The Kaisho (18 page)

An hour later one of the bodyguards came into the house and spoke to the big man who had made them breakfast.

“What is it?” Margarite asked, anxiety turning to panic.

“Maybe nothing,” the big man said, but the smile was gone from his face. “They’ve found a package outside. It’s addressed to Francine.”

Francie looked alarmed. Jumping up, Margarite gave a little cry. “I want to see it.”

The big man shook his head. “That’s not a good idea, Mrs. DeCamillo. For the time being I think you’d better go to my room with your daughter. Sal will stay with you.”

From the small bedroom, she heard the big man on the phone with Tony.

He was there inside two hours. She heard the
thwop! thwop! thwop!
of a helicopter’s rotors increasing in pitch and volume as it neared. She was allowed out of the room, but she left Francie behind with Sal.

The box sat on the entryway sideboard. Tony said nothing to her, directed one of his men to open it. Inside was a gaily wrapped package tied with a pink bow. This, too, the man opened, and they all peered inside.

Margarite gave a piercing cry. Nestled within, on a cloud of pink crepe paper, was Ryan, Francie’s teddy bear.

She rushed into the bedroom where Francie had slept, stared at the bed with its ruffled covers, the empty space against the wall where she had put Ryan late last night.

“Mother of God!”

She put her knuckles to her mouth as Tony came in behind her. “Tony, he was in the house; he was right beside her.” Her voice cracked and she had to stop, gather herself before continuing. “I put it on her bed myself when we got here last night.” She turned, stared wide-eyed at Tony. “Do you see now what I’ve been telling you? It’s a warning. What good was it bringing us here? What good were the guards? I told you. All the button men in the world aren’t going to save us now. We can’t hide from him. If we say a word, Francine’s gone.”

“Calm down,” he said automatically, but she could see that he was pale beneath his sunlamp tan.

“Please listen to me, Tony. I can’t bear the thought of Francie being harmed more than she already has. God knows what she remembers from this nightmare; she won’t talk to me about it. I’m pleading with you for our daughter’s life. Let this go.” Was it purely desperation that gave her words such conviction that even Tony was moved?

And what else have I given you, Margarite? Now you know you have the strength of purpose… to do
anything.

“All right,” he said at length. “I take your point. But I want you and the kid in the chopper now. We’re getting the hell out of here.”

Here’s what it boils down to,
Justine thought as she felt Rick Millar’s muscular thigh press against the side of her leg under the restaurant table.
He wants me
—not a part of me, but
all
of me.
And then came the thought, unbidden:
It’s been a long time since I felt that from a man.

Tears burned her eyes, and she had to turn her head away, quickly wipe her face with the back of her hand. She could not let him know just how vulnerable she was. What defenses were left to her were shaky at best, and she knew with a shudder of recognition that when—not if, but
when
—
he put his hand on her she would not be able to resist him. Not tonight, not here. He had too much she needed. Feeling him so close to her, she could imagine what it must be like to have been wandering delirious in the desert for weeks on end, then finally and unexpectedly stumble upon an oasis. She was so close to that clear, cold water. Who would blame her for drinking her fill?

“There seems to be no distance at all between us tonight,” Rick said as he poured more wine for them. “Have you been treated so badly since I last saw you?”

“Was I always so untouchable?”

He leaned over her, covered her lips with his. She tasted him, felt the quick brush of his tongue, and she felt her body melt against him.

“You’re right,” he said breathlessly. “I won’t ask you again. When you’re ready to tell me, to get it all out, I’ll be here to listen.”

“I wonder,” Justine said, breaking away from his heat. “Did you come here to seduce me?”

Rick laughed. “My God, nothing could have been further from my mind. You, the Ice Maiden?”

“Is that what they called me at the office?”

“To my knowledge, only the guys who lusted after you. I think that included all of them—well, all the straight ones, anyway.”

Now it was Justine’s turn to laugh, but she was flattered all the same. She put her head down. “I feel as if I’ve been on another planet.”

“No kidding. As far as I can see, Tokyo
is
another planet.” Rick put his hand over hers, squeezed. “It’s time you came home.”

When he returned her to the Hilton, she found that she did not want him to leave. That was not much of a surprise; all through dinner she had found her appetite for food suppressed by another desire just as basic. And by her tone of voice, the look in her eyes, the compliance of her body, she knew that she was seducing him. It was a good feeling. After years of being out of control, of being in a very real way subject to the whims of her alien environment—and to the frightening vagaries of Nicholas’s
tanjian
heritage, she felt positively liberated at being able to exert her own personality. At last, she recognized how much of herself had been held hostage, had been subsumed within her fear of what her husband was becoming. Now she could see clearly that she wanted no part of his powers and his magic; these arcane things only made her uneasy, lying sleepless beside him at night, anxiety flooding her with adrenaline.

“Stay with me tonight,” Justine whispered in Rick’s ear when the door to her room closed behind them.

“I want you to be sure this is right,” Rick said as he held her.

I’m sure,
Justine said to herself.
I need to have a normal life, to be productive in my work, to come home at night, make love with my husband, see friends on the weekends, take vacations twice a year.

She tilted her head up, captured his mouth with her lips. Her lips flowered open and she moaned a little as she felt his tongue twine with hers.

She felt his hands on her body as he unbuttoned her blouse, slipped it off her shoulders, unbuttoned her skirt, pushed it down over her hips. She fell into his arms as if she had passed out, her intense desire pushing them on. He scooped her up, carried her over to the bed.

There was only one lamp on, and through eyes slitted with lust, Justine watched his body appear as she disrobed him. She remembered parts of him from their time in Maui. Then she had seen him in a bathing suit that left little to the imagination. All the same, she found her heart beating faster than she thought possible as she slipped off his underpants. Naked, he stood at the side of the bed, looking down at her. Justine thought he had a beautiful body, slim-hipped, flat-bellied. Certainly, he did not have the unique musculature that Nicholas possessed, but, she reminded herself, this was an ordinary man and he was all that she desired now.

“Come here, darling.” She held her arms up to him.

Rick knelt on the bed, kissing her tenderly while he unhooked her bra, rolled her bikini pants down her legs. Justine was weeping when she felt his body on top of hers. It had been a very long time since she had made love with anyone other than Nicholas, and the unfamiliarity of Rick’s weight, form, and smell excited her so that she bit into his shoulder as she jerked her hips up into his groin.

She could hardly breathe, and the hammering of her heart was all she heard amid the vertiginous swirl of her desire. She opened her legs, felt his hardness brush against her, gasped as she pulled his head down to her breasts. Her eyes fluttered closed as he laved her nipples, and she corkscrewed her hips to let him know how desperate she was for him.

He understood immediately, arching up over her so that she could guide him into her with her hand. Her fingers stroked his velvet flesh for a moment, then, because she could not help herself, her palm came down over his head and she squeezed. She heard him groan, his body shudder, and she lifted her legs, fitting him to her.

She was very wet, and he slid halfway into her in one stroke.

“Ohh!” Justine cried, canting her hips upward. She was already in a frenzy, and when with his next stroke his tip touched the core of her, she lost complete control, shouting out as her orgasm burst over her. She sucked on his flesh, wanting that taste of him to permeate her entirely.

“Oh, God, oh, God!” she chanted with each thrust of him inside her. Part of her knew that this was almost wholly her—her passion venting itself, needing this expression, this outlet. Her thighs were trembling, and she felt another orgasm building. She lifted her head up, whimpering in his ear, and she felt his hips give a ragged lurch inward, and then he was spasming into her.

Justine felt her orgasm flowering out. It was different this time, less violent but more intense, coming from deep inside her.

And when it was over, she lay beside him, one leg thrown over him in abandon, and for the first time in long months, she slept the sleep of a child: deep and dreamless.

Ghosts.

There was something about Washington, Harley Gaunt thought, that was like no other city in America. Its wheel-spoke design, its wide, tree-shaded boulevards, its parks, the pillared stolidity of its major structures, all reminded him of Paris or London, of Europe, the Old World rather than the New World.

Too, the place fairly hummed with power. Gaunt could feel it as if the city were wired with overhead trolley lines. And that power, like the wide, tree-shaded boulevards, all led in one direction: to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The White House sat in the center of Washington like a spider in the center of its web.

This city was full of ghosts.

Gaunt knew the capital well, had many friends here. As the son of the former Democratic senator from Maryland, he had been born within sight of the Ellipse. He had been raised with the crackle of power in his ears, had burnt out on it quickly, more so than his father, who had hung on here past his time, dying in office.

Gaunt knew well that the power that fueled this city could be as malignant as nuclear radiation. The gamesmanship of deal-making had to it always the stench of power-mongering. Either you were in in Washington or you were nothing. This elite clique ran the country—the world’s only remaining superpower—and that was justification enough to lie, cheat, extort, break every commandment in the pursuit of the amassing of power.

This power was like a virus, seeping into the players’ bloodstreams, affecting their personalities, the whys and wherefores of decision-making. Gaunt had seen this virus so many times he could now recognize it like a fever lurking in the back of the eyes. He had had enough experience with it. He was convinced that his father had died of the fever, not old age or overwork. His father, an essentially good man, honest in the way most successful politicians learn never to be, had gradually changed. He had not been immune to the fever as Gaunt had been certain he, of course, would be. Gaunt’s mother and sister had mourned Gaunt’s father at his funeral, but Gaunt had mourned for him long before.

Every time he came back to Washington, Gaunt felt the ghosts whispering in the humid wind off the Potomac, hanging in the cherry trees near the Reflecting Pool, grinning from the heights of Capitol Hill. In a sense, his father had never left this place—the power kept him here, even after death.

The lobbyist Gaunt had chosen to run political interference for Tomkin Industries down here had been secretary of state in a former administration. He was a middle-of-the-road conservative, highly regarded—he held the green fire of Potomac power in his closed fist. Unlike most, he had won his battle with the virus.

Terrence McNaughton had offices on G Street, hard by the Old Executive Office, a building that by its almost Victorian architecture looked haunted at night, and no doubt was, not by conventional ghosts out of a horror novel, but by the drudges of the current administration, who lived a near-spook existence executing “Eyes Only” directives whose consequences never made the papers.

The imposing Federal facade of the stone building in which McNaughton plied his trade was like so many others in the capital, bespeaking old money, influence, and the presence of that green Potomac fire.

McNaughton was a tall Texan with leathery skin burnished a pleasing bronze color, pale blue eyes with sprays of squint lines at their outside edges, and thick silver hair. His long, almost mournful face was redeemed by his Roman nose and a genuine smile he had perfected during the many campaigns of his youth. He was like an old glove, at once rumpled and comfortingly familiar.

He came out of his office the moment Gaunt was announced, extending his hand for a firm, dry shake. He wore a dark suit, white shirt, and a string tie with a handmade bolo of worked silver and turquoise.

“Come on in,” he said in his rich baritone. “It’s good to see you again, Harley”—he closed the door behind them with a kick of his tooled cowboy boot—“though I wish to hell it were under kinder circumstances.”

Gaunt chose an upholstered chair, sat down. “Just what
are
the circumstances?”

McNaughton grunted, opted to sit on the tatty sofa opposite Gaunt’s chair rather than retreat behind his kidney-shaped desk, so old-fashioned it was in vogue again.

“The circumstances,” McNaughton said, folding his long body into the semblance of a sitting position, “can be summed up in three words: Sen. Rance Bane.”

“Bane wants me.”

“He wants Nicholas Linnear, but he can’t find him. D’you know where he is?”

“If he’s not in Tokyo, I have no idea.”

“I hope that’s so.” McNaughton steepled his long fingers, looked up at the ceiling. “I’ve known Rance for ages. We grew up in adjoining towns. My brother dated his sister for over a year. I’ve been following his career for a long time, worrying. This man has an obsessive personality, and his current obsession is getting the Japanese out of large American businesses. For him, Tomkin’s merger with Sato International has become a lightning rod, a symbol if you will, of all that he sees wrong with international takeovers.”