked at this. “You have been deliberately insulting to me, knocking over my drink, pushing me, using epithets. I wish redress.”

The smirk on the Yakuza’s face widened, and he thrust out his chest so that his jacket opened enough for Nicholas to see the butt of a pistol snug in its shoulder holster. “And what form would you propose this
redress
take?”

“I have been polite. I have told you my name, birthplace, and clan affiliation.” The Yakuza, taken aback, was silent for a moment.

“My name is Kine Oto. I am also known as Zao. I was born in Kyoto, and I am an underboss of the Dokudokushii clan.” He stuck out his chin. “You bring a message for me from the Russian.”

“Now we understand one another.” Nicholas bowed. “I propose we play a game of
karuta.”

Again, there was a hesitation on Zao’s part.
Karuta
was a card game originally played by the elite families of Japan. When these families turned to other, more modern diversions, it had been championed by the Yakuza as their main form of gambling.

“Oh, this should be good,” Zao said with a half-stifled laugh. He gestured to a free table. “By all means, let us play
karuta.”

Karuta
was based on seasonal flowers and was won or lost on certain number combinations. A deck of cards was produced from behind the bar and placed on the table. Nicholas asked the bartender if he knew how to deal. The man nodded, a bit fearfully. His fear escalated when Nicholas asked him to be the dealer.

Zao, sitting across from Nicholas, appeared to have no objection. He tapped the top card on the deck. “Since you have chosen the game, I will decide on the stakes. Is this acceptable?”

“It is,” Nicholas said, even as he was aware of Tachi shifting nervously at his elbow.

Zao looked about the room shrewdly. “When I win this game, you will forget who sent you to me and why you were sent. Also, you will ascend the karaoke stage and publicly apologize to me.”

“And if I win?”

“You won’t.”

“If I win, you will tell us everything you know about the Russian and why he was here.” Nicholas ignored the Yakuza’s stare, which was meant to be intimidating, and concentrated on the man’s body language. This would tell him what he needed to know during the game.

Zao ordered the bartender to deal. The first hand, both were dealt winning combinations; the second proved a bust for both men. But on the third hand, Nicholas exposed a winning combination. Zao held an eight, a nine, and a three. This was a losing hand and an ironic one, because those three numbers formed the kanji for the word
Yakuza.

“I have won,” Nicholas said, standing. “Remember the stakes, Zao-san. You must tell me what you know of the Russian Pavlov.”

“In one hour I will leave here. We will talk outside, then.”

Nicholas nodded, and he and Tachi rose. Zao glared at them as they walked back to the bar.

“I don’t trust this fellow,” Tachi said. “He didn’t like losing, especially to you.”

“I agree.” Nicholas ordered drinks for both of them. “But we have no choice now. We attracted him, now we have to make sure he doesn’t pin us both to the wall.”

It was late when Zao left the nightclub. Nicholas and Tachi followed. A cold wind was blowing, the red lanterns along the narrow street rocking crazily on their iron rings. There were few people about, but several cars were parked half on the sidewalk.

“Where did he go?” Tachi looked from one end of the street to the other. “He’s not going to talk to us.”

Nicholas had the same feeling.

The headlights of a car facing them were switched on, bathing them in brittle light.

“Iteki!”

“Zao,” Tachi murmured.

He watched the powerful figure of Zao emerge like a black bird from out of the blinding sun.

“You owe me my winnings,” Nicholas called out. “Time to pay up.”

“I want a rematch.” Zao’s voice boomed and echoed across the deserted street.

“Forget it,” Nicholas said. “You lost. Accept the inevitable.”

“I cannot forget that you, a half-breed, caused me to lose face.”

“And you will not remember your word.”

Zao, close now, laughed harshly. “My word is worthless to an
iteki.”

“Then you are without honor,” Nicholas said.

“Stupid joke! What would a barbarian know about honor.” The pistol bloomed in his huge fist like a malevolent creature. “You are no more to me than an insect who has had the stupidity to crawl into my path.” He took another step toward Nicholas and Tachi. “Get out of my way or I will crush you.”

Nicholas was moving—so fast that even to Tachi’s trained eye he was a blur. Nicholas had heard the hammer snap back on the pistol, and his instincts had taken over.

The natural human reaction to an attack was to move directly toward it. The aikido Nicholas had learned as a child broke that instinct, replacing it with others that dealt with evading an assault and redirecting the intrinsic force of that attack away from you.

And instinct was the only thing that mattered. At the split instant of attack—perhaps a hundredth of a second—there was no time to consider options, work out strategies, and employ them. There was only time to act out of pure instinct.

This Nicholas did. From his own sense of power, of the centralization that is
hara,
Nicholas struck out, an extension that was known as
ki,
the inner force.

Instead of advancing toward Zao, Nicholas engaged the extended pistol with his right hand as he swung to his right. As he did so, he brought his left hand against the Yakuza’s hip, using the heel of it as if it were a meat cleaver, chopping into Zao’s exposed hipbone.

Zao gave a little grunt as his left leg began to collapse beneath him. Nicholas swept the pistol from his right hand, twisting the wrist as he did so until he heard the bone snap. With Zao semiconscious at his feet, Nicholas heard the grate of leather soles on the cement sidewalk—Zao’s
kobun.

Tachi spun, went into a crouch as he swept the Yakuza’s gun into his hand, and shattered the car’s headlights with a brace of shots. Dimly, then, he could make out the faces like pale satellites in the night.

“This is not your fight,” he told them softly. “Your
oyabun
broke his oath; what has happened is his responsibility alone. This is an affair without honor. You are not required to take any action on his behalf.”

Nicholas felt the tension humming through the air like heat lightning. The foot soldiers had not yet retreated; they stood their ground. Nicholas began to speak to them. He pitched his voice just so, using that primeval sound that came from the back of the throat, the one the best hypnotists could just touch, the one that Tau-tau had taught him to master.

He kept talking to them, a kind of litany, until he felt the psychic tension resolve into a tolerable level. He knew they had about twenty seconds to do what had to be done. Without breaking his concentration, he motioned to Tachi to pick Zao off the ground and throw him into the backseat of his car.

Tachi got behind the wheel, gunned the engine. Nicholas jumped in beside the groggy Zao, slammed the door behind him, and they took off into the deepening night.

“She’s not here,” the man in the wheelchair said. “My mother’s away for several days. Can I be of some help?”

Ushiba smiled. “That is very kind of you, Ken. But I wouldn’t think of imposing.”

“On a cripple?” Those powerful shoulders shrugged. “I have time enough to spare for you, Daijin. I know you didn’t come all the way out here just to exchange idle gossip with Kisoko.”

Ushiba nodded. He was used to Ken’s odd ways. What others might term impolite was merely Ken’s shorthand. He had little patience with proprieties—admittedly, an odd quirk in a Japanese—considering them nothing more than long-windedness. But perhaps this was nothing more than an affectation, one more attribute that was remarkable about him.

Not that he needed it; Ken was quite remarkable without it. He was powerful, and an accomplished martial artist even without considering that he had no use of his legs. He was a fanatic collector; he had an astonishing collection of museum-quality antique weapons—many of them arcane—from Japan’s past.

Ushiba actually liked the younger man, though it often seemed to the chief minister that Ken tried his hardest to be disagreeable. He liked to probe and prod, Kisoko had once told Ushiba with an odd kind of pride, because he was interested in what lay beneath the facade of people.

In his own way, Ken was a master sociologist, and Ushiba often thought of this house where Ken and his mother lived as one vast laboratory for his unorthodox experiments.

“I’d be pleased to stay awhile and talk,” Ushiba said now. “I could use a respite from the outside world.”

“Yes,” Ken said as he led the way down the corridor into the kitchen at the back of the house. “Time seems almost to stand still here, doesn’t it?”

He was a handsome man, with a long face and soft brown eyes that belied a tenacious personality forged by the trauma of his condition. But there was always a sadness about him that, perhaps unconsciously, touched Ushiba, that seemed almost familiar to him, as if Ken were a kindred spirit adrift like the Daijin in a world of pain.

“Outside, however, time is inexorable,” Ken continued. “The Liberal Democratic Party is finished as the major political force in Japan.” He made a face. “Good riddance to them, I say.”

“They had a crucial role to play in the development of this country. And I wouldn’t exclude them so quickly from our future.”

“I understand your sympathy for your old friend Yoshinori,” Ken said astutely. “But you see where he is, this symbol of the greedy past.”

“Yoshinori fought many battles on many fronts when you were just a child, Ken. Japan is strong today—a major world power—because of him and men of vision like him.”

“Men like yourself, Daijin.”

Ushiba said nothing. This man could be extraordinarily exhausting. His intellectual capacity was almost limitless, and one never knew whether he believed the point of view he espoused or whether he wanted merely to provoke a spirited debate.

“I was fixing myself lunch,” Ken said as he rolled to the counter. “Would you like something to eat?”

Ushiba gave his assent and watched as Ken deftly put together two plates of fresh-cut sushi with lots of wasabi and pickled ginger on the side. He handed one of these, along with a bottle of beer, to Ushiba, and they went to the oval oak table in the left section of the kitchen. There were many non-Japanese touches to this house, a place where East and West met in, if not perfect then acceptable, harmony.

They ate in a companionable silence for some time. Ushiba prided himself that Ken felt so comfortable with him. Ken’s forte was not interpersonal interaction, he being more of an observer of reaction than a participant. Perhaps his infirmity had conferred upon him this observer status, Ushiba thought, and Ken clung to it because in society some status was better than none at all.