Floating City (43 page)

“Yes,” Nicholas said, thinking of Seiko’s warning about Tachi’s obsession with Floating City, “we are.”

They pressed on. Niigata lived in a small cottage at the end of this lane, and up ahead they could see lights in the gloom. Soon a small thatch-roofed house came into view. It was hewn from timbers in the traditional Japanese-farmhouse style, all locked together by notches and dowels with no nails or glue used.

As they came up to the front door, Tachi said, “Let me handle this. I know how to deal with Rock’s people.”

“How do you know Niigata’s been to Floating City?”

Tachi slapped his belly with his fist.
“This
tells me.”

His face was grim as he struck the door with his hand. A moment later, a lanky man in his midsixties stood peering out at them. He was so emaciated he recalled photos of concentration camp internees.

“Yes?”

His skull was absolutely hairless. Baldness in a man his age would not be particularly remarkable except that Nicholas could see that he had no eyelashes or eyebrows.

“Niigata-san?”

“Hai.”

“We have a message for you from a friend of yours.” Tachi took a step toward the threshold. “His name is Rock.”

Nicholas took a swift step forward, catching Niigata before he fell to the floor. They took off their shoes, and Nicholas set the thin man on his feet. He seemed to weigh less than a child, and his skin was red and blotchy, shiny as vinyl.

“Forgive me,” Niigata said, “but I had never thought to hear that name again.”

“This man’s suffering from radiation poisoning,” Nicholas said to Tachi, then turned to the older man. “Niigata-san, are you being treated? You should be in hospital.”

Niigata gave him a rueful smile. “There is no treatment for what I have. I am better off here than being the object of scientific curiosity.”

“Then you’ve been to Floating City?” Tachi asked.

Nicholas was aware of Tachi’s heartbeat accelerating.

“Come.” Niigata gestured to the dim interior. “I was just sitting down to dinner. Won’t you join me? It’s been quite some time since I had guests. The priests visit me regularly, but they never stay. I would welcome the company, even if Rock did send you.”

Nicholas gave Tachi a quick glance, but the
oyabun
contrived to ignore it. “That would be most kind of you,” Tachi said, the urgent note in his voice undiminished.

They followed the emaciated man into the interior of the house. As Niigata moved slowly around the sunken hibachi hearth, Nicholas said, “You have been to Floating City and yet you’re here now.”

“I escaped,” Niigata said simply. He stirred the root vegetables that were simmering in a soy broth. The stew was in a large iron pot hung from a hook above the hibachi.

“And yet you seem unconcerned about our appearance.”

Niigata looked up. “I am already dead. What more could Rock do to me?” He took down a stack of rough wooden bowls, ladled out generous portions of the vegetable stew. His hands shook, and once, he almost spilled liquid onto the tatami, but neither man moved to help him. “Sit,” he commanded.

The three men ate in silence. In fact, only Nicholas and Tachi appeared to have an appetite. Though the food was rich and flavorful Niigata barely touched it. Nicholas was not surprised.

“You worked on Abramanov’s project, didn’t you?” Tachi asked.

Niigata put down his chopsticks, abandoning all pretext at eating. “You’re not from Floating City.”

“No,” Tachi said. “We want to stop what’s going on inside it.”

“Then you don’t know.” Niigata’s voice was abruptly so weary that Nicholas might have thought it was emanating from Methuselah.

“The truth is we’ve come to find out.”

Niigata nodded. “The truth is important.” His head came up and his fevered black eyes bored into theirs in turn. “I find these days nothing else has meaning.”

“It
is
the truth,” Nicholas said.

“Yes.” Niigata nodded. “I suppose I have no choice but to believe you.” He shrugged his thin shoulders. “It’s a good illusion, anyway.” Then he told them everything he knew. How Rock had picked Abramanov out of the South China Sea in November of 1991, and how Abramanov had persuaded him to return to the site the following spring, when Abramanov’s wounds had sufficiently healed, in order to retrieve the Russian’s precious cargo. How Rock then built the lab with its hot cell for Abramanov’s experiments with the highly toxic radioactive isotope.

“Just how powerful is this 114m?” Tachi asked.

“How to answer that?” Niigata’s head bobbed on his stalk of a neck. “No one really knows. Even Rock dares not test it inside Vietnam, so the prototype has been made on pure speculation. I know firsthand that the isotope is more chemically toxic than plutonium. It’s a nightmare material. Direct contact with particles is invariably fatal. Since fine particulates are always present on its surface because of oxidation and surface instability, extreme contamination controls are essential. So it is handled within a negative-pressure-ventilated hot cell with an inert atmosphere of argon to prevent oxidation. But not always, and this gives rise to the transport of toxic dust. “Then there is the gamma radiation to worry about. Element 114m is such an energetic gamma emitter that standing unshielded within ten meters of it for five minutes is lethal.”

“If it’s such a nightmare, why bother with it at all?” Tachi asked.

“Several reasons. Element 114m has a very high cross-section for thermal neutrons, making it a most potent fissile material. It has a critical mass far below that of either uranium or plutonium. Plus, its half-life is exceptionally long. Do you know what all this means?”

“I think I can guess.” Nicholas felt chilled through to his bones. “The isotope that Abramanov discovered will make an excellent weapons material.”

Niigata nodded. “That’s right. Abramanov claims that the criticality factor is so high that if one were foolish enough to bring two small bricks of the isotope—say five inches by eight by one—within three feet of one another, spontaneous fission would initiate a full-scale criticality event.”

“A fission chain reaction.” Nicholas’s throat seemed filled with lead. “How large?”

“With just those two small bricks Abramanov estimates four square city blocks.”

“Good God.”

The three men sat in silence for some time. A bird sang in a branch just outside the window and then fell still. It was so quiet they could hear the rushing of the stream some distance away. Niigata stirred, moving his stiff limbs about. He was obviously in pain.

“The isotope was too hot even for the hot cell,” Nicholas said.

“Yes. We had to train locals, mountain tribesmen. It’s exacting work, and we did not have enough time. Mistakes were made—small ones—but with 114m they were enough. While I was there, fifteen men died of radiation poisoning. You can see how its extreme toxicity makes it inappropriate for commercial use.” Niigata shook his head. “Such a shame. Otherwise, Abramanov would have fulfilled one of mankind’s most cherished dreams: a safe, cheap, virtually inexhaustible fuel.”

Tachi leaned forward, the firelight licking at his taut face. “Is Abramanov being held against his will in Floating City?”

“Yes and no.” Niigata stirred the wood with a poker, put another log on. He had great difficulty handling the wood, but again neither man would shame him by offering to help. “I don’t believe Rock is keeping him captive; he doesn’t have to. Abramanov is doing a first-rate job of it himself.”

In the flickering light it appeared as if all flesh had been stripped from Niigata and what now sat before them was an animated skeleton, yellow bones still shining with the remnants of a lost life.

“Abramanov has convinced himself of the worthiness of his work at Floating City. The project, which Rock has called Torch, is the price he believes he must pay for continuing his life’s work. Like a lunatic, he listens to Rock and does his dirty work. A highly compact, portable, clean nuclear device. It makes the blood run cold. But Abramanov is oblivious. He is fixated on one point on the horizon, and it is this for which he lives—the eventual recognition he will receive from mankind.”
So this has been Okami’s objective for me all along,
Nicholas thought. Floating City is making the nuclear device, and it’s almost certain that someone plans to use it against him on the fifteenth of March. But where was Okami, and who was buying Torch from Rock?

“But doesn’t he see the terrible inevitability of its use for destruction?” Tachi was asking Niigata.

“What scientist does? Did the team at Los Alamos allow such considerations to deter them on the Manhattan Project?” Niigata stared at the charcoal that coated his fingertips. “I assure you that the nature of the beast does not allow for such rational thought.”

Nicholas addressed Niigata. “Do you know who is buying the first Torch?”

“A Japanese,” Niigata said without hesitation. “I overheard Rock at one point. He mentioned the Yakuza. An
oyabun.”

“Which
oyabun?”
Nicholas’s heart was pounding heavily in his chest.

“I don’t know. But he did mention the Kaisho.”

Nicholas’s voice was abruptly hoarse. Okami was Torch’s intended target. That meant whoever was buying it knew where he was hiding. “I believe I know the target,” he said. “Why would they use Torch in this way?”

Niigata shrugged. “My guess is it’s twofold. First, the location of the target has been established but not pinpointed. With a weapon like Torch, identifying the target’s location in a particular house or even on a block is unnecessary. The entire neighborhood will go. Second, the resulting disaster in the heart of a densely populated urban center will send the most potent message imaginable to all potential buyers. Torch’s price will skyrocket. And, believe me, every terrorist, warlord, and ethnic cleanser will fall all over himself to purchase it.”

Nicholas shivered at the thought. He had to find out where Okami was hiding. “I have information that Torch’s detonation will be in a major city. Have you any idea which one?”

Niigata’s breathing was becoming labored. “I doubt that even Abramanov knows. Only Rock. And, of course, his partner. But my advice would be to get to Torch before the fifteenth. Once it leaves Floating City the chances of finding it—especially in a big city—are virtually nil.”

“His partner?” Tachi whispered, ignoring the terrifying implications of what Niigata had just said.

Tachi’s voice was so strangled Nicholas threw him a sharp look.

“Rock’s partner is alive?” he asked again.

“Of course he’s alive,” Niigata said. “Nothing short of being too close to the Torch detonation is going to kill that bastard. Mick, Rock calls him.”

“Yes, Mick.” An eerie light had come into Tachi’s eyes, and his frame was vibrating so violently that even Niigata had become aware of it. “You fucking sonuvabitch, I have you now, Michael Leonforte.”

The sleet had stopped, and silvery light from a full moon sliding through the last of a low-riding cloud bank spilled through the bathroom, illuminating Celeste’s face. Her hair slid across her cheek as she bent, upending the trash can into the toilet and flushing away the burned contents.

Croaker, standing breathless behind the shower curtain, found the tub porcelain cold. He had seen Celeste’s shadow moving on the wall, enlarging dramatically as she began to head his way. That was when he had left the door, racing across the tiles to the tub. Celeste hadn’t bothered to turn on the lights and so hadn’t noticed the small spots of water that had fallen from his wet shoes.

Now, as he crept back to the door, he absorbed them with the soles of his socks. That had been too close, and his heart was thudding heavily in his chest. Celeste had been near enough for him to smell her perfume. He could have reached out and touched her. And if she had bothered to look down at the wet tiles...

Croaker had met Celeste late last year in Tokyo when they were pursuing Do Duc, the Vietnamese who had murdered her brother, Dominic Goldoni. That Celeste was part of the Nishiki network did not surprise him because Nicholas had first met her in Venice where she worked for Mikio Okami, but that Vesper was deeper and deeper inside it terrified him. It was beginning to look as if, like all the most successful moles, she was privy to the highest levels of Okami’s clandestine network.

“For the first time since we began, I am starting to have doubts,” Celeste said. “The forces arrayed against Okami are so vast, so well entrenched.” She shook her head. “You saw what happened after Leonforte was unmasked and killed—Dedalus took over and now it’s as if nothing has changed. The Godaishu is like the Hydra—a monster with so many heads, lopping off one or two had no effect.”

“That was part of Okami’s plan when he built up the Godaishu. Now that he’s fighting it, it’s like battling your own mirror image.”

Celeste looked up at Vesper. “I’m terrified they will penetrate his defenses and kill him. If he doesn’t get help soon—”

“I think you have to have faith in Okami,” Vesper said softly.

“But I haven’t seen him in so long. And I feel as if the Godaishu’s power is growing every day.”

Vesper said nothing, but her look of concern startled Croaker. Again he was witnessing the expert psychologist at work. Was it an act, or genuine, as it appeared? Could she care for these people—Celeste, Margarite, and Okami—while in the act of betraying them? The more he saw of this woman the less he knew her. She was a unique creature, of that much he was certain.

Celeste shook her head, worrying her lower lip. “We have another crisis. Serman hasn’t delivered his last update on Torch. Without him we’re dead in the water and the entire penetration is at a risk level we can’t tolerate.”

Penetration of what? Croaker strained to hear every word.

Vesper nodded. “Yes, there’s got to be a problem at DARPA. I don’t know what’s in Serman’s mind.”

Celeste looked worried. “Do you think he’s hit a wall? What if he can’t deliver the element-114m analysis in time? Floating City will have its weapon, and once Floating City puts it on the market on the fifteenth, we will be helpless to stop its dissemination.”