The Kaisho (36 page)

“But he might have been abducted,” Nicholas said as he searched the darkest reaches of the closet. “Didn’t Okami-san have bodyguards?”

“And draw more attention to himself?” Celeste shook her head. “Besides, despite his age, he was still very good at defending himself.” They went back out into the hallway. “God knows he’s had enough practice; he’s been doing it almost all his life.”

Nicholas glanced over at her. “And then he had you.”

“Yes, he had me,” she admitted as she pushed open the door to his study. “He had to practically break my arm to get me to stay with you.”

“That’s comforting.”

“I didn’t want to leave him.”

“Now I see why.”

He pushed past her into the maelstrom of Mikio Okami’s study. The room was a whirlwind of papers, pages ripped from books. The heavy burlwood desk was overturned, its drawers out and splintered, its back peeled away from the frame like skin from stewed meat. Framed etchings had been pulled from their places on the walls, the backing torn away. There were holes in the plaster walls where they had once hung.

“Good God,” Celeste breathed.

Nicholas, down on one knee behind the desk, said, “What the hell were they looking for?”

“I don’t know.” She knelt beside him, pushing a raft of papers away from her. “As far as I know, whatever Okami-san was working on he kept entirely in his head. He was too experienced and too clever ever to commit anything of substance to paper.” She looked at Nicholas. “Do you think he was taken?”

Nicholas was busy moving the desk over an inch. “What’s this?”

Wedged beneath one of the desk’s legs was a square of thick paper folded over twice into a small package. It was a black-and-white photo. It was grainy and full of grays, and its subject was Celeste in her Domino costume. The background clearly showed an area of the interior of the Church of San Belisario, just outside the schola cantorum where Nicholas had been taken to wait for her.

The thing was already open, being picked over by the tekkies, like a cadaver being examined by pathologists. The analogy was apt, Nangi thought as he was brought the sterile coat and shoes that were a requirement for all people on the fiftieth floor.

The Chi Project.

Masamoto Goei himself was waiting for Nangi. He was all but wringing his hands in his despair.

“Where was it found?” Nangi asked as he made his way to the zinc-topped table where the thing was laid open, all its guts exposed—fiber optics, silicon chips, copper shielding, minute diamond relays.

“On the Asian black market,” Goei said, hurrying to keep pace with Nangi as he strode across the room with the help of his cane. Masamoto Goei was one of the Chi team directors, a theoretical-language technician, one of the whiz-bang tekkies who had thought up this computer without software.

“Is it the Chi?”

They had come up to the table, stood staring down at the orderly tangle of the open computer.

“Well, yes—and no.” Goei pointed. “There, to the left, you can see three neural-net boards that are our proprietary technology, but the rest of the thing—I don’t know what it is. The only thing I can say for certain is it’s not ours.”

“But part of it is,” Nangi said. “How did it get from here to—wherever this thing was put together? And who is responsible?”

He was met with only silence. Even the tekkies who had been busy autopsying the thing had stopped, were staring at the two men. Nangi motioned for Goei to follow him out of the lab. Outside, he stripped off the cleansuit, said to Goei, “What else is there?”

“The clone—although that’s not strictly speaking the right term—was assembled somewhere in Southeast Asia. My men spotted that right away. My best guess would be Hong Kong. Tiny businesses are up and running, out of business the same month, no one pays attention. Virtually anyone could rent the space and hardware without attracting much notice.”

Shit, Nangi thought. Nicholas has dropped out of sight and his pet project has blown up in our faces. He wanted to get back to his office. Now he had even more of a need to speak to Vincent Tinh. In Saigon, Tinh would be closest to the action. He should have spotted this bastard machine on the black market. Why hadn’t he?

“Keep me informed of your progress,” he said tersely to Goei. “And make that thing a priority.”

Nangi took the chairman’s elevator back up to the executive floor.

“Has Vincent Tinh gotten back to us?” he asked as he strode past Umi’s desk.

“No, sir,” she said, pulling together several files from her desk and following Nangi and Seiko into his office.

“Any news of Linnear-san?”

“Nothing.” Umi waited until he put his walking stick across his desk before she said, “But I have some related news.”

“Oh?” Nangi lifted a hand. “Before you go on, Umi, write an electronic memo to all senior directors. As of today Seiko Ito has been promoted to director of corporate liaison. In that capacity she will be an extension of my authority throughout the organization.”

Umi’s head lifted momentarily to look at Seiko, then she continued with her shorthand.

“Make sure that gets distributed immediately.” When Umi nodded, he continued.

“Now, what I want you to do—”

The phone rang and Umi got it.

“I’m in a meeting,” he said.

She spoke into the receiver for several seconds. Nangi, who was talking to Seiko, paused. Umi’s face had gone ashen.

With a shaking hand she pressed the hold button and said, “I think you had better take this call, Nangi-san.”

Curious, Nangi took the receiver from her.

“Moshi-moshi,”
he said curtly.

“Tanzan Nangi?”

“Speaking.”

“Chief Inspector Hang Van Kiet here. Mr. Nangi, I am with the Saigon police. I have the unhappy chore of informing you that your employee, one Vincent Tinh, has met with an unfortunate accident.”

Nangi was aware of just how tightly he was gripping the receiver. There was a cold spot forming in his belly. “How seriously is he hurt?”

“I am sorry to report that he is dead, Mr. Nangi.”

Nangi listened to the ululating tones of interference on the line sounding far away, isolated from reality. Tinh was dead. He found that he had to remind himself of what those words meant. He said a silent prayer, then he gave free rein to his analytical mind.

“May I ask what kind of accident Tinh was in, Chief Inspector?”

“It was an odd one. It seems Mr. Tinh was inspecting a warehouse out in the northern district and he—”

“We have no warehouses in the northern district.”

“Indeed.” By the inflection of that one word Nangi was made aware that Van Kiet already knew. “Your Mr. Tinh was trespassing.”

“Who owns the warehouse?”

“There seems to be some confusion about that. We’re running an inquiry now.”

Nangi put his fingertips to his forehead over the spot where a headache was forming. He knew these people, how parochial and clannish they could be in times of crisis. They closed ranks against outsiders. From Van Kiet’s reply he doubted whether he would ever get an answer to that question.

“Go on,” he said.

“From what we can reconstruct from on-site analysis Mr. Tinh was up on a plank catwalk. His foot plunged through a rotten spot and he lost his balance.”

There was a silence that contained the strange electronic singing of inadequate long-distance cables.

“Yes, and...?”

“He fell into a barrel of sulfuric acid.”

Did you say sulfuric acid?

“I did, sir.”

“And this barrel of acid just happened to be in the spot where he fell?”

“There were many barrels in this warehouse, Mr. Nangi.”

“What were their contents?”

Van Kiet hesitated a moment, and Nangi thought he heard the rustle of papers being shuffled.

“Salt, gasoline, bicarbonate of soda, potassium permanganate.” Anger, frustration, and resignation could all be heard in the chief inspector’s voice.

Nangi felt his headache growing with each pulse of his heart. “In other words this warehouse was a drug factory.”

“That conclusion seems inevitable,” Van Kiet said. “Have you any knowledge of Mr. Tinh—”

“My employees do not deal drugs,” Nangi said stiffly.

“That must be a comforting thought for you so far away in Tokyo,” Van Kiet said dryly.

The last thing Nangi wanted was to get into a verbal boxing match with this police official. For the moment, he was Nangi’s only connection with Saigon and the growing mystery of Vincent Tinh.

“How have you concluded it was an accident?”

“Pardon?”

“In this situation how could you have possibly ruled out murder?”

“Frankly, Mr. Nangi, I haven’t. Nevertheless, the death will be considered an accident. There were no witnesses and there are no overt signs that anyone else was in the warehouse at the time that Mr. Tinh was there. And, of course, because of the circumstances of the death the body itself can offer us no clues.” He sighed. “I regret to inform you that I am grievously understaffed and underfunded. By any standards the crime rate here is shocking, and it just keeps escalating. I am afraid from where I sit, Mr. Nangi, it is clear that capitalism breeds contempt for the law.”

“Are you telling me there’s nothing you can do?”

“I must ring off now, Mr. Nangi. I regret the loss of your employee.”

“If you could spare a moment more, Chief Inspector, I’ll put my secretary on so that arrangements can be made for the body.”

“But my dear sir, the arrangements have already been taken care of by Mr. Tinh’s family.”

“Mr. Tinh
has
no family. Who had the body picked up?”

“Let me see. A man claiming to be Mr. Tinh’s brother. He gave as reference a company called Avalon Ltd. in London.” Van Kiet grunted as he gave Nangi the man’s name. “Now I really have overstayed this call. Good day, Mr. Nangi.”

Nangi stared at the receiver, now as dead as Vincent Tinh.

“It looks like this was taken the night we met,” Nicholas said of the photo of Celeste in her Domino. “Did you know this was being taken?”

“No. I would have bet my life we were alone. I made certain you weren’t being followed.” Her voice was shaky.

“It’s a surveillance shot.” Nicholas pointed. “Look at the heavy grain and the grays—that’s from using a long lens and high-speed film.”

“But what’s it doing here? Was Okami-san aware of it?”

“It’s possible—perhaps even probable.” Nicholas stood up, completed a thorough search of the study, then came back to where the photo lay. He studied it again.

“There’s something odd here. The entire room is a mess. There isn’t one item in here that hasn’t been either ripped apart or shredded. Except this photo.” He glanced at her. “I can’t believe that it was overlooked.” His fingers ran down the creases. “And see how carefully it was folded, almost like an origami sculpture.”

“Then the only explanation is that it was left here deliberately.”

“Exactly.” He folded and unfolded the photo. “What if it was left behind—by Okami-san? If he was abducted, he’d be clever enough to manage to leave us a clue as to where he was being taken.”

“If he knew.”

“Celeste, he knew he was a marked man. I’m beginning to think he knew who was being sent after him. I have to believe he knew where he’d be taken.”

She stared down at the photo. “But what is this telling us? All I see is me.”

“Have you gone on a trip recently for Okami-san?”

“He has some business on Burano. Every once in a while he’d ask me to go there for him.”

“Okay, Burano’s a possibility.”

“Not a good one, I’m afraid. Okami-san has too many friends there. And it’s not a large island. All the fishermen know one another. I don’t believe anyone could hide him there.”

“What else do you see in the photo?”

“Well, I’m standing in the Church of San Belisario.”

“Right. I think it’s worth a look.”

It took them twenty minutes to reach Campiello di San Belisario. Their route took them through the Jewish Quarter, which Nicholas had heard described as the poorest part of the city. He found it to be rather the most austere, but this was only natural. Compared to the Gothic and the Byzantine
palazzi
and churches elsewhere in Venice, the buildings and synagogues here were plain structures that could easily be construed as mean and shabby by those who had little understanding of how the Jews had been forced by history to internalize all their joys. The Jews’ most sacred scripture, the Torah itself, warned against public manifestations of wealth.

Here, stripped of the encrustations of the Gothic and the Byzantine, one could feel the pulse of the people. The weight of centuries hung, unadorned, like curtains of the finest linen on which were painstakingly embroidered depictions of their endless wanderings.

The small square of San Belisario was empty save for an old, emaciated man on the opposite side from the church. He glanced at them briefly, smiled wearily before disappearing behind a wooden door.

“All I can say for sure is that we weren’t followed. As for whether Okami-san is inside the church...” Nicholas shrugged.

“This way.” Celeste led him back down an alley toward a
rio
and its bridge. He recalled emerging from the hidden entrance to the church from beneath this bridge. This was the route they now took, letting themselves into the church through the oldest of its doors.

The weight of the ages pressed in upon them as they moved through the gloom. The air was heavy with myrrh, frankincense, and mold. It was damp and chill this near the water, and parts of the stone floor were greenish near the edges.

Celeste led them unerringly down a short, dark corridor dense with wooden beams, then up a flight of stone stairs. They emerged onto the main level beneath the ogival arcade, quite near the schola cantorum. She led him around until they reached a certain spot. She took out the photo, looked at it briefly, then held it up for him to see. “This is the spot where I was standing when this was taken,” she whispered.

Nicholas nodded.

“What do you feel? Any sign of Okami-san... or the man who was following us before?” she asked.