The Kaisho (52 page)

Their shoes clattered against the stone steps, resounding off the facades of the buildings, and a cloud of pigeons, disturbed from their afternoon meal, rose into the air, swooping in a great black wing.

Nicholas opened his
tanjian
eye and heard the silent beat begin against the membrane of
kokoro,
setting thought into motion, psychic impulse into reality.

He hurtled down the stairs, his eyes on the fleeing figure below him, while with his
tanjian
eye he searched the wider environment for the snare he had felt all along would be there, waiting for him.

As it had many times since he had seen it, the image of the Messulethe in Venice, bending down to pick up his hat, crossed his mind like a cloud across the sun. What was wrong with the image? Something disturbing, something out of place, as if it were a film rather than reality.

He hit one of the landings, took a leap down the next set of steps. He was gaining on Okami. Below them both he could see the wide rue Caulaincourt, the buses lurching forward, the thick lines of traffic, the dense swirl of pedestrians. The city was down there, with a labyrinth of escape routes.

Okami swung like a monkey past a pair of lovers, who broke their tender embrace to look at him.

If he was Okami. Even if Okami did possess
koryoku,
he was too old to be moving with such speed and agility.

At that moment, Okami stumbled. He was halfway down the flight of stairs just below Nicholas. He went down, rolling, then tumbled head over heels down the lower half of the flight.

Nicholas, putting on a burst of speed, sped across the landing, then leapt down the next flight. He landed beside Okami’s prostrate form, reached down to turn him over, saw the edge of something along Okami’s jawline.

He explored with his finger, felt the stickiness of the spirit gum, then digging in, saw the skin begin to wrinkle up in a wholly unnatural manner, exposing the edge of an unfamiliar jawline, and he knew he was looking not at human tissue but at a highly advanced form of acrylic resin made up of a silicon-polycarbonate hybrid of the kind his research and development people had designed for the Chi Project.

Abruptly, the present collided with the image he had been carrying around with him of the Messulethe, the wrongness as he bent to retrieve his hat
and no blood rushed to his cheeks.
Of course not. Then, as now, he had been wearing a mask!

It was the shock of this interior collision of sight and memory that slowed Nicholas’s reaction. The inert body abruptly rolled into him, and he found himself staring into the mask of Okami’s face. The lips were partly open, a small
o
framing out the center of the space.

His
tanjian
eye opened, Nicholas knew what was to happen, saw the ruse, knew it for the snare, felt its jaws snapping shut, and he began to react.

Phut!

But he was too late. Even a moment was too long a time. As his muscles responded to the danger, the minidart was already on its way at point-blank range.

It struck him in the neck and he immediately felt his throat begin to close up. He struck out, but part of him was already struggling with the disorderly shutdown of his autonomic nervous system, and there was little strength behind it.

The figure rolled again, cutting Nicholas’s feet out from under him, and he began to collapse forward. He tried to break his fall, but somehow his limbs had ceased to respond to his brain’s command.

For the space of a heartbeat control of his mind was all that was left him as the toxin spread through his system. Then that, too, was snatched from his grasp.

He felt the sun like a weight upon his back. Its light streamed past in a dizzying array of rainbow colors, then winked out as all consciousness died.

“
Omert
à
,
the law of silence,” Mikio Okami said. “If you do not understand this about the Sicilians, you understand nothing.”

Col. Denis Linnear closed his eyes, felt a bead of sweat crawl slowly down his cheek. It fell with a soft plop into the steaming water in which he and Okami were immersed.

“It’s odd to hear a Japanese speaking of ancient Sicilian law.”

Okami took the time to inhale the scented steam beating up off the water. He knew very well that the Colonel meant a Yakuza
oyabun,
had only used the term
Japanese
because he was not an
iteki
—a barbarian as Okami had assumed when his sister had insisted they meet. She was crazy about this man.
Foolhardy,
Okami thought,
because he is Western; even more foolhardy because he is married; most foolhardy because he is happily so.

“My study of these particular Sicilian Families began some time ago.” Okami felt his own sweat brought to the surface with the deep rhythm of the heat. “The logic of it is simple: these people found a way to cross international borders at will. We will have to do no less if we wish to survive in the new world Japan and America together will construct. The Yakuza has always been a strictly
national
organization; like the country within which we exist, we have been unaware of the world at large.”

“Omert
à
and kyokyaku,”
the Colonel said as if he were alone. Some believed the
kyokyaku,
local heroes, such as firemen, who were appointed by the Tokugawa shogunate to help keep order in the seventeenth century, were the origins for the Yakuza’s mythic credo of honor among thieves, nobility alive like the spark of life within the underworld. As society as a whole grew more corrupt, so, too, did the
kyokyaku,
until they themselves were absorbed into the shadowland of gambling and prostitution.

No wonder, the Colonel thought, the Mafia has caught Okami’s fancy.

“I speak of
omert
à
because it is a necessity,” Okami said. “Because I perceive a threat to my world and it is up to me to do something about it.”

The Colonel was a tall man, handsome and commanding, with piercing blue eyes. He stirred slightly in the hot water. Soft echoes from the other baths in the
furo
were an almost rhythmic counterpoint to their conversation. “There are others—older than you—who could take up this burden.”

Again, Okami was impressed by the Colonel. He had used the Japanese word for
older
when what he meant was “more powerful.” His sister was right: he knew the ways of Japan almost as well as Japanese.

“In any other society that might be true,” Okami acknowledged. “But the Yakuza is a closed book. The elders—arthritic in their thinking. They see the past as future. Whereas I see the future as present.” He lifted a hand briefly to scratch himself. “I believe you and I are similar in this regard, Linnear-san.”

The Colonel opened his eyes, inclined his head slightly toward Okami. “You are kind to say so, Okami-san.”

Okami smiled to himself.
Kind
when he meant “wise.” “But we are similar in another regard. We are both men of honor. In my experience this is rare among Westerners; it is a potential to be treasured.”

“Word and deed, Okami-san.”

“Just so.”
So he knows,
Okami thought with a quickening of his pulse. In Japan, words meant next to nothing. It was deeds that mattered, nothing else.

“I understand how you must have felt, having Kisoko insist that we meet”—the Colonel paused for effect—“especially given my status in Occupation HQ.”

“You have Douglas MacArthur’s ear.”

“Especially given how your sister feels about me.”

Okami did his best not to laugh outright. How he loved the way this man orchestrated conversations! He wondered at how much pleasure he derived by being in the Colonel’s company. Two months ago that thought would have profoundly disturbed him. He was grateful for his ability to tolerate change—in himself as well as in others.

“You had every reason to hate me on sight,” the Colonel said. “And perhaps you did. Lord knows, I couldn’t blame you.”

Okami said nothing. Like a chess master he was thinking of what moves the Colonel was bent on making.

“But now we have reached a certain understanding. We know what it is we need from one another, and because of this, we have learned to respect one another. Give-and-take, Okami-san, that is the dynamic of any successful ongoing relationship.”

“The Yakuza and the United States military,” Okami said. “You do not find a certain ironic dimension to this alliance?”

A small smile played around the Colonel’s tanned face. “Listen, Okami-san, I believe the human race has an infinite capacity to rationalize dreadful events, unspeakable acts, unholy alliances. What one must sort out for oneself is the ultimate lines across which one must never, ever venture.”

Okami stared into those blazing blue eyes. “As for myself,” he said, “I am bound by a code of honor no less stringent than Bushido, the code of the samurai. Anything that does not contravene that code is permissible.”

The Colonel laughed. “You sound just like a Sicilian.”

At last, Okami permitted himself a smile. “So we return to the subject of John Leonard, also known as Johnny Leonforte.”

“And, apparently, your beloved
omertà.”
The Colonel steepled his fingers. “This man Leonforte is making a market in every sort of contraband imaginable: not only U.S. Army matériel, but Russian weaponry, prescription drugs, and illicit drugs. The real problem is that no one we’ve picked up with the stuff will talk.”

Okami nodded. “Even Yakuza
kobun.
He has been using foot soldiers disenchanted with our alliance with the occupiers to house and distribute his contraband. Mysteriously, they won’t implicate him, either. But I have picked up a name—Leon Waxman. But that’s all he is—a name. I have been unable to find out anything else about him. It’s as if he’s being protected.”

“By Leonforte?”

Okami shrugged, and the Colonel sighed, closed his eyes again. “Someone,” he said, “has to have a talk with Johnny Leonforte.”

Truth to tell, the aspect of the situation that disturbed Okami the most was the fact that street Yakuza were betraying their oath, bonding themselves to an
iteki.
What strange power did Johnny Leonforte possess that he could command the loyalty of elements of the Japanese criminal underworld?

This was the central question that Okami kept worrying on his way to see the military police captain. Of course, the Colonel was too well known to do more than pay Leonforte an official visit, and both of them agreed that this would be more apt to cause problems than solve them. Besides, the best thing about the alliance between Okami and the Colonel was that no one would believe it could exist. Confronting Leonforte with another criminal type could elicit information from him he’d rather die for than divulge to someone in the Colonel’s position.

Capt. Jonathan Leonard spent much of his off time in the small, crowded apartment of a woman he was sleeping with—an Army nurse named Faith Sawhill with a narrow waist and clever eyes. She had the legs of a model and knew how to show them off. She had never seen line duty, but instead belonged to a general with a chronic ulcer who coveted her with the avidity of a religious zealot.

Knowing the Sicilians as he did, Okami doubted that Leonforte had included his inamorata in his business dealings, but on the other hand he worked his magic out of her place so there must somewhere be an overlapping of business and pleasure.

All of this went through Okami’s mind as he stood in the open doorway to Faith Sawhill’s cluttered apartment. Sawhill was just kissing Leonforte good-bye as she went to serve her general. As she brushed past him, Okami smelled sandalwood. She flashed him a wide, white-toothed smile and then was gone, her heels click-clacking down the stairwell.

“Mikio Okami.”

“Hai.”
Okami bowed slightly, saw in his peripheral vision that Leonforte did not return the bow. Well, he was used to such treatment by the conqueror. All the personal rancor had been burned out of him in the aftermath of the war, which he had hated and had fought against while such sentiment meant anything. In the end, he had joined in it, simply because he was a patriot—he loved his country, even when it acted on decisions that were nearsighted and bellicose. But he was no war criminal and was now doubly glad that Kisoko had introduced him to the Colonel, because he had some debts outstanding and Denis Linnear was his path to settling them.

“Come in. This is Vincent Alba.” Leonforte waved an arm in the direction of a rugged-looking individual with the dark, close-set eyes of a predator, short-cropped hair, and large, hairy hands. While Leonforte had on his MP uniform, Alba was dressed as a civilian in a well-fitting and expensive suit of silk and lightweight wool.

“Make yourself at home, put up your feet, whatever,” Leonforte said. He was a tall, lean man, handsome in that dark Mediterranean way, with thick black hair, cut short in the military style. Okami could imagine it long, curling over his forehead and the back of his neck like a Roman senator’s.

While Okami perched himself on the edge of a curved love seat, Leonforte went to a small, drop-leafed table set against a wall. “How about an anisette? Maybe a sambuca. I got fresh coffee beans to float in it.” He turned around to Okami. “You know about the Italian custom with sambuca?… No? Then you gotta try it.”

Okami accepted the clear liquid with two dark beans floating on top. He noticed that Alba had not moved. He neither asked for nor received a drink. In fact, Leonforte treated him as if he did not exist.

“Here’s looking at you,” Leonforte said, clicking his glass against Okami’s. He took half his sambuca in one shot. “What d’you think? Good, huh? Better than sake, am I right?”

Okami did not like his first taste of the liquor, but he persisted, willing his palate to adjust. He also willed himself to smile. “It’s excellent. May I have some more?”