The Kaisho (72 page)

Do you need help, Okami-san?

No, no.
Curious now in retrospect how Okami’s agitation seemed so much more significant.
I don’t want you involved in this at all. Not in any material way. But I seek your advice.

Whatever I can do,
Nangi had said.

There is a man with whom elements within my inner council insist I deal, and there is much about him that concerns me. But even though I have a profound sense of foreboding I nevertheless feel that I must take this path. I know it is the wrong one, Nangi-san, but I must make this attempt to appease the other
oyabun
if there is to be any peace among the clans. I do not want a full-scale war on my hands.

Okami had paused to watch several children playing and daydreaming in the grass. Who knew what was in his mind at that moment? Perhaps he was thinking, as Nangi had been, of the terrible price one paid for adulthood.

This
man, whose name is Lillehammer, works for someone who I believe is known to you, so I thought we should meet.

They had moved on, leaving the children to their play, coming upon strolling lovers, hands linked, faces turned toward one another, blessed by the sunlight.

Leon Waxman.

Yes. I know him,
Nangi had said.
We met here in Tokyo several years after the Occupation began. Let’s see, perhaps it was in ’forty-seven or ’forty-eight. In any case, I met him in hospital. I was doing work for the building ministry at that time, I believe, and there was some structural damage at the hospital. I was sent out with a team of engineers to see what needed to be done.

Waxman was an American, but he was recuperating in a Japanese hospital?

That’s right,
Nangi had said.
The hospital specialized in
neural surgery. His wounds were extensive so I assume a number of operations of that nature had to be done.

What kind of a man did he seem to you?

Curious,
Nangi had said.
He seemed to have two personalities. One, canny and bright, the other, terribly suspicious and dark. The nurses I spoke with said he was so prone to violent nightmares and night sweats they had gotten in the habit of sedating him right after dinner.

And after he got out of hospital you kept in touch?

Yes. For one thing, he was hungry for contacts in Tokyo. For another, he actually helped me move upward into MITI.

How did he manage that?

The lovers had vanished with the sun, and now the two men were in an area populated by punks in pink and green spiky Mohawk hairdos, black leather jackets, insectoid sunglasses, and black and chromium Kawasaki motorcycles. They sneered at the passersby and gunned their engines. Muscular, bass-heavy rock music blared.

Apparently, he wasn’t without contacts already,
Nangi said.
He had been in public liaison when he had been in the Army, so he had done plenty of interfacing with ministry personnel, especially the Ministry of Commerce and Industry which would eventually become MITI. He desperately wanted contacts in the business world and so we bartered favors. I remember being impressed with how well he understood the Japanese way.

So he wanted to become a businessman.

Apparently.

Well, he’s in an entirely different line of work now,
Okami said.
He’s the head of a spook network that’s buried deep inside the American federal bureaucracy.

They had come to an area of the park under construction. Now even the punks were left behind, and for the moment at least, they were alone. Pale-budded trees, their root balls wrapped in burlap and twine, lay heeled over against an iron fence, awaiting planting.

I can see how he’d be drawn to that kind of life,
Nangi said.
Waxman always impressed me as being someone who saw designs in shadows. Besides, even though he had a knack for it, my impression was that business bored him.
It was too easy. “Like shooting fish in a barrel,” he once told me.

Okami said,
Waxman’s network is so deeply buried even the American Congress has never heard of it.

That can be good or bad.

There’s more.
Okami put his hands behind his back and frowned, deep in thought.
Waxman has risen to the top of a loosely knit group of men who call themselves Looking-Glass.

Looking-Glass. I’ve never heard of them.

I’m not surprised, virtually nobody has. These men seek power and control over their government’s political and economic policies. We speak here of an exceedingly dangerous man.

Okami came to a halt, stood facing Nangi, and Nangi knew they had come to the crucial moment.

Waxman is the end of this particular path for me,
Okami said.
If he proves untrustworthy, I fear that I will have to take my great leap into the unknown. I have my own agenda, which I will implement despite the extreme danger to me. I apologize for involving you in this crucial decision, Nangi-san, but there is no one else I can trust.

I remember Waxman as being smart,
Nangi had said that last time he had seen Mikio Okami, seven months before he had abruptly disappeared.
Perhaps too smart for his own good.

What do you mean?

Just this. His intelligence made for a restless soul. And I, personally, can never fully trust restless souls.

Now, as Nangi stared at the digitally enhanced still-frame of the 8mm video, he knew he was looking at the face of the man he hadn’t seen in so many years. Observing in cool objectivity the sexual burlesque of one of his agents was Leon Waxman.

Tomoo Kozo covered his mouth as if, without that commitment, he would articulate to the world his hatred for Nicholas Linnear. Kozo stood naked in front of a full-length mirror staring at the movie of his body. The prismatic
irizumi
told a story of loss, revenge, and death, to Kozo’s way of thinking the three cornerstones of honor.

Loss, revenge, and death were all that concerned Kozo now. He stared down at the phoenix that girdled his penis with its wings. Its fierce head was tattooed on the helmet. The phoenix grew as he did, spreading its curious wings in ardor.

Loss, revenge, and death defined not only honor but Kozo’s relationship with Nicholas Linnear. The two had never met; perhaps Nicholas did not even know of Kozo’s existence; but Kozo knew Nicholas, intimately.

Despite the lies he had told Minister Ushiba, Kozo had deliberately put the white Toyota on Justine Linnear and her lover—yes, Kozo had known who he was the moment he had landed at Narita, long before Ushiba or the other
oyabun
of the Kaisho’s inner council had. And because of that Nicholas Linnear’s wife was dead.

Loss.

Katsuodo Kozo, Tomoo’s father, had once played a role in the rise of Mikio Okami, but Okami had outlasted him. Of course. Okami had the Colonel.

Kozo was sick to death of the Japanese deification of Colonel Linnear. Even many of the
oyabun
held him in high esteem because of what they saw as his efforts on the behalf of their clans during the early years of the Occupation. Kozo had no doubt that the Colonel was more Japanese in his thinking than he was Western. In his opinion, that was what had made the Colonel such a dangerous creature. It was what had killed Katsuodo Kozo.

Kozo believed it was Colonel Linnear himself who had murdered his father, who had been found floating in the Sumida River with not a scratch on him. But Katsuodo could not swim and the Colonel knew that; Kozo had heard them speaking one hazy summer afternoon when the sweat collected on the skin like rain in the treetops.

A week later, Katsuodo’s blue-white body was fished out of the Sumida, and Kozo had lost a father.

An irreparable loss.

It was only years later that Kozo began to glean the nature and the context of the terrible incident. Almost from the beginning Katsuodo and Okami were at loggerheads over Yakuza policy. Okami was for accommodation with the Americans—especially since the Occupation forces often turned to the Yakuza to help quell riots instigated by Communist infiltrators. It looked better for Japanese gangsters to be banging the heads of Japanese workers than it did for the American military to do it. But Katsuodo argued vehemently against any association with the Americans. He despised being used by the Americans for any purpose—even the supposedly virtuous eradication of the Communists from Japanese soil.

The disagreements between the two
oyabun
finally erupted into open warfare. Until Katsuodo’s body was discovered floating in the Sumida. Because no marks were found on him, no blame could be assessed, no revenge taken. Okami and the Colonel exerted their influence. Order was restored.

But nothing could return Tomoo Kozo’s life to the way it had been, and he never forgot. In true Japanese fashion, he took Okami as a mentor, studied under him, became a true and loyal friend, consolidated his power as Okami rose through the ranks. And when Okami became the Kaisho, Kozo was his staunchest and most vocal supporter. He had stood by Okami’s side at the rite of ascension, because of his clandestine investigation into the history surrounding Katsuodo’s death hating him and his connection with Colonel Linnear all the while.

The Colonel had died before Kozo could exact his revenge. That left the son. But the son was a ninja, powerful in his own right. Even the
oyabun
feared him. And then there was the memory of the Colonel, a reverence that Kozo could not fight. So he bided his time, patient as a spider whose intricate web is destroyed by wind, rain, and frost, but who nevertheless re-spins it time and again.

Revenge.

Kozo turned away from the mirror, began methodically to dress. It was time to see Do Duc.

Time to recall honor and mete out death.

Nicholas, pale as ash, lay among the fallen maple leaves as if he were in a bed of fire.

Celeste, kneeling over him, said, “The house—
your
house, isn’t it?—is just a hundred yards further through the trees.”

His eyes, clouded with pain, stared up at her as if she were a stranger. Celeste’s heart skipped a beat. What had the Messulethe done to him? Why had she waited so long to act? But she knew. The terror that had gripped her from the moment Nicholas had established their psychic link was like nothing she had ever experienced before. Always in her mind lurked the shadow knowledge that beyond the world she could see with her eyes, hear with her ears, lay another, more ephemeral one with which her mind intersected in times of extreme stress or dreaming. Being so directly connected to it had scoured her nerves raw. But look at what her terror had wrought.

“Ah, Nicholas.”

She bent over him and tenderly placed her lips over his. She thought she heard him moan, and she jerked away, afraid she had somehow hurt him.

They were beside a stone basin filled with water that seemed to bubble up from below the ground. There was a single Japanese
kanji
carved into the stone, and across its top lay a bamboo ladle.

Nicholas, whispering in a reedy voice, bade her let him drink from the ladle. She scooped up the cold, clear water and, lifting his head, put the ladle against his lips.

He drank slowly and noisily for some time, his eyes closed, as if the water defined his world. He put his hand flat on the carpet of leaves, sat up.

“Home,” he said. “Did I direct you here?”

“You don’t remember?”

“No.”

She put her hand against his cheek. “Nicholas, how badly are you hurt?”

“I don’t know.” He looked around. “This is where Justine and I buried our daughter, little thing, so tiny and white, she had no chance at life.”

He put his head down, and Celeste drew him into her arms, rocked him gently while he softly sobbed.

“It’s all right,” he said after a time. “That was a long time ago. Another life, really.”

Celeste closed her eyes for an instant, bit her lip. “Nicholas, I’m afraid.” They stared into one another’s eyes. “I think at the end the Messulethe understood. I think he became aware of me, of how I helped you.”

It was true. Through the haze of pain and shock Nicholas understood that he could no longer shield her in that way. He had used her and now they would both pay the price. It had been a desperate gamble, putting his head into the jaws of the Messulethe’s snare, but in a way it had paid off. From the interrogation he knew that the Messulethe did not have access to Okami. Otherwise, he would have known that Nicholas was not Nishiki, the conduit between Okami and Dominic Goldoni.

That meant Okami was alive and most likely in hiding.

“Nicholas.”

He looked up into Celeste’s eyes, and suddenly he felt her psyche emerging from its shell, enfolding him in warmth and light. She put her hands on him, at first gingerly, then as her sense of her inner self grew, more firmly. With the physical touch her strength flowed into him more fully, a floodlight illuminating shadowed depths.

“You have the hands—the mind—of a healer,” he said through cracked lips.

Automatically, he began the silent chanting of Akshara. Abruptly, he stopped.

“What is it?” Celeste had sensed the change in him. “This is all so new to me. Have I done something wrong?”

He shook his head. “No, it’s me. I was taught the part of Tau-tau—Akshara—by a certain man. I trusted him for many years, but in the end, it turned out that he was my enemy. He had learned both Akshara and its dark counterpart, Kshira. Without
koryoku,
the Path, and Shuken, the protection of integration, the dark side had corrupted him, as it has corrupted the Messulethe.”

Nicholas signed for more water, and she placed the ladle to his mouth. He drank in silence. The wet scent of leaves and rich soil perfumed the air. Birds flitted in the branches, calling sweetly to one another. This far from the winding road, there were no sounds of traffic.