Authors: Eric Van Lustbader
“It felt like heaven.”
The Red Queen smiled. “I had a bet with myself. I knew you’d say that.”
Stainless-steel desk, chairs, and lamps, stainless-steel wainscoting below walls lacquered a shiny ice-white, a color that set Lillehammer’s teeth on edge. Or maybe it was his own agenda, eating at him like a cancer; he no longer slept for more than an hour at a time. The enormous strain of running an operation expressly forbidden by his superior was weighing on him.
“Should have waited.”
“What?” Lillehammer leaned forward.
The Red Queen looked him full in the face. “If you’d waited, you could have put both of them down.”
“If I’d waited, I wouldn’t have gotten Munch. Something was making him skittish. Thirty seconds more and he would have disappeared. And you know guys like Munch, once they go to ground, it takes a major effort to flush them. This way, I made sure he was neutralized.”
“I don’t like loose ends, and we’ve got one now. What the hell were the two people you’re running doing at Renata Loti’s at midnight last night?”
“How many tails did we have on them?”
The Red Queen laughed. “Just the one you assigned. But he reported to me as well as to you.” He laughed again. “It’s not that I suddenly don’t trust you, you understand, but I can fully appreciate how a... creature like Do Duc Fujiru can get under your skin.”
“If you think I’ve lost my professional detachment—”
“Not yet,” the Red Queen said sharply. “You kept your head all through Nam. But that was before the Zoo, wasn’t it?” His cold eyes glittered. “You need to run this man Do Duc to ground, Will. But take my advice and now that you’re getting close, don’t get overanxious. I don’t want to have to go down to our morgue and assign you to a zipper bag.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want you to take a run over to Renata Loti’s, find out what your people were doing with her.”
“I’d better step carefully. Loti’s got a lot of powerful friends on the Hill.”
“True. But she’s no friend of Rance Bane’s so she’s had to pull in her horns a bit lately. I must say, though, for a lady she’s been a helluva deal-maker among the old hands in the Senate. She’s brokered many a stalemate into compromise bills that have made everyone involved look sterling.” The Red Queen lifted a hand, let it flutter to the stainless-steel desk. “You’ll know what to do. Use a little diplomacy or whatever. But watch out, she’s smart as the devil himself.”
Lillehammer nodded. “On the topic of Davis Munch, with Gaunt the Committee’s star witness discovered dead and now Munch iced, Senator Bane has gone ballistic. That could be very dangerous at this stage. If he makes one of his patented public displays, it’s going to be like the pit bull taking a shit all over our best carpet. Maybe I should—”
“You leave Rance to me,” the Red Queen said icily. “I’ve fed him everything he’s ever used on anyone. I brought him along, bought elections for him, established contacts for him, manufactured influence, made sure the good old boys on the Hill made him one of their own before I set him loose on them like a rabid dog. Now they don’t know whether to fawn or piss themselves when he walks into a room.” He shook his head. “Rance Bane is my creation, so you leave him strictly to me. Dust to dust, eh, Will?”
“Still, Bane could become a loose cannon. Why don’t I waltz him out a window?”
The Red Queen gave him a cool stare. “Sometimes, Will, I truly think that the only thing that makes you happy is a war zone.” He tapped a finger against the side of his nose. “Don’t worry. Rance Bane doesn’t need the extreme prejudice of your silver hammer. I built him out of fear, prejudice, and ignorance. By those attributes he rose to power and by those will he fall, I promise you. But only when his usefulness to us is at an end.” He made a wry face. “We will terminate no pawn before its time, eh?” He laughed at his own joke as Lillehammer left the room.
Outside the sealed, electronic-surveillance-proof room, Vesper sat in one of her many newly purchased winter suits. This one was a high-fashion number by Armani in a wine-red chalk-strip worsted wool. She had to be hands down the best-wardrobed working woman in Washington, Lillehammer thought. Well, what else did she have to do with her time? Though she handled all the travel scheduling, personal armament procurement, monetary allocation, and false-document manufacture for Looking-Glass, even though she knew where every field agent was at any given moment of the day or night, Lillehammer was willing to bet a year’s salary that she had no idea what was actually going on. How could she? The Red Queen was such a security fanatic he didn’t even tell his asshole when it was time to take a shit.
Lillehammer spent some time admiring Vesper’s long, sleek legs while she was at her computer terminal, working his bonuses through the bureaucratic maze illuminated in pulsing green icons on her screen. Her rather odd name came from her father, she had told him once, who had been a great Ian Fleming fan. Vesper was the name of James Bond’s first love.
Vesper’s cornflower blue eyes regarded Lillehammer coolly as her long coral-lacquered nails danced over the keyboard. Her thick, pale blond hair swept down over one peach-colored cheek. After the hibernal bleakness of the Red Queen’s sanctum, it was a relief to spend time in her office, which was painted in the soft colors of the American West. Even better, the temperature was sufficient to sustain mammalian life.
Vesper’s forefinger pressed
ENTER
and she said, “Oh, hell,” with a slight frown. “I can’t get the money out of Accounts because their software is backlogged. Damned outdated system. If we’d been on line now with the Hive Project hardware, I could have gotten your bonuses to you in no time.”
Bonus
was the euphemism for wet-work overrides, extra money Looking-Glass received for successful terminations. The Red Queen, taking the moral high ground, defended this rather mercenary custom by pointing out that hazard pay was a time-honored institution in many industries. Why not this one? Besides, it made sure that every agent in Looking-Glass was Strac—ready in the best possible condition.
“No problem. I’ll wait.”
“By the way, I think he’s getting his period again.”
Lillehammer, internally switching gears, began to listen very closely.
“The paranoia in that office was very thick this morning. He was on the phone with someone named Loti.”
“Renata Loti?” Lillehammer asked, wondering why the Red Queen hadn’t mentioned this. The antenna of suspicion was up.
“Uh-huh, that’s the name. I’d say it was far from a friendly conversation.”
This was not the first time Vesper had given him tips from the inner sanctum. They invariably panned out, earning him the respect of his enigmatic boss.
“In fact it degenerated into a holy screaming fight. I don’t know what about, but I did overhear something about the name Douglas Moon and the word
blackmail.
That’s when he went ballistic.”
Lillehammer thought he would pass out. Renata Loti knew about him and Doug? Good Christ! Unconsciously he put his hand up to his cheek, felt the quick, heady surge of blood. He jerked it away, as if his skin had burned it. But how could she know? He’d been so terribly security conscious, even over Doug’s constant complaints that his elaborate preparations destroyed any sense of spontaneity their couplings would otherwise have had. A homosexual affair was bad enough for a spook—the potential security compromises were endless—but then there were the things he and Doug did together. Who would understand or countenance such radical behavior save the perpetrators? How had this happened?
And then he thought in a rage,
That fucking bastard Doug got bored and has blown the whistle on me!
“Anyway,” Vesper chattered on, “it seems clear to me he wants something done about her.”
“I don’t know.” Self-preservation was warring with prudence inside him. “The heat from the fallout might be intolerable. She’s got friends in high places.”
“Is that so? I wonder. What were his exact words after he slammed the phone down? ‘Somewhere there’s an accident waiting to happen to that woman.’”
Lillehammer suddenly needed some air. “How are we doing with my bonus money?” he asked innocently.
Vesper glanced briefly at her computer screen, gave him a dazzling smile. “At last! Accounts has caught up with its backlog. Your checks are being printed up now.”
A moment later, the checks spewed out of a slot in her printer. Vesper smiled sweetly at him as she handed them over, and Lillehammer stumbled out into the hushed, anonymous corridor beyond the immense and bizarre corner office complex.
Nangi presented himself at the private dwelling wedged between the two huge warehouses. This area near the Sumida appeared wholly different in daylight. Laughing children played where by night the mangy, vaguely menacing dogs had restlessly prowled, and the incessant flurry and clamor of business perhaps hid—or at least recolored—the worst of the neighborhood’s depressing shabbiness.
A young woman opened the door in response to his knock. She was chunky, quite plain in appearance, with a thick mane of black hair she had frizzed in a voguish but unappealing style.
“Yes?” she said, peering from around the thick door.
Nangi bowed, handed her a business card, one of a dozen different ones he periodically had made up. This kind of foray—clandestine and incognito—had become over the years an inherent part of his life. He had discovered that one most often acquired valuable knowledge when hiding behind the mask of another—anonymous—identity.
It was astonishing, really, Nangi thought as he waited for a response from the young woman. What people would never consider telling to Tanzan Nangi, chairman of a major
keiretsu,
they would readily confide in a feed salesman, a product engineer, or a metalwork foreman, someone to whom they could feel superior.
This morning he was Seizo Abe, a representative of the housing ministry, purportedly doing a survey of area buildings over twenty years old. It was an all too plausible story that gained him almost immediate admittance to the house.
He was let into a small oval foyer dominated by a central staircase and a crystal chandelier. Lustrous brown and a rich melon color predominated. A striped-marble console held a bowl with a spray of fresh flowers, hothouse grown at this time of the year. The young woman took his shoes, led him down a cherrywood-paneled hallway. Off it, to the right, a set of pocket doors were open. Beyond, Nangi could see a library with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a crystal chandelier, a smaller version of the one in the foyer.
The young woman signed for him to enter. A threadbare Persian carpet lay on the floor like an exhausted memsahib. To the left, a pair of high-backed upholstered chairs were set facing a velvet-covered couch. In the opposite half of the room, a glass cabinet along one wall displayed a magnificent torso of early-seventeenth-century samurai armor. It had been placed adjacent to a burlwood French secretary so that whoever sat in the chair behind the desk could have an unobstructed view of it.
Alone, Nangi looked around. This was obviously the room of a scholar, an orderly, erudite mind that had worked out the role of each element in life.
“I see by your card that you have changed professions.”
Nangi started, hearing the soft female voice emanating from his left. He turned.
“I beg your pardon.”
“And not for the better, I might add.”
He bent forward, his forehead creased in concentration. He knew that voice, but he was certain he hadn’t heard it in quite some time.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” the female voice said. “I’ve had tea prepared.”
Nangi limped toward the high-backed chairs and, as he came around the side, saw that the one nearest him was occupied by a petite but noble-looking woman with pale, translucent skin, planular cheekbones, and black, fiery almond eyes. It was only because he knew her that he could say with any certainty that she was in her early seventies.
“Kisoko!” he said, astonished despite himself. “You are the last person I imagined I’d find here.”
“Often, I have discovered, the real world can be disarmingly like the one depicted in
Alice in Wonderland!”
There was the rustle of heavy, brocaded silk as she moved her arm and the wide sleeve of her kimono slid against her porcelain skin. Pink, white, and coral cherry blossoms were strewn across the breast and upper sleeves of her kimono, tossed by the indigo wind of the artist’s imagination.
Kisoko retained every ounce of enchantment she had possessed ten years ago. He was stung all over again by the longing he had felt upon first seeing her a decade ago. How he had wished he had known her in the magnificence of her youth. The heavy-lipped, bow-shaped mouth that maintained promises all on its own, the smoldering, guileless eyes, the precision and economy of motion that rendered palpable grace and intelligence, all were as he remembered them. But the ultimate attraction of the slightly asymmetrical face was its subtle hint of indulgence and, deeper, benediction. Nangi, rolling over in bed with the morning light streaming through gauzy curtains, had often imagined her as a Catholic nun, a secret fantasy of years past that was so forbidden it was unutterably delicious.
“Kisoko,” he said now, his head filled with the scent of memory, “I have heard that Mikio Okami is missing. Do you know anything about this mystery?”
Those incandescent inky eyes looked up at him. “I have no news of my brother,” she said flatly. “For the moment, if you will sit, I will prepare the tea.”
He sat on the chair on her left hand, watched mesmerized as she made the green tea. When they had both drunk their first cups, she said, “I do not know whether my brother is alive or dead, only that his enemies have made their move against him. What will happen next I cannot say.”
She put her cup aside, placed her forefinger on the business card he had given the young woman, pushed it across the polished ebony table toward him.
With her fingertip still on the card, she said, “You have come under another name for a purpose that is surely false. Tell me, Nangi-san, what am I to make of this?”