The Kaisho (43 page)

He launched himself forward, darting between angered pedestrians, his way encumbered, slowing him down when he had no time to spare. He caught sight of the Messulethe and, to his shock, did not see the face he was expecting. This was a different Messulethe from the one he had seen in Venice.

His path was made more difficult now because of the sudden press of people. The sidewalk was narrowed by the stained wooden planks of a construction crew repairing gas mains below the ripped-up pavement. As he pressed on, he became aware of the Tau-tau shadow detaching itself from his hiding place, flashing with black light directly toward Celeste. To Nicholas it represented pure malignancy, and he knew he would never reach the Messulethe in time. He smelled the acrid stench of sulfur, knew he was the only one around who would, and his psyche expanded.

Like a great beast it wrapped itself around Celeste just at the moment the shadow struck her. The sheer force of it staggered her, thrusting her off the curb and into the street, but Nicholas’s protection held.

The pressure in his mind was so great now that all vision was distorted. Rainbow colors smeared themselves like auras around every living thing that moved in his field of vision, and he experienced that disconcerting sense of sliding sideways, outside the grip of time, so that it seemed as if he could see himself in the struggle with the Messulethe.

The Messulethe redoubled his efforts to get to Celeste, to crush her mind with the force inside him. Nicholas staggered with the enormous effort required to protect her. Battered by unknown forces, he felt a rushing in his ears, and he was blind, fully inside Akshara, time-slipped, acutely, painfully aware of its shortcomings.

If only he had
koryoku,
the access to what he knew had once existed and could again: Shuken, the whole of Akshara and Kshira, the power of the Dominion.

All at once, the rushing in his ears became a howl, and the cold sweat broke out on his goose-fleshed skin because he knew that Akshara was not enough to win this battle. The reverberations the Messulethe had set in motion at
kokoro
were so powerful that they were threatening to tear him apart, and he knew he had to get them away, now, or they would both be finished.

Already he could feel his protection cracking, slipping away from Celeste, leaving her open and vulnerable to the Messulethe’s assault. The most appalling noise filled Nicholas’s mind, making rational thought impossible. He knew he was at the limits of his power; he felt weak and ineffectual against this malignant power that drove against him with the force of a pile driver.

In seconds, he knew, it would be over. He would be overwhelmed, and Celeste, stripped of his protection, would be killed.

He did the only thing he could.

Stripping himself from Akshara, he closed his
tanjian
eye and, returning to real time, opened his physical eyes. He saw the Messulethe, concentrating, his face lined and sweat-beaded with effort.

His protective force had been withdrawn and he knew he had only precious instants to act before Celeste’s mind would be pulverized beneath the Messulethe’s relentless assault.

He reached down, hefting a chunk of concrete from the rent sidewalk and, without conscious thought, hurled it as he would a
shuriken,
a steel throwing star.

The Messulethe must have heard the whirring of the missile as it neared him, but he was time-slipped, his focus narrowed to the diameter of a filament as he concentrated his psychic power.

Awareness came too late. The concrete slammed him backward, throwing him off his feet.

Nicholas raced toward Celeste, on her knees in the street. Traffic blared as a taxi bore down on her despite the driver desperately applying his brakes.

The harsh squeal of brakes, the smell of burned rubber, accompanied him as he charged through the throngs, leaped between a pair of thick iron posts, driven into the pavement to prevent Parisian drivers from parking along the corner.

He left his feet because it was the only chance now, the taxi terribly close. He could smell its exhaust, see the front tires as they left marks on the street.

Tucking his head down, he rolled in a ball, increasing his momentum, came up beside her after one revolution, put his arms hard around her waist, yanked her up and over one shoulder, his head, toward the far side of the street.

The taxi, brakes screaming, went through the spot where she had fallen, screeched to a halt some feet beyond. But by that time Nicholas had regained his feet, had scooped Celeste into his arms, and was carrying her away from the curious crowds, the blaring horns, the stunned cabdriver, and the scorching psychic afterburn like the stench of the flowers of evil.

Francie giggled. “Gotta go, Mom, but could I have fifty? We’re hitting the movies later.”

Then she began to sob, still lying in Croaker’s arms.

Margarite’s face was a mask of agony. “Francie, darling—”

“Oh, God, oh, God!” The tears whipped off Francie’s face. “I can’t go on like this.”

“Come on, Francie,” Margarite said, reaching for her. “I’m going to take you home.”

“No!” The girl shrank away, into Croaker’s chest. “I’m not going home. I’ll die at home!”

“Francie—” But Margarite stopped, looking into Croaker’s eyes. She could read him, knew what he wanted to do, knew from speaking to the psychiatrist that sometimes a stranger could be of more help than a family member, particularly a parent.

“Francie, I’m not going to do anything you don’t want,” Croaker said. “I’m going to pick you up and take you out of here.”

“We’re not going home!” she cried. “I don’t want to go home.”

“Not home,” Croaker said. “Somewhere where you and I can talk. Okay?”

Francie looked down at his biomechanical hand. “I want to hold that,” she whispered, her eyes wide.

Croaker closed his fingers into a tight fist, and Francie wrapped her hands around it. “Now no one can hurt me,” she said, almost to herself. She nodded and Croaker scooped her up in his arms.

“Is there a back way out of here?” he asked Margarite.

She bad been about to protest, control stripped from her, but she could see that her daughter was already calmer.

She nodded. “This way. I’ll take care of the bill—and alert the bodyguards so they don’t break your arms.”

She met them a moment later beside the Lexus coupe. The bodyguards had kept a discreet distance, but they had not yet piled into their car. Margarite came hurrying up, unlocked the Lexus. Croaker took the backseat with Francine.

“Where should we go?” Margarite asked.

“Why don’t we just stay here for the moment,” Croaker suggested. “Okay with you, Francie?”

She nodded, silent, tearful, snuggled against his muscular shoulder. She began to sniffle.

“Now, I want to ask you some questions,” he said softly, “but I want you to remember something. You don’t have to answer any of them.”

Margarite sat behind the wheel, half-turned around, staring at Croaker and her daughter in the rearview mirror.

“Can you tell me why you felt like you were going to die back there?”

“I still feel that way.”

“You do? Why?”

Francie shrugged. “I just feel that way.”

“Okay, what’s it feel like?”

“Blackness. Just…” Words failed her and she squeezed her eyes shut. She was weeping again, silently this time.

Croaker did not touch her, did not in any way acknowledge she was in distress. “Francie, who’s your favorite actress?”

“Jodie Foster,” Francie said, wiping her nose.

“Okay, pretend you’re Jodie Foster,” Croaker said. “You’re on the set of a movie. Let’s see,
Terminator 4.”

The girl giggled. “That’s silly. Jodie Foster wouldn’t be in
T4.
Linda Hamilton would.” But she had stopped crying and definitely seemed more alert.

“What if they couldn’t get Linda Hamilton? Maybe they’d pick you. Okay?”

“Yah.”

“Now think of what happened back in the restaurant as a scene from the film. Think of the feeling as a
thing,
as something to scare you so you can bring back what you felt back there. Get the picture set in your mind. Now describe it to me.”

Francie closed her eyes. “I’m in a car, not like this one, but bigger. Riding through the country. It’s night and very dark. I’m supposed to be... asleep, but I’m not. I’m awake, lying in the backseat, listening to the voices, staring out at the night sky.” Her lids fluttered. “That sky, so close and black… blacker than black—like being under a thick blanket in the summertime... no stars, no clouds… stifling...”

She gave a little gasp and her eyes flew open. They were terrified.

“It’s okay,” Croaker said, holding her tight. “You’re safe here with your mother and me.” But he followed Francie’s gaze, saw that Margarite was sitting with her head lowered, her hands over her face.

“Mom?” Francie said tentatively. “It was you I heard…”

“Hush, baby.”

“You and that… man.”

Margarite’s fingers closed into fists, and she said in a strangled voice, “Oh, my detective, how I wish you had never come into our lives.”

“He said he knew more about Uncle Dom than you did, Mom.” The girl obviously needed to talk now, to free herself from the unconscionable trauma that had been crippling her. “He said that you held my life in your hands, and you said, ‘You don’t have to keep threatening me, I understand the situation.’ Then, later, as we were pulling into one of those motels along the highway, he said, ‘Right now you think of me as the devil, but later, months after it’s all over, you’ll know the truth,’ and when he got out of the car, you began to cry.”

Margarite was crying now, her shoulders hunched, the sobs torn out of her in racking spasms.

Croaker waited a moment before he asked, “What man?”

“He’s why I’m going to die.” Francie looked at him. “He’s going to come back and kill me. The man who killed Caesar and then killed Uncle Dom.”

Nangi tried to decide at what point he had become aware of the white Toyota. Had it been when his driver had accelerated away front the traffic light in Shinjuku, or even before that, when they were closer to the office?

He tried to clear his mind. “Tell me what you know about Vincent Tinh,” he said to Seiko.

“I’ve known him for years,” she said. “He used to date a friend of mine. That’s how we met. It was at a party, I think. Singapore. Well, it was a long time ago, but I remember he impressed me right away. He was very clever and not at all the trusting sort. You can’t afford to be trusting in Southeast Asia.”

“So you’ve followed his career, more or less?”

Seiko shook her head. “Not really, but it seemed I couldn’t avoid him. His name kept popping up as he brokered billion-dollar deals—electronic factory start-ups in Kuala Lumpur, computer manufacturing in the Philippines, high-tech import-export work in Vietnam. But solid deals, leading-edge stuff. He was the wizard middleman. It seemed to me he not only knew all the right people but knew how to handle them. So when Linnear-san asked me to recommend someone for Saigon, I automatically thought of Vincent.”

“Did you hear of anything illegal he was involved in?”

“Illegal?” Seiko seemed startled.

Nangi nodded. “The Saigon police inspector intimated that Tinh might have been dealing drugs, that this activity might have been the reason for his death.”

“But you said Vincent’s death was accidental.”

“That’s what the police are calling it, but reading between the lines, Chief Inspector Van Kiet privately felt it was murder.”

“It’s all so strange,” she acknowledged. “There was the matter of someone claiming to be a family member picking up the body. I did as you asked, got the telephone number of Avalon Ltd. in London. The person I spoke to there assured me he had never heard of the man.”

“Well, that was to be expected. What business is Avalon Ltd. in?”

“High-tech import-export.”

“Just as Tinh used to be,” Nangi mused. “Curious, but I’m certain it’s just a coincidence.”

Seiko lowered her head. “I take full responsibility for Vincent Tinh, Nangi-san.”

“Nonsense. You did what you thought was right. Besides, at this point there’s no proof that Tinh was involved in anything illegal.”

But part of his mind was back at the office where Masamoto Goei and his Chi team were still dissecting the neural-net clone computer, trying to discover what technology made it run besides the section of Chi boards Goei’s men had already identified. A sense of foreboding darkened Nangi’s thoughts every time he called Goei for an update and was told no substantive progress had been made, except that the other boards were American design. Where did this clone come from and who had spirited out technology to reproduce the Chi boards?

The white Toyota moved in the periphery of his vision.

“Still, I—what is it?” Seiko saw the peculiar twist of his head.

“We’re being followed.”

Seiko turned around, peered through the BMW’s rear window. “Which one?”

“Wait, and watch.”

He leaned forward, tapped his driver on the shoulder in a particular cadence. At once, the BMW swerved to the left-hand lane, took the first left with a screech of brakes and protesting tire rubber. A moment later, a white Toyota turned the corner, and Nangi said, “That one.”

“Can we get away from them?” Seiko asked nervously.

Nangi folded his hands over his dragon-headed walking stick, said, “Why on earth would we want to do that?”

Seiko gave him a curious look. Her hand closed with some pressure over the door handle. “We’re slowing down.”

“That’s right.” Nangi opened his door even before the BMW had come to a complete halt. “Perhaps now we’ll begin to get some answers.”

The white Toyota screeched to a halt just in front of the BMW, its rear end angled outward, blocking the other car’s way. Nangi emerged from the BMW in time to see a tall, slim man unfold from behind the wheel of the white Toyota. He wore a dark sharkskin suit and black wraparound glasses. This rather insectoid creature waited with the open door between him and Nangi. Nangi could see his pistol bulging beneath his jacket. Yakuza.