ERIC LUSTBADER

A NICHOLAS LINNEAR NOVEL

SECOND SKIN

 

 

Grateful acknowledgment is made to:

Frank Panico, Frank Capone, for insight and research into Ozone Park and East New York, Virgil England, for the design of Mick's push dagger, Jim Schmidt, for his scholarly treatise on Damascus steel

 

Maybe a great magnet pulls

All souls towards the truth

Or maybe it is life itself

That feeds wisdom

To its youth

- "Constant Craving"
k. d. Lang/Ben Mink

Until the day of his

death, no man can be sure

of his courage,

-Jean Anouilh

Dead Can Dance

Time is a storm
in which we are all lost.

-William Carlos Williams

 

 

Tokyo

"What is it that you've always wanted?"

Mick Leonforte stared across the table at the tall, elegant
woman who sat unmoving as she slowly smoked a thin, black
cigar. Giai Kurtz was Vietnamese, a daughter of one of Sai-
gon's elite families. She was married, of course, but that was
part of the kick. Alone and unattached, she would not have
seemed nearly as desirable. She was also the kind of woman
Mick had wanted to be with since he had come to Asia
more than twenty years ago. Even before that, if he were
to be perfectly honest with himself.

Staring at the jewel-shaped face with its high cheekbones,
unblemished skin the lush color of teak, the heavy cascade
of blue-black hair, he understood that this exquisite crea-
ture-or someone very much like her-had inhabited his
dreams before he had ever known the first thing about Asia.
It was no wonder that having come in-country for the war,
he had never returned home. Vietnam was ids home.

"Tell me," he said with the hint of a smile at the corners
of his mouth. "Tell me and it's yours."

The woman smoked her cigar, letting the gray-brown
smoke drift languidly from her partly opened lips, and if
one was not as well versed in the peoples of Southeast Asia

as Mick was, one could .easily miss the metallic glitter of
fear far back in her depthless eyes.

"You know what I want," she said at last.

"Anything," Mick said. "Anything but that."

They were in the rearmost booth of Pull Marine, a chic
French restaurant that Mick had bankrolled in the posh
Roppongi district. It was one of many burgeoning businesses
throughout Asia-legitimate and otherwise-that he con-
trolled. Mick was involved in numerous such ventures that
he had kept secret from his late, unlamented partner, Rock.

"I want you."

No, he thought, that is what I want. At least what I want
you to feel.

"You have me," he said, spreading his hands wide. "See?"

In the opposite corner from where Mick and Giai sat, a
rail-thin Vietnamese woman warbled the songs of Jacques
Brel, filled with melancholy and the black sails of death. She
expressed Brel's profound sadness like the wounds of war,
the room was burnished as much by her serpentine voice as
it was by the low, artful lighting.

"You know what I mean. I want us to be together
always."            , '

"But I won't be here," he said with deliberate emphasis
on each word, "always."

The chanteuse was accompanied by a guitarist and a synth
player who made his instrument sound, at times, like a cathedral

organ. This churchlike overtone caused Mick to remember

the many stories of Joan of Arc his father had told
him. Apocryphal or not, they stayed with the young Mick,
perhaps because they were so much a part of his father's
worldview; saints as warriors for righteous causes had been
a major theme in Johnny Leonforte's subconscious.

"Then I will go with you wherever you go." She sucked
on her cigar. "That's what I want."

Mick stared into her dark eyes for a long time, calculating.
"All right," he said at length, as she smiled, smoke escaping
from between her ripe lips.

The restaurant was a piece of Saigon reproduced whole-
doth in Tokyo, a reflection of Saigon's deliberate air of
change and newfound prosperity. Gold-leaf walls gleamed
and sparked, a black marble floor reflected the midnight-

domed ceiling. The candles on the tables gave off the
faint incense of a temple's interior. Bathed in the cool bluish
wash of spotlights, a highly stylized mask fashioned out of
crimson lacquer from a traditional Vietnamese design domi-
nated one wall.

Smartly dressed waiters were overseen by Honniko, a
spectacular bare-shouldered blonde in a golden velvet busier

and form-fitting raw-silk skirt that came down to just
above her ankles. She spoke perfect French and Japanese.
She also spoke Vietnamese, and her air of authority was
absolute. Normally, at this time of night, one would have
been impressed by her genuine warmth in greeting patrons
and adeptly steering them to their candlelit tables, but to-
night she stood immobile behind her bronze podium, gazing
slit-eyed at the chanteuse. In truth, she had nothing else to
do, since the couple in the far corner were her only custom-
ers. Behind her, the front door to the second-floor restaurant
was locked, its lace curtains pulled tautly over the narrow
cut-glass panes. Through the glass bubble of the terrace, the
brilliant Roppongi night glittered like a shower of diadems.

A waiter, his face as cool and detached as a doctor's,
brought plates of fish en croûte and whole unshelled tiger
prawns in a delicate garlic and cream sauce.

Without a word, Mick reached for his fork while Giai
continued to draw on her cigar. "I wonder if you mean it,"
she said.            '

He began to eat with the relish of a man too long-deprived
of decent food. Giai watched him while two long fingernails
lacquered the same color as the walls flicked against each
other. Click-click. Click-click, Like beetles doing battle with
a window screen.

"Eat Aren't you hungry?" Mick asked, though from his
tone he seemed indifferent as to whether or not she would
answer. "Personally, I'm starving."

"Yes," she said at last. "I'm well aware of your appetites."
She regarded him with the scrutiny of an angel or a devil.
She saw a man with a rugged, charismatic face fronted by a
prominent Roman nose and odd gray and orange eyes that
gave him a fierce and feral aspect. His salt-and-pepper hair
was long and he wore a neatly cropped beard. It was a face
born to give orders, the face of a man who harbored radical

philosophies and dark secrets in equal number, whose per-
sonal worldview was iconoclastic and unshakable.

"Where is it?" she asked in a voice that with considerable
effort managed to remain calm. "Show it to me."

Of course he knew what she meant. "How do you know
I have it with me?" He popped the head of a prawn between
his lips and crunched down on it.

"I know you." She made to light another cigar, but he
put his hand over hers, took it away. Momentarily startled,
her eyes locked with his and something akin to a shudder
could just be discerned in her shoulders. She nodded briefly,
took up her fork, and obediently began to eat. But there
was no gusto in her movements, merely a mechanical tempo.
Mick thought it a shame she was so careful; he could not
see the motion of her even, white teeth.

He found be very much needed to see those teeth, and
he brought out from beneath the table 'the push dagger,
holding it obliquely in the air so that the candlelight sent
long glistening flashes along the black length of its Damas-
cus-steel blade.

Giai was transfixed, her hand pausing in midair, flaky
strata of fish sliding between the slick tines of her fork. Her
nostrils flared like an animal scenting the fresh spoor of
its prey.            .

"Is that it?" But of course she knew that it was. It was
an odd-looking weapon, a bronze shield sculpted into the
shape of a lotus leaf covering the top of his fist, a vertical
bar attached to its underside from which the grip was
formed, and two narrow, wicked blades seeming to bloom
from the middle fingers of his fist.

"Wiped carefully clean." He waggled the blades before
her gaze. "Dipped in a bottle of Château Talbot '70, his
favorite wine and vintage. Fitting, don't you-think?"

She shivered, her shoulders convulsing once and then
again, but her face showed no distaste. On the contrary, her
eyes were shining and her lips were still apart.

"Yes," she said softly, though what question she was an-
swering was a mystery. "We drank a bottle last night. He
toasted our fifth anniversary by licking the first sip out of
my navel. I lay on the carpet willing myself not to vomit I

wound my fingers through his hair, in passion, he thought.
  And all the while I was thinking ..."
   Her gaze left the push dagger to settle on Mick with the
kind of shocking intimacy that comes only during sex. "I was
thinking it was his heart I had squeezed between my hands."

"He was a bastard, no doubt about it," Mick agreed. "He
tried to fuck me over in the TransRim CyberNet deal. He
thought he'd been clever enough to bide behind a phalanx
at  front men and lawyers, but all of them owe me or are
terrified of me and they gave him up, willingly I might add,
almost gleeful in their relief." He shrugged. "But that's the
way Saigon is: influence, contacts, money-they're all you
need there, but they're the most difficult to obtain." He
turned his fist over, slammed the points of the double blades
into the tabletop. Neither the chanteuse nor the maître d'
missed a beat. "You've got to spill blood-more than a little,
eh, Giai?-to get what you want. That's Asia. Life is cheaper
than a kilo of rice, isn't that what you drank in with your
mothers milk?"

Giai's eyes clung to the quivering push dagger as if it were
a puff adder about to strike. It was impossible to tell from
her face whether she despised or coveted its absolute power.
Her cheeks were flushed and a thin sheen of perspiration
was on her upper lip.
"You killed him yourself, didn't you?"

"No, Giai, you killed him."

"I? I did nothing."

He regarded her for some time. "Astonishing. I think you
really believe that. But here's the truth; You sit on the side-
fines, open your legs, and let your sex give the orders, pre-
tending it has a mind of its own, as if you are not
accountable' for those decisions of life-and of death."

"I cannot stand the sight of death," she said in a reedy
whisper. Her eyes slipped out of focus, went to that spot over
his left shoulder, and now he knew what she saw there: the
past "Ever since I found my mother on the floor of her room
... The blood, the blood ..." She took a quick sucking
breath. "All of her insides slithering over the floor like a
nest of serpents." Refocusing in a flash, she sent him an
accusatory stare. "You know this-you know. And yet you
judge me by your own standards."

He leaned forward a little, his gray and orange eyes glit-
tering. "That's all I know how to do, Giai. It's nothing per-
sonal." He skewered a prawn on his fork. "Eat your food.
It's getting cold."

Giai ate with a degree of eagerness now. Once or twice,
he had the pleasure of seeing her tiny teeth as they flashed
like lights behind her lips. In a way, he was sorry her hus-
band was dead. Part of the pleasure he had in taking her
was the knowledge that she belonged to someone else. He
remembered once at an intimate dinner party, he bad had
her in the pantry, pushed up her skirt, hands pressing her
jiggling breasts, impaling her again and again, listening to
her mounting gasps while her smug husband, oblivious,
drank his wine and made deals on the other side of the wall.
There was a certain kick to cuckolding a man who had tried
to fuck him over, and now that was gone. Pity. But, then
again, Mick mused, it was time to move on. The intervention
of Nicholas Linnear in Floating City had precipitated that.

Floating City had been a fortress, a city-state hidden in
the northern highlands of Vietnam from which Mick and
Rock had directed an unprecedented worldwide network of
international arms trading and drug distribution. Floating
City was just a memory now, nuked out of existence because
of Linnear. That was okay with Mick; he'd known for some
months it was time to move on; he'd just needed a kick in
the ass to get him going-and Nicholas Linnear had pro-
vided that. Linnear had penetrated Floating City and had
killed Rock. He might have worked his particular brand of
magic on Mick as well had it not been for the nuclear explo-
sion of the handheld experimental weapon known as Torch.

Mick had come face-to-face with Nicholas at last in Floating
City, and it had come as a profound shock to him-like meet-
ing the legendary Colonel Linnear, Nicholas's father. Like
meeting your own other half, your-what did the Germans call
it?-doppelgänger.

There was a unique bond between the Colonel and Mick's
father, Johnny Leonforte-and thus a connection between
the sons. But Nicholas did not know that yet. Mick had
barely believed it when he had discovered it and had worked
diligently-and fruitlessly-for months to disprove it. Ac-
cepting it had altered his life forever, just as it would change

Nicholas's someday in the not too distant future. But Mick,
forever aware of playing all the angles, was determined that
Nicholas should learn this particular bit of knowledge at the
time and place of his own choosing.

Mick had spent years researching the life and personality
of Colonel Linnear's son, until he had felt more intimate
with him than any lover he had taken to bed. But when
they had come face-to-face in Floating City, Mick's fantasy
had burst like a-soap bubble. The real Nicholas Linnear was
someone more than Mick had ever imagined. Looking deep
into Nicholas Linnear's clear, clear brown eyes, he had felt
the stirring of the short hairs at the back of his neck. In that
moment when investigation and reality had come together,
he knew this man's fate was inextricably entwined with his.

In Nicholas Linnear, Mick Leonforte had recognized the
ultimate adversary he had been searching for all his restless
life. That was why he had provided the necessary means for
Nicholas to escape the bamboo prison cage into which Rock
had thrown him. In the endgame of the killing ground he
knew he would need every advantage he could bring into
play to counteract Nicholas's Tau-tau, the secret knowledge
of ancient psycho-necromancers. Mick had seen for himself
the power of Tau-tau when Nicholas had overcome his
guards and had killed Rock, a huge beast of a man who had
outthought and outfought every dangerous opium warlord
in the uplands Golden Triangle of Burma's Shan States.

He could still remember barreling out of Floating City in a
truck on which Nicholas had hitched a ride. (Had Nicholas's
powers allowed him to know that Mick had been driving
that truck?) He could still see clearly Rock's wounded body
in the rearview mirror as he aimed Torch at Nicholas, could
still feel the cold breath of Tau-tau as Nicholas redirected
the path of the missile upward with the power of his mind.

Soon after, Nicholas had leapt from the back of the truck,
plunging hundreds of feet into the roiling waters of the cata-
ract far below. He did not know, of course, that Mick had
had the truck lead-lined or that they were already out of
the four-square-city-block radius of Torch's ground zero det-
onation zone. Floating City had been incinerated, but Mick
had not died and neither, he believed, had Nicholas Linnear.
Mick had had a hand in Nicholas's escape from Rock's cage.

Nicholas had had a hand in keeping Mick from being incin-
erated by Rock's final attack.

They had an appointment in the future, a day of reckon-
ing, a moment toward which, Mick now knew, he had been
moving all his adult life. That was why he had come to
Tokyo, and why, if he were brutally honest with himself, he
was with Giai Kurtz now.

"Excuse me," he said, pushing himself out of the ban-
quette. On his way back to the men's room, he turned to
glance at Giai, who was finishing the tiger prawns, using her
long, delicate fingers like chopsticks. He paused, watching
her insert one long nail between head and torso to crack a
prawn open. Then he went down a short corridor and into
the men's room. He urinated, checked all the stalls even
though he knew no one was there. Then he pulled out his
cellular phone and made a call.

"Time to go," he said, when he returned a moment later.

"Don't you want dessert?" Giai asked, staring up at him
with those huge eyes that had captivated him nearly fifteen
months ago at the embassy fete in Saigon. Such bores, those
political parties, unless you knew the right people, and Mick
knew them all. Having asked the Japanese trade legate
about her, he had set about separating her from the pack
with the obsessive single-mindedness of an Australian Bor-
der collie. Her husband, a ruddy-faced, blond-haired Aryan
businessman from Köln, arrogant and tormented, who fan-
cied he knew all about Southeast Asia, was interested only
in making deals. Mick had had the impression that if he had
taken Giai there and then on the Persian carpet, Rodney
Kurtz would not have blinked an eye. As it was, they did it
in the powder room with a crystal bowl of heart-shaped
soaps crashing to the marble floor as she came.

"Later," he said. "Not now."

He held out one hand and she took it, rising. As they
crossed the floor, he waved to Honniko, the blonde in the
gold bustier. The chanteuse had finished her set, otherwise
he would have saluted her as well.

"Where are we going?"

"Home," he said. "To Hoan Kiem."

She pulled up, looking at him quizzically. "My villa? I
haven't been there all day."

He knew what she meant. "Don't worry," he said, shep-
herding her along, "he's not there anymore." He smiled.
"And whatever blood was spilled has been cleaned up."

"Where is he, exactly?"

"Nowhere you want to know about," he said as they
swung out the door into the riotous Roppongi night. Imme-
diately, they were hip deep in tourists and tripped-out teen-
agers. Just looking at them could give you a nosebleed, Mick
thought. Tattooed heads, branded hands, and metal impedi-
menta pierced through noses, eyelids, tongues, lips, and nip-
ples were the stuff of nightmares. The breakdown of society
was everywhere evident. The hardworking races endure lei-
sure only with great difficulty, Friedrich Nietzsche had said.
Which was why, Mick supposed, he admired the Japanese.
But look at them now! Lolling around, disfigured, grotesque
as sideshow freaks.

The rain-washed street seethed with the peculiar hor-
monal vibrancy of youth. Crowds of people thronged the
sidewalks, pushing off into the traffic-clogged streets. A per-
manent pall of diesel fumes hung in the air, giving the neon
colors a lurid hue. In windows were displayed the cream of
this year's crop of designer clothes, some of which, Mick
judged, were not meant for the human form.

They picked up a cruising taxi on Roppongi-dori, took it
to Giai's villa in the Asakusa temple district. Hoan Kiem-
Returned Sword-was a beautifully conical concrete and
wood structure, more spacious than most Tokyo residences.
Its cool, crisp interior was filled 'with dark-stained rattan in
the grand Saigon manner, giving rise to the speculation that
both Kurtzes were ultimately more at home there than in
Tokyo. The rooms Were illuminated at night by brass lamps
and during the day by bars of sunlight filtering in through
the wide jalousied windows. Through them, one had a spec-
tacular view across the river to the futuristic Flamme d'Or,
the Phillippe Starke-designed building of black glass, a kind
of tetrahedron on acid, surmounted by a vaguely flamelike
shape derisively christened by Tokyoites "the Golden
Turd."

Giai hesitated as she unlocked the door and Mick swung
it open.

"I told you he isn't here," Mick said, stepping past her

and, grasping her hand, pulling her over the threshold.
"Here, I'll show you where it happened."

"No!" she cried, and almost succeeded in pulling her hand
from his fierce grip.

He stood in the center of what had been, until just after
midnight this morning, Rodney Kurtz's domain, smiling slyly
at Giai. He raised his arms in an expansive gesture. "This
is what you wanted, isn't it?"

Giai glared at nun darkly. "Bastard. Yes."

He went to the mirrored bar, took down a pair of cut-
glass snifters. "It isn't me who's the bastard, darling." He
poured generous measures of Napoleon brandy, turned
around, and handed her one. "It was your husband, Rodney.
Remember?" He clinked his glass against hers, took a sip,
watching her all the while. He liked seeing her this way:
nervous and a bit unsure. But then he liked to engender
those emotions in everyone he met.

"The nights I would call you up, after he beat me, raped
me, spit on me."

"And you came back for more."

"He always apologized. He was so repentant, like a lit-
the child."

Mick hid his disgust behind the mask he had perfected,
thinking of what was to come.

"You took it all."

"Not all," she said defiantly. Now she downed the brandy
in two hard swallows. Her eyes watered, "Not now. I made
my stand. He's dead and I'm glad of it."

"So you did." Mick nodded. "Long life and health to both
of us," he said, then took more brandy into his mouth and
savored it. One thing you had to say for old Rodney, he
thought, he did know how to live.

"And so," he said, putting down his empty snifter and
rubbing his palms together, "to bed."

Mick took her in his arms, feeling her melt against him.
He was a man who believed himself to be, in the words
of Nietzsche, predestined for victory and seduction. Like
Nietzsche, his wartime idol, he understood the profound
connection between the two. He was a man bent on control-
ling and outwitting himself. Like two of Nietzsche's own
idols, Alcibiades and Napoleon, he had the craftsmanship

and subtlety for war. He was, in sum, continually challeng-
ing him.

She tasted like burnt sugar and he crushed her to him.
He stripped her of her clothes and inhaled her musk. As
usual, she wore no underwear. Her breasts reared into his
hands and she moaned deep in her throat. He lifted her by
her buttocks and her legs wrapped around him. Neither of
them could wait for the bed. Her fingers, which had so skill-
fully cracked the prawn's translucent shell, now deftly un-
buckled his belt, pushed down his trousers. She brought him
hotly against her, her eyes flying open with .the sensation,
then closing slowly, languorously, as they began their
rhythm.

Quidquid luce fruit, tenebris agit, Mick thought between
mouthfuls of dusky flesh. Whatever is started in the light
continues in the dark. It was one of Nietzsche's favorite
sayings, and his as well. How true it had proved itself in
his life!

He pushed her roughly against the wall-just here-where
he had made the first thrust with the push dagger, where
the arrogance on Kurtz's face had been supplanted by disbe-
lief and, then, fear. Oh, the ecstasy of it! He, the true
Nietzschean superman, bringing down the Aryan prey.

He was grunting now, not with the effort but with the
images flooding his mind. Giai licked his ear and hunched
frantically against him. While his body worked, his mind
sang! Of course Kurtz was tormented, of course he beat his
wife regularly. There are countless dark bodies that must be
inferred to lie near the sun; we shall never be able to see
them, Nietzsche had written. Kurtz was one of them. Obvi-
ously, in marrying Giai he had crossed the line. Dissolution,
the base shuttling and rearranging of the races, was intolera-
ble to the proud and pure Aryan in nun. Yet he would not
leave her. So he beat her, punishing her for the sin he dare
not admit to himself he had committed.

Giai was soon to reach her pinnacle. She groaned, her
eyes rolling, her belly rippling, the muscles of her thighs and
buttocks clenching furiously. And, like a house plucked up
by a tornado, he was brought along with her. She stroked
the nape of his neck, his damp hair, crooning wordlessly tike
a child in delirium.

It was Mick's firm and abiding belief that morality was
merely timidity tricked out in a philosophical overcoat Even
if he had not read this in Beyond Good and Evil, his own
experiences in the war in Vietnam would have taught him
the same thing. As it was, they merely made Nietzsche's
words resonate in his mind all the louder. And like all men
of prey, he thought, / am misunderstood. What was morality
but a recipe against passion, an attempt to castrate the dan-
gerousness in which man lives with himself?

"Yes," Giai breathed. "Oh, yes!"

He held her, light as a feather, as she shivered and
moaned, trembled and clung in great gasping sighs, then
started all over again as he put his head down, his white
teeth sinking into the tender flesh of her shoulder as he
skewered her-once, twice, three times-gushing as he
thought of life-Kurtz's life-bleeding away in a mass of
stinking, steaming innards.

He opened his eyes. Giai was staring at him.

"I'm free, aren't I?"

He could feel her hot fluids-and his, too, perhaps-sticky
on his thighs.

"Had enough?"

"No," she cried. "No, no, no!"

Of course not. It was part of their game.

Before his erection could subside he rubbed cocaine into
the reddened skin. He felt the familiar tingling, then the
curious numbness through which only sexual desire could
bum tike a beacon in dense fog. Then he entered her again,
walking her across the room, her heels bouncing against the
tops of his buttocks.

Giai, always wild with him, was particularly frenzied. In
fact, her freedom, as she called it, had made her almost
insatiable, and for once Mick thanked the lucky star under
which he had been born for the cocaine-induced numbness.
Otherwise, even he would not have been able to last.

He had her on Kurtz's dining room table, a polished teak
affair from Thailand, on Kurtz's desk, the cordless phone
clattering to the floor, on Kurtz's prize Isfahan rug, in

Kurtz's bed, and finally in Kurtz's shower. And after Giai
thought it was over, he did what he had wanted to do all
along: he took her from behind.

She wanted to sleep after all that exertion, but he was
still wired. The cocaine, he told her, urging her to dress
quickly while he struck a match and lighted his cigar. So
instead of crawling between Kurtz's silk sheets, they re-
turned to the rainy, neon-lighted Tokyo night.

The taxi he had called was waiting for them. It was after
midnight and they made the trip to the warehouse district
of Shibaura in short order. They emerged into Kaigan-dori,
and Mick told the taxi to pull over. He paid the fare and
they got out, heading for Mudra, one of the many hip dance
clubs that had bloomed here like weeds in the early nineties.

They had not walked more than a block when a black
Mercedes rounded a corner behind them, heading along Kai-
gan-dori. Mick glanced over his shoulder and saw it coming
up behind them, swerving dangerously up onto the sidewalk,
sideswiping a couple of moonfaced bohemians, chicly garbed
in grunge, purple-black hair in exaggerated Woody Wood-
pecker top knots, their lips glossed in black.

"What is it?" Giai asked.

Up ahead, two bikers in luminous trench coats and multi-
ple nose rings sat astride luridly painted Suzukis, swigging
beer and trading lewd stories of mutilated flesh. Incensed,
Mick walked a couple of paces on, shouting at the drunken
teenagers, while Giai stood waiting. He turned. "Morons,"
he said, but he was looking straight at the oncoming Mer-
cedes, which, having cleared the cars ahead of it, now put
on a last furious burst of speed.

Mick shouted something incoherent and Giai turned, her
eyes opened wide, just as the front fender of the Mercedes
plowed into her. Instantly, she was slammed backward .with
such force that when she landed her back broke. But by
then she was drowning in her own blood.

The Mercedes had already taken off as people on line for
the clubs came out of their shock and started to scream.
There was a mad jostling, an almost carnivorous mass con-
vulsing through which Mick slithered, heading up Kaigan-
dori, avoiding the jammed sidewalk, after the Mercedes. The
familiar high-low police Klaxon could be heard, still some
distance away but closing fast on the scene of panic be-
hind him.

He saw the Mercedes swerve left at the last possible in-

stant, into a narrow alley, and he followed, his legs churning
easily, his heart racing nicely, his lungs pumping in exhilara-
tion. He turned the corner, saw the black Mercedes had
come to a stop, rocking on its heavy-duty shock absorbers.
The alley was deserted; even its usual denizens had headed
toward the site of the screams.

One of the black Mercedes's rear doors flew open and he
accelerated toward it, his heart singing. What was it
Nietzsche had said? Ultimately one loves one's desires, not
the desired object.

Then he .was there, slinging his body into the backseat,
hearing the gears crash, the tires squeal, the car accelerating
down the alley as he leaned over, slamming the door shut,
and he said to the driver, "Jochi, well done!"

Book 1

Between Dog and Wolf

The best way to keep one's word
is not to give it.

-Napoleon

1

Tokyo/New York

Nicholas Linnear looked out at Tokyo, its pink-and-acid-
green neon signs creating an aurora that blocked the night.
Far below, a soft parade of black umbrellas bobbed and
weaved, filling the sidewalks of Shinjuku as the steady rain
filled the gutters of the wide, traffic-dogged streets.

It was a familiar view from his corner office on the fifty-
second floor of the Shinjuku Suiryu Building, But almost
everything now seemed different

It had been fifteen months since he had been in Tokyo,
fifteen months since he had taken on giri, the debt he had
promised his late father, Col. Denis Linnear, he would
honor. Fifteen months since he had been contacted by a
representative of Mikio Okami, his father's closest friend
and, as it turned out, the Kaisho, the oyabun of oyabun of all
the clans of the Yakuza, the powerful Japanese underworld.

Okami had been in hiding in Venice, under a death threat
from his closest allies within his inner circle of advisers. He
had needed Nicholas's help, so he had said, to protect him
Nicholas had his own very private reasons for hating the
Yakuza and could have turned his back on Okami and his
obligation to his late father. But that was not his way. Honor
meant everything to him, but the irony of helping keep alive
the living embodiment of the Yakuza was not lost on him.

On the contrary, in pure Japanese style, it added to the
poignancy of his mission.

Eventually, he had found and dispatched the would-be
assassin, a particularly frightening Vietnamese named Do
Duc Fujiro, along with the oyabun who had hired him. Now,
with Tetsuo Akinaga, the only oyabun of the inner circle still
alive, awaiting trial on charges of extortion and conspiracy to
commit murder, Okami had returned to Tokyo, and Nicho-
las with him to face an entirely new threat.

Fifteen months and to Nicholas it seemed as if Tokyo had
changed beyond recognition.

These changes revolved around the great Japanese de-
pression that had begun in 1991 and showed little sign of
lifting. Today, there were more homeless in the streets than
ever before, every company's profits were either sharply off
or in negative figures. Layoffs-a hitherto unknown prac-
tice-had begun in earnest, and those remaining in jobs had
not seen a pay raise in four years. On the way to Shinjuku
that evening, Nicholas had seen outside food shops long
lines made up of housewives who insisted on buying Japa-
nese rice instead of the imported American variety.

The trade war with America was intensifying almost every
day. In addition, there was an increasingly militant and bel-
ligerent North Korean regime to consider. Japan's pachinko
parlors, traditionally run by native Japanese, were now in
the hands of Koreans, many of whom had ties to North
Korea, and it was becoming an increasing source of embar-
rassment to the Japanese government to have these profits
going directly to the dictatorial and paranoid regime that
ruled the north.

For fee first time since the advent of the great economic
miracle in the early 1950s, Japan seemed on the brink of
losing both momentum and purpose. People were dispirited
and fed up, and the media, trained at birth to emphasize
bad news while minimizing the good, could see only a dark,
downward spiral.

Nicholas felt a hand softly stroking his back, and he saw
Koet's face reflected in the rain-streaked window. With her
huge, liquid eyes, small mouth, and angular cheekbones, it
was far from a classically beautiful face, but he loved it all
the more for that She was the daughter of a Yakuza oya-

bun. They had met in 1971 and had fallen madly, magically
in love. And out of that mad love, Nicholas had killed the
man who he thought had raped and tormented Koei, only
to discover that the man was innocent. The miscreant was
her father. Shame had caused her to lie, and this had forced
Nicholas to walk away. He had not seen her until last year,
when Okami had arranged for them to meet again so Nicho-
las could heal the rage he felt toward her and all Yakuza.

Over the years, she had turned her back on the world of
the Yakuza, losing herself in the syncretic Shugendo Shinto
sect in the mystical hills of Yoshino, where she might have
remained but for a summons from her father. He needed to
broker an alliance, and to seal it Koei was obliged to marry
a man she had not met. After spending six months with the
man she wanted out, but he was unwilling to let her go. In
desperation, she turned to Mikio Okami, the Kaisho, the
one man who had more power than this man and would be
willing to stand up to him. Okami had spirited her away,
sending her into the hinterlands of Vietnam where this man
could not find her, though he tried hard enough. The man
she had been with, whom she had been duty-bound to marry
and had come to despise and fear, was Mick Leonforte.

"Nangi-san isn't here yet," she said, "and the dinner is
scheduled to begin in ten minutes." Tanzan Nangi was the
president of Sato International, the high-tech keiretsu-the
Japanese-American conglomerate Nicholas owned with Tan-
zan Nangi-that had been created from the merger of Sato
Petrochemicals with Tomkin Industries, the company Nicho-
las owned and ran. "I hope this won't be too much for him."
Six months ago he'd had a minor heart attack and, since
then, had become somewhat more reclusive.

"It had better not," Nicholas said, checking his tie in the
mirror. "The Japanese launch of the TransRim CyberNet
has been his 'dream ever since my people came up with
the technology."

Koei turned him around, worked on his tie herself. "The
VIPs are arriving and Torin is getting nervous. He's wonder-
ing why you're not already down at Indigo to greet them."

"I've still got to make a last check at research and devel-
opment on the fortieth floor." Nicholas kissed her lightly.

"The proprietary CyberNet data are being transferred to the
central computer."

The CyberNet, a multimedia highway for trading and in-
stantaneous communication throughout Southeast Asia, had
the potential to lift Sato International out of its recessionary
spiral and return it to profitability. But if anything went
wrong with the CyberNet--if it crashed and burned-Sato
International was sure to follow it down. The unique combi-
nation of Nangi's calculating mind and Nicholas's brilliant
leaps of intuitive ingenuity had been the main reason for
Sato's success. But these days Sato, like all Japanese kei-
retsu, had been undergoing a painful restructuring.

Keiretsu-holdovers from the prewar family-run zaiba-
tsu-were groups of interlinked industrial companies com-
posed around a central bank. In boom times this gave each
keiretsu the major advantage of being able to lend itself
money for expansion and research and development at
highly competitive rates. But during a recession-as now-
when banks ran into the twin difficulties of deflated values
on their real estate portfolios and rising yen rates, they be-
came a major liability to the keiretsu. Lately, it had been up
to Nicholas's American arm to provide the R&D for new
Sato products like the supersecret CyberNet technology. De-
spite this revolutionary breakthrough he was racked by guilt
If he had not been with Mikio Okami these past fifteen
months, he might have helped his company avoid the worst
ravages of the deep recession. Instead, he had insisted that
Sato International be at the forefront of fiber-optic telecom-
munications, and to that end, the vast majority of the keire-
tsu's capital reserves had gone into expansion into not only
Southeast Asia and China, but also South America. This was
the smart long-term bet of the visionary, but it had created a
short-term crunch that the recession had exacerbated almost
beyond Sato's tolerance. Now the company was forced to
rise or fall on the success of the CyberNet, and Nicholas
knew it was his doing.
- "Nicholas."

He smiled and, taking her in his arms, kissed her harder
this. time. "Don't worry. I'll see to it," he said.

She stood there, in her dark, sequined dress, looking im-
possibly lovely. "I know you," she said. "Such a man of

action. Wining and dining corporate guests cannot be your
favorite thing. But consider the source and honor your
promise. It was Nangi-san who requested you attend this
dinner. You don't need me to remind you of its importance.
It will officially launch the TransRim CyberNet in Japan
while representatives from America, Russia, Vietnam, Thai-
land, Singapore, and China look on. The Net is so important
to Nangi-san-and to Sato International as a whole."

She was right, of course, to remind him to return to this
time and place. Nangi was far more than Nicholas's business
partner. He was also his mentor. The two had shared so
many life-or-death situations that their fates were now inex-
tricably entwined.

Koei picked up a phone, spoke briefly into it When she
turned to Nicholas, she was frowning. "Nangi-san still hasn't
arrived. It isn't like him; he's never late." She touched his
arm. "And, Nicholas, you've told me how tired and drawn
he's looked of late."

He nodded. "I'll get in touch with him, then come right
down. All right?"

"All right," She left him alone in the semidarkness of
his office.

He turned to his desk, asked the voice-activated autodi-
aler to get Nangi's home phone. It rang ten times before he
told it to hang up. No doubt, Nangi was on his way.

He dug in that pocket of his tuxedo, drew out a small
matte-black rectangle slightly smaller than a cellular tele-
phone. He thumbed a tab and it flipped open to reveal a
small screen, which soon burned luminescent green. This
was Kami, a prototype of the communicator that would soon
be on-line for the CyberNet. The Kami had been keeping
the two men in touch during the last part of Nicholas's ab-
sence from Sato International's boardrooms. He was about
to use the touch screen to dial Tanzan Nangi's personal
number when the unit began to vibrate. He had it set to
silent running and this meant a call was coming in. He
pressed the touch screen.

"Linnear-san." Nangi's face appeared on the flat liquid-
crystal-display screen, incredibly clear via the digital video
pathway. This vid-byte bandwidth communication was the

technological breakthrough that made the CyberNet so valu-
able-and vulnerable to corporate espionage.
 The opening of the TransRim CyberNet in Southeast Asia
and Russia had generated an almost feverish scrutiny from
Sato International's rivals. In an age when the speed of in-
formation was everything, whoever controlled so-called cy-
berspace on the Pacific Rim would reap billions of dollars
of benefits for the foreseeable future,

"Nangi-san, where are you? The TransRim launch dinner
is about to begin."

"I am aware of the time," Nangi interrupted in uncharac-
teristic fashion. He passed a hand across his face. Where
was he? There was not enough background showing on the
screen for Nicholas to tell. He only knew he wasn't home.
"But I have had something of a dizzy spell-"

"Are you all right?" A stab of fear went through Nicholas.
"Have you called the doctor?"

"There's no need, I assure you," Nangi said hastily as his
eyes flicked briefly to one side. Was someone in the room
with him? "I am being well taken care of."

"But, Nangi-san, where are you? The guests are waiting."

"Yes, yes, I understand your concern," Nangi said as a
small cup of tea was placed in front of him by someone
unseen. "But I am not indispensable. The party can go on
without me."

Why was he keeping his whereabouts secret? Nicholas
wondered. "Perhaps we should postpone the opening of
the Net."

"Nonsense. It must be opened tonight." For 'a moment,
some of Nangi's old spark and fire returned. "We have far
too much riding on its success. Postponement will only send
rumors through the industry that would surely undermine
confidence. No, no. I trust you and Torin to do the honors.
Whatever help you need, he'll provide. As my new right-
hand man, he can be of extraordinary use to you."

Nangi was about to disconnect from the CyberNet when
Nicholas said, "Nangi-san, at least hear me out." He'd got-
ten an idea, but would Nangi go for it? "Perhaps there is a
way to use your absence to work for us."

Ill or not, this got Nangi's attention. He lifted a hand.
"Go on, please."

"Let's make the first use of CyberNet in Japan a link
from the dinner to you."

"No."

Nicholas was puzzled. "But it's perfect, Nangi-san. You
can stay where you are, and everyone can see you blown
up on the special screen that's been erected downstairs."

"I said no and that's final," Nangi snapped, and without
another word, he disconnected from the Net.

Nicholas, whose loyalty to Sato was now joined with his
loyalty to Mikio Okami, did not know whether he felt more
puzzled or concerned. He could not imagine Nangi acting
in such a cold and irrational manner. What was happening
to his friend? These abruptly ended communications were
fast becoming the rule rather than the exception. He knew
Nangi was under extreme pressure in putting the CyberNet
on-line, and at seventy-six he was no longer young. But
Nicholas suspected these conversations could not merely be
explained away by Nangi's age. Had the heart attack some-
how changed his personality? Nicholas resolved to see him
in person when tonight's dog and pony show was oven

As he checked his tuxedo, he took one last moment to
evaluate his recent decision to join Mikio Okami, the
Kaisho.

The Yakuza's role in Japan was significant. Unlike in
America, where the underworld was outcast from society,
the Yakuza ware, in a very real sense, a part of it. Even
though they might still see themselves as outcasts, they were
an unspoken part of what was known as the Iron Triangle
that, since 1947, had ruled Japan: bureaucracy, business, and
politicians. The Ministry of International Trade and Indus-
try, MITI, had emerged as the most powerful of the postwar
bureaucratic entities. It was MITI that dictated economic
policy and allowed the keiretsu, the interlocked trading
groups run by the top industrial families, tax breaks and
incentives to move into fields that MITI determined would
be best for Japan as a whole. It was MlTI, for instance, that
decided in the 1960s to encourage the trading companies to
switch from the manufacture of heavy goods such as steel
to computers and semiconductors. In this way MITI orches-
trated Japan's economic miracle and, simultaneously, made
billionaires of the industrialists. MITI perpetuated its abso-

lute control over business by sending its ex-ministers out to
work at the very keiretsu for which it created policy.

But Mm had help. The Liberal Democratic Party, which
had dominated Japan's political scene from the forties
through to its ouster in 1993, worked hand in hand with the
ministry to keep Japan, Inc. on an even keel. This was rela-
tively easy, since the Japanese people have been used to
leaders taking care of them. Before, the war, they had looked'
to the emperor for this. Afterward, it was a series of prime
ministers from the LDP.

As for the Yakuza, they were the intermediaries who
greased the wheels. For the proper remuneration they en-
sured that the LDP remained in power by brokering each
prime minister's constituency. For the proper remunera-
tion, they saw to it that the "political contributions" the
keiretsu made influenced the politicians to enact legisla-
tion favorable to business. And so it went for decades, an
endless wheel of staggeringly swift progress and deeply
entrenched corruption.

Until the great recession of 1991 brought everything
Japan, Inc. had worked toward to a screeching halt

Nicholas was about to go down to R&D when his Kami
buzzed him. This time, he saw Mikio Okami's face in the
screen. Even with the fine lines at the corners of his eyes,
accentuated now by the exhaustion evident on his face, he
looked at least ten years younger than his ninety years.

"Nicholas," he said without the usual ritual of formality,
"I have momentous news." Without anybody else knowing
about it, Nicholas had given him a prototype Kami so the
two could keep in touch at all hours. CyberNet Communica-
tions were far more secure than most cellular phone con-
versations. "Tomorrow morning the prime minister will
announce his resignation."

Nicholas, feeling suddenly deflated, sat down on the edge
of his burlwood desk. "That makes six in just over three
years."

Okami nodded. "Yes. As I predicted, without a strong
LDP, the coalition of lesser parties cannot hold the center.
There are too many different and mutually exclusive
agendas for a true consensus to form. The Socialists, espe-
cially, have proven difficult, and this has weakened every

new prime minister because he has been, in one form or
another, something of a compromise."

"What are we to do now?"

"That's why I've called. This latest resignation will come
as a complete shock to all parties. There is no one waiting
in the wings, no strong foreign minister or trade representa-
tive ready to step up as has been the case before. There will
be a power vacuum. This means political chaos and we can-
not allow that."

"I think we should meet."

Okami was nodding. "My thoughts precisely. The Karasu-
mori Jinja the day after tomorrow at seven p.m. I will be
tied up in urgent meetings until then."

"Agreed."

"Good." Okami looked visibly relieved, "How is the re-
ception going?"

"I'm about to find out."

"Good luck."

Nicholas thanked him, then disconnected from the Net.
He left his office, heading through the reception area, to-
ward the private chairman's elevator that would whisk him
at high speed down to mezzanine level. He glanced at his
watch. No time now to stop at R&D on the way down.
Maybe he could break away during dinner so he could check
on the CyberNet data transfer. As he fitted his key into the
slot in the scrolled-bronze elevator door, he again heard
Okami's voice as the Kaisho had told him the real reason
he had called in Nicholas's debt of honor:

When you came to me last year and I saw how full of hate
you were for the Yakuza, I could find no way to tell you the
truth about your father. That he and I-the Kaisho, the head
of all the Yakuza clans-were partners from 1946 until his
death in 1963 in the creation of the new Japan. Then I was
obliged to carry on his vision virtually alone.

Your father was the most remarkable visionary, and be-
cause you are his son, I finally summoned you to my side.
Not to protect me as I told you-you have now seen that I
am well capable of doing that with my own resources. It was
merely the trigger to begin your healing, first, your rage at
Koei's mistake, and because of it, your unreasoning hatred
of the Yakuza. So you could begin to understand the truth               .

lies behind your father's carefully composed mask. And
for you to accept that truth. It is time for you to continue the
work Colonel Linnear and I planned together.

Two years before, Nicholas and Nangi had decided to buy

the long-term lease of the stuffy French restaurant that had
occupied the mezzanine level of the Shinjuku Suiryu Build-
ing when it had gone bust. For eighteen months, architects,
technicians, and designers had been at work transforming
a rather austere space into an opulent nightclub-restaurant
suitable for entertaining on the grandest scale.

Indigo had opened three months ago to great fanfare and,
so far, extraordinary success. But, tonight, it was closed to
the public so that Sate International could have its
TransRim CyberNet launch party.

The impressive three-story space was composed of an as-
cending series of flying-carpet-like platforms each occupied
by three or four boomerang-shaped tables with semicircular
banquettes facing onto a dance floor that had been laser-
etched to resemble a vast Persian rug. Soft lights shone from
high above the tables and, embedded in the dance floor,
from below, giving the sensation of floating in a pool of
blue-green light. Panels of cherrywood, stained indigo, rose
in tiers at the restaurant's curvilinear sides, and along one
of them a long bar snaked, the lights glinting off its blued
stainless-steel top. Bottles of spirits, liqueurs, and imported
beers from Southeast Asia, the Philippines, and microbrew-
eries in the States were arrayed on glass shelves hung against
a long mirror.

When Nicholas entered, the dance floor was alive, with
extravagantly dressed people and the hubbub of a hundred
conversations in at least a dozen languages. People were
three deep at the bar, the three bartenders kept humming
with a constant barrage of orders. The cool jazz of Miles
Davis was drifting from the sixty-six speakers sunk flush into
the walls, ceiling, and floor.

Heads turned at his approach, and it was no wonder. The
guests saw a powerfully built man, graceful as a dancer with
wide shoulders and narrow hips. What was most impres-
sive-and intimidating-about him, however, was his fluidity,
of motion. He did not walk or turn as other people did but

appeared to be skating on thin air, operating in very low
gravity. When he moved, it was with all his weight in his
lower belly, the place of power the Japanese called hara.
He had dark, thickly curling hair that was at odds with the
distinct oriental cast to his face-the high flat cheekbones,
the almond-shaped eyes. Despite that, the face was long and
bony, as if some English influence deep in his genes would
not be denied its due.

Nicholas picked out Kanda Torin, headed toward him
through the crowd. Still in his early thirties, Kanda Torin
was a tall, slender man with a long, handsome face and the
cool, calculating demeanor of a man with a decade's more
experience. Nicholas's opinion of him was still not com-
pletely formed. He had apparently proved to be an invalu-
able aide to Nangi during Nicholas's absence. So much so
that Nangi had recently promoted him to senior vice presi-
dent, an unprecedented level for a man his age.

To be truthful, Nicholas resented the younger man's pres-
ence. It compromised his special relationship with Tanzan
Nangi. That Torin was astute, perhaps even, as Nangi be-
lieved, brilliant, was beyond question, but Nicholas sus-
pected he was also gifted with an overweening ambition. His
power grab at the CyberNet was a prime example. Or was
Nicholas being too harsh with his judgments? Torin could
simply have had Sato International's best interests at heart,
filling the vacuum Nicholas had left. Still, Nicholas could not
entirely shake the impression, admittedly hastily gleaned,
that Torin was a team player only so long as it suited his
own needs. That was a potentially dangerous trait.

As Nicholas approached, he saw that Torin was being ha-
rangued by a florid-faced American with curly red hair and
the belligerent demeanor of a man too long frustrated by
Japan's arcane and maddening protective barriers. Unfortu-
nately, this was the attitude of too many Americans these
days. Nicholas recognized this one as Cord McKnight, the
trade representative of a consortium of Silicon Valley-based
semiconductor manufacturers.

Nicholas circled around until he was standing behind Tor-
in's right shoulder.

"You poor bastard," McKnight was saying. With his
strong face and stronger ideals he would not have looked

out of place on the athletic field of an Ivy League campus.
His pale eyes, set wide apart, gave nothing away. "Was it
only three years ago you guys bought into Hollywood, Man-
hattan, Pebble Beach; and two-thirds of Hawaii at prices no
sane businessman would touch? Yeah, it's gotta be 'cause
now that your bubble economy's burst, you can't afford to
hold on to anything you bought"

Torin said nothing, either out of good sense or an acute
sense of humiliation. The recession had had an incalculable
emotional effect on the younger men of Japan, Inc. These
men had become used to their -supreme power-their ichi-
ban, their number-one-ism. The concept of Japan as number
two, inconceivable only four years ago, had caused a severe
shock to their egos.

"I mean, look what's happening now," McKnight went on
as a small crowd began to form. In among the curious on-
lookers Nicholas saw Koei and Nguyen Van Truc, the Viet-
namese head of marketing for Mina Telekom, a company
that had been trying to interest Nicholas and Nangi in ac-
cepting a capital infusion in exchange for a piece of Sato.
"Japan's already a second-rate power. Remember when you
were bashing our education system? You don't hear any of
that crap now," His lips cracked a superior smile. "Wanna,
know why? You guys are turning out computer-illiterate
graduates. While we use computers in our schools from the
ground up, you find them too impersonal. Your elaborate
and cumbersome rituals of doing business are impossible to
cany out via computer, so you think of it as a symbol rather
than as a tool." He laughed raucously. "You'd rather use a
fucking abacus, for Christ's sake."

His laughter kept on building. "My God, what you and
your pals are missing back in the States, Torin. Locked into
your monopolistic system, you can't do what we're doing so
successfully. We're forging our own kind of keiretsu-for the
twenty-first century-built from alliances between telecom-
munications, consumer electronics, electronic media, and
computer companies that have downsized. They've shed the
fat of the last decade, become more productive and competi-
tive while .the Jap companies are still overstaffed and
overdiversified."

"Don't you think you've rather overstepped the bounds

of good manners, old man?" Nguyen Van Truc said in his
evenly modulated voice. He had been educated in England
and, thus, possessed the exaggerated accent the foreigner
often brings to the language.

"Who the hell are you?" McKnight asked. "I'm only say-
ing what's right. Unless you have something constructive to
say, butt out."

Van Truc looked around the crowd. He knew just about
everyone and was in his element He gave the American a
superior smile. "I think you're being overly emotional and
over-"

"Not constructive," McKnight snapped, and returned his
attention to Torin. "Here's what I mean. We Americans
have changed. We're lean, mean fighting machines now. We
can already transmit billions of digital bits of multimedia
information to millions of households throughout the United
States because we've got the most advanced cable system in
the world." His laugh was a derisive bark this time. "And
what've you got? Zip. Hey, you know you're the only devel-
oped country without a mature cable industry? Your manic
desire to keep closed your telecommunications and broad-
casting industries will be your downfall. The closed field has
put you at an insurmountable disadvantage. .  . .

"Ever hear of competition, buddy? It's the American way
and it's going to beat you back into the sea. You need only
look at high-definition TV to see the future. You've had
to abandon an industry into which you've sunk-what?-
hundreds of billions of dollars. Why? Because Japanese
HDTV is analog and, therefore, obsolete. Ours is digital, so
superior to your version there is no contest."

"You're speaking of the past, Mr. McKnight," Nicholas
said. His voice caused a stir, and Torin glanced briefly over
his shoulder. Nicholas wondered whether Torin was happy
to see him. "Here, tonight, the future is now. The TransRim
CyberNet is already on-line in Russia where it has far ex-
ceeded our expectations within an exceptionally short time.
Check with Torin-san, he has all the most up-to-date
figures."

The younger man nodded stiffly. "I will be presenting the
full-range of statistics during dinner."

McKnight scowled. "You're Nicholas Linnear, am I right?

Well, Linnear, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there a
cybernet already active in Russia? Who needs another
one?"

"Torin-san can answer that better than I can." It wasn't
true, strictly speaking but Nicholas needed to give Torin
back some of the face McKnight had taken from him.

"True enough, in Russia, the CyberNet was not first as it
is in Southeast Asia, but that is irrelevant because it is the
best," Torin said, right on cue. "It is fast gaining on the
indigenous Relkom, which lacks the many proprietary fea-
tures of the CyberNet that your American cyberjockeys
came up with. The CyberNet's bandwidth-that is, the
amount of information that can be transmitted along it-is
far greater than Relkom's, or any other current net, for that
matter. The CyberNet is already on-line there and in South-
east Asia with the Kami's next-generation communication:
digital video."

Nicholas spotted Sergei Vanov, a young black-haired man
with a Slavic face and soulful eyes. He pulled the Russian
over and, smiling winningly at McKnight, said, "Let's hear
it from the horse's mouth."

"I don't know about a horse, but this Russian's in love
with TransRim," Vanov said with a chuckle. As an inveter-
ate cyberjockey, he loved Americanisms or any foreign jar-
gon, for that matter. It made him feel relevant, like a part
of the world community. "My country is particularly ripe
for the CyberNet, because it is filled with people like me,
twenty-first-century entrepreneurs who understand how
valuable the Net is to them, even with only a cheap clone
of the first-generation IBM-PC and a modem. All we need
do is plug into the Net for a fee and wheel and deal without
any governmental influence or regulation."

Nicholas spread his hands wide. "Imagine. They trade ev-
erything from crops of potatoes to trainloads of potash, from
rights to a portion of a new Siberian oil pipeline, Ukrainian
wheat, to Bulgarian fruit."

Torin nodded, at last warming to the one-two-punch of-
fensive that Nicholas had devised. "Anything and everything
is possible-all one needs is the hardware, a commodity with
which to baiter, the imagination to close .the deal-and, of
course, the CyberNet.'

"Electronic mail, the current darling of Net-jockeys, will
soon be a thing of the past," Torin added. "Why type words
into a computer when you can simply send the message via
a video image? In our world, speed is of the essence. In that
regard, nothing can beat a vid-byte. With the Kami one can
word process, do update spreadsheets, downlink and uplink
to office computers, receive and send vid-byte faxes and vid-
mail, buy, sell virtually anything, transact business on all the
financial bourses."

"So great, but will the digital vid-thing really work?"
McKnight said sourly. The wind had been taken out of his
sails.

"That," Nicholas said, "is why we're all here tonight."

"I, for one, already applaud the CyberNet," Raya Haji
said He was a tall, dusky-skinned Muslim, the Singapore
government's representative. Nicholas had worked with him
several years ago on Sato's fiber-optic project in his country.
He had been one of the Net's most enthusiastic supporters
from its very inception. "I can attest to its worth." He pulled
out a prototype Kami. "After the official opening, I plan to
call the prime minister himself. And I can tell you I look
forward to seeing his astounded face."

There was general laughter and applause from the crowd.

"My workload has been cut by a third because of the
CyberNet," the Vietnamese Nguyen Van Truc chimed in.
"Throughout Vietnam, now there is a reliable means of
communication. No more blackouts or constant busy signals
on overloaded, outmoded phone lines for me."

"Now that we've given you the unsolicited testimonial
portion of tonight's program," Nicholas said lightly, "why
don't we get on with dinner? I don't know about anyone
else, but I'm starved."

There was general and enthusiastic assent. The guests con-
sulted the small cards they had been given on arriving that
indicated their tables and slowly milled toward the respec-
tive places. Koei stood by Nicholas as he shook hands and
mouthed pleasantries with this VIP or that. When they were,
at last, alone for a moment, she took his hand discreetly and
squeezed it.

"Quite a good showing for someone who despises this
sort of thing," she whispered.

"Someone had to come to Torin's defense. The man may
be a first-rate administrator, but he's still got a tot to learn
about diplomacy."

"So, apparently, does McKnight."

Nicholas nodded. "He's quite a bear, all right. But, in a
sense, he's only doing his job. It seems that one of the
avowed goals of the current American administration is to
push, bully, threaten, and goad the Japanese into opening
as many of their businesses as possible."

Koei frowned. "We opened our rice market to the Ameri-
cans, after months of bitter dispute and near riots by our
farmers, and you've seen for yourself all that's done is cause
rice lines at the shops. Any more of this and we'll turn into
a third-world country just like Russia."

Nicholas and Koei were seated at a group of tables with
many of the top Japanese politicians and bureaucrats. He
wondered what their reaction would be come tomorrow
morning when their prime minister delivered his resignation.
Torin, who was with McKnight, Raya Haji, and several oth-
ers some distance away, glanced darkly-and covetously-
in Nicholas's direction.

"Poor Torin," Koei said as they greeted their tablemates
and sat down, "he looks as miserable as a drenched kitten."

Nicholas, who assumed the seating arrangements had been
decided upon by Nangi. grinned and said, "It'll do him good
to enter the bear's den. He's got to master difficult people,
and sooner is always better than later. Anyway, McKnight
is essentially harmless.- Even if Torin blunders and further
angers him, there'll be no real harm done."

Waiters were already circulating with the first course,
poached tiger prawns with Chinese-herbed aioli. The striped
shells were so thin and translucent no one bothered taking
them off. They all crunched down, munching heads and all.
Next came wooden trays piled with fresh cold soba noodles.
The pale, buckwheat pasta was something of a delicacy, and
Nicholas's guests slurped noisily and appreciatively. Sake
was served, along with beer and wine.

Following this course, the room darkened and Torin took
his position on a spotlit area of the dance floor. Just above
him, a large screen had been lowered. He looked quite dash-
ing, tall and handsome with his thick hair slicked back and

his ramrod-straight demeanor. He looked, once again, the
cool, unflappable executive.

"Ladies and gentlemen, much as I hate interrupting your

enjoyment of the wonderful food we've prepared tonight,

it is my pleasure to preside over the opening of Sato In-

ternational and Denwa Partners' Japanese-based TransRim

CyberNet"

Denwa Partners? Nicholas thought Who or what the hell
are they? Sato has no partners in TransRim!

Down, on the dance floor, Torin was holding a Kami, using
the touch screen to dial a number. "Ladies and gentlemen,
this is a historic occasion and I am honored that all of you
are here to witness the first official digital video communica-
tion via the TransRim CyberNet. Please direct your atten-
tion to the screen."

"Moshi-moshi." The screen had lit up. It was filled with
the face of the prime minister of Japan. The clarity and
detail of the digital image was- astounding.

Nicholas glanced over at the table Torin had been seated
at, wanting to see the look on McKnight's face, but he could
not find him. His place was empty. No one seemed to notice
he was missing except Nicholas.

"Prime Minister," Torin said. "This is Kanda Torin, vice
president of CyberNet Operations for Sato International
speaking to you from the nightclub Indigo in Shinjuku,"

"Greetings, Torin-san," said the prime minister. He
looked gray and tired. Nicholas was not surprised. "This is
Prime Minister Takanobu, speaking to you from the floor
of the Tokyo Stock Exchange in Nihonbashi. My word,
Torin-san, but you look your best in that tuxedo. Would you
or any of your distinguished guests care to execute a trade
on the New York Stock Exchange?"

His comment was greeted by a roar of laughter from the
assembled guests, which was quickly followed by a long
round of thunderous applause. As the demonstration pro-
ceeded, to the continuing delight of the audience, Nicholas
slipped out of his seat and, keeping to the shadows, exited
the nightclub. He crossed the mezzanine lobby and had en-
tered the chairman's elevator to go up to check on the Cy-
berNet data transfer when he saw McKnight striding quickly
out of the men's room on the far side of the lobby.

McKnight, who had no view of Nicholas inside the private
elevator car, went into Indigo,

Nicholas pressed the button for the fortieth floor and the
bronze door began to close. At the last instant, he shoved
his foot between the door and the frame, punched the door
open button. He peered across the lobby. Another man had
come out of the men's room. He had gone immediately to
the bank of public elevators, pressed the up button.

Now, as Nicholas strode quickly out of the chairman's
elevator, the man slumped against the wall and would have
collapsed completely had Nicholas not caught him. Still, he
was all but dead weight.

Nicholas thought he had recognized him from across the
lobby, and now he was sure. This was Kappa Watanabe, one
of the R&D techs in charge of making the CyberNet data
transfer. He should have been on the fortieth floor, What
was he doing coming out of the men's room on the mezza-
nine? And what had happened to him?

"Watanabe-san," Nicholas said, but there was no re-
sponse. The tech's eyes were mere slits, but the pupils were
dilated and unfocused.

Nicholas listened to Watanabe's heartbeat and pulse. Both
were unnaturally slow, as if he were slipping into a-coma.
And unless Nicholas was mistaken, a faint bluish tinge was
coming into Watanabe's lips. Nicholas was about to call for
an ambulance when he noticed the fingers of the tech's right
hand. They were curled inward in a curious kind of claw-
tike gesture.

Quickly, with some alarm, Nicholas pried open the stiff
digits in order to get a look at the palm. He had seen these
same symptoms before on someone lying along Vung Tau,
the beachfront southeast of Saigon. Peering at Watanabe's
palm, he found what he was looking for; a tiny puncture
wound, dark blue around its edges.

Nicholas remembered the oddly clawed hand on the snor-
kler who had washed up on that beach in Vung Tau. The
man, already dead, created not a ripple of notice.

He had asked a local fisherman what had happened and
he was told that the unfortunate man had been lanced by a
Bank Tom. The innocuous-sounding "prawn pancake" was,
in fact, a dangerously poisonous stingray, indigenous to the

Andaman and South China Seas, whose skin was striped
tike a tiger prawn's-or the ocean bottom "where it lay flat
as a pancake and camouflaged, waiting to paralyze and kill
its prey.

Perhaps ,the snorkler had reached out for a particularly
beautiful shell lying on the ocean floor. Whatever, he'd had
the singularly bad joss to touch a Banh Tom and had been
stung on the hand. "See here"-the fisherman had pointed
at the palm of the snorkler's band-"the blue spot shows
the poison,"

Kappa Watanabe had been poisoned by the venom of a
Banh Tom through a tiny needle that had punctured his
palm. Why? Nicholas used a nail to strip open the skin at
the wound site, bent over it, and began to suck out as much
of the venom as he could, spitting the stuff onto the floor.
Then he stripped off his bow tie, used it as a tourniquet
around Watanabe's wrist. Had he done enough to save the
man's life? There was only one way to tell for sure.

Bending over Watanabe, Nicholas closed his eyes. And
opened his tanjian eye. The world appeared to go into
eclipse as he plunged into Tau-tau. A kind of darkness de-
scended like a veil. Nicholas opened himself to Akshara, the
Path of light, whose philosophy was built around the ability
to transmogrify energy, more specifically thought, into physi-
cal deed.

The discipline taught that there was at the center of all
things kokoro, a membrane upon which certain repeating
rhythms were beaten. Like chants or mantras, these rhythms
excited the membrane kokoro, causing in the adept an al-
tered state in which psychic energy could be harnessed. In
the. end, Tau-tau was not so different from the power of
Tibetan mystics, Chinese ascetics, or the shamans of many
different tribal cultures. All drew energy from the same an-
cient source from which man, as he became ever more civi-
lized, had been driven.      .               ,

But for Nicholas, Akshara was imperfect because embed-
ded within the esoteric psychic discipline were dark kernels
of Kshira, Akshara's black-other half, a discipline that had
killed many of its adherents-or turned them mad. Nicholas
had made this terrifying discovery while battling Do Duc
Fujiro. Since then, his inner struggle-and urgent search

had been to overcome Kshira by merging it into Akshara in
a fusion known as Shuken, before the dark path overtook
him. Shuken-the so-called Dominion-sought to negate
Kshira via integration into a whole that was at least partially
mythical. Tanjian scholars disagreed on whether Tau-tau had
ever been a whole of darkness and light or was ever meant
to be. Those skeptics doubted that Shuken had ever existed.

But Nicholas had to believe because there was a great
danger, growing like an evil flower inside him. Each time
he involved Akshara more fragments of Kshira loosed them-
selves in his psyche. Soon, he knew, if he did not find the
path to Shuken, it would be too late. Kshira would claim
him as it had his tanjian mentor, Kansatsu.

Sounds echoed and re-echoed, suspended in the liquid of
time. It was like being underwater, being able to hear as
whales did over a distance of miles, sounds so acute they
impacted upon the skin with a physical presence. The world
itself seemed simultaneously close and far away, a bowl from
which Nicholas could pluck a single element-a voice, an
insect's flight, the path of a vehicle-and dissect it with the
most minute scrutiny.

And in this state he reached into the bowl of the world
and plucked out Watanabe's psyche, attaching himself like
a lamprey to a shark's sandpaper skin. He was with the tech
now-though he could not know it-a part of him. And
Nicholas knew he was dying. The dose of venom that had
been introduced was far more concentrated than that found
in nature. Enough of it had already moved past the entry
point, the tourniquet's barrier, and had entered 'Wata-
nabe's bloodstream.

Element by element, as he had been taught by Kansatsu,
he went through the tech's blood, observing as the nerve
toxin swept along, until he isolated the substances he
needed. Moving his psyche to different organ sites within
Watanabe's .body and brain, he stimulated the production
of antibodies, hormones, complex neuropeptides that would
naturally inhibit the poison. Only when be was certain the
tech was stable did he ascend backward into the cool, mono-
chromatic light of normal reality.

Nicholas, emerging fully from Tau-tau, called for security
and, when the three men came at a run, had them move

Watanabe to the company infirmary. "Get some ice on this
as soon as you get him upstairs," he told one of the security
officers. "When the ambulance arrives, tell them this man
has been poisoned with a form of nerve paralyzer. And I
want you and another man with him at all times, even in
the hospital. Don't leave his side. Got it?"

"Yes sir," the officer said as the elevator doors closed.

Nicholas sprinted for the chairman's elevator, used his
key, punched up the fortieth floor. An icy dread gripped his
heart. Watanabe should not have been off the R&D floor.
What was he doing in the men's room on the mezzanine at
the same time that the American Cord McKnight was in
there? Nicholas thought he knew, but he needed confirma-
tion, and that would only come at Watanabe's workstation
in R&D.

The elevator door opened and he stepped out onto the
main floor of Sato International's Research and Develop-
ment division. He found the night-shift manager, told him
in broad strokes- what had happened. "Get a security detail
up here on the double," he said. "I want the main corridor
manned night and day. I'm going to be fiddling with Wata-
nabe-san's computer, probably taking it off network, so
make sure the internal alarm is overridden."

"Yes, sir," the stricken man said. "Right away."

"Also, get me the man in charge of transferring the Cy-
berNet data."

"That was Watanabe-san."

"His supervisor, then. Tell him to meet me at Watanabe-
san's office."

"I'll find Matsumura-san immediately."

Nicholas followed the night manager's directions and
found Watanabe's office without difficulty. The tech's com-
puter was on. It showed that the downloading of the Cyber-
Net data was still in progress. On the other hand, when
Nicholas accessed the menu for the main data bank and
punched in his access codes, he discovered that the Cyber-
Net data had already been transferred to the core. That
meant despite all the safeguards that had been, put in place,
someone had made an unauthorized copy of the proprietary
CyberNet data.

Returning to Watanabe's program, he saw that it was off-

line the R&D network. Watanabe had somehow run the
CyberNet data through his own program. That meant he
could have made a minidisc copy. Theoretically, this should
have been impossible. Nicholas's own techs stateside had
assured him the version they were sending contained an en-
cryption that prohibited unauthorized copying. He, could
not, however, refute the evidence of his own eyes. Watanabe
had found a way to defeat the encryption.

"Linnear-san?"   -

A slender, pale-faced man with wire-rimmed glasses and
almost no hair had appeared. "I am Junno Matsumura."

"You are Watanabe-san's supervisor?"

"Yes, sir."

Nicholas brought him up to speed.

His eyes were wide behind the lenses. "I can't believe
what has happened."

"That makes two of us. I've found that Watanabe-san
took his terminal offnet. Can you tell me if any other termi-
nal was offnet at the same time?"

"Let me check." Matsumura bent over the terminal and,
using the trackball mouse with lightning speed, went into
the core data banks. "None, sir. Only this one was offnet."

Nicholas breathed a bit easier. That meant that whatever
Watanabe was up to, he did it on his own. So now Nicholas
knew what Watanabe had been doing in the mezzanine
men's room: passing the copy he'd made of the TransRim
CyberNet data to Cord McKnight.

"Should I destroy the CyberNet data on RAM here?"
Matsumura asked.

Nicholas thought a moment. "I have a better idea." He
told the tech what he needed done.

"No problem," Matsumura said eagerly. "It'll be my
pleasure."

Nicholas left him to it and went back downstairs. As he
headed to the bank of elevators, he was pleased to see two
security men on guard. Downstairs, he spoke briefly to an-
other security guard. He learned that Watanabe had been
taken to the hospital under tight security. He gave the guard
instructions, then reentered Indigo. The demonstration had
concluded, most successfully he imagined, and the guests
were busy digging into the main courses. He located

McKnight, sitting next to Torin, calmly dissecting his brace
of lacquered whole roast squab.

Nicholas slipped back into his seat, murmuring his ex-
cuses. Koei was tuned to his psyche and, though sensing his
tension, knew not to question him in public.

The dinner proceeded without incident Koei, a charming
and accomplished hostess, had kept Nicholas's guests enter-
tained in his absence. Now he did his part, all the while
keeping an eye on McKnight The ministers were predictably
ecstatic about the digital video network. After the HDTV
debacle they were relieved to have a Japanese project
launched so successfully.

"What happened to your tie, Linnear-san?" Kanioji Naka-
hashi asked. He was one of the ranking Socialist Parry repre-
sentatives in the Diet, the Japanese legislature.

"I lost my napkin, Nakahashi-san, and had to wipe the
squab grease off my mouth before the American McKnight
could accuse me of being a glutton."

Everyone at the table roared with laughter, especially Na-
kahashi, who enjoyed a good joke at the American's expense
better than the next man.

The dishes were cleared, dessert was served along with
coffee and liqueurs, and conversation devolved into that
form of meaningless small talk endemic to all receptions of
any nationality.

It was past eleven when the guests began to depart. Nicho-
las had surreptitiously dropped the keys to their car into
Koei's hand and had whispered in her ear that he would be
home later. Keeping well back in the throng, he followed
McKnight and a whole band of people out into the mezza-
nine and down the wide, sweeping metal staircase into the
lobby.

Outside, the rain had turned to mist. Still, a field of um-
brellas flowered open as the guests waited for their cars and
limos to pull up. McKnight was no exception, stepping to
the curb to take possession of his white BMW. As he did
so, Nicholas looked for the security guard he had spoken to
earlier. He found him a hundred yards from the jammed
building entrance, standing over a big black Kawasaki mo-
torcycle with a futuristic, swept-wing silhouette.

"Your bike's all ready for you, sir," the guard said to

Nicholas. "I got it out of the storage lot, topped off the
tank, and fired it up as you asked."

"Do you have the package?"

"Straight from Matsumura-san." The guard handed over
a small Styrofoam-wrapped parcel. "He said he thinks you'll
be more than pleased with the results."

Nicholas thanked him, donned the helmet draped over
one handlebar, and stepping on the throttle, took off after
McKnight's white BMW. The American was alone in the
car.

Nicholas kept well back in the traffic as he trailed
McKnight through Tokyo's clogged streets. He fit right in
with the fleets of sleek motorcycles, as kids, joyriders, "and
gang members swept through the rain-slicked streets with a
wild thrumming of powerful engines. Now and again, a pale,
crescent moon peeked out from behind wispy clouds. The
mist remained.

It looked as if McKnight was headed for the crowded
Ginza. If he made the Ginza Yon-chome crossing, which
was so vast it was. like the intersection of the world, Nicholas
knew there was a chance he might lose him. But instead,
McKnight turned off before he got to the wide avenue, dou-
bling back toward a different area of Shinjuku.

In the seedy Kabukicho area, he headed across the rail-
road tracks, then swerved abruptly. His tires screeched as
they slid on the wet tarmac, then the BMW made the cut
and, rocking on its shocks, disappeared into a narrow side
street.

Nicholas nosed into what was known locally as shomben-
yokocho. Piss Alley. It was fined with bottomless bars, sleazy
nightclubs with raunchy sex shows, and none-too-clean yaki-
tori shops, which stood as slack-jawed as the vagrants who
drifted by outside. Halfway down the block, Nicholas saw
the white BMW being driven off by a valet. He didn't know
such services were available from the establishments of
shomben-yokocho.

He parked the Kawasaki, began to walk down the block.
Which place had McKnight gone into? There were so many
of them, jammed side by side, it was impossible to tell from
the street and he did not think he had the time to poke his
head into every dump.

But there was another way.

He entered into Akshara, reality sliding away like a dream
turned sideways, colors coronaed, then bleached out by the
inner light. And he was with McKnight as he cruised a sleazy
bar filled with gunmetal smoke, dark swirls of mingled con-
versation, and very bad drag queens.

He was with McKnight as he wended his way around ta-
bles filled with men dressed as women, businessmen and
adventurous tourists, settled himself into a tiny corner table
whose only other chair was occupied by the Vietnamese
Nguyen Van Truc. McKnight ordered a whiskey.

Nicholas entered the club. It was called- Deharau, which
meant to have nothing left.

The drink came and McKnight tossed it down and or-
dered another.

"Didn't get enough at the reception?" Nguyen asked
archly.

McKnight eyed him. "I don't know about you, buddy, but
killing someone is not my everyday activity."

Nguyen pursed his lips. "You Americans are so fastidious.
I told you. I should have done it."

"And I told you," McKnight said, downing his second
drink, "Watanabe's deal was with me. He'd never have gone
near you."

"And look what his trust of Americans got him." Nguyen
had to laugh. These Americans. So righteous in all they did
and said. It got old quickly. "He should have known better."

Apparently, that ended the entertainment portion of the
program.

"Were you successful?" Nguyen said, leaning forward.

McKnight's third drink was served by a waiter with a huge
set of false breasts and a wig like Dolly Parton, and both
men waited until they were again alone within the convivial
babble of the bar. "Yes, yes. Of course," McKnight said.
He was feeling that exultant rush of adrenaline that follows
a close look at death's face. Also, he was enjoying turning
the tables on the Vietnamese. For the moment, he was bold-
ing all the cards, and he was going to milk the moment for
all it was worth. He would, Nicholas knew as he circled
his prey, be at his most indiscreet, and therefore, Nicholas
concentrated all the more.

"I am merely following orders. My superior wants-"

"I know just what your superior needs," McKnight said
with a sneer that Nicholas could easily imagine. "And I
have it."

"Time is of the essence."

"Really?" McKnight stretched his long legs. "Why?"

"That is no concern of yours."

"No?" McKnight lit a cigarette, watched the smoke rise
lazily toward the ceiling. "But I am in a position to help
your superior."               

"You were hired to do a job. If you were successful, then
you will be paid-handsomely, as you know. Otherwise-"

"Listen, errand boy/' McKnight hissed suddenly, "I'm an
American, see? You don't talk to me like that. No one does,
not even your boss. I'm tired of sitting on the sidelines,
being fed a peanut salary by guys raking in millions in stock
options. I want a piece of the action and what I have on me
is my ticket"     ,

"The data, please," Nguyen said stonily.

"All in good time. I want a meeting with Mick Leonfor-"

"Please, no names," Nguyen said with some urgency.

McKnight laughed. "Yeah, I know, I'm not playing the
good little spy. But I did get your attention, didn't I?" He
released smoke through his nostrils. "Anyway, who's around
here to hear us, huh? A bunch of Jap pansies with wigs
and eyeshadow." He guffawed. "Watch out, Van Truc. They
might hit you with a falsie."

"Nevertheless, you will refrain from using any names, is
that clear?"

"Tell roe why your superior needs this shit so quickly."

At the mention of Mick Leonforte's name Nicholas had
gone as still as a statue. Gone was the aura of satisfaction
at having successfully tracked a spy and a thief, replaced by
a dark empty space into which he preferred not to look.
While in the Vietnam War, Mick had been picked by a
group of spies working inside the Pentagon to secure for

them the major drug pipeline from the Shan States. They
sent him into the badlands of Laos where Mick had
promptly commandeered the pipeline and gone AWOL.
Later,, he had taken on Rock and a Vietnamese named Do
Duc as his partners. Together, they had built Floating City

in the nearly inaccessible highlands of Vietnam to house
their fortune and 'the immense stockpile of armament they
regularly sold to the burgeoning number of feudal war-
lords worldwide.

Nicholas had thought Mick dead-incinerated or rotted
•with radiation poisoning during the detonation of Torch in
Floating City. Now he knew that Mick was alive and behind
the theft of the TransRim data, and his thoughts were filled
with, the same kind of static he had felt in Floating City
when the two of them had come face-to-face.

"This is not your business," Nguyen said at last.

"But, you see, I'm making it my business." McKnight
flicked ashes from the tip of his cigarette. "This is a requisite
for delivery."

"We did not contract for-"

"I just changed the terms, asshole. Now deal with it."

Nguyen waited a beat while he looked around the
crowded bar. When he spoke, his voice had lowered almost
to a whisper so that McKnight had to lean far across the
table to hear him. "All right But I daren't tell you here. I
know someplace more private." He threw some yen on the
table and they pushed back then- chairs.

By the time they stepped out onto the street, Nicholas
was nowhere in sight. Standing in the shadow of a doorway
to a sex club, be watched as the valet ran to fetch the
white BMW.

"You bring a car?" he heard McKnight ask.

'"Took a taxi over," Nguyen replied. "That way, should
anyone ask, there's nothing to tie me to this place."

As they got into the car, Nicholas looked past the gamy
stage shots, clustered like pustules on the doorframe, of
women bound and gagged on a small spotlighted stage.

The BMW's engine sounded and he went across the street
to the Kawasaki and climbed aboard. Still attached to
McKnight, he moved in far behind them as Nguyen directed
the American down a series of streets. They were heading
east, toward the exclusive Shinbashi district where geishas
still plied their ultracivilized trade. But Shinbashi was also
home of the gargantuan Tsukiji Fish Market where the land
abutted the wide Sumida River. The moon was obscured by
thickening clouds, and the lights of the city bloomed like

phosphorescent plankton in the ocean, white and ethereal,
haloed in the inky night.  

Nicholas watched as McKnight parked the BMW by the
water and the two men went along the dockside, stepping
onto a small boat. Nicholas, physically marooned on the
sidewalk, was obliged to rely solely on his psychic link to
McKnight while he searched for a boat to follow them.

There was none around and he began to run along the
slick, deserted streets of the market, paralleling the boat's
progress. Just past the market, where the only lights came
from across the Sumida, Nguyen slowed the boat so that
only intermittent ripples veed out from its prow.

Nicholas, deep in Akshara, heard voices coming over the
water almost as if the two men were directly beside him.

"Okay," McKnight said, "this is as private as it gets in
Tokyo. Now tell me-"

Nguyen, stepping carefully down the center of the boat,
struck, him hard in the carotid nerve plexus at the right side
of his neck. McKnight fell into Nguyen's arms as if he had
been poleaxed.

While the Vietnamese went methodically through McKnight's
pockets, Nicholas sprinted down the quay. He was still a good
distance away, and it was now not a matter of getting there in
time but just how late he would be.

Nguyen was an expert, and McKnight had not been partic-
ularly clever. The Vietnamese found the stolen TransRim
data encoded on a minidisc within moments of rendering
the American unconscious. It had been hastily pushed into
the lining of one shoulder of McKnight's tuxedo jacket, hid-
den by the padding.

Nguyen pocketed the minidisc, then hauled McKnight by
his jacket. Spreading his legs to brace against the inevitable
rocking, he dropped McKnight's head and shoulders into
the water.-

Nicholas felt a cold ripple of recognition through his psy-
che and redoubled his efforts. He ran along the quay, pass-
ing through the reflections of lamplight that looked like a
handful of tiny moons that had been .thrown down from
the sky.

Ahead, in the Sumida, Nguyen kept one hand on the back
of McKnight's neck and began to whistle a low tune, a snip-

pet of a Jacques Brel song. Nicholas recognized it-it encap-
sulated all the dehumanization the world underwent during
the war in the image of the whore, lying on her back, her
legs spread, calling, "Next!" to her soldier client.

The melody served as a tangible line in the darkness, an
umbilical cord linking him to the terrible act in progress.
Closer now, he felt the imminence of death-not his own,
but McKnight's. It was eerie and unsettling to be a fly on
the shoulder of death as it advanced to claim another victim.
He was at once aware of McKnight's psyche and the essence
of what was coming to claim him. He could feel the cold
and the dark as if they were moving toward an unseen void.

There was a resonance in the air as of a winter wind
blowing through a forest of icicles. This note combined with
those Nguyen was whistling to create an entirely different
melody that unexpectedly .expanded into a dark symphony.

This was, Nicholas knew, the moment of McKnight's
death, when something inside him screamed or sighed, in
any case breathed its last, evaporating out of the corpus like
light freed from a labyrinth. Nicholas's heart clamped so
tight he felt a pain in his chest. All the breath went out of
him, and for a moment, he slumped limply, his eyes
squeezed shut

The purity of the sound was absolute, and it continued to
fix him in his tracks, his boat gliding silently across black,
purling water, past huge facades that looked with blank-eyed
stares at the death that had stolen silently across the water.

When the sound vanished without the hint of an echo,
Nicholas felt diminished. Perhaps it was only that the psychic
connection had been abruptly severed, but he suspected
there was something more. McKnight was gone and there
hadn't been a thing he could have done about it. Frustration
mingled with the thought that even a bastard like McKnight
did not deserve that kind of death.

Now there was only the Vietnamese Nguyen, who, having
ascertained that McKnight had breathed his last, tied him
down with blocks of concrete, launched him over the side,
and was on the move again.

Nicholas had to deal with Nguyen. But how? Instead of
returning to the dock by Tsukiji, he was continuing down
the river. This further reinforced Nicholas's suspicion that

Nguyen had planned this all along. He had taken a taxi to
the Kabukicho, he'd had this boat with the concrete blocks
in its bottom ready and waiting. Nicholas felt certain that if
McKnight hadn't forced the issue, Nguyen would have found
some way to lure him on board. Any way the deal went
down, McKnight hadn't been meant to live through the
night

Nicholas took a deep breath; he had come to the place
where the American had so recently been drowned. Ex-
tending his psyche, he could feel the black weight sinking
down, down into the muck of the Sumida from which he
would never resurface. Wherever Nguyen was headed, Nich-
olas reasoned he'd have to pull into shore sometime. Dog-
gedly, gritting his teeth, he continued running, following
Nguyen, paralleling the river lights and the dark blight head-
ing down it, his mission now set firmly in his mind.

Margarite Goldoni DeCamillo emerged from her shiny
new Lexus onto Park Avenue and Forty-seventh Street. New
annuals had been planted in the avenue divider, and halos
of green were just beginning to wreathe the English plane
and ginkgo trees. Though it was after five, the afternoon
light was still strong, a surer sign than the still chilly wind
whistling among the skyscrapers that spring was on its way.
She told Frankie, her armed driver, to wait, then, accompa-
nied by Rocco, her bodyguard, she entered the glass and
steel skyscraper.

On her way up to the thirty-sixth floor she had time to
collect her thoughts. This respite, even so brief, was a bless-
ing because over the past fifteen months she had had little
time to devote to her business. Ever since her brother, Dom-
inic Goldoni, had been brutally murdered, she had been
thrust into a maelstrom of another life so alien and anath-
ema to her that it had initially set her reeling. Even though
Dom had tried his best to tutor her, introducing her to many
of his most important contacts in New York and Washing-
ton, still she had been unprepared for the Machiavellian
complexities of taking over his position as capo of all the
East Coast families. Her husband, Tony D., the highly suc-
cessful show biz lawyer, had been her mask. Ostensibly,
Dom had chosen him to be his replacement, but all along it

was Margarite who was pulling the strings like a ghost from
the shadows. She not only had to keep the peace among her
own galaxy of Families but continually to fend off the ad-
vances of Dom's bitter enemy, Bad Clams Leonforte, who,
now that Dom was dead, was avariciously bent on expanding
his domain from the West Coast eastward. In the last several
months, he had, over Margarite's protests and best defenses,
maneuvered and manhandled his way to controlling the Chi-
cago and midwestern Families. She knew he would never
have dared attempt such an usurpation of power-let alone
been successful at it-had Dom still been alive. Always now,
there was the metallic taste of bile in her mouth as she
struggled with the fact that she had failed her brother and
all the Families he had devoted himself to shepherding.

The elevator slowed to a stop, a tiny bell rang, and the
doors slid open. As she and Rocco strode down the gray
and beige hallway toward the offices of Serenissima, her
highly successful cosmetics company, she felt with a physical
pang the heavy burden of responsibility Dom had placed on
her shoulders. How she had missed being immersed in the
excitement of her own business, the thousand daily decisions
that would keep it on course, the triumphs and, yes, the
failures, as well, because they were also part of the learn-
ing process.

She and her partner, Rich Cooper, had built Serenissima
up from a small two-person mail-order business to the bur-
geoning international organization it was today. The com-
pany now had boutiques in Barneys, Bloomie's, Bergdorf,
and Saks in New York and all across the country through a
newly formed subcompany that doles out franchises. The
French loved the products, as did the Italians and the Japa-
nese. Later this year, Rich was planning an all-out assault
on Germany, and there was talk of going into the former
Eastern Bloc countries.

Thank God for Rich, she thought. He had been minting
the store while she had been busy battling Bad Clams and
continuing Dom's business partnership with Mikio Okami.

Serenissima's offices were low-key and elegant. Colors of
toast and burnt rose predominated. The furniture in the re-
ception area was actually comfortable--Margarite had in-
sisted on it. The walls were dominated by enormous glossy

blowups of the internationally renowned model she and
Rich had chosen to be their sole figurehead. She had been
with them from the beginning and had given the product
line an instant recognition and cachet. Like Lancôme, they
had decided to ignore fashion trends. One year the zaftig
look was in among models, the next year the waif was all
the rage. None of this mattered to Serenissima, whose net
profits soared 25 percent per year.

Rich was waiting for her in the conference room, a
sconced, heavily curtained rectangle softened by floor-to-
ceiling bookcases and the Old World cornices and moldings
she had had put up. The room was dominated by a highly
polished teak table in the shape of a boomerang, behind
which was a long credenza on which stood a Braun cof-
feemaker and cappuccino machine, twin carafes of the water,
a bottle of sambuca. Behind its carved teak doors lay a
small fridge and well-stocked minipantry. You never knew.
Experience had taught them that when they got into a brain-
storming session it could go all day and well into the night

Rich sprang up as she arrived through the double pocket
doors. She took a last look at her bodyguard as he took up
station just outside the boardroom. She hoped a day would
come when he or someone like him would not be a
necessity.

"Bella, it's been so long!" Rich opened his arms and em-
braced her, kissing her warmly on both cheeks in the Euro-
pean style. "I was getting worried about you. It was like you
had fallen off the ends of the earth. I got so tired of speaking.
to your answering machine I blew a raspberry at it!"

"I know," Margarite said, laughing. "I heard it last night
when I got home." She disengaged herself. "I'm sorry I've
left you in the lurch, but-"

"I know, I know," he said, putting up his hands. "You've
had a helluva time with Francie."

This was the cover story she had chosen because, like all
the best lies, h contained more than a grain of truth. Her
teenage daughter, Francine, caught in the middle of Marga-
rite and Tony D.'s abusive relationship, had become de-
pressed and bulimic. Francie's encounter with Lew Croaker,
the ex-NYC cop and Nicholas Linnear's best friend, seemed
to have turned her around. Her deep-seated rage at her

parents still existed, but Croaker's influence had shaken it
from the dark recesses of her subconscious. Frantic loved
Croaker with an absolute devotion that sometimes made
Margarita jealous.' She might love Lew-a sad, ironic love,
since Lew's overdeveloped sense of right and wrong was
immutable-but his harmonious relationship with her
daughter was sometimes so maddening that she cried herself
to sleep. How she longed to have a normal, loving relation-
ship with Francie. She wondered whether that might ever
be possible.

"She's better, Rich, really," she said, silting down in the
chair he had pulled out for her.

Rich Cooper was a dapper-looking man. He was fluent in
all the Romance languages and was currently breezing
through his Japanese lessons. He had a certain adaptability
to different cultures and mind-sets that others sometimes
mistook for glibness. But to underestimate him was to give
him an advantage he would exploit to its fullest. He was in
his early forties but his unruly sandy hair and quick blue
eyes gave him a boyish air. He was small and compact and
possessed of a seemingly inexhaustible nervous energy. He
was the only man she knew who could spend five days work-
ing the Milan couture show, fly off to Tokyo, then jet to
Paris for a week and return to the office ready to work. His
favorite thing was to travel, to meet new faces and win them
over to his cause.

He was fervid about Serenissima-always had been-and
he took great pride in its enormous success. From time to
time, he had brought up the idea of going public, but Marga-
rite was firmly against it. "Think of all the added capital
that will flow in!" Rich would say excitedly. "A virtual ava-
lanche, bella!" But, no, she would tell him. Going public
meant a board of directors, answering to investors, the threat
of being taken over or, worse, ousted from their own com-
pany. Margarite had seen it happen time and again. "What's
ours is ours," she had told him firmly. "And I intend to see
that it stays that way."

"So, bring me up to date," Margarite said now as she
opened her overstuffed Filofax.

For the next hour, Rich gave her a rundown on sales-
up 30 percent for the quarter; research and development-

a new overnight cream that dissolved the puffiness of too
much alcohol and not enough sleep; the franchise division-
seventy-five and counting; the German putsch-the depart-
ment store experiment at Kaufhof and Karstadt had been
wildly successful, and their first two stand-alone boutiques
were scheduled to open in the spring in Berlin and Munich.
In fact, Rich, told her, he had just wrapped up the deal with
the German partners who were going to build and manage
the boutiques.   -

There was not a negative note to Rich's profit aria, and
yet, watching him, Margarite could not shake the feeling
that something was amiss. He played nervously with his sil-
ver Pelikan fountain pen-a gift from the Germans-and
seemed to rush through his presentation instead of drawing
it out, relishing every moment as he had every right to do.

When he was finished and she had initialed the papers
and co-signed every contract he had placed before her, she
looked over to bun and said in her usual blunt style, "Okay,
what's up?"

For a moment, Rich said nothing. He rolled the Pelikan
between' his fingers like a drum majorette with a baton.
Then, abruptly, he shoved his chair back and went to the
windows. He pulled apart the heavy drapes, peered out
across the city to the Hudson River and, beyond, the smoky
haze of industrial New Jersey.

"Rich...?"

"I wish to God you hadn't come back."

"What?"

He let go of the drapes, turned to face her. "I had the
letter all drafted. It was going to be typed up this morning,
sent over to Tony's office."

She stood up, her heart pounding in her chest. "What
letter?" She could see him take a deep breath, bracing him-
self, and she felt a painful constriction in her throat.

"I've sold my share, bella."

Margarite stared at him, her mind in a numbed state of
shock. She could not think of even one word to say except
"Shit!" The kind of unconscious expletive you come out
with when you see a car coming at you broadside and you
know it's too late to do anything but brace yourself for the

impact and hope the seat belt and air bag are enough to
save you. What was, going to save her now? she wondered.
At last, as the shock, dissipated, she found her voice. "You
bastard. Why?"

He shrugged, looking sheepish now in the face of her
growing anger. "Why else? Money."

"Money?" Outraged, she could hardly believe what she
was hearing. "You mean you aren't getting enough money,
enough perks, now?"

He shrugged again. "There's always more money, bella."

Bella. "Stop that! You've no right to call me that any-
more."

He went white, and stricken, he turned back to the win-
dow. "You see now why the letter would have been better."

Margarita put her fingers to her throbbing temples. She
went to the credenza, poured herself a glass of water, fum-
bled in her purse for some extra-strength Bufferin, downed
them with a gulp. Then, blotting her lips, she turned to him.
"Why didn't you discuss this with me before-"

"Because," he said, rounding on her, "you haven't been
here in months!"

They stood close together, painting like two animals caught
in a crossfire of headlights, terrified, unsure what step to
take next.

"Rich"-she put out a hand-"let's talk about this now.
It's not too late to-"

"It is too late, Margarite. I signed the papers late yester-
day. It's a done deal."

She looked into his blue eyes, trying to fathom the truth.
This was so unlike him: It was as if she were seeing an
entirely different person from the one she had come to know
over the course of their twelve-year partnership. How many
times had he been over to the house? He had come to
Francie's Communion, had bought her that six-foot, cuddly
bear she still loved, had presented her last year with that
massive multimedia system-stereo speakers and all-for
her top-of-the-line MAC And now this: betrayal. Why?
For money?

"Who did you sell out to?"

"Oh, come on, bella, nothing's going to change. I'll still
be working here. I signed a personal services contract-"

"A contract!" He reacted to the sneer in her voice. "A
paid employee in your own company." She shook her head,
raked fingers through her dark, thick hair. "Madonna, listen
to yourself. You still don't get it These petzinavanti, who-
ever they are, own you. The minute they don't like the job
you're doing or disagree with it or, even, don't like the suits
you're wearing or the smell of your breath, you're out of
here, no recourse. Everything you've worked for for more
than a decade, down the drain, over, finis." She stared at
him. "Oh, Rich, what have you done?"

"What had to be done," he said, turning away from her,
"believe me."

"Right now I don't believe anything or anyone." She fin-
ished the rest of the water, poured herself more. Her throat
was so dry. "So who is it? Perelman? Am I now co-owned
by Revlon?"

"No, no one like that," he said, biting his lower lip. "In
fact, this is the company's first foray into cosmetics. It's
name is Volto Enterprises Unlimited. They're out of West
Palm Beach in Florida, but they have offices all over the
globe. They flew me down to West Palm," he continued, in
a pathetic attempt to attach his enthusiasm to her. "Christ,
you should see the layout they have there. This huge white
stucco mansion over the Atlantic-breathtaking."

"So they had people schmooze you, probably fuck you till
you couldn't see straight, then greased you," Margarite said,
the disgust evident in her voice. "What was Volto's head
honcho like?"

"I don't know. I never met him. Just a bunch of upper-
management people-the board of directors, I believe-and,
yeah, some good-time, urn, people." Rich was bisexual,
which was often something of an asset in Europe. "And a
shitload of lawyers. It was unbelievable."

"Breathtaking ... unbelievable," she said bitterly. "I can't
wait to meet my new partners."

"Nothing's going to change." But he had already turned
away from her, as if even he could not believe his words.
"The Volto people will be in tomorrow to take a meeting
with both of us. You'll see, then, that this isn't going to be
the disaster you anticipate."

"Madonna, what cabbage patch did you grow up in?" She

found herself on the verge of laughing, which was okay be-
cause it stopped the tears from forming. She finished her
water, went straight for the sambuca. "You betrayed me,
betrayed everything we had together."

Silence. Air rushing through the vent like a live wire,
buzzing like the blood singing in her temples.

"I trusted you and you sold me out." She swung the empty
glass at his head. "Bastard!"

Every Thursday at five Tony D. had a massage. Even
when he was out of town-which he often was, in L.A.-
work stopped on that day at that hour so he could relax.
Relaxation was one of Tony D.'s requirements of life. He
found deal-making impossible without it. A clear mind en-
abled him to conceive of new ways to fuck people over
with impenetrable paragraphs of legalese that, like soft time
bombs, would tie his adversaries into knots one, two, or five
years hence.

When, as now, he was working in his New York office,
he retired at four forty-five to a back, room adjacent to the
gym he had had installed during the recent renovations.

It was just four-thirty and Tony was on the phone with
the head of Trident Studios in L.A.

"Listen, Stanley, my client has a legitimate beef." He nod-
ded his patrician head. "Sure, I know all about it. I negoti-
ated that sonuvabitch contract with your legal department.
There's three months of my blood in it and that's why I'm
telling you it's not gonna work.. . . Why? I'll tell you why,
Stanley, that prick of a producer is stepping all over my

client. He wants him gone                That's right, outta there         

Good, Stanley, scream all you want, get it out of your system
now. Because if you don't do as my client asks, I'm gonna
see that your studio is closed down tighter than a duck's
ass. The unions will... A threat, Stanley? Are you serious?"
He pushed a toothpick to the other side of his. mouth. "You
know me better than that. But I am what might be called a

weatherman      Yeah, that's right. And at the moment from

where I sit there's a storm front heading your way so my
advice to you is pull in your sails-all of them-before
you capsize."

Tony D. slammed down the phone with an exhaled

"Schmuck!" He thumbed his intercom. "Marie, when Stan-
ley Friedman calls back, I'm not in. And call Mikey in L.A.
Tell him three days at Trident, he'll know what you mean." .]
That ought to clean Mr. Stanley Friedman's clock, he
thought What would three days without a working studio
cost Friedman? Plenty.

He glanced at his slim gold Patek Philippe. Four forty-
five. He stretched, rose, and went through a door at the rear
of Ms office, kicking off his handmade loafers. All things
considered, it had been a good day.

Padding through the gym, he entered the massage room.
He went to the window, stood looking out at Manhattan
with blind eyes. Then he closed the thick curtains against
the twilight glare of the city, disrobed, took off his jewelry,
and lay facedown on a padded table with a freshly laundered
towel draped over his hairy buttocks.

The masseuse, the same one he had used for five years,
entered the outer office, was sent by his receptionist down
the long, richly paneled hallway smelling of new paint and
a tweedy Berber carpet to the reception area of his own
suite of offices. There, she and all her equipment were thor-
oughly searched by a pair of bodyguards. Then, and only
then, was she escorted into the massage room.

She entered today as always without a word, placing an

audiotape in the stereo-Enya's "Shepherd Moons." He

heard the water running as she washed up, then the soothing

scent of rosemary as she opened a bottle of oil and, warming

her hands by rubbing her palms briskly together, got down

to work.

The placid music washed over him as her strong, capable
hands began kneading the tension from his neck and shoul-
ders. As always, as he sank deeper Into the growing lassi-
tude, memories of his childhood surfaced like long-buried
artifacts at an archaeological dig. The comforting smell of
bread baking as his mother hummed a Sicilian tune under
her breath; her forearms covered with flour and confection-
ers' sugar, white as a ghost's, thick as a plowshare.

The sharp odor of rosemary reminded him, too, of the
acrid smoke of the crooked, hand-rolled cigars his father
used to make from Cuban leaf down in the dank cellar. The
one time he snuck down there to have a look around, his

father beat him senseless. That was okay; he had been stu-
pid, straying into a man's world before he was a man. His
taciturn father, who spoke infrequently about sports but
never about his job in a dingy factory across the river in
Weehawken where he was daily exposed to the chemicals
that one day killed him like that, wham! Better than a de-
cade of emphysema or a year or two of lung cancer, Tony
overheard a neighbor say to his mother at the funeral. Later
on, when he got into Princeton, Tony D. realized that his
father never spoke about his job because he was ashamed
of it, ashamed of his lack of education. And when Tony
graduated law school, his only wish was that his father had
been there to witness his triumph.

He grunted now as the masseuse's fingers dug into the
nerve complex at the base of his neck. His breathing deep-
ened as he relaxed even more.

The rosemary reminded him of Sunday dinners at his
brother's. Marie knew how to cook, you only had to look
at her to know. But she was sweet and she had given Frank
two strapping boys. More than Margarite ever gave him.
Besides, Marie didn't know the meaning of back talk. She
knew a woman's place and kept to it, let Frank bring home
the bacon. While he was just a glorified messenger boy, a
stooge, fronting for Margarite. God damn Dominic and his
obsession with women!

"Relax, Mr. Tony," the masseuse said in a gentle whisper.
"You're tensing up again."

Yeah, well, who wouldn't,. Tony thought as he felt her
fingers kneading deeper. Christ almighty, the humiliations
he had to put up with. A bossy wife who thought she was
a man, who couldn't-or, worse, wouldn't-give him a son.
A daughter who was happier away from home in some place
in Connecticut where Margarite had stuck her, wouldn't
even tell Tony where. And then there was this thing she
was having with that fucking ex-cop Lew Croaker. It was
enough to drive any real man insane.

But Tony D. knew he had to be cool. Patience, never his
long suit, was the key. If he could be as patient with Marga-
rite and Francie as he was in his contract negotiations with
the studios, he'd be okay. In like Flynn. The bitches would
have to respect him, after a time. A reconciliation would

come. Margarite would see how idiotic this fling with
Croaker was and he could bed her again, maybe even get
her to pop out the son he wanted so dearly. You weren't
really a man until you sired a male child, that's what the
old man had said, his hands filthy from the Weehawken
chemicals, and he was right.

He turned his head from one side to the other to ease
the strain, and that was when he saw the heavy curtains
move. He lay very still, his heart thudding slowly and heav-
ily. He blinked, looked again. Stirring still. But that was
impossible. This building was like so many of the city's mod-
ern skyscrapers: the windows did not open. A breath of fresh
air came to him, stinking of soot and car fumes. He moved
his arm, so slowly the masseuse did not detect it

"Doris," he said softly, "I think I'd prefer the lavender."

"Yes, Mr. Tony," the masseuse said, lifting her hands off
him and moving silently to her equipment bag where her
containers of oils were grouped with a thick rubber band

As she bent over her capacious bag, the curtains billowed
outward and Tony sat up. They parted to reveal a large
circular hole cut in the window glass. The precisely cut glass
lay like a gigantic lens, gripped by a pair of powerful suction
cups, on a wooden scaffold that window washers use.

The man who had cut the glass took one step into the
room. He was dressed in the anonymous denim overalls of
a window washer. His right hand was filled with a 38 fitted
with a snub-nosed silencer. He grinned at Tony D.'s naked-
ness, showing crooked yellow teeth. "Bad Clams says,
'Good-bye, Tony.'"

Phut! Phut! The sounds were insignificant, much as if
Tony had passed wind, but their effect was anything but.
The grinning man spun backward, his mouth frozen in that
same smirk but his eyes opened wide, registering shock at
the silencer-equipped Colt .45 in Tony's oily fist He grabbed
onto the curtains, pulling them half Off their track, blood
spurting from chest and throat. Then he pitched to the floor.

"Too bad you won't be able to tell Bad Clams anything,"
Tony said into eyes already beginning to film over. :

He heard heavy gasping and turned, seeing Doris with
one hand in her mouth, the other clutching something white,
perhaps the bottle of scented oil she had just taken from

her bag. Her eyes were wide and staring as she backed up
against one wait.

"It's okay," he said reassuringly. "It's all over." He got
off the table and, holding the .45 at his side, walked toward
her. "You're safe now." He tried a smile, but still panicked,
she was fixated on the gun. Just like a woman. The last thing
he wanted was anything to alert the building security. His
was a strictly legit business, and any event to the contrary
could kill his reputation. Hence the silencer on his .45.

He lifted it, placing it gently on the massage table, coming
toward her with his hands raised and open. "See? There's
no problem. It's over."

He was within a pace of her and he could see her breath-
ing calm. She took her hand from her mouth. Tiny white
ovals were imprinted oh the skin where she had almost
drawn blood.

"Doris?" He touched her. "Okay? Are you all right?"

"It's not me I'm thinking of," Doris said as she buried
the four-inch stiletto blade in his sternum.

"Oh, fuck! Wha-?" He fell against her, then opened his
mouth to scream and found her fist jammed into it.

"Bad Clams says you should take better care of yourself,
Mr. Tony," she said, staring intently at him as if he were a
frog she was about to dissect.

He wanted to curse her, to reach for his weapon, but he
could manage neither. His legs had turned to jelly and his
extremities had turned to ice. He grunted instead, as she
quite expertly dragged the small but razor-sharp blade up
through his lungs and into his heart and his full mass came
against her.

Dead weight, Doris thought as she pushed him down to the
floor. She wiped the handle of the blade, then dragging the
would-be assassin over, pressed his still-warm fingers around
the folding handle. Looking around, she used a towel to drop
the Colt between the two bodies. She picked up the white
tampon within which she had secreted the stiletto. She
jammed it into her bag, gathered up the rest of her equip-
ment. Shouldering her bag, she ducked through the neat
hole in the windowpane, clambered out onto the scaffolding,
and was gone.

 

2

Tokyo/Palm Beach/
New York

"So you followed him all the way back here."
"Yes," Nicholas said.

"What kind of place has this mysterious Vietnamese
gone into?"

Nicholas looked at the bat-winged glass and ferroconcrete
building in the center of the arty, tourist area of Roppongi.
"See that buttressed glass bubble terrace on the second
floor? He went into the French restaurant there called Pull
Marine. It's new, I'm told. Ultra-opulent place with prices
ro mated."

Tanzan Nangi had not turned to face Nicholas. Instead,
he continued to sit in the leather backseat of his Mercedes
limousine, staring through the smoked-glass window out at
the steel-gray skyline of Tokyo that rose above Rop-
pongi's rooftops.

Five minutes ago, the Mercedes limo had slid to a stop
behind Nicholas's black Kawasaki. Earlier this morning, he
had had Koei drive him back to the dockside near Tsukiji
where he had left it. From the car, he had phoned the hospi-
tal and was told that Watanabe was in stable but guarded
condition, so weak that he had not yet regained conscious

ness. When he did, Nicholas knew he would have to question him.

Nangi had come in response to Nicholas's video summons
via the Kami. Nicholas supposed he might not have emerged
from his unknown den were it not for the startling news
that the CyberNet data had been stolen.

What did Nangi see, Nicholas wondered, in Tokyo's rain-
befogged cityscape? Individual signs and shapes were
blurred into a giant pachinko parlor, a riot of neon colors
and loud whirs and whistles, nothing more than an approxi-
mation of reality, which was what this city of symbols re-
ally was.

"And whom did he contact there?" Nangi said.

"A woman," Nicholas said. "Her name is Honniko."

"She has the data now?" Kanda Torin said.

"Yes."

Nangi had not come alone and this surprised Nicholas.
He was accompanied by his new vice president. The many
things Nicholas wished to discuss with Nangi could not be
brought up with Torin here, and again he felt the change in
his special relationship with his friend and mentor.

So long from Nangi's side, he could not shake the concern
he felt for him. Nangi was no longer as vigorous as he had
once been. Last year's lightning trips to Russia, Ukraine,
Singapore, mainland China, and Hong Kong had taken their
toll on the older man. Perhaps they had even had some
cause in his heart attack. But there was still the question of
his behavior.

True, he was obsessed with saving Sato and, therefore,
with the success of the CyberNet. But this very obsession
made Nicholas all the more guilty for deserting him during
the onset of this crisis.

Nangi moved uneasily, and pale light flared off his artifi-
cial eye. He had been through much in the war, not the
least of which was losing his best friend, the man who had
willed him Sato International. "This is a disaster of incalcu-
lable proportions," he said, shaking his head slowly back and
forth. "We must get the CyberNet data back at all costs."

"Still, it is inconceivable to me how the data were stolen
at the reception," Torin said. "It speaks of a gross lapse in
security." Of course, he was comfortable criticizing an area

not currently under his control. Was he angling for that cut
of the pie, as well? Nicholas wondered. "This is the second
such breach within eighteen months. Another tech, Masa-
moto Goei, was found selling Sato secrets. I suggest a full-
scale investigation be launched." Yes, he was.

"Linnear-san did well to save Watanabe-san's life," Nangi
said without enthusiasm. He sighed and raised a hand, per-
haps in acquiescence to the young vice president's sugges-
tion. "Perhaps, Torin-san, we erred in rushing the TransRim
CyberNet into service more quickly than was prudent."

Torin was silent. He was smarter than to try to answer
that loaded question. No matter what he said, he'd look bad.
But Nicholas used his reticence to ask the question most on
his mind since the reception last night.

"Nangi-san, could you explain to me who or what Denwa
Partners is? Torin-san introduced their name at the presen-
tation as the co-owners of the CyberNet."

Nangi passed a hand over his face, just as he had last night
when he had video-logged on the CyberNet to Nicholas at
the office. "Ah, yes. I have not had time to tell you, Nicho-
las-san. But during your long absence, in order to accelerate
the start-up date we were forced to bring in several
partners."

"Partners? Why wasn't I advised of this? We had an
agreement."

Torin's brow furrowed in consternation. "Nangi-san, par-
don this unforgivably rude question, but didn't you inform
Linnear-san of the partners' agreement via the Kami?"

Nangi closed his eyes, ignoring Torin's query. "But, you
see, we didn't have any choice." He gestured to the young
man on his left. "Actually, it was Torin who came up with
the idea."

Nicholas gave a brief glance at Torin, who sat ramrod
straight, his -handsome face a complete cipher.

"I think it was quite brilliant, really," Nangi said. "Bring-
ing in corporate partners spreads goodwill, which along with
the success of the CyberNet, is what we most need now."
He shook his head like an old terrier. "Terrible about the
prime minister. Did you hear? It was broadcast early this
morning. What a shock. And now this CyberNet disaster.
But Torin-san is good, very clever, indeed, and now that the

CyberNet is operational, I've given him the task of running
it day to day."

As if this were a signal, Torin leaned forward and pulled
down a small, polished burlwood door, revealing a bay,
equipped with a mini-hibachi and all the accoutrements for
making tea. He began to prepare green tea for the three of
them. Nangi, though he had his head turned away from the
two men, must have known what was happening because he
kept silent.

Nicholas watched Torin as he beat the powdered tea to a
fine bitter froth with a bamboo whisk. He placed the first
cup in Nangi's hands. Nicholas received the second. Then
he lifted his own. He watched Nangi with the anxious covet-
ousness of a nanny with her sickly charge, as if his good or
bad health would directly reflect on him.

Nangi finished his tea, but apparently it failed to calm
him. He said, "The launch of the CyberNet was all perfectly
orchestrated. Perfect. But now that the data have been sto-
len, I don't know what will happen."

Nicholas stared out the window while sooty rain slid
slowly down the pane. He did not care for Torin's attitude.
It was almost as if he were indicating that Nangi's brain was
deteriorating, that his memory was not what it had once
been. He worked to clear his mind of anger and concentrate
on the matter at hand.

Everything had changed at the moment he had discovered
that Nguyen was working for Mick Leonforte. What did
Leonforte want with the TransRim CyberNet data? He
wasn't foolhardy enough to attempt to start his own compet-
ing cybernet with the information; Sato's lawyers would slam
him with so many infringement suits he'd be out of business
in a matter of months. What then?

Nicholas had no idea, but he knew he had to find out. His
encounter with Mick in Floating City had been profoundly
disturbing. And, if he were to be brutally honest with him-
self, it had been preying on his mind ever since. There was
something strange about Mick-and terrifyingly familiar as
well. It was as if he had known Mick long before they had
ever met. But that was impossible, wasn't it?

"More tea?"

Nicholas turned to see Torin, solicitous as a geisha, bend-

ing over Nangi, but Nangi shook his head, turned to Nicho-
las, said, "Find that data. You must bring it back to us. The
CyberNet is our only hope."

"Nangi-san, we must speak-"

But his friend was waving him away. "I am tired. We will
talk later, yes?"

Nicholas looked up, saw Torin holding open the limo's
door. As he stepped out into the drizzle, Nicholas said to
Torin, "Please come with me a moment." The younger man
nodded in that curiously obsequious manner that Nicholas
suspected he trotted out to hide his rapacious appetite for
advancement and power.

Nicholas watched Torin fastidiously open a black umbrella
over both of them. Nicholas said, "Now I think you had
better bring me up to speed on everything."

Torin, who continued to industriously play the servile
manqu6, said, "Of course, Linnear-san. You were so helpful
to me last night. I want to be of as much assistance as I can."

Nicholas was aware that Torin was baiting him, playing
to his impatient occidental side. It was a common tactic by
which canny Japanese most often trapped Westerners. He
was certainly prepared to play this the Japanese way, but
that did not mean he wouldn't have some surprises for the
younger man.

"As you know, my absence from the office has put me at
something of a disadvantage. I am going to have to rely on
your reports to make certain I am fully briefed on Sato
business."

Torin nodded, a ghost of a smile playing across his
pressed-together lips. "I am honored, Linnear-san. Though
there is, doubtless, no replacement for your legendary first-
hand impressions, I will endeavor to provide an inade-
quate substitute."

Despite himself, Nicholas was impressed. Torin had man-
aged to insult him in the guise of praising him. On the other
hand, he did not like being chided for his absence, especially
by Torin, who had no business rebuking anyone of supe-
rior status.

Putting his growing personal animosity firmly aside, Nich-
olas said, "Nangi-san is acting oddly. He seems cold, distant.
Also, he was supposed to have informed me of the CyberNet

partners agreement but he did not. Have you any idea
why?"

"Perhaps the heart attack has changed him. I have read
this sometimes happens." Having delivered this fleshless an-
swer in a clipped manner, Torin stood erect as a soldier, his
free hand placed demurely at the small of his back. Again,
this slick mask of the loyal manservant was delivered with
the artistry of a No performer.

Nicholas waited a beat while he scanned Torin's blank
face, before continuing, "Have you any opinions of your
own?"

"Any {personal opinions would be presumptuous of me."

Nicholas, who had begun to get the measure of him, said,
"I take that to mean that you do have an opinion of Nangi-
san's condition. If that is so, I'd be very much obliged if you
would share it with me."

"As you wish, sir." Torin cleared h{s throat. He seemed
more relaxed now, perhaps only intent on what he was about
to say, but also because the interview was going in the direc-
tion he had set it on. "My opinion is that over the course
of the past year Nangi-san has suffered a series of-I don't
know what-mini-strokes."

Again, Nicholas felt a clutch of fear. Life without his men-
tor seemed impossible. "Is there any medical evidence to
support this theory?"

"No, sir. There is not." Torin's head swiveled as he
tracked the movements of two men who came abreast of
them and then, in a double halo of black umbrellas, walked
past. "And it is just a personal opinion. Frankly, I would
not repeat it to anyone other than you."

"That's very good of you, Torin-san." Nicholas nodded,
hiding how disturbed he was by this news. "That will be all.
Oh, and I want all pertinent particulars on the Denwa Part-
ners as soon as possible."

Torin, appearing as obedient as ever, nodded. "Yes, sir."
With his hand on the limo's door handle, Torin turned back
to Nicholas. "If I may ask, sir ..."

"By all means."

"Nangi-san spoke to me of the theft of the TransRim
data. May I inquire as to how you could leave the stolen
material in the hands of someone you have identified. Would

it not have been more prudent to take her-and the data-
into custody?"

Nicholas spent a moment reassessing the acuity of this
young man. He had asked a very pertinent question, and it
was imperative that Nicholas allay any suspicions he might
harbor. "The material would be safe, that's true," Nicholas
said carefully. "But we would know nothing of the people
who have stolen, it. And, sooner or later, they would try
again and we might not be so lucky that time."

"I see." Torin nodded like a student absorbing a beloved
professor's theories. He opened the car door and furled his
umbrella. Drizzle turned his slicked-back hah: shiny as a
samurai's helmet. With impeccable timing, he said, "By the
way Nangi-san wished me to tell you that he has called in
a favor on our behalf. A member of the Tokyo prosecutor's
office-a man named Tanaka Gin-will join you on this
investigation."

"I don't need a Tokyo prosecutor or anyone else for that
matter. I work best alone. Nangi-san knows that."

"I am sure he does." The ghost of the smile lingered on
the corners of Torin's mouth as he climbed into the limo.
"I am the messenger in this matter, nothing more."

Before Nicholas had a chance to reply, Torin slammed
shut the armor-plated door and the Mercedes nosed out into
traffic, rain sizzling on its highly polished surface.

"We're closed."

Nicholas eyed Honniko. She was dressed in a lustrous
green-gray Tokuko Maeda suit of shingosen, a new Japanese
synthetic that was highly tactile, could be manufactured to
have any texture imaginable. This one appeared to be a
cross between silk and linen. It also covered her gray heels.
Her pale blond hair was done in a short bob, and her lips,
a frosted bow, were painted the palest pink. She wore a
wide cuff of incised, brushed gold on her left wrist but was
otherwise devoid of jewelry. She looked slim and elegant,
just what you would expect from the hostess of a restaurant
like Pull Marine.

The interior walls were a muted gold-leaf, except for the
bar, which was copper-topped, reflecting the light in dis-
torted sections. A small stage projected from one corner,

and each table had on it a thick, saffron-scented candle.
There were so many Vietnamese artifacts the place looked
like any of the new upscale restaurants sprouting up in
newly affluent Saigon.

"I'm not here to eat," Nicholas said. Perhaps it was a
trick of the light, but the room appeared to curve, much like
the shell of a nautilus.

Honniko was perhaps thirty, but her dark, slightly almond
eyes seemed older than that. She possessed a sweetness that
was leavened by a no-nonsense air that made you believe
she knew her way around demanding people and thorny
situations.

"You don't look like a salesman and we're not apprecia-
bly behind in any payments, so you can't be a process
server." Her eyes widened. "Are you a cop?"

"Now why would a cop come in here?"

"I can't imagine."

"I'd like a drink." He stood in the doorway, filling it up
in spirit rather than in bulk.

"Beer all right?" she asked, leaving her podium and going
behind the bar. She was smart enough to figure out she
wasn't going to get rid of him any other way.

"Suits me." He pulled up a barstool, watching her long,
slender fingers as she pulled the bottles of Kirin Ichiban out
of the ice chest, popped the tops. Instead of drinking hers,
she made water rings on the bartop with the bottle.

"Been here long?"

She looked up. "Are you speaking of the restaurant or
of me?"

"Why don't you choose."

"Three months for the place, but of course it's been under
construction for a year before that."

"Your place?"

She laughed, a soft, throaty sound. "Hardly. But I can't
complain. I get my piece."

"I suppose it isn't enough."

"What a curious thing to say." Her lips pursed and she
could not help keeping the smile on her face. "But, you're
right. It's never enough."

"You know a man named Van Truc? Nguyen Van Truc."

"That's a Vietnamese name."

"It is."

Her brows furrowed as she made a show of searching her
memory. "We have a couple of Vietnamese who come in
on a regular basis, but none with that name."

"Are you sure? Nguyen's the Vietnamese equivalent of
Joe Smith.'

"Still, it's not familiar to me." She pushed her Kirin away.
"You are a cop."

"Van Truc owes me money. I've followed him all the way
from Saigon to get it back."

Behind him, the door swung open and a deliveryman
wheeled in a cart of soft drinks. Honniko excused herself,
signed the manifest, then called to the back of the restau-
rant. A bent-backed Japanese emerged in rolled-up sleeves
and a dirty apron and took possession of the shipment.

"If this man comes in here, I will be certain to tell him
you are looking for him." Honniko turned back to Nicholas.
"Is there anything else?"

"You move with the relaxed grace of the true geisha."
He saw that be had astonished her. He had given her the
highest compliment and she knew if.

"Thank you."

He slid off the barstool. "What do I owe you?"

"On the house." She smiled, but something dark was
swimming far back in her eyes. Perhaps it was curiosity.
"What are you, part American?"

"Brit, actually. My father served with MacArthur."

"My father was an MP stationed here after the war. We
never went home."

There was a moment then between them when the unspo-
ken bond of their oriental mothers passed between them
like DNA from cell to cell. Perhaps she was about to say
something, but at that moment, the phone rang. He bowed
as she spoke briefly into the cordless receiver, giving her a
traditional Japanese farewell. Putting down the phone, she
seemed about to say something, then giving in to protocol,
she bowed him out the door.

The white sun was at its zenith in Palm Beach, the full
blast of its light spread across the water. The royal palms
clattered in the heat. It was just past one in the afternoon,

but Vesper Arkham and Lew Croaker had been hard at
work since three-thirty the previous morning.

In fact, for Vesper, the work had begun years before.
Originally spying clandestinely for the Kaisho, Mikio Okami,
Vesper had been inserted into Looking-Glass, the top-secret
federal espionage and assassination bureau. While there, she
had discovered that someone was stealing ultra-high-tech
weaponry from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency, known as DARPA, and selling it on the
worldwide black market. This was very bad news for
America as a whole and the Pentagon in particular. The
thought of the U.S.'s most highly advanced experimental
weaponry in the hands of Saddam Hussein or the Colombian
drug cartel was nothing short of terrifying. And it became
even more so when Vesper discovered that the leak within
DARPA appeared to lead back to someone inside Look-
ing-Glass.

Ever since she had discovered that Leon Waxman, the
late head of Looking-Glass, had been Johnny Leonforte, she
had been trying to discover whether it had been the Leon-
fortes who were behind the consistent theft out of DARPA.
DARPA was black-budgeted, which meant that Congress
did not vote on appropriations for it. In fact, officially
DARPA did not exist. And yet, someone had breached its
defenses and was selecting plum weapons from its arsenal.

Caesare Leonforte? Vesper suspected as much. It made
sense, since Caesare's father, Johnny Leonforte, had had
access to DARPA through Looking-Glass. If the elder
Leonforte had been Caesare's entrée into DARPA, Caesare
was "smart and clever enough to maintain the pipeline
through bribes or extortion or both to keep it going even
though Johnny was dead.

In Vesper's mind, the need to plug the leak in national
security, to bring Caesare to justice, had turned into some-
thing of an obsession. She had been conned by Johnny
Leonforte, just like everyone else at Looking-Glass, and she
was determined to make the son pay for the sins of his
father, along with those of his own evil making.

To that end, she had gotten herself reassigned within the
Federal government, into the Anti-Cartel Task Force, and
had asked to have Lew Croaker hired as an independent

field operative assigned to her. This was not so difficult as
outsiders might think. For one thing, the federal agencies
were a labyrinth of overworked, undermotivated bureaucrats
handling a mare's nest of paperwork each day. If you knew
which routings to use, assignments with the proper signa-
tures could be manipulated without undue strain. Vesper's
old boss, Leon Waxman-Johnny Leonforte-was dead.
And Vesper herself had an extensive network of support-
ers-shadowy people for whom an operative with her abili-
ties was an invaluable asset. These men were so high up in
government then- word was akin to God's.

Once outside the ACTF, she had quickly discovered that
it had already targeted a company named Volto Enterprises
Unlimited. It was a Bahamian shell corporation that the
ACTF believed was a conduit for hundreds of millions of
dollars annually of IGG, ill-gotten gains. And the man get-
ting filthy rich from the IGG, the man behind Volto itself,
Vesper had read with a certain quickening of her pulse, was
believed to be Caesare Leonforte, Johnny's son.

That's when it all came together for Vesper. She had al-
ways wondered how Johnny Leonforte had successfully mas-
queraded as Leon Waxman. It was true that Johnny had
obtained a superbly forged legend-official documents such
as a birth certificate, high school and college records, credit
history, even Army records, and for verisimilitude, a divorce
decree from the State of Virginia. He'd also had extensive
plastic surgery performed on his face overseas. Still, Vesper
had asked herself, how had Leonforte passed the sophisti-
cated vetting set up by Looking-Glass?

A little digging gave her the answer. During the time of
Leonforte's Wring the entire federal government was on one
of its periodic austerity kicks. Squadrons of lower-echelon
workers were laid off, including the vetting staff, who only
worked part-time anyway. In their place, he hired National
Security Services, an independent security vetting service.
Scouring a maze of computer records, Vesper had subse-
quently discovered that NSS was a wholly owned subsidiary
of Volto Enterprises Unlimited. No wonder Johnny Leon-
forte had beaten the elaborate security system. In effect,
he'd cleverly short-circuited it: he'd been "vetted" by his
own son!

 

And still the pieces of the puzzle kept fitting together.
Lew Croaker had told-her how Nicholas Linnear, who was
also working with Mikio Okami, had stolen highly classified
computer data from Avalon Ltd., one of the most notorious
international arms-dealing organizations, that showed hun-
dreds of millions of dollars in payments to Volto.

And last year, Avalon Ltd. had somehow gotten hold of
Torch, an antipersonnel nuclear device shot out of a hand-
held rocket launcher that had been developed by DARPA,
the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Then she
had unearthed the fact that Caesare Leonforte owned
Avalon.

That someone had to have access to the most secret docu-
ments in Looking-Glass. Now that she'd unraveled the puz-
zle, Vesper had to admire how beautifully it was put
together. Caesare put Johnny in place; perhaps he had been
the one who provided Johnny his bogus bona fides as Leon
Waxman. In return, it looked likely that Johnny gave Cae-
sare the information he needed to infiltrate DARPA's secu-
rity system and plunder its riches. Now it looked as if
Caesare was using Volto to launder and warehouse the enor-
mous profits from illicit arms trading he made through
Avalon.

Vesper and Croaker had had the white mansion in West
Palm under surveillance for a week. During that time, she
had made careful note of everyone who had come and gone:
the suits, the sentries, the lawyers, the businessmen visitors,
the gangster-type visitors, the party girls-and, interestingly,
boys. Then there were the regular Services: daily deliveries
of rolls and bread from La Petite Bakery, fresh flower ar-
rangements by Amazonia, twice weekly pool maintenance
by Blue Grotto, weekly pest control, tree and lawn care, the
list went on for two single-spaced pages.

Vesper's thoughts snapped back to the present. She was
sitting at a table in a trendy Palm Beach restaurant with
Lew Croaker. Outside, along Worth Avenue, the heart and
soul of Palm Beach, the inveterate shoppers needed some-
thing to stoke their second wind. In twos and threes, they
staggered in out of the oppressive heat, shopping bags
clutched between lacquered talons as long as finishing nails.

Vesper, preparing herself mentally, looked into the enor-

mous mirror that ran along the side wall so she could keep
an eye on the entrance without turning her head. The restau-
rant was ostensibly owned by a pair of enterprising Argen-
tine brothers, dark and smoldering, who loved women more
than they did business. Which was just as well, because they
were a front. II Palazzo was, in fact, owned by Caesare
Leonforte-or, to be perfectly accurate, one of his subsid-
iary corporations.

Vesper crossed her legs, ordered another martini. She was
heart-stoppingly beautiful with cornflower-blue eyes and
hair like spun gold, blunt cut, that hung over one side of
her face. She wore a sleeveless Herve Leger dress that
showed her long legs-and every other part of her-to their
best advantage. That was, she reflected, what a $3,000 outfit
could do for you-make you look drop-dead sexy instead
of cheap.

An hour ago, Croaker, looking like a high-living dude on
the prowl, had picked her up at the marble-topped bar that
snaked its way down one side of the restaurant. Plenty of
people had seen him do it, which was the point-they were
not supposed to know one another.

He was a bear of a man with a rumpled, almost pushed-
in face that somehow made him seem resolute rather than
plain. You could also be intrigued by that weird polycarbo-
nate and titanium biomechanical hand the Japanese sur-
geons had given him. They were sharing a huge bowl of
Manila clams and a Caesar salad, and to anyone who looked
their way they certainly seemed to be having a time of it.
He told jokes and she laughed.

Speak of the devil, she thought, as in the mirror she saw
Caesare enter Il Palazzo with his entourage, larger than
usual today. This was her cue.

Caesare apparently was a creature of habit. He had come
here for lunch every day this week, which was why Croaker
had suggested they make contact here. Initially, Vesper had
been against his plan. Croaker had told her about his run-
ins with Caesare. Leonforte had tried to use Croaker against
Margarite, knowing that they had been having an affair, and
when Croaker had tried to get away, had made an attempt
on Croaker's life.

This is nuts. Bad Clams'll kill you on sight, she had said.

But Croaker had shaken his head. Not this bastard. That's
too direct. Trust me, he'll want to torture me first.

Caesare was swaggering into the restaurant. Vesper closed
her eyes now and, one sense at a time, detached herself
from the world around her. Soon enough, she was enveloped
by the beating of her heart, thundering like the beat of cere-
monial drums. She could feel the air rushing in and out of
her lungs as they inflated and deflated. As she concentrated
on this, her heartbeat receded until there was only the pecu-
liar silence of thought. The beat-beat-beat as the wings of
unseen birds filled her up as if she were a crystal vessel.

She turned her head, her eyes snapped open, and she
found herself gazing into Caesare Leonforte's eyes. Croaker
had been correct. In person, there was something feral, al-
most deranged, flickering in their depths. Even from across
the large room he seemed impressive. He had powerful
arms, a narrow waist, and an unruly shock of coarse hair.
This, combined with his wide, wry grin, gave him the aspect
of a reckless adolescent. Then, you came to the eyes and a
chill went through you.

While Caesare stared at her, she sat by Croaker's side,
entirely relaxed, waiting. She was fully briefed on Caesare;.
she knew he was not your typical gun-toting hood. Smart
and perhaps half-mad, Bad Clams ruled the West Coast fam-
ilies without quarter or remorse. Ever since he had come to
power, he had coveted Dominic Goldoni's hold on the East
Coast, and with Dom's assassination fifteen months ago he
had begun to probe for weaknesses.

"He's seen us," Vesper whispered to Croaker, and for
Caesare's benefit, threw her head back and laughed at some-
thing clever Croaker might have said.

Then she whispered, "All your backups have been set."
She was talking of their unit of the Anti-Cartel Task Force.

Something in the tone of her voice warned him. "If you're
getting cold feet, forget it. And for Christ's sake don't worry
about me. I've been around feds almost all my life. I can
handle them."

"Forrest's a good man but hardheaded-like you."

"I said, don't worry. I'll handle Wade Forrest and all my
other fed playmates at the ACTF. They're bureaucrats at
heart-political and ruthless. That makes them predictable."

Croaker was right about her. Like a bride just before her
wedding, she had begun to have doubts about this whole
scheme. She had had to make a deal with Forrest, who
headed the special group within ACTF that had been after
the Leonfortes for years: his intelligence and backup in ex-
change for sharing whatever they learned and letting him in
on the kill-if there was one. Forrest had had to admit that
the plan she and Croaker had cooked up, though unortho-
dox and dangerous, was the best shot at getting inside the
Leonforte organization. // Bad Clams is the one siphoning
off the country's most advanced weapons out of the DARPA
labs, I'll find out, she had confidently told him. Forrest was
impelled to believe her, not only because of her record with
Looking-Glass but because he had to. He had run out of
other options. So he had agreed to play backup, which was
fine as far as it went. But as Vesper had taken great pains
to point out to Croaker, though Forrest was absolutely reli-
able, as a fed he was sure to have his own agenda.

She was going to use Bad Clams's vulnerable spot-his
love of beautiful women-to get inside his organization, get
close to him. But in doing so, she was putting her neck on
the chopping block; as Forrest had pointed out, she'd be
totally vulnerable and beyond immediate help should the
scam blow up in her face. It was a daring and dangerous
plan, but it was their only chance to bring Bad Clams down.
Or it was going to get all of them dead.

"He's coming over," Vesper said.

Caesare disengaged himself from his entourage as they
were being seated at a round table laden with flowers on
the upper level and, like a moth to a flame, headed toward
Croaker and Vesper. He waved away two of his bodyguards
who had begun to follow him. Still, they quartered the room
with their narrow, blank eyes, like hunting dogs on point.

"And the signal," Vesper said with a false laugh.

"Don't for God's sake worry," Croaker said. "Your lus-
cious body at the window. How could I forget that?"

Vesper, smiling sweetly at Croaker, felt Bad Clams' prox-
imity. It was as if she had spent too much time in the Florida
sun. Her skin prickled, burning slightly as if it had been
rubbed raw.

"Croaker," Caesare rumbled, "fuck're you doing here?"

Croaker looked up into Bad Clams' face to see that he
was unabashedly staring down Vesper's cleavage.

"What does it look like?" Croaker spread his hands. "I'm
taking a vacation before I get back to my sportfishing busi-
ness in Marco Island."

"You're blowing smoke up my ass," Caesare said in his
most charming voice. "Your business is mono, dead." His
head swung around and he fixed Croaker with a steely gaze.
"Shouldn't you be back in NYC, trying to get into Marga-
rite's panties?"

"Who the hell is Margarite?" Vesper said, playacting in
a small, hurt voice.

Caesare's face opened up into his most charming grin. It
was the one he used when he wanted to win over and influ-
ence people. "I don't know what line this wise guy's been
feeding you, but he's got a steady squeeze back home. A
married squeeze, to boot."

"Shit!" She threw down her napkin. "And I thought you
were being straight with me."

"Sit down!" Croaker blazed, continuing their charade. He
was actually enjoying it, Vesper was a born actor. "Don't
listen to this guy. He's got a hard-on for me."

Caesare's grin got wider as he bent over Vesper. "The
only thing I got a hard-on for, my dear, is you." He extended
a hand. "How about you join my company over there. I'll
show you a really good time."

"Butt out," Croaker said.

At which point, Caesare turned on him. "You better
watch your mouth, wise guy, before you find yourself eating
outta your neck."

Croaker moved his biomechanical hand, the stainless-steel
nails beginning to extrude from the finger ends, when Cae-
sare slammed down a knife with a short, thick blade. The
point pierced the hand's titanium back, pinning it to the
table.

Caesare put his face up against Croaker's. "I told you
once before not to fuck with me, asshole, but you just go
along whistling your own tune. Now you'll see how stupid
that was."

He gave an oddly courtly bow, looking like an Old World

doge as he presented Vesper with a red rose from an adjoin-
ing table. "A beautiful flower for a beautiful woman."

Vesper inhaled its fragrance as Caesare took her hand.
She smiled up into his face as he led her away. As he did
so, he turned back to Croaker. That demented light in his
eyes flared like a nova as he grinned broadly. "Know what,
asshole? I'm gonna take my time an' think of what else I
can take away from you."

It took all of Croaker's resolve to sit tight, stare at a spot
behind and above Leonforte's left shoulder, and ignore his
manic cackle. What next? he thought. Will he kick up his
feet and click his heels in delight?

Bad Clams might laugh as he took Vesper away. But the
laugh was on him, wasn't it? Croaker thought, pulling the
blade out of his hand. He flexed his fingers, one by one,
testing their response. He felt no pain, and of course there
was no blood. Many of the hand's circuits were self-
repairing, but there were others that could be damaged. He
put on a sour glance as he saw Bad Clams seating Vesper
next to him at the large round table. His plan had worked.
Vesper, posing as a Florida bimbo, was inside, as close to
Leonforte as you could possibly get. Now, she would have
to use all her skills to stay there. Caesare was attracted to
her, that much was obvious, but she would have to work to
ensure that he did not view her as simply a one-night stand.

Margarite, preoccupied with Rich Cooper's betrayal, was
heading toward her Lexus. Memory was so odd. Afterward,
she could recall only seeing Frankie, her driver, swing out
of the Lexus where he had been reading the Daily News's
racing pages. She could see his smile as he headed around
the front of the car. She could even remember seeing the
bulge under his jacket where his .38 was bolstered in his
armpit.

Then it seemed everything happened at once. Her body-
guard, Rocco, appeared to slip, going down by her side. She
looked down, saw one leg crumpled under his body. He was
clawing for his gun when his head blew backward, spraying
blood and brains all over a dowager walking down the block.
She screamed and Margarite turned to see Frankie crouch-
ing down beside the offside fender of the Lexus. He was

shouting for her to get down. Then he was running toward
her, stretching out, leaping in front of her, twisting in midair
as a bullet caught him beneath the chin, destroying his cri-
coid cartilage. Another shattered his right shoulder blade,
but as a practical matter, he never felt it because he was
already dead.

Margarite felt a hot spurt as Frankie fell against her. She
tried to catch him but he was dead weight and she went to
her knees.

"Frankie! Jesus and Mary, Frankie!"

Her hand, trapped under him, felt the cool metal edge of
his .38. Instinctively, she pulled it out from under him. She
was already aware of a swirl of movement, of people scream-
ing, yes, the beginning of chaos, but within that the outlines
of three thugs running toward her, guns drawn. Who were
they? Imported talent. Out-of-town professional hit men,
she'd bet. Her heart was pounding painfully. He's coming
after me, she thought. First the Leonfortes murdered Dom
and now it's my turn.

She tried to stand up, but the .38 was caught in a fold of
Frankie's coat. Margarite cried out, used the heel of her
shoe to roll him over, his dead eyes turned upward, a line
of red spittle running from the corner of his mouth down
his chin.

One of the three thugs was on his knee, leaning against
a parked car in a sharpshooter's stance, a .45 aimed at her.
Margarite got the gun free, swung it at the end of an iron-
straight arm, squeezed the trigger. The kneeling man was
blown backward by the shot, his arms upraised. His-two pals
stopped dead in their tracks, momentarily stunned.

She got off another shot, then she was up and running,
swinging into the Lexus through the open driver's door,
switching on the ignition even before she had fully slid be-
hind the wheel. One foot found the accelerator, slid off it
in her near-panic as she threw the Lexus in gear. She
screamed as a shot shattered her rear window and she
stamped on the accelerator, swinging out into traffic without
checking the side mirror, clipping the headlight of an oncom-
ing taxi. Horns shrilled angrily along with brakes.

Another shot ripped through the interior of the Lexus and
she was off, correcting for the overswing caused by the crash,

speeding through a red light, almost broadsiding a dilapi-
dated truck that was lumbering along, clearing it and almost
running over a delivery cyclist, stamping hard on the brakes,
making the U-turn on Park Avenue in a welter of flying
safety glass and torn chrome and plastic, heading downtown
like a bat out of hell toward the Midtown Tunnel and home
in Old Westbury.

The driver turned the bulletproof limo into the crushed-
shell driveway of the huge white mansion in West Palm
Beach with its Tara-like columns, Old World porte cochere,
thick hedges, and pristine manicured lawn. It stood at the
end of Linda Lane where it debouched onto Flagler Drive.
Its site was not as flashy, perhaps, as one on Ocean Boule-
vard just to the northeast of West Palm in Palm Beach
proper, but then it was far more secluded, and just as im-
portant, its approach was through a solid middle-class resi-
dential district, rather than the black ghetto just west of
Palm Beach.

In overlooking the bright blue water of Lake Worth, the
mansion did not have a view of the Atlantic, but it also
lacked the flocks of tourists and curiosity seekers that drove
by the glitzy areas in an almost unending stream.

"Here we go," Bad Clams said with what Vesper thought
was an inordinate amount of glee. "Weimaraner alert."

The limo came to a halt just inside the iron gates while
Bad Clams slipped down a window, said, "New blood."

A gimlet-eyed sentry glowered, while another bearlike
man slammed open the rear door. He had with him a power-
ful Weimaraner on a short choke chain. The Weimaraner
stuck its ugly snout into the interior where Vesper was sit-
ting beside Leonforte. A genuinely scary monster, it looked
as if it had been fed a diet of bloody meat and steroids for
the past six months. As it brought its powerful forepaws
onto the carpeted floor, the sentry eyed Vesper with sullen
lust.

"Open your bag," he ordered.

Vesper snapped open her handbag so the dog's muzzle
could root around in her personal possessions. So this is how
it's going to be, she thought. Bad Clams, crude but magnetic,
was no dummy. He had presided over the large table, regal-

ing his entourage with stories ranging over many topics. All
the while, his hand was exploring Vesper's thigh beneath
her tight dress. Before he went too far she had clamped her
fingers over his. This had astonished him and, not unexpect-
edly, had increased his ardor. It was Vesper's experience
that men coveted most what they could not have, so it had
come as no surprise to her when Bad Clams had cut the
luncheon short to invite her home.

The sentry grunted as the Weimaraner strained to sniff
her. "Out of the van."

Vesper looked over at Bad Clams, who was staring at her
with such fixed intensity it would have made her blood run
cold had she not been prepared for him.

"You gotta problem with my security, babe?"

She smiled sweetly. "Not a one."

Clambering out, she drew on dark glasses, stood perfectly
still in the Florida harsh sunlight while the sentry slipped the
Weimaraner's chain. The dog almost skipped in its elation to
be free. Sunlight sheened its sleek gray coat. It stalked
around her, then buried its nose in her crotch. The sentry,
watching her face, broke out into a smile.

Nobody said a word. Vesper's cool blue eyes held the
sentry's until he was forced to look away.

Bad Clams laughed. "Some pair of balls on her, right,
Joey?"

"Yeah, sure, Mr. Leonforte," Joey said, re-leashing the
Weimaraner.

Bad Clams gestured. "Come on back inside, babe. You
passed." He watched her as she ducked her head to get
inside the limo. "You okay?"

"Sure. As long as that dog doesn't mistake me for lunch."

"Leave that to me," Bad Clams chuckled. He covered her
knee with his hand as they went up the drive to the porte
cochere. Vesper sat back, content for the moment

The mansion was as white inside as it was on the exterior.
It must be a bitch to clean, Vesper thought. Not that that
would mean anything to a sport like Bad Clams Leonforte.
Curving walls made of blocks of translucent glass gave the
sunlight a kind of explosive echo. The furniture, which
looked made-to-order, had that low, sleek, frictionless look
of ultramodern Milanese fashion. A pair of white leather

sofas crouched like a pair of commas around a sunken pool
in which spotted carp swam with lazy indifference. A ridicu-
lous bronze fireplace large enough to stand in was filled
with an enormous display of fresh flowers, the riot of colors
startling in the stark formality of the room.

Music was playing: Jerry Vale on one of those CD endless
loops. "You like this shit?" Bad Clams asked rhetorically as
he strode to the stack of matte-black audiovideo equipment
that glowed like the control in an airplane cockpit. "Person-
ally, I can't stand it," he said, taking the CD off-line, "but
the staff, you know, it's kind of like a tradition. Reminds
'em of mom and pop or somethin'."

"Does Jerry Vale remind you of your father?"

He paused, turning slowly to look deep into her eyes.
Perhaps he was just paranoid about whether she knew who
his father was. She slowed her heartbeat with the same
method she used to fool a lie detector. That kind of thing
was fun for her-a challenge worthy of her extraordinary
mind. She was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Yale, and of
Columbia University with a degree in clinical psychology,
plus a doctorate in parapsychology. She had also been a
member of Mensa.

"My old man never listened to Jerry Vale," Bad Clams
said with exaggerated care. "Opera was his bag. Give him
a good aria an' within minutes he could be in tears."

Vesper, feigning disinterest, was scanning his CD collec-
tion. She pulled out a jewel box. "How about this?"

Bad Clams took the CD from her, looked at it. "Gerry
Mulligan? Really? You like jazz?"

She nodded. "Some, like Mulligan and Brubeck and
Miles. Not the pop-fusion crap." She had done her home-
work, memorizing his CD collection in the time it would
take other people to register the names of a few titles.

"Me, too." Bad Clams slipped the disc into the player, and
Multigan's elegant baritone sax drifted through the room.

Without warning, he swung her around and, taking her in
his arms, began to dance. He was surprisingly good at it,
light on his feet, looser, more open to the beat than most
men. His hips swiveled opposite hers. He had drunk quite
a bit at the restaurant but he showed no signs of being high.
She felt him, weighty as a dark star, pulling her inward with

a force not unlike gravity. For a moment, she felt frightened,
out of control, as if, like the Weimaraner outside, something
inside her had slipped its leash. Whirled around, she took a
deep breath, swallowing whole the disconcerting feeling.

For Vesper, a self-imposed orphan, a child of the streets
who knew what it was like to be savage and homeless, her
worst nightmare was to feel out of control. She had been
born in Potomac, Maryland, to Maxwell and Bonny Harcas-
ter, but they were no longer a part of her life, if they ever
had been. Gifted or doomed with a mind outpacing her body
and her emotions, she had early experimented with drugs,
sex, alternative lifestyles, everything and anyone she could
lay her hands on. Nothing was too outré or taboo. She knew
very well about AIDS-one of her friends had died of it
long before it hit mainstream America between the eyes-
and still she did not stop experimenting. She could not. Re-
maining still was her only fear, back then. Totally out of
control, she careened from one bizarre encounter to another,
self-destruction part of an alien vocabulary she could not
recognize.

Like a discarded coin, scarred and grimy, she had been
plucked off the mean streets by Mikio Okami. She had been
absolutely alone when he found her, severed from hu-
mankind as if she had been a leper. In her feral and fear-
driven state she had tried to bite him, to scratch his eyes
out, believing with the fevered paranoia of the streets that
he meant to rape her. It took time to purge her delirium,
and still she distrusted him because she was convinced he
wanted to tame her, to break her spirit, when all he wanted
to do was to set it free.

Now, dancing groin to groin with Bad Clams Leonforte,
Vesper's old fear of losing control welled up once again,
threatening to strangle her. She had for so long kept her
wild emotions in check that the thought of returning to that
ungovernable state had seemed unthinkable even a half hour
ago. But in Caesare's arms she seemed to have been taken
up by a primal force, thrown sideways out of herself-the
self she and Mikio Okami had painstakingly built through
three years at Yale and four at Columbia, then five years in
Okami's service. He had forged high school grades for her,
and she in turn had scored full marks on the SATs, had

wowed college examiners in interviews. She had had her
pick of colleges, all at full scholarship. Mikio Okami had
been right, the whole world had been waiting to take her
up in its arms.

Caesare's hand was at the small of her back, moving in
an almost imperceptible circle. She stared into his eyes as
he drew her hips against his. She saw the red spark; the
scent of dementia was upon him, and it was so recognizable
to her that her nostrils flared. If he were, indeed, mad, then
it was an insanity with which she was intimately familiar.
The very thought of it, a triumphant yowl in the night,
caused a shiver to run down her spine.

Mulligan's sax blew through the pockets of soft shadow
and blazing light, bouncing off the glass blocks as if they
were mirrors. Outside, the royal palms dipped as if in three-
quarter time, and the shore lights blazed in the hot, span-
gled afternoon.

Vesper, swaying back and forth in Caesare's arms, felt
caught in the magnet of time, drawn inexorably back to
when she was in her teens, tight as a rubber band, when
she had managed to exceed every limit society put upon its
denizens. She was a citizen of no land, accountable to no
one, feverishly fucking one woman after another, loving
them harder, treating them more roughly perhaps than any
man would. Which was why her recruitment by Mikio
Okami had been a godsend, because he had offered her a
legitimate outlet for all her birds in flight, their talons drawn,
their beaks open in a perpetual screech.

For the longest time, she had thought of her-well, her
mind for want of a better word-as a flock of falcons, borne
on the night wind, driving her aloft. Of course, this was
probably drug-induced imagery, but it stuck with her
nonetheless.

Now, as Caesare's lips came down over hers, she felt the
stirring of her falcons as they shifted restlessly on the dark
perch where she had relegated them when she had seen
Mikio Okami for what he was, had accepted him. And she
knew if she did not find some way to deflect them, they
would soon take wing and take her where she had promised
herself she would never go again.

Caesare was whispering her name and she closed her eyes.

She was aware that he was backing her toward one of the
curving glass-brick walls, and her heart rate climbed. She
felt the cool glass against her back and Caesare came against
her. She was flooded in green light, diffused through the
translucent brick, diamondlike sunlight bouncing off the
water in the pool, casting a rippling funnel of illumination
on the ceiling.

She drew one leg up along his thigh, surrendering, and
his hand was at the place she had been denying him all
afternoon long. He cupped her, then pressed his middle fin-
gers gently in, splitting her open.

Her head went back and she released a low moan as her
falcons took wing from out of the darkness, the exile into
which she had plunged them. Talons extruded, they began
to scream in her ears. Once, when she was seventeen and
in the full grip of her madness, her lust for women had
caused her to consider undergoing the operation that would
have completed the transformation she believed already
begun. Strange as it might seem, Caesare Leonforte was the
first man she had been with who made her forget that she
had ever wanted to be a man.

He was panting now as he peeled her elasticized dress up
over her hips. Her fingers unbelted and unzipped his trou-
sers. When she freed him, he was hard and heavy and she
could not wait. She rubbed him against her and almost
fainted with the sensation. Then she guided him inside, all
the breath rushing out of her at once, to be replaced by a
liquid heat that filled her up.

At the feel of him inside her, she began to spasm, losing
herself in the ecstasy of orgasm that made her cry out. She
bit the meat of his shoulder, pulling him hard against her,
coming again, shuddering and slipping down the glass wall.
He followed her, on top of her, the weight feeling good,
making her feel protected and whole. Somewhere, deep
down, a tiny part of her that was still rational quailed at
such insanity. But it was soon drowned out by the crying of
the falcons, which merged with Vesper's sobbing moans as
she was shaken by yet another orgasm.

This was too much even for Caesare, who felt himself
ejaculating. The feeling was quite beyond his control, and
stunned, he hunched against her spasming body, wanting

nothing more than to get more deeply inside her than he
already was. That was the moment he knew he was in
trouble.

She slept where she lay, wet with her own fluids and his,
for the moment drained. While Caesare rose to start making
his phone calls, while Mulligan's eternal sax continued to
drift through the mansion, Vesper dreamed she was back at
Columbia, immersed in the parapsychology program, but in
the curious symbology of dream she was thinking of Cae-
sare. She had entrapped him by using the force of her per-
sonality, drawing him to her at the restaurant with a silent
beckoning. But, this time, her charism-the charism that had
terrified her, that she had been running from, that Okami
had forced her to face and to manipulate-had backfired. It
had somehow opened her up to his magnetism, letting the
falcons free. And now she was in the most dangerous posi-
tion of her life.

 

3

Tokyo/New York

"The French have a saying: Between the hour of the dog
and the wolf lies the end of all things."

"Is that a real time?"

Mick Leonforte smiled. "Indeed, yes. It is the hour be-
tween twilight and dusk, when the sun has slipped behind
the horizon but the night has not yet arrived, when the goat
herders of the Luberon mountain range instruct their dogs
to bring their charges from the grazing lands before the wolf
can strike them down." Mick pursed his lips. "It is the hour
when anything is possible."

Ginjiro Machida, the chief of the Tokyo Prosecutor's Of-
fice, sucked on teeth stained by tobacco the color of old
ivory. "The end-"

"Or the beginning," Mick said. "The mutability. You see,
it all ties in."

"How so?"

"History is constantly being rewritten by the present."
Mick moved restlessly around the rhomboid-shaped room,
prowling like a caged animal. "Great minds are defined by
their ability to reinterpret the past, reject the lies pro-
pounded by a conspiracy of so-called historians, and extract
the hard truths buried there. After all, what is history but a
synthesis of language and text. But language, by its very

definition, is notoriously unreliable, and texts are by and
large ambiguous, open to interpretation, and therefore,
distortion."

The two men were in Machida's Tokyo house. It was a
cultural landmark, having been built in the 1920s after de-
signs of Frank Lloyd Wright. It was constructed entirely of
concrete blocks that had been carved in a vaguely Mayan
pattern. The result was both otherworldly and wildly futuris-
tic, a combination that most people found forbidding, op-
pressive, and much too intense.

Machida, however, adored it. Restrained in every other
way, the house was his one passion in life, and keeping it
in pristine condition had become an obsession.

"I am a deconstructionist," Mick was saying. "By careful
textual analysis I dismantle, history piece by piece until, by
peeling away the layers of misinterpretation, misrepresenta-
tion, and manipulation-in other words all subjectivism-I
come upon the truth."

Machida stared into the varnished stone and polished
bronze hearth while he considered this. He was a dark-com-
plexioned man with a flat face, slicked-back hair, and the
predatory manner of a successful litigator, which is precisely
what he had been before ascending to the exalted apex of
the Tokyo Prosecutor's Office. He had a wide mouth and
huge, coal-black eyes that seemed to see everything at once.

At length, he turned to Mick, who stood slouched in a
black Issey Miyake suit, looking every inch a visitor from
another planet. "You deny everything that has come before.
You manipulate. In effect, you murder the past."

"No, no, no. Just the opposite," Mick said. "I seek a rein-
terpretation, a forum to show-as in the case of the so-called
holocaust-how past events have been misinterpreted-in
some cases, as with the Jews, systematically manipulated to
portray a victimization that never actually occurred."

Machida possessed that form of stillness, a serene author-
ity, most prized by the Japanese. Without it, one could never
ascend into the starry firmament of business or bureaucracy.
"Six million Jews did not die by Nazi hands. This is your
contention."

"Yes."

"And all the documentation-"

"Staged, doctored, faked." Mick made a gesture, the flat
of his hand cutting diagonally through the air. "I told you,
the systematic manipulation of past events is endemic. The
science of history is only now making itself heard all over
the globe. But its time is coming. I promise you, it will not
be denied."

Machida allowed himself the ghost of a smile, as he went
to a silver and black marble deco bar decorated with a frieze
of borzois and whippet-thin women. "Yes, your philosophy
is quite dynamic, quite ... compelling." He laughed. "You
won me over in a single sitting, and these men ... well, so
as not to be indiscreet, let me just say that they are predis-
posed to this body of thought."

As if you're not, Mick thought as he strode across the
room. Putting his face close to the chief prosecutor's, he
said, "You know what clay pigeons are? That's it, exactly.
You take care of getting me in to see these bozos and I'll
do the rest."

Machida, who did not care for close proximity to others,
did not give so much as an inch. "Often, you know, I wonder
at- the wisdom of entering into an alliance with you."

"Then get the hell out," Mick snapped. "I don't care for
partners with dancing feet."            

Machida, who had poured them both large glasses of Sun-
tory Scotch, now handed one to Mick. "I can't get out. Not
at this late date. I have gone to a great deal of trouble to
locate and identify all the members of Denwa Partners who
would be, er, responsive to your message. Promises have
been given, deals have been struck, compensation has
changed hands. You have been in Asia a long time; you
understand these things."

Mick politely took a sip, then put the glass down. "Yes,
I do." He didn't much care for Japanese Scotch.

"Good." Machida made no physical movement, but some-
thing inside him seemed to extend out, pushing against Mick
like a negative charge, making his skin tingle and the little
hairs at the back of his neck quiver. "Because I know you
have had partners in the past. None, I believe, have sur-
vived. Those are bad odds." Machida shrugged without
seeming to move his shoulders. "This does not faze me. I

have made and maintained my reputation on situations with
bad odds. They are, so to speak, my rice."

"Is this a threat?"

That ghost of a smile returned to play at the corners of
Machida's wide mouth. "When you know me better, you
will see that I never make threats. I make predictions."

Mick had also been in Asia long enough to understand
this game of who had the larger katana. The Japanese were
absolutely passionate about seeing how far you would allow
yourself to be pushed before you held the line. It was only
then they might grant you a measure of respect

"Everywhere around me," Machida continued, "I see the
closed faces of those who fear the changes proposed by the
so-called reformers. I, alone, am unafraid of these reformers
because they have no power. I am the power. I buy and sell
deals, I purchase people the way other people buy rice. This
is the way it has been in Japan since the war in the Pacific
and it is how it will remain. The reformers are not only
powerless, they are naive. Their ^coalition' is a joke. Al-
ready, it has fallen apart so many times that defections have
made its face unrecognizable. Special interest is what, in the
end, makes Japan run like a well-oiled engine. The old
Japan will abide; I will abide, despite the ineffectual efforts
of the reformers-political or otherwise."

Mick knew all this, of course. It was why he had come to
Machida in the first-place. "As Nietzsche said, 'If you want
the bond to hold, bite on it-free and bold.' If I have had
no partners who survived their bond with me, it was because
they lacked the will-or the courage-to bite on it boldly."

Machida clacked his white teeth together loudly. Possibly
he was amused, although it was difficult even for Mick to
tell. At that moment, the doorbell rang, and without moving
at all, Machida said, "An unfortunate but necessary inter-
ruption." He gestured. "There is a wide range of interesting
books in the library down the hall. Some of them are even
in English."

"I read Japanese," Mick said, instantly regretting the ad-
mission. You never knew when such an advantage would
come in handy, whether among friend or foe.

Nodding to Machida, he went down the hall, out of sight.

When he had made certain Mick was out of sight,
Machida went into the entryway and opened the front door.

"Chief Prosecutor," Takuo Hatta said, bowing deeply.

Machida ushered him inside. He was a small, compact
man with iron-gray hair cut so short his scalp gleamed
through. He wore round, steel-rimmed spectacles, his watery
eyes magnified by the thick lenses. He carried a battered
leather attaché case, which he clutched as if it held all the
secrets of the state.

"I thought I told you to buy yourself a new attaché case,"
Machida said with some distaste. "This one looks as if the
dogs got to it."

"Yes, Chief Prosecutor," Hatta said in the midst of an
orgy of continuous bowing. "I simply haven't the time to-"

"Are you complaining about the workload?"

"No, Chief Prosecutor."

"Because I did you a great favor by naming you my ad-
ministrative adjutant. The way you botched the Noguchi
prosecution was enough for serious reprimand. I cannot un-
derstand how you failed to conduct a proper set of inter-
views. It is inexcusable that you missed Noguchi's illicit
connection with Tora Securities. You are a competent ad-
ministrator, but when it comes to people ... pah!"

With that sound of disgust, Hatta winced, watching from
the corner of his eye as Machida went to the bar, drank a
sizable gulp of Scotch. There was another glass there and
he almost downed that, as well. "Every time I see you my
'stomach turns over," he said unkindly. "Noguchi is still
laughing at your incompetence. You dishonored the entire
office." He turned around. "And I would have demoted you
save for the fact that my former adjutant resigned to move
to Kyoto the day your debacle came to light, I needed an
adjutant and there was no one else available. Bad luck for
me, perhaps; good luck for you." He came back across the
room. "When I tell you to do something, do it. Get a new
attaché during your lunch break tomorrow."

"Yes, Chief Prosecutor."

"Now, have you reviewed the brief Tanaka Gin submitted
on Tetsuo Akinaga?"

Hatta dived into the open attaché. "Right here, Chief
Prosecutor."

Machida took the folder from his adjutant, grunted as he
read. "Perhaps I did not make such a blunder with you,
Hatta-san. You demonstrate you are not stupid. Plus, your -
single status affords you the luxury of working my late
hours."

Hatta bowed. "I do not deserve such praise, Chief Prose-
cutor," he said, watching as Machida went through the brief,
which was to be filed the next morning. Machida was notori-
ous for nitpicking a brief until it was virtually unassailable
in court

Machida was frowning. "I'm only on page two and I al-
ready see problems." His forefinger stabbed out. "Here,
here, and here. Ministerial signatures are missing, noted tes-
timony is missing or incomplete." He looked up. "We can-
not bring Akinaga into court with the brief in this state.
Where is Tanaka Gin?"

"He is working the Kurtz murder, Chief Prosecutor."

"Ah, yes. Gin-san has a reputation for piling his plate
high, eh, Hatta-san?"

"Yes, Chief Prosecutor."

"This Kurtz matter is high profile. The man was an iteki,
a foreigner, and a fabulously wealthy one at that, involved
in business all over Asia. I need Gin-san on that case and I
have no one else for reassignment." His forefinger stabbed
out again. "I have an idea, Hatta-san." He pushed the folder
into his adjutant's hands. "You rework the Akinaga brief,
obtain the missing material. I have marked the trouble spots.
Then I will review it with you." He nodded, settling the
matter in his mind. "In the meantime, you will have to peti-
tion the court for a postponement."

"Akinaga-san's attorneys are apt to make the most of it.
Gin-san has already been granted two delays in order to get
the brief to this state."

"Just do it," Machida said dismissively. "Keep me in-
formed if you run into trouble."

But by Machida's tone Hatta knew he was expected to
gain the delay on his own. "Yes, Chief Prosecutor. First
thing in the morning."

Machida saw Hatta but, shutting the door firmly behind
him. When he turned around, Mick was already standing in

the living room.

"Trouble in paradise, Chief Prosecutor?"

"Nothing a few more billion yen would not cure."
Machida sighed, pouring himself another Scotch. "This re-
cession is becoming tiresome."

"Even for the Dai-Roku, I imagine," Mick said, bring-
ing the conversation back to where it had been going when
they were interrupted.

Machida turned. "It is not, perhaps, a good idea to men-
tion this word aloud."

"What, here?" Mick guffawed. "This is your own home,
for Christ's sake. Lighten up, will you? We're talking a
group of guys here."

Machida looked as if he were chewing on a lemon wedge.
"Dai-Roku is more an ideal than a group. There are no
meetings, no notes taken, only verbal exchanges made, never
over any electronic media. Dai-Roku is a way of life, a con-
tinuation of traditions of strength and value prevalent in
samurai Japan before the Meiji Restoration of the nine-
teenth century stripped away their power and influence."

Mick shrugged. "Group or ideal, it makes no difference
to me. I struck a deal with you because I had been told that
you could make contact with the Dai-Roku, that you could
identify those within it who were also Denwa Partners in
Sato International's TransRim CyberNet. And that you have
done with admirable efficiency."

Machida bowed deferentially. "You did the right thing,"
he said with a warning note. "Dai-Roku does not take kindly
to gaijin-to Westerners. If you had been foolish enough to
attempt to contact them yourself, you would have run into
a stone wall. Those who adhere to Dai-Roku all have great
power and influence and insight into the way the world will
be tomorrow and tomorrow. They trust me implicitly. Why,
how many services have I done them-and they me." He
chuckled a moment. "With me as an intermediary, they will see
you. As for the rest ..." He shrugged, indicating that the
rest would be up to Mick.

"That is why they're perfect for my plan," Mick said. "I
need visionaries, people who are as concerned with all the
tomorrows as they are with today."

They had come to a kind of understanding, at least an
equilibrium. But Mick did not for a moment believe Machi-

da's assertions of humility. That, he knew, was just the Japa-
nese way of communicating, that damnable Confucian thing
all Asians had of being humble, of saying "can do" when
they meant "can't do" or "won't do." Everything was possi-
ble in Asia, if you were foolish enough to believe it.

Mick suspected that Machida was not the Dai-Roku's
lackey runner, as he apparently wanted Mick to believe.
Mick believed that he was one of the men he needed to win
over, to sell his potent brand of deconstructionism.

If, as Machida maintained, Dai-Roku was a kind of philos-
ophy of samurai purity, it functioned as a loose-knit alliance
of businessmen and bureaucrats who not only believed in
this almost mythical purity of purpose but, in more practical
terms, had come together .out of mutual necessity.

The recent evolution in Japanese politics had proved that
business could no longer go on as usual-the kickback
schemes to keep politicians in one's back pocket were no
longer feasible as a simple solution to getting favorable legis-
lation passed or assuring tax breaks or industry incentives
that would give one's company an edge over all one's rivals.

More subtle forms of influence peddling were required if
those who believed in Dai-Roku were to maintain their posi-
tions and continue to build their wealth and -suzerainty.
These men-all captains of multibillion-dollar keiretsu or
chief ministers of their respective bureaucracies-were akin
to the feudal lords of seventeenth-century Japan. Each had
his particular fiefdom from which he derived his power and
status in society. Therefore, those domains were of para-
mount importance to them.

Mick knew that for all their vaunted influence, deep down
these men were running scared. Yet they maintained the
disposition of a glacier. Change came to them in infinitesimal
degrees, if it came at all, and then only after an earth-
shattering struggle.

The endless stream over the past six years of political and
business influence peddling, illegal-contribution and kick-
back scandals that had ruined companies, brokerage firms,
and had, at last, brought down the long-ruling Liberal Dem-
ocratic Party, had rattled them. They saw, in the increasing
scrutiny not only by law enforcement officials but also by

the normally placid and indifferent public, a threat to their
mini-empires.

The inevitability of change was what these men refused
to grasp. Mick and Machida had gone into partnership in
order to capitalize on these men's fear, to harness then-
power and influence in ways they had never conceived of.
To exploit them in the way they spent their lives exploiting
those beneath their social station.

Machida seemed a willing confederate in this scheme per-
haps because of all those who adhered to Dai-Roku, he
lacked the requisite moneyed background to be considered
fully an equal. Also, Mick believed, Machida secretly felt
the others tolerated bun simply because of his position. As
chief prosecutor he was in the ideal position to keep them
abreast of the latest investigations and to warn them of im-
pending crackdowns, raids, and sting operations-all ever-
widening nets in which these men or their cronies, associates,
and those they kept on secret payroll might one day be
caught.

Now, with the scheme in place, it was Mick's job to con-
vince the Dai-Roku change was not only continuing to occur
but that-surprise!-it could actually be used to make them
wealthier and more influential. In one sense, it could be said
that Mick was selling them nothing, using a sophisticated
version of the con game. But, on another level, he would
refute that. Because his own passion was as strong-possibly
even stronger-than theirs. Mick wanted nothing less than
to change history, to move the Nietzschean philosophy into
the twenty-first century: the complete control of the com-
merce of business and thought. It was his right and due as
an Übermensch, a Nietzschean Superman; who better than
he to control the destiny of the world. And to think that
the very technology of this new age would bring it to him.
As more and more Japanese companies became comfortable
with the vid-byte technology of the CyberNet, they would
use it more and more to instantaneously transmit data over
lines that would be proclaimed secure. A veritable treasure
trove of secrets would come spilling into Mick's lap: Sony's
newest digitized electronic breakthroughs, Masushita's tech-
nology for a tiny video camera worn inside the rim of a pair
of eyeglasses, which companies were currently on Mill's

most favored list, even which way the yen would go. So
many, many ways to make money, to gain a crucial edge
over a competitor. So much to do and so little time to do
it in.

This ambitious takeover of international commerce he had
no doubt he could do, assuming he had enough money, lev-
erage, and the right people behind him. He had already had
a number of years building his underground arms and drug
networks throughout Southeast Asia from his former base
of Floating City. Now it was time to get into the legitimate
end of commerce. This he meant to do here in Tokyo, where
the tenor of the times-militancy-the temperament of the
people-subservience-seemed to him ideal. And, of course,
Tokyo was where Sato International was; Sato with its
TransRim CyberNet. If all went as planned, he would be
inside Sato within a matter of weeks-if he could convince
the Denwa Partners to go along with him. They would, of
course, because he had done his homework, he knew these
men and what made them tick. What he would offer them,
they would find irresistible. These men feared change above
all else because it was the status quo in Japan that lent them
their power. They could see cracks forming in their power-
political scandals, bribery links to brokerage houses, giant
construction companies they owned-a vast and swelling
outcry from the media and the public. These things they
feared and reacted against instinctively.

Mick would give them what they needed to allay their
fears-an establishment of a new status quo that enhanced
their power base. How could they resist? Once they made
that crucial decision, he would control them. They would be
his entree into Sato International. And once there, he would
exert his influence, quickly, decisively, in true Nietzschean
fashion, causing the ruin of the man he had come to view
as his nemesis, his doppelgänger: Nicholas Linnear.

Margarite awoke from a dream-stalked sleep cramped and
grimy-eyed. She uncurled herself from the backseat of the
Lexus. She got out of the car and stretched. It was just past
noon, not surprising since she had not fallen asleep until-
what?-four, five in the morning? Then she got behind the

wheel, drove out of the telephone rest stop, and hit the first
7-Eleven she came to.

Over a steaming hot coffee and a Drakes cake, she pon-
dered her situation. Perhaps she had carried paranoia too
far by not checking into any one of a number of anonymous-
looking motels that dotted the Long Island Expressway, but
she had not wanted to take a chance. She took another sip
of overroasted coffee and massaged the back of her neck.

Late last night she had been within a couple of miles of
her mansion in Old Westbury when it occurred to her she
was doing just about the most foolish thing she could do.
Wasn't it logical that the people who had tried to kill her
would have her house staked out? Sure. She had been in

such a panic leaving the scene of the abortive strike against
her that she had not been thinking straight Clearly, she
needed to get away and to implement a well-considered
course of action. She .had to call Tony, and this she did while
she kept driving on the Long Island Expressway past her
customary exit.

"Call Tony's office," she had said to the phone mounted
on the center console of her car. She glanced at her watch,
gave a little scream. She had to wipe away blood-Rocco's
or her driver Frankie's-before she could see the numerals.
It had been seven-thirty. Tony would be finished with his
massage by now and back at work, making his most im-
portant West Coast calls.

"Hello. Who's this, please?"

A strange voice on the other end of the line. When she
identified herself and asked for Tony, he said gruffly, "Hold
a sec', don't go away." She heard a muffled word on the
phone, something that sounded like Lew Tennant, and she
automatically thought of Lew Croaker. My God, how I miss
him, she thought. He'd know what to do in this crisis.

"Mrs. DeCamillo? That you?" Another voice, deeper, a
whiskey baritone.

When she answered, he said, "My name's Jack Barnett,
Mrs. DeCamillo. I'm a detective lieutenant with the NYPD."
That was it, she thought. Lew Tennant. Lieutenant. "I'm
afraid I have some bad news regarding your husband."

An icy chill gripped Margarite's modes. She swerved off

the expressway onto the trash-strewn grassy verge where she
braked to a halt, watching her hands shake. "Is he dead?"

"I'm afraid so, Mrs. DeCamillo. Murdered in his office."

Bad Clams. So many emotions rushing through her like a
wind blowing down a canyon. Tony dead. She felt as if her
soul were being scoured clean by the hand of God. She
slowed her breathing into deep inhalations, struggling to
clear her mind, so she could ask the right questions.

"Mrs. DeCamillo? Are you still there?"

Concentrate, damn it! "When did it happen?" she said,
slamming the door shut.

"I beg your pardon?"

'"What time was Tony killed?" She was impatient now
because this information was crucial.

"I'm not sure. But it couldn't have been more than an
hour ago. The blood hasn't yet fully coagulated."

"I see."

There was a small pause. "Mrs. DeCamillo, I wonder
where you are. You've had quite a shock, maybe someone
should be with you. Plus, it would be helpful if we could
talk to you."

"I'm afraid that's impossible, Lieutenant ..."

"Barnett, ma'am. Jack Barnett."

"I'm on the road right now and it will be some time be-
fore I can get back to the city." She looked around her at
the cars whizzing by as she listened to the silence build at
the other end of the line.

"Do you think that's wise, Mrs. DeCamillo? I mean, your
husband has been murdered. The people who did this could
be looking for you. At the very least, I'd think you'd want
protection."

He is right about that, she thought. Cars and more cars
swimming by like schools offish, blurred and indistinct, each
carrying passengers with their own life stories. An uncaring
cavalcade of metal and flesh-ignorant of what's happening to
my life. First, my partner betrays me, selling my company out
from under me, then my bodyguard and driver are gunned
down and I am almost killed at just about the same time that
• Tony is murdered.

"Mrs. DeCamillo?" Lieutenant Barnett's voice broke into
her thoughts. "If you know anything about the circum-

stances of your husband's murder or you believe you have
any information regarding the perpetrator or perpetrators,
it would be in your best interests to tell me. Plus, it could
help stave off a potential bloodbath."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"A lawyer like your husband with a lotta different busi-
ness interests, it's only natural he'd made some very power-
ful enemies. Mrs. DeCamillo, I wonder whether we're
connecting."

"Go to hell."

"I know you're upset. But, see what I'm doing, Mrs. De-
Camillo? I'm reaching out to you the best way I know how.
Do you think you could take even one step in my
direction?"

Margarita suddenly felt Vulnerable, sitting on the side of
the LIE with her rear window a spiderweb of broken glass.
I've got to get out of here, she thought.

"If you want to know who killed my husband, talk to
Caesare Leonforte," she said, severing the connection.

That was when the full brunt of the paranoia had taken
hold, and instead of pulling into a motel, she had stopped
at the telephone drive-by and had stayed there.

The way the ground had been systematically cut from
under her was all too much of a coincidence, she thought
now as she finished her too sweet Drakes cake. It had been
as meticulously coordinated as a military campaign. Who the
fuck were the people Rich sold out to? What a schmuck.
Bad Clams had played him like a Steinway. She had little
doubt now that Caesare Leonforte must own or at least
control Volto, the company to which Rich had sold his half
of Serenissima. She was shaking with rage and fear.

I've got to try calling Lew and Vesper again, she told her-
self as she caught a window in the traffic flow and acceler-
ated into the right-hand lane with a screech of tires. She'd
tried them last night with no success. But first, she had to
get to Francie. Her daughter was the most important person
in her life, and now that danger had appeared at every side,
her primary instinct was to get to her as quickly as possible.
She'd tried calling last night, had gotten the answering ma-
chine. She'd checked her datebook and had seen that

Francie was coming back from a horseback riding show
sometime today.

Margarite exited the LIE and reentered heading west-
bound, on her way to the Throgs Neck Bridge. She turned
on the CD player, needing some music to calm her nerves,
but nothing happened. She turned to a classical radio sta-
tion, instead.

For the past nine months Francie had been living with
Julie Longacre, Margarite's friend in Connecticut. Julie was
a horse fanatic and a first-rate rider, and Francie had taken
to her right away. Lew's advice to Francie had convinced
Margarite to keep her daughter out of the family situation
that had caused her problem in the first place.

So Margarite had secreted her at Julie's. Not even Tony
knew her whereabouts. And Julie, a divorced heiress with
horses, hunting dogs, and all the paraphernalia to go with
it, treated secrets like a sacred trust.

Margarite knew she had been foolish and out of touch,
believing that she and Tony could hide their problems from
Francie. Children had a way of being far more clever than
their parents could possibly believe. And that, of course,
made them more vulnerable to pressures and evil forces
within the family.

Tony DeCamillo had been just such an evil force, but it
was still possible for Margarite to understand how she had
fallen in love with him. He was handsome, bright, and best
of all, had access to a different level of society than she had
been brought up with. The glitterati of Hollywood all knew
Tony-many had been his clients. Margarite, on Tony's arm,
had met them all. She would never forget attending her first
Oscar telecast. It was like being picked up by a whirlwind
and being deposited in Oz. Of course she had been blown
away. Of course she had looked up to Tony as some kind
of God. Of course she had married him.

Then had come the nightmare.

She paid her toll, went across the bridge, and picked up
Route 95.

Tony had wanted a baby machine. He'd told her on their
honeymoon that he expected her to give him a child a year.
And sons! My God, how he flew into a rage when Francie
was born! He had changed the moment of his daughter's

birth, shunning the infant and physically punishing the wife
who in his mind had betrayed him by depriving him of his
son, his heir, the continuation of his branch of the
DeCamillos.

She rocketed past the Pelhams, the Lexus humming hap-
pily while the wind whistled eerily through the shattered
glass.

How did she feel now that Tony was dead? Could she
mourn him? Not really. Truth to tell, she felt lighter than
air, as if a long-standing ache with which she had learned
to live had suddenly vanished. It astonished her how easy it
was to breathe, how sweet each breath she took in now
seemed. She felt dizzy with relief. But behind all that crept
the anxiety of the many pronged attack on the Goldoni fam-
ily and on herself.

Bad Clams was behind this, she was sure of it. No wonder
he had waited so long to make his move. He needed the
time to coordinate all the pieces of the attack, and he
needed to hill her into thinking he might never attempt to
take over the East Coast Families, what had been Domi-
nic's territory.

So far every phase had worked to perfection, save the hit
on her. That she had managed to escape was, she knew,
something of a miracle. She must have her own personal
angel looking over her shoulder. But now, as she entered
Connecticut, the fear for her-and for Francie-intensified.
Whom could she trust? She no longer knew. It occurred to
her that no matter how much power Bad Clams had man-
aged to muster, he would still need help-from inside her
own Family. Who had betrayed her and Tony? Probably
one of the Family capi who had been promised more terri-
tory and influence tinder the Leonforte regime.

Abruptly, she swerved to the curb, braked to a halt. For
a moment, she sat slumped over the wheel, trying unsuccess-
fully to slow her breathing. Oh my God, she thought. Oh
my God!

She stared into her side mirror, scrutinizing the street be-
hind her. What if she was being followed? Given the nature
of the recent well-coordinated events, it was more than pos-
sible. She was driving her own dark red Lexus with gold
trim and her MGDC vanity license plate. She would be all

too easy to spot She scrabbled in her handbag, extracted
the .38. She opened it, thankful Dom had insisted she take
lessons, and checked the cartridges. She found she had only
fired one. One? It seemed as if she had emptied all the
chambers at her would-be assassin. She closed it, hefted it
in her palm.

Once again, she felt awash in paranoia and wondered if
Dominic had lived his entire adult life in this state. But
paranoid notion or not she had given it credence, because
if she was being followed, she was taking them right to Fran-
cie's doorstep. She wasn't about to make the mistake Tony
had made in underestimating Bad Clams. He was smart
enough to know that Francie was Margarite's weak spot. If
he had a fallback plan now that the murder had failed, it
would surely entail Francie.

If he could find her.

She was damned if she was going to give him his chance.
Still scanning the street, she said, "Call Julie," and the
phone dialed the number. While it rang, she prayed that
Francie would answer. But, instead, her heart sank as she
got the answering machine. After the beep, she said,
"Francie, darling, it's me. Hope you had a good time at the
horse show. If you'd call me when you get home, I'd ap-
preciate it. I'm in the ear and I'll be here till very late. Speak
to you soon, baby." She broke the connection, hoping that
her terror hadn't been apparent in her voice. Then she said,
"Call Lew," dialing Croaker's portable-phone number, but
it just rang and rang.

Damn, now what? Next Saturday night she was expected
to be the guest of honor at the Joey Infante and Kate Del-
larco wedding. She knew that, come what may, she needed
to make an appearance there if she had any hope of holding
on to Dominic's domain. The Sicilian Infantes and the Nea-
politan Dellarcos were two families that had been at each
other's throat, and their escalating war was destabilizing the
entire East Coast operation and bringing down fleets of ho-
micide cops to deal with the corpses piling up in East New
York and Ozone Park.

How to handle this inflammable situation had been Mar-
garite's first test of power management. She had discovered
that Joey and Kate had been seeing each other secretly, like

Romeo and Juliet. But unlike Shakespeare's star-crossed
lovers, Margarite was determined to bring about a happy
ending.

She and Tony had called a meeting with the heads of the
two families and, at it, had brought in the two lovers. Vitri-
olic invective had almost turned to physical violence. Tony
had quelled that soon enough, and then, slowly and quietly,
Margarite had outlined just how the love between these
members of the two families could help heal the wounds.
She had given them the emotional underpinnings for a per-
manent truce, and then Tony, with his relentlessly logical
litigator's brain, had provided the practical framework.

Now, after months of negotiations and diplomacy the deed
was about to be done. At the wedding of Joey and Kate the
Infantes and Dellarcos would finally bury the vendetta that
was decimating them and weakening the East Coast Fami-
lies alliance.

This was why she had to be there. The wedding was the
cornerstone of the new regime. If it fell apart, so would
Dominic's legacy, which he had entrusted to her. She was
already at a loss as to how to operate in the male-dominated
world of the Mafia without her husband as her mask. Osten-
sibly, he had been Dominic's successor, but it was she who
knew all of Dom's secrets, she who made all the decisions.
Now, with Tony gone, she was naked in the light. Which
one of the Family heads would follow her, a woman? None.
This was why her role had been such a well-kept secret.
Only Tony had known, and she suspected he hated her for
usurping what he saw as rightfully his.

Dominic, however, in his usual brilliant manner, had seen
matters entirely differently. To this day, Margarite had no
idea why he had asked her to take over his position as head
of all the East Coast Families. He must have known what
an impossible task he was leaving her with. And yet he had
persisted. And she, partly as dutiful sister, partly as fasci-
nated initiate, had acquiesced. But now look where it had
got her, alone and exiled, betrayed from within and under
attack, bereft of her power. Surely, Dom could not have
envisioned this bleak future.

Putting her face in her hands, she wept, her shoulders
shaking, engulfed by self-pity. When, at last, she was cried

out, she turned her head, willing the phone to ring, but it
remained silent as a serpent

Francis, where are you? Please, God, keep her safe from
harm.

She jumped as the phone rang. For an instant, she hesi-
tated, then she breathed a little sigh.. Francie.

She opened the line. "Hello?"

"Hello, sweetheart."

Her heart constricted. "Who is this?"

"They messed up, Margarite. They were supposed to take
out your bodyguard and snatch you-no fuss, no muss. Oh,
well, it's getting harder to find competent help."

"Caesare?"

"In another time, another place, we could have been
pals," Caesare Leonforte said. "Closer even, maybe. Pity."

She closed her eyes. "What do you want, Caesare, my
death?"

"Oh, no. Not only your death, Margarite. I want it all.
Everything Dominic built, everything that is yours;" He
chuckled. "Not so much to covet, in the scheme of things.
But I will have it all, Margarite."

"Not if I have anything to say about it."

"But you don't, sweetheart. You're nothing: a skirt, a
twist, a woman. Now that Tony's gone I've cut off the head.
The Goldonis only have you." He laughed. "And I've put
an end to you."

Her hand tightened on the grip of the .38. "I put a bullet
through the heart of one of your assassins. I'll do the same
to you."

"Oh, I believe you, sweetheart. Even though you're a
woman you're a damn fine shot. I can't afford to have you
barreling around like a loose cannon, so I'm going to order
you in from the cold."

"You'll never be able to order me to do anything."

"Never say never, Margarite. Dominic would have told
you that."

"Don't use my brother's name."

"Come in, Margarite. I promise you won't be harmed. I'll
give you directions right now-"

"Fuck you!"

"How ladylike. Well, darling, you force me into the dis-

tasteful position of using leverage. Did you wonder why your
CD player isn't working? That's because we outfitted your
Lexus with a phone monitor. Your daughter is at Julie's,
isn't she? We ran Julie's number through a contact at the
phone company and came up with the address. Want to
hear it?"

Margarite's blood had run cold. Francie! "Bastard."

"Thirty-eight thirty-seven Fox Hollow Lane in New
Canaan."

Margarite screamed.

"Are you all right, sweetheart? I think I heard a noise."

Margarite leaned over the phone. "Caesare, if you harm
Francie in any way, I promise you I will hunt you down no
matter where you are, no matter how long it takes."

"I don't doubt you'd try, which is why I haven't the slight-
est intention of hurting her. Assuming you give yourself up.
You have an hour, Margarite." He gave her an address in
Sheepshead Bay, off the service road of the Belt Parkway
near Coney Island Avenue. "If you're not at this location
at that time, I'm afraid I cannot take responsibility for what
happens to your daughter."

She was weeping despite biting her lip in an effort to hold
it back. "Oh, Caesare, she's just an innocent child," There
was no answer and she ground her teeth. Her eyes felt hot,
stinging with tears. "You'll have to bring her or I won't
come in."

"Forgetaboutit."

"I need proof."

"This is war, Margarite. I give no quarter."

"Neither do I."

"You fuckin' bitch, you give me any more trouble an' I'll
bring her fuckin' finger to the meet, get me?"

"You do that, Caesare, and I promise you I'll personally
gouge your eyes out and make you eat them."

Perhaps the tone of her voice made him relent. Maybe he
meant to give in all along and had just been torturing her.
"Okay, okay. You come in an' she'll be there. Satisfied?"
"   "In one piece?"

"In one piece, sure."

Her mind was awhirl in shock and grief. "I need more
time."

"No, you don't."

"I won't make it, I know it. There's traffic, the bridges,
I'm almost out of gas. Plus, I have to find a pharmacy."

"A pharmacy? What for?"

"What do you think, idiot. I just got my period. I need-"

"Enough! I don't want to hear this."

"For the love of God, Caesare, we're talking about my
child's life."

There was a brief pause, during which Margarite just had
time for a quick, silent prayer.

"All right, sweetheart, I'll give you three hours. But that's
all the time Francie has."

Tokyo's mistlike drizzle had turned into a metallic rain
that bounced off vertical neon signs and Shinto shrine torii
gates alike. There were plenty of the latter in the Asakusa
temple district where Nicholas met Tanaka gui. He was
standing in front of a conical private residence, beneath a
single cryptomeria set into a grating of concrete blocks.

Tanaka Gin was a slender, dark-faced man with the kind
of laconic grace one often found in Japan's cinema detec-
tives or samurai heroes. He had about him an air of mystery,
as if his mind were a safety deposit box filled with secrets.
His hooded eyes were deceiving. He seemed half-asleep, but
Nicholas felt certain that he would appear this way even if
he was running full tilt after you down an alley or putting
the pressure on you in an interrogation cell.

"Linnear-san," Tanaka gui said, bowing formally, "it is
an honor to meet you."

"The honor is all mine, I assure you," Nicholas said, re-
turning the bow. He stowed away his Kami. The ever-
efficient Kanda Torin had digi-faxed him the information on
the dozen or so members of Denwa Partners. The data had
come into his Kami as a stream of ones and zeros, which the
unit had translated into Japanese kanji. "Your reputation
precedes you-especially the cases you put together against
Tetsuo Akinaga and Yoshinori." He was referring to two
men-one a prominent Yakuza oyabun, the head of a Japa-
nese underworld family; the other the most influential un-
aligned politico with the reputation of making or breaking

the last eight prime ministers. "Your reputation as the latter-
day reformer is formidable."

The success of the prosecution of Akinaga's case was of
particular importance to Nicholas. Tetsuo Akinaga was the
oyabun of Tokyo's powerful and murderous Shikei clan. Ya-
kuza, who proudly considered themselves outsiders in Japa-
nese society, preferred ironically fatalistic names of their-
clans. Shikei meant capital punishment. Akinaga had been
a member of the Kaisho's inner circle, a purported friend
and disciple of Okami's, but in fact his bitterest enemy. All
of Okami's other enemies were gone, washed away in a tide
of blood. Only Tetsuo Akinaga remained.

"I have an excellent and dedicated staff," Tanaka Gin
said. He Stood in the rain without the protection of an um-
brella. His sole concession to the weather was the lapel of
his iridescent green trench coat, which he had turned up to
keep the water from running down his back. "It was good
of you to meet me at such short notice."

"I am as anxious as you are to discover the identity of
the people involved in the theft of the CyberNet secrets."

Tanaka Gin used a key to open the patined bronze door,

in the process stripping off three lines of bright orange police
tape. warning! police crime scene! entry forbidden!
they had printed on them in kanji. He stepped inside and
Nicholas followed.

Nicholas found himself in an astonishing replica of a colo-
nial-Saigon villa. Aqueous light, tinged by neon, seeped in
through the jalousied windows. The smell of incense and
star anise wafted in the air. But something hanging like the
web of a giant spider made Nicholas start involuntarily.

Tanaka gui closed the door behind Nicholas. "Let us be
frank, Linnear-san. I have agreed to help your investigation
because Tanzan Nangi asked it of me. He is a man for whom
I have great respect." He went to a long side table, turned
on two bronze lamps. "As it happens, I have much on my
plate. I am investigating the murder of a German business-
man, Rodney Kurtz, and the subsequent hit-and-run death
of his wife, Giai, a Vietnamese national." He spread his
hands. "This is where Mr. Kurtz was killed."

Nicholas nodded. "As long as we are being frank, Prose-

cutor, allow me to say that I never asked for your help and,
in fact, prefer to work alone."

"That is a dangerous occupation in Tokyo. Officially, I
would not advise it."

"And unofficially?"

Tanaka Gin smiled. "I know something about you, Lin-
near-san. Nangi-san speaks of you in the manner one would
talk about his progeny. This I take as significant." He
paused a beat. "I am willing to offer you assistance as you
need it. But it would be ... unfortunate if your investiga-
tion caused me or my office any embarrassment"

"I take your point, Prosecutor. And I appreciate the ad-
vice." Nicholas could sense Tanaka Gin, behind his half-
lowered lids, sizing him up.

"Yes, I believe you do."

Nicholas watched Tanaka Gin using a pocket flashlight
with a powerful beam to illuminate the walls one by one. It
lingered on a section speckled with what could be dried
blood. "Do you wish me to leave, Prosecutor?"

With the beam still full on the blood spots Tanaka Gin
said, "I believe you knew the deceased, Linnear-san."

So this was what he meant, Nicholas thought. I know
something about you. "I met him perhaps once or twice. I
did not know him."

Now Tanaka Gin turned on his heel and his hooded eyes
fixed Nicholas. "No? But he was a partner in the Trans-
Rim CyberNet."

Damn Kanda Torin and his overweening desire to get the
CyberNet on-line, Nicholas thought. This prosecutor knows
more about the partnership deal than I do.

"If he was, it comes as news to me," Nicholas said. "If
you have done your homework, Prosecutor, you know that
I was not involved in the TransRim partnership itself."

Tanaka Gin's eyebrows raised slightly. "Can this be possi-
ble? Your own American computer techs developed the
CyberNet technology. How is it possible you have been kept
out of the loop?"

Ask Torin, Nicholas thought. To Tanaka Gin, he said,
"Nangi-san made that decision while I was otherwise occu-
pied overseas. As I understand it, the business climate dic-
tated we get the CyberNet on-line as quickly as possible.

Since Sato itself was unable to raise that much capital so
quickly, Nangi-san decided to turn to outside partners. I
think it was a good idea. Right now the keiretsu can ill afford
to take on the onerous debt the TransRim start-up costs
would impose."

Tanaka Gin made no reply, but walked toward the wall.
"I wonder whether it was here, near the bar. In any case,
some wicked blade-nothing our people have ever seen be-
fore-pierced his flesh, not once, but many times. Over
and over."

"A slasher."

Without turning around Tanaka Gin slipped a couple of
photos out of his breast pocket, handed them to Nicholas.
They were of Rodney Kurtz's corpse in situ, Nicholas saw
by the light of one of the bronze lamps. Close-ups of his
face, neck, and shoulders.

"Where did you find the body?"

"Not here in the house. He had been dumped near Tsu-
kiji." Tanaka Gin meant Tokyo's enormous fish market. The
light, brighter now with Tanaka Gin's proximity, wavered
slightly. "Arcane weapons, I believe, are a specialty of yours,
Linnear-san. Can you tell me what kind of weapon the mur-
derer used, a spike or-"

"Not from these photos. This body is too ripped up to
make a guess. But if you'd keep your people on the lookout
for any new murders that fit this pattern-"

"Done," Tanaka Gin said, making a note on a slim pad.
"Perhaps not a slasher, then. There is a pattern carved into
his forehead."

Indeed, there was. "A vertical crescent," Nicholas said,
studying the photos in greater detail.

"Precisely."

In one of them, Nicholas saw the beginning of a curious
dark blotch in the lower right corner of one photo, where
Kurtz's chest began. What could that be? Another wound?

He looked up to see Tanaka Gin watching him. A look
of intense curiosity was on the prosecutor's face.

"They say that even at the point of death you could will
yourself to show no emotion." Tanaka gui cocked his head
to one side. "Is this true? I wonder."

Nicholas handed back the crime-scene photos. "Why
would this concern you?"

"It is you I am dealing with now, Linnear-san. Before I
do, a common ground must be struck." Tanaka Gin made
a gesture that might be construed to be conciliatory. "I think
you would agree all relationships work best this way."

"All except those with women."

"So? I would have said especially with women."

"I can see you are no romantic, Prosecutor," Nicholas
said, walking out of the lamplight into the darkness to stand
beside the other man. "Where love is concerned, not know-
ing what is ahead is often most important."

"Ah, I see the difficulty. You were speaking of love and
I was referring to sex." Tanaka Gin played the beam of
light slowly across the speckled wall. "Too often the two are
not compatible."

Nicholas took a. look around the room. "Gin-san, I won-
der whether you would allow me access to the rest of the
house?"

"As you wish. I have no objection. The place has already
been dusted for fingerprints and photographed."

Nicholas went off through the house. He looked through
rooms filled with a mortal silence, but in his inner mind he
heard a screaming, an echo perhaps of the pain that had
existed in this house for some time. He opened his tan/ion
eye, on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary. Black
fingerprint powder lay everywhere like soot from a leaky
furnace. He went through the dining room, Kurtz's study,
all the bedrooms. The marble master bathroom was ul-
traluxe. It contained a shower, a Japanese cedar bathtub,
and a fiberglass Jacuzzi. The juxtaposition of the traditional
and the modem was jarring.

He sat down on the edge of the Jacuzzi. Where it abutted
the wall was an access panel for the Jacuzzi plumbing. Some-
thing about the panel caught his eye. Bending over, he ex-
amined one of the four screws that held it in place. Was
that a scratch on the plate near it? No. He unscrewed the
screw, saw a human hair carefully wrapped around the
threads. Its end, sticking out slightly, had looked like a
scratch. There was no doubt in his mind that it had been

deliberately set there. Why? To let someone know if the
plate had been tampered' with?

He unscrewed the plate, put it aside. Inside, he found an
expensive, hardened-steel combination wall safe. That ex-
plained the carefully wound hair. He ran his fingertips
around the door and discovered that it was unlocked. He
swung it open and peered inside. Empty. Ransacked by
Rodney Kurtz's murderer? It would seem so. And whoever
it had been had been meticulous enough not to disturb the
hair and clever enough to have seen it.

When he returned to the living room, he found Tanaka
Gin standing in exactly the same position.

Tanaka Gin said, "There were pubic hairs on the dining
room table and on Kurtz's desk. Curious, don't you think?"

"Sex and death. A strong, almost uncontrollable connec-
tion among certain people."

Tanaka Gin turned. "Certain people?" He nodded slowly,
as if divining a hidden meaning to Nicholas's words. "Can't
you just see the man as he held Kurtz while he drove the
blade in, quite deliberately, again and again. The man was
passionate but there was, I think, no red haze, no frenzy. It
was all quite well thought out."

"Was this before or after he had Kurtz's wife in the dining
room and Kurtz's office?"

Tanaka Gin appeared to be doing no more than counting
the blood spots. He took a deep breath. "That depends,
doesn't it?"

"On what?"

"Whether or not she was involved in the murder." His
eyes slid sideways to gather Nicholas into their web. "Wit-
nesses to Giai Kurtz's death say that she was with a man-
a Westerner. After the black Mercedes hit her he took off
after it and no one saw him again."

It was at this moment that Nicholas realized just how good
a detective this man was. "You're certain it was a Mer-
cedes?"

"Absolutely. We found it early this morning at a building
site in Shibuya, abandoned and burned to a cinder." He
snapped off the light. "By the way, the medical examiner
has determined that Kurtz was murdered ten to twelve hours
before the wife was struck by the Mercedes."

"Do you think she was deliberately killed?"

"Hit-and-runs are not routine in this city. But perhaps this
one was different." Tanaka Gin shrugged, his thin frame
outlined like a charcoal sketch by the lamplight. "This is my
working hypothesis, anyway."

In the dimness, the two men stood shoulder to shoulder,
breathing in the scents of sex and death.

"Tell me, Linnear-san, what does the image of vertical
crescent mean to you?"

Nicholas hesitated. He had seen that symbol before. It
was ngoh-meih-yuht, a phrase in an obscure Chinese dialect
that meant "the crescent moon." It was the Gin, the Two-
Edged Sword, the initiation symbol into a cult of myth and
magic. It was part of a Vietnamese Nung tribe tattoo he had
seen on the Messulethe, Do Duc Fujiro, the man who had
tried to murder Mikio Okami. The Messulethe were terrify-
ing psycho-magicians; so ancient legend had it, they were
descended from the Cycladeans and the Titans. It was even
rumored that their magic had been the precursor to Tau-tau.

But Okami was not a part of this investigation and Nicho-
las did not want him involved in any way. Also, he had
killed Do Duc on Japanese soil and he did not want that
incident investigated. He said, "I don't know."

"This man who destroyed the Kurtzes, I think, is excep-
tionally dangerous." Tanaka Gin's head swung around, his
eyes glittering in the low lamplight "Would you tell me if
it did mean anything to you?"

He was an excellent interrogator, as well, Nicholas
thought. "Of course. I have nothing to hide." But he could
not shake the terrible sensation that had hit him like the
stink of a charnel house the moment he had stepped through
the Kurtzes' front door that another Messulethe had been
loosed.

He was very close to the blood-spattered wall and he felt
himself sinking down, inward toward kokoro almost despite
himself. Something dark and inexplicable seemed to be call-
ing to him like echoes beneath a deep-water lake.

"Interesting. I would imagine a man who is sworn to pro-
tect the Kaisho would have much to keep secret" Tanaka
Gin shrugged. "But perhaps I am mistaken. After all, what
can I, a civil servant, know of such things?"

Nicholas felt a kind of schizophrenia come over him. Part
of his mind reacted, dismayed that Tanaka Gin knew some-
thing of his relationship with Mikio Okami. That could
prove dangerous. But part of him was already adrift from
the bonds of time and space.

He had put the fiat of his hand against the wall. The
fingers, barely curled so their ends made contact, acted like
a fiber-optic cable, transmitting data. The world had canted
over on its side, diminishing in Akshara as if he were flying
away from a spit of land. Time dissolved tike a lozenge in
the mouth, and he was back in this room as it had been the
day before.

Tanaka Gin was right in at least part of his hypothesis.
"He" was here," Nicholas whispered.

Tanaka Gin's torso swayed forward as if drawn by the
suck of time collapsing in upon itself. "Who? Who was here
with Giai Kurtz? Her husband?"

"At first, yes. Then, later ..."

Tanaka Gin was breathless. He had heard of Nicholas
Linnear's arcane powers, but he had been loathe to believe
the stories. However, looking at Nicholas's drawn face, he
knew this was no illusionist, no rigged freak-show exhibit.
Whatever was happening was real, and he thought, there is
real hope here for me. "Yes, what happened later?"

"Kurtz was murdered here."

"In this house, you mean."

"Right here." Nicholas moved his hand over the wall. His
face seemed even more twisted, deformed, .as if it were being
illuminated from below. "Someone else. Some . . ."
Abruptly, he shuddered. He was quite white.

"Linnear-san are you all right? What is it you saw?"

"I..."

"Who was with Giai Kurtz?"
"The same person who murdered her husband."
Tanaka Gin emitted the smallest sigh. "Did you see him?"
There it was again, that familiar static in his mind that .he
associated with Mick Leonforte and with-what?-a feeling
or sensation like a host of insects crawling inside him, tiny
pincers clipping his flesh. Perhaps dark presentiment de-
scribed it best. But he could not say any of this to Tanaka
Gin. "I saw ... something."

"What was it, a shadow?" He is still not himself, Tanaka
Gin thought. What had happened to him? "Linnear-san, you
must tell me everything."

Nicholas stared at the prosecutor for a long time, but his
eyes were oddly focused, as if he saw something inside Ta-
naka Gin's body. Outside, cars hissed by and trucks making
nighttime deliveries ground their gears and passed on to
unknown destinations.

"You can trust me, Linnear-san. This I swear to you."

Nicholas nodded, a spastic jolt of his head.

"Tell me what your Tau-tau revealed to you. We will
come to an understanding, you and I, because I think we
can help one another."

Nicholas was staring out the jalousied window where
lights sparked and danced on the river. "How can I help
you?"

Tanaka Gin lifted his arm. "Shall we sit down a
moment?"

They sat on a rattan sofa, while the light from the Golden
Turd across the Sumida filtered through the jalousies.

But almost at once, Nicholas jumped up. "This is a violent
place, filled with hatred and rage."

"So I've heard. There are rumors that Mr. Kurtz beat
his wife."
 "Did she ever file charges?"

"No. But unfortunately that is the norm in pattern physi-
cal-abuse cases."

Nicholas, silhouetted by the lights, seemed all alone and
a little bit lost. Tanaka Gin could understand just how he
felt. It had only been a month since Ushiba's death. Friend-
ship such as theirs had been should not be so abruptly sev-
ered. He was still trying to recover.

"I want to trust you," Nicholas said. "Now is a time when
I must trust someone."

"About Kurtz. There's something about the body I
haven't told you." Tanaka Gin's steady gaze regarded Nich-
olas with equanimity. "Some of his organs were missing-
heart, pancreas, liver." So that explained the dark smudge
at the bottom of one of the photos, Nicholas thought. It had
been part of the hole through which the organs had been
removed. "They had been excised with surgical precision,

the medical examiner assured me. The vertical crescent, the
missing organs, do these mean anything to you?"

They did. Dominic Goldoni's heart had been taken from
him when the Messulethe killed him, but Nicholas was not
going to tell Tanaka Gin about that. "No, but I'm willing
to do some research."

"That would undoubtedly be helpful."

Nicholas wondered how much irony to read into that com-
ment. Again, he had the impression that the prosecutor
knew more than he was letting on. But he had not time to
dwell on this because he was trying to work out something
significant. And physically shocked as he was, he knew he
needed to solve this problem to clear his head, to try to
forget what he had seen while he had been in contact with
the death wall. It was like a new wound, pulsing in the
center of his mind.

We will come to an understanding, you and I, because I
think we can help one another. That was what Tanaka Gin
had said, and Nicholas could see his point this was no ordi-
nary murderer and the prosecutor's instincts had told him
so. Obviously, he knew something about Tau-tau, knew
some potent stimulus left at what he believed to be the
murder site might bring on the psychic dislocation of time
and space that allowed Nicholas to "see" what had hap-
pened here. That was why he had asked Nicholas to meet
him here at the Kurtzes' instead of at his office, which would
have been standard operating procedure.

He must be desperate for my help, Nicholas thought.

The two men were silent for some time, Nicholas because
he was working out the vectors of this new situation, the
prosecutor because he wanted to give Nicholas time to re-
cover his inner equilibrium.

At length, Tanaka Gin stirred. "When I arrested the oya-
bun Tetsuo Akinaga, I did so in public. He lost a great deal
of face.. Perhaps that was a tactical mistake on my part.
Akinaga-san is a formidable enough foe without enraging
him. But I was very angry myself because, in a way, he
caused the death of an honorable man and a good friend."

Tanaka Gin looked away, at the wall and its tiny constella-
tions of blood spots.

"In any event, he warned me, "There are mechanisms in

place within your own department that will lead to your
destruction.' Those were his words exactly. I have not for-
gotten them nor the look in his eyes."

"Bluster from a man trying to regain some face."

Tanaka Gin inclined his head. "My thoughts also, Lin-
near-san. Except that Akira Chosa, another of the Yakuza
oyabun, told me much the same thing. 'If it's corruption
you're after, look to your own department,' he said. As you
have said, I have developed some small repute as a re-
former. Understandably, this has alienated me from more
people than you would imagine. Also, it has spawned some
powerful enemies in highly unexpected places," Tanaka Gin
cleared his throat "Someone is hindering my case against
Akinaga and I cannot tell who it is."
"You think I can?" At last it was becoming clear: Gin's
acquiescing to Nangi's request, allowing Nicholas the run of
a murder crime scene, his deliberately leaving provocative
clues in situ. Here was Gin's need, spread out on the table.

"I know it, Linnear-san." Tanaka Gin's eyes glittered. "It
is the Tau-tau. How you were able to see-the violence
here, the rage inside the marriage."

"Perhaps there was that between Rodney and Giai Kurtz,
but what I see, what I feel here, is far stronger. It is from
someone else."

"The murderer, Linnear-san!"

"Yes, perhaps."

Tanaka Gin, his eyes alight, leaned forward. "You saw
him, didn't you? Tell me who he is."

"I don't know. I can scarcely believe what I..." Nicholas
had to start all over again, but his voice was now a harsh
whisper as the psychic wound that had been opened at the
death wall regathered its force. "Gin-san, I reached out with
Tau-tau, with my mind to see who murdered Rodney Kurtz
and perhaps Giai Kurtz as well ... and it was like looking
into a dark mirror." He pressed his fingertips to his temple.
"I saw myself."

Experiment
in Terror

The man who sees two or three generations

is like one who sits in the conjuror's booth

at a fair, and sees the same tricks two or

three times. They are meant to be seen

only once.

-Schopenhauer

Ozone Park, N. Y.
Spring 1961

For as long as he could remember, Mick Leonforte had had
the same dream. He was a young man-not the boy he had
been when he first started having the dream-and he looked
nothing like the darkly handsome Mediterranean-blooded
person he saw in the mirror every morning. He was blond and
blue eyed, smartly dressed in white-always white-and he
was a long way from his family apartment on 101st Avenue
and Eighty-seventh Street in the Ozone Park area of Queens.

Exactly where he was he could not say. Maybe it was
Florida or Europe or something because there were palm
trees and cool trade winds and sunlight sparkling off a green
ocean studded with luxury yachts. But maybe it wasn't Flor-
ida after all because everyone was speaking a foreign lan-
guage, not Italian, not English, even him. Anyway, come to
think of it, he'd been to Florida once with his father and
his brother, Caesare, and this wasn't it.

For sure, it was someplace exotic and he was with some-
one heavenly, a girl tall and lean with long brown limbs so
shapely you didn't want to take your eyes off them, and
blond hair tied back off her oval face in a French braid and
green eyes cool and deep as that ocean.

She was sitting next to him on the buffed tan leather of
the gold and black Stutz Bearcat's seats, and her tan knees

were visible below the hem of the silk skirt she'd had to
hike up to get into the car. She was smiling at him while a
few wisps of hair by her ear fluttered against her cheek. The
sight of those knees and just an inch or two of thigh above
was enough to give him heart palpitations.

"Michael," she said into the wind. "Michael."

She always called him Michael, never Mick, and he loved
her for it. But then he adored everything about her, so much
so that the feeling was like an ache in his heart, as if she
were part of him, inside nun, privy to all his thoughts, all
his secrets. All the darkness.

And still she loved him.

He felt lighter than air, as if he could scale the white
clouds painted on the sky like cartoons.

In the dream, he drove her in his Stutz Bearcat along a
road that wound through dark green cypresses that rose thin
as pencils out of a white cliff that hung at the water's edge.
Every so often they'd pass a house, bright with a tomato-
colored tiled roof, its stucco walls white and pristine as milk.

The feeling of freedom was like a drug in his veins. It
pulsed like a tropical moon over water, shivering his spine.
He reached out to touch her and she grabbed his hand,
engulfing his fingertips with her ripe red lips.

Then they were on a slate dance floor at an open-air
nightclub that hung high above the ocean on a cantilevered
terrace, lined with heavily scented roses. A band in tuxedos
was playing "Moonlight Becomes You," and the girl was in
his arms, warm and syrupy, as if she were made of honey.
Her eyes held his and in them he could see reflected the
line of Chinese lanterns strung diagonally across the dance
floor, tiny saintly auras through which they passed, one by
one, as they danced.

What he particularly loved was that the band was playing
just for them. There was no one else in the nightclub and
no one else would come. This was his place, and tonight, he
did not want to be disturbed.

As if reading his mind, the band segued into "Moonlight
Serenade" and he drew the girl closer to him so that he felt
her hard body from breasts to knees, felt her like an electric
current as her thigh slipped between his, felt himself getting
hard, not just his penis, but his entire body-his mind, as

well, until she was all he could think of, even the band and
the Chinese lanterns and the ocean fading into a pale dis-
tance, leaving him there with her, united.

He could recall with an almost suprareal clarity the first
time he had had this dream. Upon waking, he lay staring
up at the ceiling with blind eyes, watching the play of light
thrown off by the Chinese lanterns, strains of "Moonlight
Serenade" still in his ears, the ineffably exquisite feel of her
resilient thigh rubbing his crotch to unbearable smoothness
like a sculptor's cloth.

Then a sharp rap on his door dissolved the dream's last
residue, and he turned his head as the door of his bedroom
opened inward and his sister, Jaqui, poked her head in.

"Time to get up, Michael."

That moment was, for bun, frozen in time, as with an
immense erotic charge and a superhot gush of mortification
he realized that she was the girl in his dream.

Michael Leonforte's grandfather, for whom his older
brother, Caesare, had been named, had emigrated to the
New World in 1910. He had lived in an area of East New
York called the Old Mill. It was a Sicilian ghetto at the
bottom of Crescent Street at Jamaica Bay known familiarly
by the younger generation as the Hole on account of the
fact that its streets were twenty to thirty feet lower than any
other in Brooklyn, or anywhere else in the five boroughs of
New York, for that matter. At the turn of the century, the
city fathers had declared all streets had to be a certain height
above river level and they raised those found wanting. All
except those in the Hole. No one knew exactly why. Perhaps
there were too many existing houses there already or, more
likely, because it was a ghetto and no one gave a shit.

In the early days, Mick's grandfather raised goats, selling
their milk and their flesh to his fellow immigrants. Soon,
though, he graduated to protection, which was far more lu-
crative. He also emigrated for the second time-out of the
Hole and into a spacious third-story apartment in a brown-
brick building on 101st Avenue and Eighty-seventh Street
in Ozone Park, an area of Queens within which Sicilians
and Neapolitans resided as uneasy neighbors.

Even in those days, moving from East New York to

Ozone Park was not an easy thing. Both areas were popu-
lated by hooligans, wiseguys, toughs, and just plain crazy
button men in training. East New York was dominated-
and always had been, it seemed-by the F&R, the Fulton-
Rockaway Gang. They owned the turf bounded by Rock-
away Avenue and Fulton Street, south of Atlantic Avenue.
In Ozone Park, the Saints held sway, a newer but no less
savage group of young men and pimply teens that had been
born in the 1950s. Not to be outdone by their older enemies,
the Saints even boasted a six-man suicide squad-point men
in any turf rumbles. These certified madmen rode Cross Bay
Boulevard in a prized Ford, full-panel, low pickup truck and
were armed at all times with tire chains, handguns, and a
variety of unpleasant-looking knives.

It was in this highly charged atmosphere that Mick grew
up. Every time you went out into the street you had it in
mind to defend yourself. But if outside life was violently
confrontational, his family life was no less so. As the
younger of the two brothers-he was also younger than his
sister, but in the family scheme of things she didn't count-
he was constantly tormented by thoughts of his father, John.
In those days, no one spoke about Johnny Leonforte, not
Johnny's older brother, Alphonse, not Johnny's own father,
Grandfather Caesare, for whom Mick's older brother had
been named.

What had happened to Johnny Leonforte? No one would
speak of it. If he was dead, his children had not been told;
if he was alive, he had never contacted them. To be sure,
there were rumors in the neighborhood of humiliation and
disgrace of such magnitude that it had broken Grandfather
Caesare's spirit. Some said the Leonfortes were never the
same again. But if anyone knew the exact nature of the
secret, they would not say. Mick did not know what to be-
lieve, but Caesare, always the hothead, was constantly on
guard, ready to get bloody to defend his absent father's
honor. The fact that Mick would not join him, was in fact
silent on the subject, only served to further inflame him.

Grandfather Caesare was slim and very tall, and he was
so smart it didn't matter that he lacked the usual Sicilian
trait of physical intimidation. Everyone was automatically
terrified of him. As for Alphonse, he was as big as a bear

and just as tough. Many was the bruising fight he'd get into
just for the sheer pleasure of mauling another human being.
Mick's older brother, Caesare, wished for that ability, but
all he got for it was a series of bloody noses and, worse,
Uncle Alphonse coming to his rescue. This constant humilia-
tion he took out on Mick, who seemed to lack all the skills
at petty perfidy that Caesare possessed in spades.

Caesare, having been named after his beloved grandfa-
ther, was the favorite, that was common knowledge inside
the household, and perhaps as things fell out, outside as
well. Uncle Alphonse had a strap hanging on the inside of
the door to the bathroom that he used on Mick and Caesare
with liberal and gleeful intent, recalling, perhaps, the beat-
ings his father had inflicted on him in the "backhouse," as
the outhouse was called.

In this situation, Mick had two choices: he could hew to
the traditional upbringing his odd family provided and con-
tinue to love his father's memory as Caesare did, or he could
rebel and hate his father for abandoning the family. What
it was inside Mick that caused him to choose the latter path:
it was impossible to say. But the fact was, by the time he was
fourteen, he was already inwardly estranged from a father he
could not remember and was immutably bonded to his
grandfather.

Old Caesare, in his ubiquitous black suit and fedora,
looked like a Sicilian crow on a fence rail. His black eyes,
ringed by squint lines, peered out from the penumbra of the
fedora's brim with a startling clarity. He had these enormous
square hands that invited attention. He would sit at the
kitchen table, a water glass of valpolicella in front of him,
smoking cigarettes, which he placed between the pinky and
ring finger of his right hand. Yellow with nicotine, this right
hand felt like a bear's paw when it gripped Mick, which was
often. Grandfather Caesare was animated when he spoke or
lectured on topics that were dear to him. He could come to
an important point in his narrative, jam his cigarette into
his mouth, and clamp Mick's shoulder with a viselike grip
whose terrible intensity at first made Mick tremble.

"You're a good boy," he would say. "You're smart
enough, but it's a different kind of smart. This work-the
biziness-it is not for you-unnerstand?"

Mick would come to understand what the old man meant,
but all he got from his grandfather then was that he was
loved even though he was different. For the moment, that
was enough, though it wouldn't be for long.

Mick's brother, Caesare, was a complete mystery to him.
Looking in Caesare's eyes, Mick could see a light that
seemed not very distant from the one he observed in red
stars as he peered through the telescope his grandfather
bought him that year for Christmas. Each night he'd throw
the telescope over his shoulder and climb up to the roof,
setting it up on the black asphalt to peer through the big-
city light-haze into the night-darkened sky. What he saw
there fascinated him because in imagining himself far, far
away he could look down upon Earth and see continents
other than his own.

He was also as far away as possible from Uncle Alphonse,
who was, in any case, increasingly away setting up his family
in his new home base of San Francisco.

Every so often, up on the roof, as he was folding up his
telescope for the night, he'd hear a heavy car door slam,
and looking over the parapet, he'd see Grandfather Caesare
walking across the courtyard, coming home after being
driven from a nighttime meeting at his office or perhaps at
the Fountainbleu Florists on Fulton and Pine streets, where
a lot of heavy-duty meets were set. Seeing the old man from
above with his black fedora and the spring still in his step
after so many years gave Mick the sense of continuity he'd
never received from a father who was entirely absent.

What Mick liked best was to visit his grandfather at work.
His office was above the Mastimo Funeral Home on Conduit
Avenue. Tony Mastimo was an old-time funeral director
with four daughters and no son to carry on the business. He
was old and tired when he sold out to Grandfather Caesare,
but perhaps not as old and tired as he made out to the
world at large. Caesare made him an offer he was smart
enough to accept. Now he lived with his new wife in a small
but neat row house in Bay Ridge and played boccie when
he wasn't taking her on trips to Europe.

It was a good deal for everyone involved. Within six
months of taking over, Grandfather Caesare had magically
turned the funeral parlor into a cash cow. Within a year, he

had opened two other Mastimo Funeral Homes in Queens,
all of them instantly successful. Such was his charisma and
his repute.

Grandfather Caesare's rise in Ozone Park was altogether
meteoric, but not without its rough spots. Jealousies quite
naturally erupted both from those who were his rivals and
from the family remnants of those who had been displaced.
Those latter were no longer around. Most had simply disap-
peared, although it was true that several of the most vocal
and openly antagonistic had been found in the backseats of
anonymous cars in the junkyards at the end of Pennsylvania
and Fountain avenues. To a man, they displayed a single
bullet hole through the backs of their heads, which was
enough to subdue or at least silence the rest of Grandfa-
ther's enemies.

Grandfather liked three lumps of sugar in his espresso
and a generous dollop of anisette. This and many other mi-
nuscule peculiarities Mick memorized instantaneously so
that after school, when he visited Grandfather at his place
of business above the Mastimo Funeral Home on Conduit
Avenue, he could provide these services for the old man.
Most often Mick took the Green Bus Line, but sometimes
in good weather he biked over.

Naturally, his brother, Caesare, scoffed at such servitude,
since he was already out on the street with a gun he knew
how to fire, but Mick ignored his brother. Unlike his older
brother, who was eager to make his bones, daily violent
confrontation with the dangerously low IQ gavonnes of ei-
ther Ozone Park or East New York held no special interest
for Mick. And when he was with Grandfather while he was
working, he could silently observe all that went on: the capi
who came to do business and to genuflect before the old
man, the friends who gathered at the round oak table to
smoke hand-rolled cigars and drink wine, clear spirits, and
espresso, and to talk. He learned from his grandfather the
nuances of command, the necessity for humor and the dark-
ness of life. Gradually, he discerned something that fasci-
nated him: his grandfather had many acquaintances and, it
seemed by the number who sat with him, even more ene-
mies, but almost no friends, or at least people in whom he
could confide with openness.

"Friendship is a strange and unruly animal," his grand-
father once said to him as he stirred the sugar into his
espresso. "Like a lame dog you take offa the street and
nurse back to health who then bites you onna hand, you
must treat friendship with equal amounts of apprehension
and skepticism."

They were alone in Grandfather's office, which when it
didn't smell of espresso and anisette and fear, smelled
strongly of sickly sweet embalming fluid. Outside, it was
pissing down rain, the traffic along Conduit hissing like ser-
pents aroused from slumber.

He took a long drag of his cigarette and seized Mick's
shoulder in his bone-crushing grip. The smoke, let out in a
soft sigh, closed one eye. "Me, I prefer the company of my
enemies and I'll tell you why. I know who they are and what
they want from me." He turned Mick around so that he
could fix the teenager with his black eyes. "Besides, the
more time you spend with your enemies, the better you get
to know 'em." He smiled then, and it was as if Mick's whole
universe expanded exponentially. "But you, you smart
dunce, you already know that, don't you?"

Grandfather then did an extraordinary thing. "Here, sit
down nexta me," he said. He pulled over a cup and poured
espresso into it. He plopped in three cubes of sugar, stirred
it with a small spoon, then pushed it over in front of Mick.
"Drink up. It's timea you enjoyed a little of what you bring
to me."

It was the first and only time that Grandfather Caesare
in any way acknowledged that he knew why Mick so often
visited him at work.

Mick's older brother, Caesare, may have had no respect
for Mick, but he was not above using him when the need
arose. Mick was not then so much the rebel that he could
refuse his brother, but somehow, he always ended up regret-
ting his involvement.

Take the incident of the turquoise Fairlane. One day
Caesare comes to Mick and he says, "Hey, kid, I need ya
t'do somethin' for me. It's easy, don't .worry. Even a civilian
like you can do it, no sweat." He put two sets of keys into
Mick's hand, one for a car. "I wancha to go inta Manhattan.

There's this faggoty blue Ford Fairlane parked ata meter on
Tenth Avenue. By Fiftieth Street, okay? All's you gotta do
is get in an' drive it to this here address around the corner
from the Jamaica Avenue post office, right?" He told Mick
an address. "This other key'll open an apartment ona fourth
floor. Piece of cake." He put a twenty-dollar bill in Mick's
hand. "There's twenty more when you deliver both keys to
the man'll be there, okay?" Mick nodded. "Right. Got that
driver's license I gotcha says you're eighteen?" Mick nodded
again. "Fuck you waitin' for? Get goin'."

This Mick did. Not that he didn't resent being spoken to
this way. Not that he didn't have misgivings about anything
his brother asked him to do. But family was family. The
Fairlane-actually a beautiful turquoise-was parked just as
Caesare had said. The meter still had time on it and it had
a full tank of gas. It was some beautiful set of wheels, and
Mick spent a half hour admiring every line, every dazzling
inch of chrome. At last, he started her up and pulled out
into traffic. Everything was fine until some schmuck ran a
red light at the big intersection at Thirty-fourth Street and
cut him off. He almost accordioned the front .end of the
Fairlane, and although he was able to keep the car from
being scratched, he was royally pissed off.

The other guy, a civilian in a brown suit, was so shaken
up he shook his fist in fury at Mick. That was not the smart-
est thing for him to have done because it got Mick even
more pissed off. All the pent-up anger at his father and his
brother erupted out of him like a volcano blowing its top,
and he strode over to the other motorist, hauled him out
through the open window, and beat the back of his head
against the chrome of his white Chevy until blood started
to run.

Perhaps it was the sight of blood running, but he suddenly
came to his senses, and letting the motorist fall against the
car, he strode back to the Fairlane on rubbery legs, slammed
it in gear, and roared away.

He arrived in Jamaica without further incident, passing by
the grimy stone facade of the post office on Jamaica Avenue.
He parked across the street from the apartment, locked the
car, and went up the brownstone stoop into a dim vestibule
that smelled of garlic and rosemary. He took the stairs two

at a time, thinking about what he was going to do with his
forty dollars, and rapped on the appropriate door.

When there was no answer> he used the keys and let him-
self in. He was in a sparsely furnished one-bedroom that
smelled of old gym socks. An old Norge hummed in a lino-
leum-covered kitchen. In the tiny bathroom, a tap dripped
into a sink whose bottom was the same color as the Fairlane.

No one was home. Back in the living room, he went
around the brown tweed couch, glanced out the window at
the Fairlane parked beneath a Dutch elm tree, dusty with
soot. He put the keys on the kitchen table, which was cov-
ered with a faded patterned piece of oilcloth, and opening
the Norge, put some ice on the knuckles of his right hand,
which were sore and skinned from his altercation with the
motorist on Thirty-fourth Street. He wanted to leave but he
also wanted his second twenty. Out in the living room, the
telephone began to ring.

After a moment's inner debate, he went and picked up
the heavy black receiver.

"Mick, that you?" said a familiar voice in his ear.

"Caesare?"

"Fuck you do? I tol' you zackly what you had to do. Fuck
you do?"

"Do?" Mick said, bewildered. "What did I do?"

"Fuck do I know? But I getta call from our man inna
precinct, cops is after the man that drove the Fairlane.
Seems some insurance salesman called the police once he
got to the emergency room of Roosevelt Hospital, gave the
cops the license plate number ova Ford."

"Jesus."

"You tellin' me," Caesare said. "Look out onta the street,
kid, tell me whatcha see."

Mick craned his neck. "Ah, fuck, a cop car's what I see."

"Yeah, you do, you little prick. An' you know what's inna
trunka that Fairlane? Ten poundsa pot an' the same of
heroin."

Great, Mick thought. That fuckin' brother of mine. Now
I'm in the same sackful of shit he's in. "Fuck you doin' with
that shit?"

"Fuck you think I'm doin'? Makin' a fuckin' living while
you're playing busboy down by the funeral."

"Grandpa says drugs have no part of our biziness," Mick
said, somewhat judiciously.

"Listen to the big shot," Caesare said, his voice dripping
contempt. "Fuck you know about the biziness, kid? Fuck
all, is what. So you leave makin' the money to me. Times
is changin' but Grandpa he's still got one foot inna Hole. All
due respect to the old bird, but the world's passin' him by."

If Caesare had been in the same room with him instead
of connected by voice through a telephone cable, Mick was
quite certain he would have wrung his neck or at least tried
to for that kind of remark. As it was, all 'he could muster
was, "Fuck you."

"Hey, watch that fuckin' mouth, kid." Caesare chuckled.
"Well, now you know what's what, here's what you gotta
do. You gotta get the shit outta the trunk without the
cops knowin'."

"But Caesare-"

"Just do it, kid," Caesare barked, "or I swear I'll come
over there myself and beat you black-an'-blue."

Mick slammed down the receiver and stood with his hands
jammed in the back pockets of his trousers. He peered out
the window. Fuckin' cops. They'd be sitting there all night
waiting for him to show. What the hell was he gonna do?

The light was fading. At six o'clock, he was still wondering
how he was going to get Caesare's stash when he saw the
cop car take off. A couple of minutes later, another one
took its place. He sat up and paid careful attention. Sure.
He should have thought of it before: shift change. When
was the next one? He racked his brain for the information
he had picked up on the street. Four in the morning.

He settled into the apartment, made himself some pasta
with tomato sauce, then got a couple of hours of sleep. He
was up at one and then three. After that, he couldn't fall
back to sleep. Besides, there was no time. He had to be in
place when the shift changed. And he knew he had to be
lucky. If the four a.m. car arrived before this shift was up,
he was rucked.

It didn't. At four on the nose, the cop car swung out of
its spot, cruised off down the street. As it turned the corner,
heading up to Jamaica Avenue, Mick was tearing across the
street, key in hand. He fumbled at the Fairlane's trunk lock,

got it open. He filled his arms with Caesare's shit, slammed
the trunk shut, and hotfooted it out of there.

It should have been that Mick was happy to drop the shit
into his brother's lap and Caesare pissed at how he'd fucked
up, but the funny thing was, it turned out just the opposite.
In fact, Mick was so scared by his brush with the cops, he
was in a towering rage when he came into the house.

After a brief glance to make sure they were untouched,
Caesare put the packages aside and, grabbing Mick around
the shoulders, bent his head so he could kiss the top of it.
"Kid, I gotta admit I never thought I'd say it, but you're so
okay you should come work for me."

"Hey, cut it out," Mick said, flailing his arms like a wind-
mill. He stood back from his brother, looked around to
make sure their mother or Jaqui wasn't in the vicinity. Then
he pointed a finger at his brother and, with heretofore un-
known storm clouds beetling his brow, said, "You sonuva-
bitch, if you ever get me involved in your stinking drug runs
again, I'll cut off your balls."

Instead of taking offense, Caesare laughed. Why wouldn't
he? This was his younger brother talking, a skinny kid who
preferred hanging out with their grandfather than making
his bones on the street like every other male his age. Who
could take anything he said seriously? But Caesare did ob-
ject to one thing. "Keep your fuckin' voice down. Fuck'sa-
matta wich you? Ya wanna broadcast this alia way to the
women?"

Mick knew what Caesare really meant. He didn't give a
shit about the Leonforte women, who were, in any case,
nonentities as far as the biziness was concerned. He was
terrified Grandfather Caesare would get wind of what he
was up to, and then, the favorite or not, he'd really catch it.

"I want my money," Mick said.

"Sure, sure, kid." Caesare drew out a roll of bills, which
he carried just like the older made men they saw around the
neighborhood. He peeled off a bill. "Here's your twenty."

But Mick shook his head. "I deserve more than that."

"Fuck for?"

"Hazardous duty, Caesare." Mick held out his hand. "I
got your shit past the cops. You owe me."

Caesare looked hard into his younger brother's eyes and
saw he wasn't kidding. He also knew the kid was right and
he laughed. "Fuck you. I tol' you forty an' that's what you
gettin'."

Mick grinned at him. "I wonder what Grandpa would say
to all these drugs you're selling."

"You know fuckin' well what he'd say." Caesare's eyes
squinted hard. "You little extortionist." But he was grinning
as he forked over another two twenties. "Here, fuckface,
don't spend it all in one place."

"Eighty dollars," Grandfather Caesare said, staring down
at the four twenty-dollar bills Mick had laid on the round
table in his office. The place stank of formaldehyde, cigar
smoke, and stale sweat. Mick had watched for three hours
while the old man negotiated with his allies and enemies for
pieces of turf that had been under dispute so long they were
known as a battle zone for the Saints and the Fulton-Rock-
aways to let off steam. Now, with increased vigilance by the
cops, that no longer seemed like such a good idea.

The settlement had been hammered out at last, but it
hadn't gone down well with all parties. The dark-faced
Frank Vizzini of Bay Ridge, known as the Importer, and
the sausagelike Tony Pentangeli of the Rockaways, who con-
trolled the truckers, both afraid of change and dissensions
within their families, were adamantly opposed to the plan.
Paul Vario, who took a piece of everything that went in and
out of Kennedy Airport, was neutral, as was Black Paul
Mattaccino from Astoria, who, like Grandfather, controlled
segments of the insurance and fire protection industries, as
well as the Fulton Fish Market and the humongous import-
export business owned by the Venetian, don Enrico Gol-
doni. All of them were into the unions. That was one pie
big enough to go around the table.

Grandfather's negotiating skills, however, had won the
day, along with the solid support he got from Gino Scalfa,
one of the dons from East New York, who looked like a
puffer fish and commanded a great deal of respect. He was
one of the first dons Grandfather had gone to see when he
had moved out of the Hole.

During the murderously tense session, Mick had observed

how his grandfather had cleverly preyed upon the various
dons' personalities in order to manipulate their votes. Cata-
loging this skill more than compensated for his scurrying
around the table, serving men who didn't even know he
existed. Now, at last, they were all gone.

"Openna window," Grandfather Caesare said. "It's close
in here."

He sighed deeply as Mick let the fresh air in. "Makes me
kinda sad," he mused, almost to himself.

"What does, Grandfather?" Mick asked as he poured
some anisette into a cordial glass and stuck it in front of the
old man.

Caesare picked up the glass, watching how the light played
off the crystal and the liquor. He took a deep breath.
"That's the smell that makes it all worthwhile." He downed
his anisette, sighed again. "Fix it inna you mind, Mikey,
because it's the most important smell in life, more important
even than the smell ova woman." He pursed his lips. "It'sa
smell of fear and it'sa good smell."

He looked down at the twenties spread out in front of
him. "This money?"

Mick, relieved that he hadn't been asked where he got
the eighty bucks, said in a rush, "I wanna invest it."

"S'matta, you haven't gotta bank account?"

"Banks is for goofballs. I wanna invest it with you."

Mick went to pour him more anisette, but Grandfather
waved him off. He rose, stretched, then put on his hat.
"C'mon, I wanna show you somethin'." Then he pointed to
the four bills. "Take that whicha,"

Grandfather liked to drive. He had a '59 emerald green
Caddy that was kept in pristine condition for him. He had
a driver, of course, but truth to tell he preferred to drive.
That was one of the great things about America, he had
always said. Driving. As he aged, he had taken even more
pleasure in driving that Caddy, and only Mick suspected part
of the reason he did was that he could still do it, and a skill
like that was becoming increasingly important to him.

This evening, he took Mick west about ten miles along
the Belt Parkway down to Sheepshead Bay. In those days,
a couple of country clubs and a hotel, -the Golden Gate Inn,
were down there by the Belt Parkway right at the bay, cater-

ing to the ginzoes. They liked the water. Who knows, maybe
it reminded them of Italy.

Grandfather parked the car off the service road at the
verge of where it got thick with overgrown weeds and the
ferocious, unlovely underbrush of the city, and they got out.
The sun was just going down. Seagulls were wheeling, calling
to each other from out of a sky the color of mother-of-pearl.
Grandfather stared down at the water, which, in taking on
the color of the sky, had disappeared.

"Beautiful, isn't it?"

Mick nodded.

Grandfather pointed. "Know how many people I know
about inna bay tied to cement blocks? Twenty. And that's just
me." He laughed, a dry sound like the scraping of boots
against a cement sidewalk. "You know, that Gino Scalfa, you
remember him, the fat one. He comes down here by himself
every evening, stares inna water. Why? It keeps him sharp, he
says, because it reminds him what happensa guys who get too
greedy or too wise or too ambitious too soon. An' he's right.
That's our world." He sighed as he took the twenties out of
Mick's hand. "You know, whatchew asking me?"

"I know."

"Well." The old man made quite a show of folding the
bills and pocketing them. "Let 'em grow, just like seeds,
right?" He touched the brim of his fedora. "Not only ene-
mies out there inna water, you know. Friends, too. Some of
'em I even miss." He turned to Mick and quite suddenly in
a very low voice said in Italian, "Mikey, I'm gonna tell you
the secret of Me, Not my life, but yours. Don't wind up
sounding like a mick. Educate yourself. Education is the key
to knowing yourself, and without that you'll be lost like
all these penny-ante hoodlums looking to make a name for
themselves. Education is history and history can teach us
everything we need to know because in history all the seri-
ous mistakes have already been made. A student of history
is bound never to repeat them, and let me tell you, not
making mistakes is what it's all about."

Grandfather Caesare's enormous hands pumped up and
down. "This is America and it's a mistake to think of it like
it's Sicily. It isn't, not even the Hole, much as we wanted it
to be. Now I see even the wanting was wrong."

He pushed his hands apart, palms up, and switched back
to English. "I mean, why'd we come here, anyway, to do
the same things we were doing inna old country? No. We
came for opportunity, yeah. But we also came to change."
He winked at Mick. "Not too many paisans understand this,
and inna end they're the ones'll die like dogs with their faces
inna pavement."

Looking at the milky stars through the lens of his tele-
scope, Mick heard his grandfather's voice. Educate yourself.
There were the Big Dipper and Orion, the weaker stars
made smudgy by the city's glow. He wished his brother had
heard Grandfather. We came for opportunity, yeah. But we
also came to change. Maybe then Caesare wouldn't think
Grandfather was over the hill. Then, again, maybe not.
Caesare had his own way of looking at the world-his own
kind of philosophy-that, like it or not, Mick had to admire.
He didn't agree with it, and he certainly didn't like his
brother any more for it, but he was already three steps
ahead of the wiseguys and would-be wiseguys all around
him. Caesare was destined for great things, Mick knew, if
he didn't the like a dog with his face in the pavement.

One night, a month or so after Grandfather had taken
him down to Sheepshead Bay, Mick was up on the roof of
his building staring at the stars. His eye ached with the strain
of peering through the city's light at the pristine sky above.

He heard the door open behind him and took his eye away
from the telescope. Rubbing it to get some circulation back
into it, he saw a small figure emerge onto the tarred roof.

"Jaqui?"

"Hi, Michael," she said.

It was the .beginning of June, had been one of those quint-
essential New York days that was as scorching as midsum-
mer. Night had brought only minimal respite. Mick stared
at his sister, who was dressed in a thin white cotton halter
dress and sandals. Her shoulders and legs already glowed
with the inner light of summer.

"How's it going?"

"Okay," he said, choking off the specter of his recurring
dream. He pointed upward. "Just stargazing."

"I think it's great that you do that."

"You do?"

"Sure. You're not on the streets with those bums."

"I have no interest in bums," Mick said brazenly.

"Good for you."

Jaqui, who had been named by her mother in atypical
Italian fashion after someone she had read about in Life
magazine, did not speak like anyone else in Ozone Park.
She was studious and conscientious and, in her quiet way,
proud of both traits. It was rumored in the family-though
Mick had never heard it spoken of-that she might become
a nun. Certainly, she was a regular Mass-goer and often
disappeared into the Sacred Heart of Santa Maria Convent
in Astoria.

She was beautiful, it was true, with her wide-apart green
eyes and luscious lips, but what Mick loved most about her
was that she moved through Ozone Park as if it did not
exist She was immune to the daily violent altercations, the
gangland turf wars, the guns and cigars in the house, even-
and perhaps most importantly-the closed doors behind
which the men met to discuss the biziness.

At nineteen, she was absolutely untouched by the savage
world of the uneducated men, so different from then-
mother, who, after all, cooked for Grandfather Caesare and
his cronies. In living by their rules, their mother had in some
way become like them. But Jaqui was as isolated from them
as the twinkling stars were from the streetlights of Ozone
Park. In a way, she was already in that place where Mick
longed to be, on another continent, unknown and far away.

Somewhere, from some other rooftop or perhaps an open
window, Doris Day was singing "Love Me or Leave Me."
Never deceive me, Mick thought. There was a sentiment not
well known in Ozone Park.

When Jaqui walked, it seemed to Mick as if she were
dancing, and as she moved dreamily toward him, he could
not help picturing a cantilevered terrace, a tuxedoed band,
a string of Chinese lanterns, elements resurrected from the
dream he'd had so many times it had the substance of
reality.

"Can I look?" she asked.

"Sure."

He beckoned and she put her eye to the lens. "What
you're looking at is Orion. It's a constellation."

Jaqui looked at him with her cool green eyes and laughed.
"I know that, dummy." But it was a gentle laugh, not any-
thing like Caesare's, which was like a cattle prod in his ribs.
Then she put her eye back at the telescope.

"How many stars in Orion?"

"Seven," he said. "Two shoulders, see 'em? And then
three dimmer ones, those're his belt. And then, lower down,
two more are his knees."

"I can't find the belt."

As he bent over her, he smelled the clean citrusy odor of
her hair, and he felt his knees grow weak. Immediately, his
cheeks burned with shame. How could he feel this way
about his sister? But it wasn't just a physical thing, it was
more. He knew that, and somehow the knowledge calmed
him somewhat. She was like a part of him that had broken
off, a piece he had been searching for.

He put his hands on her soft shoulders, moved her just
slightly. "There."

"Yes. I see them now. Oh, Michael, how beautiful."

Of 'course it was so. Beautiful stars as opposed to ugly
Ozone Park. How he longed to be with her on that cantile-
vered terrace on, a continent far, far away. His fingers mov-
ing over her shoulders felt her skin raised in goose bumps,
and her hair drifted onto his knuckle.

"Jaqui?"

She took her eyes from the lens. "Yes, Michael?"

"Nothing." He looked away and swallowed hard. What
was he going to say to her? What madness had been about
to escape his mouth? He put his hand up to his forehead to
see if it was still burning with blood.

She clasped her hands behind her back and smiled. "You
know what I also think is great?"

"What?"

"That you're sticking it out in school." She pursed her
lips and shook her head. "That brother of ours is going to
flunk out. I just know it. He's more interested in using a
gun than in using his brain."

"What brain?" It was easy to make a joke at Caesare's
expense when he wasn't around.

Jaqui frowned. "He isn't stupid, you know, not like the
rest of those gavonnes he runs with. They're like the gang
that couldn't shoot straight. If they had half a brain between
them, they'd be dangerous."

Mick laughed, delighting in her insight. "Yeah, well, you
know how Caesare is."

"I sure do. Tough as a bull and twice as stubborn. But
inside that big bark of his lies a first-rate mind." She sighed.
"If only he'd take your lead for once and apply himself
to learning."

"Caesare? Not a chance. He's too busy lapping up all the
street has to give him."

Jaqui stood very close to him. Her breath smelled like the
roses in his dream, and for a dizzying moment it seemed to
him as if they had been magically transported inside his
dream, that it was real and the rooftop in Ozone Park was,
in fact, the dream. Someone else's nightmare.

"Michael, this life makes me afraid. I'm not like Mom,
just sitting still while all the wildness, the death, swirls
around me. I can't imagine myself waiting patiently for a
man to return home from that war. The fear, it's like some-
thing sleeping in my bones, you know?-like a disease that
I'm fated to have but hasn't yet come to life." She shud-
dered and Mick could do nothing else but hold her. Her
head on his shoulder was almost more than he ~ could bear.

"I want out, Michael," she whispered in his ear, "so badly
it's a taste in my mouth." She pushed away from him so her
beautiful green eyes could meet his. "It's crazy, isn't it, what
I just said?"

Tell her, stupid, a terrifying voice inside him begged. If
there ever was a time, this it is. Tell her everything. But all
he said was, "Not at all. I understand."

"You do? Really and truly?"

It was one of her favorite phrases. Where she had picked
it up, he had no idea. "Really and truly."

Her smile was radiant as she hugged him to her. "Oh,
Michael, thank God there's someone in the family I can
talk to."

Now he understood the dilemma that bound them to-

gether as closely as did his recurring dream. I'm not like

Mom. The men were off limits to her, and their mother was

too traditional to understand the radical thoughts in Jaqui's
head. But he understood, better than she would ever know.

"You can always talk to me," he said, "about anything."

"You're not like any of them." She sat on the parapet,
ran a hand through her hair, and the lights of the city were
reflected in her eyes. "No wonder you come up here every
night. It's so far away from everything down there. All the
evil energy, the stupid violence." She looked up at him, the
naked, innocent look in her eyes stabbing at his stomach.
"Why are men so violent, Michael? It's a question I ask
myself over and over."

"I don't know. Maybe it's in the genes, you know, a terri-
torial thing, like in the old days protecting the family."

He had caught her interest. "War is in men's blood, is
that what you mean?"

"Yeah, kinda. They can't help it."

"But you're not like that."

"Maybe I got a genetic deficiency," he joked. They
laughed together and he felt them drawing even closer, the
dream and reality overlapping, exchanging places, reality
and unreality fusing with the intoxicating scent of roses.

Then she shivered. "This discussion sounds eerily like a
part of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy. Have you heard
of him?"

"No."

"He was a nineteenth-century German philosopher whose
theories on the nature of man were expropriated and maybe
even distorted by the Nazis. They used him to, in part, justify
their aims of ethnic cleansing. He was all for the primitive
man-who lived in the tropics and the primeval forests of
the soul. Nietzsche had only contempt for those men who
dwelled in the temperate zones, whose morality was, in his
mind at least, timidity."

"In other words, he believed that war lived in men's blood
and souls."

Jaqui nodded. "I'd say so. And he'd also say that the most
warlike men, like, for instance, Napoleon and Cesare Borgia,
were misunderstood. Nietzsche believed that these men were
condemned by moralists looking for evil, but in fact, Napo-
leon and Borgia were merely acting out the true nature of
man."

Mick found this ideology irresistible since it at once made
clear to him two points of view he had up to now found
irreconcilable. Grandfather had said that education was the
key to success because it showed you who you were, and
Mick believed him. But what about Caesare? He was largely
self-educated, having terrorized the local school into submis-
sion. He came and went there of his own volition. And yet,
in his own despicable way, he was already successful. He
had a fully formed outlook on life, an inner perspective, and
now in Nietzschean terms, Mick could understand his suc-
cess without education. He lived in the tropics, the primeval
forests of the soul. He was like Napoleon and his namesake,
Cesare Borgia.

At that moment, he heard the slam of a heavy car door
and he looked over the parapet on which Jaqui was sitting.
She turned to look down also, and they both saw Grandfa-
ther Caesare walking across the courtyard as his driver took
the Caddy to the parking spot across the street that, by
common consent, was always left vacant for it.

Mick was about to call out to the old man when he heard
a sound. It might have been a voice, harsh and piercing in
the night. It might have said, "Caesare Leonforte!"

The old man must have heard it as well because he halted,
turning back toward the street. And that was when Mick
saw the two shadows stride into the courtyard. At the same
instant he yelled a warning, they opened fire. Bright yellow
flames leaped from the muzzles of their handguns, and a
great booming echoed off the stone facade of the courtyard.
Blood spurted from the old man's chest and head as he was
thrown backward.

Jaqui put her hand to her mouth and screamed. Mick had
the presence of mind to pull her down from the parapet
where she could be seen by the assassins. He crouched down
with her, feeling the involuntary tremors rippling through
her. Her green eyes were wide and staring, and she was
biting on a knuckle in order not to scream again. A tiny
rivulet of blood trickled between her fingers, and when Mick
pulled her hand, away, he saw the series of small crescent
marks her teeth had made as they punctured her skin.

He felt her trying to stand up and he kept a tight hold
on her. She opened her mouth to protest, but he put a hand

across her lips, shook his head, making a gun out of his
forefinger and thumb so she would get the idea that they
were in danger unless they remained hidden.

A voice began to wail from an open window fronting the
courtyard. Voices began to shout. Mick stood up, peered
over the parapet. The courtyard was alive with people, but
of course the assassins were nowhere in sight. Mick let go
of his sister, ran to the side of the building facing 101st
Avenue. He saw a dark-colored Cougar pulling out, heading
very fast toward the light at Eighty-eighth Street. It was
going to run the light, which had just turned red, but at
almost the last instant the driver saw the cop car nosing up
the side street and screeched to a halt.

Mick ran for his telescope, lugged it back to his vantage
spot. Swinging the barrel over and down, he peered through
the lens at the back of the dark-colored Cougar. The cop
car had turned on its siren and flashing tights, headed di-
rectly for his house. He just had time to make out the license
plate number of the Cougar when the driver threw it in gear
and hot-rodded down the avenue as the light hit green.

"Did you see anything?" Jaqui said, her eyes wide. "The
police are here. Can you help them?"

Mick, thinking of how she had said he wasn't tike all the
other males in Ozone Park, said, "There's wasn't anything
to see."

He could see the disappointment in her eyes. "Really
and truly?"
"Really and truly."

He folded down the telescope, put his arm around her.
"Let's go downstairs."

They came out into the courtyard, having first deposited
the telescope in the apartment. Sadly, it was an all too typi-
cal scene for Ozone Park. Women were weeping. The cops
had already cordoned off the body and were interviewing
everyone for potential witnesses. Caesare, in a rage of frus-
tration and fear, was shouting at the cops. John was gone
and Alphonse was three thousand miles away in San Fran-
cisco. Jaqui went immediately to their mother, who was sob-
bing in the arms of several other women.

Mick moved through the crowd until he was at the closest
perimeter. His grandfather lay facedown in the courtyard in

a pool of blood and brains and feces. It was a more horri-
fying sight than he could ever have imagined, and he stared
fixedly at it, drinking in the horror as if for fortification.
Slowly, he began to tremble.

Behind him, in ones and twos, the people dispersed as
they were let go by the police. Caesare, vowing revenge,
had stormed off. Mick's mother, half-fainting with shock,
had been led into the house, and now Mick and Jaqui, hav-
ing endured the cops' indifferent questions, stood together
as police photographers took flash photos of the crime scene.
Soon enough, the coroner arrived.
"You don't have to stay for this," Mick said quietly.
Jaqui took his hand, squeezing her fingers between his.
"Yes, I do."

And there they stood, in the stone courtyard. No band
was playing, and instead of the glow of Chinese lanterns the
night was filled with the harsh light of flashbulbs popping.
And with the stench of death instead of the attar of roses
in his nostrils, Mick was left with his grandfather's ironically
prophetic words: And inna end they're the ones'll die like
dogs with their faces inna pavement.

"You want what?"

"I told you, Caesare, a trace of this license plate number."

Caesare Leonforte squinted at his younger brother.
"You're a cute kid, ya know that, but I got no time for you
now. I'm tryin'ta run down every fuck inna Fulton-Rock-
aways. I don't know who to whack first, the Vizzinis or the
Pentangelis. Not to mention I'm not too sure where this young
don, Dominic Mattaccino, stands. Y'know, with his father,
Black Paul Mattaccino, to this day no one knows how he died.
Then the widow takes up with Enrico Goldoni, it's not even a
year since Black Paul kicked the bucket. And her brat Domi-
nic takes over, thinks his shit don't stink. Maybe he ain't even
Black Paul's son." Caesare threw up his hands. "An" what's
Goldoni anyway, a fuckin' Venetian, for Christ's sake, that's
maybe not even Italian." The hands spun like pinwheels.
"What the fuck's he know from la famiglia, uh? Grandpa
might've trusted him, but not me. This is fuckin' war. I got
suspects comin' outta my ears, an' now this."

The two brothers, along with perhaps a dozen of Caesare's

cronies, button men and minor family heads, were in Grand-
father's office above the Mastimo Funeral Home. Despite
the clamor and grim tension, it seemed cold and lonely, and
Mick was just now realizing how much Grandfather Cae-
sare's presence filled it up.
"I know that."

"Okay, you wanna be useful," Caesare said, "gimme an
espresso."

"But I need this. It's very important. I think these wise-
guys stole my telescope off the roof, the telescope Grandpa
gave me."

Caesare tore at his hair. "Stolen telescopes? Madonna,
Richie, whattam I gonna do with this kid?"

"Whyint I make the fuckin' call?" Richie said. "Get'em
off our backs."

Caesare snapped his fingers. "Go on. Fuck not?"
An hour later, the call back came from one of the Leon-
fortes' contacts at the 106th Precinct. Richie, the receiver
held between his shoulder and ear, scribbled frantically on
a scratch pad. "Yeah, yeah, got it. Thanks." He cradled the
receiver, ripped off the sheet, gave it to Mick.

"Here, kid, don't get inta no trouble wid dis or your
brudda will kill da bothuv us."
"Thanks," Mick said, pocketing the paper.
Outside on the street, the late-afternoon sun was shining
and a small breeze was ruffling the leaves on the elms and
plane trees. Cars whooshed by on Conduit Avenue, and a
bus spewed diesel fumes into the air. Mick took a look
around his world and found that it all looked different.
There was a sheen, no, more like an aura, like the halo
around a saint's head, over everything. The outlines of build-
ings and people came to him with the superreal crispness of
things seen through the lens of his telescope. Colors were
so vivid they almost made his eyes water. He would have
slipped on his sunglasses, but the sensation felt too good.

Back home, he went into his brother's bedroom and,
reaching into the back of the closet, pushed aside the neat
stack of winter clothes. Behind that, he took down an olive-
colored metal ammo case from World War II. He had been
with Caesare when he had bought it at a war-surplus store
and, curious as to why his brother would want such a useless

item, had spied on him as Caesare had filled it and had
carefully hidden it away.

Now he brought it over to the bed and opened it. Inside,
wrapped in oilskin, was a .45-caliber handgun and rounds of
ammunition. Mick took out the gun, hefting it in his hand.
He loaded it as he had seen his brother do many times,
slipped extra ammo into his trousers' pocket, and replaced
the ammo case inside the closet. Before he left the apart-
ment, he took a wire coat hanger out of his own closet
and slipped his mother's long-bladed paring knife into the
waistband of his trousers at the small of his back.

Only then did he open the slip of paper on which Richie
had written the name and address of the person who owned
the dark-colored Cougar he had seen racing away- from the
scene of his grandfather's murder. A name he did not know,
an address in East New York. But they meant everything
to him now, because he realized that the moment his grand-
father had been killed his whole life had changed. Standing
there with Jaqui in the bloody courtyard, he had felt it,
intangibles swinging on an invisible axis, canting the world-
his world-over on its side. Nothing would ever be the same
again. He did not know why, but he knew it was so.

He walked more than a mile from his apartment before
he stole the car. He broke in using the wire hanger and
hot-wired it without any trouble. Then he set off for East
New York.

He pulled up across the street from the address, nosing
into a parking spot. He did not see the dark-colored Cougar
anywhere around, so he got out, scouted around to get the
lay of the land. Then he returned to the stolen car and sat
back, folded his arms across his chest, and waited. Into his
mind swept the darkness of his grandfather's fate: to be
walking across the familiar pavement of home one instant,
to be ripped asunder by assassins' bullets the next. To die
like a dog with his face in the pavement.
Oh, Christ!

Tears stood in the corners of Mick's squeezed-shut eyes,
and he felt a red rage filling him. He would not-could
not-allow this to be his grandfather's fate. He was a great
man, not a dog. Vengeance would be his salvation. Mick
was no longer living in the temperate zone of his youth.

He had crossed over to the tropics, the primeval forest of
the soul.

A cool, clear wind blew through Mick when he opened his
eyes. A dark blue Cougar was heading down the street as if
looking for a parking spot. He spotted the license plate in his
rearview mirror and it matched up. He started his engine,
pulled out so the Cougar could park. It was a joke. The driver
actually waved at him in thanks as he took the spot.

Mick double-parked around the corner. He hurried back
and was in time to see a tall, dark-haired individual with
deep olive skin locking his car. He was in his early twenties
and, on closer inspection, had a scar separating one eyebrow.
"Hey, there!" Mick called, putting a smile on his face as
he jogged toward the man. "Vinnie Mezzatesta."

He turned. "Fuck you want, kid?"

"Not much," Mick said as he put all his weight into a
solid punch to Vinnie's solar plexus.

Vinnie doubled over and Mick hauled him into a dank
and narrow alley he had discovered on his reconnaissance.
He slammed Vinnie into the wall and slapped his face.
"Hey, fuckface! Hey, Vinnie Halfahead, you with me? My
name's Michael Leonforte." He put his lips against Vinnie's
ear. "That's Leonforte, asshole."

"So fuckin'what?" Vinnie said.

"So fuckin' this," Mick said, kneeing him in the groin.

Vinnie groaned and slumped so that Mick had to pin him
against the wall. He slapped the man until his bloodshot
eyes opened and he could see the'.45 in Mick's left hand.
"So you killed my grandfather."

Vinnie stared, entranced, at the muzzle of the gun. "Kid,
you're fuckin' outta your mind." -

"You and someone else."

"You little fucknuthin', you know who I work for? Gino
Scalfa. Sure as I'm standin' here, you're a fuckin' dead man."

Mick pushed the gun against the side of Vinnie's neck, and
as he stared him in the eye, he reached into his waistband and
in one fluid motion drew the paring knife and jammed the en-
tire blade into the outside of Vinnie's right knee.

Pop! Pop! The joint made all kinds of interesting noises
as Mick slashed the blade horizontally through tendons
and ligaments.

Vinnie yelped as he jumped like a frog hit by a lightning
bolt. Mick actually saw his pupils contract with the pain as
he let him go and he slid down the wall.

"Oh, Jesus and Mary," Vinnie cried, rocking himself,
"look at my fuckin' knee."

"Yeah, Vinnie Halfahead, now you ain't standing any-
more." Mick knelt beside him, ignoring the blood and the
fragments of bone sticking up through the slit skin. "You
killed my grandfather and I don't give a fuck" who you are,
where you go to church, or who you work for." He put the
muzzle of the .45 against Vinnie's left temple. "I'm gonna
fuckin' blow your brains out."

Vinnie Mezzatesta finally got it through his half a head
that this was no mere kid, that he meant what he said and
was not to be fooled with. The cheap hood's bravado with
which he had applied Gino Scalfa's muscle in injudicious
quantities evaporated like mist in the sun. What it left be-
hind was what had always been there: a none-too-bright
young man without any sense of himself.

"I didn't fuckin' do it," he said, still rocking back and forth.
"I only drove the fuckin' Cougar. You're right, there was
someone else."

"Who, Vinnie?"

"Jesus, kid, you know what you're asking me t'do?"

Mick, calmly and deliberately, drove the blade of the par-
ing knife into Vinnie's kneecap so that he screamed and
squirmed to get away. Mick shipped him hard across both
cheeks with the barrel of the .45.

"Who pulled the trigger?" He already knew Vinnie was
lying about only driving the car because he had seen two shad-
ows, flames jumping from two guns. Vinnie and who else?

Vinnie put his head down and mumbled something at his
bloody shoe.

"What was that?"

Vinnie was beginning to shiver and shake as he went into
shock. "Was Gino himself," he whispered. "Jesus, it hurts."
His eyes were tearing. "Gino pulled the trigger on your
grandfather. He fuckin' had no respect for that Sicilian
ginzo, comin' inta turf Gino wanted, making deals wid
Gino's enemies. He hated that fuck from the moment he

walked into Gino's place of business. Know why? 'Cause he
went to Black Paul Mattaccino first, didn't give Gino the
respect he deserved. But Gino was patient, he bided his
time. He saw how your grandfather could organize the
neighborhood for him. Now he's gonna step in nice 'n' easy
and have everything set up for him."

Perhaps it was a renewal of the ethnic hatred that
gave Vinnie back his braggadocio. Or perhaps, as he
was named, he only had half a brain. In any event, as
he spoke, he lunged for Mick's gun.

Mick, who was watching him with such intensity that he
saw the intimation of the movement in Vinnie's bloodshot
eyes, let him get his bloody hand on the gun. That was okay
by him because while Vinnie was occupied, Mick drove the
blade of the paring knife into his chest

He must have hit a main artery because blood began to
fountain out of the wound almost immediately, and he had
to jump back in order not to get drenched. Vinnie's eyes
were wide with fear. His mouth flopped open and closed
like a fish gasping in the bottom of a boat. He made a vain
effort to cover the wound, then he fell over in a heap.

It was astonishing, really, how calm and clearheaded he-
was. He could feel the blood pumping in his veins and there
was a feral smell in his nostrils. He had never killed before,
had never even contemplated it. Shouldn't this monumental
act have changed him in some way? He had the blood of
another human being quite literally on his hands. But his
metamorphosis had already occurred. He was merely follow-
ing through on this particular strand of what he now knew
to be his destiny. It was right and proper-merely business.

Mick wiped the knife on Vinnie's clothes, then put both
weapons away. He found the keys to the Cougar. It was
parked almost directly across from the alley. He went
around, popped the trunk, went back into the alley, and
making sure he was alone, hefted Vinnie's corpse and
dumped it in. He slammed down the trunk's lid, then he
drove off.

A tight drizzle was falling across Sheepshead Bay as Mick

pulled up. He sat in the Cougar and listened to the drone
of jets from the airport. There was a soft, dank smell here

that was unique. Probably, you didn't want to know what
was causing it. Maybe it was all those bodies Grandfather
and Gino Scalfa had dumped into the bay.

Scalfa was already there, standing near the water, as Grand-
father had said, gazing out over the water. Mick beeped the
horn several times until Scalfa turned slowly around.

"Hey, Vinnie, whatta you doin' here? I tried ta call ya
before but there was no ansa."

Mick got out of the car, came down to where the don
stood, fat as a moon.

"You ain't Vinnie." He scowled, his puffer-fish face con-
torted in the effort to remember Mick's face. "I know you,
don't I?"

"Vinnie sent me," Mick said to allay Scalfa's fears and
give him just enough time. He had the .45 in his right hand
and was now close enough to press its muzzle against the
fat don's heart

"The name is Leonforte," he said, pulling the trigger.
"Mick Leonforte."

The bullet tore clean through Scalfa, boring a good-sized
hole in him and completely obliterating his heart. He
dropped to his knees, but Mick saw there was no reason to
shoot him again: the light was already out of his eyes.

Gulls rose, crying and circling, from either the gun's re-
port or the smell of blood. Mick's hand ached from the .45's
heavy recoil. As Scalfa fell over, face first, Mick launched
the gun far out into the bay. The gunshot had sounded like
nothing more than a truck backfire, and in this isolated spot,
no one was likely to notice. On the other hand, he had no
intention of hanging around to find out. He dragged Scalfa's
fat form back to the Cougar, did some rearranging of limbs

in the trunk, and got him in beside Vinnie Halfahead.

Mick looked around. Except for the voracious gulls, the
spot was deserted. Overhead, a large jet was streaking si-
lently across the sky. Suddenly, its sound rose like a bird
from the bay, a deep rumble like a portent from heaven.

"You, did what?" Caesare shook his head. "Fuck're you

tellin' me?"

Mick, in the somber foyer of the Mastimo Funeral Home,
went through it all again, how he had been up on the rooftop

when Grandfather had been murdered, how he had used his
telescope to get the license plate number, how he had pumped
Vinnie Mezzatesta, how he had gone to Sheepshead Bay.

"Whatta you askin' me t' believe, that you, you little
pissant, bidda-bing, bidda-bam, bidda-boom, whacked this
Vinnie Whatsis and Gino fuckin'Scalfa?" Caesare threw up
his hands. "Marrone, kid, you gotta some imagination, I'll
grant you that."

"Come downstairs. I've got the bodies in Vinnie's Cougar.
I didn't want to leave them lying around for the cops to find
and give them an excuse to come down even harder on us."

Ten minutes later, a white-faced Caesare called for Richie
and two of their buddies. As they gathered at the rear of the
Cougar, he said, "Drive this crate around to the service en-
trance. There's cargo in the trunk. Get 'em out and prepare
'em in the usual way. Then, get rid of the car. Incinerate it."

"Who's in there?" Richie asked.

Caesare leered at him. "You'll find out soon enough. An',
take it from me, you won't believe your fuckin' eyes."

As they drove off, Caesare stood in the street with Mick,
with the last of the drizzle coming down. "You're one crazy
bastard, you know that, kid?" He cuffed Mick roughly. "I
should be pissed at you for not cuttin' me in onna action."
He grinned. "But Jesus Christ, you whacked these two real
good. Just like a professional."

That was as close as he could come to saying he was
proud of his brother. Mick, who was only now realizing how
long he had waited for this moment, felt somehow deflated.
Instead of feeling proud, he found himself wondering what
Jaqui would think of a world where recognition came from
whacking people. Trouble was, he knew very well what she
would think. She despised it with every fiber of her being.

"Fuckin' Gino Scalfa." Caesare was shaking his head. "I
never would have figured. He was the old man's best friend."

"Friendship is a strange and unruly animal," Mick said,

recalling his grandfather's words. "Like a lame dog you take

off the street and nurse back to health who then bites you on

the hand, you have to treat friendship with equal amounts of

apprehension and skepticism."

Caesare looked at him. "What the fuck does that mean?"

"It means," Mick said, "that in the biziness you have no
friends, only enemies."

There was a different tone in Caesare's voice, a kind of
respect he'd never showed before for his brother. "Where,
allova sudden, you get to know so much about the bizi-
ness, kid?"

"From serving espresso and anisette to Grandpa."

They went back into the funeral home, Mick had never
been to the rear where the bodies were prepared. In the
four hours he was there he learned a great deal. Vinnie
Mezzatesta and Gino Scalfa were cleaned up, embalmed,
then placed in the bottom of cherrywood coffins paid for by
legitimate customers.

That was because the rightful deceased were placed in
these coffins, directly on top of the mobsters. In that way,
the whacked men were disposed of without anyone knowing
what had happened to them. And there was no possibility
of their corpses appearing six months or a year later in the
Pennsylvania and Fountain avenues junkyards or washing
up in the bay.

It was a foolproof way of making people disappear, and
as Mick discovered that night, it was the innovative method
by which Grandfather Caesare had turned a lackluster busi-
ness into a booming franchise.

"Kid, you did one fuckin' job whacking the bastards who
killed Grandpa," Caesare said. "He woulda been prouda
you." He shook his head sadly. "I gotta admit it, I miss the
old bird."

"Me, too," Mick acknowledged.

"Yeah, but the difference is you spent all this time with
him. Looks like you were the smart one."

They were upstairs in Grandfather's old office. Mick was
making espresso while Caesare sat at the round table around
which so many men of power and respect had sat and drank
and smoked and played cards and lied to one another. It
would never be the same again in here or anywhere else in

Ozone Park, both men knew that. Uncle Alphonse had no
use for New York. He had come for the funeral and had
gone back to California, where the younger Leonfortes'
mother would soon go. Caesare, as well, as it turned out.

Caesare wasted no time in telling Mick how it was going to
be. The Leonfortes were pulling up stakes in New York.
Times were changing. With Grandpa gone there was no rea-
son to stay on. Besides, there was more opportunity on the
West Coast.

"I'm gonna go inta Uncle Alphonse's biziness," Caesare
said. "Won't be long before I'm his right-hand man. He's
got no sona his own so ..." He stirred sugar into the
espresso Mick had brought over. The two brothers sat in
silence for some time, sipping their coffee and thinking their
own thoughts. "You're welcome ta come an' help out."

Mick, who had been around this table long enough to
separate the lies from the truth, found the offer amusing. It
was as phony as a three-dollar bill. Caesare could not possi-
bly want a potential rival for Alphonse's affection and re-
spect, especially not his brother.

"Be your gofer, you mean. No way. I have my own ideas.
I'm going into the Army."

"What?" Caesare's cup clattered loudly into its saucer.
"Are you mental, or what?"

"I've got to get out of here."

"So, okay," Caesare said, digging into his hip pocket and
coming out with a wad of bills. He began to peel off hun-
dreds. "So how much do you need, kid? Say the figure an'
it's yours. You sure earned it."

"No, no." Mick raised his hands. He caught his brother's
eyes. "Caesare, listen to me. What I did I did out of love
and respect for Grandpa. I did it because I had to. 1 didn't
do it for money, understand?"

"Hey, kid, don't take offense. We're not talking blood
money here, if that's your worry. The family owes you and
I want to-"

"Forget it. The family owes me zip." Mick rolled up the
hundreds, put them into his brother's hand. "See, it's not
just Ozone Park I want to get out of. It's everything."

Caesare cocked his head. "Everything? I don't unnerstand."

"I'm not sure."

Caesare scowled. "Kid, you're starting to piss me off.
First, you don't accept my offer of money-made free an'
dear as one brother to another. Now, you're starting to talk
crazy. I don't like any of it."

"It's not for you to like or dislike," Mick said, getting up.
"Good-bye, Caesare."

Caesare pushed his chair back so roughly it toppled over.
"Hey, not so fast, wise guy. What about Mom? You can't
just leave her like this. She's expecting you to come with us
to San Francisco. With Jaqui staying here and all, this'll
break her heart."

"Sorry."

"Sorry?" That weird manic light like a red star had come
into Caesare's eyes. "Is that all you can say, you ungrateful
sonuvabitch." He took one step toward Mick. "I'll fuckin'
break your neck for you, kid."

"That time's past." Mick put up a warning hand, and
astonishingly, Caesare halted in midstride. Mick could see it
in his eyes, that uncertainty, that knowledge of what Mick
had done to the two men in the cherrywood coffins.

"Do what you fuckin' want, then," Caesare said, his hands
stuck in his pockets. "But don't come ta me for help. I won't
know you."

The Convent of the Sacred Heart of Santa Maria domi-
nated a quiet, tree-shaded street in Astoria. Although it was
by far the largest structure on the block, it was flanked by
a bakery and a dry cleaner's. On the opposite side of the
street stretched a row of neat attached brick-faced houses,
all with small aluminum awnings over the front doors.

The convent was actually quite a beautiful building. It was
constructed of large blocks of white stone off which the
sunshine sparked and cascaded like rippling water. There
was a carved alabaster statue of Mary alone on one side of
the gated entrance and another of Her and the baby Jesus
on the other.

Mick, pulling the brim of the black fedora down over his
forehead so the wind wouldn't take it, rang the bell at the side
of the gate and was admitted. Not knowing the proper proto-
col, he took the fedora off as soon as he was in the grounds.

A nun in habit met him at the front stoop. She smiled
quietly at him as he approached.

"I'm here to see Jaqui," he said, his throat suddenly tight.
And when the nun looked at him quizzically: "Jaqui
Leonforte."

The nun smiled and bowed him in. "You must be Mi-
chael," she said in her soft voice. "Follow me, please."

She led Mick down a series of dark stone corridors whose
walls were completely unadorned. He passed a pair of
French doors that led out onto a small courtyard opulently
bedecked with flowering shrubs and vines. He caught a
glimpse of a stone bench and a small fountain before the
nun led him farther down the corridor. At its end, she
opened high wooden double doors but did not go in herself.

"The mother superior will see you."

Mick went into a surprisingly small room that had been
turned into something of an office. A small niche held a
plaster Madonna, and on the wall behind the desk hung a
wood and gilt crucifix.

"I am Bernice." a woman in her late fifties said as she
rose from her chair. "You must be Michael Leonforte." She
stuck out her hand, shook his forthrightly with a grip as firm
and dry as a man's. "Marie Rose has spoken of you often."

"Who?"

Bernice took off her steel-rimmed spectacles so that he
could feel the full impact of her extraordinary pale blue
eyes. "I thought you knew. Your sister is a full novitiate, a
permanent member of the convent now. Her new name is
Marie Rose."

Mick, holding his grandfather's fedora tightly in both
hands, shifted nervously from one foot to the other. "Does
this mean I can't see her?"

"It is not usually allowed," Bernice said in her steady
voice that neither rose nor fell.

"But, see, I'm going away. For a long time, maybe." He
ground the brim of the fedora against his thighs. "I gotta
see her."

"Sit down a moment, won't you, Michael?" Bernice said,
indicating a straight-backed chair. And when he had done
so, she smiled. "I don't mean to make you uneasy."

"Oh, it's not you," Mick said hastily. "It's this place. It's
so quiet."

"Deliberately so." Bernice paused for a moment, as if
debating with herself whether to go on. "I understand you
had a close and unusual relationship with your grandfather."

Mick nodded. "Jaqui, urn, Marie Rose told you."

"No," Bernice said, sitting down at her desk. "I knew
your grandfather quite well."

"You did?"

Bernice smiled again. "You seem surprised."

"Well, uh, you know, Astoria, it's a little out of his terri-
tory," Mick said, recovering quickly.

Bernice laughed, a low, astonishingly joyous sound. "I
suppose that is one way of putting it." She reached into a
drawer, took out something that she spread upon the desk-
top. "Four twenty-dollar bills," she said, and those pale blue
eyes impaled him again.

"I asked him to invest them."

"Are you surprised that he chose to invest your money
with me rather than with the funeral home or the insurance
companies he controlled?"

Mick squinted at her. "What do you know about all that?"

"Everything," Bernice said, swiping the money off the
desktop as deftly as a Las Vegas dealer. The smile wreathed
her face. "I think, in the end, you will be pleased with the
return on your investment." She stood up. "Now, go back
the way you came to the meditation garden. Novitiate Marie
Rose is waiting for you there."

"Thank you, Mother Superior," Mick said, stumbling to
his feet.

"You're quite welcome, Michael." At the door to her of-
fice, she said in the hushed voice of a confidante, "I loved
him, you know." Then she softly closed the door.

As Mick went down the corridor, he heard the soft chant-
ing of prayers. What on earth had the mother superior
meant by that last cryptic statement? In what way had she
loved Grandfather Caesare? And why would she tell Mick?

He was still pondering these questions when he opened
the French doors. The sound of songbirds greeted him, along
with the heavy perfume of roses, and he was immediately
plunged into his dream. He walked out into the courtyard,
and though it was in Queens, it might just as well have been
that terrace cantilevered out over the unknown coastline of
his dream. The prayer, stronger now because it emerged
from an open window fronting the courtyard, was like music.

As he walked down the narrow, mossy brick path to the
single stone bench, Jaqui turned toward him. Her face was

radiant and he felt his heart lurch in his chest. Nothing had
changed on this score, he saw. He felt about his sister as he
always had.

She smiled and, instead of embracing him, took his hands
in hers. "Michael, it's so good to see you. I wasn't certain
you'd come before you left." She shook her head. "I've tried
to talk to Caesare. But you know our brother." She gave
him an almost embarrassed smile. "He never listened to a
word I said." She put a hand to his cheek. "You look tired "

She led him to the bench, where they both sat in silence
for some time. All Mick could smell were the roses. For a
time, he tried not to breathe, but that didn't work, either.

"Jaqui, you sure this is what you want?"

"It's right for me, Michael."

He sighed. "I guess I just don't understand." He gestured
up at the white stone walls. "All this." He shook his head
in bewilderment.

"You met Bernice."

"The mother superior. Sure."

"Then you know why I'm here." She squeezed his hand.
"Grandfather knew."

"He did?"

She nodded. "From the very beginning. And Mom's been
very understanding." She glanced away, at a songbird that
flitted among the vines, looking for something to eat.

"Jaqui-"

She turned back to him. "I'm Marie Rose now."

"Yeah, sure." He disentangled his fingers from hers and
stood up. This wasn't how it was supposed to end. This
wasn't what he wanted. "I gotta get going." Why had he
come here, anyway?

"I know." She continued to sit on the bench as if willing
them both to remain here in this odd limbo for at least a
while longer, and for a flash, he had the profoundly disquiet-
ing sense that she was aware of his dream.

"I don't know when I'll be back."

She turned her face up to him. "But we'll see each other."

"You bet."

He turned, leaving her there with the sun in her eyes, but in
all the years afterward of never seeing her, the deep Mediter-
ranean green of her eyes never left his mind or his dreams.

Book 2

Smoke and

Mirrors

A thousand hearts are great within my bosom.
Advance our standards, set upon our foes!

-Richard III, act 5, scene 3
Richard III, William Shakespeare

 

4

New York/Tokyo

A mockingbird's insouciant calling ushered in Margarite Gol-
doni DeCamillo's return to Astoria. Despite her apprehension
and fear over her current predicament, the sight of the famil-
iar streets and stores began a flood of memories inside her.

She parked in front of the bakery and went in just as it
was closing. It looked the same as it always had, with its
sawdust over the tiny white floor tile, so scratched and
cracked it might be somewhere in Italy. Fluorescent lights
bounced off the large glass cases, though oddly they didn't
seem as huge as they once had.

"Can I help you?" asked a chubby little woman who bus-
tled out from the back. Her gray hah- was tied back in a
bun. She had a doughy face with thick eyebrows that arched
like a clown's. She broke into a smile. "Margarite?"

"Yes, Mrs. Paglia. It's me."

"Madonna!" Mrs. Paglia cried, coming around from be-
hind the cases. "Bella! So good to see you! Poor darling,
how are you?" She pulled Margarite's head down to her
ample bosom. She smelled of flour and starch. "Such a trag-
edy about Tony. It was on the news this morning, so terrible
I couldn't believe it! I said to Luigi, 'Can you believe this
about our Tony D.?' " She bit a knuckle. "It's an infamia!"

"I know. I'm still in shock."

Mrs. Paglia waved her pudgy hands. "But don't worry,
Bella. You're here now. You're home." She hurried back
behind the counter, began picking through the bread and
rolls. "But you're so thin." She handed a fistful over the
countertop. "Mangia, angel. Mangia!"

Margarite, far from hungry, took several bites of the roll.
It would have been disrespectful to do otherwise, but she
could already feel her tightly knotted stomach rebelling.

"Now don't you worry about a thing," Mrs. Paglia was
saying, as she brought some grappa from the back and
poured it into a water glass. "Here, angel. Fortification.
Drink up." She waved her hands again, as if with the gesture
she could get the rim more quickly to Margarite's lips.
"Drink it all, Bella, it will do you good!"

Then she bustled around the cases again to put her arm
around Margarite. "I know why you're here," she whispered
with a glance toward the back where her husband, Luigi,
must-have been working on the bakery's books. "Instinct,
angel. That's why you've come here in your hour of need."
She squeezed Margarite's shoulders. "The men think they
have it all figured out, right? But we know better. All
they've figured out is what we give them." She cackled a
little. "You finish your roll and then you go next door like
you planned. It's the right thing."

"She's there?"

Mrs. Paglia nodded and crossed herself. "Thank God. He
looks after her. Though she's in her nineties, you'd never
believe it." She tapped the side of her head with her stubby
forefinger. "She's no longer mother superior, of course; an-
other has taken up those duties. But she is sharp as ever,
angel You'll see."

Outside, the mockingbird's clear notes pierced the night
air. Margarite glanced at her watch. Two hours left before
she had to make the meet so she could save her daughter's
life. But what would happen to them then? Nothing good.
Far from ending things, turning herself over to Bad Clams
would be just the beginning. He wanted all of Dominic's
secrets: his contracts with truckers, wholesalers, judges, cops,
bankers, and manufacturers across the country, his contacts
in Washington, and most of all, he coveted the power of the
Nishiki network, which had provided Dominic with personal

dirt on enough high-level government officials to get what-
ever he wanted from them. Mikio Okami was Nishiki, mys-
teriously providing the secrets of other people's lives in
order to keep them under the Goldonis' thumb.

The complex mechanism for gaming this information Mar-
garite now had in her head. Bad Clams would use Francie
for as long as he could as the goad that would make her
spill her guts to him.

She staggered as she walked down the street. Then, rush-
ing to the curb, she doubled over, vomiting up everything
she had just eaten and drunk. When the spasms had sub-
sided, she opened her purse, wiped her mouth with a couple
of Kleenex. The gun glinted evilly in the sodium streetlights.

Christ, she thought. What am I going to do?

She knew exactly what she must do at this moment. She
went to the wrought-iron gate protecting the large white
stone building that took up most of the block. The images
of Mary and the baby Jesus flanked the gate, just as they
had when Dominic had first taken her here six years ago to
begin her education.

She rang the bell and was admitted at once.

A strange kind of peacefulness stole over her as she
stepped into the grounds of the Sacred Heart of Santa Maria
Convent. Above her head, sitting high in a magnolia tree,
she saw the mockingbird peering down at her with its head
cocked at a comical angle. Then it began to sing, sounding
like one, two, three, four other birds. The master of disguise,
protecting its young with its ventriloquist's voice.

She walked up the marble steps and the doors opened
inward.

"Welcome, my child," a familiar voice said from the
shadows.

Margarite, who had for a moment been lost in the past,
said, "Bernice?"

"Yes, my child." Bernice wrapped her in her loving
embrace.

"Oh, Bernice!" Margarite began to sob. The tenderness
of those arms, the warmth of that body in her moment of
crisis, were too much for her. "God in heaven, what is hap-
pening to my life?"

"That is what you have come to find out, my child."

Bernice closed the wooden door behind them, walked
with her arm around Margarite down the corridor. Once
again, Margarite was struck by the almost magisterial silence
of the convent. What other, less attuned visitors mistook for
austerity, she recognized as an absolute serenity at the cen-
ter of the spirit.

"Everything that's happened-I just feel so helpless. It's
all spinning out of control-" She broke off, unable to go
on.

Bernice stopped before a mirror. Her strong hand grasped
Margarite's chin, turned her face up so that she was staring
at her reflection. "Look. What do you see? Your face is
stained with tears," Bernice said softly. "But I see deeper
than that. Your soul is choked with tears. This is not just
from the events of the past few days, my child. You must
recognize this before you can go on."

"I can't. I-"

"Ah, Margarite, you can. And do you know why? It is
because you are your brother's sister. You have so much of
him inside you, though you are not of the same blood. No
doubt, he saw that kinship of temperament in you."

Margarite and her sister, Celeste, who lived in Venice,
were the daughters of Enrico Goldoni, a manufacturer and
exporter of fine Venetian silks and brocades, who had resi-
dences in Venice and Astoria, Queens. In 1964, when his
daughters Margarite and Celeste were nine and six respec-
tively, he remarried. The woman, Faith Mattaccino, came to
him with a son, Dominic, whom he adopted a year later.
Faith had been married to Black Paul Mattaccino, by all
accounts an exceptionally scary New York Mafia don, who
died under mysterious circumstances. One of the many ru-
mors that had swirled around Black Paul was that Dominic
was not his son.

"I doubt if he was ever this out of control."

"But control is why Dominic first came here, Margarite,"
the old mother superior said. "And it is why you have
come." Her pale blue eyes grew round and depthless in that
charismatic way of hers as she gathered herself for power.
"Never forget that your inner strength is why Dominic chose
you to succeed him."

"I don't know. What if he was wrong?"

"But I am not wrong," Bernice said in that tone she used
that brooked no rebuttal. She took Margarite's tear-stained
face in her smooth hands. "Now listen to me, child I advised
your brother on his successor and he agreed. We were not
wrong about you. But your path is difficult, you knew that
when you began your journey."

"But I didn't know how difficult it was going to be."

"None of us do. But that is God's will, believe me. He is
always testing us, that is His way." She patted Margarite on
the arm. "Now come. Dry your "eyes. It is tune for a council
of war."

There was something immensely comforting about Ber-
nice's office. Perhaps it was the size or shape, like a room in one

of the fairy stories Margarite used to read to Francie
when she had been young.

Francie!

"That evil monster has my baby!" she blurted out as soon
as she stepped across the threshold. "What have we wrought
with the Leonfortes, Bernice? They murdered Dom. Now
Tony has been killed, I am almost gunned down on Park
Avenue, and Bad Clams has my Francie! And to top it ail
off, I may have lost control of my business!" The tears were
coming again, even though she had promised herself that
she must be calm. Hadn't it been Bernice herself who had
taught her that serenity in crisis was the only path that
would take her safely to victory? But there was no path to
safety here, at least none that she could see. She clenched
her fists and her voice was clotted with emotion. "That ani-
mal, that troll! I'll kill him!"

Bernice sat beneath the wood and gilt crucifix, wrapped
in her serenity. Age had given her face lines and an almost
absolute absence of fat, so that die skin was-stretched slackly
over the bones of her skull seemingly without the interven-
tion of flesh or sinew. But even time could not diminish
the fierce intensity of those pale blue eyes, whose fire had
unerringly guided so many over the years. "My dear, if you
truly think like that, then Caesare has already won his most
important victory.

"You are terribly frightened. And you have every right
to be. Believe me when I tell you I understand what you're
feeling, Margarite." She placed her hands on Margarite's

fists, and slowly, inexorably, their warmth opened the
clenched fingers like petals turn to the sun. "But that feeling
must end, now. Fear breeds hate, and hate is ignorance.
People such as Caesare Leonforte count on the ignorance
of their adversaries."

"But look what he has done to me!" Margarita cried. "In
one concerted strike, he has taken my whole life from me.
I have lost the battle, the war, everything. In less than two
hours I have to be in Sheepshead Bay or he will kill
Francie!"

"He won't kill your daughter," Bernice said with such
finality that, at last, Margarite was forced to believe her.

"How can you say that?"

"Think about it rationally and logically, my dear. What
can he gain from Francine's death? She is the one form of
leverage against you he can be certain of. Once he lets go
of that, you will slip away from him, and he knows it."

Margarite could feel her teeth grinding together. Bernice
said she knew what Margarite was feeling, but how could
she? She'd never had a child. And now that that child was
in jeopardy, Margarite knew she would do anything to get
her back. "With all due respect," she said, "this is Caesare
Leonforte we are talking about. I don't believe that he is
either rational or logical. He lives purely on emotion and
we both know it." Beneath Bernice's warmth, Margarite
could feel her hands curling back into fists.

"Margarite!"

Bernice leaned forward, pouring her psychic energy into
the younger woman until she was enfolded in Bernice's char-
ismatic power. "Listen to me now because it is crucial you
understand what I am about to say. Right now your mind
is locked within the cage of revenge." Margarita's head
shook from side to side. "Don't bother to deny it. I can see
the venom in your eyes, feel it in the clenching of your fists.
You must let go of such poisoned thoughts, my dear. It is
what started the vendetta between the Leonfortes and the
Goldonis. Otherwise, as surely as night follows day, suffering
and death will ensue."

For a moment, Margarite said nothing. She felt Bernice's
aura bathing her, that strange and unique quality she found
both comforting and exhilarating. This was not a power that

Bernice used indiscriminately. In fact, it was safe to say that
most visitors to the convent had no idea she possessed any-
thing other than a land and generous spirit.

"I can't just bow my head and acquiesce, Bernice," she
whispered. "You can't ask me to do that because I won't. I
won't, I tell you!"

Bernice gave off the semblance of a smile. "Spoken like
Dominic. 'Always take the offensive,' he said. 'The minute
you curl up in a ball, you're dead.' That was why he hated
the Federal Witness Protection Program so passionately.
Why he kept in contact with you, against their rules. Domi-
nic played life by his own rules, and damn what anyone
thought of him."

Margarite found herself mesmerized by those electric blue
eyes. "At this moment Caesare has taken the one thing you
hold most dear," Bernice went on. "I am not asking you to
fold, Margarite. On the contrary, I believe we have em-
barked on the last phase of the long and bloody vendetta
between the Leonfortes and the Goldonis. Now is the dark-
est time, my child, but it is also the time for you to be
strongest. The time for you to make your stand."

"I don't know. My world has been torn apart; I no longer
recognize it."

"That is Caesare's goal. It is up to you to see he does not
achieve it." Bernice's grip tightened on Margarite, the heat
of her power infusing the younger woman. "Judicious use
of all forms of power is what we are about. Isn't that what
you were taught during your time here?"

For a moment, Margarite's face clouded with remem-
brance, then she nodded.

"It isn't power itself that corrupts us," Bernice said. "It
is the abuse of it. This is what makes the Leonfortes so
strong; but it is also what will bring them rum."

"Then let the two brothers kill each other," Margarite
said bitterly.

"Revenge is God's province, not your own. I want you to
remember that in the days to come." Bernice rose. "Now I
will leave you to prepare yourself mentally. As usual, all the
considerable facilities of the convent are at your disposal,
should you need them."

Once more, her charismatic power enfolded Margarite in

its loving embrace. "Remember everything you have learned
here." She leaned down, kissed Margarite's forehead. "God
bless you and watch over you always, my child."

 

Morning mist rose from the Sumida, wrapping Tokyo in a 

damp haze that made it seem like a picture postcard.

The exhaust from Nicholas's black Kawasaki rumbled off the fa-
cades of the prewar warehouses that closely lined the streets
of this business district. A mournful foghorn from a boat
heading downriver outlasted the liquid cough of the motor-
cycle's enormous engine as he rolled to a stop, then cut
the ignition.

He dismounted, stood gazing at the front of a small town
house wedged between two warehouse behemoths. It was
an unremarkable facade, so much so that it would surely
remain unnoticed by any but the most penetrating glance.

So this was the home of Kisoko, Mikio Okami's sister,
Nicholas thought. The place where Nangi had chosen to re-
cuperate. Just what did he think he was doing? Nicholas
wondered as he placed his helmet beneath his arm and,
quickly crossing the cracked pavement, went up the stairs
to the front door.

There was no bell, and the first thing he noticed when he
used the brass knocker shaped like an animal's paw was
the sound it made against the door. He put his hand out
experimentally and discovered that the door was metal, most
likely steel. Very odd in a private dwelling such as this. Was
it for security?

But there was no time for further speculation as the door
opened inward and he found himself face-to-face with Mikio
Okami's sister.

Nicholas had heard stories of Kisoko, but she was highly
reclusive, and despite the fact of his closeness with Okami
he had never before met her. Despite this, he recognized
her immediately.

"Won't you come inside?" she said in a musical voice, as
naturally as if he were an old friend. "There's more rain
coming, I fear, and you will get soaked if you stand on the
stoop much longer."

When he hesitated, she added, "I know who you are, Lin-
near-san. I would recognize you anywhere."

He stepped into the foyer and she swung the steel door
shut behind him. It closed with the heavy clang of a
prison door.

"You have your father's face," she said. "And some of
your mother's, as well."

"You knew them?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes."

He found himself in an oval foyer, painted a rich cream
color with wainscoting of pale gold. In the center was a
small, elegant marble console on which was a large crystal
bowl filled with sprays of bright flowers. Beyond was the
kind of grand staircase that hadn't been built with such ex-
pertise since the turn of the century.

Though the house was, as far as Nicholas could discern,
entirely Western in aspect, Kisoko was clad in traditional
silk kimono and underkimono. Her hah- was intricately
coiffed, held up with a set of long, carved silver pins. Her
kimono was the color of a blood-orange sunset; the under-
kimono, which could only be seen at cuff and collar, was
the indigo blue the Japanese had justly made famous.

Nicholas knew Kisoko was in her seventies, but she
looked twenty years younger. She had the pale, unblemished
skin, glossy as porcelain, of the pure-blood samurai woman.
Hers was an odd face, asymmetrical with sensual, bow-
shaped lips. Nevertheless, it was almost wholly dominated
by her utterly black eyes, which, so he had heard, had the
ability to extrapolate conclusions about people from their
seemingly insignificant physical movements. It was said that
she was never surprised by anything. It was also whispered
that she was kanashimi de nuitori shite aru. Literally, this
meant that she was embroidered in sadness. What it implied
was that she had experienced a terrible tragedy sometime in her

past. What that tragedy was, Nicholas had no idea;
given the secrecy surrounding her, he doubted that anyone
other than Kisoko and perhaps her brother knew.

She led him soundlessly down a corridor paneled in
gleaming cherrywood. At intervals, surimono-Japanese
prints from the 1700s that had originally been greeting
cards-were hung in gilt frames. Their authors, scorned in
their day, had now achieved the status of world-class artists,

sought after by collectors, auction houses, and museums the
world over.

In a sitting room painted persimmon with gold trim, Nich-
olas found Tanzan Nangi. He was half-reclining on a pale
yellow brocaded settee of French manufacture. He looked
tired and drawn, and when Nicholas tried to make eye con-
tact, he looked away.

"I am honored that you are finally here, Linnear-san,"
Kisoko said quickly and lightly, as if trying to defuse a po-
tentially thorny situation. "I realize I have been remiss in
not inviting you."

A palace-sized Persian carpet covered the wood floor. The
furniture was all period pieces, with wide seats and low
backs, but made comfortable by a plethora of voluptuous,
tasseled pillows in damask, chintz, and more brocaded silk.
The walls were without paintings. In their place, suits of
samurai armor for full battle regalia stood at eternal atten-
tion within glass cases. The pristine collection Was as stun-
ning as it was extensive. Many museums, Nicholas knew, did
not have this range.

"The armor does not belong to me," Kisoko said, watch-
ing the direction of Nicholas's gaze. "It belongs to my son,
Ken."

"It's astonishing. Magnificent."

She bowed slightly. "Such effusive praise cannot fail to
please him." She smiled suddenly and, as if they were alone
in the room, said, "Would you care for tea?"

"Thank you, no."

"It is poor fare, I know, but..."

"Thank you, no."

She asked one more time and he declined, after which, in
this heavily Confucian society, he was allowed to accept the
offer Kisoko bowed and, with a secret smile, said, "If you
will excuse me for a moment, it is the servants' day off."

Left alone in the sitting room with Nangi, Nicholas
crossed to the settee.

"Nangi-san."

"How did you find me?" he said curtly.

"Through your Kami transmission."

An odd, cool silence ensued, during which Nicholas sat

next to his friend and mentor. "Nangi-san, there are many
matters that urgently need our attention."

"Discuss them with Torin-san. That's why he's there."

"Torin is no substitute for your expertise. I cannot say
that I trust him overmuch."

"He has my complete trust," Nangi said emphatically.
"You must find a way to work with him." He lay back as
if exhausted. "I grow old, Nicholas-san." He smiled. "Or
perhaps I am merely melancholy."

Nangi's head turned and his good eye peered at Nicholas.
"You're far too clever a detective for me to think I could
hide from you for long." He nodded. "You see what I
mean? A simple miscalculation, but five years ago I would
not have made it." He sighed.

"I have to talk with you, Nangi-san," Nicholas pressed.
"Sato-Tomkin without a working president will soon be in
disarray. I'm afraid I need to go to New York to sort things
out, and I don't know how long I will have to stay. Sato
needs you here at the helm."

Nangi hitched himself higher on the settee. "Listen to me,
Nicholas-san. I won't always be here. Don't you think I
know your nature? I never expected you to tie yourself
down to Tokyo, to overseeing the day-to-day running of
Sato International. You have more than enough on your
plate as it is with the American affiliate. And then there's
been your involvement with Okami-san and the Yakuza."

His head swung away and that odd, cool silence crept into
the room again. "That's why I have been bringing Torin-
san along. He's young but he's smart and quick. You must
overcome your prejudices and learn to trust him."

"I don't want to trust him."

"Yes. You've made that eminently clear."

Nicholas was aware that a gulf had formed between them,
as if they were at odds over a key issue, and this was some-
thing for which he was totally unprepared.

"Nangi-san, if I have-" He turned his head, abruptly
aware of Kisoko standing in the doorway, observing them.
When she saw Nicholas's head turn, she came into the room,
gliding as if with no movement or effort.

Nangi had averted his head again. "I wish you hadn't
come."

 

Kisoko stood staring down at the tea service for a moment
before looking to Nicholas. She smiled sweetly, and Nicholas
had a brief glimpse of the sensual woman she had once
been. Then she put the tray down on the art nouveau iron
and lacquer coffee table. Out of her pocket she took a small
vial, shook out a pill. This she put carefully and tenderly
under Nangi's tongue.

Nangi sighed, his good eye going out of focus for a
moment.

"Nangi-san," Nicholas insisted gently, "we have to talk. I
need your advice regarding the Denwa partnership."
"   Nangi spread his hands. "As always, anything I can do,
I will."

"Now don't tire him out, Linnear-san," Kisoko said softly
as she served them green tea.

Nicholas sipped the pale, bitter brew, then put the tiny
cup down. "Nangi-san, you tell me that I must trust Torin-
san, but how can I when he helped put this partnership
together? You and I have had many offers of partnership
in the past and we have refused them all. Neither of us
have wanted to be responsible-or answerable-to outside
people. For this reason, the Denwa partnership makes me
profoundly uneasy. We have gone too far out on a limb. We
are so financially strapped that even the smallest miscalcula-
tion will end in disaster."

"You don't understand," Nangi said. "The CyberNet is
the future. We had to put it on-line in Japan before anyone
else managed similar technology."

"But don't you see what you have done?" Nicholas cried.
"You've gambled everything on one roll of the dice. And if
we stumble now, it will be the Denwa Partners who gather
up the pieces. Everything we have worked for will have
come to nothing."

"This isn't about Denwa or the CyberNet, is it, Nicholas-
san? It's about Torin-san. You don't like to see him in a
position of such responsibility."

"It's true he's very young to be a vice president, but that
isn't without precedent," Nicholas said, carefully feeling his
way among the minefield of new and unknown relationships.
How close had Torin bonded with Nangi while Nicholas had
been away? It seemed like years rather than fifteen months.

"Please try to see it from my point of view. When I left for
Venice to fulfill my obligation to the Kaisho, I had not even
met Kanda Torin. Now, a year and a half later, t return to
find he's not only overseeing our most important project but
has helped you structure a deal with outside partners-
which is precedent for Sato."

Nangi nodded, but his good eye had slipped half-closed
and Nicholas could see he was tiring. Kisoko flashed him a
warning glance.

Nangi said, "I quite understand your apprehension, but
the world turns, Nicholas-san, with or without you." He gave
a wan smile as he shifted in the sofa. "This is not meant as
a rebuke, merely as a statement of fact. Another fact: I
needed you here, but I know you are a man of honor and
your father's giri had become yours. I know you are racked
with guilt, but that is wasted emotion. I would have done
the same had I been you. Honor above all else, Nicholas-
san. This is what marks us, sets us apart, defines the nature
of our existence." His hand began to tremble and Kisoko
took the teacup from him.

His blind eye with its fixed stare seemed to give off an air of
defiance and empathy. "The fact remains you were not here
and I could not do this deal alone. I needed someone younger,
with good instincts, a fresh perspective, who knew the playing
field and could look into the future as you do. Someone who
would not look back, who was not afraid to act-to dare to be
the future. I found that in Kanda Torin.

"His dossier had crossed my desk some time ago and I
had been keeping an eye on him ever since. His quarterly
evaluations had been nothing short of spectacular, so I
reached into the resources of our company and pulled him
up into the executive suite. Since then, he's risen to every
challenge I've set before him."

There was silence for some time. Like a tableau or an
image stuck in time, the three of them ceased to move. It
seemed to Nicholas that his breathing, even the beat of his
heart, had been suspended, and he experienced an abrupt
sense of discontinuity, or tearing free of time, and he
thought, No, no! Not now! But the Kshira was rising, ripping
through his consciousness like high winds scattering gauzy
clouds, and he was falling, falling ... seeing, as one does in

a dream, his own body, along with theirs, like husks of com
in a field, ready for the reaper's rapacious blade. He experi-
enced then the ascendancy of Kshira, and though it was
momentary, it was like an iris opening onto the portal of
death, and every dark thing that lay beyond. Deep inside
himself he began to scream              

Nangi was drifting off to sleep. Kisoko sat still as a statue,
as if waiting for some unheard signal. Eventually, she stirred.
"I'll see you out," she said.

Nicholas stood on trembling legs. He breathed silently,
trying to center himself, then followed Kisoko to the front
door. There, she turned to face him.

"Nangi-san has told you about us, though he has kept me
secret from" everyone else."

This was true. Last year, Nangi had told him a bit about
his relationship with Kisoko. They had met eleven years ago
and had had a torrid, though ultimately tragic, affair. Nangi
had never forgotten her, and when they had met again, it
seemed it was, at last, their time.

Nicholas understood her meaning. "I will not speak of
you, even to Torin-san."

She bowed her head in thanks. When she looked up, she
said, "Don't think ill of him. This was hard, having you
come here. He had no wish for you to see him like this,
weak and ill."

"But I had a meeting with him yesterday in his car."

"Yes. But he was prepared for you then, dressed as he
has always dressed, buttressed by drugs, and I will bet the
interview was brief."
"It was."

She nodded and smiled. "It is his way, Nicholas-san, do
not be downcast. He loves you like a son. Indeed, he thinks
of you as his own flesh and blood. Which is why he is
ashamed for you to see him old and helpless."

"I had to come."

"Of course you did," she said kindly. "I appreciate it, and
believe me, beneath his shame, he does as well." She looked
into his sad eyes. "Six months ago, you were not here when
he had his heart attack."

He nodded. "That has never been out of my mind. I can-
not forgive myself-"

"I forgive you," Kisoko said unexpectedly. "As for Nangi-
san, he sees nothing to forgive you for." She took a step
closer to him. "My point was not to make you feel guilty,
but to make the confession he could not bring himself to
make. The truth is his heart attack was more serious than
anyone-even Torin-san-knows. Now, don't worry. He will
recover without any permanent impairment, the doctors
have assured us. But it will take time."

Her voice was reduced to a whisper. "This is what I must
ask of you, Nicholas-san, though I know it is rude and pre-
sumes too much on a relationship that has just begun. But,
after all, I did know your parents and I was very fond of
them."

"I will do what I can, Kisoko-san."

She nodded with a sense of relief. Oddly, at that moment,
he felt as if she were about to touch him. But that was, of
course, nonsense. Such a breach of etiquette in a woman of
her age was unthinkable.

The moment passed, and she smiled up at him. "You
remind me so much of your father. So strong of will, so
handsome." She put her long-fingered hand on the door,
opened it so that a dank breeze blew across their faces and
entered the house. "Do whatever you have to do, but give
him the time he needs to recuperate fully. If this means
working with Torin-san, I beg you to do it."

A gust of wind brought a spray of rain onto the front
steps, and a foghorn lowed mournfully out along the river.

Nicholas nodded. "I appreciate your candor, Kisoko-san."

She smiled. "How could I be otherwise? You are dear to
the two most important men in my life." She gazed into his
eyes, and once again he had a flash of the magnificent
woman she had been decades ago. "You are my brother's
angel. Isn't that how Westerners would say it?"

He nodded again. "I will do what has to be done, Ki-
soko-san."

She gave him a curiously informal bow. "I know you will
and I am grateful." Again he had the curious sensation that
she wanted to reach out and enfold him in her arms.

"Godspeed," she whispered after him into the wind.

 

Nicholas caught Honniko as she was coming down the
staircase to Pull Marine.

"Isn't this your day off?" He was perched on his
Kawasaki.

Honniko paused halfway down the stairs, then laughed,
continuing her descent "It is, but how did you know that?"

Nicholas shrugged. "I asked Jochi, the other maître d' at
the restaurant."

She came across the crowded Roppongi sidewalk. She was
wearing a cool blue-green linen skirt and a crisp pearl-gray
blouse beneath a black-and-green-striped bolero jacket. Her
small feet were in black flats, and a thin gold chain was
wrapped around her throat. "That doesn't explain how you
knew where to find me."

"He also told me you'd be coming in for an hour or so
today for the staff meeting."

"Jochi said that?"

"I told him I was in love. I guess he took pity on me."

"Better him than me."

She put on a pah- of dark glasses. The sun was beginning
to break through a widening rift in the misty clouds, but
Nicholas wasn't at all sure this was her motivation. In tone
as well as physical proximity she was keeping her distance.

"Ouch. I'm not all that bad."

Honniko scrunched up her face. "You want something.
Trouble is, I can't figure out what."

"I already told you. I'm trying to find Nguyen Van Truc."

"Oh, yeah. He owes you money."

"That's right."

She took one step toward him. "You're a liar."

"I'm not lying."

She leaned forward. "And I can't be intimidated."

"I never said you could. Take off those glasses, why
don't you."

"Even by a handsome man on a dashing black motor-
cycle," she added with a perfectly straight face.

He smiled. "Now that you've drawn the line in the sand
and stepped across it, the least I can do is take you to
lunch."

Honniko thought a moment "Or I could take you."

"There's that line again," Nicholas said, patting the back

of the Kawasaki. "We'll eat and then do whatever you say,
does that suit you?"

By way of reply, Honniko swung aboard, clasping him
tightly around the waist. He could feel the press of her
breasts against his back.

She did take off the sunglasses, but only after they were
seated in the restaurant, a small cafe called Third Stone
From the Sun, after the Jimi Hendrix song, he supposed. It
was on the terraced third floor of the Gorgon Building, just
down the street from "Little Beverly Hills," where one
could eat at the Hard Rock Cafe or Spago's.

Nicholas liked this place because it was an unpretentious
island in a sea of self-conscious French and Chinese restau-
rants and because it overlooked the Gorgon Building's glass-
walled wedding hall, where outlandishly hip Western-style
weddings were always in progress. Today, a Japanese couple
improbably dressed as Elvis and Priscilla Presley were in the
midst of their nuptials. These recessionary days, the lavish
excesses of Las Vegas-style bad taste had been replaced by
the curious Japanese propensity to maladroitly appropriate
icons of American pop culture. When the loudspeaker sys-
tem gushed forth the King's red-hot rendition of "Burning
Love" as the couple walked down the aisle, Honniko burst
into laughter.

"So it seems you have a sense of humor after all," Nicho-
las said.

"Jesus," she sputtered, wiping her eyes, "did you know
about this place?"

He nodded, laughing. "I figured with someone who works
all night in a top restaurant the show would be more im-
portant than the food."

Her dark, almond eyes regarded him with great care.
"That was thoughtful." Then, as if the small compliment
had been some kind of gaffe, she snatched up the menu,
buried her head in it. With her blond hair and oriental eyes,
she provided a mix as potent as a double sake martini.

After a moment, she noticed that he wasn't reading his
menu. "Aren't you hungry? Or is the food here that bad?"

"You order for me. I'm sure I'll like whatever it is."

Honniko put down her menu. "You are the most self-
assured man I have ever met. How do you do it?"

"What do you mean?"

"Look at the world. There's no stability anywhere. I used
to think, well, that's one thing Japan has: stability. But look
what's happened in the last four years. We're plunged into
an endless recession, bankruptcies are at an all-time high,
our major banks are going under, the strong yen is killing
us, our real estate is next to worthless, there's massive unem-
ployment for the first time in memory, the ruling party gets
bounced out of power, people are more concerned with the
price of rice than with how government is failing, and now
we have resurrected on our doorstep the specter of another
nuclear attack."

Across the terrace, Elvis and Priscilla had come out into
the pallid sunlight, surrounded by their joyous guests.
"Burning Love" had been replaced by "I Want You, I
Need You, I Love You." Someone had dragged out a
microphone, which the groom had good-naturedly grabbed.
He swung his hips, lip-synching the lyrics. Priscilla clasped her
hands and rolled her eyes. The guests applauded.

Honniko was applauding, too. "That's why I admire any-
one with such self-assurance. It speaks of a strong philoso-
phy of life." She turned her eyes on him. "It reassures me
there's still a North Star up there in the sky to be guided
by."

"Like the samurai daimyo-the warlords who used to live
here in Roppongi."

"Yes, exactly. Then: purity of purpose seems overly harsh,
even at times incomprehensible to most Westerners."

The waiter came with then- drinks and Honniko ordered
goat-cheese- salads and stir-fried vegetable plates for both of
them. "I'm a vegetarian," she said to Nicholas. "I hope you
don't mind."

He shook his head. "Do you know how Roppongi got its
name? Once upon a time, it belonged to six of those daimyo
I was speaking of. They all had the Chinese character for
'trees' in their names, hence Roppongi-Six Trees. In the
middle of the nineteenth century, when their status as samu-
rai ceased to be a shield, their property was confiscated by
the Meiji government and given over to the Imperial Army."

"I know the more recent history. After the war, it was
requisitioned by the American Occupation, and gradually it

became an entertainment quarter." Honniko fiddled with
her dark glasses. "I know that because my father was sta-
tioned here in those years."

"He was Army, right?"

Around and around the tabletop the dark glasses went.
"Military police." She glanced up at him. "He went after
the bad buys, you know, the users: the currency runners,
arms merchants, drug dealers, black marketeers."

It was interesting. She was giving off two conflicting sig-
nals. She didn't want to talk about her father, but she did.

"Tell me about your mother," he said as the salads were
served. Maybe that would take some of the pressure off.

"There's nothing much to tell. My father met her here in
Roppongi." Honniko was watching a new marriage party-
this group in black leather motorcycle jackets and silver
studs-make their way across the terrace under the direc-
tion of a rather hyper photographer.

"And that's the end of the story."

As the photographer placed the party in the sunlight,
Honniko looked down at her salad and said nothing.

"Forget it," Nicholas said. "It's none of my business."

Across the terrace, the party was shedding their leather
jackets, revealing skin so covered with tattoos that there was
hardly a flesh-colored patch anywhere to be seen.

Honniko, studying the array of tattooed flesh like a careful
housewife picking over fresh fish, said, "Actually, there is
more to the story."

While the wedding photographer worked in a flurry of
movement, Nicholas waited for her to continue.

"My mother worked not far from here, in a toruko," she
said after a long pause. Her eyes caught his, flashed away.
"Do you know what that is?"

"Yes. Nowadays, it's called soapland." He took up a fork-
ful of radicchio, mache, and goat cheese. "The word is a
bastardization of the English Turkish bath."

"Then you know that men went to a toruko not merely
to get clean."

"I suppose it had to do with how much money they were
willing to part with."

"And the imagination of the woman getting you clean."
She looked down at her untouched salad. "My mother was

a halo." The word was slang. Literally, it meant box, but
the meaning was pussy. It was also the nickname of the
women who worked the old-time toruko.

"Your father knew this?"

"Yeah. It was called Tenki." Tenki was Japanese for a
profound secret. "He got a call to raid the place and dig
out a black marketeer who was getting his genitals soaped.
Everyone in the toruko was hauled out and arrested, my
mother included."

"And they fell in love."

"Like hell." Honniko laughed uneasily. "My father was
all-American and a pure, cross-eyed romantic. Also, he
knew nothing about the Japanese." Finding no good use for
her fork, she finally put it down. "He wanted to take her
away from all that"

"And, of course, she went." He pushed his salad away;
he'd had enough. "Because be wanted her to, not because
she wanted to."

"She became his wife." Honniko watched the waiter take
their plates away, "She became what he wanted her to be."

"Did she have a choice?"

Honniko shook her head. "Not really. He was the one
who sprung her from jail. Her family, who lived in Ise, did
not even know she was in Tokyo." The plates of brightly
colored vegetables were set in front of them. "He paid her
fine, got the authorities to wipe her record dean-so she
could start fresh, he told her." She stabbed a piece of aspar-
agus with more force than was required. "His life, not hers."
She stared at the asparagus on her fork as if it might be
alive and squirming. "Still, as you can imagine, she was im-
mensely grateful"

On the sun-splashed terrace, the photographer was ner-
vously rearranging the wedding party into so many designs
it was dizzying.

"From that day forward the giri she owed him was so
great 'she could refuse him nothing. The ironic thing is that
if my father ever suspected, it would have blown his mind.
Of course, he never did."

Nicholas pushed the food around on his plate. Maybe her
lack of appetite was contagious. "Did she come to love him
in the end?"

Honniko gave him a wistful smile as she gave up on her
food. "We all wish for happy endings, don't we?" She put
down her fork. "The truth is I don't know. I never will. She
died last year and my father ..." She let out a long breath.
"I don't know where my father is, whether he's alive or
dead. He walked out on us when I was twelve and we never
heard from him. He never sent my mother money for me.
Nothing. It's like he never existed, and from that time on
my mother never spoke his name." She looked at him. "So
I guess, yeah, she must have loved him in some fashion
because he sure as hell broke her heart."

Looking at the wedding party now filing inside for the
ceremony, Nicholas thought maybe it hadn't been such a
good idea to bring her here, after all.

Abruptly, the world canted over on one side. The disap-
pearing wedding party looked like stretched-out bars of
Turkish taffy and the sky had turned the color of bubble
gum. Nicholas, alarmed, looked down at his right arm. Had
it gone directly through the table, as it now seemed? He
shook his head, but the buzz of 10 million bees refused to
abate. He sensed Honniko looking at him oddly, but he
could not actually see her. The bubble gum was coming
down from the sky.

Then, like a rubber band snapping back into place, reality
returned to its previous form.

"-all right?" Honniko was saying. "You went white there
for a moment, and now you're sweating."

Nicholas wiped his forehead with his napkin. His tongue
felt as thick as a log. What had happened? Another small
seizure of Tau-tau, but not Akshara, no. Kshira. His power
rising, unbidden. Toward what end? The question made
him shiver.

"It's nothing. I'm all right." But even as he said it, he
knew it for a lie.

Thirty years ago, the Golden Gate Inn had been a hip
and happening place. Despite its unlovely exterior, the six-
story building had the right location for the wiseguys of
Queens and East New York. It overlooked Sheepshead Bay
at Coney Island Avenue and the Belt Parkway. As such, it

was prime location for what the wiseguys favored most:
beach, boats, and bodies.

The bodies-all dead, all, in one form or another, ene-
mies-were discovered from time to time in the section of
overgrown weeds arid steel-woolly underbrush where, in
1961, Mick Leonforte had whacked Gino Scalfa. Scalfa was
by no means the first to get it there and he certainly wasn't
the last.

Nowadays, the hotel was no longer hosting wiseguys to
drinks, broads, and braggadocio. It was, in fact, closed up
and all but derelict. But the area next to it that had never
been developed, wild with weeds, grasses, and goldenrod in
summer, enriched over the years with then- blood and brains,
still abided by the side of the service road.

It was at this place that Caesare Leonforte had set the
meet with Margarite. She arrived in the vicinity ten minutes
early and sat in her car waiting. It was not cold, nevertheless
her arms were crossed over her chest in order to keep her-
self from trembling.

To calm her wildly beating heart, she took the time to
review all the ways in which Bad Clams had turned her life
upside down. And at once she saw how much she had been
in shock these last two days. They seemed like days, weeks,
so paralyzed had she been. Caesare-brilliant bastard that
he was-had struck her heart three times in succession and
had succeeded in robbing her of her best defense: her mind.
She was in an intense state of fear for Francie's life even
while she had been mourning for her beloved business-
and, yes, even for Tony, with whom she had shared at least
some good times and a sense of intimacy. Tony might have
abused her, but he had loved her as well, of this she had no
doubt She also knew that she had-grown where he had not
And, in doing so, she had become a person with whom he
could not cope. For men like Tony, women with aspirations
were bad enough. But those who turned those aspirations
into success were intolerable. Where, in his mind, she should
have stayed at home banging out a succession of little De-
Camillos for him, she went out, got educated, went into her
own business. But for all that, she was a failure as a woman,
as far as Tony had been concerned. And then had come the
topper. Dominic had made Tony his successor as don in

name only. All the real power had devolved onto Margarite.
It was Margarite whom Dom trained, Margarite to whom
he whispered all his secrets. It had driven Tony wild.

Now he was dead and though Margarite could mourn him
in the traditional sense, she wondered whether a day would
come when she would miss him.

She stared hard at the slashed and gaping hole in the dash-
board where the CD player had been. She had used the crow-
bar in the trunk to gouge it out, had thrown it out the window
as she had sped along the Belt Parkway. Then and only then,
when she was certain that Caesare could not trace her calls,
did she phone the beeper of the high-level Goldoni contact
at City Hall. She had told the official to pull Jack Barnett,
the cop who was investigating Tony's murder, off that case
and any others he was currently on. "This is what I want
Barnett to do," she told the official, and had then given the
man a specific set of instructions.

The official did not complain. He was one of literally hun-
dreds of municipal, state, and federal government officials
on whom Dominic Goldoni had compiled dossiers. The Ni-
shiki network constantly updated these dossiers, and when
Dom had been murdered, Margarite had inherited these files
and the power they brought anyone who possessed them.

This particular man, Margarite knew, was a cross-dresser,
not a peccadillo that would be condoned if it were made
public. A man-especially a government official-dressing
up in women's clothes would cause a scandal of epic propor-
tions if it hit the news media.

The phone rang and she jumped just as if a shot had been
fired at her.

"Yes?" she answered warily. What if it was Caesare call-
ing to torment her again?

"Mrs. DeCamillo? Barnett here."

Her eyes closed in relief. "Where are you, Detective?"

"Close. Very close."

Margarite glanced at her watch. "It's time."

"I know."

"My daughter, Francine-"

"You've made yourself very clear, Mrs. DeCamillo. You
pull some extremely powerful strings at City Hall."

"All in a day's work."

"Your work, Mis. DeCamillo. I'm only brought in to clean
up the messes you and people like you make."

Her face was a mask of concentration as she put the Lexus
in gear. "I'm going in."

"Understood."

She broke the connection as she nosed down the service
road toward the patch of weeds and underbrush. Beyond,
the bay twinkled with lights and reflections. The lights of
the city bounced eerily off the underside of low clouds. The
air was heavy and wet with incipient rain. A plane following
a flight path .into Kennedy roared by, sounding like thunder.

Bernice was wrong, Margarite thought, as she kept her
eye out for the other car. And, anyway, it was impossible
to put aside thoughts of vengeance. This was Francine, her
baby, they were talking about! Business was one thing, but
Bad Clams had violated every code of their world: he'd gone
after her family. That was, as Mrs. Paglia had said, an infa-
mia, and now, whatever Bad Clams's fate, he had brought
it down on himself.

She knew she was taking a terrible risk. But this situation
wasn't that cut-and-dried. In snatching her daughter Caesare
had crossed a line. His unspeakable act had branded him
for destruction, and Margarite was determined to be the
agent of that annihilation.

Up ahead, in the tarmacked space between the service
road and the place where the weeds began heading down
to the bay, she could see a dark Lincoln, lying low and in
wait like a hunter. It had kept dark all this time, but as she
approached, its golden running lights were switched on. She
rolled to a stop, the Lexus's engine ticking over like a clock,
like' her pulse. She stared hard at the car, as if she had
X-ray vision that could penetrate its armor plate and see
her daughter.

Francine! Her mind screamed in her agony. Oh, Bernice,
for all her wisdom, could not know such profound fear
and pain!

She bunked several times, then slowly and methodically
disengaged her white fingers from their death grip around
the steering wheel.

"Mrs. DeCamillo." A voice, disembodied by distance and
darkness, made her shiver.

Breathe, she commanded herself. Breathe.

"Yes," she called out of the open window. "I'm here."

"Please get outta the car an' open all four doors."

It will all be over in a minute, she told herself as she got
slowly out of the Lexus. That's what Burnett said and I be-
lieve him. I have to believe him.

"Now step away from the car so we can see inside an'
make sure you're alone."

"I told Caesare-"

"Gotta make sure, Mrs. D. You know how it is. I got
my orders."

She walked carefully out of the headlight beams.

"Stay where we can see ya. Right in fronta the car."

She did as she was told, but she had the .45 in her hand,
hanging at her side, hidden by her body and her handbag.
She had already killed once in defense of her life, and she
knew she was prepared to kill again to get Francie back.
She had become the agent of Caesare's annihilation.

"She's clear," the voice said, "an' so's the car. It's like
she said, she's solo."

A car door slammed and Margarite squinted through the
glare of the headlights at a bloblike shape. This was not
going to be so easy; seeing wasn't so good from where she
was standing. As she took a step toward the darkness, a
voice stopped her.

"It would not be wise to move, Mrs. D.," another voice,
deeper, thicker, said. "I have your daughter here an' I know
you wouldn't want anything bad to happen to her at this
late date."

Margarite's heart flipped over painfully. "Francine!"

"Mom!"

Thank God! Margarite breathed. She's here!

"Are you okay?"              -

"Mom, what's going on?"

Margarite's heart went out to her daughter. She'd gone
through so much already. "Don't worry, angel. This is just
business. Caesare wants to-"

"That's enough wid the chitchat, you two," the deep voice
said. "Mrs. D., my name's Marco. Now that you know we
have your daughter, I want you to walk straight toward me.
I'm standin' next to the rear door to the black Lincoln. Get

in an' I'll put your daughter in beside you an' that'll be that.
We'll take carea the Lexus."

"But I-"

"Mrs. D., you do just as I say, nothing more, nothing less.
I wancha t'know your daughter is standing directly in fronta
me. Vinnie's at the wheela the Lincoln an' he's armed. So'm
I. I gotta gun against the backa your daughter's head." He
lowered his voice. "Go ahead, kid, tell 'er."

"He's got something pressed against my head, Mom!"
Francine piped up in a voice quivering only slightly with
held-in tension and fear.

"All right, all right!" Margarite called. "I'm coming
straight toward you." She stepped out . of the headlight
beams, heading toward Marco and Francine. "I'm doing just
what you said."

"That's good, Mrs. D.," Marco said. "Makes my job easier
an' yourdaughter - "

He never got to finish his thought because, at that instant,
Margarite had come abreast of him and, whipping the muz-
zle of the .45 beneath his jaw, pulled the trigger and blown
the top of his head off.

Francie screamed from the sharp report of the pistol's
discharge and from the spastic jerk of Marco against her.
Margarite grabbed her daughter, shoved Marco's heavy
corpse away, and trained her gun in Vinnie's direction. But
she needn't have bothered. There was another sharp report,
echoing over the bay, and- a surprisingly small section of the
Lincoln's windshield shattered inward. The rest of it had
turned into a vast and complex spiderweb behind which Vin-
nie could be seen spread-eagle against the seatback, staring
upward at the large hole in his forehead.

Margarite threw down her .45, kicked it beneath Marco's
body as the form of Detective Lieutenant Jack Barnett
picked its way fastidiously across the tarmac.

"Mrs. DeCamillo, are you and your daughter okay?"

She raised her voice long enough to say, "We are,
Detective."

She cuddled Francine and whispered urgently in her ear.
She devoured Francie with her eyes, and seeing her own
face reflected in her daughter's, she thought, She's all right.
She kissed both her cheeks, stroked her curling red hair,

which she wore long and wild. She stared into Francie's
hazel, quicksilver eyes, trying to read a world in a split sec-
ond. She's so beautiful, Margarite thought, the only good
thing to come out of my marriage to Tony. But she's pure
Goldoni. If there's any DeCamillo in her, I can't see it. The
long-legged, coltish body trembled like a fawn's in Marga-
rite's embrace. Francie, in wide-legged Gap jeans, well-worn
Tony Lama cowboy boots, an inside-out black tee, and a
rumpled denim jacket with the sleeves rolled up her fore-
arms, pressed herself against her mother, but she was staring
wide-eyed at the dead men. How fragile youth is, Margarite
thought. And how precious. It's snatched away in the blink
of an eye and then it's gone forever.

"That first shot gave me quite a start." Barnett, coming
up on mother and daughter, squinted through the hole his
shot had made through the Lincoln's windshield. He was
holding a Husqvarna rifle, outlined with a nightscope, in his
left hand; in his right was his service revolver. He was a
dapper-looking man in his early forties with sandy hair and
light eyes, although in the glare of the headlights Margarite
could not tell their exact color. He possessed the face of a
man who had seen many things and passed through them
all as a fakir walks over hot coals, with a mixture of faith
and practical knowledge of the way the universe works. He
was dressed in a dark suit with surprisingly few creases. His
tie, which now flew over his shoulder in the freshening wind,
was elegant rather than loud.

He came around the side of the Lincoln where Margarite
stood with Francine tucked protectively into her body and
stared down at Marco's crumpled form. "Hmm. Two down
and only one shot fired." He sniffed. "I'm good but, much
as I hate to admit it, I'm not that good." His eyes swung
up to fix Margarite in a gaze as hard as the glare from"
sodium lights. "You wouldn't know anything about that,
would you, Mrs. DeCamillo?"

Margarite was thinking of an answer when Barnett was
slammed against the side of the Lincoln. The Husqvarna
flew from his grip and he leaned against the shiny black
metal with a confused and slightly sad expression on his
face. He looked up at her and his eyes crossed. That was
when she noticed the rapidly expanding boutonniere of

blood damaging his beautiful suit. She gripped Frantic more
tightly as she felt a choked-off scream burning her throat
alee acid.

She wanted to reach out to poor Barnett even though the
flower of blood emanated from over his heart, but a low
moan escaped Francie's lips and her daughter began to
tremble in earnest. Margarite kissed the top of Francie's
head. She couldn't let go of her, and yet, as Barnett slid to
the blood-spattered ground, she felt she had to do some-
thing. She began to reach out toward his service revolver,
but a voice made her freeze.

"Oh, do try for it. Shooting an armed woman is much
less problematic than killing an unarmed one. And so much
more fun."

She turned then and saw a man coming through the Lex-
us's beams. He walked with a peculiar hip-tilting gait, as if
one leg didn't work right or was shorter than the other. He
had compensated for this disability by employing an almost
skipping motion in his walk, so that he moved quickly and
at sharp angles, reminding Margarite of the small, colorless
sand crabs she had seen on the beach in the Caribbean.

There was nothing colorless, however, about this man.
Though he was somewhat short, he was nonetheless impos-
ing. He had a wide face, square as a block of ice, with
mackerel eyes that seemed dead, yellow as yesterday's mar-
row. He wore a neat, unfashionable goatee that gave him
something of the aspect of Bacchus, the Greek god of wine,
women, and song, who was said to be part animal. Like
Bacchus, he had jet-black, curling hair that fell in shiny
ringlets across his forehead and down the nape of his
neck, a wide, sensual mouth, and a long, straight, Roman
nose. A striking man, though the heaviness of some fea-
tures prevented him from being handsome.

He was dressed in a striped, collarless shirt beneath a
handsome pig suede jacket dyed the color of whiskey, black
jeans, and boots of whiskey-colored alligator with high
Cuban heels and custom toes shod in what looked like stain-
less steel.
- "I know you, don't I?" Margarite said.

"You do an' you don't. I'm the ghost of Black Paul Mat-
taccino. I'm his son, Paul Chiaramonte."

"I know that name. You're part of the Abriola family my
husband trusted with his life. The Abriolas have served the
Goldonis faithfully for decades."

While he smiled a lopsided grin, he lifted a leg and, with
the finesse of a ballet dancer, flicked Barnett's weapons
away into the darkness. He held a long-barreled gun in his
left hand.

"Bad Clams warned me not to trust you and he was right.
But then he's always right." Paul Chiaramonte clicked his
tongue against the roof of his mouth in that reproving sound
old ladies make during sex scenes in the movies. "Well, we
can say good-bye to Vinnie and Marco." He shrugged. "Not
the best of talent, anyway." He gave her that lopsided grin
again. Because of his sensual lips, it was almost a leer, and
Margarite found herself putting her hand over Francie's face
to shield her further. "In the old days they called soldiers
like Vinnie and Marco cannon fodder because they were
gonna die on the battlefield." He shrugged again. "That's
gotta happen to someone. Why waste A-list talent when it's
so hard to find these days?" He chuckled, showing teeth
like a wolfs, sharp as paring knives.

His eyes fell upon the body of Detective Lieutenant Jack
Barnett. "But who's this?" His stainless-steel boot toe
kicked Barnett in the side and Margarite winced even
though the detective was dead. Paul Chiaramonte grinned
up at Margarite as he knelt down. "Bodyguard or boyfriend?
Maybe both."

He carefully used one long fingernail to peel back the
blood-sodden jacket, reached inside, and opened the small
plastic wallet he found there. "Not much of a sport, I see."
Then, he let out a little cry and dropped the tiling as if it
had stung him.

His eyes, black and ripe as grapes, goggled at Margarite.
"Are you fucking mental? This guy's a cop, for the love of
Mary!" He did a tiny jig, making nun look as if he were
summoning up the woodland nymphs for an orgy, "I
whacked an NYPD blue. Oh, holy shit! Who coulda
figured?"

"You didn't have to kill him," Margarite pointed out. It
was an inane thing to say, but she was now so terrified

and so shocked at what she had done she couldn't think of
anything else.

Paul Chiaramonte jumped, his face black with rage. He
shoved the muzzle of his gun into the soft spot beneath the
point of her chin, making her cry out.

"Mom!"

"Hush, .angel," she said as tears of pain ran freely down
her cheeks.

"You and your cop buddy whacked two of my crew," he
shouted in her face. "I should blow the toppa your head off
for you." He had gold rings on all his fingers, including his
thumb, which made it look deformed, heavy with menace.

"Killing a woman. That would be just your speed," Mar-
garite said.

Paul Chiaramonte hit her backhanded across both cheeks,
his gold rings gouging her flesh and making her bleed.

"Shut up and stand like a statue!" he said with his lips
pulled back from his teeth. "Christ Jesus, I haven't seen so
much trouble since your stepmother lived here."

"What do you know about Faith Goldoni?"

"Plenty." Paul Chiaramonte sneered. "My mother was
Sara Chiaramonte. She was the only woman Black Paul Mat-
taccino ever loved." He was staring at Francine, who seemed
as mesmerized by him as she would be by an exotic animal.
"He was locked in a loveless, lifeless marriage with Faith,
the bitch. But he was Catholic, from the old school, and
wouldn't divorce her." His eyes, quick as an adder's tongue,
flicked to Margarite's face. "So she killed him slowly with
poison in the black figs he adored, so she could marry your
father, Enrico Goldoni."

"Are you trying to frighten me? Everyone knew that
rumor about her. But that's all it was. She told me. People
were jealous of her, marrying my father. Faith was incapable
of killing anyone."

"I know better. But who gives a shit, anyway? She's dead
now so at least she can't lie to you anymore."

Fright and disgust mingled so thoroughly in her Margarite
could no longer look at him. So she stared at Jack Barnett's
face, which was no help at all. It was a handsome face,
especially with that sandy hair lying across his eyes. Did he
have a wife? A child, maybe Francie's age? She didn't know,

never would know, and after all, it was irrelevant because
he was dead. In the name of revenge, she had brought him
into this, and to this end. As surely as night follows day,
suffering and death will ensue, Bernice had said. But Marga-
rita had thought she was smarter than that, was sure that
she could beat the odds, change the rules, and upset the
game. Instead, look what had come of it. She had reached
out with her power-the power of the Goldonis-and had
brought death to an innocent man.

What was it Bernice had told her? It isn't power itself that
corrupts us. It is the abuse of it. She had abused her power,
and suffering and death was the result.

Everyone thought Faith was dead-even apparently Paul
Chiaramonte. But the truth was she had merely changed
identities. She was now Renata Loti, one of Washington's
major power brokers. Margarite saw her stepmother infre-
quently. Theirs was a thorny and unsatisfying relationship.
She had been nine when her father, Enrico Goldoni, had
married Faith, too old to easily lose her bond with her real
mother, too young to fully grasp the difficulties Faith was
facing with a new husband and a new-and hostile-family.

Margarite had always kept herself aloof from the common
neighborhood belief that Faith, in Machiavellian calculation
and cold blood, had murdered her first husband. But perhaps
that had only been out of a sense of self-preservation. What
child would want to be brought up in the same house as
a murderess?

Your soul is choked with tears, Bernice had said, reading
-her with uncanny insight. Margarite wailed inside, and she
jumped as that wailing became a real sound.

Sirens ululating in the night, startling all three of them.

"Hello, we must be going," Paul Chiaramonte said, para-
phrasing Groucho Marx. Using the muzzle of his gun, he
roughly herded the two women up the incline and into the
ghostly hotel's parking lot. Phosphorescence glistened out
on the bay. It was probably best not to know its source,
Margarite thought.

A fire-red, vintage Thunderbird convertible crouched in a
shadowed corner of the lot. He directed Margarite to bind
Francie's wrists and ankles. They bundled her into the

cramped back space. Then, working swiftly and surely, he
did the same with Margarite.

"This isn't necessary. I'll sit beside you in the front. You
have my daughter. You can trust me."

"Like Marco and Vinnie could trust you?" Paul Chiara-
monte sneered. "Your stepmother raised you well. You're
a fuckin' viper, lady."

He stuffed his handkerchief into her mouth, pressed her
head down, pushed her on top of Francie. Then he slammed
the door shut, got behind the wheel, fired up the T-bird,
and swung out of the lot.

Out on the Belt Parkway, with the cassette deck cranked
up, cruising easily under the speed limit, he passed a fleet
of blue-and-white cop cars, top lights revolving, sirens
screaming,-heading for the Golden Gate Inn.

"So long, suckas," Paul Chiaramonte called over Brian
Wilson's choirboy voice singing "Don't Worry Baby."

 

5

Tokyo/West "Palm Beach

Nicholas met Tanaka Gin in Kappa Watanabe's hospital
room. The cyber tech looked like hell. His skin, pulled tight
against his bones, had been tainted an alarming greenish
yellow by the Banh Tom nerve toxin. A ventilator was as-
sisting his breathing, and a plethora Of plastic tubes snaked
in and out of him. His heart and pulse rate were being
monitored, and a nurse stood by his side, adjusting the levels
of the many chemicals being pumped into him.

"You may have five minutes with him, no more," the
obviously annoyed physician had told them in the corridor
just outside. "He's still very weak, so don't upset him in
any way."

"We appreciate the assist," Tanaka Gin had said as he
bowed respectfully.

Inside, however, he was brisk, all business, as he quickly
introduced himself to Watanabe. "This is a criminal investi-
gation," he concluded, ignoring the nurse's silent disap-
proval. "Your involvement has put you at great risk, as you
must already have guessed. But if and when you get out of
here, I am authorized to tell you that you will be charged
with multiple counts of espionage, piracy, and grand larceny.
Other charges are currently being drawn up as the investiga-
tion continues." Tanaka Gin stared down at Watanabe's yel-

low eyes as he waved away the increasingly frantic motions
of the nurse. Judging by the noises from the monitors, the
cyber tech's vital signs were becoming elevated. As Tanaka
Gin and Nicholas had discussed, now was the time to press
him even harder. "Watanabe-san, you have willfully stolen
copyrighted and proprietary material from Sato Interna-
tional. I am afraid that all you have to look forward to is a
lifetime in jail. If you don't die in here, that is."

"Just a moment," Nicholas said, adhering to their pre-
pared script. "I have an idea, Gin-san, an alternative."

"There is no alternative," Tanaka Gin said, his steely eyes
boring into Watanabe's wide-apart eyes.

"At least hear me out. What if Watanabe-san makes a
full confession and cooperates fully with this investigation?"

"Yes," Watanabe said in a wan but desperate tone.
"Yes."

Tanaka Gin snorted. "Linnear-san, this man is a thief. He
tried to bankrupt you. I cannot believe you are defending
him."

"Not defending. But I want to get to the bottom of this.
Don't you see? I am convinced by the evidence we have so
far that Watanabe-san did not steal the CyberNet data on
his own. If he can lead us to the others, I am not interested
in prosecuting him."

"You may not be, but I certainly am!" Tanaka Gin thun-
dered so loudly that even the nurse cowered into her corner.
"By God, the Tokyo Prosecutor's Office will not tolerate
industrial espionage. Damn it, it's a matter of national
security."

Watanabe was trembling and his heart rate was going
crazy. "But I have the information, Linnear-san," he
pleaded. "I can never forgive myself for what I have done,
but at least I can try to make amends."

"No deals!" Tanaka Gin's voice rose to a crescendo.

"I don't want him in jail if he helps us," Nicholas said.
"You know what it's like inside. He'll never survive."

Now Watanabe was goggling at them both. Terror such
as he'd never known filled his very soul. And he struggled
to get everything out at once.

At that moment, the door swung open and the doctor

strode in. "What in the name of heaven is going on here?
I told you-"

"This is official business," Tanaka Gin said, pinning the
doctor with that patented steely glare. "Out until I tell
you otherwise."

"You can't talk to me that way. I am in charge here."

"When I'm finished, you are." Tanaka Gin drew out a
folded sheet. "Otherwise I am authorized to remove your
patient to. the medical facility in Metropolitan Prison. Is that
your wish, Doctor?".

The doctor stared at Tanaka Gin for a moment to allow
himself to regain some face with the nurse, then he let the
door close.

Tanaka Gin, with a quick glance at Nicholas, turned back
to Watanabe just in time to see Nicholas bending over him.
"It's going to be all right, Watanabe-san, I promise you."

And with a great deal of satisfaction, Tanaka Gin heard
Watanabe squeak, "I am prepared, Linnear-san. It is quite
clear in my mind. I want to tell you everything I know."

Tanaka Gin flipped on a pocket recorder, spoke into it
the date, time, location, and those present. Then he set the
recorder down in the swinging tray in front of Watanabe's
mouth, and Watanabe said he was making this statement of
his own free will.

"You admit to making an unauthorized copy of Sato In-
ternational's TransRim CyberNet data?" Tanaka gui began.

"I do."

"And you acknowledge knowing that said data were the
sole property of Sato International?"

"I do."

"Did you perpetrate this crime on your own?"

"No. I was approached by a man named Nguyen Van Truc.

He's the vice president of national marketing for Minh
Telekom, a Vietnamese company."

"Just a moment," Nicholas interjected. "You weren't ap-
proached by the American Cord McKnight?"

"No. As I told you, it was Van Truc."

"But you made the data transfer with McKnight," Nicho-
las said.

"As far as I know, he was just an intermediary. A cutout
so Van Truc could keep his hands clean." Watanabe" put his

head back on the pillow. His hair was shiny with the sweat
of exertion.

"Let me get you some water," Nicholas said. They
watched as Watanabe sucked ice water through a straw, his
eyes closed with the intense pleasure of a child.

"Tell us a bit more about the Vietnamese," Tanaka Gin
said.

Watanabe nodded. "Van True works for Minn, as I said.
But he was being paid by someone else. An industrialist I'd
heard of named Kurtz."

Tanaka Gin and Nicholas exchanged glances. "Rodney
Kurtz?" Nicholas asked.

"Yes."

"How could you know this?" Tanaka Gin said. "By your
own admission, these people were extremely careful. Van
Truc used McKnight as a cutout."

"Yes, yes. But, you see, Van True had to use something
of sufficient value to entice me to steal the CyberNet data.
What he offered me was my own R and D lab with
Sterngold Associates. I did some digging and discovered that
Sterngold is one of half a dozen companies in Asia owned
by Rodney Kurtz. How else would a vice president of mar-
keting of a Vietnamese telecommunications company be of-
fering me such a plum job unless Kurtz was financing the-
whole thing?"

"You should have come to me with all of this before
the fact," Nicholas said. "I would have helped you and you
wouldn't be lying here now, poisoned by the people who
hired you."

Watanabe, who was clearly exhausted by his ordeal,
closed his eyes. His hands were trembling and the nurse
seemed truly alarmed by the readings coming off the
monitor.

"I might have," he said in a voice that had become thin
and reedy, "because everyone at Sato talks about how kind
and intuitive you are. But you weren't around, were you?"

In a kissaten, a coffee shop nearby the hospital, Nicholas
and Tanaka Gin sat staring out the window at the rest of
the world rushing home to dinner and TV. Cars and buses

clogged the street to the point of immobility, and a sea of
pedestrians spooled by as if on moving walkways.

"Are you okay?" Tanaka Gin asked. "You look almost
as bad as Watanabe."

"I'm fine," Nicholas said, sipping his coffee.

"Well, I'm not." Tanaka Gin rubbed his eyes with the
pads of his thumbs. "Just before we met at the hospital, I
got word that Tetsuo Akinaga's lawyers sprung him."

"You mean the charges have been dropped?" The
thought 0f the Yakuza oyabun who was Okami's most pow-
erful and implacable enemy being set free was unthinkable.
"But he was awaiting trial."

"Akinaga's lawyers claimed there were irregularities in
my prosecutorial brief and apparently they were right." Ta-
naka Gin shook his head. "The brief was sabotaged, Lin-
near-san. As I told you, I had been warned of corruption
within my department. Now I am seeing direct evidence of
it."

"I will make some inquiries in areas off limits to you."

Tanaka Gin bowed formally. "Thank you, Linnear-san. I
am in your debt."

They ordered more coffee and stared out at the traffic
and the rain. The slick sidewalks seemed lacquered with
neon reflections.

"I sure would like a word with Nguyen Van Truc," Ta-
naka Gin mused, "but it's as if he fell off the face of the
earth. Neither his company nor his relatives have heard from
him since the night of the CyberNet launch dinner, and Im-
migration informs me he hasn't tried to leave the country.
So where the hell is he?"

Nicholas stared at the rush-hour traffic and said nothing.

"You were right about Kurtz," he said at last. "Sterngold
Associates appears on the list of the CyberNet's Denwa
Partners."

"But why would Kurtz want to steal data from a project
he'd just invested in?"

"Interesting question," Nicholas said. "It also puts a
whole new spin on Kurtz's murder."

"How so?"

"Look at it this way. Kurtz was incredibly reclusive from
a business perspective. He never let any of his businesses

go public, even though it's a matter of public record from
numerous stories in Stern, Time, and Forbes, to name just
three, that his accountants, lawyers, and business associates
had been urging him to do just that and make a killing on
the international markets. He was something of a genius.
People would fall all over themselves to buy into the
Kurtz empire."

"Yes. So what?"

"So all his holdings are personal," Nicholas said. "If he
dies, his wife inherits them. And if she dies ..."

"They had no children."

"No." Nicholas drained the rest of his coffee. "So Kurtz

likes the CyberNet prospects so much he buys into Denwa

Partners. Two weeks later, he's murdered, and the next day

his widow is killed by a hit-and-run. Cosmic coincidence or

hidden connection?"

"I don't believe in coincidences where murder is con-
cerned. I think I'd better find out who gets the estate now
that both principals are deceased."

Tanaka Gin threw some bills on the table. "Linnear-san,
about what happened last night at the Kurtzes', I know that
in some way your Tau-tau allowed you to feel the presence
of the killer. Have you any more impressions of who he
might be? I have to discount your sensation of looking into
a mirror and seeing yourself. You didn't kill Kurtz."

"No, of course not. I-"

The world canted over and was sliding into a rain-puck-
ered ocean. Red and blue mixed, becoming magenta col-
umns rising out of the kissaten's floor, a forest of taffy. He
heard his heartbeat, quick and fast, filling up his ears with
pulsing fluid. He looked down, felt himself sinking through
the floor, passing through solid objects as if they were made
of ether.

A roaring colored the fluid in his ears, the massed buzzing
of 10 million bees, a hive of kinetic activity that made him
wince as he fell and kept right on falling ...

"-near-san! Linnear-san!"

Someone was' shouting, trying to drown out the bees'
cross-pollinated conversations. Quiet, please!

"Linnear-san!"

It was Tanaka Gin's familiar face close by as he pulled
Nicholas off the floor.

Nicholas put his hand to his throbbing head. The columns
had disappeared and the floor seemed solid enough, but
there was still the aftermath of the bees to contend with.
"What happened?"

"You tell me," Tanaka Gin said "You suddenly went
white and slid off your chair."

Nicholas thought of the end of his lunch with Honniko.
Those damned bees buzzing in his head, trying to be heard.

"Let's get out of here," he said.

Out in the rain-dark streets, it seemed quieter. The inces-
sant crowds, the familiar chirping of the crosswalk units for
the bund, provided a sense of continuity and lulled him back
into reality.

"Linnear-san?"

"I slipped."

"Slipped? I saw you in a Tau-tau trance at the Kurtz
house, and that was no normal slip."

"You're right," Nicholas said bleakly. "I'm very much
afraid it was a slip from one reality to another."

Bad Clams had a forty-foot Cigarette-one of those ul-
trafast, ultraslim power boats so coveted in Florida. Its hull
was painted the color of the ocean at night, a muddy shade
in sunlight, but by moonlight it virtually disappeared. Of
course, that was the point. Cigarettes were smugglers' boats.

Caesare's Cigarette was fast, even by the souped-up stan-
dards of the craft. Vesper's skin turned to gooseflesh within
minutes of taking off from the dock in West Palm, and she
had to hold on to the railing for support. The noise was
almost insupportable, like being in the center of a jet engine.
Her white-knuckle grip was secure on the gunwale as it had
been as a kid on roller coasters that took her breath away
just like this. Craning her neck, she saw the front of the
boat was on plane, all the way out of the water, spray car-
oming off the sleek sides, hard and solid as hail.

"You need a sweater, babe? I think there's a couple
stowed away below," Bad Clams shouted over the roar of
the wind and the gigantic twin engines.

Vesper, her body vibrating with the throb of the engines,
shook her head. "How fast are we going?"

"Faster than anything else afloat," Bad Clams confided,
"and that includes those Coast Guard dicks."

It was just past seven and he still seemed agitated. He
had been pacing the floor, looking at the phone, and when
it had rung, he almost broke his hip lunging for it. He'd
seemed initially disappointed, as if this business call was not
the one he'd been waiting for. Nevertheless, he'd told her
to get dressed as he hung up. "I got too much energy to
stay in," he'd told her. He was jumpy and elated all at once,
and she wondered what had happened.

As she tumbled out of bed, she wondered how Croaker
was making out with Wade Forrest, the head of the Leon-
forte unit of the Anti-Cartel Task Force. Had it been crazy
to involve Croaker? He was tough and smart, but she knew
the ambitious Forrest very well, and if Croaker didn't handle
himself just right, Forrest would blow him off without a
second thought. She did not want that. She had come to be
quite fond of him. Being with him was like hanging around
a Robert Mitchum film character. She'd always been a
sucker for Mitchum.

"There's a man maybe coming tomorrow, friend of mine,"
Bad Clams said as he headed out along the scimitared line
the moonlight made on the ocean. "Real character, this guy.
I think you'll get a kick outta him. He's gonna stay couple
days, maybe. Bringing his girlfriend, she's okay." He waited
a moment. "Not that it matters, she's a sickly broad, so you
won't be seein' mucha her."

"Does this mean we can't go to South Beach?" Vesper
drew wisps of hair off her face. "You promised me we'd
go tomorrow."

"No, South Beach it is. My friend, Paulie, he won't be
here till sometime inna afternoon. We'll go for lunch, 'kay?
I'm sick of II Palazzo, anyway."

About three miles from shore, he abruptly cut the engines
and they began to drift.

"Look at that sunset," he said, pointing to the green and
orange fire beyond the western horizon. "Makes you glad
t'be alive, doesn't it?"

It was preternaturally quiet out here, beyond the seabirds

and out of the shipping lanes. The pleasure boats were all
riding at anchor or safely in their slips. Only the distant
drone of a plane could be heard wafting over the water. Far
off, the lights of Palm Beach had come on, a spangle, part
of another world, a reflection of the sunset riding the waves.

"You hungry?"

"Not really." She noticed a large Styrofoam chest that
had been stowed beside the wheel.

"Hey, you know what I did today?" he said, his tone still
light and conversational. "I checked you out. And y'know
what I found?" He was coming toward her and Vesper had
sense enough to stand her ground. Not an easy thing given
the pissed-off look on his face. "I found out that you worked
for the federal government." He was close now. "Not only
that, you worked for a virtually unknown unit called Look-
ing-Glass." She could smell him, that curious, spicy animal
scent with which he scared people. "Not only that, you
worked for my father, John."

"It's all true," Vesper said quietly.

He snorted. "I know that, lady. What I don't know is what
you're doing here." His hands gestured. "I mean, it's too
much ova coincidence you showin' up in II Palazzo just in
time for me to walk in and see you."

Vesper was walking through a lethal minefield without a
diagram of where the explosives were located. Being with
Caesare Leonforte was like that. Not that she minded such
an assignment. Almost all her life, it seemed, she had been
a sister to risk. And to her credit or her damnation, de-
pending on your point of view, she clove to it like a moth
to a flame.

The essential attraction of risk was that it took you out
of yourself. Like acting, it was the antithesis of self-contem-
plation, which had never been one of Vesper's attributes. In
being someone else, actors had ho time to be themselves,
and it was the same for risk. In those situations that entailed
the greatest risk, you had to be whatever it was the other
person needed you to be. Up to a point. Then you turned
the tables on them in order to get what you wanted out
of them.

Vesper's relationship with Bad Clams was still in the first,
and most dangerous, stage. For if she was found out, there

would be no other stages to. follow on. Everything would
be lost.

On the risky theory that the best defense was offense,
Vesper pushed herself against him, encirch'ng him with her
arms. She kissed him hard on the lips. Then she pulled her
head away so she could see his eyes and grinned up at him. .
"Did I somehow magically make you come over and pick
me up?"

"No, of course not, but-"

"But I was there hoping to run into you."

His eyes narrowed. "Yeah, why?"

"Because of the Pentagon investigation into your father's
dealings with DARPA, I need a secure place to hide." She
was talking about the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Re-
search Projects Agency. DARPA was so ultrasecret it was
black-budgeted, which meant that Congress never knew
about its funds and, therefore, never had to vote appropria-
tions. "Your father was dipping his fingers into the DARPA
experimental weapons cache virtually at will. When that
came to light, it got a lot of people at the Pentagon really
pissed off because it made the generals look foolish and
compromised the entire fast-track advanced weapons re-
search program."

"So okay, what's that got to do with you?"

"I needed to get out of Washington permanently before
the investigation got around to me."

Now he seemed really suspicious. "Yeah, why? You had
nothing to do with the DARPA procurement network."

Like most things in life, it was a trade-off. She'd gotten
him more pissed off and suspicious of her, but in the process
he'd given her a vital piece of the puzzle she was trying to
solve. Now she had confirmed that Caesare had been in-
volved in his father's scheme to raid DARPA of its best
weapons ideas.

"No, but I worked closely with your father."

"On what?"
"Drugs."

For a moment, Caesare was too shocked to say anything.
Then he began to laugh. He laughed so hard he held his
sides and tears came to his eyes. "You?" he gasped. "A

beautiful, intelligent broad like you involved in the macho
sleaze of the drug world? You gotta be kidding."

"I'm not."

Caesare sobered up quickly. "Don't you fuckin' try to
scam me, I'll skin you alive." When he spoke like that, his
street voice overrode everything.

"No scam. I was your father's administrative assistant, on
the books, that is. What I really did for him was coordinate
his drug operation from inside Looking-Glass."

"How come I never heard of you?"

"Because I took care of the Asian side of things. Besides,
Johnny had more secrets than a small town."

"Yeah, you could say that again." Caesare was calmer
now. "That sonuvabitch never told anybody anything more
than he thought they needed to know. Was always like that.
Never trusted anybody-not even his kids." He snorted
again. "Hey, shit, what am I talkin' about-'specially his
kids. Nobody, an' I mean nofuckingbody, was close to
Johnny Leonforte." This was said with a certain admiring
machismo, but Vesper felt an undercurrent like a wisp of a
breeze against her cheek, a dark and brooding hurt like a
bruise that had never healed.

He sat down on the stern of the Cigarette, looked at her.
"He keep you a secret 'cause he was boffing you?"

For a moment, Vesper wondered which way to play this.
She knew now that Caesare would be intensely jealous if
she said yes. The question was whether she wanted that.

"Well, he certainly tried," she said, going solely on in-
stinct. "And tried and tried and tried."

Caesare stared at her in a kind of reverie. He had never
met a woman even remotely like her, and he was intoxi-
cated. Much to his astonishment, he found that he admired
the way she stood up to him almost as much as he adored
the fury with which she made love. For him, whose needs
required that everything be larger than life, she was like a
gift from heaven. Everything about her was larger than
life-her passion, her humor, her intelligence, her fury.
Rather than being intimidated, as most men would be, he
embraced these things in her. After spending his life dismiss-
big women as second-class citizens who did no more than
inhabit the vast backdrop of his life, he had discovered a

kind of soulmate who, by sheer force of her animal personal-
ity, had pushed herself to the foreground where he had al-
ways stood alone."

Not surprisingly, this revelation set up a series of ripples
in his mind. Like unknown currents, they branched out,
-chilling him, firing nun, taking him to places he had not
known existed.

He shook his head. "You're some fuckin' broad, you
know that? Whatta pair of cojónes on you."

Then they were laughing together and she knew she had
made the right decision because she felt one of his internal
walls crumbling. She was further inside than she had been.

It was growing dark now, the string of lights on shore
more brilliant. The eastern half of the sky was already black.

"Y'know, I never met a broad before my father wanted
who he didn't get."

"That must've been hard on your mother."

"Ah, my mother." Caesare crossed himself. "God rest her
soul. She hung in there, gotta give her all the credit inna
world.^ She loved my father until the day she died, and noth-
ing was gonna shake that love apart. But he was nevah there,
y'know?" He looked out over the waves. "But sometimes I
think he sure did his best." He put his elbows on his knees,
stared down at the deck. "Why'd he hurt her so to leave
her like that? I mean, us kids, we were alla time runnin'
around so we hardly had time t'miss him. Leastwise I nevah
did." But something far back in his eye told Vesper he was
lying-not only to her but perhaps to himself as well.

Caesare shook his head. "What'd she ever do to him but
love him, make him the only man inna world? An' then he
skips out. But he hadda job t'do, y'know, she knew that, I
mean, she had to, right? It was business, but she hadda miss
him something fierce and it must've killed her inside, the
love eating right through her. Anyway, I used to ask myself
these questions when I was young an' stupid, running around
the streets of Ozone Park."

His eyes flicked up to hers. "And, y'know, I never could
come up with the answers until one day I had to do this
errand, take my sister to Astoria, to this convent she was
crazy for." His fingers laced and unlaced as he spoke. "She
was so odd, my sister, Jaqui. Talk about someone I never

 

understood, Jesus! Anyway, Jaqui, her dream was to be a
nun, that's why she was always going off to this convent,
the Sacred Heart of Santa Maria. I was only there the once
but I never forgot the name."

He sighed. "Anyway, I was driving Jaqui there and we
were talking. Poor thing, she was always trying to talk to
me, only I don't think I ever paid attention. I mean she was
my sister, for Christ's sake, what could she have t'say, alia
time talkin' about stuff I knew nothin' about? 'Cept this
time. I asked her those questions that were driving me batty.
'When's Pop coming home?' I asked her. 'I mean, Mom's
gotta broken heart already from waiting for him.' An' she
said, 'Don't you get it yet? He's never coming back.'"

Caesare's hands opened wide. "Naturally, I got pissed off
and yelled at her. I mean, what the fuck, she was talking
bullshit, like she always did, no wonder I never listened to
her. Of course, Pop was coming back. We were his family,
right?"

He was staring down at his feet. "But, funny thing,
y'know, she was right. Pop never did come back."

Caesare's head came up suddenly and he guffawed. His
mood change was startling. "She could really be something,
Jaqui. You remind me of her maybe a little 'cause she was
big-in here." He tapped his temple meaningfully with a
forefinger. "Y'know, she never called Pop Pop, or Dad or
Father, even. Father was for the priests, anyway, far as she
was concerned. I guess she hated him or maybe pitied him
'cause she felt abandoned."

"Didn't you?" Vesper asked. "I mean it'd be only
natural."

"Who, me? Nah, I was too busy learning the family trade,
so to speak, from Uncle Alphonse, that rat bastard." She
heard that same dark undercurrent in his voice. He grew
unaccountably melancholy again and she felt she was on one
end of an emotional yo-yo. "An" I always, y'know, stuck up
for the old man. Not like Jaqui. She had some fuckin'
mouth, my sister. An' no fuckin' respect for family, either."
He rubbed his palms together slowly as if he needed to
warm them and looked out to sea.

"What happened to Jaqui?" Vesper put a hand on his
back, rubbing in circles. As she did so, she detached herself

from her physical moorings as Okami had taught her until
even the beating of her heart receded down a long crystal-
line corridor, until she was enveloped in the singular silence
of thought. The beat-beat-beat of the wings of unseen birds
pushed outward, past the barrier between humans, and en-
tered Caesare's psyche. Connected in this tenuous fashion,
she did her best to push him on. Revelation would follow
revelation, the first one being the most difficult. This Bad
Clam shell was beginning to open.

"Thaf's the really shitty thing, see." He took a breath
even as he waved a hand dismissively. "She died inna car
crash when she was twenty. Year after she joined the con-
vent." He continued to stare bleakly out to sea. "Twenty,
Jesus." He turned to her. "Y'know, the funny thing is, I
miss her now. Never did when she was alive and inna con-
vent. Never even thought of her much, 'cept to be pissed at
her for not respectin' Pop. But now I think of her all the
time. Weird, isn't it?"

"Not really, and I think it's good. It's good that you can
appreciate her now. She'd like that, don't you think?"

"I dunno." Caesare seemed so sad. "I think of that time
I yelled at her inna car onna way to the convent, y'know?
Truth is, I didn't just yell-I slapped her. I hit her hard,
y'know. I hurt her, outside and inside. I know it. I feel it"-
he curled one hand into a fist, pounded his chest over his
heart-"here."

"But now you're sorry you did it."  "*

"Course I am. Jesus, what a fuckin' monster I was then,
trying so hard to be like Pop, 'cause he was gone and I had
to be the head of the family, there was no one else. I mean,
my brother, Mick, forgetaboutit, he always had his brains
up his ass."

Mick Leonforte, Vesper thought. What role had he played
in the family dynamic-then and now? She was about to
lead him into this territory when he abruptly rose and went
to the wheel and switched on green running lights. This sud-
den burst of physical energy snapped Vesper's delicate psy-
chic threads, and he was gone.

"See that out there?" He had grabbed a pair of binoculars
and was peering through them out into a dark part of the
ocean.

Vesper walked to where he stood. She could just make
out a pair of red sparks. "What are those, running lights?"

Caesare grinned. "Smart girl. Yeah, we're meeting a boat
out here."

"I'm flattered you took me with you."

"Don't be," he said flatly. "This is an ideal place to dump
a body. Sharks'll make sure there's nothing left to find."

Vesper's heart flipped over. "Is that what you plan to do
with me?"

"It was inna beginning." Caesare took the binoculars from
his eyes. "But now I gotta bettah idea. It depends on
whether I believe your story or not."

This was not a good position for her to be in and she
knew it. She got up on the rail, spread her arms wide, bal-
ancing there. "Then push me in. As you said, it'll all be
over in minutes."

The red running lights were coming closer, and now the
deep throbbing of engines could be heard faintly.

"Nah. I'd rather let you think about it some."

"Why wait, Caesare? Do it now. You can get back to
your life and forget all about me."

He looked at her for a long time. Behind her, she heard
the engines quit as the unknown boat slid silently toward
them. Only the faint wash of the waves could be heard.

"I'm curious," he said. "I wanna see if you're bull-
shitting me.'^?

"Really?"

Caesare held out a hand but he did not touch her. "That
and I don't want to forget about you."

But now she knew what he was really saying, though at
the moment he might not have understood. / don't want to
forget about Jaqui.

"You've hurt me. I'm not one of your bimbos. Do you
think you can just put on "one of your macho shows, an-
nounce that you're thinking of plopping me in the water,
and watch while my insides turn to jelly?" She kept her
voice on a steadily rising pitch. "You think that's amusing
or fun?"

"Look at it from my point of view. What if you're the
heat?"

"You're still the fucking monster you were when you hit
your sister!" she shouted.

"Naw, c'mon, babe. Cut out the crap."

"You like rucking with my mind, you sadist."

"Don't-Jesus, don't, for God's sake, use the f-word."

"Why the hell not?" Of course she knew why not. She'd
bet the farm Jaqui had never used the f-word. "You do.
Besides, you've scared the piss out of me. How the hell do
you think I feel?"

"Yah, well ..." He shrugged, took a step toward her,
enfolded her in his arms, and she let him take her down from
there, hold her close to him. He kissed her on both cheeks,
on each eyelids, on her forehead. Very formal, very tender.
Then his lips pressed against hers, opened, and their tongues
met briefly.

A soft hail came on the night air, and Caesare put her
down. "Business now," he whispered. As he gently touched
her cheek, he returned the hail.

She nodded. "I'll go below."

But as she turned, he grasped her hand, pulled her back.
"No, stay here." He neatly and efficiently tied off the lines-
thrown to him. "You say you were in the business."

"I was in the business," she whispered fiercely as a man
thin as a whippet climbed over the side from a dinghy
lying to.

"Okay, then." He turned back to her. "I want you to give
me your opinion of this motherfucker."

Vesper turned to see a Coast Guard cutter off the star-
board bow. It was showing no lights, which was highly un-
usual. She checked its markings, saw the designation: COM
1176. The whippet-thin man was dressed in the standard
uniform of a lieutenant in the U.S. Coast Guard He was
carrying a blue and white nylon gym bag.

"Caesare," he said. His smile showed about an acre of
gold-capped teeth. He had the close-set nervous eyes of a
rodent, and he had a twitch in his right shoulder as if he
had a gun butt digging into his armpit.

"Milo." Caesare lifted a hand. "This's Vesper. She's
gonna check the shipment. Okay with you?"

Milo shrugged. "Me, I don't give a shit if you want the
pope to taste it. Alla same t'me."

He unzipped the gym bag, handed over a clear plastic bag
filled with a white powder. Vesper took it and the knife
Caesare handed her. She made a small X in the bag, drew
out some of the white powder on the flat of the blade, tasted
it. Then she turned her head, spat over the side. She looked
hard into Caesare's eyes for a moment before nodding.

"Bring the shit over," Caesare said.

The transfer took approximately seven minutes. During
that time, Caesare brought out an attaché case in which
Vesper assumed was the money to pay for the cocaine. With
her back to Milo, she whispered to Caesare, "Don't pay him
yet. Just follow my lead."

"Is this all of it?" Vesper asked as Milo counted out the
last of the 150 bags.

"That's it. I'll take the money now."

"Just a moment." Vesper stood in front of the shipment
and, kneeling down, plucked out two bags at random from
the inside of the pile.

"What's she doin'?" Milo said in mild alarm. "We gotta
deal."

"I'm checking the merch," Vesper said as she slit open
the bags.

"You already done that." Milo looked at Caesare. "She
already done that." His mouth screwed up. "Now you lettin'
a broad wear the pants, Bad Clams?"

"Shut your fuckin' yap," Caesare said.

Milo looked down to see a MAC-10 machine pistol in
Caesare's right hand. "Jesus Christ," he cried, "take it fuck-
ing easy, would you? I didn't mean anything."

Vesper stood up. She was careful to keep out of Caesare's
line of fire. "The bag on the left's okay. But the one on the
right's laced with something really nasty: arsenic."

Caesare hefted the MAC-10, pointed his chin at Milo.
"Well?"

Milo dipped his pinky into the open bag on the right,
tasted off the tip. He nodded, his face expanded with as-
tonishment. "Damned if she isn't right on the money, boss."

All at once Caesare leapt across the deck and jammed
the muzzle of the MAC-10 into the soft spot between Milo's
neck and chin- "I wanna know right now, you lying,
cocksucking sonuvabitcb if you're tryin' t'fuck me ovah, be-

cause if you are an' deny it now, you'll be singin' alto inna
girls' choir." A red madness was in his eyes, like that of a
berserk or rabid beast, a vast and burning rage not wholly
under his control. "Answer me, you fucking weasel
nothing!"

"Jesus Christ, don't kill the messenger just 'cause the news
sucks. I'm not the source, for Christ's sake. Besides, you
know drugs aren't my thing. I haven't touched your shit an'
I'll kill the motherfucker what says I did." Milo almost
choked on his fear. "This's the first I'm hearin' of it, I
swear!"

Caesare drew himself up slightly, and taking a deep
breath, he turned to glance at Vesper. She nodded to tell
him she believed Milo was telling the truth.

In a way, Caesare seemed disappointed. He wanted imme-
diate satisfaction for this outrage, and Vesper could see he
was just itching to go after Milo.

"Okay," Caesare said at length. He let Milo up. The whip-
pet-thin man was drenched in sweat and his knees almost
buckled when Caesare let go of him. He knew just how
close he had come to disaster.

"Someone's trying to fuck me over, Milo." Caesare kept
the MAC-10, but now held it muzzle down at his side. "Let's
see, there's a delivery set up for tomorrow night, right?"

Milo nodded numbly.

"We'll take carea this mess then."

Milo began to breathe again. "Inna-meantime, I'll get this
gahbidge outta here. Let the fuckin' sharks choke on it."

"Shut the fuck up," Caesare snapped. "Who told you to
think?" He pointed to the bag of arsenic-laced dope. "Wrap
that up an' make sure it's on the boat tomorrow night. I'm
goin' with you."

"You, boss, but nevah-"

"Get outta here!" Caesare screamed at him and Milo
scrambled to obey.

When they were alone, Vesper turned on Caesare, her
eyes blazing. "You set me up. This was a test."

He shrugged. "Yeah, well, can you blame me? A broad
too good t'be true drops outta the sky inta my lap, I gotta
wonder 'bout that. Problem?"

"No problem."

"Good. Anyway, looks like you did me a big one, finger-
ing the shit with the arsenic." He broke out the Styrofoam
chest, which was filled with food and iced champagne. "Let's
eat. I'm starved."

The pink and acid-green neon glow of Tokyo radiated like
the heart of a gigantic generator. But here amid the modem
concrete shell of Karasumori Jinja, the soft nineteenth-
century light of lanterns cast a flight of hazy circles within
the environs of the Shinto shrine. Despite the looming bulk
of the nearby New Shinbashi Building, the Jinja was set
within a series of narrow alleys whose appearance harked
back to a different Tokyo before war and economic miracle
had made of it another country.

"Japan is now without a political leader," Mikio Okami
said. "In this time of economic chaos it lies adrift and rud-
derless in violent seas. As with all vacuums nature will not
long tolerate this one."

"But you told me that there are no leading candidates to
become prime minister," Nicholas said.

"That was then," Okami said as he stepped from lantern
light into relative darkness. "This afternoon, the name Kan-
sai Mitsui was put forward by the coalition as a kind of
compromise."

"I don't know him."

"Not surprising. Not many people who aren't on the polit-
ical inside do. But he's a dangerous man. It's his contention
that the rape of Nanking was nothing more than a fabrica-
tion." Okami was speaking of one of Japan's most notori-
ous-and bestial-war crimes. In 1937, Japanese soldiers
massacred hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians. More
than twenty thousand women were raped and the city was
torched. Eleven years later, a war crimes tribunal sentenced
the commander of the Japanese forces in Nanking to death.

"Kansai Mitsui is a deconstructionist, pure and simple,"
Okami continued. "He's intent on remaking history in his
own image. To that end, he's made threats against the cur-
rent prime minister for trying to heal the wounds of the .war
in the Pacific. He claims our invasion of the Asian mainland
should be remembered-lauded as an act of liberation. In
denying that Japan was ever intent on expanding her terri-

tory, he insists that we were merely liberating the Asian
people from their enslavement by Western colonial
aggressors."

Okami stopped just out of another circle of lantern light.
"Also, what almost no one knows is that Mitsui is backed
by Tetsuo Akinaga. But that may be of little moment. Aki-
naga is destined to rot in prison."

Nicholas's eyes glittered. "Late this afternoon I received
word that our old friend Akinaga will be walking free
within days. His lawyers have sprung him on a series of
technicalities."

"Akinaga is going free?"

"Someone or some people within the Tokyo Prosecutor's
Office are! in his pocket. I am working with a prosecutor
named Tanaka Gin. He's a good man, a dogged and dedi-
cated detective. Akinaga was his case. He believes his brief
was sabotaged by someone in his office. Maybe you could
look into this."

Okami grinned fiercely. "It will be my pleasure."

They came upon a local musician, who took up his sami-
sen and began a haunting melody. They walked on, needing
the space in which to talk, but the music followed them,
drifting like smoke amid the lanterns.

"How big a threat is this man, Mitsui?" Nicholas asked.

"That remains to be seen. But, undoubtedly, the greatest
threat is Akinaga himself. I want to see if he still has the
muscle to push Mitsui's nomination through."

"By then it may be too late."

"Not really." Okami resumed walking. "Akinaga's the
key. Without bun, Mitsui will fall into line, another weak
prime minister who won't accomplish much. Right now, I
think it's worth biding our time and letting Akinaga run out
his skein."

"The talk of threats has made more urgent something that
happened to me twice this afternoon." Nicholas related the
odd and disquieting sensations of Tau-tau he had experi-
enced while with Honniko and Tanaka Gin without having
consciously summoned it up.

"I have never known Akshara to manifest itself in this
manner," Okami said, clearly concerned.

"But it was strangely different from Akshara." Nicholas

had not told Okami about the eerie doppelgänger sensation
he had experienced at Rodney Kurtz's, and he had no plan
to until he could better sort it out for himself. It was too
personal, too intimate in a way Nicholas had yet to define,
to confide it in anyone-even Okami.

"What was it like?"

"I'm not sure. Like the sky was melting, like ten million
voices speaking to me at once." He shook his head. "I know.
All of that sounds crazy."

"Not at all. But I do believe we ought to continue with
our attempts to heal the defects inside you." Okami reached
out a hand. "Are you prepared?"

Nicholas nodded, though after the unsettling experiences
of the last few days, he approached this session with a
heightened sense of trepidation. He stood very still, listening
to the city sounds around him first growing unnaturally loud,
then fading into the distance, as normal reality fled through
a hole in the universe.

"That's right," Mikio Okami said, "drink in the night."

He watched as Nicholas, head thrown back, stared into
the void that was Akshara. High above and with each heart-
beat growing more distant were the lights of Tokyo, a dome
of neon, receding into darkness.

"Enter deeply into Akshara," Okami said. "So deeply
that you begin to see the dark patterns in the void. Here
is Kshira."

Kshira was the dark path, the other half of Tau-tau, the
part almost never spoken of because those who dared try
to master it either died or went mad. Such had been the
case with Kansatsu, Nicholas's Tau-tau sensei, who had em-
bedded pieces of Kshira inside Nicholas's mind like cunning
time bombs.

Nicholas had been told that Okami possessed koryoku,
the Illuminating Power. It was said among the ancients who
practiced Tau-tau centuries ago that koryoku was the sole
path to Shaken, the Dominion, where the two halves of Tau-
tau could be united into a working whole. But others insisted
that Shuken was merely a myth, that Akshara and Kshira
were never meant to meld into a whole.

Nicholas fervently believed in Shuken. He needed to. Oth-

erwise Kshira, the soul destroyer, would eventually take him
over and drive him mad as it had done to Kansatsu.

Abruptly, he felt the jellied sky covering his limbs, heard
the cluttering of 10 million voices speaking in unknown
tongues directly, at the center of his mind. It was as it had
been this afternoon. It was Kshira, and it was too much. It-

"No," Okami said sharply, "do not pull away from Kshira.
You will only draw the dark patterns closer to you, and
once they attach themselves to your conscious they cannot
be severed,"

Deep within the trancelike state of Tau-tau, Nicholas was
beyond time and space. He existed as a point of light in a
void without dimension. All around him the cosmos
breathed like a beast in the forest, but now instead of being
encased in the armor of Akshara, he felt the unquiet dark-
ness all around as the shards of Kshira swirled in the void.
Once, they seemed almost harmless, distant clouds on a lim-
itless horizon. But now they circled him so swiftly that at
any given moment they blocked out increasing sections of
the void, impairing his psychic vision. All too soon, he knew,
they would link up, making a continuous band around him,
cutting him off from chunks of Akshara until all he could
see and feel would be their black weight, and then the mad-
ness would set in.

His psyche was directed toward a newly erected coruscat-
ing column of light, beautiful filaments floating off it now
and again to touch the black bits of Kshira his mind had
summoned up. Behind the light, he could sense Okami's
psychic presence. They had been at this for over a week,
ever since they were reunited in Venice, and still the Kshira
raged within Nicholas, blinding him psychically at odd mo-
ments, at others distorting Akshara so badly it frightened
him on the most profound level.

And his fear increased as he was reminded of another
moment like this one in the forest of Yoshino three weeks
ago when he and Tachi Shidare, the young Yakuza oyabun
who had befriended him, had attempted just such a psychic
union. Tachi also possessed koryoku, but when he attempted
to make contact with Nicholas, he faltered. I can't Some-
thing ... I don't know ... There had been an odd look on
his face. The Kshira is so strong ... And Tachi had pulled

away. Moments later, he was killed and Nicholas never
solved the riddle. Had Nicholas's Kshira been too strong for
Tachi? But how was that possible? Koryoku was meant to
handle Kshira.

Okami's face was forming within the column of light, and
perhaps Nicholas would get his answer.

He could feel the psychic emanations from within the glit-
tering light source, and he was drawn to it. He felt a heat
and a crawling on his skin as of sweat or insects as the
ionized particles interacted with his psyche.

Now, as Nicholas moved toward the swirling column of
light, it began to iris open to admit him, and his heart leapt
with elation. At last, he was beginning his journey to integra-
tion; at last, the dark power of Kshira, which had been
haunting him, would be put to rest.

But the moment he reached out to embrace the particles
of light, he heard Okami's voice in his mind, as he had heard
Tachi's at this point in the ritual: No, no ... Too much. I
cannot hold the line.... It is falling inward, imploding....
Get clear! Quickly now! It has come undone. Get clear!

Like a band snapping, Nicholas's hold on Akshara broke,
and he was bounced back into specific time and space. He
crouched in the grounds of the shrine, panting, the unearthly
neon glow of Tokyo spreading over him like a mechanized
Milky Way.

Nicholas, still dizzy from the abrupt severing of Akshara,
looked around for Okami. He found him sprawled on the
ground as if he had been shot with a high-powered rifle.
Nicholas dragged himself over, listening for breath, checking
the eyes beneath the closed lids.

Okami began to convulse. His blood pressure was danger-
ously high. What had happened at kokoro? What had
Okami seen? What had sent him into spastic shock, made
him lose hold on the column of light, on koryoku? Was it
the same mysterious occurrence that had made Tachi pull
abruptly away from psychic contact with Nicholas? Had
Kansatsu somehow psychically poisoned him? He had to
know.

Using Akshara, he extended his psyche until it entered
Okami's bloodstream. There he adjusted adrenaline levels
downward while getting Okami's body to pump out a more

potent mix of nucleopeptides to help fight off the shock,
calm the convulsions, and bring him back to consciousness
more quickly.

Okami quieted in Nicholas's arms, the last of the spasms
dissipating, and his eyes opened.

"How do you feel, Okami-san?"

"Tired." He tried to smile but did not quite make it. "I
am not as young as I used to be."

"You're ninety."

"Who told you that? Celeste?" He licked his dry lips.
"Even she does not know my real" age. Just as well." He
gestured. "Help me up, please."

As Nicholas began to move him, Okami held his head and
groaned, and Nicholas set him carefully back on the ground.
"What did you do to me? I haven't had this amount of endor-
phins running through me since I was in my seventies."

"You went into violent convulsions."

"I do not remember."

Nicholas watched Okami carefully as he went into prana,
breathing -deeply and evenly to continue the bodily
cleansing.

When Okami's eyes fluttered open, they were looking di-
rectly at Nicholas. "I do not believe I can help you, my
friend, though I very much want to."

I cannot be hearing this, Nicholas thought. "But you have
koryoku. It is the only way to integration. You are my last
hope."

"Let us pray to whatever God we believe in that this is
not so. Because then you are doomed." Okami sighed, grab-
bing on to Nicholas as they rose. "You see, all the time
Kshira has been inside you, you have had no access to it. I
cannot get close, either. When I tried, I was almost killed.
And from what you have told me about your experience
with Tachi Shidare, he was stymied in the same manner.
From these unfortunate encounters we must conclude that
koryoku, the Illuminating Power, is of no help to you."

Nicholas fought a vertiginous sensation of panic. "What,
then, am I to do, Okami-san? I cannot tolerate Kshira much
longer inside me. Lately, I have felt its strength growing. It
is like a shadow on my soul."

"I know, my friend, and I sympathize. But Kshira must

be approached in just the right manner otherwise it will
be like disarming a booby trap without knowing how the
mechanism works. Disaster." Okami shook his head. "Pity
that Kansatsu, the sensei who trained you, is dead. He is the
one man who would know how to save you." He spat.
"What a twisted, diabolical brain he had. He must have
hated you with all his soul to have done this to you."

Okami walked on legs made stiff by shock. "Come. It is
time we left this place. The psychic echoes of the near catas-
trophe are disturbing."

As they walked out into the bustle of West Shinbashi,
Okami looked at Nicholas's ashen face. "I am too old and
tired to help you, but do not give up hope, Linnear-san. I
know the answer exists. There is someone out there who
possesses the means by which you can escape the unique
prison into which you have been placed."

 

6

New York/Tokyo

"Everyone comfy?"

"Mom's asleep," Francine Goldoni DeCamillo said.

"Yah, I know," Paul Chiaramonte said. "I gave her some-
thing so she should rest."

It was dark in the belly of the private plane, and cold.
They sat on facing seats while outside the small, scarred
Perspex windows clouds rolled by, illuminated eerily by
moonlight. They looked like smoke from the dry-ice ma-
chines used in rock videos, Francie thought She was trying
to be brave, trying with all her might to still the painful
fluttering of her heart. She moved a little until she felt the
warmth of her mother's shoulder and felt a little better.

"Where are you taking us?"

Paul's eyes glittered in the semidarkness. "South.
Where it's warm. You'll like it. Plenty of swimming,
maybe even surfboarding."

"Who are you trying to kid? You're taking us to Bad
Clams."

Paul regarded her for some time. "Kid, you're a smart
cookie."

"Don't talk down to me. I'm not seven years old."

"I can see that." He eyed her appreciatively. "I think you
threw out your training bra a while ago, hah?"

"You like them," she said, arching her back slightly,
"my breasts?"

Paul shrugged. "What's not to like?"

Francie smiled. "Want to touch them?"

Paul reacted as if she had burned him with the end of a
cigarette. "Jesus, kid, what the hell kinda question's that?"

"That's not how you acted back at Sheepshead Bay."

He waved a hand dismissively. "I was fuckin' pissed off.
An' didn't I have a right t'be? Your mother was responsible
for whacking the men I hired."

"They were going to kidnap us."

"An' she made me whack a cop. A cop, kid, you unner-
stand? My ass is grass back in NYC. You kill a fuckin' cop,
they catch you, you're a goner. They lock you up an' throw
away the key."

"He was only trying to protect us."

Paul eyed her with what could only be termed a grudging
kind of respect. "What're you, seventeen?"

"Almost."

Paul snorted. "Goin' on twenny-eight. Take my advice,
kid. Give it a rest, okay? You got plenty of time t'grow up,
you don't need t'do it in one gulp."

Francine thought about this for some time. "How come
you put my mother to sleep and not me?"

"Y'know, Jesus Christ, I bettah watch what I say
around you."

"Why did you want to talk with me alone?"

Paul put a fingernail to his mouth, tore off a thin sliver
with his teeth. "I like you, kid. You ask a straight question,
no bullshit. So I'll answer you straight. Your mother, she,
y'know, like hates my guts 'cause of how things worked out.
Also, I roughed her up a little I was so pissed, an' for that
I am truly sorry. So I know right off for sure I can't talk
with her because whatevah I say, she'll go, 'Fuck you,' an'
she'd be right, I guess. But I figure maybe you are, like,
different. You, bein' almost seventeen and all, might listen
to what I have to say."

"I'll listen, unless I think what you're saying is bullshit.
Then you can fuck yourself."

"Kay, I can respect that." Paul tore another thin strip of

nail off the end of his finger. "You evah met Bad Clams,
kid?"

"No."

"Well." He looked away, as if that weren't at all what he
had meant to ask her. "Hey!" He jumped up, startling her.
"You hungry? How about I make us some pasta?"

Francie looked around. "There's a kitchen on the plane?"

"Sure, sure, whaddaya think? 'Cept it's called a galley,
like onna boat." He led the way down the aisle to a small
space where he turned on a light to reveal a compact stain-
less-steel galley.

"Aren't there any flight attendants?"

"Nah. This's a private flight, y'know?"

He took down a box of pasta, set water to boiling on the
two-burner electric stove. Then he set about making a sauce
from tomato paste, stewed tomatoes, parsley, oregano, olive
oil, and sauteed onions. "A little salt and pepper," he said,
"and we're done." He set the pot of sauce on the second
burner.

"What happened to your leg?"

Paul automatically glanced down at his shorter leg. "Was
an accident happened a long time ago when I was a kid.
Nineteen sixty-two. In Astoria, near where I lived." He
stirred the sauce and shook his head. "It was kinda crazy,
like a dream, y'know? If not for my leg I'd be sure it was
a dream. I saw a car speeding down the street, an' for some
reason I knew something terrible was about to happen. It
was comin' right at this girl. I'd been watching her, y'know,
'cause, my God, she was a beauty.

"I shouted a warning an' she turned. I leapt off the curb
just like someone inna movies, thinking I could save her,
but the car clipped my hip and thigh."

"What happened to the girl?"

"She died. I was inna hospital a long time. I had three
operations an' they still couldn't get me back to the way I
was. Said I was lucky t'be walking on two legs. In between
times, that's when I tried to find out about the girl an' was
told she didn't make it. Her funeral'd already happened."
Then he pointed. "Hey, look, the pasta's done. Trick is not
t'let it overcook, y'know?"

"Yeah. I know."

He made a fluttering gesture with his hand. "That's what
everyone says. But the real secret's to make a sauce that
coats the pasta just right." He looked down at her and was
disappointed that she wasn't smiling. "You scared?"

For a moment, she did not answer. "A little, I guess. I've
heard a lot about Bad Clams."

Paul snorted. "Who hasn't?" He shook his head. "You
know how he got his name?"

Francie shook her head. "Uh-uh."

"Well, the first guy he whacked, it was like a contract job,
y'know? Guy was eatin' inna restaurant an' Bad Clams he
comes in, levels the gun and-wham!-plugs the guy. Then,
like he's got no nerves at all, he looks down at the guy he
just whacked, whose face is inna bowl of pasta with white
clam sauce he's been eatin' from, an' he says, 'Must've been
the bad clams that killed 'im.'" Paul was laughing. "Jesus,
Christ, can ya picture it?"

His smile faded a bit as he regarded Francine's serious
face. "A little scared, that's okay. But, hey, kid, nothing
bad's gonna happen t'you."

"How do you know?"

"I know, that's all." He dumped the pasta and boiling
water into a colander he had wedged into the small sink. "I
know a lotta things." With a deft twist of his wrist he slid the
pasta back into the pot, then added the sauce and tossed it.

"Beautiful. Good pasta is a masterwork." He portioned
out the pasta into two bowls. "Nothing like it to restore the
soul and the spirit, that's what my mother used t'say." He
handed her one bowl, along with a fork and large spoon.
"Sorry I don't have any fresh-baked bread, kid."

"That's okay." The smell coming out of the bowl was
heavenly, and suddenly Francie realized that she was
ravenous.

They sat in facing seats, feasting. He had turned on one
of those small overhead lights that shone between them with
a pure, brittle beam, half-illuminating their faces like in the
mirrored room of a fun house.

"When it comes to cooking, this's the only thing I do well.
Learned it from my mother."

"Who was your mother?"

"Belissima. A beautiful woman," Paul said in a voice tight
with tension. "That's all you gotta know."

Francie gave him a quick glance and went back to eating
her pasta. Paul looked at her head pulled down into her
shoulders, and he put down his fork .onto which he had
twirled just the right amount of sauce-coated pasta.

"I get a little, y'know, uptight about her because, well,
because she was Jewish-outside la Famiglia. But, well, I
guess that's what my old man figured. Woulda been too
complicated to have an Italian mistress, hah? With a Jew, it
was a no guilt kinda thing, right? I mean she could never be
considered family, so even if Faith-y'know, your, what?-
stepgrandmother kinda thing-she was married to my father
then-so even if she found out, no threat, no sweat, justa
roll inna fuckin' hay."

Francine risked a glance at him. He looked so sad at that
moment she felt an urge to hug him. She knew better than
most what it was like to have fucked-up parents.

"Faith found out, didn't she?"

"It wasn't that, really." He put aside his bowl, locked his
arms behind his head, and stared up at the dark ceiling of
the plane. "Thing is, she found out that for my father it
hadn't been just a roll inna hay. He felt something for this
other woman-this Jew-and she put her foot down. 'It's
her or me,' she said, knowing full well he couldn't divorce
her in the eyes of God." He gave Francine a meaningful
stare. "Catholicism, right? It's a fuckin' pain inna ass, you
ask me."

"I don't know much about it."

"There, y'see. What I said." His eyes returned to the ceil-
ing. "My old man, he might've been a terror onna streets
of Astoria, but he was a devout Catholic. Went to church,
donated money, did, y'know, good deeds for the diocese,
even ate fish on Fridays even though he hated it like poison.
Useta cough it all up inna toilet, afterwards. But he nevah
ate more food till the next morning.

"So he, y'know, took what Faith said as gospel. The
Church said divorce was a sin an' that was that."

"So then what happened?"

"Faith, she said to him, 'What does it matter, anyway?
She's a Jew. She knew what she was getting into when she

seduced you. She won't feel a thing.' Trouble was, she'd got
it ass backwards. It was my father who had seduced my
mother, it was my father who didn't know what he was
getting into."

"So he did see her again," Francine said, hoping for a
happy ending.

"I dunno, really." Paul bunked several times as if he had
something in his eye. "My mother married John Chiara-
monte, a Renaissance-history professor from City College,
where she was going to night school twice a week. She'd
known him for some time and he had already proposed to
her once. She did it very fast, I guess, because she knew she
was pregnant.

"My mother was a practical woman, always using her
head," he said with a good deal of admiration. "When I was
bom six months later, John never asked her who the father
was. According to my mother, he just accepted me as his
own."

He sighed deeply. "A love like that..." He broke off for
a moment. Then looked across at Francine. "That was the
kind of love Black Paul Mattaccino felt for her." He put his
ragged nail between his teeth once more. "He must've seen
her somehow, some way, 'cause she got money regularly."
He gripped his short leg. "My stay inna hospital, the opera-
tions an', afterward, the rehab, my mom got the money from
him for that."

"But why do you work for Bad Clams?" Francine asked,
putting her bowl on top of his. "Why do you hate my mother
so much?"

"I don't hate your mother so much now, an' I don't hate
you at all. You believe that, don't you?"

Francine shrugged.

"Well, it's true. Hey, remember what you said before
about bullshit? This is not bullshit, okay? Whatever's going
down, it's between families, the Leonfortes and the Gol-
donis. You and your mom just, like, got caught in the gears,
is all. She shoulda kept her nose clean, stood bya sideline
like a woman should."

"Then they would have shot her down, just like they did
my father," Francine said fiercely.

"I don't know 'bout that, I swear." Paul flicked a piece

of nail into tho darkness. "Was imported talent did that, an'
I was kept inna dark." He waved a hand. "Between you an'
me, I think it was a wrong decision to try to whack your
mom. She's a tough cookie, just like you." He gave her a
little smile. "But she sure fucked up my life now."

"Occupational hazard."

He stared at her wide-eyed, then gave a little snort of
astonishment. "Marrone, whatta mouth on you, kid."

She looked at him with a steady gaze. "Maybe this isn't
just family. You hated Faith, I know that."

"Sure I hated the fuckin' bitch. She killed my father,
Black Paul."

"Is that story true?"

Paul held up a hand. "On the soul of my sainted mother."
He grimaced. "I hope Faith got what was comin' to her. I
hope she's fryin' in hell."

"I smell revenge."

"Where d'you get that kinda talk, kid, the fuckin'
movies?"

She climbed up on the seat, turned to look back down
the seatbacks to where Margarite lay in darkness. "You
think she's all right?"

"Sure, she's all right."

Francine turned back as he tapped her lightly on the arm.
She slid down into the seat.

"Kid, tell me something. Your mom ever, like, take you
to Santa Maria in Astoria?"

"The convent, you mean?"

Something passed behind Paul's eyes. "The convent, yeah.
The Sacred Heart of Santa Maria."

Francine nodded. "Lots of times."

"You met the old lady, the mother superior?"

"Every time I was there."

"What'd you guys talk about? Religious stuff or what?"

"Yeah. Religious stuff."

But her eyes slid away from his and he knew she was
lying. It didn't matter, he wasn't interested in what they
talked about. He leaned forward, his hands clasped in front
of him. "You meet anyone else?"

Francine could sense the tenseness come into his face be-
cause she could see all squinty lines at the corners of his

eyes and mouth get harder, more defined. "Sure, lots of
others. Nuns, right? Who else would be in a convent?"

"Of course. Who else?" he said so softly she had to strain
to hear him. "But, I mean, could you tell me if you'd met
one specific nun if I described her?"

"Why do you want to know?"

He leaned even closer. "It's important, kid, okay?" His
voice was no louder than the harsh whisper she used while
talking to a friend in the library.

Because she believed him, she said, "Okay."

"Right, she's kinda tall, lean, with, like, great legs." He
waved his hands as if to erase the message. "But that
wouldn't mean nothing, 'cause she'd be wearing a habit,
wouldn't she? But she'd be real pretty and have dark, wavy
hair. And the most unusual green eyes, the kinda green you
see inna ocean, not close in, like, but far out where the
water's deep." He sat back abruptly, as if he had realized
he had said too much. "You seen anyone like that at
Santa Maria?"

"No."

He squinted at her. "You sure, kid? You're telling me
the truth?"

"Yes."

"Really?"

"Really and truly."

"Oh, Jesus," he whispered. Really and truly. That was the
phrase Jaqui used. He sat for a long time staring at Francie
before his eyes went out of focus. Even in the semidarkness,
she could see she'd hit a nerve, and she'd remember that.
At length, his eyes snapped into focus and he slapped his
thighs with the fiats of his hands.

"Okay, kid," he said in a completely different voice.
"What say we see how your mom's doing back there?"

 

"Come to bed."

"Not yet," Nicholas said.

Koei, who slept in the nude, wrapped herself in the bed-
clothes and stepped off the futon. As soon as her feet
touched the wooden floor, she shivered. "It's cold." She
pressed herself against him. "Aren't you cold?"

"Only up here," Nicholas said, tapping his head. "I had

two incidences of Kshira burning through my conscious state
today, time and light shifting. I was out of control, my mind
felt as if it had been taken over."

"And how do you feel now?"

"Fine. Perfectly normal."

Her eyes, huge and dark and full of life, seemed to hold
reflected the whole of Tokyo's nighttime dazzle. "Okami-
san will help you-."

"I don't know." He felt her near him, felt how much he
desired her near him. "He was hurt this evening trying to
help. He's old, Koei. His mind's sharp enough, but it's
turned elsewhere, on the politics consuming the country, and
I think he lacks the intrinsic strength to help with my
inner battle."

For a long time Nicholas said nothing. He stared out the
window at the nighttime lights of Tokyo. They were high
up in an ultramodern high-rise with a sculpted facade in the
center of the city. Nicholas had bought a duplex, huge by
Japanese standards, then hired the architect who had de-
signed the building to redo the interior. The result was a
combination of pink, gray, and black granite surfaces soft-
ened by chunky expanses of light cherry and darker, deep-
grained kyoki-wood.

"I'll make us some tea," Koei said, unwinding herself
from him.

Nicholas stared down at the Naigai Capsule Tower. It
seemed close enough that a leap to its top was possible. It
was a holdover from the 1970s Metabolism movement,
which separated permanent structures nice roads and free-
ways with the temporary, like housing. It had been a brave
but unsuccessful stab at integrating the two halves of an
urban whole.

The tower of spiderweb scaffoldings and elevator banks
was like an exoskeleton within which were arranged like
boxes of chocolates, premade apartments of different sizes
into which people moved as their economic status evolved.
What had been a fad twenty years ago was now a relic, the
impractical and unlovely Metabolism movement having died
a deserved death. Only a few people made their homes there
now. He wondered why it hadn't been razed to make way
for new ideas in architecture.

After a moment, he followed Koei down the wide stair-
case with the stainless-steel banister, which led from the sec-
ond floor with its two bedrooms and baths, done in
traditional Japanese style.

Downstairs was almost entirely Western in aspect, save
for Nicholas's museum-quality collection of artifacts from all
over Southeast Asia and China, which filled the walls and
cabinets, covered the sleek granite and marble tops of coffee
tables, sideboards, and commodes.

As he watched her deft, concise motions, he said, "Do
you ever think about him?"

This, form of verbal shorthand might have stymied another
woman, but not Koei. Her active, intuitive mind absorbed
every nuance and tonal quality of the person she was with.

"I almost never think of Michael Leonforte." She mea-
sured out the pale green tea with a thin bamboo ladle, her
beautifully formed arm passing through darkness into span-
gled light so that diamonds danced along her skin. "When
I do, it's to remind myself how truly miserable a human
being can be." She looked up at him and the light in her
eyes was electric. "So I will never forget how lucky I am to
have found you again."

Nicholas watched her finish fixing the tea in the midst of
the kyoki-wood and porcelain kitchen. Her deftness came
from happiness, an inner knowledge of self. How different
she was from the teenaged girl he had fallen in love with
so many years ago, different as night from day. As different
as this kitchen was from the large one he'd had in his house
on the outskirts of the city. He had been very fond of that
kitchen, but this one was infused with Koei's small, ordinary
movements, and the other was dark and dead as a grave.

"How much do you miss the house?" Koei asked with
her usual perceptiveness.

"I was raised there," Nicholas said, taking the fired-clay
teacup from her. "There are so many memories. It's hard
to let go."

"Are you sorry you sold it?"

He sighed. "I don't think so, no. There were bad memories
there, also. The house felt glutted with Justine's unhappiness.
And then when she was killed in that car accident..." He
paused for a moment, sipping his tea. "She never was able

to adjust to living here. She wanted so badly to return to
New York."

Koei looked at him over the rim of her teacup. "So, I
think, do you."

"I don't know."

"Oh, but you do," she whispered. "It's always in the back
of your mind, even though you may not want to admit it"

"Japan is my home."

"Perhaps." Her face, knowing and serene, seemed to float
in the light-infused darkness, a beacon of sanity in an in-
creasingly insane world. "But maybe you weren't meant to
have just one home. Not everyone is. I feel your longing,
Nicholas. I know how much you miss it."

"I have no time now to go back."

"That remains to be seen. Perhaps you will return sooner
than you think."

He looked deep into her eyes. "I will have to go, and
soon. The American affiliate is still without a president. Ter-
rence McNaughton, my high-powered lobbyist in Washing-
ton, is conducting the prelims with a corporate headhunter
right now, but I'm going to have to do the final interviews
myself. But how did you know?"

She laughed, holding out one palm to him with the open-
ness of a child. "I am only responding to what I feel from
you."

"Even so, how can I think of going back to New York
when I've lost touch with what's happening at Sato? This
new man, Kanda Torin, has inveigled his way into the com-
pany and Nangi-san's trust."

They went into the living room. Koei pulled the drapes
back, revealing the spectacular view of a city as if caught in
the midst of a stellar fire. They sat together, touching, two
tender animals in the comfort of the night.

"I take it you don't trust him."

"Frankly, I'm not sure what to make of him," Nicholas
said. "Something is rotten inside the company, and right
now Torin's my prime suspect But I know whatever opin-
ions I might have are colored by the fact that I'm jealous
of his position with Nangi-san."

"Then I think it's time you had another talk with
Nangi-san."

"Nangi's heart attack was worse than he let on." Nicholas,
finished with the tea, felt the hand-fired clay cup sturdy be-
neath his palm. "He's getting better, but what I'm told he
needs most now is time. Besides, he told me to trust Torin."

"Then give them both the benefit of the doubt."

Nicholas shook his head. "Sounds good in theory, but in prac-
tice ..." He looked at her. "I get the distinct impression
something is happening I know nothing about."

Koei put the tip of her forefinger in the center of his
forehead. "Do you feel it from here with your tanjian eye?"

"Yes."

"Then you may very well be right." She sighed. "On the
other hand, the older you get the more precious time be-
comes, my darling. I think you must give Nangi-san that
time." She reached up, smoothed the lines on his forehead,
then kissed him on the cheek. "Don't look so perplexed.
You already know what you will do. Follow your heart and
you will find yourself close to the mark."

He turned abruptly away from her and she felt his with-
drawal. It was not the first time, nor would it be the last
She was neither offended nor worried. She knew these acrid
emotions had turned Justine's relationship with him rotten.
Time was her only ally here, and she knew she needed to
make the most of it.

"It's all right that you're thinking of her," she said softly.
"It's only right and natural. Justine was your wife."

Nicholas turned back to her, the pain so evident in his
face her heart broke. "It isn't that she died; I've come to
terms with that. It's the guilt. I left her alone and desperately
unhappy. She pleaded with me not to go. She had come to
hate Japan and I knew it. I just didn't believe it. I chose to
ignore all the warning signs."

"Her death was an accident, nothing more. She and a
friend were driving back to the house from Tokyo. You
were in Venice with Mikio Okami."

He nodded. "I tried to call her. Twice. It was the middle
of the night but the phone just rang and rang. She was so
angry at me, she probably didn't want to talk."

"That's not the point. Even if you had been in Tokyo,
you couldn't have saved her. It was her karma."

He took her in his arms and kissed her. She was right, as

always. He had to let it go. "Let the past be the past," he
whispered. "Karma that you and I met again." He stroked
her, breathed in the scent of her hair, closed his eyes, and
felt a kind of peace steal over him. "I'm so lucky to have
found you."

The underground food courts of Tokyo's enormous de-
partment stores were jammed throughout the shopping day.
But after five o'clock, when the stores closed, they were
deserted. The court at the Ginza branch of Tamayama on
the Harumi-dori was a vast marketplace arrayed like an En-
glish garden maze, an orderly design of formal structures
and aisles in order to make shopping at the panoply of dif-
ferent stations that much easier.

There was something eerie about this sub-street-level floor
at night. Even the cleaning people were gone, and surfaces
shone and glittered dimly in the service lights, empty of
wares and, therefore, of meaning. Transformed into form
without substance, the stations, so alive with transactions
during the day, were now cast adrift like the growing num-
ber of homeless on Tokyo's sidewalks.

But behind the food court was another, far more private
gathering place. In contrast to the food court, however, it
was generally deserted during the day. Used mainly at night,
it served Mick in good stead. The fact was he-and a num-
ber of Korean partners-had bought Tamayama two years
ago. The recession at retail had ground down the reserves
of a store that had been dedicated to delivering high-fashion
names at top dollar to the Japanese consumer. The recession
had transformed Tamayama's success into bankruptcy al-
most overnight. Mick and his partners had come in, thrown
out nine-tenths of the fashion names, and substituted house
brands imported from Taiwan, Malaysia, and mainland
China.

The response had been nothing short of miraculous. A
populous formerly fixated on brand names were more than
happy to buy quality items at half the price. So the dresses,
skirts, suits, trousers, and blouses didn't have Chanel or
Armani couture labels. They looked good and the prices
were right. Now Tamayama's new regime was applying the
same principle to durables and electronic goods made in

Southeast Asia, mostly by Mick's own companies. Vertical
retailing had come to Japan with a bang.

Tonight, Mick had arrived early to oversee every phase
of the dinner that would be served to the members of
Denwa Partners whom Ginjiro Machida, the chief prosecu-
tor, had invited. Unlike most such business gatherings, the
food was every bit as important as the speech-making.

When Mick emerged from the kitchens, he saw that the
wood-paneled room was decorated in the muted colors he
had prescribed. The long cherrywood table shone magnifi-
cently beneath the huge cut-glass chandelier. Cutlery and
stemware glittered and sparkled like diamonds in a Tiffany's
window, and at each place a calligraphied card rested with
the name of the designated attendee.

Twelve men were in the room, along with Machida. The
chief prosecutor made the introductions, one by one, in the
formal Japanese manner, while waitresses in kimono and obi
circulated with glasses of Louis Roederer champagne, beluga
malossol caviar, and toro, the fat-webbed sushi Japanese
loved. The room was already blue with cigarette smoke, and
a haze not unlike the smog hovering over the city outside
collected just below the ceiling, trembling in the eddies of
chill air from the air-conditioning ducts.

Soon thereafter, Machida called the room to order, and
the men, peering at the place cards, worked then- way to
their assigned seats. When, at length, they were all seated,
Mick took his place at the head of the table. Machida sat
opposite him, at the other end of the table. One setting
remained vacant.

This was a signal for the attentive serving staff, who un-
corked bottles of Gorton Charlemagne. Mick gazed down
the long table much as a benevolent dictator looks to at-
tending his satraps, with a certain but unmistakable steely
charm. The golden French wine flowed as freely as the water
in the fountains of Paris. Everyone was in a receptive mood,
expectant and in good spirits. Mick had not been wrong. To
these men, the recession had only reinforced their almost
obsessive love of everything rare and expensive.

"Good evening, gentlemen," Mick said, making eye con-
tact with each man ranged around the table. "I am honored
that you have agreed to attend this momentous gathering.

And may I say it was a distinct pleasure to meet each and
every one of you." So much for the soft part of the evening,
he thought.

The waitresses placed a small plate of salad in front of
each man. Honniko appeared through the kitchen door,
pushing a small cart in front of her. On it was an outsize
tureen of chased silver and a large ladle. She stopped before
each setting and ladled out a heaping portion onto the cen-
ter of each salad.

To a man, the attendees glanced down at what she had
served them, trying to identify it. The food looked like large
beans, striped black and yellow, steeped in some kind of
clear and viscous glaze.

"Our first course comes from China, from inside the walls
of the Forbidden City, in fact." Mick lifted his hands and
broadcast his most electric smile. "Tonight, gentlemen, we
eat like emperors!"

The men took up their forks and began to eat. Mick gave
Honniko a brief nod as she left the room after serving his
portion. He did not, however, look down, but rather cast his
countenance around the table at all the well-groomed and
impeccably dressed men.

"I had a prepared speech to make tonight," he began,
"but yesterday I chanced to overhear a debata in Ueno Park
between two elderly gents who seemed quite knowledgeable
about the current state of the world. One claimed that the
masses are destined to kowtow before any ideology that
appeals to" their baser instincts.

"What does he mean by that? Consider: home, hearth,
self-preservation. These are elemental instincts in man-
good instincts, we would all agree, correct? But how many
racial and ethnic wars the world over have been started and
kept going by the rallying cry of home, hearth, and self-
preservation.

"This is not a coincidence. Look at the proliferation of
Fascism in the wake of Communism's worldwide demise. In
Germany, the neo-Nazis are inexorably on the rise. In Italy,
voters have brought to power a coalition dominated by men
who consider Mussolini their idol. In Russia, dissatisfaction
with the chaos of a free-market economy has brought to
prominence a man who says, 'Russia first. Burn all others!'-

who says he is determined to go to war to reclaim Alaska
from the United States. Today, there are millions who call
these men great!

" 'Well,' said the second man, 'perhaps there is greatness
in men prepared to risk everything to break away from the
old order, the corrupt ways, the cozy coalitions that have
kept each other in power since the end of the War in the
Pacific. Corruption that is so well entrenched requires ex-
treme measures. Can such endemic evil be rooted out any
other way? Do not the ends justify the means?' "

Mick raised a hand. "Do we automatically condemn those
charismatic men who have the power to galvanize large
masses of people to carry out their vision? Or are the means
these men employ-sometimes ruthless, coldly efficient, ab-
solute-justified by their vision of a future ethically stream-
lined and supremely productive by the codification and
enforcement of law? Do we-as acknowledged leaders,
the elite of society-stand by and do nothing while society
devours itself like a mongrel dog? Or do we seize society
by the throat and impose the necessary harsh rule in order
to properly govern and guide the masses? This is an age-
old question. It has been debated by philosophers, politi-
cians, generals, and theologians through the ages without
having come to any definitive conclusion."

Mick opened wide his arms as if to embrace the entire
room as the waitresses took away the salad plates. "I hope
you have enjoyed your Imperial appetizer. Now as we take
a break between courses, I wish to go around the table and
ask each of you in which camp you place yourself." He
nodded deferentially to the gray-haired man on his immedi-
ate left, who was head of a well-known electronics trading
firm. "Perhaps we can begin with you, Asada-san."

"The debate seems clear enough," Asada said. "Just after
the war we created the Liberal Democratic Party by unac-
knowledged mutual consent. It remained the unchallenged
ruling party, and until three years ago, it had absolute con-
trol 'over Japanese politics and policy. Without the leader-
ship of the LDP and its handpicked prime ministers, Japan
would not have achieved the great economic miracle that
transformed it from a defeated nation on the brink of crip-
pling inflation and unemployment to an economic colossus."

He nodded. "At times, the means the LDP used to maintain
control of the country were ruthless and-yes, cruel, by
some standards. But we all agreed it had to be done; it
was in the best interests of Japan. History has spoken most
eloquently. Therefore, I say the ends do justify the means."

One by one, the men around the table answered in much
the same words.

When they were done, Mick said, "I congratulate all of
you for understanding the nature of true greatness."

"But what does it matter?" Asada asked. "Those were
the old days, and as we all know, the old days are gone.
The LDP has been deposed and we are left with a ruling
coalition so fragile, so devoid of a consensus on how to
govern, that we have a new prime minister every six months.
I defy anyone in this room to tell us where in this time of
constant compromise our future lies. Nowhere, that's where.
If only we could return to the way things have been."

Mick leaned forward on his arms, his eyes alight with a
religious fervor. "You are wrong, my friend. Think again of
the debate between these two men. The first one, who de-
cries the progress of history in whatever form it takes, is
living in the past. He takes comfort in the way things have
been. Perhaps that is you, as well. Conversely, the man who
seeks to justify men whose primary rallying cry is 'I hold
the future in my hand!' is living in the future. He thinks
only of the way things should be.

"But I tell you this, gentlemen: neither of them have a
today, and so they are doomed to be relics of history's inexo-
rable march."

Mick waited a beat, luxuriating in the scent of tension
perfuming the air. "As are you all, unless you can take that
great leap of faith to change the way you view your life and
the world. Unless you join me in the most audacious-and
lucrative-venture of the coming century!"

He spread his arms again, and now the gesture had the
effect of taking them all inside his protecting embrace. The
doors to the kitchen opened and the waitresses flowed in,
Honniko at their head. Mick's voice softened from its prose-
lytizing edge as he said, "Gentlemen, this is the all-
important decision I leave you with while you take time to
savor your main course. Please enjoy yourselves!"

A new round of wine was uncorked, a deep, rich red
this time, a 1960 Pétrus. Then the entrée was served, a
dark meat stew, pungent with aged balsamic vinegar and
sauteed onion. Japanese rice, of course, on the side, along
with slender stalks of baby asparagus.

Mick raised his wineglass high, toasted their health, and
watched them dig in. He found Honniko's eyes from across
the room. He gave her a slight nod again, and she shooed
her charges back into the kitchen.

"Consider the masses, slaves of the media. Now consider
yourselves-men of such intelligence and will that you are
above the rest of mankind. You are slaves of no one." He
used the mesmerizing rhythm of the righteous, the incanta-
tory rhythm of the political polemicist, the Baptist minister,
the rapturous televangelist. "You are the overlords."

It was a dark and charismatic human stream from which
he was drawing, one that knew no boundary of race, creed,
or religion, but that resided somewhere within all men, slum-
bering like a serpent, all too ready to slither to the surface.

"The cultural and philosophical diversity now considered
politically correct in countries such as the United States is
the ideal medium for breeding the overlord," he continued.
"In this atmosphere of openness and creativity, he becomes
stronger and richer than he could possibly have been under
more oppressive societies. Prejudice-the bane of the politi-
cally correct individual-would cut off the overlord's devel-
opment in the bud. Universities-filled with potential
acolytes-are now paying rich fees to propounders of racial
hatred in the name of diversity and freedom of speech. In
just such an atmosphere does the overlord thrive.

"And what do I mean by an overlord? One meant to rule
the masses." He reached out his hand, extending a forefin-
ger, dramatically moving it around the room as it settled in
turn on each man ranged around the dinner table. "You,
Asada-san ... you, Morimoto-san ... you ... and you ...
and you."

His finger cut through the air like a scythe. "All of us
here who are special, who live our lives by different rules,
who come and go as we please, who gather power around
us as the emperor gathers his ermine cloak. We see the
future, a future the common man crawling by beyond these

walls cannot even imagine. This is what we all have in com-
mon. Japanese or Caucasian, it matters not, for we speak a
common language."

As he lowered his voice, he could feel them leaning for-
ward so as not to miss a word. "We have a right-no, no, a
responsibility to take advantage of the freedom a politically
correct society offers us." He raised a forefinger. "Which
we can do-beginning right here, right now at this table."
His hand swept over the food. "It is no coincidence that we
eat like emperors tonight, gentlemen. It is a form of initia-
tion, a magical rite." He smiled winningly. "You know, in
the jungles of Vietnam and elsewhere in the real world,
there is a strong belief that the first step to the true defeat
of your enemy is to devour nun whole!"

"What nonsense is this?" Ise Ikuzo said. He was a beefy
man on Mick's immediate right, the head of a steel and
metallurgy conglomerate with shadowy ties to the Yakuza-
the Shikei clan, if Mick's sources of information were accu-
rate. "You told us the first course was from China. It was
sweet enough to be Chinese!"

"Yes, indeed," Mick said, his smile widening. "Our appe-
tizer consisted of Imperial bees sauteed in their own honey
and liquor. Were they not delicious?"

"Indeed," Asada said, nodding. "It is rare for a Westerner
such as yourself to have such sophisticated taste in food. I,
for one, had expected french fries and Bigu Makus for
dinner."

There was general laughter around the table and a nod-
ding of heads. Of course, they had liked the Imperial Chi-
nese bees. That was to be expected, Mick thought.

"And what about the main course?" Ikuzo asked.

"Was that not also to your liking, Ikuzo-san?" Asada
asked from across the table. "Most unusual flavor, do you
not agree?"

Ikuzo shrugged. "I have been to Venice. I have tasted
their fegato specialty."

"Ah, yes, liver cooked in the Venetian manner," Mick
said "But what liver!" He looked around the table at each
man. "We all remember the late Rodney Kurtz. So sad
about him." He gestured to the empty seat. "In his memory,
we have kept a place for him." His voice was building again

in that charismatic way. "And in memory of his attempt to
subvert Denwa Partners to serve his own ends, it is his liver
we have just eaten."

Mick, having delivered his coup de th6atre with the skill
of a surgeon, stood back and watched the ensuing uproar
with delight.

"This is outrageous! A monstrous -jest!" Ikuzo. shouted,
and Asada looked blood-choked, as if he were about to be
sick on the spot He was not alone. All twelve were on then-
feet, shouting, shaking fists, pale as ghosts. Amid this chaos,
Machida sat still as a statue, neither responding to angry
queries nor looking at his colleagues.

At last, Machida pushed his chair back and stood with all
the rest. "It is no jest." His commanding voice cut through
the babble. "And I suggest we listen to what Mr. Leonforte
has to say."

In ones and twos, the men sat back down. Most pushed
their plates away into the center of the table, some would
not even look at them.

"Now we are all one!" Mick cried as all the heads in the
room turned his way. "Now we have supped on Power and
are bound together in a modern-day version of a blood
oath!" He took up a forkful of the dark stew and, shoving
it in his mouth, chewed happily. Swallowing, he said, "We
have devoured our enemy whole. Now we must ban together
to use Denwa Partners in the manner for which it is ide-
ally suited."

Ikuzo threw down his fork with a harsh clatter. "I'll have
none of this fairy tale! I have been deceived and made a
fool of." He jumped up. "You have abused your responsibil-
ities as a host. I have no obligation to you."

"I think it would be best if you stayed long enough to hear
me out," Mick said softly. "Then you will be free to leave."

"I am free to leave now!" Ikuzo said, incensed. "Who are
you to dictate terms to me? You are iteki, a foreigner with
no influence over me."

"Ikuzo-san, it pains me to see us so at odds," Mick said.
"Of course you are free to leave now if that is your
preference."

"It is," Ikuzo said, puffing out his chest. He looked around
the table, made his ritual bowing.

Mick waited until he was almost at the door when he
said, "Icuzo-san, I would appreciate it if you would answer
one question."

Ikuzo turned back to the room. "And what is that?"

"You are a silent partner in Sterngold Associates, aren't
you?"

"Why ask a question to which you obviously know the
answer?" Ikuzo snapped. "Sterngold was owned by Rod-
ney Kurtz."

"Do you know that Mr. Kurtz was working on squeezing
you out of Sterngold and Denwa Partners?"

A look of consternation flickered across Ikuzo's face.
"What are you talking about?"

"Kurtz wanted you out as a partner so he agreed to swap
your minority interest in Sterngold for half his share in
Denwa. But you hadn't made your last payment to him, so,
technically, you're in breach of your contract. In that light,
Kurtz made certain arrangements in the event of his death-
and that of his wife. Sterngold is now in the hands of Bates
and Bates, an American law firm. According to Kurtz's will,
all of Sterngold's interest in Denwa has been taken over by
Worldtel, Inc., a shell corporation which I have just bought."

"What? But that's impossible!" Ikuzo sputtered. "He
couldn't have done that. He knew I was in a cash crunch. I
met with him last week. He expressly told me I had six more
weeks to pay him the rest of the money I owed him. The
deal was all set."

"Guess what?" Mick said, taking out the contracts and
spreading them on the table. "He lied. You know what they
said about Kurtz in Germany? Don't stand downwind of
him when he pisses." He watched as Ikuzo's eyes were inex-
orably drawn to the contracts. "Well, what are you waiting
for, Ikuzo-san? You are free to leave." He waited a beat.
"Or you can return to the table and we can renegotiate your
partnership in Denwa." He broadcast that winning smile
again. "I assure you I am a more trustworthy partner than
Kurtz ever was."

He was aware of the entire room riveted on Ikuzo as he
slowly made his way back to his seat and slipped silently
into it. Mick graciously passed down the contracts to him.

Then Mick raised his voice. "Asada-san was quite correct

in his lament. The good old days are gone, gentlemen; they
sang themselves out in Mozart, as Friedrich Nietzsche would
say. Or, in our case, in the shogun lyeyasu Tokugawa. When
the Meiji government stripped the samurai of their status
and rank in the 1800s, they deprived Japan of its history-
of its very soul.

"Which is why the TransRim CyberNet is so vital to Ja-
pan's future. Right now, you are a computer-illiterate soci-
ety. Your children go through school without learning how
to use the one tool that will bring them into the twenty-
first century. Japanese need to learn to move all forms of
information along the CyberNet superhighway like the
Americans and the Europeans do. And this Japan will do in

its own formidable way. It will do it because it is essential
in order for Japan to compete effectively in the coming
years.

"The CyberNet is the first such worldwide superhighway
in Japan-and therefore it will be adopted as the computer
net of choice for the country as a whole. Further, with its
digital video capabilities I can assure you it will have a mo-
nopoly on information transmission and dissemination for
the foreseeable future.

"Frankly, I'd like nothing better than to start my own
CyberNet, but, as you all know, the TransRim vid-byte tech-
nology is proprietary-patented, locked up tight against
theft."

"If any such competing net came on-line, we would sue
its owners and win, bankrupting them," Asada-san said.

"Precisely," Mick replied, "That is why I bought into
Denwa Partners. The vid-byte technology is going to be
worth billions and billions of dollars in the coining de-
cades-not only from TransRim itself but from subsequent
licensing deals that are sure to follow."

He raised a forefinger. "But the fact is the CyberNet is
not being utilized to its ultimate potential, which is why we
are all here tonight Dissemination of information. Think
about that phrase for a moment. The CyberNet is going to
be the single most influential tool by which people in Japan
and in the entire Pacific Rim move information. But it can
also be used to influence people, business deals, and the like.
It is the next generation up from satellite TV. And it has a

great advantage over satellite TV, which, we have seen, can-
not pass with impunity across all national boundaries." Mick
looked from face to face. "I need hardly remind you of the
example of Rupert Murdoch's Star TV, which had to stop
beaming the BBC news broadcasts into China because of
programs critical of the Chinese government's civil rights
position. The CyberNet will have no such problems because
it is not transmitted in any conventional way. No one can
regulate what is disseminated on a computer on-line service.
We will become the architects-the gods, if you will-of our
own information autobahn."

He" paused to allow the concept to sink in. "There will be
no secrets from us; we will have control of communication,
of commerce. Owning the system, we will be able to dictate
the programming to the drones who log on. Imagine twenty-
four-hour-a-day advertising that is masquerading as pro-
gramming. If, for instance, we want to initiate a resurgence
of the Liberal Democratic Party, we need only begin a daily
forum on the CyberNet skewed toward LDP policies.
Pounding them home day after day, night after night, will
have its effect-and will effectively stifle anti-LDP sentiment
in the media."

He paused a moment to let that concept sink in, then
leaned forward, like a figurehead into the wind. "Consider,
as another example, that we want to know what our rivals
are doing at Mitsui Heavy Industries or at the Bureau of
Foreign Affairs or within the Metropolitan Police Depart-
ment. Do you think that within twelve months any Japanese
keiretsu or bureau will be able to conduct business without
the CyberNet? Not if it wants to be globally competitive!
Imagine it! You will have the control-no, much more than
you have had in the past, than you are clinging to now with
the old ways of bribery and extortion under attack by the
police, under the scrutiny of the media and the public. With
control of the CyberNet you can discard the old ways, which
have become increasingly dangerous for you through re-
peated investigations by both the police and the media. The
web which you have so effectively spread since the end of
the war is outdated, a dinosaur that takes more time and
effort than you can afford to give it in this day and age."
He spread his arms wide. "It all comes to you-and more,

much more-electronically; deal-making made simple, quick,
efficient, and, best of all, absolutely untraceable."

"This is revolutionary thinking, without doubt. But inspir-
ing as all this may seem, isn't it impossible?" Asada said,
"With knowledge comes sophistication. Companies won't
begin to move then- secret data along the Cybernet until
they're sure they can do it confidentially. Right now the
CyberNet communication is not secure; anyone can read
anyone else's communications."

"Asada-san is as right as he is wrong." Like a magician,
Mick opened his right hand. In the center of his palm was
a tiny computer chip gleaming like platinum. "Gentlemen,
allow me to present the Kyron Algorithm Lithium Chip.
The KALC is a refined version of the U.S.-designed Slipjack
algorithm, a so-called unbreakable coding device that will
make eavesdropping on the CyberNet impossible-or so we
will prove to everyone. We will give the KALC to all compa-
nies going on-line within the first six months. It will be a
promotion, a way to induce them to use the CyberNet."

A slow smile spread across Mick's face. "What we won't
tell them is that the KALC can also break any code, no
matter how complex. It is the ultimate eavesdropping device
because it works for both audio and video encryption."

From beneath the table, he drew out two electronic de-
vices. He pointed to the one on his left. "Hare is a machine
that has recorded a conversation encrypted with the Ameri-
can Slipjack algorithm." He spoke the word "Play," and a
spew of gibberish emanated from the recorder.

"Can anyone tell me what was being said on the tape?"

Silence.

Mick looked up as he ran the tape back. "I have no doubt
that any of you could take this tape and run it through your
mainframes from now until the end of the year and you'd
be no closer to decoding the Slipjack algorithm. It is, in-
deed, powerful."

He then connected the machine on his right to the first
one. "This machine contains the KALC. I will now run the
tape through its circuit." He turned on the KALC-loaded
recorder, spoke, "Play," to the machine on his left.

"We have no such initiative on the boards at this time,
Mr. President."

"Then we should have."

Mick watched intently as everyone around the table
leaned forward as they recognized the slightly nasal accent
of the president of the United States.

"You tell Mitchelson at Commerce that we've got a policy
gap and I don't like it. The Japanese ought to be buying
more rice from us. That's the bottom line."

"Uh, Mitchelson's going to want to know what land of
leeway he's being given, sir."

"Any way Mitchelson wants to handle it is okay with me.
We've gotten tough with the Japanese before and it works.
I want them buying our rice. Got it?"

"Absolutely, sir."

Mick switched off the recorders. There was a kind of
stunned silence in the room. "All we need do is incorporate
this chip into the CyberNet matrix. It will allow us to key
into any and all encoded data run on the CyberNet."

At last, Morimoto, the head of MITI's Industrial Policy
Bureau, cleared his throat and said, "Sato International is
the majority partner in the CyberNet." He looked around
the room. "like everyone here, I know Tanzan Nangi. He
would not allow such a chip to be incorporated in the Cyber-
Net. Even were we to go along with you, Nangi-san will
not."

"Nangi-san is an old man," Mick said. "Furthermore, he's
been ill. His recent heart attack-"

"We have been assured that Nangi-san's illness is minor,"
Asada said.

"Yes, and we will assure everyone that the KALC will
make electronic eavesdropping impossible. Does that make
it so?" Mick allowed his words time to sink in. "Yes, yes,
his heart attack was minor, so we have heard. But what if
it was worse? What if Nangi-san's abilities have been perma-
nently unpaired?" Mick said carefully. "Would you want
such a man leading Sato International?"

"Do you know something we don't?" Asada asked.

Mick seemed to ponder a moment, a theatrical gesture
underscoring what he was about to say. "He had his attack,
what ... ?"

"Six months ago," Morimoto said.

"Is he back at his desk yet?" Mick asked in all innocence.

"No," Asada said thoughtfully. "And his infirmity would
explain why he was not at the CyberNet launch dinner."

"If he is so unwell," Morimoto said, recognizing his
chance and seizing it, "then he should no longer be guiding
a keiretsu of Sato's size and influence." Heads nodded in
agreement. Everyone in the room knew his views on Tanzan
Nangi. Morimoto thought Nangi had too much power, but
that might simply be because of jealousy. Before "retiring"
into the business community, Nangi had been a high-ranking
minister of MITI. Though he had made his mark at the
Ministry of International Trade and Industry, he had be-
come far more well-known as head of Sato.

"Now we have come to the crux of the matter," Mick
said. "Control of the parent company, Sato International.
Up to now Sato, as a privately held keiretsu, was untouch-
able for takeover even by such an exalted group such as we
have here." His eyes sparked and his words ramped up in
speed and emotion. "But the CyberNet and Denwa Partners
has changed all that. Sato is in such dire financial straits it
had to seek outside financial backing in order to launch
the CyberNet."

"But we are only minority shareholders," Asada pointed
out. "Sato still has majority ownership."

"Only under certain conditions," Mick said. "Under the
agreement, a bridge loan Denwa made to Sato must be re-
paid within ninety days. If it is not, we can gain a foothold
into the company. I intend to see that the loan is not repaid.
In fact, I can guarantee it. In return, I ask that you elect
me president of Denwa Partners. In that capacity, as part
of our agreement with Sato, I will automatically go on Sato's
board of directors when they are in default of the loan pay-
ment. That is all I need to eventually gain complete control
of Sato and the CyberNet. Once on the board, I can work
on the other members individually until I get a majority
to vote Nangi out and elect me as the new chairman of
Sato International."

Again, a silence enveloped the room. As Mick watched
the expressions on their faces, he knew he had gambled
and won. He had gambled that these men-the Dai-Roku-
would have no love for the well-known liberal Nangi, that

they were jealous of his power, and that they feared Nangi's
partner, Nicholas Linnear.

Everything he had told them was the truth, up to a point.
But he had another, hidden agenda. He wanted control of
Sato International. Despite its current financial woes, it re-
mained the single most influential keiretsu in Japan and
overseas, and its clout could do wonders for opening the
legitimate doors of business for Mick. Sato was his ticket
into the real world, a world in which he longed to become
a player-a mover and a shaker. Too long had he pulled
the strings of clandestine activities from the shadows of
mountainous Vietnam. That Sato International was co-
owned by his nemesis, his dark twin, Nicholas Linnear, made
his longing all the more potent. That he was becoming the
seed of Linnear's destruction was an irresistible lure.

Having given them enough time, Mick now said, "Here
is our chance to seize the present for Japan and to break
Sato International's stranglehold on the future."

"What about Linnear-san?" The naked fear in Asada's
face bespoke their capitulation. They wanted in; they wanted
Mick to guide them. They had seen his future and had made
it theirs.

Mick smiled, said softly, "Leave Linnear to me. I know
how to handle him. I promise you, he won't interfere with
our plan." He leaned forward. "Now which of you are with
me? Think it through. This is, without hyperbole, the oppor-
tunity of a lifetime. Do we use Denwa to seize control of
Sato?" He looked around the table. One by one, they nod-
ded solemnly. There was not a dissenting vote among them.

Later, when they had all gone, including Machida, Mick
sat smoking a cigar, staring up at the ceiling. The table was
bare, save for a multicolored runner down the middle. Its
gleaming cherrywood surface gave off the sharp, pleasing
odor of lemon wax. In the kitchen, Honniko was supervising
the last of the staff cleanup.

It was at times like this that he thought of Koei. His six
months with her had been difficult, painful even, in some
ways. But, like prison, he would never be able to forget. She
had despised him, of this he was certain, and it should have
been enough for him to turn her out. Alliances were all well
and good, but what did one need with a woman who would

as soon spit at you as climb into your bed? And yet it was
this very hatred that had meant the most to him. He missed
it when she was gone, or anyway, he missed the menu of
small humiliations and degradations he found himself com-
posing in order to keep that black emotion burning. It be-
came like a bitter taste at the back of his mouth, as from
ash in the vicinity of an incinerator.

He was roused from this unsavory reverie by Honniko,
who had reemerged from the kitchen. She had changed out
of kimono and obi into a smart, smoke-gray Armani suit
without lapels. She wore almost no makeup at all, and this
naturalness seemed to accentuate the oriental caste of her
eyes. Her blond hair was even more startling in this context.

"A masterful performance," she said.

"Do you think so?" He blew out a cloud of aromatic
smoke as his head came down. "It was a good presentation,
yes, but all I did was tell them what they most wanted to
hear. I put a hook in their noses and led them .along, but
they were ripe for foment. They don't like the uncertainty of
the present, they long for the past and fear for the future."

He rolled the cigar between his lips in a curiously obscene
gesture. He sucked in more smoke, let it out slowly. "But I
was also lucky." He snapped the minidisc Honniko had de-
livered to him earlier between two fingers. "The procedure
I drew up to get this from Sato's R and D could have gone
wrong in so many places."

"I don't see how. You were prudent at every stage."

"Prudence is the crutch by which man rationalizes de-
feat." Mick twirled the minidisc between his fingers. "It is
an inadequate arsenal."

She came and sat beside him, ran fingers through his hair.
"Does it matter? You got everything you want."

"I have the CyberNet technology, but I never wanted or
needed it." He twirled the minidisc between his fingers. "I
had this stolen from Sato as a ruse, to distract them from
the true assault on them that will be coming through the
contract Sato signed with Denwa Partners. I don't want any-
one at Sato thinking about that contract now. Let them run
themselves in circles trying to find out who stole their pre-
cious data-and why. For all the good it will do them."

He inhaled his cigar, blew out a cloud of blue smoke.

"But as for having everything, I don't. I don't have Linnear's
head. Not yet." Then he grinned, a sudden boyish gesture
she had come to know well. "Want to see the fruits of our
labor?"

She hitched her chair forward. "You bet."

He drew out a soft-sided attaché case from which he took
a notebook computer outfitted with a CD-ROM and mini-
disc drive. He switched it on, slipped the minidisc in, and
booted up. When the computer came on-line, he switched
to the minidisc drive.

"This is it," he told her as his finger hovered over the
enter key. "Once I press this, the CyberNet data will ap-
pear on the computer screen." He sucked some smoke into
his mouth, savoring its bite. Then, as the smoke drifted from
his partly opened lips, he hit the button. The drive light
switched on and the computer began its processing.

Almost immediately, the screen was filled with lines of
data: complex formulas, operating instructions, data codes,
cipher overrides, the entire CyberNet matrix, along with an
index of files.

"Ahhh!" Mick let out a long sigh of satisfaction as he
scrolled through. Then he chomped down on his cigar so
hard he almost bit it in two.

"What the fuck?"

The screen was wiping itself of the data. Mick's fingers
flew over the keys, trying everything he knew to save the
data to the hard drive before it was lost. He managed to save
almost three-quarters of it before the screen purged itself.

He accessed the minidisc to download the rest of the data,
but he got an error message. He switched the screen to
the minidisc itself, discovered to his consternation that the
minidisc was reading devoid of data. He tried another way
to access the data, same result. He removed the minidisc,
closed down the computer, then rebooted it and started the
procedure all over again.

This time, not only could he not get the contents of the
minidisc to download, some of his own computer's com-
mands were malfunctioning. He switched to his C drive, ac-
cessed the built-in diagnostic, discovered that a virus was
busy dismantling the software on his hard drive. He booted

up his antivirus program, but that had already been overrid-
den and destroyed.

"What's going on?" Honniko asked.

"I don't know," Mick said, hunched over the keyboard.
But there was nothing he could do. "Somehow a virus has
been introduced into the computer that's destroying every-
thing on my hard drive."

"Even the CyberNet data?"

As he nodded, a single word popped up onto his screen.
He could not wipe it off, no matter what he did.

"smile."

He sat there, staring at the computer. Then, with a string
of curses, he swept it off the table. It crashed to the floor.
He stood up, leaving it there.

"Come on," he said. "Let's go home."

At that moment, his cellular phone rang.

"What is it?" he barked into the mouthpiece.

"I'm out at the Keiji," Jochi, his lieutenant, said in his
ear. Keiji Hakubutsukan was the Criminal Museum in
Kanda, the quarter of Tokyo that is part of both the High
City and the Low City.

"What are you doing there?"

"I think you'd better get over here and see for yourself."

Mick would have made a remark concerning Jochi's enig-
matic call, but he heard the degree of agitation in his voice.
Jochi knew they were on a secure line and could speak
freely. Something monstrous must have hit the fan.

"We're just finishing up at Tamayama," Mick said. "We'll
be there. By the way, the shipment to my brother got off
on schedule?"

"Right on time. This new shipper is aces."

Mick hung up and to Honniko's inquiring gaze, said,
"Jochi's found something over at the Criminal Museum."

"At this time of night? The museum's been closed for
hours."

"Let's go," Mick said, grabbing his ankle-length raincoat.
"It sounded urgent."

There was something magical about Tokyo late at night,
Mick thought as he roared down the rain-sucked street. The
eighteen-hour-a-day crowds were gone, replaced by lumber-
ing trucks that, by law, were allowed to make deliveries only

at night. Teenagers, too, were evident, in their black leather
jackets, their spiked hair and pierced flesh, thundering high
and hard on their motorcycles. Mick thought he understood
their obsession with self-mutilation. Everywhere, things were
melding. Youths in Brussels, St. Petersburg, Saigon, and
Pittsburgh were all the same. They wore the same clothes,
played the same on-line games, watched MTV. Man re-
quired self-definition, and the more you peered into TV,
ramped up your computer, played video games on your CD-
ROM with a net-pal in Timbuktu or wherever, the more
difficult self-definition became. And the more reason there
was to find permanent methods of setting yourself apart.

"I am not a number. I am a free man."

That's what it boiled down to, this trend, moving from
tattooing to piercing to branding and back again.

They arrived in Kanda to the roar of a group of far-off
motorcycles, echoes bouncing off the high-rises like steel
balls in a pachinko game. Jochi emerged from the shadows
of an alleyway at the side of the Criminal Museum. He
looked both ways along the deserted street, beckoned si-
lently to Mick, who got out of the car and followed him.
Mick took Honniko's hand. Her heels clacked along the
pavement, sounding unnaturally loud in the darkness.

Jochi switched on a powerful flashlight as he led them
deeper into the alley. They passed a pair of gargantuan
green metal Dumpsters that looked as if they hadn't been
emptied in years. Between them was a small camp of home-
less men. A fire was burning through a metal grillwork. The
homeless-those who were not asleep in their filthy rags-
peered at them out of rheumy, incurious eyes. The reek of
alcohol and rancid bodies lay like a suffocating blanket

Mick did not hurry by, as most people would have, avert-
ing their eyes and holding their breath. Instead, he slowed,
studying these folk carefully. Though he would rather slit
his throat than admit it, he had more in common with them
than he did with the men of the Dai-Roku. They belonged
to the High City, the part of Tokyo once ruled by shoguns
and their daimyo. Mick was a part of the Low City, the
dark, unseemly corners where humanity crawled on its belly
when it moved at all, the steaming, unsightly boils that grew
without the benefit of light or privilege.

"Mick, come on!" Jochi urged. "Now is not the time for
a sociological survey of the soft black underbelly."

They continued on, and at last they came to the far end
of the alley. Here, a soot- and grime-encrusted concrete wall
abutted the side of the museum. Jochi shone the flashlight's
beam, revealing a figure sitting up against the wall. His posi-
tion seemed so natural that at first Mick thought he was
merely sleeping. But, on closer inspection, he saw the stiff-
ness of the limbs, the bloated nature of the fingers. And
then, as the flashlight's beam moved, he saw the unnatural
pallor of the face.

"Jesus Christ," he breathed. "It's Nguyen."

Jochi nodded. "It's Van Truc, all right, the man who
picked up the CyberNet minidisc from the American
McKnight." The beam held steady. "We've been looking for
him ever since he delivered the minidisc to Honniko."

"He seem okay to you then?" Mick asked as he moved
cautiously around the body. There was a smell here, coming
from the corpse in waves.

"I guess," Honniko said. "He seemed calm enough. You
know, cool, but then I didn't know him."

"I think you're the only one who did," Jochi said to Mick.

"That's right I recruited Nguyen in Saigon. He was per-
fect deeply venal, committed to money." Mick glanced at
Jochi. "What the hell killed him?"

"Damned if I know. We found him and I called you. He
hasn't been touched by us."

Mick moved in, used the toe of his shoe to kick Nguyen
over. The stench billowed up as if from the depths of hell.

"Ugh!" Honniko said, but she stood her ground.

Mick glanced at her. She was not the kind of woman to
get sick at the sight of death. She'd seen her share. Not like
him, of course. But he'd been in the war in Vietnam, where
monstrous atrocities became mundane.

Mick kicked the corpse around good, until he had seen
all sides of him. "He wasn't shot, knifed, or garroted."

"He could have been smothered to death," Honniko said

"Not this man," Mick said. "He'd have never let anyone
get that close."

Mick kicked at the corpse one more time so that Nguyen's
face was up. He directed Jochi to move the light in closer,

then he squatted down. He breathed shallowly through his
mouth, feeling the stench claw at the back of his throat.
Peering at the features, he said, "You know, I do believe
our friend here was drowned." He pointed. "You see here-
and here-there's evidence of bloating, as if he'd been in
the water some."

"You mean someone drowned him then dumped him here?"
Honniko asked. "But why?"

Mick had seen so many dead in his time you'd think one
more wouldn't matter. But it did. Death was not like the
films made it out to be, ennobling and featureless. It made
you sick to your stomach, it made you examine what was
inside you, question what life was all about. Maybe it didn't
diminish you, as books said it did, Mick thought. But it sure
as hell changed you.

"Only one reason I can think of," he said, standing up.
"Look where he was dumped. At the back of the Criminal
Museum. Get the message? Whoever killed him wanted us
to find him."

"But no one even knew Nguyen was working for you,"
Jochi said

That was when Mick thought .of the computer virus. It
had been contained in the minidisc, riding piggyback on the
CyberNet data. That meant one of two things: either Kappa
Watanabe, the Sato R&D tech Mick had co-opted, had
fucked him over, which, knowing Watanabe, he seriously
doubted, or the minidisc had somehow been intercepted
and switched.

"Shit!"

Mick clenched his fists in rage. Only one man had had
the means and the opportunity to make the switch: Nicho-
las Linnear.

He looked skyward, his lips pulled back in a bloodless
grin. He had found that there were moments in life when a
mixture of circumstance and emotion caused the world to
change shape. The evening he had spent with Jaqui up on
the roof the night his grandfather had been murdered had
been one such incident, and there had been a second in the
highland jungles of Laos with the Nungs when he had been
initiated into their tribe and had been inscribed with the
Gim, the dark blue, vertical crescent tattooed on the inside

of his wrist. This was yet another. Everywhere he looked,
the sharp edges of buildings had taken on a preternatural
clarity, the ruthless acuity of a razor blade's edge. He sucked
in the humid Tokyo air, and it had the mind-expanding chill
of a Himalayan night, and he rejoiced in the knowledge. So
now they were into it, just the two of them. And isn't this
exactly what he had wanted? A chance to pit himself against
his shadow double, his doppelgänger, the man with whom
he had so much in common?

Linnear was doing a number on his head. Smile, the com-
puter virus had written on his screen, and having writ re-
fused to get the hell off. So Linnear was stalking him just
as he had been stalking Linnear. A dance of death, the two
of them in a prescribed circle, moving from the darkness to
the light and back again, tied together by the mysterious
cord that linked their pasts.

Now, truly, reality seemed to fade into the hazy distance.
Instead, Mick found himself in a heightened state, the entire
universe traveling the path of darkness and light with noth-
ing in between. It was as if he and Nicholas Linnear were
polar opposites, proton and electron inhabiting the last
atom, circling one another at higher and higher speeds, both
repelled and attracted, coming inevitably closer to the clash
that would mean existence for one of them-and destruction
for the other.

Saints

The samurai of old were mortified by the idea
of dying in bed; they hoped only to die on the
battlefield. A priest, too, will be unable to fulfill
the Way unless he is of this disposition-

-The priest Ryoi

From chapter 1O of Hagakiure, the book of
the samurai

Astoria

Spring 1957/Winter 1945/
Spring 1961-62

Jaqui Leonforte knew she was destined for something spe-
cial the moment she met Bernice. Within the boundaries of
the Convent of the Sacred Heart of Santa Maria, Jaqui felt
as if she possessed a curious inner light, as if she could look
straight through the mother superior's facade of warmth and
wisdom to her warrior's heart.

Out of the corner of her eye, Jaqui looked at Mama, who,
she was now certain, did not possess this inner light. Mama
was, after all, a normal woman in every respect. Sometimes,
lying in bed at night, Jaqui wondered restlessly if she had
come into this family by mistake. Maybe she and another
female infant had inadvertently been switched in the hospi-
tal, and somewhere across the city another girl was living
the life Jaqui should have been living. At times she was so
certain of this that she had become almost autistic, as if
responding to any stimulus in her environment would give
it a legitimacy it did not deserve.

So obsessive did this behavior become as Jaqui grew that
Mama, terrified, had taken her to a specialist in Manhattan.
Jaqui remembered the train ride across the bridge more
clearly than she did the doctor's myopic face.

"There is nothing wrong with your daughter," he had pro
nounced. Mama was so relieved that she cried. "All that's
really needed is for you to engage her attention more. She's
just bored."

On the train ride home, Mama said, "I know you are
unhappy. I've known for some time, but I've been putting
off doing anything about it. I thought"-she wrapped Jaqui's
hand in her own-"I thought you would grow out of it."
Mama sighed wistfully staring out the grimy train window.
"Instead, you've grown into it." It was time, Mama said, she
took Jaqui to Astoria.

Jaqui fell in love with the Sacred Heart of Santa Maria
the moment she stepped through the iron gates into,-the
heavily treed grounds. She loved the smell sunlight made as
it dried out the dew-dampened foliage, the heavy drone of
the bees as they pollinated the roses, the bright twitter of
the birds as they flitted through the branches of the trees.

But, above all, she felt a presence. Perhaps, after all, it
was God, as Bernice so fervently believed. Or, then again,
perhaps it was simply a lack of the quotidian violence that
invaded Jaqui's world at every turn.

But whatever it was, Jaqui felt it as surely as a strong,
guiding hand upon her shoulder. And Bernice knew she
felt it.

The white stone facade shone in the sunlight like a pol-
ished mirror. In one of the small, slitted windows that
flanked the front door, Jaqui felt, rather than saw, eyes peer-
ing at her with curiosity and keen anticipation. When Mama
led her up the wide flight of steps to the iron-banded wood
door and it opened inward, Jaqui knew that she was entering
a world apart, that she was about to begin a journey that
would last the rest of her life.

It was the spring of 1957; Jaqui was fifteen.

"Do you believe in God?"

"I believe ..." Jaqui broke off, at a loss. It was not that
she was intimidated by those piercing blue eyes, or by the
peculiar iconography of Catholicism that adorned the walls
of Bernice's office. The fact was that after being baptized
and confirmed, after attending church regularly with her par-
ents, after years of reciting the catechism, of staring at Jesus

bleeding on the cross, of confessing in a booth that smelled
of shoe polish and sweat, she had no more idea of her beliefs
than she did about what would befall her a year from now.

"I don't know whether I do or not."
"Good," Bernice said with such enthusiasm that it caught
Jaqui's attention instantly. Mama had remained in the rose
garden, wandering, putting her face up to the sun and wor-
rying whether she had done the right thing in bringing her
daughter here.

"How is that good?" Jaqui asked now.

"You answered honestly and that's a start," Bernice said
flatly. She had the gift of transforming opinion into fact.

Jaqui looked around the office at the religious paintings,
the statue of the Virgin and Child, the large wood and gilt
crucifix, and she was at once suffocating beneath the weighty
religious symbols. "I don't want to become a nun."

Bernice leaned forward and, taking Jaqui's hands in her
own, smiled. "Child, I have no intention of making you be-
come a nun."

At that moment, Jaqui knew it had been Bernice peering
at her through that very medieval window. A castle window,
slitted and fortified against the arrows and spears of the
enemy. And it resided here, on a quiet, poplar-lined street
of Queens. She looked at Bernice and, in astonishment, saw
her clad in burnished armor, a great broadsword scabbarded
at her side. This armor shone with the same quality as had
the white stone facade of the building in the sunshine.

Jaqui murmured something under her breath, then
blinked several times. When she looked at Bernice again,
the mother superior was as she had been, clothed in her
habit.

"What is it, my child?"

"I thought-" Jaqui bunked again. Then she let out a
small, embarrassed laugh. "I thought I saw you covered in
medieval armor. Crazy, isn't it?"

Bernice let out what seemed a long-held exhalation. She
was on the verge of tears as she rose. "Come, I want to show
you something." But instead of leading her to the door,
she took Jaqui back to a rear alcove, where floor-to-ceiling
bookcases rose. She put her hand behind a row of books.

There was a soft click and one part of the bookcase
opened inward.

They crossed the threshold and Jaqui found herself in a
stone corridor with an arched ceiling. It was lit by small
electric lights in niches in the wall where, in Europe, one
would expect to find torches. Their shoes echoed against the
stone flooring. At the end of the corridor, Bernice used a
set of keys she drew from her pocket to open an iron door.
It creaked loudly. Bernice locked it carefully behind them
and, lifting her hem, marched up a metal spiral staircase.

The room they entered at the top was not large; neverthe-
less it was impressive. It featured one wait that, like a castle's
turret, was semicircular. From perhaps three feet off the
floor to just below the ceiling, the wall was a line of the
most magnificent stained glass Jaqui had ever seen. Oddly,
only one panel had a religious theme, and that was of Joan
of Arc on a white stallion. The remainder of the panels
depicted scenes from the history of France and Italy. As far
as Jaqui could tell, war was the predominant motif.

The massive expanse of stained glass flooded the room
with a multicolored light so extraordinary it seemed magical.
It spilled over Bernice and Jaqui, and Jaqui felt transformed.
A curious warmth suffused her, and it was as if the horrors
of Ozone Park and East New York had ceased to exist

"Oh, Bernice," she cried, "it's so beautiful!"

"Do you really think so?"

"Really and truly," Jaqui said, turning to face the mother
superior. "I feel ..."

Bernice gripped her shoulders, her blue eyes piercing Ja-
qui's flesh. "What do you feel?"

"I don't know." Jaqui was as breathless as if she had run
all the way here from Ozone Park. "Something ..."

"Yes," Bernice said fiercely. "I was right about you."

Then she turned Jaqui around until she was facing the
one flat wall of the room. It was made of the same stone as
the corridor and was unadorned save for a painting. The
painting was not large, nevertheless it dominated the room
as if it were ten times the size.

"My God!" Jaqui breathed.

"Indeed," Bernice said, her electric-blue eyes aught

Jaqui found herself mesmerized by the painting. It de-

picted an armor-clad figure with a great broadsword
strapped to one hip. The helmet was off, held in the crook
of the figure's left hand, and the face could plainly be seen.
It was a woman. A woman whose countenance was not so
dissimilar from that of Bernice. The artist had rendered the
handsome face enrobed in an inner light that burst upon
the canvas.

"This is the vision I had in your office," Jaqui said with
her heart pounding so hard it seemed ready to leap into her
throat. "Is that you?"

"How could it be? The painting is hundreds of years old."

"And yet-" Jaqui stepped closer. She looked back at
Bernice. "It is you!"

Bernice shook her head. "Only in one sense. This is a
portrait of Donà di Piave, the founder of this order."

Jaqui continued to gaze at the painting in wonderment.
"But it is my vision! Bernice, I save her."

"More likely what you felt downstairs was her presence
inside me."

"Look at her face. It is alight with ..."

"Divine animation."

"Yes," Jaqui said, knowing instinctively that Bernice was
right. "But she was some kind of warrior."

"Dona di Piave was a nun," Bernice said softly. "But
she was also a great champion, a defender of her people.
Sometimes, in a world full of fear and evil, they can be one
and the same." She nodded to a pair of Savonarola chairs
facing one another, glittering in the light from the stained
glass. "Sit, my child. There is much you must be told before
you can make your decision."

"What decision?"

"You are special, Jaqui. Part of the chosen. That is why
your mother brought you here." Bernice smiled her most
benign smile, but Jaqui was not fooled. Already she could
see behind that mask, clever as it was, to the woman warrior
who stood beside her.

Bernice said, "In our world women are dismissed as moth-
ers or as whores. Either way, they're considered irrelevant
to business." She waited until Jaqui had settled herself on
the left-hand Savonarola chair. "Do you know Goethe, the
German philosopher?"

"I've heard of him, but I haven't read him."

"You will read him here if you choose to join us," Bernice
said, sitting opposite the girl. "He wrote that few men have
imagination enough for reality." She was staring at the por-
trait of Donà di Piave, "But he quite rightly did not in-
clude women."

She rose, and as Jaqui watched her, she grasped the left
edge of the picture frame and pulled it toward her. Behind
the portrait of Donà di Piave was a niche carved into the
stone wall and, inside, an object, long and narrow, covered
by a purple velvet cloth, fringed in gold. Embroidered on it
were words in Latin Jaqui could not understand.

Turning around, Bernice held the object in front of her
and carefully removed the velvet cloth. Jaqui gaped. She
held a sword in her hand, a darkly gleaming object of iron,
clearly forged centuries before the advent of stainless steel.

"This is the sword of Donà di Piave," Bernice said.

And, as if drawn by magnetic force, Jaqui left her chair
and reached out in wonder toward the weapon. At just that
instant, Bernice lost her balance and the blade came down,
slicing into the meat at the base of Jaqui's right hand.

Strangely, she did not cry out and she did not jump. In
fact, she felt no pain at all, just an odd pulsing, and looking
down, she saw her hands covered in blood.

Bernice, who had dropped the sword and rushed from the
room, now returned with Merthiolate, sterile gauze, and
first-aid adhesive.

"It doesn't hurt," Jaqui said as if to no one in particular.

And Bernice, slipping to her knees, grasped Jaqui's wrist,
and as she painstakingly cleaned and dressed the wound,
she thought, Praise God. She is the one.

"And your bishop agrees with your interpretation of
Goethe?"

"This is 1945," Bernice said to Camille Goldoni. "My
archbishop is too busy with the war effort to care one whit
about what Goethe wrote, let alone what my interpretation
of his philosophy might be."

Camille-who was Margarite's aunt by marriage; she had
died in the early 1970s-was a big-boned woman with a wide
waist, fleshy arms and shoulders. She was not pretty, but her

face was handsome in its way. Her decidedly mannish fea-
tures were offset by the resoluteness of her- demeanor and
the determination in her eyes. She was also exceedingly
kind, and this generosity of spirit glowed like light from
a lantern.

She was with Bernice because her husband, Marco Gol-
doni, Enrico's older brother, had had a stroke. This was
unusual in a man of forty. As luck would have it, he had
been home alone with her. It had been a Sunday. She rushed
him to the hospital, and when Marco's personal physician
told her what had happened to him, she determined then
and there that no one would know about it She bribed the
doctor and the two nurses she allowed into the room. She
lied to Marco's bodyguards, who had driven the couple to
the hospital The don was suffering from an acute case of
food poisoning, she told them.

"I knew that if news of Marco's stroke got out, the family
would be in serious trouble," Camille said now. "Enrico is
in Venice and, in any event, Marco is the powerhouse, the
connected one, the thinker and the planner."

She was dry eyed, having wept in the privacy of her hus-
band's bedside. She sat with her back very straight, at this
moment conscious of all the minutiae that kept her together:
her makeup, the seams in her stockings, and little more. "Of
course, I know nothing about Marco's affairs. As is the cus-
tom, he is scrupulous about separating his business from his
personal life."

Camille had not yet come around to the real reason for
her visit It was a simple matter for Bernice to provide com-
fort, but she suspected Camille was here for another pur-
pose entirely.

' "You see, Bernice, I need to confide in someone, but I
did not know who to turn to. Marco met with his capi every
week. Most of them come to dinner once a month, but I
don't know who among these men I can trust. Who will be
loyal when they hear the news? Who will seek to betray the
family in its time of weakness?"

"My dear, this sounds like an unsolvable problem."

"No, no. I came here to the one person I can trust with-
out question."

Bernice's heart skipped a beat Could this be the sign in

the physical world she had been destined to find? She took
a deep breath and waited for events to unfold.

"Marco has been very generous, especially to this con-
vent," Camille continued. "And we were both so grateful
and thrilled when you agreed to take in our daughter. The
doctors said she would never survive in the world outside,
and we could never subject her to the cruelty of an institu-
tion." Now her emotions betrayed her, and clutching her
handkerchief to her eyes, she began to cry. "We will never
forget such kindness, Bernice."

Bernice leaned over, stroked Camille's cheek. "There,
there, my dear. Marco has bestowed his own great kindness
on us. After all, it is due to him that Santa Maria will be
renovated-a new facade, a new whig. We are flourishing
while others are struggling and dying out." She smiled be-
nignly as Camille clutched her hand. "Besides, my dear, you
and I know each other some years. We have spent so many
hours in the contemplation garden, speaking of many things
while the roses grew up around us."

Camille smiled. "It's true. I remember when you were
first introduced to me. Mother Superior Mary Margaret was
not so old then, but she was not well. She would not relin-
quish her title, but instead brought you along. 'Bernice will
speak for me,' she said in that sandpaper voice of hers."

Bernice nodded. "God forgive me, it will be a blessing,
really, when she dies." She shook her head. "So much pain
for one person to endure."

"Bernice, I must ask you. I know you are not ignorant of
what the Goldoni family's real business is. Yet you have
befriended us."

"Of course." Bernice took the other woman's palm,
pressed hers against it, transmitting the charismatic warmth
that was but one of her extraordinary gifts. She was a tall,
slender woman with a startlingly expressive face. Someone
once said that she had the eyes of a mathematician. They
were analytical, observing patterns that most other people
missed, in the minute movements of everyday life. She held
no truck with blandness or indecision. Among the women
in the neighborhood, she was widely known as being tough
as a man but far more fair in her judgments. She was an
ardent reader of books and human character; she did noth-

ing arbitrarily. "I am a pragmatist, as the best of my kind
always are," she said. "I have this flock to care for and,
besides, I pray twice a day for Marco's soul. I used to laugh
and say, 'Without sinners like Marco the Church would be
out of business.'" She smiled. "But, my dear, you must
know that you and I could not be closer were we sisters."

"So." Camille arranged her hands in her lap, her fingers
twisting and untwisting her damp handkerchief. "So."

A soft chanting began, emanating from another part of
the convent, penetrating the stone walls. The liturgical Latin
seemed immensely comforting, the slow phrasing calming
wildly beating hearts.

"Camille, tell me how I can help .you." Bernice turned
her palms upward. "I assure you, nothing you could ask me
will be a burden."

Camille nodded, gaining courage from her friend's words.
"I have come here in my hour of desperation to ask for
your advice." She looked into Bernice's piercing blue eyes.
"My entire family is hanging in the balance. Tell me what
I should do."

Bernice sat back. Now she knew what it was she was
facing: nothing less than her destiny. She could taste it, hold
it in her hand, and yet she felt curiously calm. "My dear,
before we go further, let me say that dispensing advice is
easy. Taking it is quite a different matter."

"Oh, Bernice, I'm here, aren't I?" Tears stood in the cor-
ners of Camille's eyes. "You're the one I came to. I have
nowhere else to go. Whatever advice you give me I swear I
will take."

"This is a house of God. When you take an oath, it is
forever."

Camille swallowed hard. "Then let it be forever."

Bernice nodded. "Very well then. My advice is for us to
look to Goethe. 'Few men have imagination enough for real-
ity.' Let me explain how this applies to us. You talk of
custom, my dear. You tell me you know nothing of the
details of your husband's business and I believe you. In his
eyes-in the eyes of all men-that is right and proper. But
taking from Goethe, I strenuously disagree.

"What I mean is that men have had their way for so long,
and what has it brought us-bloodshed and war, because

that is how men settle arguments. But the deaths of our
sons is no way to pay for the future."

Bernice lifted her forefinger. "I want you to consider
something. Perhaps your husband's illness is a sign. Three
nights ago I had a vision that God stretched out His hand
in the darkness and loosed a bolt of lightning. Where He
directed it, I had no idea, but I do now."

Bernice's face was filled with the kind of divine animation
depicted in her forebear. "This is God's work, Camille, and
we must recognize His plan in what has happened. The mo-
ment we recognize this, we turn tragedy into triumph."

Camille shook her head. "I don't understand. How could
Marco's stroke possibly be interpreted as a sign from God?"

"Think of Goethe's quote. Men have been bound into
societies for centuries, and for centuries the world has re-
volved around territory and war."

"But that is the way the world works, Bernice. How can
we do anything about it?"

"On the surface, we can't. And that is as it should be.
But, Camille, as you well know, appearances are often not
the whole story." Bernice tapped the side of her nose. "Se-
crets are best kept by women and dead men. It comes so
naturally to us. A woman lies to her man every day of her
life in order to ensure his happiness or to save him from
grief, isn't that so?" She sighed. "Sometimes, I am convinced
that God put the sweetness on our faces and into our voices
for just this purpose."

"It's true." Camille nodded. "In the household, a man
says, 'Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies.' But a
woman's gift is to makes her lies seem like the truth."

"And so it has been down through the ages." Bernice
took Camille's hand, brought her into the same turreted
room to which she would bring Jaqui a decade later. Camille
sighed when she entered. It was the sound one makes when
inhaling the rich perfume of the first rose of summer, ex-
pressing not only contentment but pleasure.

When she had drunk her fill of the stained glass, Bernice
showed her the portrait of the nun-warrior.

"Many years ago, in the fifteenth century," Bernice said,
"a secret society was formed-a society of women called the
Order of Donà di Piave. In those days, it was natural for

the power of women to accumulate in places out of the light
of day, in places, moreover, not subject to the daily scrutiny
of men. A convent was a perfect place to maintain this
power, don't you think?

"It was formed because those women strong enough to
make the leap of faith beyond the boundaries of their sex
felt it was time to take an active role in creating a future
where their sons did not march off to die in war or return
crippled in body and in spirit, where their daughters were
not left to raise their children alone.

"Centuries later, this society came to this country, and
here it has remained, waiting for a day of rebirth. And,
Camille, I very much believe that this is the day." Bernice
gestured at the painting. "We live in a time not so dissimilar
to that of Donà di Piave's. It is an age of fear and evil."

She put her arm around Camille's shoulder. "The sign
from God foretold not merely Marco's disability, but the
transference of power from his hands to yours."

"What?" Camille looked aghast.

"Listen to me closely, my dear. You came to me because
you said I am the only one you can trust. Trust me now
when I tell you that this is our chance to seize the power."
She lifted a forefinger. "And remember what you swore be-
fore God and His intermediaries."

Camille looked defeated. "But, even if what you say is
true, how can I possibly do what my husband did? We live
in a world dominated by men. And none more so than la
Famiglia. Do you seriously believe any of Marco's capi
would listen to a word I tell them? That is, even assuming
I knew what orders to give."

"Orders are not difficult to formulate," Bernice said
crisply. "One need only think in logical sequence and every-
thing will be made clear. Take care of one problem at a
time and you find they all fall like dominoes." She nodded.
"As to the rest, you are quite right, the lieutenants will
follow only the orders they believe come from Marco him-
self-or someone he has designated.

"Therefore, I suggest you contact Marco's younger
brother, Enrico, in Venice and urge nun to come to his
brother's side."

"But Enrico is an exporter of fabrics. He knows nothing
of Marco's real business."

"Then he will learn along with you. The important thing
is, up until now you have made all the right decisions. No
one knows how ill Marco is and, God willing, they will never
know. Enrico will become his emissary and then his mouth-
piece and, finally, it will be Enrico who takes over for
Marco. Only we will be making the decisions, behind the
scenes, in the sanctity of the convent, and no one will ever
know."

Camille was trembling. "Oh, Bernice, I don't know. The
whole idea is so frightening!"

"Of course it is. But think, my dear, what a force for good
you can become! Rein in the fears for yourself. Come from
a place of light and truth. Put your thoughts beyond the
boundaries of home and hearth. Set your goals beyond
Marco and the family. Think only of God and the dazzling
opportunity He has presented you. And remember that the
full resources of the Order of Donà di Piave will be at your
disposal forevermore."

After she saw Camille out, Bernice went to the kitchen
and returned to the turret room with a tray of food. She
pushed through another hidden door into another more spa-
cious room furnished as a bedchamber. Thick curtains were
drawn across the two windows that overlooked the inner
courtyard with its central meditation garden. Fresh flowers
in glass vases festooned the room. A single lamp glowed
dimly on a small wooden table beside a well-worn easy chair
pulled up to the curtained window. On the other side of the
room was an enormous four-poster bed made of mahogany
and ebony. It was a masterful bit of carpentry, very old, and
had been shipped in pieces from Europe.

Bernice stood in the room, waiting for her eyes to accom-
modate to the semidarkness.

"Bernice, is that you?" The voice was dry and brittle as
a broom sweeping a sidewalk.

"Yes, Mary Margaret."

"What has happened?"

"Marco Goldoni has had a stroke."

"How bad is he?"

"Quite bad, apparently."

"Was he so evil?"

"Evil enough, I imagine," Bernice said. "But, as in all
things, it is in the eye of the beholder."

"Indeed, he's always been most generous with us. Most
generous. And now Camille has come to us."

"Yes."

"Praise God."

Bernice approached the bed. Despite her best efforts, the
room held the cloying sweet smell of sickness and of en-
croaching death. "I will praise Him when He gives you
some rest."

Mary Margaret sighed. "Such anger. You should have a
sword at your side." Her cackle broke down into fitful
coughing. Bernice had tissues waiting for her sputum. "Pull
me up."

She was bald now, her face sunken by age and by ravaging
illness. She wore a baby blue satin bed jacket, a present
from the women on the street who knew her. It was a sick-
ening color, but she loved it just the same. Her dark eyes
looked enormous in that cadaverous face that seemed all
skull. Long ago, Bernice had had all mirrors removed from
this room and the adjacent bathroom..

Mary Margaret's face scrunched up so that she looked
like a wizened doll that had been abandoned by her owner.
"It must have been terribly difficult for her, to come here."

"I think it was more difficult for her to do nothing. Also,
she knows we love her. And now she knows we can help
her." Bernice kissed Mary Margaret's cold forehead. "Those
things are what she needs most."

As Bernice arranged the pillows behind her, Mary Marga-
ret said, "It's happened. We have our chance, don't we?"

"Yes."

Mary Margaret put a clawlike hand out, tapped a horny
fingertip against the back of Bernice's hand. "This is what
we have prayed for, and yet you do not seem happy."

"Oh, I am." Bernice brushed a thread of hair off her
forehead. "But I am also worried."

"As long as you're in the mood, worry about my food."

Bernice brought over the tray and, setting it down,
perched on the edge of the bed. "Are you hungry?"

"Not particularly. But I need to eat, don't I?"

Bernice commenced to feed her, dipping a small chased-
silver spoon in a melange of steamed vegetables, depositing
them into Mary Margaret's mouth.

"I was dreaming when you came in."

"I'm sorry if I disturbed you."

"Oh, you didn't. In my condition, time and place have
collided. I dreamt I was a child, and in my dream I knew I
was in this room and that you were coming. Odd, isn't it,
that the closer one gets to death the more one understands
the nature of time. It doesn't exist Not really. At least, it
doesn't for me. It's like a wheel that revolves constantly.
What happened two years ago is no less clear than what
transpired two minutes ago. And what happened twenty
years ago-forty-is just as clear. They're all on the wheel,
you see, and it keeps revolving."

Mary Margaret closed her eyes while she ate. Chewing
was an effort for her, Bernice knew; perhaps she could con-
centrate better this way.

"I was a child again, in this dream," she continued. "Ex-
cept that it wasn't a dream. Not really. I was a child again,
far from this decaying body." Her eyes snapped open. Per-
haps she wanted to be sure that Bernice was paying atten-
tion. She had always been full of these kinds of tricks. "Do
you believe that?"

"Yes, Mary Margaret, I do."

Satisfied with this exchange, Mary Margaret accepted an-
other spoonful of cauliflower and peas and closed her eyes,
chewing slowly and methodically like a soldier trudging
through virgin jungle.

"But as this child, I knew everything I know now. It was
so extraordinary! To be so young and so knowledgeable.
Can you imagine it?"

There were times Mary Margaret asked questions to
which no answer was appropriate. From long and intimate
experience, Bernice knew this was one such. She fed her
another spoonful and kept quiet

"No one could imagine it unless they had experienced it,
and that's the truth," Mary Margaret said. "God works in
mysterious ways. You see, I have my recompense for my
pain. I can roam through life without restrictions, and I can

find God in all the little places one never has the time to
look when one lives one's life from day to day."

She had stopped eating for the moment, and her eyes
were open, shining very clear, as Bernice remembered them
before they had become perpetually clouded by pain.

"You see; there is faith and then there is faith," Mary
Margaret whispered. "Oh, one's faith in God never wavers.
Never. But it is so thrilling to actually see His handiwork
and to experience all over again how one was shaped by
His hand and His wisdom."

She was still for a moment, resting, and in that moment
the clarity in her eyes was again occluded by pain.

"Mmm," she whispered. "No more food for me. No mat-
ter what you give me it tastes like library paste."

Bernice put down the spoon and wiped Mary Margaret's
lips. She knew better than to argue with the older woman
even at this late stage.

"Lest you think my mind has been wandering," Mary
Margaret said abruptly, "this is all in aid of saying no matter
how much you worry, no matter what disasters befall-and
there will be setbacks, of that you may be certain-you-must
persevere. God is with us. It is by His will that the Order
of Donà di Piave was founded. It was by His will that Donà

di Piave was obliged to take up the sword. The doge of
Venice sent Donà di Piave and her nun soldiers to guard
the Sacred Heart of Santa Maria when the Serene Republic
was under siege by Charles VIII of France in 1495. After
the soldiers were wiped out, it was Donà di Piave who re-
ceived a divine vision. God directed her and her fellow nuns
to take up the soldiers' weapons and defend the Sacred
Heart themselves.

"Thirteen years later, when Pope Julius II, Louis XII of
France, Ferdinand of Aragon, and the Emperor Maximilian
formed the League of Cambrai to greedily carve up the
Venetian territory on the mainland, Donà di Piave and her
order were able to judiciously apply the influence she and
her adherents had amassed from the shadows, the ragged
edges of history where women have resided and, it seems,
are destined to remain, to divide and defeat Venice's
enemies."

Mary Margaret smiled. "Serenissima's doge and council

took credit for the diplomatic coup, but we know the truth
of it. That it was the women of our order who changed
history by applying pressure in a French monarch's bed, an
emperor's boudoir, in a pope's ear. It was the order who
trained Lucrezia Borgia, nearly all the wives of the Mocen-
igo family, so influential it produced no less than seven
doges, along with uncountable other women notable only in
select secret circles for their influence in political intrigue.

"We inveigled national policy, inveighed successfully
against our enemies, getting the regal men of pomp and
power, the dim-witted and the inbred, to do our bidding.
Yes, we developed to a high art the business of power by
proxy. We learned our lesson well: that the direct approach
is, for us, forbidden. But there are so many other ways to
apply influence at which women excel."

Mary Margaret stroked the coverlet as she spoke in the
same slow rhythm by which she chanted her Latin prayers.
"Men have no use for artful flattery and so cannot detect it
even when it floats right under their nose. They'd much
rather see it as the truth, especially when it comes from
someone with a pretty face and an enticing body. That is
why we take no vow of celibacy in our order, though this
omission is kept secret from every archbishop to whom we
report. God gave us certain tools by which we may accom-
plish from the shadows what we could not do in the light."
- She was quiet for some time, and Bernice could hear her
breathing as stentoriously as a grandfather clock counting
time. Bernice began to weep, even though she had promised
herself that she would reserve her tears for when she was
alone.

She felt the old, dry hand on hers. ''Why do you cry,
my child?"

Bernice's hands clamped into fists hard as steel. "It is so
unfair, this suffering."

"Spoken like a true warrior. But swords are not always
the answer. Faith is."

"Faith." Bernice said it as if it left a bad taste in her
mouth.

"Listen to me." Mary Margaret struggled to sit up higher,
her satin bed jacket rustling like an insect's wings. "A person
who serves when treated kindly by God is no retainer. But

one who serves when God is seeming heartless and unrea-
sonable has fulfilled her purpose."

Bernice bowed her head, willing her tears to cease.

"Now tell me why you are worried," Mary Margaret
asked briskly.

Bernice took a deep breath, let it all out before she began.
"I will come after you, to continue the order's work. But
who will come after me? There are no candidates among
the nuns. Not a one."

Mary Margaret's face was set in stone. "That is the least
of your problems now." Her horny finger tapped the back of
Bernice's hand again. "Stop trying to do everything yourself.
Remember, think only of the task at hand and you will be
able to accomplish anything. And let God do His part. You
will see. He will bring you your successor, just as He brought
you to me."

"How will I know her, Mary Margaret?"

For the longest time, the old woman said nothing. Her
eyes had again gone out of focus, and Bernice knew she was
seeing events on the wheel of Me.

"You will know her," she said at last, "because her hands
will be covered in blood."

During the time Bernice had been reciting this story of
Camille, the sun had gone in, and now the turret room was
emblazoned in a deep, jewel-toned dusk that seemed to seep
into every corner of the room. A mockingbird began its
caroling song, the notes piercing even the stone walls and
stained glass.

"So the Goldonis endow the convent," Jaqui said. She
gave Bernice a quizzical look. "Enrico Goldoni and my fa-
ther, John, do not see eye to eye."

"To put it more bluntly, they're enemies," Bernice said.

"Then why am I, a Leonforte, here?"

Bernice smiled. "It is as I said. You are special, part of
the chosen. In that regard, the enmity between Goldoni and
Leonforte is irrelevant." She took Jaqui's hands in hers and
Jaqui could feel the heat of her inner power. "On the other
hand, the Goldonis' role here is not well known." Her pierc-
ing blue eyes bore into Jaqui's. "Nor should it be."

"I understand," Jaqui said after a time. "I will tell no

one." Somehow, saying this made Jaqui feel at once closer
to Bernice, and she liked that very much.

In the small silence that followed, Bernice gave a small
smile. "I suppose you're wondering how I came to know
about you. Your grandfather Caesare and I are old friends."

"Friends? Does he know about the Goldonis' involvement
in the Sacred Heart of Santa Maria?"

"Oh, yes. But I can assure you he was the only one. You
see, Jaqui, your grandfather is an extraordinary man. He
was one of the very few down through the ages who has
understood the role we have played. He wanted only to help
us. That was why be talked to me about you."

"What?"

Bernice nodded. "Yes. He spoke to me about you many
times."

"Grandpa Caesare did that?" Jaqui was stunned. She
knew the old man had loved her, but she had assumed that,
like all Italian grandfathers, his attention had been focused
on his grandsons.

"He had his eye on you as you grew up. He was well
versed in the power of the order."

Jaqui looked to Bernice for some time. "So now you think
God has sent me to you, just as He sent you to Mary
Margaret"

Bernice said nothing for the longest time, sunk so deeply
in thought was she. "I believe what my heart tells me," she
said at length. "Lies and false visions come in all forms and
guises. But you had the vision of Dona di Rave, just as I
did when I came here, and every beat of my heart confirms
the truth in God's order of things." Her eyes focused on
Jaqui and she smiled. "That is my roundabout way of saying,
yes, God is the messenger here. I believe that with every
fiber of my being." Her hands lifted, then fell back into
her lap. "But experience also tells me that what I feel is
meaningless-if you don't feel it, as well."

"But I do," Jaqui blurted. "I mean I've felt something
from the moment I stepped through the front gate. What is
it? Is it Donà di Piave speaking to me or is it God touching
me with His band?"

Bernice shook her head. "I can help you with many
things, my dear, but not this. You must discover the nature

of the presence for yourself because it is different for every-
one." She looked deeply into Jaqui's eyes. "Is this some-
thing you think might interest you?"

She said this as if she were asking Jaqui if she'd like to
come with her for a lovely evening stroll, but Jaqui knew
better. Pursuing the nature of the presence would be a life-
time commitment. In a sense, the enormity of it terrified
her. And yet, she felt a curious kind of elation she had never
before known. Wasn't this kind of enigma just what she had
been searching for? It was something unconnected with the
dull and frightful world into which she had been born, from
which she had been desperately trying to flee almost all her
young life.

"Yes," she said in a hoarse whisper. "It interests me
greatly."

"Ah, greatly," Bernice said with a nod. "That is good,
because from the first I have known that you are-as I am-
an agent of change." She offered her hand, and when Jaqui
took it, she allowed die charismatic warmth to transfer itself
to the girl.

"There," Bernice said. "The compact has begun."

What Jaqui always thought about her brother Michael was
this: that there was a wolf inside him, eating at him, desper-
ate to get out. And it was this desperation that frightened
her. She could admire his innate intelligence, she could ap-
plaud his decision to keep his distance from the family busi-
ness that had already ensnared Caesare, but she recognized
the danger of this beast inside him and it made her tremble.

And yet

What was it about Michael that made him seem to her as
if he were a kindred spirit? All alone in the night, she
dreamed of him. In her dream, they stood in a glade of a
vast woods. All around them was cluttering darkness where
beasts of prey prowled. The glade shone whitely in moon-
light, but the dense canopy of treetops would not let the
light penetrate the woods.

Michael stood tall and handsome and absolutely unafraid,
but she could feel her terror like a second skin, crawling
over her like a skein being drawn by an invisible insect

He smiled at her with that peculiar, goofy smile he di-
rected only at her.

Michael! she screamed, more loudly.

But he could not hear her, and now she realized that she
was mute. She heard the rhythmic liturgical chanting of
Latin prayers, and she grabbed Michael's hand and fled with
him into the darkness of the woods.

And in that darkness, she could hear the twin beatings of
their hearts, synchronized and harmonized, like the choral
voices of the liturgical song. Deeper and deeper into the
dangerous woods she drew him until both glade and moon-
light were but a memory. Why? Why? What was she
seeking?

She awoke knowing they were about to be attacked, and
the thought in her head, revolving like a wheel: I've done
this to him. It's all my fault.

This dream was alive and glowing in her mind that hot
June night in 1961 when she found Michael up on the roof
of their apartment building in Ozone Park. Grandpa had
given him a telescope, the perfect present for a boy longing
to outpace the boundaries of his limited world. But then
Grandpa always seemed to know just what his grandchildren
wanted most. On her last birthday, Valentine's Day, when
she had turned nineteen, he had given her a book on the
birth of Italy. For Caesare's birthday, he had chosen a gun.

There was a peculiar kind of fever coming off Michael
that night, as if he, too, possessed that second skin beneath
which a hitherto unknown person was thirsting to emerge.
That night, he was by turns avid and unresponsive, as if a
central question in his mind had not yet been resolved.

She had evinced an interest in the stars even though they
seemed as remote and dead as Latin. But even Latin, when
sung in chant, possessed a certain formal beauty that the
stars, in their coldness, could not. They were far too alien
for her. Still, she was desperate to talk and she did not know
how else to prolong her presence up on the roof. Michael
liked to be alone; perhaps he even thrived in his solitude.
This was another element about him that frightened her.
Solitude was too demanding; it required a certain concentra-
tion she was only now beginning to explore with Bernice in
her studies at Santa Maria.

She had been so stupid that night! She had gotten so close
to him, she could feel all her defenses crumbling. She longed
to confide in him, to tell him about the extraordinary jour-
ney on which she was about to embark, but at the last in-
stant, she had wrenched herself back from the brink. What
had she been thinking of? Living with secrets was now an
integral part of her life. If she could break her vow to Ber-
nice and the order so easily, then she had made a terrible
mistake and must abandon her training now.

But she knew she would do no such thing. The order was
for her. It was her destiny to replace Bernice, she knew that
as surely as she drew each breath. But what was it about
Michael that made her want to confide in him?

That night, in the intimacy of the rooftop encounter with
him, in the aftermath of the subsequent tragedy, she came
to know. Seeing how he responded so instinctively, so much
more intelligently than Caesare did to Grandpa's murder,
convinced her that the beast in him had been released by
some mysterious alchemy. Perhaps being an eyewitness to
Grandpa's death had given birth to the creature of the sec-
ond skin lurking beneath the surface. And standing "with him
in the bloody courtyard while the flashbulbs b't the walls of
the buildings with their lurid light, she understood every-
thing. Her dream and reality merged to form an entirely
new reality. She was standing with him in the darkness of
the cluttering woods, and she knew why she had taken his
hand, had run with him from the softness of the moonlight
into the dangerous dark. It was this very beast, so terrifying
to her, that drew her to him.

Caesare, on the other hand, was an open book. He was
scary to everyone on the street, but he wasn't to her, even
though he yelled at her. Often, she suspected it was because
he knew she could see right through him. Understanding
Caesare was simple: he adored their mother and was almost
destroyed by his conflicting feelings about their father. It was
typical of him that he conveniently ignored their mother's
failings-her extreme passivity, the long-suffering mask that
had become part of her. She thought she was nurturing her
family, but all she was doing was stifling them. Her passivity

threatened to make them passive or-as in Caesare's case-
excessively violent.

If only Johnny had not abandoned them to his wild
schemes, Jaqui thought, for in her heart she was certain that
her wayward father had found himself a woman younger
and prettier than Mama and was living with her somewhere
warm and tropical. How else to explain the rumors and innu-
endos of great humiliation? How else to explain the fact
that Grandfather Caesare never spoke of him? It was as if
Johnny Leonforte never existed. If Grandfather knew his
son's dreadful secret, he kept it locked away inside his heart.
And what of Mama? Did even she know what had hap-
pened to her husband, whether he was alive or dead? Jaqui
had asked herself those questions so often that when one
long and dreary afternoon she discovered her mother sitting
on their big four-poster bed, weeping, she had no inkling
that the answers were merely a hairbreadth away.

It was a year before she entered the Convent of the Sa-
cred Heart of Santa Maria, and Mama had started when
Jaqui came in the room and slid something behind her into
the bedclothes. Thinking at first that it was some kind of
game, Jaqui had scrambled across the bed and, making an
end run around Mama, had snatched from beneath the cov-
erlet an opened letter.

"No!" Mama had cried with such unexpected ferocity that
Jaqui allowed her to snatch it back. Mama immediately
crumpled it between reddened hands.
"Who is the letter from, Mama? Tell me."
"I can't." Mama's face was filled with a kind of anguish
Jaqui had only read about in books.

With the teenager's preternatural sense of emotion, she
blurted the first thing that entered her mind: "It's from
Johnny."

Even as she said it, it sounded absurd. Johnny Leonforte,

if he was still alive, was at this moment no doubt sunning

himself on some beach with a blonde with big breasts and-

But then something that was odd about the scene hit her.

"It is from Johnny."

"I wish you'd call him Papa." Now Mama's eyes were
filled with tears. Jaqui, who had become frightened without

quite knowing why, kneed across the bed to wrap her arms
around Mama's shaking shoulders.

"My little girl." Mama wept. "You see too much. You
know too much." She shook her head. "It's not right, you're
all I have to confide in."

Jaqui put her head dose to her mother's. "Johnny's
alive?"

"Swear to me, Jaqui Swear before God and the Virgin
Mary that you will tell no one."

"But why not?"

"Swear!" Again Jaqui felt that unexpected force of will
from her mother, and she swore even while she was wonder-
ing from what deep well that force sprang.

"He's alive." Mama said it in a sigh, and Jaqui, her heart

unaccountably breaking, used the pad of her thumb to wipe
the tears from her mother's eyes. "No, darling, leave them.
It's good for me to cry. So much feeling bottled up inside
for so long-it's not healthy. Ask your grandfather."

"He knows Johnny's alive?"

Mama nodded. "He knows everything. Every detail. But
don't ever ask him to admit it. He'd rather slit his own
throat. And he'd be terribly angry with me if he knew I'd
told you."

Jaqui clutched her mother's meaty shoulder. "But what
happened? Where is Johnny?"

Mama had put her head down, defeated. "I don't know.
His letters used to come from Japan, but now the postmarks
are from here, cities all around the country. But I don't
think he's in any of them."

"Is he coming back?"

"I don't know." The whisper was so low, Jaqui had to
lean closer to hear it.

"Mama, why did he go away?" She took her mother by
the shoulders and shook her. "Why did he leave us?"

Mama was shaking her head as if she were a dripping dog
coming in out of the rain.

"Mama!" Jaqui screamed, and her mother shook as if
jolted by lightning.

"He-you know your father was in the Army during the
war. Afterward, he-stayed on in Japan for a time." Mama
was sobbing, but Jaqui felt no inclination to stop her. She

felt as if she were standing in a drought-dry stream bed
looking up at a long-awaited torrent of water about to inun-
date her. "He tried to do something. It was business, so
don't ask me what, I was never told. It was clever, it was
stupid. It would have made the entire Leonforte family,
Grandfather said."

None of this made any sense to Jaqui. "What happened?"

"I don't know. Events fell out the .wrong way or someone

was more clever-in any case, it was a terrible disaster from

which your grandfather never quite recovered. Neither did

the family."

So the rumors and innuendos were true-at least part of
them, Jaqui thought. "But what does it matter? Why isn't
Johnny here where he's needed?"

Mama's head came up and her bloodshot eyes looked
bleak. She tried to smile, stroking her daughter's gleaming
hair. "You're so beautiful, you remind me so much of-"
"Mama!"

"It was your grandfather's wish, that's all I can say."
"You mean Grandfather banished him for life?"
"For life?" Mama's eyes had gone vague. "I don't know.
It's business and that's the end of it. I have accepted it and
now so must you."

After she had burned the letter-she would not let Jaqui
read it-Mama felt better. She went about her household
chores as if nothing had happened. And that night, when
Grandfather Caesare returned home, to Jaqui's astonish-
ment, Mama greeted him at the front door with her custom-
ary warmth and effusiveness.

"When the hell is Pop coming back?" Caesare said to
Jaqui the morning after Grandfather Caesare's funeral as he
drove her to Santa Maria. "If he was here now, I wouldn't
be havin' t'make a deal with Uncle Alphonse."

Jaqui was so astonished that he had confided in her that
she did something stupid-she told him the truth: "Johnny's
never coming back. Face it, he left us, Mama, you, me,
Mick-all of us. He just walked out. Why should he come
back now?"

Which was when Caesare hit her.

Afterward, she could see that he had had no other choice.

In Caesare's black-and-white world, Johnny was not merely
his father, but the head of the family, his idol-not to men-
tion a don who commanded a whole other kind of respect
and loyalty.

They sat in silence the rest of the way to Astoria. Jaqui
was acutely aware of her flaming cheek. It was the heat she
felt, not the pain. And when the car drew up in front of
Santa Maria, she was so humiliated she could not summon
up the Christian kindness to offer him her other cheek and
forgive him. Bernice would, no doubt, have been disap-
pointed in her.

But, later, she understood so clearly the lesson she had
learned that day. The truth, like everything else in life, had
its place. It was not to be dispensed indiscriminately like
cannoli at a street fair because it could cause as much pain
and suffering as a well-placed lie.

She had been halfway out the door of his car when he
said to her, "This is the last time you go to Santa Maria."

She turned back to him, stunned. "What?"

"I'm only letting you go this time because of Mama."

Jaqui shook her head as if she could not believe her ears.
"What are you saying?"

"Fuck you mean?" he snapped. "Santa Maria is in Gol-
doni territory."

"So what?"

His patience gave out. "So we fuckin' hate the Goldonis!"
he shouted with such ferocity that Jaqui flinched.

"I'm not involved in your stupid vendettas," she said after
a moment. Her heart was beating so fast she was quite cer-
tain it would burst through her chest. "This is a convent. A
place of God."

"Maybe so, but the Goldonis have made it theirs." Cae-
sare sat back with that self-satisfied expression he got when
he knew something you didn't. "They give a ton of money
to Santa Maria's. Christ, it wouldn't even be in existence
today if it wasn't for the Goldonis."

"Don't talk like that here," she said evenly. "It's sacred
ground."

He stared at her for a minute. "You really believe in all
this, don't you?"

"Yes, I do."

He launched himself forward on the seat. "But you're a
Leonforte, damn it!"

"Not inside Santa Maria's. Don't you get it? That's why
I want to be there."

He threw up his arms, his big hands banging off the inside
of the car's roof. "Those nuns!" He shook his head. "Forget
the nuns for a minute and use your head that's supposed to
be so smart. The Goldonis will never let you forget who
you are."

"You're wrong."

Caesare sighed "Mom made a mistake bringing you here.
Jaqui, this comes straight from the top. From Uncle Al-
phonse. He wants you back home."

They stared at each other for a long time, and who could
say what images of their father ran through their minds.

At last, Jaqui said, "I don't care."

"Well, you'd better care," he said, returning to the well-
worn role of unthinking bully.

"Why?" She slid off the seat and out of the car. "You're
the one who wants to be like him, not me."

"Hey, Sis, you can't run away!" he shouted at her through
the window. "You were born a Leonforte and you'll die a
Leonforte! Goddamn it, there's no escape! Not at Santa Ma-
ria's or anywhere else!"

Jaqui was lost in prayer. It was a prayer for the dying, a
prayer of the order that had been taught her by Bernice
because it did not exist in Scripture.

Light like liquid honey filtered lazily through the chapel's
stained-glass windows. Tall and narrow as spears, there was
about them a certain medieval quality and more: a hint of
fortification, an ancient garrison's slitted window. The chapel
held all sound as if it were sacred, preserving even the most
minute echo.

Jaqui, praying in Latin, as was the habit of the order,
formed the words and felt as clumsy as a drunken bluejay,
Often, as now, she was struck with the awesome asceticism
of the life she had chosen. Or had it chosen her? This was
her fear, that she had lost all control over her life. Which,
of coarse, she had. As Bernice so accurately pointed out,
one entered the order ceding all control to God.

Jaqui prayed, and as she did so, doubt crept in. She
knew-because Bernice had told her-that doubt was the
work of the devil. Belief in God was the Shining Path, but
her fear was that that divine belief was a sham, nothing
more than blind, unthinking obedience, and Jaqui hated any-
thing blind and unthinking.

She tried not to hate her father, she tried not to hate her
brother Caesare for being blind and unthinking about her
and their father and the world at large. She knew hate was
the work of the devil; that if she hated she was not worthy
of being in the order, not worthy of Bernice's trust, not
worthy of God. To hate was like dying inside, and yet she
could not help what she felt. These were evil men and in

her heart she knew it. God could never smile upon these
men of her family as, surely, He smiled upon Michael.

She was not pure; but Bernice had told her purity was
not a component of human nature. Purity was for the saints
and for God. The object-surely the only real object in sub-
mitting to God's will-was to strive for that purity.

Jaqui, her head bent, kneeling within the sight of God,
felt His presence sweep through the chapel like the rush of
wings across treetops. She felt a warmth and closed her eyes.
It was as if a great hand squeezed her shoulder, and she
was reassured.

Perhaps Bernice was right-perhaps she was destined for
great things.

In the turning of the solstice, with the coming of spring,
Jaqui met Paul Chiaramonte at the small bakery on one
corner of the block in Astoria dominated by Santa Maria.
Mrs. Paglia was gathering up six loaves of bread for the
convent when Paul walked in. Jaqui, who was counting out
the money on Mrs. Paglia's crumb-strewn glass countertop,
looked up to see a dark-faced, dark-eyed young man regard-
ing her.

He sauntered to the counter with the exaggerated air of
a drunkard or a kid wanting to act older than he was. He
did not reek of liquor and he could not take his eyes off
her. Jaqui smiled at him and he looked as if he would faint
His knees seemed to buckle and he clutched the edge of the
counter with the desperation of a drowning man.

Mrs. Paglia, ever the worrier, eyed him and said, "Paulie,
are you okay?"

"Sure, Mrs. Paglia," Paul croaked. "I could use a drinka
water, though."

She nodded, put Jaqui's bags down, and bustled into the
back.

Paul grinned at Jaqui, said, "Hi! My name's Paul
Chiaramonte."

She extended her hand. "Jaqui Leonforte."

Paul seemed so stunned he did not know what to do with
her hand. He continued to stare at her as if she were made
of porcelain. Then, as if regaining consciousness, he grasped
her hand, pumped it twice, then let it go as if it had been
a hot poker. He seemed disappointed he had done that.

"I live around heah," he said. "You?"

She shook her head. "Ozone Park. But in a few weeks
I'm going to be staying at Santa Maria."

He goggled at her. "You're going to be a nun?"

"Is that so odd?"

"Oh, God." He seemed so crestfallen. "I haven't even
gotten to know you yet."

At that moment, Mrs. Paglia returned with a glass of
water. Paul drank and Jaqui paid for her bread.

"Nice meeting you," she murmured, and could not help
giggling as he almost choked on the water.

She also could not help thinking about her effect on him.
He was no kindred spirit. She did not feel drawn to him in
the same way she did Michael. She and Michael shared the
same emotional wavelength; that kind of intimacy she did
not believe could be repeated.

But she felt something else for Paul. Jaqui had never had
a boyfriend, had never, in fact, gone out on a date. Boys
bored her with their groping sweaty hands and their lethar-
gic brains. Michael's brain was agile and unpredictable and
she loved him for it. This was, she supposed, why she had
not tried to stop him from going after Grandpa's murderer.
She could not in any way condone his thirst for vengeance,
but at least she could understand it. Nietzsche wrote that
the greatest danger to mankind is that he will choke on
compassion.

This was, in a way, what Bernice had taught her that

valor was a matter of fanaticism. In the end, compassion
had been an inadequate defense of the Sacred Heart of
Santa Maria. Therefore, God had shown Donà di Piave and
her warrior-nuns another way. They took up the swords of
the soldiers and had beaten back the enemy. And then God
had shown them another way: what Bernice liked to call the -
diplomacy of fanaticism. "But our own kind of fanaticism,"
Bernice said. "In those days females needed fanaticism

in order to rise above their traditional lot in life, to gain the
strength to free themselves from the bondage of drudgery.
But God showed Donà di Piave a divine truth: that fanati-
cism is inherently dangerous because it can so easily bund
the faithful to facts."

When God struck the soldier's bloody sword from Donà
di Piave's fist when 'the Sacred Heart of Santa Maria had
successfully been defended, He ordered her never to take it
up again. God blinded her for the space of thirty seconds,
and in that time He showed her the path she dare not take.
Fanatics, God revealed to her, are blinded to the truths all
around them because they are fixated on the one truth by
which they set their sails.

In light of all Bernice had taught her, it did not seem odd
to Jaqui that Michael had become something of a hero when
he killed the two men responsible for Grandpa's murder.
On the other hand, she knew Michael could not long toler-
ate notoriety in the world he had come to loathe, and she
knew, deep in her soul, that he would soon be going far
away.

Paul, too, seemed different, though not in the same way.
Thus, to her utter astonishment, she found herself standing
outside the bakery, waiting for him to emerge. When he did,
he seemed as astounded as she. He carried her bags to the
convent and, after she had deposited them in the kitchen,
was still waiting for her outside the iron gates.

They walked together in the gathering twilight. Cars
passed by, their headlights sweeping past them in brief
golden flares. Streetlights dropped puddles of bluish light on
the pavement.

They spoke very little, of nothing and everything. Jaqui
had no desire to open herself up to him in the way she did
with Michael. Besides, that was a kind of sacred relationship

that she would not violate, even with Bernice. Her desire
for Paul was like an acute hunger in the pit of her stomach.
And, though it was an entirely new sensation for her, she
suspected it was foolish for her to attempt to satisfy it
Within weeks, she would be locked away from Michael's
world-and Paul's--within the white stone walls of Santa
Maria. She had pledged herself to the order, and far from
causing her to doubt that vow, her feelings for Paul only
made them stronger.

And yet she wanted him. It was foolish because it was so
selfish. He was smitten with her now, but in time he would
get over it To go deeper than this innocent walk, to explore
this longing in her lower belly, and then to turn her back
on him was more than selfish. It would be cruel. But hadn't
she already warned him about her intentions? Yes, yes. And
still he took her hand, gazed into her eyes with such naked
hunger that her knees turned to jelly.

She had never been naked in front of a man. As a small
child, she had run naked with her brothers, but that had
stopped long, long ago. And once in a while they would
catch a glimpse of one another through the steamy bath-
room they shared. But, anyway, that was different, all
curiosity.

There was none of this liquid heat she felt as Paul opened
the buttons of her dress, none of this breathless anticipation
as her stiff fingers fumbled at his belt. But when his hands
pushed aside her bra and closed over her breasts, it was she
who almost fainted from the sensation. Her eyes fluttered
closed and her body went limp in his arms.

He carried her through the damp grass of his backyard to
the toolshed, kicking open the door. The sharp tang of well-
oiled steel mingled' with his own scent, making her nostrils
flare. She gave a tiny moan and kissed the skin of his bare
shoulder.

He loomed above her tike a god. The experience, so un-
earthly up until now, assumed a supraclarity she would carry
with her for the rest of her days. He did not press down on
her, he did not fumble and hurt her with his powerful hands.
Instead, he watted for her to reach up to him, to bring his
heat down to her quivering flesh.

He did not enter her at once, but played with her, kissing

her all over-on her forehead, her cheeks, her eyelids, her
lips, his tongue slipping between her partly opened lips. She
panted into his mouth, arching her breasts against him.

When his mouth enclosed a nipple, her thighs rippled
open, and when he slipped to her belly, licking her there,
she gasped, kneading the powerful muscles of his shoulders.

"Oh, no!" she cried when he reached her sex, but she had
no idea what she meant by that. He opened her with his
lips and tongue, and she smelled the roses from Santa Maria,
as if her petals were giving off the same rich scent. She was
immersed in sensation she had not been able to imagine.
She felt a growing heaviness between her thighs, spiraling
outward through her whole body. It was as if they had been
transported off the earth and were lying on a planet whose
gravity drew them down, sucked them inward to its glow-
ing core.

He slipped into her and she wanted bun so completely
she twined her arms around him, bringing him to her, lifting
her thighs as he tore past her ribbon of membrane, and then
he was inside.

Her eyes flew open and she licked the sweat from his
forehead. Her eyes, big as moons, were all pupil in the dark-
ness of the shed. She saw rakes and pruners, hedge clippers,
a metal can of three-in-one oil, two pairs of soiled garden
gloves, piles of wooden stakes, bags of lawn seed and Holly-
tone, and these became like stars, like constellations floating
in a mist of ecstasy. She wanted him with every fiber of her
being, right now, right here, and it was happening. After-
ward, she wept for the exquisite beauty of it and for the
loss, because she knew she would never have it again.

Jaqui knelt in the chapel, waiting. It was almost midnight.
Outside, a full moon rode in a clear sky. Its light fell through
the long, slender stained-glass window, painting pale pat-
terns on the stone floor and wooden pews. The altar before
which Jaqui knelt was draped in purple velvet upon which
sat a chalice of chased silver. She could hear chanting.

She was dressed in robes of white linen with an overdress
of heavy black muslin, on which was stitched a cross in gold
thread. It was an exact replica of the garments worn by
Donà di Piave centuries ago. The last time it was worn was

when Bernice had knelt before a similar altar to be initiated
by Mary Margaret.

Jaqui, head bowed, eyes closed in prayer, felt Bernice
enter the chapel. She carried with her the broadsword of
Donà di Piave. Bernice took her place and began the Latin
prayer. She poured sacrificial wine into the chalice and, as
she recited another prayer, anointed the tip of the sword
with the wine. She wiped it clean with a white cloth, then
held the newly stained material aloft.

"Here is the blood of those who died in the service of
the order. We remember and honor them," Bernice intoned.
"Here is the blood of Donà di Piave. We honor and cherish
her memory." She carefully folded the cloth three times and
placed it beneath the silver chalice.

Then she stepped down off the dais of the altar and stood
before Jaqui. "Sister Marie Rose, you have been chosen by
God, you have been touched by Donà di Piave to continue
her work in God's name." She brought the flat of the blade
onto Jaqui's left shoulder and let it rest there. "Swear before
God that you will serve His will wherever it may lead you."

"I swear," Jaqui murmured.

Bernice moved the flat of the blade to her right shoulder.
"Swear that you will serve the order. Swear that you will
do whatever is required of you."

"I swear."

Bernice moved the flat of the blade to the top of her head.
"Swear that your life, your mind, and your heart belong to
the order and to God."

"I swear."

Bernice removed the blade, and she and Jaqui recited a
Latin prayer. Then Bernice bade Jaqui rise and, grasping
her shoulders, kissed her on first one cheek, then the other.

Bernice's eyes were shining with the light of God. "It is
done," she said.

Of course, at the last moment it threatened to all come
undone. It was her fault, Jaqui knew that, but it was a kind
of divine intervention, .as well, as Bernice said. She had said
her good-byes to Michael, who had come to see her, as she
knew he must, before he shipped off to God only knew
where. Jaqui was unsurprised by his leave-taking-or that

e was taking the radical step of joining the military. He
needed to get as far away from Ozone Park as he could."
Besides, John had been in the military during World War
II, stationed in Tokyo. It would not surprise her if Michael
ended up there, as well.

But the farewell proved far more difficult than she had
imagined. Michael was choked with emotion. He would have
loved taking her with him, so that they could continue their
journey to far-off climes together. But that was Michael for
you, always wanting his cake and eating it, too.

She was far too happy for him to immediately feel the
loss. But he seemed so melancholy she knew that despite
his facade he was missing Grandpa with an almost palpable
pain. He had been the closest to the old man, had under-
stood him far better than either of Grandpa's sons. Perhaps,
though, that was the way of the world.

She was also happy to see him go because he would not
be around when she died. She did not think she could bear
knowing that he was standing above her grave as they low-
ered her coffin into the ground. She had almost withered
and died to see the look on his face when they had stood
over Grandpa's sprawled body in the bloody courtyard. She
never wanted to see that expression again.

As for Caesare, they never spoke again after the incident
in the car. It was just as well. He had never cared to take
the time to understand her. Caesare had inherited too much
of his father. He felt about women as he did about furniture:
they were useful when and where they were needed.

But it was her one lubricious evening with Paul Chiara-
monte that almost undid everything. She and Bernice had
been plotting her death ever since Caesare had made this
threat to her. It seemed excessively extreme-at first, all
Jaqui could think about was the pain she would cause Mama
and Michael-but Bernice, ever the warrior-nun, convinced
her that only an extreme solution would have any chance
of success.

Though Caesare had not come back to Santa Maria, Ja-
qui's uncle had. Alphonse, annoyed at having to come all
the way east from his home in San Francisco, had pushed
himself into Bernice's chambers as if assaulting the very
gates of heaven. But, in the end, he had been defeated.

"It is Jaqui's choice to be here," Bernice had told him with
all the fierce determination at her disposal. "And it is God's
will. Neither you nor anyone can take that away from her."
The divine charisma was upon her, and Alphonse, usually so
clever and forceful, could do nothing but retreat to the street,
where he climbed into his limousine without a backward
glance, returning to the airport from which he had come.

But Bernice was not fooled. "You are a Leonforte," she
told Jaqui, eerily echoing Caesare's phrase. "Your family
will never forget you are here-and never forgive. There is
only one way to put an end to it. You must die."

As it happened, there was a young nun, Sister Agnes, at
the convent who was dying. The doctors could do nothing
for her, and rather than being left to the inconsiderate minis-
trations of hospital personnel, she had requested that she
live out her remaining days in a place of God's radiance. Of
course, Bernice had acquiesced.

"She is not so dissimilar to you in physique or in fea-
tures," Bernice said. "Though no one would ever mistake
you for sisters, still there is enough of a resemblance for
our purposes."

"But-"

"No buts. I have discussed the entire matter with her. She
has no family of her own and she has agreed to everything.
It is God's will."

Jaqui, after speaking to Sister Agnes herself, had reluc-
tantly agreed. But in the deepest recesses of her mind she
wondered whether the plan was indeed God's will-or
merely part of Bernice's byzantine design.

She and Bernice continued to discuss the plot until they be-
lieved they had covered every angle, aspect, and contingency.
But, as Mary Margaret had liked to say, God dislikes plots and
so does His best to unravel them in one way or another.

The way He contrived to unravel this one was to make
sure that Paul Chiaramonte was on his way to the bakery
when the car that was meant to hit Jaqui came hurtling
down the street. She had made certain that she had been
coming back from errands to the greengrocer and the bakery
at precisely the same time each day for the past six months.

The day of the staged accident, however, she had been at
the corner window of the convent that had an unobstructed

view of the scene. In her place was the person they had
secretly hired to dress up like her-a stunt woman who got
"killed" every day of the week in the incomprehensible
world of films and television.

Intent on carrying out the complex timing of the plot, the
stuntwoman had not seen Paul until it was too late. He had
cried out, she had turned, and for a split instant he was
staring straight at her.

Dear God! No one was supposed to see her face.

Then he was leaping toward her, knocking her sideways,
dear Lord, the car striking him, twisting him in midair so
that even from a distance Jaqui imagined that she heard the
bones snap.

It was Bernice who took care of most of the arrange-
ments-Jaqui's mother being too overcome with grief. It was
she who spoke to the police-the beat cops who first re-
sponded and then the plainclothes detectives, all of whom
she knew personally. She spoke to the coroner, and to the
funeral director, making absolutely certain that the coffin's
lid remained closed, hinting to the world at large in hushed
tones that the face had been mangled beyond the repair of
even the finest mortician.

It all went smoothly, as Bernice had predicted.

Afterward, following the funeral, when the world believed
that Jaqui was really and truly dead-when Sister Agnes's
body was buried in the coffin the Leonfortes had picked
out-was when it almost came undone. Bernice assured
Jaqui that Paul was receiving the best care. The convent had
anonymously sent the money to pay for his operations, and
it all seemed to be working as they had plotted.

Then one day Bernice told Jaqui that Paul had been ask-
ing questions about the accident.

"I don't think he believes you're really dead," Bernice said.

"Leave it alone," Jaqui counseled. "Do nothing."

"But he could cause problems. He's saying he saw some-
one else, that it wasn't you who got hit by the car. He thinks
there's a conspiracy of some land."

"It's just a reaction," Jaqui insisted. "I know him. He was
almost killed himself, and now he has come out of the hospi-
tal a changed person. He wants to believe, that's all."

But, when she was left alone, her resolve failed her and she

was consumed with guilt. Look what her one evening of bliss
had created. Paul knew what he knew. He had seen the stunt-
woman's face, had known something was wrong with the en-
tire picture. No wonder he was conjuring up conspiracies.

She hoped to God that he would leave it alone, as she
had told Bernice. Perhaps, as the sense of trauma faded, his
memories of the moment would become less reliable until
doubts would creep in and he would begin to suspect that
he saw only what he wanted to see. Yes. His troublesome
questions would soon subside and he would get on with his
life. He would forget all about her.

But alone in her night, the question returned again and
again to haunt her: what if he didn't? They had gone to so
much time and trouble to assure Jaqui's place at Santa
Maria, and now one man, one night of passion, was threaten-
ing to unravel what she had come to think of as a lifetime
of commitment: to God, to the Sacred Heart of Santa Maria,
and to its legendary protector, Donà di Piave. But, as is
God's way, the crisis had an altogether different side to it.
And this led her, inevitably, to thoughts of her mother.

On a beastly day in the July following her "death," when,
at eight p.m., the thermometer still hovered near ninety,
Jaqui slipped to her knees in the chapel and clasped her
hands in fervent prayer. The truth was, beneath her innate
love for her mother festered an unmistakable contempt. In
accepting the family's way of life, in turning a blind eye to
the extorting, intimidation, and murder, Jaqui had seen her
as no better than the men who perpetrated those despicable
acts. They were sinners, all of them.

But now God had revealed the truth, as He always did in
His own time and in His own way: that her mother, in bring-
ing her to Santa Maria, had shown extraordinary courage.
What kind of punishment had she received at Uncle Al-
phonse's hands for what she had done: taking her daughter
into the den of the Goldonis and leaving her there for per-
manent indoctrination?

Alone in the chapel, sweating beneath her habit, Jaqui
shuddered. Her own courage seemed a small and unformed
thing next to that of her mother. The bells of the chapel
began to toll, the echoes filling the stone space, and Jaqui
continued her prayers, for her mother and for herself.

 

Book 3

Doppelgänger

One has not watched life very observantly

if   one    has    never    seen    the    hand    that-kills

tenderly.

-Friedrich Nietzsche

 

7

Tokyo/South Beach

Kisoko's town house looked stark and bare in the early-
morning light. All the huge warehouses near the Sumida
River loomed over it, as if frowning in disapproval. The
rain had stopped, and as Nicholas dismounted his Kawasaki,
sunlight, pink as the inside of a seashell, streamed through
a break in the clouds. Green leaves, blown off the trees
during the night, skittered along the pavement like the foot-
steps of unseen spirits.

A young woman in uniform opened the door and Nicholas
introduced himself. She let him into the vestibule with, he
felt, some reluctance.

"The mistress is not yet seeing guests." Her voice was a
mere wisp, like a reed in the wind.

"No need to bother Kisoko-san," Nicholas said. "My busi-
ness is with Nangi-san."

"I'm afraid the old boy isn't awake yet," came a com-
manding voice from the far side of the foyer. "Perhaps I
can be of assistance."

Nicholas saw a man in his early forties wheel himself
through into the vestibule. He had a long, brooding face,
with large liquid brown eyes that seemed soft but soon
proved otherwise. The muscles of his powerful upper body
flexed as he swung into the room on the chrome wheelchair.

It glided across the marble with not so much as a whisper
of its rubber tires. The maid gave him one look and vanished
up the stairs.

"I gave Kisoko-san-"

"My mother."

As Nicholas continued to look at him, the man grinned.
"She didn't tell you anything about me, eh?" He shrugged
his massive shoulders. "Typical. My name's Ken and I al-
ready know yours, Linnear-san." He did not bow or hold
out his hand. In fact, he gave no sense of greeting at all.

"Even though I gave your mother my word, I must speak
with Nangi-san. There are a number of business matters I
don't understand."

Ken laced his fingers together. Their calluses were like
armor plate. "That is the prevailing creed of the human
condition. Ignorance." He grinned again. "Some people are
simply more ignorant than others."

Nicholas stared at Ken. Whom did he remind Nicholas
of? "I am concerned about Nangi-san."

"I expect you are. Nasty disease, old age." Ken arranged
his huge hands in his lap. "But he'll be fine, never fear."
He cocked his head to one side. "You know that they were
once-and future-lovers."

He had the disconcerting habit, not unlike an expert inter-
rogator, of jumping from one topic to another without using
subject names as guideposts.

"I had no idea." This was a lie, but Nicholas had no
difficulty telling it.

"Well, don't worry. Hardly anyone else does." He ap-
peared to consider a moment. "They met in. 1948 at a to-
ruko, one of those odd places-the Japanese version of a
Turkish bath-that catered to American soldiers in the occu-
pation years after the war."

Nicholas felt a tiny thrill of recognition go through him
at Ken's mention of the toruko. Honniko's mother had
worked in such a place after the war called Tenki. "Where
was this toruko?"

Ken shrugged. "In Roppongi. That was where most of
them were in those days."

Nicholas could not contain the creeping along his flesh.
What was he feeling? The present and past swirling together

in a nexus of unanswered questions. Nangi and Kisoko had
met only eleven years ago. Ken was lying to him, but for
what purpose? "What was the name?"

Ken rolled his eyes up to the ceiling as he called up his
memory. "Let me see. I think it was called Tenki."

Nicholas shivered slightly. The same toruko where Hon-
niko's mother had worked. It was as if Ken were trying to
tell Nicholas something.

"Ken!"

The sharpness of Kisoko's voice caused Ken to stare si-
lently at Nicholas.

"You have pressing obligations elsewhere!" Kisoko came
down the staircase up which the maid had fled a moment
ago. Perhaps she had told her mistress what was going on
down here.

Ken was facing away from his mother, and as she came
toward them, he gave Nicholas a swift and inexplicable grin
that was more like a grimace of pain. Then, without saying
another word, he wheeled himself around and disappeared
down the hallway to the rear of the house.

"I can make no adequate excuse for my son's rudeness,"
Kisoko said as she came toward him. "All I can offer is that
his ... disability has made him something of a social misfit."
She wore an informal kimono of indigo-dyed cotton, but her
hair and face were, as usual, exquisitely made up.

"He's quite a handful."

"Forgive me." She smiled. "I haven't had time to explain
him to you, and Ken requires so much explaining. Why, you
and I have only begun to get to know one another." Her
arm swept toward the back of the house. "You're just in

time for breakfast. Would you care to join us? I'm afraid
Nangi-san is still in bed."

Nicholas felt a momentary stab of fear. "Is he all right?"

"Perfectly." Her smile softened. "I told you, Linnear-san.
All he needs is time. He will be fine, don't worry."

Nicholas opened his mouth to reply and felt as if a
wooden stake had been jammed between his jaws. Darkness
came down like dirt into an open grave, and he felt the
marble floor bubbling, turning molten beneath his feet. He
slipped, tried to regain his balance, but as the Kshira seizure
gripped him, he fell to his knees.

Darkness all around and, in his center, an eye opening,
not his tanjian eye-or then again perhaps it was, but if so, it
was of such a different aspect that he could not recognize it

It opened fully and he saw his surroundings as if from a
dimension he had never known existed. He saw the house
in its many incarnations. He saw gangsters here, and the
hand of God; he saw love fulfilled and love broken, hearts
filled with joy and shattered; tears of pain and enormous
sorrow; rage and a flash-as of heat lightning, gone almost
before it had begun-of evil               

His eyes opened and he found himself gazing up into Ki-
soko's concerned face. She was kneeling on the cool marble
floor of the vestibule, cradling his head in her lap. She was
rocking slightly as a mother will a sick and terrified child.

"I ...," he began, but a wave of dizziness stopped him.

"I know," Kisoko whispered, bending over him. "I know
what you are going through, how you are suffering."

"How could you possibly-"

He stopped as he saw an image taking form in his mind.
It was of Kisoko as she had been in 1947. All around her
was a penumbra of darkness within which he could just dis-
cern the movement of shadows without faces or voices. It
was as if reality had shifted and the past had been made to
live again. He felt her love as a living thing, a jewel that
radiated warmth in the palm of the hand, and he knew she
had extended her psyche, cradling him as she was doing with
her arms.

Then the vision was gone. But the warmth remained, and
for a moment he closed his eyes.

"You are tanjian," he whispered.

"I know of Akshara. And Kshira. I know the darkness
and the light are sweeping through you."

"The Kshira is bubbling up, threatening to drown me.."
Nicholas opened his eyes, stared up into hers. "What is hap-
pening to me?"

"Change. And whatever it is, you must allow it to take
place."

"But I-"

"Banish fear from your heart. Trust in kokoro, the center
of things."

"Kisoko-san, I feel as if the Kshira 'will take me over
completely. Okami-san could not help me. Can you?"

She shook her head.

"But the darkness-"

"Linnear-san," she said in the most gentle voice imagin-
able, "you do not need help. Let the darkness come."

When, twenty minutes later, he left her house, the rain
had returned, whipping more leaves off the trees. The sky
was stained indigo and here was the sound of constant far-
away drumming. The blank faces of the warehouses stared
back at him with grim and unforgiving looks.

What to make of Kisoko? She was tanjian, of that he was
certain. He recalled how still she had sat the first time he
had come to her house and had a Kshira seizure. Had she
even breathed? Surely she had felt what he had felt. Surely
she could help him.

Let the darkness come ...

He got back on his Kawasaki and wended his way through
the traffic-choked streets to Shinjuku. A message had been
left on his Kami. It was from Mikio Okami, who wanted to
meet him at the Fuzoku Shiryokan, the Shitamachi Museum,
at four forty-five tomorrow afternoon. He transmitted a con-
firm icon to Okami's address as he waited for a light on
Minami-dori to turn green.

Let the darkness come ...

Could he do that? Was his faith in kokoro absolute? He
looked deep into his heart and did not know the answer.

They came for Mick Leonforte as he was leaving Both
Ends Burning, an all-night S&M club in Roppongi notable
for the young, full-breasted women who, slowly and one
imagined quite painfully, poured hot wax all over their
naked bodies as a crowd of sweaty men looked on.

The plan had been well coordinated. While Ise Ikuzo, the
head of the steel and metallurgy keiretsu bearing his name,
emerged from a gleaming white Mercedes, two burly men
popped out of the front seat of the car-the driver and the
man riding shotgun-and headed toward Mick at full speed.
One was short and squat as a sumo, the other was younger
and completely bald. The irezumi of a phoenix rising cov-
ered half his bare pate.

"Not so big a man here on the street, are you?" Ikuzo
called. "I am here to teach you a lesson. No one causes me
to lose face, Mr. Leonforte, not even you."

It was just past three a.m., but by the neon light of the
Tokyo night Mick could tell the two men were, indeed,
members of the Shikei clan. So the rumors of Ikuzo's Ya-
kuza connections were true. Mick thought briefly of how
sorry Jochi-his bodyguard-would be to miss the fun.

"You're an interloper in our world." Ikuzo lounged
against the Mercedes. "Worse, you're an iteki, a foreign
maggot. I am not fooled by your silver tongue as others may
be. And when they find you tomorrow morning, it will serve
as an example for others who might try to follow your lead."

The two Yakuza heavyweights expected him to turn tail,
but he did not. Instead, he stood his ground, whirling at the
last instant to meet the squat Yakuza's charge. Mick's right
hand, which had surreptitiously supped beneath his jacket,
was filled with the Damascus-steel push dagger with which
he had dispatched Rodney Kurtz. He jammed it into the
squat Yakuza's chest just above and to the right of the end
of the sternum. After a brief scrape of bone the blade drove
completely home, its tip piercing the man's heart Then, be-
fore the Yakuza could slam into him, Mick swiveled away
to face phoenix-man. Behind him, he could hear the squat
Yakuza stumbling along on legs that refused to pump. Terri-
ble sounds of labored breathing filled the small street, then
a retching and the sudden stench of death.

But Mick had other matters to attend to, the most press-
ing of which was the snub-nosed automatic phoenix-man was
pointing at him. He did the last thing phoenix-man expected
him to do. While a broad smile of triumph was still on the
Yakuza's face, Mick ignored the gun and stepped into point-
blank range. Reaching up with astonishing speed, his cupped
hands brought phoenix-man's head down against his raised
knee.

Cartilage shattered with a satisfying crunch as phoenix-
man's nose collapsed. The automatic fell from his grasp, and
Mick kicked it into the gutter while he slammed the heel of
his hand into the vulnerable spot just behind phoenix-man's
right ear, home of major nerve bundles.

Phoenix-man plunged to the street as if in heavy gravity.

Mick put one foot on his shoulder, the other on his neck.
Kicking out with the heel of his foot, he heard the neck
vertebrae snap.

In almost the same motion Mick turned and loped down
the street to the white Mercedes. Ikuzo had wisely retreated
to the car's interior. He had just electronically locked the
doors and was fumbling with the gearshift when Mick put
Ms left elbow through the driver's side window. Ikuzo yelped
as the safety glass collapsed onto him, and then Mick had
hold of him and was hauling him out through the window.
He fumbled out a small .25-caliber automatic, which Mick
contemptuously slapped away.

"Iteki am I?" Mick breathed as he struck Ikuzo a paralyz-
ing blow between his eyes. "Too bad. This iteki will be the
death of you."

His push dagger was in his hand, and he made the first
ritual incision, as the Nungs had taught him. There was no
hurry now. The street was deserted. Tokyo watched his re-
venge with blank eyes.

He excised the heart, liver, and spleen, then he hefted the
bloody corpse across the hood of the idling Mercedes, its
white sheen bluish in the light. Blood, black as cuttlefish
ink, crawled across the once-pristine hood. Mick took the
spleen and, using the blade of the push dagger to open
Ikuzo's jaws, jammed the glistening organ in.

"You had the right idea, setting an example. You just had
the wrong victim."

Mick walked ten minutes until he came to his car, which
he never left in the vicinity of the club he was patronizing.
There, he crouched down as he'd done so many times in
the jungles of Vietnam and Laos, setting the organs in front
of him. He wiped his hands as best he could and took out
his cellular phone.

Jochi answered on the first ring, listened in silence as Mick
related what had happened. "I want you to dispose of the
two bodies in the street in the usual way, so no one knows
they ever'existed."

"Only two?"

"That's right. Leave the one on the white Mercedes. It's
an ensign of a very private war."

 

*   *    *

 

Lew Croaker stretched out on the turquoise chair at Playa
del Sol, one of the myriad beachfront restaurants that lined
the newly renovated South Beach area of Miami. The sun
burned bright and hot in a cloudless sky that could make
the skin turn red even through high-level sunblock. In an
oversized rayon shirt, peach-colored slacks, huaraches, and
wraparound mirrored sunglasses, he pushed around a forkful
of sausages with rice and black beans-cristianos y moms,
as the Cubans called it-but he didn't eat it. No appetite;
his stomach was doing flip-flops. He looked up just as a
bronzed beach bunny in a string bikini went past him on
Rollerblades on the beach side of Ocean Boulevard.

South Beach had returned to the art deco splendor it had
achieved in the thirties and forties, hot tropical colors and
all, due in no small measure to an influx of international
models and fashion designers who had drawn the interest of
jaded Europeans and wealthy South Americans alike. So
new buildings were going up shoulder to shoulder with the
renovated ones from decades ago. In fact, he was just down
the block from Gianni Versace's ornate European villa,
whose imported Italian facade stood guarded and gated
against the almost constant turista crush.

A fire-red Camaro cruised by with a testosterone rush of
music blaring from its stereo system. The two blond muscle
boys inside were having a grand time ogling all the female
flesh in sight. They were followed by three hard young men
on Softail Harleys vrooming their way on clouds of thrum-
ming exhaust.

Croaker's cellular phone buzzed and he picked it up. "I
hope to shit what you and Vesper's got in mind'll spear Bad
Clams in his tracks." It was Wade Forrest, the Anti-Cartel
Task Force fed. "Otherwise we're all lookin' at a shitload
of trouble."

Croaker hitched his chair closer and cocked his head for-
ward. Previously he'd kept one eye on the lookout for Ves-
per and Bad Clams, who, according to their timetable, were
due any minute. Early this morning, he'd sneaked out of the
Marlin, the way-cool hotel on Washington Avenue where
he'd been sleeping, and had driven to Bad Clams's white
mansion. There, using a pair of high-powered binoculars,
he'd focused on the second-story window directly over the

front door and at precisely seven o'clock had seen the cur-
tains stir, then part. He had been so relieved to see Vesper's
face clearly but briefly in the window that he'd let out an
audible sigh. Her appearance there at that time had been
their prearranged signal that everything was on schedule.
She and Bad Clams were due at South Beach by lunchtime.
"What's up?" Croaker asked the fed.

"Bad Clams's people whacked Tony D. and tried t'do the
same to his old lady."

"What?" Croaker felt as if he'd been jabbed with an elec-
tric prod. "How is Margarite DeCamillo? Is she alive?"

"You know this woman?" Even through the phone line
Croaker could tell Forrest was curious.

"I... Yes. She's important to this plan ... in an indirect
way," Croaker finished lamely. "What the hell happened?"

"Bad Clams and Vesper in sight yet?"

Croaker craned his neck. "It's clear."

"Thing is, his people missed the DeCamillo woman and
he had to go to plan B."

Croaker heard the blood roaring through his ears. "Which
was?" At that moment he could have strangled Forrest, who
was clearly enjoying drawing this out.

"He snatched the kid, you know, what's her name ... ?"

Croaker closed his eyes for an instant. "Francine."

"Yeah, right. Francine. Anyway, he snatches the kid, then
reels mama in. Only, she's smarter than anyone dunks and
she gets some homicide dick-Barnett, I think his name
was-to come protect her." Forrest paused and Croaker
could hear him giving orders to his team. Meanwhile, blood
was pounding heavily in his temples and his stomach felt
hollow. "Now it really gets goin'." Forrest was back on the
line. "The city dick whacks the two punks sent to take her
hi, but the city dick, he gets it in the neck from the inside
guy-Bad Clams's man inside the Goldoni machine-Paul
Chiaramonte."

Croaker's heart flipped over. Bright sunlight spun off the
crawling line of cars and rigged-out motorcycles moving like
a millipede down Ocean Boulevard. A pan- of bare-chested
musclemen sat down at a table and, flexing their well-oiled
flesh for the bored waitress, ordered Bloody Marys. A wil-
lowy young woman in a skintight red, white, and blue outfit

that left nothing to the imagination led a black and tan
Doberman on a thick chain leash. Everybody, gawking, gave
her a wide berth as she went by.

Croaker pulled at his shirt, trying not to sweat into it,
because he had to do something to calm himself down. This
was explosive stuff. Bad Clams had a mole inside Marga-
rite's outfit. How come none of them suspected as much?
What the hell was he doing here while Margarite and
Francie were in mortal danger? He was already planning his
quick exit to the Miami airport when he said, "What did
Chiaramonte do with them?"

"With the DeCamillo woman and her kid?" Forrest said
as if he didn't know whom Croaker was talking about. "Ac-
cording to our sources, Chiaramonte stuffed 'em into a pri-
vate plane."

Croaker waited for Forrest to go on, but there was only
silence on the line. He was going to strangle this bastard.
Then he asked the question Forrest was waiting for him to
ask. "Where was the plane headed?"

"Here. Right here. Chiaramonte's bringing 'em into the
lion's den. Sometime today they're going to meet Bad Clams
on his own turf and on his own terms." Forrest waited a
beat "You still with me, Croaker."

"Yeah, sure."

"I don't know what he's after, but it doesn't look good
for the DeCamillo woman. She's a Goldoni, after all, and
we know what Leonfortes do to Goldonis."

Croaker knew,: all too well.

"Hey." Forrest's voice in his ear buzzed with tension.
"Speak of the devil and he pops up right between your
fucking legs. North One reports a sighting. Heading your
way on Ocean. Be careful, subject's got on a sports jacket
so he must be carrying."

Croaker turned just in time to see Vesper walking arm in
arm with Caesare Leonforte. Just as Forrest had said, the cou-
ple was heading in his direction. He folded up his phone and
went into the restaurant, wending his way to the rest rooms,
where he tried without success to lower his pulse rate.

"We have about two minutes, no more," Vesper said to
Croaker. "I told him I had to tap a kidney." They were

locked inside the ladies' room, which, typically, had one
stall. "He's got a line into the Coast Guard." She described
the meet of last night, including a description of the man
named Milo and the number of the Coast Guard cutter,
CGM 1176. She also told him how pissed off Caesare was
about the arsenic-laced dope.

"I'll check it out," Croaker said. "This Coast Guard con-
nection's interesting. I have a feeling he's using the cutter
for more than bringing in cocaine. Maybe that's how he
smuggles out the DARPA arms materiel."

"It's possible," Vesper said thoughtfully. "What better
cover than a Coast Guard cutter that can go anywhere and
everywhere. By the way, there's a meet I'm going on tomor-
row. It's set for five o'clock in the afternoon."

"Great work. With the number of the cutter, we'll be able
to trace its movements."

She seemed so excited about this possibility that he hated
to spoil her mood. But he had no choice. Quickly, he told
her about Caesare's move on the Goldoni family, about
Margarita and Paul Chiaramonte. Vesper and Margarite had
been friends and associates since Margarite had taken over
her brother Dominic's role.

"Christ, Margarite." Her hands balled into white-knuck-
led fists. "We've got to find a way to get her the hell away
from Caesare."

"Bad Clams is gonna make that very hard to do."

Vesper put a hand on his arm. "Leave Caesare to me.
You deal with the women." She bit her lip. "So Tony D.
got whacked." She shook her head. "Why didn't we see
this coming?"

"My thoughts exactly. But now's not the time for
recriminations.''

Vesper nodded in agreement. "Bad Clams told me a
friend of his named Paul would be coming in today-with
his girlfriend. I'll bet anything he'll stash them in the guest-
house." She looked at Croaker. "You okay?"

He nodded. "What about you?"

"Fine." She didn't want to talk about her and Caesare.
Instead, she squeezed his arm. "We'll get them back, don't
worry."

"Sure."

"After this, he'll be giving me his confidence, Lew. I
mean, that's the point, isn't it?" She took a deep breath.
"Meanwhile, we've got the next thirty seconds to get
through. Now, listen, it's just like drowning."

"Thanks a lot."

"Don't try to breathe." Someone hammered on the door.
"Just relax and let it happen. Let me do everything."

He grinned fiercely. "One day, maybe I'll take you up
on that."

"Dream on." She laughed, then gave his arm a last
squeeze. "Anyway, you'll be too busy with Margarite and
Francie. They're going to need you now more than ever."
She flipped the lock behind them. "We'd better get out of
here. Ready?"

He nodded.

"See you on the other side," she said, and they piled out
of the toilet, past an indignant woman in winged sunglasses
and orange lipstick, who muttered, "The nerve of some
people!"

When Caesare saw Vesper hurrying out of the restaurant,
he took note immediately. He did not like the look on her
face.

"Caesare!" she called, and looked back over her shoulder.

Caesare took a step toward her. "What th' fuck-!" He
saw Croaker racing out of the restaurant after her.

"Hey!" Croaker shouted. "Hey! You can't get away from
me that easily. Who the fuck you think you are?"

"Get away from me!" Vesper cried as he reached out for
her blouse.

The sound of ripping silk made Caesare sprint toward her.
Then, everything seemed to go into fast-forward so that,
even later, it all seemed one brief blur to him.

Croaker, his hand full of Vesper's rent blouse, slapped
her hard across the face. She whirled and screamed.

"Hey, you washed up fucker, get the fuck offa her!" Cae-
sare shouted as he scrabbled for the automatic in his left
armpit.

People jumped, electrified at the explosion that shoved
Croaker back like a giant fist. Caesare got a glimpse of the
gun in Vesper's hand, the blood seeping from the left side

of Croaker's chest as a table and chairs went flying. Diners
shrieked, waitresses dropped trays and ran, panic escalated
as the second explosion came. This time, Caesare was sure
he saw the bullet slam into Croaker's chest just millimeters
from the first. The ex-cop was thrown off the canted over-
turned table, crumpling to the ground. Weirdly, in the midst
of all the madness, Caesare found himself thinking with ad-
miration and a bit of awe what a crack shot Vesper was.

Caesare knew he had to get them out of there as he clam-
bered over scrambling bodies, shoved and punched others
out of the way. It was like trying to swim against a riptide.
He was inundated with people in a frenzy to get clear. The
screams of the terrified onlookers built to an eerie cre-
scendo. Caesare ignored it all, got to her, and pulled her
to him.

"That sonuvabitch," he heard her panting. "Nobody treats
me like a piece of shit."

He held her, knowing she was in serious trouble and that
she needed his protection, his power, that without him she
was finished. This was the confidence he was now prepared
to give her, the confidence he wanted to give her; this was
what the eon game was all about. By needing him, Vesper
would win his complete trust and bind him to her. It was
simple human nature.

He took a step toward where Croaker lay, bent and bleed-
ing. Was he dead? Jesus, how could he not be? Vesper had
pumped two bullets into his heart. Jesus, she had nerves
of steel.

He grabbed Vesper up in his arms and hustled her out of
there, racing down Ocean Boulevard as the wail of the po-
lice sirens could be heard over the hip-hop blasting from
cruising convertibles and out of packed restaurant terraces.

 

8

Tokyo/South Beach

The massed wail of electronic guitars at first sounded like
the sirens from a thousand ambulances. Then, as the acous-
tics of the vast space allowed the ululations to rise through
the eight heavily glyphed columns girdling Mudra's dance
floor, sound was magically transmuted into music-an ear-
piercing, pulse-pounding, adrenaline-rush type of thing, but
still rife with melody, harmonies-plus, you could dance to

it.
Nicholas and Tanaka Gin moved through the writhing,

sweaty dancers and the sweeping laser beams of light, feeling
as if they were fish in a tank. Periodically, the haunting
Sanskrit glyphs and bodhisattva sculptures were lit by the
passing lights, giving literal form to-the enlightened beings,
whose karma it was to forgo nirvana in order to help others
attain that state.

Outside, though it was past four in the morning, the Kai-
gon-dori was alive with street punks with money to burn,
models, singers, teenaged actors, talentos, and the predatory
types who prowled around them in the urban forest of the
night. Uncaring, they crisscrossed over the spot where Giai
Kurtz had been killed by the murderous hit-and-run.

Nicholas had responded to a call from the prosecutor, who
had told him there was someone he wanted Nicholas to

interview, had driven into the heart of Tokyo and the Shi-
baura district, pushing his modified Kawasaki hard. He had
been up anyway, analyzing the preliminary information
Okami had provided on the personnel in the Tokyo Prosecu-
tor's Office. He hadn't bothered to wake Koei, but had left
her a note. Unlike Justine, she was not threatened by his
nocturnal comings and goings. She recognized that this was
part of him.

"I discovered who Kurtz left his money to." Tanaka Gin
had to fairly shout above the din. "It was Sterngold, his
corporate entity."

"Interesting," Nicholas said as he dodged a spuming fe-
male body, breasts all but exposed, that came at him with
the speed and single-mindedness of a missile.

"Wait, it gets better." Tanaka Gin led them beyond the
dance floor to a relatively safe spot near a semicircular bar
that looked as if it were carved out of the side of an Angkor
Wat temple. "Kurtz stipulated in his will that his share of
the Denwa Partners be spun off into a separate entity,
Worldtel, Inc. I spent the better part of the afternoon in the
data banks checking out Worldtel. It's got a couple of small
Southeast Asian wireless interests, nothing big-time. Now
it's got Denwa."

Nicholas was momentarily distracted by a young woman
with a series of nose rings that ran like a chain from one
nostril to her cheek. She wore black lipstick and her spiky
hair was pure white. "So who controls Worldtel? The
Sterngold board of directors?"

"Maybe once, but not anymore," Tanaka Gin said.
"Worldtel was sold so recently-within the last twenty-four
hours-that I couldn't get any of the details, except for the
name of the company that snapped it up, something called
Tenki Associates."

Nicholas felt a stirring at the back of his neck. Tenki was
the name of the toruko where, according to Kisoko's son,
Ken, his mother and Nangi had met thirty-four years before
they had actually gotten together, and where Honniko's
mother had worked during the Occupation. "Tenki?" In his
world there was no such thing as coincidence. "Are you
sure?"

"Yes. Why?"

"You check it out?"

Tanaka Gin nodded "Naturally. It's hollow, a holding
company with an address in Sri Lanka. I called, got an an-
swering machine, and left a message, but I'm not holding
my breath for a call back."

Nicholas thought a moment. "My guess is we find out who
owns Tenki Associates and we might have a direct line on
the Kurtzes' murderer."

"You have a direct line to the murderer, Linnear-san."

The floor turned to jelly beneath Nicholas's feet and he
felt himself falling, falling until Mudra's light and sound ma-
chine arched far above him and he felt as if he were slith-
ering through primeval ooze, sinking down farther, sound
damped, light disappearing more swiftly than the blink of
an eye.

The incessant buzz of the bees trapped inside his head
made him dizzy. Darkness all around, the voices of the
bees-for now he could determine that they were voices, a
language forming, being translated even as he listened like
a greedy and fearful observer, a young child slipping out of
bed to listen to the brittle and forbidden chatter at his par-
ents' late-night party.

Kshira was filling him with its shining face of evil. It was
supping through his unconscious like a nocturnal predator,
jaws gleaming in the moonlight. It was so near dawn and he
had had so little sleep during the last thirty-six hours that
he did not have the strength to fight it, to claw his way back
to the light and sound far above him.

Change, Kisoko had told him. Whatever it is, you must
allow it to take place. Banish fear. Trust in kokoro.

He slipped deeper into the jellylike darkness, and as he
did so, the buzzing of the ten thousand bees, the parsing of
the unknown language, was reduced to a single voice:

You should be familiar with revolutionaries; you were
brought up by one.... A voice that was as familiar as it was
chilling. I have made an exhaustive study of your father. The
Colonel was the most secretive man I have come across. More
secretive, even, than my own father, who changed identities
so often I wondered finally if he remembered who he really
was.... Mick Leonforte's voice echoing in his head, at the
center of his being as the dark constructs of Kshira contin-

ued to form a permanent home. But how? How? I make it
my business to ruthlessly deconstruct the past and re-create it
in the image of the future....

Nicholas's eyes snapped open into a light only he could
see. Eerily, terrifyingly, Kshira was showing him its Path, a
converging of possibilities all extrapolated from recent
events, which, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, were being
fit together to form the tapestry of the present . . . and
the future.

And he could see now that Kshira's Path was a mirror,
or at least what he had thought fly be a mirror that night at
the Kurtzes' when, feeling the presence of their murderer,
he had stared into it and had seen himself.

But now he knew the truth: it was a window, not a mirror,
and the image he saw within, that he had mistaken for his
own, was in fact that of Mick Leonforte. Doppelgänger. That
rather old-fashioned word sent a roll of thunder echoing
through his mind. He and I are mirror images.

But that was absurd. Mick had murdered the Kurtzes, he
was certain of that now. Why? To gain possession of Rodney.
Kurtz's share of Denwa? But how would murder accomplish
that? It might certainly prove valuable, but enough to kill
two people for? Perhaps, for a man like Mick Leonforte.
But Nicholas could not dismiss the feeling that he was miss-
ing some vital part of the puzzle.

The fear had vanished, replaced by a kind of fierce and
feral exhilaration. It was Kshira-not Akshara-that had
shown him the truth. Why had he been so afraid of it? Had
he conveniently forgotten the effect it had had on Kansatsu,
his mad sensei, and on Okami when he had tried to access
the dark path? Why bother bringing up needless memories
when the truth was right in front of him. Kshira provided
chikaku, the profound perception all mystics of whatever
discipline spent their lifetime searching for.

"Linnear-san?"

He blinked, was back amid crushing sound and light. He
was on his knees near the edge of the dance floor, his field
of vision filled with a pah- of Japanese girls with hair longer
than their skirts, which were, in any case, riding so high on
their thighs, the secret was out.

"I saw him," Nicholas said as Tanaka Gin pulled him to

his feet. "I know who killed the Kurtzes, Gin-san. It was
Michael Leonforte."

Tanaka Gin's eyes opened wide as he led Nicholas back
toward a dark area near the bar. "Leonforte, the man be-
hind Floating City?"

"He and the dead American warlord Rock, yes."

"But I thought Mick Leonforte had been nuked in the
explosion that destroyed Floating City."

"That's apparently what he wants everyone to believe, but
now I think he's the one who stole the TransRim vid-byte
technology from us."

Tanaka Gin looked hard at Nicholas. "It's all connected,
isn't it, Linnear-san? The Kurtzes' murders, the Sato indus-
trial espionage. Our cases have converged."

"So it would seem. But the only way to confirm it is to
find out who owns Tenki Associates."

Tanaka Gin said nothing for some time. Inundated as they
were by the machine of amplified music, it was as if silence
had been banished to another dimension. Not a breath could
be taken without the tang of slamming bodies in motion,
not a sensation could be felt without the deep, bone-jarring
beat of digitalized bass and synthesized percussion.

"The only way for me, you mean." Tanaka Gin stood
close to Nicholas. "I am beginning to understand this about
you, Linnear-san: you have your own methods of looking
into matters." He nodded, almost a formal bow. "Given
your talents, perhaps this is not uncalled for. But I want you
to understand this: I am sworn to uphold the law, and
though I am convinced that you are an honorable man in
every sense of the word, still it has occurred to me that my
law and yours will not always be ... the same."

Once again, Nicholas was struck by this man's remarkable
insight. He was unlike any prosecutor Nicholas had ever met
before. In telling Nicholas that he was an honorable man in
every sense of the word, Tanaka Gin had paid him the high-
est compliment. It seemed their relationship was destined to
take new and unexpected turns. Nicholas returned the other
man's nod. "This may be as you say, Gin-san. But I swear
to you that they will always be compatible."

Now Tanaka Gin presented Nicholas with a formal bow.

In this manner was their peculiar and deepening friendship
sealed for all time.

"Will you be able to talk to this individual? I need you
to concentrate," Tanaka Gin asked, now all business. And
when Nicholas nodded, he led him around the left side of
the bar, through a door at the end of it that looked like a
part of the wall. As the door shut behind them, the massive
noise and heavy vibration all but disappeared. Some kind of
sophisticated acoustic damping, Nicholas thought.

Almost immediately, another kind of vibration, rhythmic
but much slower, became audible, rising in volume as they
walked down a dun wood-floored corridor that seemed part
of the original warehouse into which the dance club had
been built. An old metal-grilled industrial elevator took
them down into a sub-basement. Music with a slow, sensual
beat rose around them like tendrils from the deep.

The elevator disgorged them into a tiny anteroom beyond
which Nicholas could see on a round lighted dais a woman
in buttock-length hair squatting over a prostrate male who
was naked, except for a spiked dog collar around his neck.
The woman wore skintight leather capri pants pockmarked
with zippers, a scary-looking black latex bra, a leather hood,
and six-inch spike heels. In one hand she held a cat-o'-nine-
tails, in the other a leash attached to the dog collar.

A dapper-looking Japanese with slicked-back hair and a
hatchet face said, "What can I do for you gentlemen?"

The woman on the dais pulled open a zipper and began
to urinate on the prostrate man's face.

"Got an appointment with Tento-san."

Hatchet-face gave them both the once-over. "Tento-san?"

It was a joke, a nickname. Tento was slang for a hard-on.
It was taken, not inappropriately, from the English word
tent.

"He's expecting us," Tanaka Gin said.

Incredibly, on the dais the prostrate man was drinking the
woman's urine.

Hatchet-face leaned forward expectantly. "And you are?"

"You don't want to know. Just tell him Gin."

Hatchet-face disappeared while in the small theater there
was a smattering of applause and the lights went out while
attendants mopped the dais in preparation for the next act

Nicholas hoped they'd be out of here before then. Judging
by what he'd just seen, one S&M act a night was more
than enough. Men in rumpled gray suits and sweating faces
trooped by on their way to the elevator.

A fat man in a sharkskin suit and with rings on every
finger waddled up to them, gave them both perfunctory
bows. This was Tento.

"Gin-san," he said in a high, almost feminine voice, "we
will be more comfortable in back."

His office was a windowless cubicle whose only wall deco-
ration was a filthy air vent behind which was the almost
constant rustling of rodents. There was one dented and se-
verely scarred green metal desk that looked vaguely Ameri-
can Army issue, a cheap swivel , chair, and against the
opposite wall, two sets of flimsy file cabinets. This was
Tento's idea of comfort? Maybe he meant privacy.

Nicholas wisely declined the fat man's offer of a drink.
While Tento blew into a dusty glass covered with greasy
fingerprints, Tanaka Gin said, "Tento-san, when we last
spoke, you told me you had seen the woman Giai Kurtz in
your club several times before her death."

Tento fetched a bottle of Suntory Scotch from a desk
drawer, poured two fingers in the glass. "That's right."

Tanaka Gin produced a photo of Giai Kurtz and placed it
on the desk. "You're absolutely certain it was this woman?"

Tento glanced down at the photo, then into the prosecu-
tor's face. "There are two things I am superb at. One is
handling money. The other is faces. I can tell you with con-
fidence I know every face that's entered my club more than
once." His finger stabbed out. "She came here maybe half
a dozen times."

"The dance club or here?" Nicholas asked.

"A Bas." Tento downed the Scotch. "That's the name of
this place. It's French for Down There."

"So she liked this sort of thing?"

Tento inclined his head, "Who is he?"

"A friend of the ,family," Tanaka Gin said. "Just answer
his questions, please."

The fat man pursed his lips. "I never talked to her, you
understand, but if I had to make a guess, I'd say no, she
didn't like S and M. She used to turn her head away, I

remember. But her companion, now he was a different
story altogether."

"Describe him, please," Tanaka Gin said.

"But I already-"

"Again."

Very precisely, Tento began to describe a man who very
clearly was Mick Leonforte. Tanaka Gin's eyes briefly met
Nicholas's in recognition.

"He liked the S-and-M show," Nicholas said when Tento
was done.

"Oh, yeah." The fat man poured himself another drink.
"But I mean he lapped the stuff up. You know, I got a lotta
types in here so I know one when I see one."

"One what?" Tanaka Gin asked.

"A sex junkie." Tento very carefully pushed the empty
glass aside. "He'd come back sometimes without the woman
and he'd pay extra to take the dominatrices upstairs after
the show, sometimes two, three at a time."

"What "was that like?" Nicholas asked.

Tento made a face. "Shit, what d'you think I am, a per-
vert? I didn't ask because I didn't want to know. That kind
of thing-well, every man to his own kind of meat."

"Anything else?" Tanaka Gin asked.

Tento thought a moment. "Only one: the dominatrix he
liked best, Londa, left about three months ago, and I got
the feeling this guy had something to do With it."

"You have an address for her?" Nicholas said.

"Yeah, well, who knows with these creatures." Tento sat
down behind his desk, rummaged through his drawers. He
took out a long logbook, went through it until he came to
the entry he was looking for. He grabbed a pad and pen and
scribbled something down, tore it off, and handed it over.

"That's it, then." Tanaka Gin took the photo of Giai
Kurtz off the desk and was already halfway out the door
when Nicholas turned back to Tento.

"You said this man came back sometimes without the
woman."

"That's right."

"You mean he'd also come back with her?"

Tento nodded. "Yeah. He'd always want Londa then, and

she'd go upstairs with the two, of them-the woman, I
mean."

"Did you ever wonder?"

Tento was looking longingly at the bottle of Scotch.
"About the three of them? Naw. Why should I?"

As they walked back to the elevator, Tanaka Gin said,
"What're you thinking?"

"I'm not sure." Nicholas opened the gate and they got in.
Thankfully, the next act hadn't yet taken the dais. "But
somehow for Mick sex and death are inextricably linked.
That was a sense I got most strongly that night at the
Kurtzes'. I think it'd be worth my while to see if I can run
Londa down."

Tanaka Gin shook his head. "Not without me."

"Listen, Gin-san, this dominatrix works in another world
altogether." They had reached street level and they went
back to the dense clamor of Mudra. "Her work may not be
illegal per se, but if she's mixed up with Mick Leonforte,
she's on the other side of the law. I don't think she's going
to want anything to do with you." They went past the bar.
"Besides, I've got some leads for you to run down concern-
ing the personnel in your office."

Tanaka Gin was about to reply when his pager went off.
He scrolled through the LED readout and his face lit up.

"Let's go," he said with some excitement. "We've got
something that may be of interest to both of us."

It had begun to rain again, the slick streets picking up the
city's neon shimmer and smearing it in long pastel streaks
against the blackness. Nicholas followed Tanaka Gin's
Honda across town, west by northwest, from the rather dull
southern boundary of establishment Tokyo into the glitter
of Roppongi, high-tech ghetto of the foreigner and the rov-
ing bands of Nihonin, the motorcycle gangs who collectively
had been dubbed with the Japanese street slang for nihilist.
. The Honda led him into a side street that had been cor-
doned off by police cars, their multicolored lights swinging
again and again off the buildings, the flashes running like
blood reflected in the rain-slick street.

Nicholas got off his Kawasaki. Dead ahead of him was a
white Mercedes across whose long hood was spread-eagled

a male body. As Tanaka Gin guided him past the phalanx
of uniformed cops, Nicholas got a look at the corpse's face
in the lurid light. Even with the dark, glistening mass pro-
truding from the livid lips, even with the bloody vertical
crescent carved in the center of the forehead, he recognized
the man.

"Ikuzo-san!"

That brought Tanaka Gin up short. "You know this
man?"

"Yes. He was the head of Ikuzo Nippon Steel and Metal-
lurgy." Nicholas moved closer to the body. "Gin-san, this
man was a member of Denwa Partners."

"Heart, liver, and what else carved out of him," Tanaka
Gin said. "What's that he's got in his mouth?"

"It's his spleen," a thin man who was the medical exam-
iner said.

Tanaka Gin nodded. "Too much like Rodney Kurtz to be
the work of another killer."

Nicholas let out a deep breath. "Has anyone touched the
body yet?"

"It has been photographed," the ME said, "that's all. I
was given instructions to wait for Gin-san's arrival."

"I want to examine the wounds."

Tanaka Gin nodded and signaled to the ME. He, in turn,
spoke to several assistants, who, donning latex gloves, care-
fully removed the corpse from the hood of the white Mer-
cedes and laid it on a gurney.

Nicholas asked for a flashlight and, when it was given to
him, played the beam at close range over the wounds. "See
here ... and here." He pointed to several major wounds.
"As with Rodney Kurtz, something with a wide blade punc-
tured him with great force." He gestured. "Like this, straight
in. There was no tearing or ripping of skin as with a knife
blade."

"What was the murder weapon?"

"My guess is a push dagger."

Tanaka Gin glanced at him. "What is that?"

"The blade emanates here." Nicholas put the forefinger
of his left hand between the third and fourth fingers of his
right hand and jabbed outward. "And when it strikes, it
does so with the full force of the body behind it. It would

puncture flesh, sinew, muscle, even bone, with a force like
that." He pointed. "Here you can see the puncture wound
went straight in and out. That's unique to push daggers."
He pointed to the place where the organs had been re-
moved. "But here these are almost like surgical cuts. If you
look closely, you can see the blade marks."

The two men stood up. Tanaka Gin glanced at Nicholas,
who nodded, and the prosecutor signaled for the ME's men

to take the body. "I Want a full report as quickly as you
can, Doctor," Gin said.

"By nine a.m.," the medical examiner said.

Tanaka Gin watched Ikuzo being loaded into the ambu-
lance. "Showy kind of murder, don't you think?"

"Yes," Nicholas said. "And the spleen stuffed in his
mouth. Almost like a warning."

"To us or to someone else?"

"Perhaps both."

They were cold and tired but entirely too wired to think
about bed and sleep. Besides, it was almost dawn. They
drove over to Tsukiji. The fish market was already open, its
flood of light and movement a tonic from the claustrophobic
darkness the two men had endured. At a nearby noodle
stand, they stood out of the rain, slurping up steaming bowls
of broth enriched by fresh greens and slices of roast pork
as well as soba noodles.

"We must both use extreme caution," Nicholas said.

Tanaka Gin's impassive face was attentive as ever.

"The vertical crescent is a ritual symbol of a certain tribe
in the Vietnamese highlands."

"The Nungs." Tanaka Gin nodded. "Yes, I know."

Nicholas's head swung around. "You knew all along."

"I wanted to trust you, Linnear-san. And I wanted you
to trust me." Tanaka Gin slurped up some soba noodles,
chewed thoughtfully. "It's all worked out for us, in the end,
hasn't it?"

Nicholas laughed. "I suppose so." He sipped some of the
delicious, rich broth. "Then you know something of the
Nung ritual of absorbing an enemy's strength by eating his
vital organs."

"Yes. The ngoh-meih-yuht, the crescent moon."

"It also has another meaning here. The ancient Messu-

lethe used the symbol of the crescent-the Gim-for then-
two-edged sword. They used to paint their faces with woad
to mark themselves-and the bodies of their enemies."

Tanaka Gin swallowed hard and put down his chopsticks.
"Are you saying that Michael Leonforte is a Messulethe?"

"I don't know. He's lived in Vietnam and Laos on and
off since 1968. And most of the time it was in the deep
bush where the Nungs live. He obviously knows tie ritual
Whether he was initiated by them is impossible to guess."

Tanaka Gin took up his chopsticks again, began to eat
more slowly and thoughtfully.

Nicholas, who had been running this conversation back in
his mind, said, "Gin-san, you didn't ask me what a Messu-
lethe is. That means you already know."

Tanaka gui smiled. "I spent a year in the Vietnamese
highlands. It was part of my reckless youth. I had an anthro-
pology professor at college who was ma'd about hands-on
experience. I followed him to Vietnam one summer and
didn't come back for twelve months."

"So you met the Nungs."

"We lived among them for almost all that time. Fascinat-
ing people, in touch with the spirits, the old gods of earth,
or so they believe." Tanaka Gin pushed the sleeve of his
coat up, unbuttened his long-sleeve shirt, rolled it up to his
elbow. There, on the inside of his left wrist, was a crude
tattoo of a vertical crescent.

Nicholas took a deep breath, let it out slowly. No wonder
it seemed to him as if Gin knew more than he was letting
on. He himself was a Nung novitiate.

"We've got to stop Michael Leonforte from killing again,"
Tanaka Gin said flatly.

"Everything leads back to Denwa. Mick wants to control
the partnership. He also wants the vid-byte technology."
Nicholas considered a moment. "I think it's now more im-
perative than ever that I have a talk with Londa, the domi-
natrix Mick is so attached to."

"Maybe that isn't such a good idea." Tanaka Gin rolled
his sleeve down over the Gim tattoo. "Has it occurred to
you that Leonforte had Giai Kurtz run down in front of a
club he frequented? Normally, I'd say that was a stupid thing
to do, a slip-up. Most criminals are stupid, if cunning, which

is why we eventually catch them. But we already know this
man is different. This was no slip-up, was it?"

"No. He's proved he's got a deadly, shrewd mind."

"What then?"

Nicholas breathed in the salt and fish tang of the air. The
rain had taken most of the soot and carbon monoxide out
of the atmosphere, and for the moment at least, the morning
smefled good. "I suspect he's leading us along a preselected
path. What he wants is, right now, anyone's guess." He
thought a moment. "But perhaps you're right. I've been
thinking of the weapon he must have used for the murders.
If I'm right about it being a push dagger, I think I know
who made it for him. I'd better run by there first just to see
if Mick's got any other surprise weapons in store for us."

"I don't like people playing God." Tanaka Gin put down
his bowl, stacked his chopsticks across its rim. "They don't
know their place in the world."

Nicholas looked at Tanaka Gin. "That's as good a defini-
tion of Mick Leonforte as I can think of." But he could not
help wondering whether it was also the correct definition
of himself.

Mick ran his hand over Honniko's breast and she moved
like an impaled serpent. She was naked, her flesh gleaming
with fragrant oil, bound at wrists, thighs, and ankles; there
was a silk carf tied across her eyes, two more beneath and
above her breasts, thrusting them out like ripe fruit in a
street market. Outside the small window rain beat a military
tattoo on the circular glass. The chair on which they were
fused like glass creaked with their movements. He smelled
the heat rising off her like incense.

Honniko ran her tongue along the dark blue crescent tat-
too on the inside of his wrist, so primitive the bamboo nee-
dles had left permanent holes in his skin, as if this were the
one true way to identify him.

"Men like me are misunderstood," Mick said, moving on
her, slithering in the oil and their musk. "Passion frightens
society and society is in the business of protecting itself first,
last, and always," His hand found her nipple, erect and pli-
ant. "Even when that society has outlived its usefulness."

Honniko felt him deep inside her, moving easily from one

orifice to another. She was "used to him speaking in this
way. It was like an incantation, his philosophy, the way she
imagined Apollo or Dionysus might have spoken, once, so
very long ago. It was part of this ritual-he made a habit of
ritualizing everything-and it made her dizzy with sensation.
"I am an inquirer after life, like Julius Caesar, Napoleon,
and Nietzsche. I, like they, am feared and, when not feared,
despised." In the saddle of Honniko's own making, Mick
stared out of the tiny prefab apartment in the Naigai Cap-
sule Tower. "They were true heroes. They knew how to
imbue their existence with a solidity and depth of meaning
that made them feared. But fear did not concern them; it
was the last thing on their minds." Rain beat against the
glass, turning the cityscape into crazy streamers of light that
ran like frosting off a melting cake. "What concerned them
was the revelation of awe of themselves fountaining upward
from then- very hearts." His gaze fell upon the new and
beautiful high-rise three hundred feet away, upon a particu-
lar set of windows above him through whose panes he could
make out a familiar figure moving. "To make this happen
they needed not only to subdue tradition but the gods within
themselves in order to believe." The figure switched on a
lamp and he could see her face now-Koei's face. He was
looking directly into the apartment she shared with Nicholas.
She lifted her arms over her head, slid out of her shift.
"How can this be done?" he said, staring at Koei's naked
breasts and thrusting more deeply, more violently, making
Honniko cry out. "King Vishvamitra discovered the truth
centuries ago: the strength and fortitude to build a new
heaven comes from the depths of one's own hell."

 

It's just like drowning, Vesper had said, and she'd been
right. Eyes closed, back aching from the hit of the table
edge, feeling as if he were on the verge of having a heart
attack, Croaker nevertheless felt the unnatural lassitude
overcome him. Vesper was doing it, but how? He'd heard
stories about just this feeling from people who'd almost
drowned, sinking into the depths where even semitropical
seas were cold enough to chill the bones. Near death, air all
but exhausted in the straining lungs, the body was seized by

this same curious lassitude, carrying it downward into
darkness.

Croaker heard the screams of terrified patrons as if from
behind a thick concrete wall, was only dimly aware of the
febrile rush of movement as Vesper used this gift that had
been honed by Okami to damp Croaker's senses and give
the appearance of death. His pulse rate was way down, his
heart pumped at a crawl. How did she do it?

Then he was being lifted onto a gurney, and bright sun-
light against his closed lids was replaced by dimness as he
was slid into the back of the private ambulance they'd con-
tracted, and sirens blasting, they took off.

"How's he doing?"

Croaker recognized Rico Limòn's voice. Limòn was a film
special-effects expert Vesper had recruited through the
Anti-Cartel Task Force, members of whom were even now
posing as FBI agents as they took over the "investigation"
into Croaker's "death." Right, Croaker thought, I'm starting
to come out of it now.

"What about this hand, would'ja? Never saw anything
like it."

Croaker tried to laugh. The paramedic was more inter-
ested in his biomechanical hand than he was in the bruises
the bullets had made when they struck the Kevlar vest.

''How's it work?"

"Revive him and maybe he'll tell you," Limòn said
crossly.

"Yeah, yeah, okay. Keep your briefs on," the paramedic
said.

Then Croaker coughed and snorted as the paramedic held
the smelling salts under his nose. "Okay, okay, enough," he
muttered as his eyes fluttered open.

He saw Limòn's concerned brown face leaning over him.
"How's it feel to come back from the dead?"

Croaker grunted. "I don't think I'm there just yet."

"So far, so good," said a voice from the recesses of the
van. That would be Wade Forrest, the senior fed on this
project. Forrest leaned into the light. "I want him in tip-top
shape," he said to the interior at large. He was a large man,
looked in fact like a football lineman with a neck as large
as most models' waists, small ears, brush-cut, blondish hair,

and what Croaker knew were light eyes hidden behind mir-
ror glasses. He jutted his prominent jaw. "You okay,
Croaker?"

For sure he had been the date of the homecoming queen
each fall in college, Croaker thought. "Give me a minute,
okay?"

"We don't have a minute," Forrest said in that flinty tone
they taught you on the Potomac. He hunched forward as if
giving quarterback signals in the huddle. "See, I've been
after Caesare Leonforte for three years." He pulled at his
brush cut. "I got gray hair because of this rotten sonuva-
bitch. I missed my daughter's graduation because I was in
L.A. setting up an infiltration, and all I got for it was a
man down and a bleeding ulcer. I'm missing my younger
daughter's birthday today because I'm here." His hunched
form was rock solid, his expression hyper as a greyhound's,
his bunched muscles making him look weirdly like a gar-
goyle. "But this time I mean to make it count for something.
I want him, Croaker, and by God you and Vesper will get
him for me."

Croaker had been exposed to these fed types before and
knew they were often wound up to within an inch of their
lives. The best thing to do, sometimes, was to ignore them
when they were venting. That was a relatively new thing,
venting, suggested by fed shrinks and mandated in triplicate
by their superiors, to cut down on field-agent burnout.

Croaker turned to Limòn. "Get me out of this contrap-
tion, would you?"

Limòn reached behind him, and as Croaker lifted his
shoulders, he unsnapped the harness that held the Kevlar
vest in place.

"Look at those holes!" the paramedic said in awe. "Right
over his heart! And this blood looks real!"

"It is real," Limòn said. "It's chicken blood." He poked
his finger through the holes in Croaker's shirt. "How'd the
impacts feel?" Given Caesare Leonforte's reach, neither

Croaker nor Vesper had felt comfortable soliciting the coop-
eration of the Miami PD. In any event, Limòn had set off
tiny charges by remote control that opened the plastic sacs
of blood attached to the vest that gave the illusion that the

bullets Vesper had fired had penetrated Croaker's flesh in-
stead of being repelled by the Kevlar.

Croaker grimaced. "How'd they feel? Like I was having
a heart attack." He sat up slowly. "I wouldn't recommend
it for a steady diet, if that's what you mean."

With his shirt off, he stayed still as the paramedic probed
the left side of his chest. "These bruises are pretty deep. I'd
go easy on twisting your torso for a while." The paramedic
shook his head. "Skin's not even broken. Amazing!" Then
he began to pack up his instruments. "You need a pain-
killer? Those bruises will start to smart pretty good by
tonight."

"No, thanks. Those things'll only slow me down."

"Suit yourself." The paramedic was about to get up. "Uh,
by the way, would you mind?" He pointed to Croaker's
biomechanical hand.

"Sure. Why not?" Croaker leaned over and, balling the
titanium and polycarbonate fingers, smashed his fist through
the side of the ambulance.

The paramedic jumped as if stabbed and the driver yelled
back at them, "What the hell was that?"

The paramedic, looking as if he had been struck by light-
ning, peered through the rent in the steel frame. "Jesus H.
Christ."

"Okay, you've had your fun," Limòn said, elbowing the
paramedic out of the way. "I got work to do." He hauled
over a heavy black satchel and dug into its capacious inte-
rior. He was a young man, perhaps just thirty, slim and
good-looking, with large chocolate-brown eyes, buzz-cut
black hair, and a pencil-thin mustache right out of a Dick
Powell movie. He knew his special effects-liked to have
fun with them and so was inventive. Also, he was local,
which helped.

"All righty," he said, holding up a latex nose, "when I
get through with you, even your mother would walk right
by you without giving you a second glance." He waggled
the nose. "What do you think, ordinary enough?"

Croaker shrugged. "You're the expert."

"Damn straight. And the beauty part is there's a tiny
homing device hidden in the left nostril, so I advise you
against sneezing." Limòn gestured. "Now lie down on your

back and keep still. I have to make a death mask out of
plaster to make sure all the prostheses I make for you fit
your facial size and type."

"A death mask," Croaker said, settling back on the gur-
ney and listening to the wind whistle through the rent he'd
made in the wall of the ambulance. "That seems all too
appropriate."

When Tetsuo Akinaga, oyabun of the Shikei clan, was
released from jail after his incarceration pending indictment,
he returned not to his home or to his many businesses, for
he thought of these all as tainted somehow by the death of
Naohiro Ushiba, the chief minister of MITI. This was a
death he, Akinaga, had ordered, for in the end, Ushiba had
sided with Mikio Okami and had thus become Akinaga's
implacable enemy.

All these familiar places were tainted not only by that mur-
der but by the events immediately following-most notably his
public arrest by the prosecutor Tanaka Gin in the o-furo-the
public baths-his father had built, and his humiliating subse-
quent incarceration.

When Tetsuo Akinaga entered one of a dozen apartments
he kept for himself throughout Tokyo, the first thing he did
was strip off his $3,500 imported suit-in fact, all his
clothes-and, piling them into the kitchen sink, poured kero-
sene over them and lit a match.

In the resulting white-hot flare he felt his cheeks burning
with rage with the face he had lost. All the familiar things
in his life had been rendered unfit for habitation. Like a
priest who finds his church has been summarily desanctified,
he had nowhere to go except to these hidey-holes, anony-
mous places with no aesthetic value, as if he were this same
priest forced to conduct services in the basement of an of-
fice building.

As the fire flared and sparked, his rage burned brighter
than any kerosene-fed flame. The stench of the burning fab-
rics, the rapid evaporation of his own stale sweat, clogged
his nostrils and almost made him gag. His rage burned all
the brighter. Naked, he stood on his powerful bandy legs,
gripping the warm porcelain of the sink, his mind consumed
by revenge. He was so thin he looked like a concentration

camp inmate, with his knobby joints. He was in his midfif-
ties, but the vicissitudes of maintaining power and influence
had made him seem older. His gray hair was unfashionably
long, at samurai length, pulled back from his wide, flat fore-
head in a traditional queue. His deep-set eyes were impene-
trable. In all, he was a hard man, someone who could take
blows as well as give them. A man who asked for no quarter
and gave none. A man who believed in nothing-save per-
haps the sanctity of being an outsider in a world gone mad.

At that moment, a key turned in the lock and he heard
someone enter. He did not turn around because he knew
who it must be. Only one other person had a key to this
apartment besides himself.

"Shall I make you a drink?" Londa asked in that voice
that made you want to be staked out across her bed.

He said nothing, continuing to stare at the flames, dying
now as they ate away the last of the fabrics, the remains of
the fear that had gripped him when representatives of the
establishment he reviled had taken him inside, when he had
heard the hard steel doors clang shut and had seen nothing
but iron bars and had known his world had shrunk to the
size of his cell.

Even when he killed Tanaka Gin-which he would, very
soon and with a great deal of ingenuity and gusto-he would
never forgive him for making him fall prey to that disabling
fear. Inside, Akinaga had felt helpless, and this, above all
other things, he could not abide.

Londa came up behind him and wound her long, long hair
around his throat. In this way, she pulled him back from the
sink, from the brink of his one true fear, from the acrid
foment of his revenge.

"I need a bath," he said.

"Later. You'll stink more before I'm through with you."

He was already hard. It did not take much from her: the
feel of her hair on his naked flesh, the touch of her leather-
gloved hand, even, sometimes, the steel-hard flash in her
eye, because he knew what was in store for him and he
could relax completely, forget about decisions of influence,
money, corruption, and business. He could be a child in her
capable hands, free from maintaining control-which was,
after all, an exceptionally exhausting undertaking.

Floor-to-ceiling windows, thin as columns in a medieval
church, looked out over Roppongi, an area of contemporary
Japan where no one would think to look for a traditional-
minded man such as Akinaga. Also, he was high enough to
have an almost perfect view of the Nogi Jinja, a shrine to a
modern general who had nevertheless been a true samurai,
who committed seppuku-ritual suicide-in 1912 with his
wife following the death of Emperor Meiji. This juxtaposi-
tion-the samurai spirit alive and abiding in foreign-domi-
nated Roppongi-was just the kind of irony that appealed
to Akinaga, whose cynical outlook on life was nothing if
not ironic.

He rested his head against the rough gray Berber carpet.
It did not seem odd to him to be staring down at the Nogi
Jinja, lit up as if it were on fire in the night, while he knelt
on the carpet with his butt in the air and his genitals dan-
gling between his gangly legs. He could smell himself, which
was not altogether unpleasant, and then he could smell
Londa as she placed the spike heel of her shoe in his crack
and bent over him.

Strangely, there was no indignity in this for him, only an
intense relief. Indignity was being publicly arrested in his
father's o-furo by Tanaka gui. Indignity was being stripped
by professional penal people who knew his power, perhaps
had even lost money in one of his gambling parlors or had
spent an idle hour with one of his girls. Once, they had
feared him, but now he appeared before them with his
clothes scrunched in a ball in front of his genitals, just an-
other old man, a criminal without either power or influence
enough to stay out of prison.

He had wilted. Well, it was no wonder, with the humilia-
tion coursing through his veins like a drug. How he wished
to step out of his skin and become a whole new person!
Londa would see to that, as only she could. But, tonight, he
wanted to go further, to blot out what had been done to
him. Tonight, he wanted to be someone else instead of pre-
tending for a couple of hours. He wanted, in short, what no
one could give him, and he clenched his fists, beating them
against the Berber in rage and frustration.

"Are you ready?" Londa reached down between his legs,
fondling him. Then, at almost the same instant, came a

sharp, painful crack across his butt that made the blood rush
to his head in dizzying fashion. "Not yet," she crooned, "but
we'll get you there, won't we?"

Of course she would. That was her specialty, why he had
become addicted-yes, that was the right word: addicted-
to her. He had met her at that club everyone had been
talking about, had seen her act once, and that was it. He'd
had to have her, and have her he did, though not as often
as he would have liked. She was so popular with so many
influential people that even he, Tetsuo Akinaga, had had to
wait his turn.

But then something had happened a month or so before
his arrest. She had become more available to him-he could
have her almost any day he pleased, though at specific times
she designated. What did she do at those other times when
he could not have her? Better not to know, he had decided.
Why destroy an illusion that was working so well for him?

Pain enough to make him moan, and his member uncoiled
like a snake, all the bad and humiliating thoughts driven
from his mind. The pain continued, a specific kind of pain
that, more and more, edged into pleasure, until the line be-
tween them was blurred completely and it became both,
pleasure and pain coexisting in a ball that expanded from
his loins outward.

He was moaning as Londa worked him over as only she
could. He felt her sweat plopping onto his naked back like
droplets of hot wax, each one excruciating, intensifying his
pleasure-pain. Then, crouched over him like a giant crab,
she did something to him that made his eyes bulge out of
their sockets. A great groan emerged from deep inside him
and he was sure that he would collapse. But, as always, he
did not; he would be punished for that with a cessation of
her ministrations, and that he could not abide. Instead, he
swayed on thighs and elbows, his trembling thighs threaten-
ing to shake his teeth loose. Just one moment more and he
would ...

He heard something foreign, something outside the sphere
of pleasure-pain that Londa had created for him. It was
sharp, metallic like the latch of a lock being turned.

"What is it?" he mumbled vaguely.

"Nothing," Londa said, digging in again with her high

heel until that taste came to his mouth that he associated
with the end.

But he heard it again, and dimly he wondered whether
he had heard her lock the door behind her when she had
come in. Of course, she had. She always did. But this time-
had he heard her do it, or ... ?

His watering eyes focused on a pair of shoes-black,
highly polished, expensive. Not Londa's; these were men's
shoes.

"What? Who ... ?" He tried to change position, to look
up past the cuffs of the trousers, but Londa had hold of him
and he was immobile, locked in her exotic embrace.

"Akinaga-san," a male voice said, "so good to meet you
after all this time."

Still locked in his erotic haze, Akinaga struggled to make
his mind focus, but Londa had hold of him and his blood
was pounding in his veins; the testosterone was raging and
it was like listening to far-off voices through the crack and
spark of a forest fire.

"Who ...?"•

"My name is Michael Leonforte. Are you familiar with
it?"

Akinaga tried to shake his head, settled for a feeble
"No" instead.

"No matter. I have heard a great deal about you." The
shoes shifted a bit. "I think we can do business. I think we
can help each other."

"I don't need ... any help."

Mick laughed. "You should see yourself, Akinaga-san. It's
a scream, the position I find you in. Are you certain you
don't need help?"

"I'll kill... both of you."

"With her heel buried in the crack of your ass? I don't
think so."

"If you know anything about me ..."

"Yes, yes. I know all about the Yakuza. But you're not
the force you once were. The Kaisho's inner council of
which you were a part is gone-blown away like so many
autumn leaves. And what is left? Your power's broken,
never to return. You have Nicholas Linnear and your own
Kaisho-Mikio Okami-to thank for that. You should never

have ousted Okami. And when you put a contract out on
him, you really pissed him off. You forced him to call in a
debt Okami was owed by his former partner, Col. Denis
Linnear. Okami recruited the Colonel's son, Nicholas. Bad
move, Akinaga-san. Very bad move. Linnear has almost de-
stroyed you totally. You're hanging on by the skin of your
teeth."

"My ... what?"

"It's American slang, Akinaga-san, for terminal trouble."

"I still have my power. And my contacts. They got the
prosecutor's case thrown out on technicalities, and now I'm
out of jail. Could you have done the same under those
circumstances?"

"I would never have allowed myself to be in that
position."

"Talk is nothing," Akinaga spit out, "but the drool of
incompetent and foolish men!"

Then, so abruptly that his teeth clashed together, Akina-
ga's head was jerked up by his hair and he found himself
staring into Mick Leonforte's face.

"I'll tell you what's foolish," Mick said in a harsh and
grating whisper, "you here with your ass in the air, being
taken advantage of by a woman you hardly know."

"What... what do you mean?"

"Londa works for me. She's a most valuable asset, don't
you agree? I sent her to ensnare you when you showed such
unbridled lust for her at the club." Mick shook his head.
"How can anyone measure the value of things according to
pleasure and pain? That kind of thinking is superficial. I,
who am conscious of the formative powers of the human
brain, who am aware of its awesome potential, can only feel
scorn at the way you have managed to squander your
power." He pulled Akinaga's face to him. "Don't you see?
Here, in this room of your apartment I am shogun. You
bow down to me."

Akinaga said nothing. This man, so feral and de-
manding-burning almost at the point of madness-had
begun to intrigue him.

"Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that in man there is united
both creature and creator. Do you understand this, Akinaga-
san? The creature in man is the raw material: the clay, frag-

ments of other times and other lives, filth, nonsense, and
chaos, the excess, of pleasure and pain. But then there is the
creator: the image maker that turns that clay, that chaos, into
something more; the flinty hardness that forges a personality in
the painful crucible of experience. The spectator-divinity that
flies in the face of the common, the rote training, the done
thing; that forms, breaks apart, hammers anew, burns, brings
to white heat, and then purifies the creature, making of it
through these rounds of suffering something more, some-
thing better."

Mick let go of Akinaga's hair, and at the same time,
Londa released him from her hold, so that he collapsed with
a groan, rolled over on his back, breathing hard. He stared
up into Mick Leonforte's face.

"You don't speak like an iteki. And you don't think or
act like one." Akinaga paused a moment. "I could have you
killed-right here, right now, and it would mean nothing to
me-nothing."

Mick crouched down beside him. "Talk is nothing but the
drool of incompetent and foolish men."

Akinaga threw his head back and laughed. His cries of
mirth echoed through the apartment like peals of thunder.
"I want sake," he shouted.

While Londa went to fetch some, he sat up. "You are a
fascinating man. Where, I wonder, would someone like you
come from?"

"The cauldron of experience."

Akinaga gave a brief nod. "An altogether appropriate
answer."

Londa brought the rice wine, along with a silk robe, which
Akinaga slipped on. When they had drunk three cups each,
Akinaga said, "You mentioned something about us being
able to help one another."

"I want something, you want something. A simple barter
old as time."

Akinaga, eyeing Mick carefully, said, "I think with you
nothing is ever simple." He nodded. "But go on. You have
my undivided attention."

Staring into Akinaga's dark, hooded eyes, Mick said, "But
it is simple. I want access into Sato International."

For a brief moment there was absolute silence in the

apartment. Then, abruptly, shockingly, Akinaga began to
laugh. He laughed so hard tears came to his eyes and he
was obliged to hold his sides and gasp for air. "Is that all?"
he said at last. He wiped his eyes, then gestured at Londa,
lounging in the shadows. "I am very much afraid you've set
your elaborate scheme in the wrong part of the forest. I'd
like access to Sato myself, but I don't have it."

Mick, pouring himself more sake, seemed not to have
heard the oyabun. "Allow me tell you a story. This goes
back, oh, a decade or so. A then very ambitious under-
oyabun anxious to take control of a clan he believed-quite
rightly-to be drifting without proper leadership, to be
under siege from the Yamauchi clan, made a deal. It was
the kind of deal that, quite frankly, is made every day of the
week. Among Japanese. However, this particular deal the
under-oyabun made was with an iteki. Not just any foreigner,
mind you, but a very powerful industrialist who, in exchange
for getting his businesses set up in Japan without having to
be held up by the endless protectionist regulations, punitive
tariffs, and bureaucratic red tape, agreed to make this cer-
tain under-oyabun rich on the Tokyo Stock Exchange."

Silence lay heavy in the apartment. Akinaga, staring out
at the shrine to General Nogi, said, "This is an edifying
story, but what does it have to do with me?"

"Wait, it gets better." Mick had taken on the predatory
aspect of a wolf. "In order to thoroughly cover up the illegal
transaction, this ambitious under-oyabun took all the re-
quired precautions-setting up a legitimate account at a le-
gitimate brokerage house, engaging a legitimate broker and
funneling all trades through him, putting up a small sum of
his own money that was easily traceable, putting the account
on margin-and then he took another: he arranged for the
proceeds of the spectacular investment windfall to come to
his twin sons." At the mention of those two last words Aki-
naga gave a small but noticeable twitch.

Mick cocked his head at an angle. "Now do you see how
this concerns you, Akinaga-san?" When the oyabun said
nothing, Mick continued, "You see, I am a most diligent
student of human behavior. I know what it is you want more
than anything."

"And what would that be?" A sullen note had crept into
Akinaga's voice and Mick noted it.

"The continuation of your line. When you are gone, you
want your sons to rule the Shikei clan, and their sons after
them, on and on, until a dynasty is born to rival the two-
hundred-year rule of the Tokugawa shogunate."

"I think you have grossly misunderstood me," Akinaga
said quietly.

Mick shrugged. "Then it is my loss of face, eh, Akinaga-
san? But, just for the hell of it, let me play out the hand. It
happens that I have obtained certain records concerning the
brokerage transactions. Now, they won't have any effect on
the industrialist. His name is Rodney Kurtz and he met with
a rather violent end earlier this week. I got close with his
wife. Kurtz seriously underestimated her. While I was cuck-
olding him, she gave up all his secrets-happily, willingly,
ecstatically." Mick waved a hand. "But that's another story.
Back to you. You, well, your myriad contacts within the
Japanese justice machine will eventually wriggle you out
with a minimum of penalty-a stiff fine, which I have no
doubt you won't even miss when you pay it. But as for your
twin sons, I do believe they won't be as fortunate. Your
protection may be able to extend to them-in the end-but
in the interim their reputations will have been irrevocably
tarnished. They'll never be made oyabun of the Shikei
clan-or any other, for that matter."

Mick spent some time lighting up a cigar while he allowed
Akinaga to come to terms with the situation in which he
found himself.

"I could have you snuffed out in the wink of an eye."

"I have no doubt. But circumstance does not favor you,
Akinaga-san. Tanaka Gin is after your ass and he won't stop
until he puts you behind bars."

"Fuck Gin," Akinaga spat. "I'm taking care of him."

"Then there's Nicholas Linnear," Mick continued as if he
hadn't been interrupted. "He's as cozy with Mikio Okami
as his father ever was. And that means he'd become your
enemy as well." Mick drew on his cigar. "I believe you need
new allies, Akinaga-san. Allies who hate Linnear and Okami
as much as you do. Allies whose philosophical outlook
meshes with yours."

Akinaga's head swung around. "Allies like yourself."

Mick gave a little bow.

The oyabun glanced at Londa. "It seems you have played
your hand well, iteki." He gave a grim smile. "Well, I have
thrown my lot in with one foreigner. Why not another?"

Mick held up his cup as he poured sake for the oyabun.
"To this new alliance." The men drank while Londa looked
on, silent as stone.

"All right," Mick said briskly. "About your penetration
of Sato International."

Akinaga looked at him a long time. Secrets were not
something he divulged so easily. At last, he said, "There is
a man named Kanda Torin. In Nicholas Linnear's absence,
he has gained Tanzan Nangi's trust. Torin works for me."

 

9

West Palm Beach/Tokyo

"Fuck you get my gun?" Caesare shouted.

"From your collection, where else?" Vesper said. "What,
I'm not allowed to protect myself?"

"You don't need no fuckin' gun now," he thundered.
"You got me."

He was in a towering rage, and Vesper wanted to know
why.

"As it turned out, it's a damned good thing I was armed.
What's your problem?"

"Problem? I'll tell you my fuckin' problem," he thun-
dered. "It's you! Women should not be carrying, that's the
fuckin' problem." He hit his forehead with his palm. "Jesus,
a blind man could see it There are certain rules inna world
that shouldn't be violated. Men do men things, women do
women things. Women do not go around shooting people.
Christ, it's clear as black 'n' white."

They were back at the white mansion in West Palm and
he had been on the phone for almost an hour straight, pull-
ing strings, invoking privilege, and using his subtle forms of
persuasion to ensure that whatever investigation into Croak-
er's death was made, it would be brief and perfunctory.

"This fuckin' pain in my ass Croaker was ex-NYPD,"
Caesare had said into the phone during the last call. "He

hadda lotta enemies, right? They all do. One of them
whacked 'im. Period. You tell that to the feds or whoever's
handlin' the investigation. You make sure there're no wit-
nesses, get me? End of investigation, end of conversation."
He'd rung off. "Fuckin' cops," he'd muttered to no one in
particular. "Once they make commissioner, they think they
know it all."

He turned back to her, shook his head. "You're fuckin'
nuts, you know that? What the hell am I gonna do with
you, killing a fuckin' ex-cop like that."

"What d'you care? From what I could see, there was no
love lost between the two of you." •

"Loony as shit." He put his hands on his hips and glared
at her.

"I got royally pissed off, okay?" Her voice softened sud-
denly and he saw tears glistening at the corners of her eyes.
"You'll make it all right, won't you, Caesare?"

He took her into his arms, stroked her gleaming golden
hair. He was filled with pride that she needed him now for
protection, she was vulnerable, and giving her his confidence
was something he wanted very badly. She was like a dream,
every day revealed, to him another side of her that delighted
him, and now he would do anything to keep her at his side.

"Don't worry 'bout a fuckin' thing. I think we got it all
worked out."

And the weird and awful thing was that, cradled in his
powerful arms, feeling the aura of his power coming off him

in waves, she did feel protected, safe as she'd never felt in
her parents' house, or on the street or even with Mother
Madonna in the House of Marbella-safe as she'd ever felt
with Okami. Nothing in her life could have prepared her for
this, and so, for a moment, she was disarmed, the chink
in her self-made armor pried back, exposing the starving
woman beneath.

Caesare kissed her and said, "Paulie's here an' I gotta say
hello to him. It's business."

She nodded.

He tipped her head back with his thumb beneath her chin.
"You okay? I mean you whacked a man, an' all, an' it wasn't
just some anonymous jamoke. You wanna throw up or
anything?"

She smiled. "I already did that while you were on the
phone."

He nodded. "Okay then. Move on from it It's over. Go
into the kitchen an' have Gino fix you something."

"I can do it myself."

"Jesus Christ, I know you can. There anything you can't
do? But what should I do? It's Gino's job. You want I
should fire him?"

She laughed. "No." And bowed her head obediently be-
cause that was what he needed to complete the picture of
having her completely in his power, a woman like her. It
was the most compelling aphrodisiac imaginable. "Okay, I'll
get him to fix me something." She disengaged herself from
his embrace. "You?"

"Nah. I'll pick something up on the way inta see Paulie.
He an' his broad-what's-her-name, I never remember.
Anyway, they're in the guesthouse." He took her hand,
kissed the palm. "I may be a while, okay?"

She smiled at him. "Okay." Then she shooed him out the
door. "Go on. Take care of your business."

In fact, Caesare spent very little time with Paul Chiara-
monte. He said, "How'ya doin'? Ya did a good job gettin'
the broad an' her kid outta New Yawk." Then he cuffed
Paulie hard behind his right ear. "You fuckin' moron, killin'
an NYPD detective. Shit for brains."

"But no one saw me," Paul Chiaramonte protested, "ex-
cept the broad and her kid. I used a stolen gun that's un-
traceable, so fuck the NYPD six times over."

"It isn't the cops I'm thinkin' of, Paulie. It's your fuckin'
cover. You blew it. You were my little church mouse inside
the Goldoni machine."

"But now you're takin' over, who gives a shit?"

Caesare cuffed him another one hard enough to make
Paul's head ring. "Putz, don't you read your history? How
d'you think the Romans extended their empire so success-
fully. Infiltration among the conquered. You think the Gol-
doni family capos are gonna just roll over an' let me scratch
their stomachs? That's a sucker bet. They'll pretend to go
along with me, then try to stab me in the back first chance

they get. An' now I don't have you to keep me one step
ahead of them."
Paul's head went down. "Sorry."

"Ah, what th' fuck, you did good with Tony D.'s wife."

Paul's head came up. "So we can forget the whole thing?"

Caesare stepped up into his face. "Fuck, no. Listen, Pau-
lie, I want you to remember every step of this-not as a
penance, unnerstand? But to learn, so you never make the
same mistake again. Got it?"

"Sure."

Caesare reached out, drew the younger man toward him
with his hand on the back of his neck. He kissed Paul's
forehead. "You're a good kid. An' loyal. I put a high pre-
mium on loyalty. An', meanwhile, read some Pliny, for
Christ's sake." He looked around the guesthouse, which had
been furnished by some local interior designer in soothing
neutral shades. He hated it, but what the fuck, he didn't
have to stay here. "Where's Margarite?"

"Inna bedroom."

"Okay. You keep an eye on the kid. I don't wanna be
disturbed, got me?"

Paulie nodded and headed for the bedroom, where he
uncuffed Francie from the doorknob of the closet.

"C'mon, kid. Let's get some lunch."

Frantic looked at Margarite bound by wrists and ankles
to the corner posts of the king-size bed. "But what about
my mom?"

"I'll take care of her," Caesare said, entering the room.
"How ya doin', Francie?"

Francie shook her head and said nothing as Paul hustled
her out of the room.

Caesare, a can of diet Coke in one hand, stood at the foot
of the bed, regarding Margarite. "Now this is a sorry sight"

Margarite stared straight at him. "It was one thing to go
after Tony. But by marking me and my daughter you have
violated every rule of our world. You're a pariah, a marked
man without respect."

Caesare scratched the side of his head with a pinkie. "You
finished? Nobody's gonna buy that crap an' I'm gonna tell
you why. You brought this grief on yourself, Margarite. You
couldn't leave the business to Tony D. You had to stick _

your nose inta things that didn't concern you, taking trips
to D.C. to see Dom's old pals, to maybe strike up new
alliances for Tony. An' then, to top it off, you started to
play stuff the bacon with Lew Croaker, an ex-NYPD detec-
tive, for the love of God." He shook his head. "Why Tony
D. allowed you to run amok is one fuckin' mystery. But the
fact is, you became my enemy as much as Tony D. As for
your daughter-an' what a lovely creature she has become-
you left me no choice. When you whacked two of my out-
of-town crew, I had to reel you in as quickly as possible.
An' I hadda bring Paul inta it. I didn't like that But, again,
you left me no choice; you'd become far too dangerous. In
my opinion, Francine was the most reliable way to get to
you." He took a sip of the drink. "I think, how things turned
out, I was right"
"You're despicable."

Caesare moved around the side of the bed. "Considering
the source, I'll take that as a compliment." He offered the
can. "Care for a sip?"
"I'd rather die of thirst."

Caesare smiled. "Just like a woman. Overreacting and
overemotional." He shook his head. "It was a mistake to make
this your business, Margarite. I trust you see that now."

"I have nothing more to say to you." She turned her head
to the wall

"Oh, in that matter, like everything else, you're wrong,
Margarite." He sat beside her. "I didn't bring you here for
a vacation or even to dispose of you. I brought you here so
that you could vomit it all up, every secret that Tony made
you privy to. You see, I want what Dom had: his leverage
in D.C. and overseas. I want the Nishiki files-the dirt he
used t'keep so many of the really big boys under his thumb.
Now, you'll do that for me, won't you, Margarite?"
"Get lost."

He stood up abruptly and smashed her across the face
with the aluminum can. She cried out, but he ignored her
and the blood blooming on her cheek. "You will tell me"
everything, Margarite, or by God I'll march Francine in
here, and while you watch, I will take a lit cigarette to her
beautiful, unblemished body and face inch by inch."

Sunlight flooded through the high windows, making of the
dust motes suspended in the air tiny dancers that spun and
sparked as they were struck. Far below them, in the dimness
of his Vulcanlike chamber, Kaichi Toyoda bent to the task
at hand. His broad, round back made him look like a tor-
toise, an impression that his huge shoulders, deep chest, and
narrow hips and waist did nothing to dispel.

Toyoda slid a bar of layered steel into his forge, and a
blast of heat seared the already uncomfortably hot work-
room. The stained and flame-singed ferroconcrete walls were
festooned with the tools of his trade. Toyoda was an ar-
morer, a man who fashioned beautiful and deadly blades
out of solid bars of steel. He did this by beating out the
white-hot steel ingot until it was long and narrow, then fold-
ing it over, hammering it again, heating it again until the
two layers formed an inseparable bond, then repeating the
process again and again, some said ten thousand times, until
the composite sword blade was ready to be shaped. The
Japanese were unique in all peoples of the world-in that
only they had perfected the art of composite swordmaking.
They used ultrahard steel to shape the edge and spine of
the blade, the one to hold a cutting edge so perfectly sharp
it virtually disappeared, the other to create a strong back-
bone. They surrounded this hard spine with layers of mild
steel, soft enough to absorb the shock of the hardest blows.
Surrounding this were layers of sernimild steel of medium
hardness to give the blade flexibility. Only then did it have
the requisite strength and flexibility to cleave armor and
bone and to resist being broken in two.

"Push dagger," Toyoda said now in response to Nicholas's
question. "I don't get too much call for that kind of weapon
these days." The swordsmith was old-in his seventies, at
least, Nicholas estimated, with a round face and skin as Uned
and leathery as an armadillo's hide. A wispy white beard,
floated from the point of his chin.

"But you have been asked for at least one, haven't you?"

Toyoda pulled out the steel and was about to pound it
with his hammer when he apparently noticed something, a
flaw forming, and he flung the now useless piece of metal
into a barrel filled with cold water. Steam hissed like an
angry serpent.

The swordsmith wiped his heavy, blunt-fingered hands on
his thick apron, went to the front door of his shop, and
locked it.

"Let's go inside," he said.

He led Nicholas into a short hallway behind the forge that
was as hot as a sauna going full blast. At the end of it was
an open tatami room that looked out onto a tiny garden
surrounded on three sides by high walls. Still, a single hinoki
cypress, dark green, flourished amid its sterile surroundings.
Toyoda pulled down mottled bamboo blinds until the upper
half of the wide slider out to the garden was covered. Heat
rose like dizzying waves from the desert.

The room was small and as decorated as a monk's cell.
Toyoda was a Zen Buddhist; as such, less was always more.
It was like the single hinoki-it was all the garden he
required.

The two men sat where Toyoda indicated. There was a
long white scar down the inside of his left leg where a de-
cade ago surgeons had taken out a vein to circumvent two
clogged arteries in his heart Toyoda offered him tea and he
accepted. They drank in companionable silence for some
time, staring out at the hinoki.

"We know each other a long time, Linnear-san." Toyoda
put aside his cup, signaling the silence was over. "I have
made you many weapons. Dangerous weapons. Unique
weapons."

"I would not have gone to anyone else, Toyoda-san."

The swordsmith shrugged. "I was a convenient source."
What he meant was he was the only source. He made weap-
ons other swordsmiths could only dream of. He appeared to
consider for a moment. "I made a dangerous weapon for
a man."

"A push dagger."

Toyoda nodded.

"You designed it?"

Toyoda stared at the hinoki, baking in a sliver of sunlight.
"That was the intriguing part, Linnear-san. I worked from
his own design. It was crude, yes, but quite ingenious and
altogether functional."

"Functional?"

"Oh, yes." The old head bobbed up and down. "You

could kill a wild boar with this push dagger. If you had the
strength and determination."

"Could it slash as well as puncture?"

A slow sly smile enlivened Toyoda's face. "I fold you the
design was ingenious. Yes, it had a distinct blade signature."

Nicholas took out a pad and pen. "Like this?" He drew
a weapon's blade consistent with the slashes on Ise Ikuzo's
body.

The swordsmith's eyes dropped down to look at the draw-
ing. "Yes, just like that."

Nicholas produced a copy of the U.S. Army photo show-
ing Mick Leonforte. He was a good deal younger, clean-cut
and almost formal looking, but there was no mistaking the
shape of the face, the sensual lips, or the hooded look of
his dark eyes.

Toyoda stared at it for a long time before answering.
"This is the man."

"Did he tell you his name?"

"I did not ask."

"Why not?"

"Name leads to purpose, and in my work any purpose
other than my own is a distraction."

"Did you make anything else for him, Toyoda-san?"

"No."

Nicholas put the photo and the pad and pen away. "Tell
me, Toyoda-san, why did you make this weapon?"

"I would think that would be obvious. It is why I make
any weapon. When it is finished, it is a work of art."

"I'm not hungry," Francie said as Paul Chiaramonte took
her toward the kitchen.

"Okay." He eyed her. "You nervous about Bad Clams?"
When she didn't answer, he switched tactics. "Hey, how
about a swim? That pool sure looks good."

Francie shrugged. "I don't have a suit."

"No problem," he said_f herding her into another bed-
room. She watched, passive as a sheep, while he rummaged
through bleached-wood dresser drawers. "Here." He held
up a turquoise tank suit. "This looks like it'll fit."

She took it from him, padded to the door of the bath-

room. In the doorway, she turned back to him and with a
perfectly serious face said, "Wanna watch?"

"Jesus, kid, you're the limit," he said, immediately ner-
vous again. Judging by the look on her face, he was begin-
ning to think she liked doing this to him. "Get in there an'
do your thing, okay?"

"What about you?"

He pulled a pair of big trunks, gaudy with tropical fish in
electric colors, out of another drawer, which brought a brief
giggle from her. "I'll get changed in heah," he said.

Francie closed the door behind her, and with a sigh of
relief Paul collapsed on the end of the bed. This assignment
was getting to him. First, he whacks an NYPD detective,
then he's got to bring the Goldoni wildcat all the way down
here like some caveman dragging his unwilling mate to the
slaughter. Then he's got to deal with a sixteen-year-old who
cracks wise and is, in all probability, smarter than he is. But
a very special sixteen-year-old to him, for all that. Because
there was a real chance that she had seen Jaqui, had-who
knows?-even spoken to her.

Jaqui alive.

The thought sent tendrils of electricity through him. Or
maybe this obsession of his was a decades-old delusion. Ei-
ther way, he had to know. Somehow, he had to gain the
kid's trust to get more info out of her. Besides, he really
liked her. She was smart, quick, and damned funny. It was
rare Paul found anyone who made him laugh. To be honest,
his life was a mess, running undercover for Bad Clams, be-
traying the Abriola family, who had taken him in as one of
their own. And as for his private life, forgeddaboutit! He'd
been hung up on Jaqui from the moment they had met in
'62; since then, no one could measure up to the perfect
memory stuck in his head like a melody that played over
and over until it made you crazy.

He began to disrobe. As he did so, he breathed out
sharply several times as he'd learned to do in his yoga class.
Stress busters, as it was billed; Paul knew he needed the
extreme stress he was under busted or he'd for sure have a
heart attack. He was already battling hypertension, and on
too many occasions his doctor had cautioned him on his

elevated blood pressure. The yoga was helping, for sure.
Next stop, meditation.

He had his trousers and shirt off and his shorts were a
puddle at his ankles when the door to the bathroom swung
open and Frantic stepped out.

"Madonna!" he cried, red-faced, shoving the gaudy, trunks
against his exposed crotch.

Francie stood in the doorway, clad in the turquoise tank
suit, a look on her face like the cat who'd just swallowed
the canary. The ghost of a smile that played across her lips
made her look just like the Mono Lisa.

"You happy now?" he said, frowning.

"Like the way I look?"

She posed like some model in one of those women's mag-
azines, Vogue or Cosmo. Very professional, very sexy. Paul
had to remind himself twice that she was not yet seventeen,
though with the hard evidence of her body staring him in
the face, it was next to impossible to believe.

"Yeah, sure," he said sullenly. "What's not to like?"

She came and sat next to him on the end of the bed.
Staring him right in the eye, she said, "Why don't you put
on your suit? I want to take a swim."

"Why d'you think? You're lookin' right at me."

"So what? I've seen it before."

Paul shook his head. "For Christ's sake, kid. Turn around,
at least."

She complied and he scrambled into the trunks, but he
was terrified she'd turn back and watch. He had some diffi-
culty, though. To his horror and intense shame he found he
was starting to get erect. Oh, Jesus, he thought. Just what I
need, or what?

"Okay."

She swung her head around and giggled. "You look cute."

"Why don't you cover yourself up?" he said, more crossly
than he'd wanted.

Francie looked down at her body. "Don't you like the
way I look?"

He rolled his eyes. "Kid, I like it too much is the
problem."

She sucked her lower lip between her teeth, contemplating
this. Then she stood and, in front of the mirror above the

dresser, ran her hand over her flat belly and hips. "You
know, last year I would have given anything-a finger, an
eye, anything-to be thinner than thin. Painful is the word
that comes to mind."

"That sounds kinda extreme."

She turned around to face him. "It's the truth, all the
same." She had these eyes that, when she leveled them at
you, were filled with an emotion so naked they made you
sure she'd never learned how to lie.

"You have to understand, my body was the only thing
that belonged to me. Everything else was controlled by my
parents, and my parents were not getting along." She gave
a rueful laugh. " 'Not getting along' doesn't begin to de-
scribe it. They were in a state of perpetual war. My mom
was too smart-she's got her own company, yon know-and
my father decided he'd punish her for her brains. So he beat
her. Continually."

"Yeah," Paul said, nodding his head in acknowledgment,
"you got it."

Francie took a breath. "So, something deep inside me
decided that if I stayed real, real thin, everything would
work out with my parents." She kept her eyes on him,
maybe to see if he would mock her. "It was like I made a
deal with God. But it took me a long time to learn that
what I'd really done was make a deal with the worst, darkest
part of myself. I was punishing myself for my parents' war."

She plunked herself down beside him, so disconcertingly
close that Paul felt as if he had been singed by a fire. "I
hated myself; my body, most of all. So now it's important
to me. I take pride in it. I want to show it off."

"Yeah, but, kid, you should be showin' it off t'kids your
own age." She began to laugh and he immediately recog-
nized his gaffe. "Naw, that's not what I meant. You
shouldn't be showin' it off t'anyone right now. Like I said
last night, don't be in such a hurry t'grow up. It's not all it's
cracked up t'be."

He looked at his watch. "C'mon, let's take that swim."

In the water she was like the dolphins Paul had seen at
the New York Aquarium at Coney Island: long and sleek
and playful, in love with the water, with its buoyancy, its
supportive weight, its cool, clear blue depths. She swam rings

around him, her long, deep red hair- streaming out behind
her like an animal's tail or the dorsal fin of one of the exotic
fish that decorated his trunks. He hated his voluminous
swimsuit. It was nerdy, the way it kept filling up with air
bubbles like a clown's trick trousers.

At last, exhausted, the pads of his fingers looking like
prunes, he paddled to the side Of the pool and made careful
note of the patterns the guards and their dogs took around
the periphery of the property and key areas of the
guesthouse.

Briefly, he wondered what was happening in that back
bedroom between Bad Clams and Margarita Goldoni De-
Camillo. Better not to know, he decided, turning away from
the guesthouse as Francie surfaced with a great whip of
water.

"What happened to you? You gave up too soon."

"I guess I'm not as young as I used t'be."

She swam over to where he floated, his elbows up on the
coping. She was a perfect shape for the water, tapered as a
torpedo, but as she neared him, her limbs splayed out like
those of a starfish, her hands and feet gripping the pool on
either side of him.

"That's not it," she said. "You're not used to having fun."

He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it
with a snap. She was right. Her lithe body set up warm
ripples, a kind of vibration he felt deep inside like the ham-
mering of his heart.

"Yeah, well, maybe I live a life doesn't have too much
call for fun," he said defensively. "I got a lotta responsibili-
ties, y'know. People count on me."

"Like Bad Clams." When he said nothing, she added, "Is
that why you said being a grown-up isn't all it's cracked up
to be?"

He waved his hands. "Where d'you come up with these
nutty ideas?"

But she wouldn't budge an inch. "I'm right, aren't I?
Working for Bad Clams, ratting on people who trust you
and count on you, isn't so hot, right?" Those preternaturally
intelligent eyes just would not let him go. "In fact, I bet
it sucks."

Right again, he thought. But he'd be damned if he'd admit

it to her or anyone else, for that matter. "It's the life I
chose," he said steadfastly, "because it's right for me."

"Lying, cheating, rucking decent people over, you want
me to believe that's the life you chose for yourself?"

Now she was really bugging him. "Kid, I don't give a flyin'

fuck what-"

"I think that kind of low life chose you."

He made a scoffing sound in his throat. "Fuck does that
mean?"

"I think you know."

"What, you like talkin' in riddles?" He tried to turn his
head away, found he couldn't. Like a cobra going to its end
at the hands of the mongoose, he was powerless to escape.

"Maybe. But I know this: you're being eaten up inside by
everything you can't let out-hate, revenge, love."

"Love?" Paul was astonished. "Love?"

She put her head so close to his he could feel the soft
beat of her eyelashes like angel's wings against his cheeks
and said in a low voice, "I know about Jaqui."

Paul, who up to now had maintained at least a semblance
of control over the situation, felt his heart freeze in his chest.
"What did you say?" His fingertips were like icicles. He had
been racking his brains about how to pry this out of her,
and whammo! here it comes, right down the chute.

"I think I said that wrong," Francie whispered. "I have
met her. Sister Marie Rose, as she's known. I have spoken
with her, been trained by her. The woman you have been
trying to find; the woman you love."

Paul was sure he was losing his mind. After so many years
of digging, of coming to dead ends, of being so sure in his
mind that Jaqui was alive, that someone else had been killed
in that hit-and-run, and feeling increasingly paranoid as his
conspiracy theory was derided by Santa Maria's mother su-
perior. Posing as a reporter and, later, as an intern from a
nearby hospital, he'd tried to weasel Jaqui's morgue shot
out of. the medical examiner's office during the latter half
of 1962, but had been rebuffed at every turn. So he'd never
stopped believing in his heart, though he had grieved for
her and, certainly, had never forgotten. And now this bomb-
shell, laid on him by a very clever slip of a girl whom he
knew-just knew-he'd better not underestimate. But he al-

ready suspected to his lasting sorrow that she was too much
for him, for in those naked eyes he already foresaw his
doom. And like a sleepwalker he saw himself already too
far along the path down which she was all too eager to
lead him.

Gathering himself as best he could, he said, "You lying
to me, kid?"

"No."

And in that single-word answer he recognized the truth,
for he had already noted the lie she had told him last night
on the plane when he had asked her about that one special
nun with eyes the color of the deep ocean. Jaqui.

"Ah, Christ," he breathed

"You want to see her again?" Francie whispered. "You
want to talk to her?"

"More than anything." He should have hated himself for
letting that slip, but all he felt was a rush of elation so strong
that the tips of his fingers, so recently numb, now tingled
warmly with newfound energy.

"You can," Francie whispered "I'll take you to her. But
you gotta get us out of here. Me and my mom."

This was his doom, the road he was already too far down to
turn back. The moment she'd uttered Jaqui's name, he knew
what she would ask of him in return. She was far too smart to
demand anything less. And the truly awful part was, he knew
that she would make good on her end of the bargain. He could
see it in her eyes, feel it in every fiber of her being. She wanted
to help him, and with a heavy resignation he understood fi-
nally that he, in turn, wanted to help her.

This was a first for him, a man trained by circumstance
to look out for Paul Chiaramonte first, last, and always and
fuck everyone else, as he had been fucked over by his father,
by Faith Goldoni, by his mother even, who by dint of being
Jewish could not even keep Black Paul by her side.

He wanted to help Francie, even though it would most
surely cost him dearly-maybe, knowing Bad Clams, even
his life. But, by God, he'd have fun doing it

Slowly, as if in a dream, his hand came up and clasped
hers in the only embrace he felt comfortable giving her. It
was done. The pact was silently signed. It boggled the mind.

 

*    *    *

 

Koei was scrolling through the computer at the Nipponshu
Sake Center on Harumi-dori, a block from the mammoth
Ginza YonchOme crossing. Everything you wanted to know
about the Japanese national liquor made from fermented
rice was here. Nicholas loved sake, and the computer pro-
gram was helping her to locate the brands that would best
suit his taste.

A shadow passed across the screen and she looked up
into the face of Mick Leonforte. He had appeared as if from
the ripples of a mirage, a dark and evil place in her mind.

"Hello, Koei," he said. "What a surprise running into you
here." Said in that tone of voice she had come to know well
during the time they had lived together-she miserable and
self-castigating, he rampant all the time, filled with sinuous
and disturbing suggestions regarding their sexual cojoining.
A tone of voice that told her everything he wished her to
know: namely, that this had been no coincidence, that he
was far from surprised.

Outside, a thousand people marched by, hustling along
the rain-slick streets, black umbrellas crowding each other,
bobbing and weaving. Koei felt a little shudder go through
her, isolated here, herded out of the moving crowd by this
sinister animal she knew too well.

He smiled like a boy on the way to a prom. "Aren't you
happy to see me? I mean, it's been a long time since we
lived together, a long time you've been in hiding." He gave
her a quizzical look, almost sad but not quite because the
overhead lights were doing odd things to his features, elon-
gating them as if they were made of tallow. "What made
you change your mind?"

Koei automatically glanced around to see who was near
them. A lot of people, as it happened, but no one was paying
them the slightest attention.

Mick, emotions sliding like quicksilver, laughed. "You're
not nervous, are you?" He spread his hands. "I mean, why
should you be? Just because you were supposed to marry
me and didn't? You ran to Mikio Okami, if memory serves,
and he stashed you away someplace where I couldn't find
you." He put his arm out, strong and menacing as a prison's
steel bar, and she flinched. He saw that and it seemed to
please him. "I tried, you know-to find you, I mean. I used

every means at my disposal-I made a lot of people misera-
ble, crawling all over them for information. And what did I
get for my time and trouble? Not a fucking thing. You were
gone, vanished like a puff of smoke. That bastard Okami's
a real magician."

He moved closer to her, wedging her against the computer
screen, which kept prompting her to ask the next question.

"That's not strictly speaking true," he continued, enjoying
her increasing discomfort "I did get something for my time
and trouble. Humiliation. It got to a point where everyone
I went to knew how badly I wanted you back. I sweated
out. that search while behind my back they must have been,
laughing." His face darkened suddenly. "Laughing at me."

"I'm sorry."

"Bullshit." He shook his head, his eyes boring into her.
"You're not sorry. You did just what you pleased. You al-
ways did. You never cared about me, you never cared about
anyone but yourself." His face was twisted with rage. "No,
don't worry, I won't hurt you. But I pity the poor bastard
you're with now,"

He was gone before she could form a reply. Humiliated
and sick to her stomach, she turned her back on the crowd
inside the center and blindly scrolled through screens she
did not bother to read. She could feel hot tears forming and
she tried to force them back, but they dropped one by one
onto the keyboard. She wanted to run home, to tell Nicholas
what had happened, but she knew she must not. She remem-
bered all too well his reaction when she had told him that
Michael had fallen in love with her.

The computer beeped, and wiping away her tears, she saw
that she had reached the final screen. She had found the
perfect sake for Nicholas. Somehow, it seemed totally irrele-
vant now.

I've got to figure out why my life seems to be running in
parallel with Mick Leonforte's, Nicholas thought as he drove
crosstown toward the address Tento had given him for the
dominatrix Londa. He had been on stakeout, parked across
the street from the restaurant Pull Marine in Roppongi, on
the lookout for Mick. This was the place to which Nicholas
had come when he was following the, trail of the stolen

TransRim CyberNet data, and it was here, he felt certain,
he would eventually find Leonforte.

He felt as if Mick were a vast penumbra, a shadow mirror
image of himself where all the dark forces were held in
check. And this led to a truly chilling thought: Mick was the
very personification of the Kshira that was rising like a tide
inside him, that threatened with its increasingly powerful
seizures to strip him of his sanity. Because what was Kshira
but the coalescing of those dark forces, breaking the bonds
that had kept them in the prison of his mind. Every man
and woman walking the earth had these dark forces-evil
thoughts, selfish, avaricious, jealous, rage-filled. More often
than not they remained mere thoughts, passing through con-
sciousness like clouds momentarily obscuring the sunlight
But the sun returned; it always did. Except in those individu-
als for whom these dark thoughts became real, metamor-
phosing into deed. These were the people the police hunted
down like animals and shut away for the rest of their lives.
This was what Mick had become-was part of him truly a
reflection of what lay inside Nicholas?

A police siren's harsh on-and-off blare broke into his
thoughts, and glancing in his mirror, he saw a motorcycle
cop on his tail, lights flashing. Since he had been speeding,
Nicholas slowed slightly, trying to find a place to weave out
of the narrow lane between traffic and pull over. He found
one, finally, and headed right between two Toyotas. In that
moment, he glanced in the mirror to keep track of the cop
and, at this closer distance, saw the cop's face and recog-
nized it. It was Jochi, the hulking maitre d' at Pull Marine,
'the restaurant where Honniko worked. What was he doing
impersonating a cop?

Nicholas looked for and found a gap in the traffic, and
with a squeal of burning rubber and a cloud of blue exhaust,
he took the Kawasaki through a scarifyingly narrow gap
between vehicles, accelerating away from Jochi on his big
police motorcycle.

Slamming on his siren, Jochi took off in pursuit. Now
Nicholas would get a field test of all the modifications he'd
made on the big Kawasaki engine. As soon as Jochi got his
initial clearance through the traffic, he cut the siren. That

figured. His cop impersonation had been blown and he had
no wish to attract real cops by keeping his siren on.

Nicholas whipped by the south exit of Shinjuku Station
with Jochi on his tail. Nicholas kept the station to his left
for as long as he could, then, at the last instant, he ripped
across the divider, almost colliding head-on with a red Mit-
subishi. A blare of horns followed him as he bounded up
on the sidewalk, scattering pedestrians, then bouncing down
at street level, heading toward Shinjuku Gyoen, the park
filled with both Western- and Japanese-style gardens as well
as a now rather shabby pavilion in the Chinese style dating
back to 1927.

Risking a glance in his mirror, he saw Jochi right behind
him, with a brief shout of his siren, rounding the corner that
Nicholas had just so dangerously cut. Nicholas, grinning into
the quickening wind, accelerated into the park. Because of
the poor condition of the structures, it was a relatively de-
serted place, and the few .strollers had plenty of warning,
scrambling out of the way of the huge black Kawasaki and
its pursuing police cycle.

Nicholas went airborne, flying over a small, rock-strewn
pond filled with koi. He hit the other side, skidded briefly,
recovered, and was off, heading toward the pavilion that had
been built in honor of Emperor Hirohito's wedding. Jochi
made it safely across the pond, his cycle coming down with
a jarring thud and almost stalling out. In expert fashion,
Jochi used his booted left foot to right the cycle while he
swung it around, then, gunning it, set off after Nicholas.

The pavilion was coming up and Nicholas headed straight
for it. Seeing this bit of madness, Jochi slowed, swinging
wide of the course Nicholas was on.

When it seemed that a collision was inevitable, Nicholas
swerved so close to the corner of the pavilion he felt a chunk
of wood fly off, striking the top of his helmet and glancing
off. As it was, his head was swung hard around and pain
flared momentarily in his neck. He almost missed the work-
man's ramp, made out of bamboo sawhorses and banged-up
wooden planks. He rode along it, paralleling the side of the
pavilion, Jochi's silhouette disappearing behind the facade.

But he could hear the cop cycle's exhaust booming off
the building's facade. In a moment, the cycle appeared on

the other side of the pavilion, and Nicholas was obliged to
turn sharply left, off the planks, the wild spin of his wheels
making the boards and sawhorses fly apart like straw in the
grip of a twister.

Around the side of the French-style garden he went, with
Jochi almost on his flank. Into the street, with cars spinning
this way and that, more horns blaring, pedestrians scream-
ing, onto the wide staircase that led up to a huge granite-
slab plaza. He and Jochi raced across it. Ahead of them rose
the glittering spaceshiplike dome of the newly erected
Tokyo-kan, the gigantic underground mall, virtual-reality
center, and sports complex.

There were no doors, just a rectangular opening in the
dome made to look like a gaping mouth.

Into the mouth Nicholas zoorned, jumping the magnetic-
admission-card barrier, screeching down the ramp filled with
people running this way and that, scrambling for whatever
cover they could manage to find. Nicholas passed gymnasi-
ums for weight lifters, sumo, sprint track, and marathon con-
ditioning. Boutiques of all sizes and descriptions blurred
away behind him. He had modified the Kawasaki to be tre-
mendously responsive to even the most minute changes in
pressure on the accelerator and brakes. This made for a
supremely responsive machine that held him in good stead
as he zigzagged his way around terrified people and octago-
nal ferroconcrete columns set in a double line down the
length of the mall.

Nicholas was rocketing down the center, with the columns
streaming by on either side of him. And here came Jochi
on his big cop bike. Ahead was the long ramp up toward
the other entrance to the mall. At the far end were the
virtual-reality parlors on the left, the largest of the gymnasi-
ums on the right Up there, because of the layout of the
city, the mall ended at street level instead of being under-
ground as it was here.

Now Nicholas began to weave back and forth across the
width of the emptying mall, coming closer and closer to the
columns. He opened his tanjian eye and, for the first time,
summoned Kshira. The world tilted over, colors deepened
to the dark and fiery hues one saw in the heart of a furnace
that had been running for weeks on end.

He shot past a column, almost clipping its side as he
crossed to the side of the mall. Jochi, following him, almost
crashed and was forced to drop back the space of two car
lengths in order to keep his speed under control.

This is what Nicholas had been counting on. He took off
up the long ramp and, at the last instant, veered to the right,
banging open a set of doors. He found himself streaking
along the polished wooden floor of a huge gymnasium. Ath-
letes scattered, leaving their equipment and gym bags where
they lay. Dead ahead was a wall in which was an enormous
round window looking out on Shinjuku Central Park. The
oriel window was perhaps twenty feet off the floor.

Nicholas, in Kshira, shifted his weight back on the Kawa-
saki. Then, two-thirds of the way across the gym, he lifted
the front of the bike off the floor, kicked down hard on the
second accelerator he had installed himself, and the Kawa-
saki was launched upward.

Airborne, Nicholas leaned out over the front of the bike
as a ski jumper will over his skis. For an instant, he thought
he was not going to make it, that he was going to hurtle
headfirst into the ferroconcrete wall of the gym. Then the
trajectory of the bike trued and he hit the window square
on, the glass bursting upward as he broke through, the front
wheel, then the back, landing on a grassy knoll, slipping, the
bike almost skidding into a cypress tree, then the rear tire
gripping and, as he kicked down the accelerator, the Kawa-
saki speeding off through the park, into the busy street,
between the lines of traffic, far from Jochi, left in his dust
in the middle of the chaotic gym.

It was almost closing time at the Fuzoku Shiryokan, the
Shitamachi Museum, and with just twenty minutes left, al-
most everyone had left. One who remained was Mikio
Okami. He liked to come to this particular museum to rest
and to think because of its magnificent reproductions of Shi-
tamachi shops from centuries past. There was a tenement,
a merchant's counting house, and the shop in front of which
he was sitting that sold sweets called dagashi.

He had come from a meeting with Jo Hitomoto, the cur-
rent finance minister, who was one of the leading candidates
for the vacant prime minister's position, along with the right-

ist Kansai Mitsui, Tetsuo Akinaga's choice. They had met
in the Nakamise-dori, the shopping street within the pre-
cincts of the Senso-ji, the Asakusa Kannon Temple. Okami,
who had been saved from alcoholism by Colonel Linnear,
nevertheless had an addictive personality, and there was a
two-hundred-year-old shop in the Nakamise-dori that sold
dagashi, which he visited whenever he could. •

This was yet another reason, he reflected, why it was so
good to be back home in Tokyo. It astonished him how
much he missed it But his past resided here not unlike this
museum, a living treasury filled with glittering artifacts and
incidents that continued to exert their influence over time.

He now had. the interesting sensation of munching
thoughtfully on these sweets in the almost deserted Shita-
machi Museum while contemplating a painstakingly precise
replica of an ancient shop that specialized in dagashi.

He thought about Jo Hitomoto and whether he was, in
fact, the right man to take the reins of power. Better him
than Mitsui, with his dangerously fascistic reminders of the
war and the worst aspects of the Japanese worldview.

He thought about Nicholas Linnear and his long struggle
to understand his father, his fate, and his own complex per-
sonality. But mostly, he thought about his old friend Denis
Linnear. The Colonel had meant everything to him-friend,
confidant, mentor, enemy. It was curious and not a little
disturbing to realize that all these disparate facets could re-
side in one human being. But then the Colonel was a rather
exceptional specimen. He had seen the future of Japan, had
recognized its vast potential not only to itself but to the
West. To this end, he had used Okami, manipulating ele-
ments of the Yakuza into service, eliminating those who
stood in his way. He had, in the end, used the whole struc-
ture of Japan-bureaucracy, industry, and political parties-
to attain his goal

Though terribly moral, the Colonel could be a ruthless
man when circumstance dictated. Envious others thought his
morality mutable-that he manipulated it in the same clever
manner he manipulated everyone around him. True or false?
As with all things human, Okami reflected, it depended on-
your own point of view. Okami's point of view slid back
and force in the sands of time, but of course that was for

very personal reasons that he preferred not to examine.
When it came to family, there was a line no one ought to
cross. Colonel Linnear had done so, and even today, sitting
here in this timeless place, Okami could not find it in his
heart to forgive him.

"A museum is a fitting place for you, old man."

Another person had slipped onto the cool stone bench at
its far end.

"Look at you," Mick Leonforte said, "the mighty Kaisho
sitting here like an old homeless man eating sweets while
contemplating the world as it once was." He put one hand
briefly over his heart. "How touching." He pointed at the
paper bag of sweets. "That's how I was able to find you,
you know, I followed you here all the way from Asakusa.
That monstrous sweet tooth of yours. You might have been
better off with cirrhosis of the liver."

"I know you."

"Yes, you do." Mick put a forefinger up and tapped his
lips. "Now let me see, what were you thinking of, being
here, surrounded by the past?" He leaned toward Okami
suddenly. "It was him, wasn't it?"

"Him?"

"Colonel Linnear. Your pal." Mick could see Okami's
eyes take on a flat, dead look. "You were thinking about
what he did to you." Now Okami's body went rigid, as if
he had stared into Medusa's eyes and been turned to stone.
"Yes," Mick said in a conversational tone, "I know." He
slid closer on the bench. "What I want to know is how you
could have allowed it to happen. Oh, it's true, you may not
have known in the beginning. But afterward ..." He clicked
his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "What excuse
could you have had, I wonder, not to take action?"

"What do you want?" Okami asked in a tone as flat and
dead as his eyes. He still had not turned his head away from
the model of the sweetshop.

Mick sidled farther along the bench until his thigh was
almost touching Okami's. Then he leaned in and putting his
lips close to Okami's ear, whispered, "The truth."
Okami seemed to come alive. "The truth!" he scoffed. "It
seems to me you already know the truth-or the version of
it that best suits your needs. It seems to me that you make

your own truth. You chop the past up into such tiny, discrete
fragments that they no longer make sense. But that loss of
integrity is your very intent because you then very carefully
reassemble them in .your own image. What is it you call
yourself?"

"A deconstructionist."

"Fascistic nihilism is more like it. Destruction is your
stock-in-trade; the eradication of existing political and social
institutions in order to install your own."

Mick grinned. "It takes one to know one."

"What?"

"Isn't that what Colonel Linnear set out to do in 1947
with you as his trusty sidekick? Sure it is."

"What is a sidekick?"

Mick blew air between his teeth. "An aide-de-camp, a
flunky, a pal, depending on your point of view."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Mick snorted "Passive resistance isn't going to get you
anywhere with me, Kaisho. Colonel Linnear set put to re-
build Japan almost single-handedly in his imago. Can you
deny that?"

Okami stared mutely at the replica of the sweetshop, but
the taste of dagashi had turned bitter in his mouth.

"A more fascistic vision I cannot imagine." Mick took the
half-empty bag of sweets from Okami's hand, popped one
into his mouth. "So let's not be throwing stones too hastily."

"This is your special gift, is it not? To twist the truth until
day becomes night, good becomes evil, and morality slips
into a faceless limbo where it can no longer be recognized
or depended upon."

"Okay. Let's talk morality. Let me animate like ghosts
from then- graves the names Seizo and Mitsuba Yamauchi,
Yakuza who stood in the way of your schemes. Do you deny
planning their deaths? And what of Katsuodo Kozo, the
oyabun of the Yamauchi clan, who, in the summer of 1947,
was found floating facedown in the Sumida River. Did you
also not arrange his demise? Shall I go on? There are plenty
of others."

"I will not play the game of morality with loaded dice."

"You also have not answered my questions. But that's
okay, gramps. I didn't really think-you would. I know you're

guilty as charged, and since the dead cannot bear witness to
the crimes you have committed, I am prosecutor, jury, and
judge in this court of law."

"Law. What law?"

"The law of kiss my ass," Mick said as he placed the
muzzle of a square ceramic gun to the side of Okami's head.

"I know your type." Okami was breathing in through his
mouth, out through his nostrils, as if sitting so close to this
noxious being was fouling the very air he breathed. "What
you call morality is self-glorification. Whatever threatens you
is a threat to the world at large."

"Yes. I create honor, just as I create morality. It is the
common people, roaming the streets like dogs, who are the
liars. Not me."

"Of course not. You are among the chosen. Like the no-
bles who ruled Greece, the truth resides inside you. Isn't
that how you see it?"

Mick ground the ceramic muzzle into the flesh of Okami's

temple. "So many people would give their right leg to be in

the position I am in right now. All I have to do is pull

the trigger, and Boom! you're just another part of history.

My history."

"And this feeling of fulgence, of power endlessly flowing,
the bliss of high tension, is what you live for. It is, in effect,
your life's work, all that you are or can ever be."

Mick's cheeks expanded like the sides of a poisonous
blowfish. "Do you think quoting Nietzsche at me will save
you, Kaisho? Think again."

"Being so familiar with Nietzsche, you must know the
essence of the Viking saga of their chief god, Wotan, be-
cause you live by it: 'Whoever has not a hard heart when
young will never get it at all.'"

"How hard your heart must have been, old man, to have
killed when you were so young."

"I killed to avenge treachery, to destroy the enemies of
my father who conspired to have him murdered," Okami
said in a voice without inflection, "nothing more or less.
What I did I did out of filial duty."

"I was right," Mick exulted. "A hard man, indeed."

"Have you no place for compassion inside you?" Okami
whispered.

"Compassion, Kaisho?" Mick sneered. "You have not
been reading your Nietzsche carefully enough. Those whose
hearts have been hardened by Wotan are not made for com-
passion. Compassion is weakness, compassion is for the
lower man, the liar, the violated ones with a slave morality
who run like cowering dogs amid the garbage of the back
alleys; who equate power with danger, who see good versus
evil when neither exists. Compassion is for the good-natured
beast, the easily deceived, the little bit stupid, those over-
flowing with human kindness, always ready with a helping
hand-in short, those whose lot in life is to do the bidding
of people like me."

"How smug you are. How sure you are that you under-
stand the equation of universal principles."

"Why not?" Mick's face was arranged in a lopsided grin.
"The equation's simple enough."

"That's where you're wrong. It's far more complex than
you can ever know."

Mick leered at him. "But you know, old man, don't you?"

"I?" Okami seemed astonished. "I know as little of the
equation as anyone."

Mick made a face. "Confucian humility is really a pathetic
sight to behold. But beneath your good Confucian mask I
know what's in your heart."

"Of course you do. You know everything."

Mick squeezed the trigger of the ceramic gun. There was
a sound, no louder than a discreet fart. Mick caught Okami
before he could roll off the bench.

"Everything," Mick said as if he could stop the sands of
time and make the moment last forever.

Because of the incident with Jochi, Nicholas was forty
minutes late for his rendezvous with Okami. When he got
to the Shitamachi Museum, it had already closed and there
was no sign of Okami. Nicholas punched in Okami's address
on the CyberNet but got no response. He left a message for
Okami to contact him as soon as possible. Then he called the
Finance Ministry, but was told that JO Hitomoto, Okami's
candidate for prime minister, was out of the office and was
not expected back today. For the moment, that was as much

as Nicholas could do, and he reluctantly got back on his
Kawasaki and took off.

According to Tento, the owner of the S&M club A Bas,
the dominatrix Londa lived in Meguro, one of the low-lying
western districts lost in Tokyo's eternal haze. It was not far
from the fairy-tale castle facade of Meguro Club Sekitei, the
city's most famous and easily identified love hotel.

It took some time for Nicholas to get there for he was
obliged to stop several times as the Kshira he had sum-
moned raged through him, distorting his sense of sight and
touch even as it increased his perception in other, more
subtle ways. He saw, for instance, the entire grid of Tokyo
laid out beneath him, small as a postage stamp, intricate as
a wasp's wing. Within each district he could sense the pulse
of the city, the energy that pulled people from starting point
to destination, not the electrical power of the city but the
febrile network of psychic energy of so many people pressed
together like ants in a warren. He pulsed with the energy,
filled with a dark illumination, burning with Kshira's power.

At one of those stops, his Kami buzzed, and checking it,
he saw he had a communication from Kanda Torin. He ig-
nored it, in no mood for the young executive.

At last, with the Kshira burned from his system like
adrenaline, he turned down the rate of his metabolism. He
arrived at his destination and dismounted. Meguro was not
an upscale district, and the narrow street on which Londa
lived was not among the best of the area. Unlovely buildings
from the postwar era, when housing was being thrown up at
lightning speed, crammed the streets and dank back alleys,
huddled and forlorn, covered in a mantle of industrial soot
A group of Nihonin, bikers in black leather and shiny
chrome studs, stared at him as he pulled up in front of the
building, a crumbling, ramshackle structure that looked all
but condemned.

He found the super in his basement apartment It ap-
peared as if he had been asleep and he was thoroughly irri-
tated at being disturbed. He claimed to know nothing of a
woman named Londa who worked odd hours, mostly nights.
The more Nicholas tried to query him the more hostile he
became, peering at Nicholas in the low light

"Half-breed," he finally shouted, "I have nothing to say
to you!" And slammed the door in Nicholas's face.

Back out in the street, he found a couple of the Nihonin
standing around his Kawasaki, admiring it.

"Bitchin' bike," said one of the youths, a small but muscu-
lar Japanese with a nose ring, spiky hair the color of snow,
and jaded eyes. His practiced slouch approximated the shape
of a question mark. His leather jacket had the rising-sun flag
stitched across its back. He glanced sideways at Nicholas.
"Looks like you did some work here."

"Two months of it, off and on."

The Nihonin nodded sagely, pointing out the many tweaks
Nicholas had made to the bike. Finally, he squinted up at
Nicholas. "Name's Kawa. You find who you're lookin' for?"

"No." There was no use denying why he was here. He
stood out like an American at a sumo tournament. He
looked at Kawa, whose name meant skin. "You hang here
all the time?"

"Now and then," Kawa said noncommittally. That got a
chuckle from some of his companions.

"You know a woman named Londa? She might have
worked nights."

"Worked nights, hah!" Kawa sneered. "That pussy. Yeah,
she used to live here. Couple months ago, at least, she split.
For high-class digs, for sure."

"You know that?"

"Sure do."

"Know where she's living now?"

"Might." Kawa turned to his companions, who shrugged
or grinned evilly, waffling their hands from side to side. He
turned back to Nicholas. "You got one mean bike, brother."
He sucked his lower lip into his mouth, then stuck out his
tongue. It, too, was pierced by a ring. "Let's see if it's just
a toy or it's part of you. If you can ride with us, we'll take
you there, fair enough?"

Their gang name was WarPaint, which was important to
them because, as in all Nihonin, it drew them together into
a surrogate family. These were the scions of the bureaucrats
and businessmen who had forged Japan Inc. in the preceding
decades. Their progeny, bored, restless, rich, and so West-
ernized they'd rather eat a Bigu Maku than sushi, lived their

lives at the Hyperspeed of the interactive video games to
which they were addicted

The Nihonin took off in formation with Nicholas on point
so they could all see him. He knew what was expected of
him. They wanted no part of the establishment, and if he
proved a part of it, they'd peel off in a minute and leave
him stranded.

He took them through a series of tricky maneuvers, weav-
ing fearlessly in and out of traffic, jumping lights in a massed
thunder of rpms, speeding the wrong way down narrow
streets that left no margin for error. They liked the escalat-
ing danger well enough, but when he launched himself over
three car tops, onto a deserted stretch of sidewalk cracked
with neglect, he really made his bones with them. They fol-
lowed him eagerly, whooping it up, grinning from ear to ear,
pumped with excitement

He'd made their day and they were as good as their word,
delivering him, an hour later, to Sunshine City, a complex
of buildings in Ikebukuro. Sunshine City was built on the
site of the infamous Sugamo Prison, where virtually all of
Japan's most prominent war criminals had been held and,
in some cases, hanged. Besides apartments, the gigantic
block-long complex housed a hotel, museum, cultural center,
and a sixty-story office spire.

Kawa gave Nicholas the number of Londa's apartment.
Apparently, he had a grudge that, like an itch, needed to
be assuaged. "She used to use us as bodyguards sometimes,"
he told Nicholas. "But since she moved upscale, she wants
no part of us."

Nicholas thanked Kawa, and as they thundered off, he
saw Kawa turn around to stare at him. His snow-white hair
shone like a halo. Nicholas parked the Kawasaki, went into
the lobby of the building they'd indicated. There was a
locked inner door and, on one wall, a sea of buzzers, each
one marked with a letter and a number. No names. He
pressed the one for the apartment directly above Londa's.
No answer. He tried another and another without luck.

The outer door opened and an old lady with packages
entered. She was grateful when he held them while she in-
serted her key in the lock of the inner door and he pushed
it open. He gave her back her packages and she nodded.

I'm looking for Mrs. Okushimo," he said. "Do you know
her? She's in the twenty-nine."

The woman looked at him as he came through the door
but said nothing. He let her take the elevator alone, prefer-
ring the stairs. He reached Londa's floor without incident,
went down the anonymous-looking corridor. He could have
been in any large city in the world.

He stopped in front of the door to Londa's apartment and
rapped his knuckles hard and fast against it

It was a moment before he heard a muffled voice say,
"Who's there?"

He rapped again and the door opened.

Dark almond eyes and long black hair down to her but-
tocks. She was dressed in an informal kimono and was
barefoot.

"Jesus Christ." She stared at him with a stunned
expression.

She had good reason to do that. The woman who stood
framed in the doorway was Honniko.

She took off the long black hair-a wig-revealing her
short blond cut.

"I don't want to know how you found me here," she said,
"but you should not have come."

Her eyes said something different, however.

"Will you let me in?" he said, playing to the emotion she
so desperately wanted to keep hidden.

"I don't think that's such a hot idea."

But as at their first meeting, in the restaurant Pull Marine,
she saw that he would not go.

She nodded mutely and stepped aside. He found himself
in a bright two-bedroom apartment with typically low ceil-
ings and small rooms. It was sparsely but expensively fur-
nished with lacquer and cypress-wood sofa, easy chairs,
dining table and chairs. There were no paintings, but a silver
crucifix hung from a chain on the wall, and a small marble
statue of the Virgin Mary was in one of the bookcases. The
floors were a light, cool green granite, the walls stuccoed
the color of pale bronze, behind a succession of bookcases
filled with volumes of all sizes and descriptions. In short, it

didn't look like the home of a dominatrix-or of a maître
d', for that matter.

Honniko, hipsprung, arms folded across her breasts, re-
garded Nicholas with a slightly ironic smile. This was a
woman of the shadows, used to keeping her inner thoughts
and emotions tightly wrapped-perhaps once forced to do
so.

"I see it written all over your face. You don't approve of
what I do. Well, get lost! I'm not the poor little lost girl you
thought I was back in Roppongi, someone you could feel
sorry for. You forced yourself into my world, and now that
you're in it, you don't like it, you're full of contempt and
loathing for what I do, for what I am."

She said all of this in a breathless rush as she backed up
until she was pressed hard against the wall holding the cruci-
fix. While still facing him, she had got as far away from him
as the room would permit.

"An interesting theory, but that's not at all what I think.
Is it what you think?"

"What?"

"About yourself." He moved after her, across the room.
"Maybe it's you who feels contempt and self-loathing. Do
you hate yourself, Honniko? Or should I call you Londa?"

"Either." She turned her head away. "It doesn't matter."

"Oh, doesn't it?" He studied her with some curiosity.
"Somewhere beneath all that cynical armor beats the heart
of one woman."

"Stop it."

"One woman with a keen mind, unique insights, a
worldview, likes and dislikes-"

"Stop it, I said!" she shouted.

He stopped in front of her. "Measure and pain. Dreams and
so many, many fears she has erected an entire city of facades,
personalities, and masks to protect herself. Who are you, do you
even really know?"

"You bastard!" she cried. Then, reaching out, she literally
pulled herself from the wall by grabbing onto him. Behind
her, the crucifix jangled on its chain. She pressed her lips
hard against his, her lips trembling, softening as they
opened, as her hot tongue sought his. She seemed to melt
against him, into him.

Then, abruptly, she hurled herself away, crashing back-
ward, books flying as she fell, then scrambling up, staring at
him as if he were a vision of her own private hell come to
terrifying life.

"Ah, God, what am I doing? I care about you. I made an
oath never to care for a man. I promised myself-"

Nicholas felt something from her mind, a quicksilver cur-
rent purling the surface of her consciousness. "Do you have
someone here? A customer, perhaps?" He strode to the
door to the bedroom, opened it, and saw standing there a
slender Caucasian woman with deep sea-green eyes. They
were the kind of eyes in which you could see whole worlds
appear and disappear in a heartbeat, intelligent, cool, kind,
and something more-something in contrast, almost at odds,
with the deeply ingrained empathy. She looked to be in her
forties and possessed the kind of beauty one dreamt about
if one were very lucky, but had no chance of finding. It was
the beauty of a sort so fragile and febrile one could almost
say it did not belong to this world.

She was dressed in a simple black suit and was clutching
a black leather handbag. She smiled sweetly and he felt an
immediate aura of serenity and determination. This was
definitely not a client.

"Hello," she said, holding out her hand. He took it. "My
name's Sister Marie Rose."

"Nicholas Linnear." Her hand was firm and dry and
slightly callused, and he could feel her physical strength as
well as her psychic mettle.

She gave him a little nod, another little smile as she
slipped her hand from his. Now he could see the delicate
gold chain around her neck on the end of which was a hand-
carved crucifix.

"Do I know you?" Nicholas asked.

Sister Marie Rose answered him with her sea-green gaze.

"Marie Rose-" It was Honniko.

"It's okay, Honniko-san," Sister Marie Rose said in per-
fect idiomatic Japanese. "My presence here cannot remain
a secret forever. I must get on with my work."

"And what work is that?" Nicholas asked.

"God's work."

As Sister Marie Rose brushed past him as she went into

the living room, he smelled the faint perfume of roses. Did
nuns wear perfume?

"Marie Rose is mother superior of the Convent of the
Sacred Heart of Santa Maria," Honniko said. "In Astoria,
Queens."

"A long way from home, Mother," he said, "aren't we?"

"Mr. Linnear, I am the head of the Order of Donà di
Piave," Marie Rose said in a matter-of-fact voice. "Have
you heard of it?"

"Should I?"

"Perhaps not." Some flicker passed through her eyes. "I
thought the Colonel might have mentioned it to you before
he died."

"My father?" Nicholas shook his head. "No, he didn't."

Marie Rose smiled. "You were right, Honniko-san. I see
it now, the resemblance. You look very much like your fa-
ther, Mr. Linnear. That long, handsome face, the dark,
brooding eyes, but your body is so different from his."

"How would either of you know what my father looked
like?"

"From my mother," Honniko said. "She knew Colonel
Linnear from the toruko."

"The soapland in Roppongi. From Tenki."

"Yes."

"Then that wasn't a lie you told at lunch. There really
was a toruko?"

"Tenki. Oh, yes."

"I keep hearing that name. What is the significance of
Tenki? It's the name of the toruko where your mother
worked as well as what Michael Leonforte calls his shell
corporation. That's no coincidence. What's his involvement
with this toruko?"

The world canted over, the colors running like spilled
paint, and he was sinking down through the crust of the
earth into its molten core. Kshira turned the apartment in-
side out, inverted Nicholas's consciousness. He heard Mick
Leonforte's voice: I am the future. I am progress, efficiency,
safety in one's own kind. I am for God and country and the
family; I am evangelical; I forbid abortion and foreigners and
indiscriminate immigration. I am the new Fascism unfurled.
You are wrapped in my banner of war. You and I are locked

in a circle that's slowly closing its circumference. Soon we
will occupy the same space. But we cannot occupy the same
space. What will happen then? I know. Do you?

His eyes snapped open. He was lying on the floor of Hon-
niko's apartment amid a welter of strewn books. Honniko's
face, white and stricken, stared down at him. She had been
crying, her cheeks were streaked with dried tears. Above
her stood the regal figure of Marie Rose, regarding him with
her serene sea-green gaze.

"When you fell, I thought you were dead," Honniko said.
He felt the flat of her hand on his chest. "Then I felt your
heart beating strongly, but so slowly!"

"Honniko-"

Sister Marie Rose put her hand on Honniko's shoulder.
"You know your duty," she said as Honniko rocked slowly
back and forth as if trying to calm herself. -

"Duty?" Nicholas echoed. He was still partially stunned
by the onset of Kshira. It had been far stronger this time,
perhaps because he had deliberately summoned it not long
ago. "What duty?"

Those sea-green eyes floated in his vision. "Honniko is a
member of the Order of Donà di Piave, Mr. Linnear, just
as her mother was before her. Her duty is to God and to
the purpose of the order."

"The order was here, in Japan, in my father's day?"

"Yes." Marie Rose smiled. "He met my predecessor,
Bernice."

"I don't understand."

"I know," Marie Rose said in her kindest voice. "But in a
moment you will. Honniko will tell you. everything. About
Tenki About what happened in the toruko. About your father
and how their lives became irrevocably entwined." Marie Rose
knelt and took his hand in hers. "But first I must ask you for
a leap of faith. I must ask you to trust me, even though we
have only just now met and you cannot know me."

This close to her he could feel her aura, strong as iron,
hot as the sun, but there was a cool undercurrent-no, cold,
cold as ice, cold as death. She was in mortal fear of some-
thing. What?

"I trust you, Mother."

"Yes." Her grip tightened on him. "You do." She nodded.

"Then look into my eyes, Mr. Linnear, and tell me who
you see."

It was an odd question but he did as she asked. Suddenly,
he remembered his own question to her: Do I know you?
And the silent reply he had seen in her eyes. No, he didn't
know her, not really, but the resemblance... A door opened
in his mind and someone stepped through.

Sister Marie Rose saw shocked recognition forming in his
eyes and she nodded. "Yes, with your extraordinary psychic
powers you've intuited it, haven't you? You see the family
resemblance.

"I took the name Marie Rose when I was ordained, but
the name I was born with was Jaqui. I am Michael Leon-
forte's sister."

The Toruko

Borrowed armor, old,

getting fitted to my body-

oh, it's cold!

-Buson

"Tokyo

Autumn 1949

In Col. Denis Linnear's estimation the toruko was the per-
fect candidate to become his house of secrets. An anony-
mous-looking building in Roppongi-Tokyo's burgeoning
new pleasure district for foreigners-this Japanese take on
a Turkish bath was a place for sex, pure and simple. As
such, it was already a harbor for the darkest secrets. In
Colonel Linnear's estimation, there was nothing like the sex
act to engender secrets. No other human occupation caused
the body to be so free and vulnerable-or the soul to be so
mortgaged by its secret whims. Fantasy, perversion, pecca-
dillo, infantilism, shameful memory-all took flight during
sex even as they took flight from an act as revealing as a
hot and blinding klieg light.

In such a dark and overheated atmosphere, the secrets
Colonel Linnear and Mikio Okami bore were as easily hid-
den as bullion in a vault.

Not that their secrets had anything to do with sex; at least
not in the beginning.

The woman who ran this toruko-which was aptly named
Tenki, a profound secret-was named Eiko Shima. She was
a handsome woman, small and compact, with a deceptively
slow pace. At times, the Colonel felt as if she were not quite

following what he was saying, but he soon found out she
was almost always way ahead of him.

Okami had his people check her out. She was from Osaka,
where many women did the work and the men did nothing
but take their wife's surname in the Shinto marriage cere-
mony. She was a shrewd businesswoman as well as a keen
observer of the human condition. While other toruko were
systematically being taken over by the Yakuza, she refused
to acquiesce. She had met the underworld's blandishments
and threats by besting them at their own game, blackmailing
them with abuses so egregious even the SCAP government
could not afford to look the other way.

So, with plenty of other less thorny pickings, the Yakuza
stayed away, which suited Colonel Linnear just fine. Of late,
the Colonel's enemies within G-2 had been given to surveil-
ling his known haunts, and Tenki with connections to
his world, was an ideal place to rendezvous and hold clan-
destine meetings.

Eiko provided the Colonel and Okami with a suite of
small rooms at the back of Tenki, and they retired there
immediately. They had much to discuss. In February of 1947,
they had become aware of a black market ring of alarming
proportions. In those days black market rings were sprouting
like wheat in a Kansas field, but this one was different. It
was larger, more well-organized-and it had been run by an
American who had somehow made an alliance with ? Ya-
kuza oyabun. This man was U.S. Army Captain Jonathan
Leonard. Some diligent digging on Okami's part, however,
unearthed the man's real name: Johnny Leonforte, Leon-
forte was working for someone named Leon Waxman, but
despite exhaustive investigating neither the Colonel nor
Okami could unearth anyone with that name.

When Okami had met Johnny Leonforte the following
April, he'd also come in contact with his girlfriend. This
woman, whose name was Faith Sawhill, was ostensibly a
nurse in the U.S. Army. Okami had killed Leonforte in a
violent confrontation only to discover that it was Faith who
was managing the operation. She had asked him to go into
partnership with her and he had agreed. According to
Okami, Faith knew nothing about a man named Leon Wax-
man, and at last the Colonel was forced to conclude that

the name was just that-a nonentity floated by Johnny
Leonforte to take any investigative heat off him.

Soon after, Okami had discovered that Katsuodo Kozo,
the oyabun of the Yamauchi clan, had been clandestinely
backing the Leonforte ring. He had done this through sev-
eral supposedly disenfranchised under-oyabun, using their
kobun-street soldiers-so no known member of the Ya-
mauchi could be connected with Leonforte. Over the sum-
mer, the Colonel and Okami had agreed to do away with
Katsuodo Kozo, and not long after, the oyabun had been
discovered floating facedown in the Sumida River.

Almost immediately, the ring itself had been thrust into
the background, because Okami discovered that Faith's real
role was as part of a pipeline back to the United States that
was funneling secret intelligence on military personnel from
Maj. Gen. Charles Willoughby's office. Willoughby, a thorn
in the Colonel's side until he had been forced aside several
months ago, was the head of G-2, the Army's intelligence
operation in the Occupation. Willoughby was a well-known
fascist with powerful friends in Washington; his former adju-
tant Jack Donnough-the man Okami had discovered was
leaking the intelligence to Faith-had stepped up in rank
and office following a disaster that caused Willoughby's
transfer. This disaster-the incineration of the group of war
criminals Willoughby was training to spy for G-2-had been
engineered by Mikio Okami.

Faith's people had a safe house that Okami had been to
once-though Faith had warned him never to return there.
It was in an industrial district that ran along the Sumida
River, a private residence wedged between two windowless
warehouses.

Okami remembered the extraordinary town house with its
vaulted ceilings, crystal chandeliers, antique furniture, and
floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with fascinating volumes on
warfare, histories, and most prominently, philosophical texts.
Whose iconoclastic tastes did it reflect? Why did Faith con-
sider it a dangerous place for him to be seen? And whom
did Faith ultimately report to?

These were questions Okami posed to the Colonel in
the toruko.

Colonel Linnear, with his uncanny ability to ferret out the

truth, had already made significant headway. One of the
reasons he had picked Eiko's toruko, he now informed
Okami, was that it serviced Donnough's unsavory sexual
proclivities. The major was a pedophile. He liked little girls,
but his preference was for prepubescent boys.

Donnough was handsome in a wispy way. With his wind-
blown sandy hair, high forehead, green eyes, and intense
thin-lipped mouth, the Colonel could imagine him com-
manding a yacht heading into Newport harbor. He looked
as if he came from money, but that didn't make him a push-
over. He was tough as nails-and as political an animal
as the Army ever got. He'd outlasted his predecessor,
Charles Willoughby.

He took it calmly enough when the Colonel showed him
the packet of photos of him in the steamy sexual embrace
of a number of obviously young Japanese boys.

"I tike this one especially," Donnough said, holding one
up. "Could you possibly make me a blowup?"

The Colonel, who knew the measure of things, watched
as Donnough carefully pushed the photos back in their enve-
lope and dropped them on the floor at his feet. "Is there a
fire anywhere where I can stuff these?" Then he gave a little
shudder and turned his sunny-cheeked face toward where
the Colonel stood, silent as a cat "What is it you want?"

The Colonel loaded his pipe, and when he had gotten it
going to his satisfaction, said, "What a man does in private
is his business, Major Donnough. But everything in life must
be paid for and not always in the most obvious way." He
let out a cloud of aromatic smoke. "I'm not here to judge
you or to drum you out of the service. No, yours is to be a
subtler form of payment for your pleasures."

Donnough gave the kind of wry smile only a miser would
make. "I hesitate to ask, but could you give me an
example?"

The Colonel thought a moment. Then he took the pipe
out of his mouth and said, "This stream of information on
G-2 activities-backgrounds on the Army's own men-
where is it going?"

"You know an Army nurse named Faith Sawhill?"
The Colonel sighed, came and sat next to Donnough.

"This debriefing can be easy-or difficult-it's totally in
your hands."

Donnough kicked the packet of photos across the room
as if he could make them disappear in the baseboard. At
last he said, "You ever hear of Sen. Jacklyn McCabe? . . .
No, I didn't think so. Well, up until late 'forty-seven he was
a captain in the Army, served well in the war. Then he went
home to Minnesota and, as a self-promoted war hero and
Republican candidate, beat the pants off the incumbent
Democrat senator."

Donnough looked longingly at the smoke the Colonel was
blowing. "McCabe’s wasted no time making quite a name
for himself on Capitol Hill. He's become a self-appointed
defender of the American people against, as he calls it, 'the
insidious and pervasive threat of Communism.' He's a lime-
light hog and the Hill is a perfect forum for him. He makes
speeches almost nonstop, all on the same theme." Don-
nough sat back and, with nothing to do with his arms, folded
them across his chest. "What I think he's doing is compiling
dossiers on everyone he can get his hands on. What he's
going to do with them is anyone's guess."

"Give me yours."

Donnough gave him a quick glance, then shrugged. "I
haven't thought about it too much, but if I had to guess, I'd
say he's contemplating a witch-hunt at home-a purge of
everyone with even a hint of leftist leanings. Personally, I
don't think that would be a bad thing."

The Colonel thought about this for some time. "Is this
how Faith bought you? The pipeline's going straight to Sen-
ator McCabe?"

"I have my views but I'm no ideologue. No, the truth is
more mundane, I'm afraid. I like all the good things in life a
serviceman's salary can't buy. Faith bought me with money."
Donnough crossed one leg over the other. "You know, I'm
dying for a smoke."

The Colonel went out of the room, came back a moment
later with a pack of Chesterfields and a gunmetal Zippo
lighter. Donnough took them gratefully, ripped open the
packet, and tapped out a cigarette. He seemed calmer light-
ing up, as if his orderly mind had processed the disastrous

situation in which he found himself and had made its peace 
with it

"Do you know who Faith Sawhill is delivering the intelli-
gence to?" the Colonel asked abruptly.

"No, but it's not directly to McCabe. He doesn't know
she exists." He exhaled in a long, drawn-out hiss. "McCabe
doesn't talk to women in that way. He's a man's man, if
you know what I mean. Women have their place but that's
it. He'd never listen to what one had to say for advice, that
I can tell you."

The Colonel remained silent. He had learned interroga-
tion techniques from the best in the business when he had
been stationed in Singapore during the war. Silence was an
underappreciated weapon in the interrogator's arsenal. So
was a feeling of empathy engendered in the person being
interrogated.

Donnough took a flake of tobacco off his lower lip, then
took a deep drag. "Who does she report to?" Smoke purled
out of his nostrils. "At first I thought it was this Mafia capo,
Caesare Leonforte, legendary sort. He's the patron-got two
sons, Alphonse and John. He and this capo, oh, what is his
colorful name?"-he snapped his fingers a couple of times-
"Black Paul Mattaccino, that's it Both capos want to be
connected to the increasingly powerful fascist contingent in
Washington." He took another drag. "I may be right that
Faith reports to Caesare Leonforte. But, if so, there's some-
one else, someone Leonforte knows nothing about."

"You think Faith Sawhill is a double agent?"

"Oh, not in the sense you and I would think. I mean,
she's not working secretly for the Communists or anything.
But I get the impression that she doesn't like the Leon-
fortes."

"She Was living with one. Did you know Captain Leonard
is really Johnny Leonforte, Caesare's kid?"

"Is that so?" Donnough stared at the lit end of his ciga-
rette. "Now that is interesting." He kept doggedly at his
cigarette, dragging the smoke deep into his lungs. "But, you
know, living and loving are two separate things. She
might've hated John Leonforte's guts, for all we know."

We, that was a good sign in any interrogation. It meant

the person being interrogated had made the crucial leap
from me vs. them, to us vs. them.

"True," the Colonel said. "I know next to nothing about
her. Maybe I should talk to her."

"Good luck to you, then. This one is like no woman I
ever met. She's hard as iron and twice as wicked. She knows
her own mind." He stubbed out his butt, got another ciga-
rette going right away. "I get the distinct impression Faith
Sawhill has her whole life planned out."

The Colonel changed tack for a moment and asked Don-
nough if he knew anything about the house wedged between
two warehouses down by the Sumida. Donnough did not.
He didn't tell Donnough that Okami had been inside or that
it was a safe house for Faith but not, apparently, for Okami.
That was the most curious point. But if Donnough was right
about Faith working for Caesare Leonforte and someone
else, it would make sense she'd have a safe house that was
insecure for Okami.

The Colonel rose. "That' s it for now."

Donnough looked up at him. "You mean I'm free to go?"

"You bet."

Donnough got to his feet slowly. Almost reluctantly, his
gaze slid toward the packet of photos on the floor.

"Take them if you want. I have others."

Donnough gave the Colonel that abstemious smile as he
crossed to the door. "I don't think so. I have my memories,
after all."

The Colonel waited until Donnough was almost out the
door. "Oh, Major." He hesitated, turned back. "I would
appreciate you doing your best to find out who owns that
town house in the warehouse district."

Donnough's green eyes kept being drawn back to the
packet of photos. He nodded and left.

Late that evening, Okami confirmed much of the Mafia
background Donnough had given him. Okami, obsessed with
the similarities between omertà-the Sicilian code of loyalty
and silence-and the Yakuza code of fealty, had made the
study of the Italian and American Mafia his hobby. According
to Okami, there was an intense and bitter rivalry between the
Leonfortes and the Mattaccinos, and the forum for their strug-

gle was, increasingly, Washington, D.C. Both desperately
wanted to extend their reach into a government in flux and
therefore vulnerable to infiltration, bribes, and extortion. Sen.
Jacklyn McCabe, the newest rising star, was the ultimate prize.

"I want you to go after Faith Sawhill," the Colonel said.

"In what way?" Okami asked.

"Jack Donnough thinks she's a double, working for the
Leonfortes and someone else. Who?"

"Black Paul Mattaccino?"

The Colonel nodded. "Maybe."

Okami looked out the window of the toruko. "It's a fanci-,
ful idea, but one we're not likely to be able to pursue
with Faith."

"Why not?"

"Ever since I killed Johnny Leonforte and she and I took
over the network, she's kept me at arm's length. I've tried
every way I know to discover what she's really up to."
Okami turned back to look at the Colonel. "She's as closed
up as a clam, and since Johnny's dead, she's as solitary as
a nun. At least, I think so. Although I speak with her at
least twice a week, I haven't see her in close to ten months."

"Where the hell is she? Sicily?"

"I have no idea. And all the inquiries I've made have led
me nowhere."

"Keep at it. There must be some chink in this mysterious
woman's armor."

Okami said in the best Confucian tradition, "I will do
my best."

But two weeks later, Okami was no closer to unearthing
Faith's secrets. The Colonel was staring out at the gray sky-
line of Tokyo, which, daily, was changing as drastically as
the view through a kaleidoscope. His rooms at the toruko
had become a kind of home away from home, as if the
influence of his enemies had put him under siege. He had
been thinking of Faith Sawhill's mysterious safe house down
by the warehouses and who might own it, when it occurred
to him that he ought to take a look at the place himself. As
he went down the corridor, he passed the room where Eiko
worked-filling the ledgers with her neat calligraphy, keep-
ing track of the comings and goings of her girls-when she

wasn't performing less mundane functions with the clients
themselves.

"Colonel-san," she said, mangling the els in his title.

He poked his head inside. Eiko's smile was half-hidden
behind the wide sleeve of her kimono. "I am about to have
tea. Would you join me?"

Eiko had never before asked either the Colonel or Okami
to tea, and curious as he was about the safe house, this
invitation was so unusual he did not think he could afford
to pass it up.

He bowed formally. "Thank you, Eiko-san."

She cleared papers off the table she was using as a desk.
She possessed the tension of a coiled spring deep inside her.
Was that from ambition or from having to fend off male
business rivals, including the Yakuza? The Colonel did not
yet know. "You work day, night, time doesn't matter to you.
When do you ever have time for your wife, Cheong, or your
son, Nicholas-when do you have time to rest?" She slid a
tray onto the table, set about boiling water in a kettle she
placed atop the hibachi set into the tatami of the floor. She
had strong, slender hands and a neck like a swan. Her nar-
row face gave her a patrician's look. The Colonel could
imagine her as the strong-willed wife of a powerful
daimyo-warlord-in feudal times.

"There is much to do and too little time to do it in, I'm
afraid."

"Spoken like a true Englishman," she said as she deftly
distributed macha, the finest and most expensive of the
green teas, into two cups. This interested the Colonel.
Mocha was normally prepared only for the tea ceremony or
for important meetings, when the server wanted to impress
his or her guest-or when there were matters of conse-
quence to discuss.

Eiko averted her eyes and ducked her head. "I hope I
haven't offended you. In many ways you are very Japanese."

He bowed. "Thank you, but I hardly deserve such praise.
And, no, you haven't offended me. My soul is still at least
a little British."

"But your heart is Japanese, neh?" She poured the boiling
water into the cups, whisked the tea into a pale and delicate
froth. She held out a cup and he took it in both hands. She

waited until he had taken his first sip before touching her
own cup.

- The silence lengthened. Eiko stared into her tea as if ob-
serving an entire universe there. She asked a series of polite
questions about Cheong, Nicholas, and the Colonel's garden,
which she knew he loved but hardly had any time to appreci-
ate. They finished the pot of tea and she made another. The
thing was, the Colonel knew, to be patient. Whatever it was
Eiko wished to speak to him about would eventually be
made clear to him.

At last -she said, "I am not totally unaware of your work
here, Colonel-san." She shrugged. "I make no special effort
to eavesdrop, but one cannot help noticing the parade of
people you and Okami-san bring in here for meetings and,
er, other occasions." She paused and he waited. "Personally,
I applaud your efforts on behalf of my country. I am pleased
that I can, in some small and insignificant way, contribute."

Eiko poured more tea. Now she placed between them a
selection of pastel-colored sweets made of soybean paste
carved into the shape of maple leaves. The Colonel bit into
one, took some tea. The confluence of concentrated sweet
and intense bitter made for a pleasing whole. So, too, the
Japanese believed, in life.

"I have a certain client," Eiko said. "I work on him my-
self-he likes me above any of my girls."

The Colonel cocked an ear. Eiko made it a strict rule
never to speak of her clients, so the fact that she was break-
ing that rule now was of great significance.

She seemed abruptly unsure of how to proceed, "Some-
thing about this client disturbs you, Eiko-san?"

She nodded. "Yes. That is it precisely." She extended her
forefinger and touched one cheek. "He has scars."

"From the war. He's a veteran, cut by shrapnel, perhaps."

"No. I have seen such wounds. They have a particular
look. Plus, the stitching is not of the finest quality in field
hospitals." She shook her head again. "No, these scars are
perfect, and they are almost evenly placed. Plus the skin
between them-it has an ever so slightly different color."
She took her finger from her cheek and held it up. "I have
seen such scars before on a female acquaintance who
thought she was ugly."

"Are you saying this client has had plastic surgery?"

"Hai."

"I take it this man is Caucasian. American?"

"Hai."

The Colonel looked at her. Why would she think someone
who had had plastic surgery would be worth mentioning
to him?

"But not just plastic surgery," Eiko continued. "It appears
as if he has had his entire face remade. Bones have been
broken and realigned, cartilage removed and transferred."
Her fingernail tapped a staccato tattoo on the tabletop. "For
instance, his cheeks have been built up, along with the ridge
of his forehead. His nose has had a great deal of work-
more than one operation. And the skin around his eyes has
been tucked to give the eyes themselves a somewhat differ-
ent shape."

"Sounds to me as if he's got something to hide."

"Yes."

The Colonel inclined his head. "Do you know what it is?"

"He asked me if I could find him a man he has been
looking for. He had discovered that I am connected, that I
have many friends. He offered to pay me a great deal of
money if I found this man for him."

"Who does he want you to dig up?"

At last, Eiko's eyes met his and he could see a trace of
anxiety there. "Okami-san."

The Colonel wanted to laugh. "Many people want to
speak with Okami-san."

"This man does not want to speak with the oyabun. He'
wants to kill him."

The Colonel cocked his head. "Kill him? Did he tell
you that?"

"Of course not. But I could see it in his eyes when he
made his request. His hatred for Okami-san was naked as a
newborn baby."

The Colonel nodded. "All right, I'll look into it. Does this
client have a name?"

"Leon Waxman."

The first thing the Colonel did was swear Eiko to absolute
secrecy. He wanted no one-least of all Okami-to know

that a Leon Waxman, a man with extensive facial recon-
struction, had suddenly surfaced two years after Johnny
Leonfofte had floated the name around.

In 1947 the Colonel had harbored the suspicion that Leon
Waxman had been nothing more than a fiction. But if that
was so, who was this flesh-and-blood Leon Waxman?

The Colonel asked Eiko to find out from her friend where
she had had her plastic surgery done and started there. Dur-
ing the following two weeks, the Colonel visited every clinic
and surgeon specializing in plastic surgery, without luck.
There weren't that many, and he was beginning to toy with
the notion that Leon Waxman might have had the surgery
performed outside Tokyo-improbable as that seemed,
given the capital's superior facilities-when he met a second
time with a surgeon named Hiigata.

Then' first interview had been terminated prematurely
when the doctor was informed one of his new patients had
begun to hemorrhage in recovery. Five days later, he agreed
to meet with the Colonel again.

He was a small, intense man with iron-gray hair and a
narrow, almost cadaverous face. "I've been thinking about
your problem," he said as they sat in his small, cramped
office. Books and skulls loomed on almost every shelf, on
every horizonal surface. "You've been making the rounds
of plastic surgeons because you're apparently under the im-
pression that this man-what's his name?"

"Leon Waxman."

"Yes, Waxman. You're assuming that his surgery was vol-
untary." Hazy sunlight filtered through a small window that
desperately needed cleaning a year ago and now seemed to
be growing a lab experiment on its outer side. "Well, what
if it wasn't?"

The Colonel sat forward. "What do you mean?"

Dr. Hiigata steepled his fingers. "Just this. If he had been
in some kind of accident-a serious car crash or a nasty fall
down a flight of stairs, for instance-he might have required
extensive neural surgery as well as bone, cartilage, and skin
reconstruction. Tell me, Colonel, have you tried the Hospital
for Neural Surgery attached to Todai University?"

Another week went by before Dr. Ingawa, the doctor the

Colonel had been referred to by Dr. Hiigata, was available.
He was chief surgeon for the Hospital for Neural Surgery.

"Leon Waxman? Yes, he was a patient here for upwards
of, oh, ten months, I should think." Dr. Ingawa consulted
his records. "Yes. Just over, actually."

The Colonel's heart turned over. "When was he
discharged?"

"Last year." Dr. Ingawa looked up and smiled politely.
"At cherry-blossom viewing time."

That would be mid-April of 1948. That meant he would
have been admitted a little less than a year before: May
1947.

His pulse pounding in his temples, the Colonel said,
"Would you by any chance have photos of Mr. Waxman
before his surgery?"

"Naturally," Dr. Ingawa said, shutting the file with a de-
fensive snap. "But they are confidential." He was a large
man for a Japanese, thin as a rail, with large, bony hands
on which all the joints were visible. He wore small, round
glasses, which unfortunately emphasized his small, perma-
nently pursed lips and pinched nose. His ears stuck out from
his head, making them look like butterfly wings pinned to a
lepidopterist's board. He exuded the professor's rather
musty air of chalk dust and academic debate. In every glance
and gesture he exhibited a sense of existing on a loftier
plane than those around him.

"This is official business of the United States armed
forces," the Colonel said in his most pleasant voice. "Mr.
Waxman is wanted for questioning concerning a series of
felonies including trafficking in contraband and murder in
the second degree. Please don't force me to return with the
military police."

Academic infighting at the university had apparently
honed Dr. Ingawa's political skills. He knew when he was
defeated. Even so, he hesitated just that fraction in order to
let the Colonel know that this was still his territory and he
was handing over confidential material of his own free will
and not on the command of the U.S. Army. It was a way
to save face and the Colonel let him salvage what he could
from the confrontation. He waited patiently for the folder.

Only when Dr. Ingawa placed it on his desk and slid it

across to the center did the Colonel say, "Thank you for
your cooperation, Doctor." He waited just that moment ber
fore reaching out for the folder, preserving his own face.

Then, placing it on his lap, he opened the cover and his
blood ran cold. He found himself looking at the face of
Johnny Leonforte-the supposedly late and unlamented
Johnny Leonforte.

"When he was brought in here he was a mess. Frankly, I
didn't think we'd be able to save him. He was-"

"Excuse me, Doctor, who brought him in?"

"I'm not sure." Dr. Ingawa hummed to himself as he
thought back. "I think she said she was a nun."

"A nun?" That was curious. "Japanese?"

"No, American." Dr. Ingawa nodded. "I remember be-
cause of her eyes. They were a magnificent color. A kind of
electric blue. Extraordinary, really."

"Did she give you her name?"

Dr. Ingawa shrugged. "She might have but I don't
remember."

"You mean no one wrote it down?"

Dr. Ingawa cocked his head and in his most supercilious
tone said, "My dear Colonel, the man she brought in was
our only concern. He was near death; he'd lost a great deal
of blood and his wounds were both grave and extensive. I
don't know what kind of disaster befell him, but it must
have been excruciating. My team and I were concentrated
wholly on the patient." His thin shoulders lifted tad fell.
"By the time I came out of surgery for the first time, she
was long gone."

"And she never returned-or rang you to ask about Mr.
Waxman's condition?"

"Not to my knowledge. No one ever inquired about Mr.
Waxman. And to be perfectly honest I think that was how
Mr. Waxman wanted it."

The Colonel was finished going through the file. "What
makes you say that, Doctor?"

"Oh, nothing concrete. But from observing the patient-
well, despite the fact that he had violent nightmares almost
every night, he refused to speak to the psychologist I recom-
mended see him. He was rather rude to the man, as I recall."
Dr. Ingawa paused. "Then there was the fact that he never

made any calls-even when he was on the mend and mobile
again. He made no friends among the patients or staff. In
fact, he spoke to almost no one save for me and a couple
of the nurses-and only then when it was necessary. Yes, on
reflection, he seemed to be a man very much on his own."

"Isolated?"

"Why, yes. Very deliberately so."

The Colonel thought for a moment. "He had extensive
reconstruction on his face."

"Yes." Dr. Ingawa nodded. "There isn't a part of it, in
fact, that remains from his previous face." He said this with
an unpleasant smugness, as if Waxman were a prized cre-
ation of his, which, the Colonel supposed, was not too far
off the mark.

"You said his injuries were both grave and extensive."

"Correct."

"Is this why you redid his face so completely?"

"Why, no. I repaired his injuries during that first surgery.
It took us, oh, fourteen hours or so because of the delicate
nature of the neural work. The three subsequent operations
to give him a new face were entirely at Mr. Waxman's
request."

"There's another thing," Eiko said one night not long
after. "Waxman's making friends here."

The Colonel, who had been filling his. pipe, paused. "You
mean among the clients?"

"Yes."

He knew what that meant. Tenki had become a kind of
clandestine crossroads, attending to the various sexual needs
of the who's who of the American Occupation staff. Not
just military men, either, but the flood of technicians, econo-
mists, politicos, and businessmen who were, weekly, being
flown in to assist in Japan's economic reconstruction. On
any given night, a tenth of the top men in Washington were
here. The Colonel had seen most of them.

"This is his real reason for being here," he mused.

Eiko nodded. "From what I have observed, I would
think so."

She had brought him food-sushi from the all-night place
down the street. It stayed open to service her clients, who,

invariably, were famished when they exited Tenki. He ate
less than he wanted, leaving a third of the raw fish and
pressed rice so that she might eat as well. Eiko would never
have bought enough for herself.

"Who, exactly, has he been making contact with?"

"I have made a list." Drawing a folded sheet of paper
from the wide sleeve, of her kimono, she handed it to him.

As he opened it, he said in his most offhanded manner,
"I've eaten my fill, Eiko-san."

"I apologize. I bought .too much."

The Colonel tried not to frown. "I'd consider it a favor if
you would finish it."

"Oh, thank you, Colonel-san, but I am not hungry.
Really."

He got his pipe going, then read the list of names she had
recorded in her neat vertical calligraphy. "He's going after
the cream of the crop," he observed. "What do you suppose
he wants with them?"

"Contacts," Eiko said promptly. "I think he's going into
business for himself."

But what kind of business? the Colonel thought. He
looked up. "You've done well, Eiko-san. I'd like you to
keep a record of Leon Waxman's comings and goings. When
the time comes, I want to know when I can find him with
you."

She took the tray of sushi and was about to leave when he
said, "Oh, and Eiko-san, there is this woman, Faith Sawhill.
Supposedly, she's a captain-a nurse-in the U.S. Army.
But Okami-san and I have reason to believe that she is also
something else. He hasn't even seen her for ten months,
though she's been in contact. Would you use your contacts
to see what you can find out about her?"

"It would be my pleasure, Colonel-san."

Later, when he was at last ready to go home, the Colonel
went silently down the corridor. Outside Eiko's room, he
paused for a moment. Aware of movement inside, he
changed his position slightly so he had an angle of sight into
the room. He saw Eiko at her table, bent over, eating the
leftover sushi. Her look of sheer delight brought a smile to
his face.

 

*     *     *

 

The next day, Maj. Jack Donnough asked to see him after
working hours. They met at Tenki while the lights of Tokyo
were being lit with the coming of night.

"I've discovered who owns that odd town house in the
warehouse district," Donnough said without preamble. He
stood in front of the Colonel's desk, fidgeting, so filled with
excitement he could not sit down. "You won't believe this,
but it's Sen. Jacklyn McCabe."

"McCabe? What the hell is he doing with property in Tokyo?
Especially one that's being used as a Mafia safe house?"

Donnough shrugged. "It was a shocker, I can tell you."

The Colonel's brows knit together. "You're certain of
this?"

"Absolutely. My source is unimpeachable."

"Christ." The Colonel stood, looking out the window at
nothing in particular. His brain was racing a mile a minute,
trying to figure the angles. But nothing made sense. Unless
... Donnough had said that the Leonfortes and the Mattac-
cinos were both hell-bent to make liaisons with the fascists
in Washington. Was it possible that one of them was already
in bed with Capitol Hill's chief fascist?

An hour after Donnough departed, Okami came in. By
the look of him he'd had no luck tracking down Faith
Sawhill. The Colonel, who had been batting around an odd
coincidence, said to Okami, "I've never seen Faith. What
color eyes does she have?"

"Blue," Okami said, and went out to get washed up.

Now that was interesting, the Colonel thought. It was a
long shot, but these days, long shots were all that were avail-
able to him. He had been thinking of his interview with
Dr. Ingawa, the neural surgeon who had worked on Leon
Waxman's face. He'd said Waxman had been brought in by
someone claiming to be a nun. Dr. Ingawa remembered
nothing else about her except for her extraordinary blue
eyes. Okami had referred to Faith Sawhill as living like a
nun after Johnny Leonforte ostensibly died. She had blue
eyes. Coincidence, or had she been the one to bring her
lover to the hospital? Did she really hate Leonforte, as Don-
nough believed, or did she love him and was now protecting
his new identity?

 

*    *    *

 

Three nights later, the Colonel went looking for Eiko. She
was not in her room so he concluded she must be working
on a client. He went to her table to write her a note to
come see him as soon as she had a moment. He sat down
and went through the stacks of paper, looking for a clean
sheet on which to write. As he lifted up a partial stack on
the right-hand side of the table, he saw something metallic
gleaming. He put the papers aside and stared at it. It was a
silver crucifix on a slender chain. Was Eiko Catholic? He'd
never known it, and she had given no indication that she
was anything but Buddhist. She had spoken to him several
times of the misogi, the Shinto rite of purification by water
that she periodically attended. Also, she was so traditionally
Japanese in her dress and demeanor that he could not imag-
ine that she was a convert to a Western religion. But if, in
fact, she was Catholic, why was she hiding the fact?

He was about to replace the stack of papers when he
heard her voice from the doorway.

"Colonel-san?"

He put the papers down. "Ah, Eiko-san, I was just about
to write you a note."

She came into the room. "You wish to see me?"

"Indeed I do."

She gave a quick glance toward the still-visible crucifix.
"So now you know my secret."

The Colonel stood up. "I've never considered religion a
secret, Eiko-san."

She looked at him shrewdly. From this angle, her narrow
face with its dark eyes, framed by her black hair, made her
seem like a clever crow. "You are half-Jewish, Colonel-san,
yet you go to considerable lengths to keep that part of your-
self hidden."

The Colonel did not care to speculate on how she had
discovered this bit of intelligence about his background.
Even Okami did not know. "There are reasons, Eiko-san.
Jews are considered different by many people. There is
widespread discrimination, though many would deny its
existence; no doubt there would be unpleasant repercus-
sions were my Jewish heritage to become common
knowledge."

"Well, you needn't worry about me being indiscreet. We

all have our secrets." Eiko went to a chair and sat down,
crossing her legs in classic Western style. The Colonel could
not have been more shocked had she opened her kimono
and showed him a penis between her legs. She switched to
her very fine English. "You see, Colonel, I, too, belong to
an order that is persecuted as savagely and consistently as
the Jews."

He frowned. "Catholics? I don't think-"

"I am speaking of women."

There was dead silence in the room. Now and again, he
could hear through the walls the soft hiss of traffic from the
street nearby, and then a soft and sexual groan wafted down
the hallway like incense.

At last, the Colonel sat down. "Could you explain this,
Eiko-san?"

With her forearms on the thigh crossed over her left leg,
she bent slightly forward. "I have some information on your
Faith Sawhill. The reason Okami-san has not seen her in
close to ten months is that she is no longer in Japan."

"Where did she go, back to the States?"

"Yes. Before leaving she'd been staying down in the ware-
house district."

The Colonel's insides went cold as everything started to
coalesce. "In a town house wedged between two ware-
houses?"

Eiko nodded. If she was surprised by his question, she did
not show it.

"I need to find out what's going on," he said, almost to
himself. "I've got to get into that town house."

Eiko's dark eyes flicked up at his. "Would now be a con-
venient time?"

It had a door of stainless steel, that was first thing the
Colonel noticed. It looked like a regular wooden door, but
when Eiko used the knocker, the sound told the Colonel
the truth.

The truth. This was why he was here now, at the town
house Faith had taken Okami to but had told him was too
dangerous to come back to. Who was waiting for him inside?
Faith? Caesare Leonforte? Sen. Jacklyn McCabe? Even-
most wildly-Leon Waxman-Johnny Leonforte?

The door swung open.

A young woman of no more than twenty, whom Eiko
introduced as Anako, led them through a lovely oval vesti-
bule dominated by a wide staircase up to the second floor,
and down a corridor beautifully paneled in cherrywood and
into a magnificent library. Everything about this interior was
exquisite and spoke of barrels of money. As was true of the
door, the homely exterior of the town house belied what
was inside.        '

The library was made spacious by its eighteen-foot vaulted
ceiling from which hung an Austrian crystal chandelier.
Floor-to-ceiling mahogany shelves held thousands of vol-
umes of books. An estate-sized Persian carpet of lush ruby,
sapphire, and emerald tones was spread across the floor on
which was scattered leather furniture: a brace of facing sofas,
a pair of chairs with matching ottomans, several green-
shaded lamps. In one corner an exceptional French secretary
of gleaming pearwood stood like an exhibit in a museum.
A small but ornate ormolu clock on a bronze-and-glass cof-
fee table chimed the hour and then began to tick away the
seconds toward another. Thick, dark green velvet curtains
hung where he knew no windows could be.

He turned to Eiko. "What is this place?"

"It's a home away from home," a rich contralto voice
said, "an oasis for strangers in a strange land."

The Colonel turned around to see a tall, stately woman
with rosy cheeks, chestnut hair, and the most extraordinary
eyes he had ever seen. Dr. Ingawa had been right: they were
a shade that could only be described as electric blue. She
stepped forward and the black skirts of her habit rustled.
She extended a hand, and when the Colonel took it, he
found it dry and hard and powerful. An odd kind of heat
passed through him and he blinked.

The nun was smiling. "Welcome to our manor house, Col-
onel Linnear. My name is Bernice. I am in charge of the
Convent of the Sacred Heart of Santa Maria."

"You," he stumbled, almost at a loss for words. "You
saved Johnny Leonforte's life."

Bernice continued to grip his hand and smile like the sun
in August "All in good time, Colonel. All in good time."
She turned to Eiko. "You were right about him, Sister."

Eiko bowed her head. "Thank you, Bernice." She said
this in wholly Western style, and the Colonel had cause to
remember what she had said to him: I, too, belong to an
order that is persecuted as savagely and consistently as the
Jews.

Turning back to him, Bernice said, "So, Colonel Linnear,
what is your opinion of me?"

Still connected to her by her strong grip, he said the first
thing that came into his mind. "I think you are the most
beautiful warrior I have ever met."

Bernice laughed then and said, "By the sword of Dona
di Piave, I think I am going to like you, Colonel Linnear!"

She indicated one of the high-backed leather chairs.
"Please make yourself comfortable." She took a seat on the
chair that accompanied the French secretary. She sat,
perched on the edge like a wren poised to take flight, her
back ramrod-straight, her white, long-fingered hands folded
in her lap. She had the fingernails, the Colonel saw, of a
field-worker. Whatever else this nun might be, he decided,
she was not an administrator. In chess terms, she was more
the knight or the bishop; the one who spearheaded the
attacks.

"Colonel, may I offer you anything? Tea? Coffee?
Brandy?"

He opted for tea and she joined him. Eiko disappeared
and short moments thereafter Anako arrived with a chased-
silver tea service. Tea was done English style, down to the
thin rounds of fresh lemon, whole milk, fresh-baked scones,
and clotted cream, all presumably on his account. It was an
astonishing, unexpected treat and he set about enjoying
himself.

At last, sated and content, he sat back. "Sister, I am in
need of explanations,"

Her eyes darted his way, quick as a bird's, and she spread
her hands. "How can I help?"

"What are you doing here in a house being used as a
Mafia safe house and which is owned by Sen. Jacklyn
McCabe?"         >

"An excellent question, Colonel," came a booming bari-
tone voice. The Colonel shifted in his seat just enough to
get a look at the figure standing in the doorway to the li-

brary. He was a good deal over six feet. A broad-shouldered
man in a beautiful chalk-stripe suit that made the Colonel
long momentarily for civilian life. He wore a crisp white
shirt, a cravat at his throat. Gleaming black handmade
brogues were on his feet.

"And one I intend to answer."

He had a dark olive complexion, curling, thick black hair,
and a thin mustache. His eyes were alive and dancing, as
if he found life the most delicious and intoxicating game
imaginable. He was good-looking, in his early thirties with
sharp cheeks, a strong jaw, and a wide forehead. He looked
both intelligent and formidable.

He strode toward them with the carriage of a man who
had seen the world and had rightly recognized it as his
oyster. "The simple truth is that we are in bed with the
devil."

He gave a wide smile that encompassed Bernice as well
as the Colonel. "I don't mean the Devil with a capital D,
though Bernice here might not agree." He stopped in front
of the chased-silver tray, dipped his pinky in the clotted
cream, and putting it between his rather sensual lips, sucked
it off. With unaffected nonchalance he transformed a rather
rude act into a perfectly natural one. Natural for him. Here
was a true force of nature, and this fact was not lost on
the Colonel.

The man took out a linen handkerchief and wiped his
hand. "I mean a devil as in an evil man." He sat abruptly
on an ottoman, pulled it to a spot midway between them.
"That's what this man, Sen. Jacklyn McCabe is. He's a righ-
teous sonuvabitch-sorry, Bernice-sure what he's doing is
good work, and that makes him all the more dangerous."

"God puts blinders on fanatics," Bernice said, "and that's
a fact."

The man shot out a hand, and when the Colonel took it,
pumped it enthusiastically. "Name's Paul Mattaccino. But
everyone calls me Black Paul"-he laughed delightedly,
pulling on his cheek-"on account of this dark skin of mine.
Moors, maybe, from Africa, coming through Agrigento, who
knows that far back in history."

"You're digressing, Paul," Bernice said softly. "The Colo-
nel is a busy man."

"Sure he is!" Black Paul boomed. "I know that" He gave
the Colonel a wink. "Reason he's here now is 'cause he's
such a high-muck-a-muck."

"Paul ... ," "Bernice said in the tone a nanny uses to
curtail the more egregious activities of an obstreperous
charge.

"Okay, okay." Black Paul sighed, knowing it was time to
get down to business. "I've been using a network my family
established over here to get close with McCabe. He, in turn,
has gotten me tight with a lotta the big shots in D.C. To do
that, though, I had to pay a high price. My network's been
feeding him the dish on everyone in SCAP command
through me."

"Senator McCabe is compiling dossiers on everyone high
up in the military," Bernice said. "He's recently confided in
Paul that through the military personnel he now has under
his thumb, he is beginning to compile the same kind of dos-
siers on State Department personnel."

"Damned braggart," Black Paul barked.

The Colonel looked at Bernice, but she seemed unper-
turbed by the capo's blasphemous remark. An odd kind of
nun, he thought.

"McCabe has had his uses," Black Paul continued.
"Through him I'm in with the people who count in running
the nation. That's jake with me, far as it goes. But now I've
been hearing rumors that McCabe's thinking of asking for
congressional hearings on un-Americanism in the govern-
ment. If it's true, that's nasty business and I want no part
of it."

"You already are," the Colonel pointed out.

"Perhaps we have been guilty of a kind of overzealous-
ness," Bernice said.

There's an understatement, the Colonel thought. "Which
brings me to another point. What are you doing in bed with
the Mafia?"

"Hey, bud," Black Paul said, "you'll damn well be re-
spectful to the sister when you speak to her."

"Paul, hush now," Bernice admonished.

"I meant no disrespect," the Colonel said. "But, from
where I sit, this is as ... bizarre an alliance as I could
imagine."

Bernice smiled. "Perhaps unholy was a word that came
to mind."

The Colonel matched her smile. "It did occur to me."

"Hey, hey." Black Paul jabbed a forefinger threateningly.
"I'll have you know my family goes way back with the Order
of Donà di Piave." He leaned forward, putting creases in
his magnificent suit. "The Mattaccinos have ties, Colonel."
He clasped his hands tight together in front of his face. "Ties
you can't even imagine."

"People like, the Mattaccinos have their uses, Colonel."
Bernice spread her hands. "We are an order of women-
and women have all the limitations of gender working
against them. We have been persecuted in one form or an-
other down through the centuries." Her electric blue eyes
would not let his go, and the Colonel found himself wonder-
ing whether she knew of his Jewish heritage. "God in His
infinite wisdom gave Donà di Piave a mandate that has sur-
vived the centuries. We do God's work in the manner He
chooses for us." She smiled "Where we are weak, He pro-
vides strength."

"Which is, presumably, where the Mattaccinos come in.
Are you telling me God wants you to befriend gangsters-
mafiosi?"

"All are God's children, Colonel," Bernice said. "Would
you turn from those who sin? All are in need of redemption.
Because of our influence, they contribute to the Church, to
the neighborhood in which they live. They keep many peo-
ple safe from harm."

"And prey on just as many others."

"I told you!" Black Paul exploded. He jumped up. "I
don't hafta hear this kinda-" He bit his lip to choke off the
expletive. "This was a goddamned mistake an' I knew it!"

Bernice kept her eyes on the Colonel and remained calm.
When Black Paul had run out of blasphemies, she said,
"Who among us are not sinners, Colonel? Will you throw
the first stone?"

The Colonel, chastened, said nothing. Bernice was right
How could he, a man who had broken laws, murdered, even,
in the name of his overriding vision-who had gotten in bed
with the Yakuza-how could he take the moral high ground
with these people?

"What is it you want?" he said at length.

Black Paul stared down at him, then switched his gaze to
Bernice. Clearly, he was amazed.

"We need your help to reverse course. We've gotten what
we wanted from Senator McCabe. But now, with the in-
creasing risk of his radical anticommunist witch-hunts, he's
become a threat," Bernice said with astonishing pragmatism.

Bending over between them, Black Paul made a fist "It's
time to crush him inna ground."

"And you want me to help you?" the Colonel asked.

"McCabe is scheduled to arrive here in Tokyo the begin-
ning of next week," Bernice said.

"Excellent," the Colonel said, rising, "I'll take out my gun
and shoot him dead."

"Madonna!" Black Paul clapped the heel of his hand
against his forehead. "Whatta we need this jamoke for,
Bernice?"          .

She turned her gaze on him for a moment. "Because we
can't do it without him. Neither you nor I can be seen any-
where near Senator McCabe."

"Devil or no," the Colonel said, "I won't be a party to
his murder."

"What murder?" Black Paul's hands whirled like der-
vishes. "Who said anything 'bout murder?"

The Colonel rounded on him. " 'It's time to crush him
into the ground,' you said."

"Yeah, but-"

"Sit down, both of you."

The men sat at Bernice's command.

"Colonel," she said in her deep, calming voice, "we need
to find a way to neutralize Senator McCabe, nothing more.
We want to strip him of his influence, not kill him."

The Colonel thought about this a long time. He dug out
his pipe and spent precious moments filling it, lighting it,
and getting it going to his satisfaction. At last, he said, "It
may be possible. For a price."

"Money's no object," Black Paul interjected.

"Oh, don't be ridiculous, Paul," Bernice said. "The Colo-
nel is a highly pragmatic man. I'm certain money will play
no part in our bargain."

"Yeah?" Black Paul said uncertainly. "Then what?"

The Colonel looked at both, of them. "First, I want to
speak with Faith-"

"No!" Black Jack shouted. "Absofuckin'lutely not! I will
not have it! Faith's outta this discussion!"

The Colonel turned to Bernice.

"The fact is Paul's right. Faith is no longer here. She has
returned to the States."

"She could verify everything," the Colonel said.

"Y'see?" Black Paul's hands spun like windmills. "The
bastard doesn't believe a word of what we've told 'im. He's
like every outsider I came in contact with." He turned to
the Colonel, outraged. "You have her word. She's a fuckin'
nun, for chrissake!"

"That will be quite enough, Paul!"

Black Paul turned away, stalked on stiff legs to the cur-
tains, and stood staring at them.

"Colonel, I'm afraid this point is nonnegotiable," Bernice
said firmly. "Faith is gone, you'll have to accept that."

"You know what you're asking me to get involved in,
Sister. Is this so different from murder? You're asking me
to take Senator McCabe's life away from him. Without his
career, with his reputation ruined, he may put a gun to his
head."

"The bettah for alla us," Black Paul said from across the
room. "The maniac's a devil. Take it from me, I've broken
bread with the sonuvabitch an' almost choked on it."

Bernice and the Colonel ignored the outburst.

"You know what McCabe could do to America if he gets
his way," Bernice said. "Rip it right apart. Friends, families,
reputations, careers, all ruined. Tens, hundreds. And for
what?"

"Speculation is not enough," the Colonel said. "What it
boils down to is you want me to clean up the mess you had
a hand in making."

Bernice shook her head. "That's not it at all." Then she
half-turned her head and in a louder voice said, "Eiko-san."

Eiko came in. She was carrying a buff-colored folder and
she would not meet the Colonel's eyes. She handed the
folder to Bernice and hurried out the way people flee the
site of a catastrophe.

Bernice silently handed over the folder. The Colonel took
it and it seemed to bum his hands.

"Whatta you doing?" Black Paul said, coming back from
his exile- at the curtains. "I thought we agreed-"

Bernice held up her hand and now her creamy contralto
had a steely note to it. "He deserves to know."

The Colonel, filled with trepidation, opened the folder. It
was his G-2 file, all familiar stuff, and he relaxed. Then he
got to the end. Two pages had been added as a confidential
addendum. They were on plain paper but bore the official
G-2 seal. With mounting horror, the Colonel read details of
his partnership with Mikio Okami. He turned to the second
page. OF JEWISH HERITAGE. There was no point in
going on. The words stuck out on the page as if they had
been written in fire instead of on an Army typewriter. Lines
from Shakespeare's Richard III came into his mind: Murder,
stern murder in the direct degree, All several sins, all used in
each degree, Throng to the bar, crying all, "Guilty! Guilty!"

"That is the G-2 office copy," Bernice said softly. "A
duplicate was passed on, through Paul, to Senator McCabe."
The Colonel looked up to meet her steady gaze. "You know
what will happen, don't you, Colonel? Jew. McCabe will
brand you a Communist conspirator simply because several
well-known Jews were known to sympathize with the Soviet
Union. And you're a British national, to boot, serving in
SCAP. That fact alone has made you powerful enemies in
Washington. These people would dance a jig around your
funeral pyre." Bernice took the file from him. "Now the
threat of careers, reputations ruined does not seem so re-
mote, does it, Colonel? It has hit home in the most per-
sonal way."

The Colonel cleared his throat. "What about G-2? Has
intelligence seen this file?"

"Not since it was updated." Bernice slipped out the last
two pages and held them up. "Shall we?"

The Colonel nodded numbly. He took up a heavy silver
lighter, put it to the lower corner of the papers. Flames
flared, eating the evidence. My conscience hath a thousand
several tongue, And every tongue brings in a several tale, And
every tale condemns me for a villain. Richard III was so

right, the Colonel thought as he watched Bernice drop the
gray ash onto the chased-silver tea tray.

Bernice crossed herself. "The deed is done. Now what are
we going to do about it?"

Maj. Jack Donnough was in a jovial mood when he en-
tered the Colonel's rooms at the back of the toruko. "You'll
never guess who's going to be G-2's special guest come next
week. It's classified, so when I tell you-"

He gave a squawk like a chicken about to get its neck
wrung. His eyes bulged, sensing his dire fate as the Colonel
hurled him against the back wall. His head slammed back
painfully, his teeth rattled, and he saw stars. Before he knew
what was happening, the Colonel had kicked over a chair
and had jammed him onto it He squeezed his eyes shut,
hoping to make this nightmare go away, but a hard metallic
click made his eyes snap open.

"Wha-?"

Then the barrel of his own service revolver was filling his
mouth. Its taste and length made him gag. Christ, he wanted
to say. Christ on the cross!

"Now I am going to count to three," the Colonel said
with his face close to Donnough's, "and then I am going to
splatter your brains all over the wall. Is that clear enough
for you, Donnough?" The major froze, as if this extreme
lack of motion might somehow save him. "Then I am going
to place this gun in your hand and I will spread those photos
of you all around and put in a call to the MPs. Let them
make of it what they will."

Donnough began to retch.

"Go ahead, do it." The Colonel ground the muzzle of
the revolver into Donnough's palate. "You'll choke on your
own vomit."

Donnough caught himself, tried to stop retching.

"You did it to me, didn't you, Donnough? What made
you take such a desperate chance? Did you think I wouldn't
get a look at how you doctored my G-2 -file? Fascist
bastard."           _v

Abruptly, he withdrew the pistol, slapped the major so
hard across the face he flew off the chair. Huddled in a

corner, his head down, he drew his knees up to his chest
and began to cry.

The Colonel, disgusted by this breakdown, dragged the
chair over and sat down on it backward. With his forearms
loosely draped over the chairback he peered down at Don-
nough. "Well? I'm waiting, Major."

Donnough sniffled, wiped his running nose on his sleeve.
"I-I was scared. I didn't know what else to do. I had to
try to save myself."

"That's it?"

He nodded dumbly.

Why not? the Colonel thought. The mundane answers
were most often the truth.

"All right, listen up," the Colonel said briskly. "I know
Senator McCabe is coming into town the beginning of next
week under an intelligence blackout. I also know some of
his peculiar sexual proclivities." He paused a beat. "I also
know about you, Donnough." When the major's head came
up and his bloodshot eyes met the Colonel's, he said, "You
and McCabe were an item when he was in service, weren't
you? That's how you know so much about him." Another
tidbit provided by McCabe's former partners. One thing you
had to say about them, they were filled with bits of useful
information.

The Colonel stood and, wheeling the chair away, grabbed
the front of Donnough's uniform blouse and hauled him
upright. The major's mouth was rank with terror. "Now
you're going to do exactly what I tell you." He lifted the
pistol so that Donnough's head shied away. "And let me
tell you, if you fuck up in any way, I will put this into your
mouth and pull the trigger. Is that clear?"

Donnough, still half-stunned, nodded.

"And one other thing," the Colonel said. "My G-2 file
has been replaced without those addenda you wrote. If you
attempt to alter it again-"

"I-I won't. I swear."

"So sorry, but the plumbing in my usual room is under
repair," Eiko said to Leon Waxman when he arrived at the
toruko. "We will have to use another."

Waxman shrugged. He was thinking about what deal he

could consummate after he got hosed down by the Jap
broad.

Eiko led him to the rear of the building. As they passed
by the Colonel's office, Waxman heard a voice. "I don't give
a good goddamn what you think is best. I'm handling this."
Silence. The man was obviously on the phone. Johnny
slowed his pace. "That's right," the Colonel said. "Now you
bloody well listen to me, Mr. Mattaccino-"

"Oh, shit!" Waxman softly hit the side of his head, and
Eiko turned around. "I left the lights on in my car," He
gave her a smile that made his scars burn white. "I tell you
what, honey. You go on ahead and get everything ready and
I'll be right along."

"Hai." Eiko pointed out the room to him, then gave him
a little bow and trotted off down the hall.

Waxman turned and took a couple of steps back down
the hall. But when he heard the door to the room slide
shut, he went back to stand outside the Colonel's rooms to
overhear more of the conversation with that lying sonuva-
bitch Black Paul Mattaccino.

''Mr. Mattaccino, you're sorely trying my patience        Is

that so? ... I don't take kindly to threats like that.... See
here, I'll have you picked up and- Hello? Hello?" Sound
of the receiver slamming onto its pips. "Sodding hell!"

Johnny Leonforte had heard enough. A sly, secret smile
broadened his mouth. He knocked on the door, and when
a voice muttered, "Come in," he did just that.

The Colonel looked up. "Can I help you? I think you've
come to the wrong place."

"Nah, I don't think so." Johnny hooked an ankle around
a chair leg, brought it under him, and sank into it.

"And you are?"

A limey, Johnny thought. And a colonel to boot. "Leon
Waxman." He did not extend a hand, remembering vaguely
how formal limeys were.

"Col. Denis Linnear." The Colonel gave him a curt nod
and, closing a file in which he had been writing, slipped it
into the top left-hand drawer of a desk. He slid it firmly
shut, then clasped his hands across the desktop. "How may
I be of help, Mr. Waxman?"

"I think you got it the wrong way around," Johnny said
with a little grin.

The Colonel's eyebrows shot up. "Is that so?"

"Yeah. I hear you got problems with a man named Black
Paul Mattaccino."

"Never heard of him."

"Yeah, well, I have. Fact is, I know the bastard inside
out. Bettah maybe than his own mama."

"That's all very interesting but-"

At that moment, Eiko burst in, breathless and sweating.
"Colonel-san," she cried, "please come quick. A fight be-
tween two clients. One is bleeding and the other-"

"Excuse me, Mr. Waxman, I'll be right back," the Colonel
said, leaping up. In two strides he was out of the room.
Johnny could hear the two of them racing down the hall.

"That's'all right," he said to the empty room, "take your
time." Then he got up and, after taking a peek at the empty
hallway, sat down behind the Colonel's desk. He slid open
the top left-hand drawer and took out the file in which the
Colonel had been writing. It had a top secret G-2 stamp.
American military intelligence, Johnny thought. He opened
it, found the plans to bring Sen. Jacklyn McCabe to Tokyo
early the next week. In the left-hand margin was handwrit-
ten in hurried script: Donnough bringing McC here 2300 hrs, tues. Use
rm 7. Make sure security airtight.

Johnny's heart was hammering hard in his chest. Senator
McCabe was going to be here at Tenki. Johnny knew every-
thing: date, time, place. He knew this was the break of a
lifetime. Neither his father nor his brother Alphonse had
been able to get to see McCabe. Now he had his chance.
The Leonforte family had a great deal to offer the senator,
and McCabe was nothing if not a pragmatic man. Johnny
glanced up. Thank you, Colonel Linnear, he thought. Then,
as he heard voices in the hall, he closed the file, shoved it
into the drawer, and slid it shut. He got up and was just
settling himself in the chair across the desk when the Colo-
nel came in.

"You still here?" The Colonel, clearly annoyed, sat down
behind his desk and began making hurried notes.

"Trouble?" Johnny asked nonchalantly.

"Nothing I can't handle."

"Take it from me, it won't be so easy with Black Paul
Mattaccino."

The Colonel's eyes flicked up. "I told you, I don't know
the man."

"Yeah, right."

"Listen, Mr...."

"Waxman."

"Mr. Waxman, we're wasting each other's time here."

Johnny put up his palms and rose. "Okay. Maybe you're
right." He flashed the Colonel a brief smile. "See you
around."

That Tuesday night, the Colonel was nervous. So much
was riding on a plan that was as fragile as it was audacious.
So many vectors heading toward one nexus point, so many
variables, so much to go wrong.

"Fragile," Eiko said, turning the word over in her mouth
as the Colonel voiced his fears. Then she shook her head.
"I don't think so. It's all a matter of human nature, isn't it?
And that's the surest thing in the world." She flashed him
a smile. "Don't worry, Colonel-san. What is the worst that
can happen?"

"McCabe gets away scot-free and crucifies me for being
a Communist-loving Jew and Okami finds out I'm hid-
ing Johnny Leonforte from him." He looked at her over
his pipe. "Two greater personal catastrophes I cannot
imagine."

"Well, at least now you have it in perspective," Eiko said
quietly, and in her tone and the look on her face the Colonel
knew that she was proud to be involved in what he was
doing. This gave him the flash of added confidence he
needed.

"Thank you, Eiko-san."

Her eyes lowered before his gaze. "I have done nothing,
Colonel-san."

He put the flat of his hands on his desk and stood up.
"Either way this goes, Eiko-san, I'm going to take you out
tonight for the best sushi you've aver had."

She said nothing, which, for her, was as good as
acceptance.

 

 

*    *    *

 

At precisely 2300 hours-eleven p.m. civilian time-Don-
nough brought Jacklyn McCabe to Tenki. McCabe was a
heavyset, balding man with a slab of a forehead, heavy jowls,
blue with-permanent stubble, and a thick roll of fat above
the collar of his shirt. He smelled of cologne and sweat and
he glowered at the world with equal amounts of distrust and
hostility from out of piggish eyes set too close together.

But he had an undeniable force of personality and a sono-
rous speaking voice that could make the phone book inter-
esting, and that, apparently, was what mattered most.

McCabe took a look around the operation as if he were
a field commander inspecting the troops. The Colonel could
almost see him licking his chops.

"We sure can't get this kind of service at home," McCabe
said to Donnough. "The most I can expect is to poke a bull
when no one's looking." He roared with laughter.

At last, he was introduced to Eiko. "You got any boys in
this rattrap? I mean real fine upstanding youths." McCabe
guffawed again, enjoying himself immensely. Perhaps the
freedom of the toruko after the intensive round of high-level
meetings at SCAP HQ made him feel giddy.

"All first-rate," Eiko said in her best imitation of pidgin
English. "All up-up-"

"Upstanding!" McCabe roared, making a lewd gesture
with one loosely held fist. And when she nodded vigorously
and led him to room seven, he turned to Donnough as if
she were not there and said, "This looks to be the highlight
of a very acrimonious trip, Jack." He put his hand on the
door and said in a dismissive tone, "Now you run along and
wait till I'm done. Then, maybe we'll get some chow."

Room seven was set up and waiting for him. Through the
two-way mirror, the Colonel snapped picture after picture
of the senator's hairy, overweight body performing a series
of truly astonishing sexual gymnastics with a sleek-bodied
Japanese boy of no more than twelve. The Colonel had been
in the Orient far too long to be squeamish about such things.
Still, he never failed to feel a deep pang of frustration that
there was nothing to be done about such practices. He felt
no anger and he had some time before he put away preju-
dices that brought to mind the word abuse. Sex was a cul-

tural thing and he had no jurisdiction--either legal or
moral-to interfere.

When a naked Johnny Leonforte entered room seven, the
Colonel allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction. Human
nature, as Eiko said. The young boy was slumped on the
floor asleep, but the senator, still filled with energy, had rung
for another.

"Jesus Mother," he said when he saw Johnny, "you're too
fuckin' old."

Johnny laughed, stuck out his hand, and introduced him-
self. "Senator Jacklyn, you and I have a lot t'talk about."

"We do?" McCabe gave a nervous glance at the Japa-
nese youth.

"Yes, indeed" Johnny gave him his broadest grin. "I,
personally, will see to it you get blotto on sex and whatever
else it is you want every night of the week."

McCabe looked skeptical. "I live in the United States, Mr.
Waxman, in Washington, D.C., to be exact. Folks over there
don't take too kindly to what gives me pleasure."

"But that's the beauty part, Senator Jack. I'm in the busi-
ness of, er, procurement." Johnny made a deep bow. "I'm
your personal genie. Your wish is my command."

The Colonel, watching this first contact through the two-
way mirror, had to admire Johnny Leonforte's nerve. This
had been the most difficult part of his plan because he had
no part in it. He'd had to rely on Leonforte to make contact
with McCabe, to form a liaison close enough to bring him-
and the entire Leonforte family-down when pictures of
McCabe in the embrace of a twelve-year-old boy were circu-
lated to every member of the Congressional Ethics Com-
mittee.

Peering through the mirror at the parade of young Japa-
nese boys Johnny now ushered through the door, the Colo-
nel could see he needn't have worried. Johnny Leonforte
was a clever and resourceful soul."

"It's over," Eiko said as she happily ate a huge plateful
of sushi. "You took care of Senator McCabe and the Leon-
fortes. Bernice and Paul are very grateful."

"I trust you to make sure they fulfill their part of the

bargain," the Colonel said. Her unabashed delight in the
food made him happy.

"Of that you can be assured." Eiko gripped a piece of
fatty toro with the end of her chopsticks and, after dipping
it delicately in soy sauce, popped it into her mouth. Her
eyes closed as she chewed slowly and methodically. "This is
the best sushi I've ever had. Where did you find this place?"

"Okami owns it."

"Ah, Okami." She wiped her lips. "You have successfully
kept all of this from him?"

"It wasn't easy and, to be honest, I'm not happy about it.
I can only hope this deception doesn't come back to haunt
me one day." The Colonel looked past her. "But with his
hot temper I knew the moment I told him that Leon Wax-
man was Johnny Leonforte, he'd go after him again and this
time finish the job. That wouldn't have fit into my plans. I
needed Johnny to take all the Leonfortes down."

"I hope it was worth keeping him alive. In my estimation
he's a very dangerous man."

Prophetic words, but the Colonel would never know that
In the autumn of 1963 he died, and everything he had
worked for slowly started to come undone.

Book 4

Beyond Good
and Evil

"I did this," says my memory. "I cannot
have done this," says my pride, remaining
inexorable. Eventually, my memory yields.

-Friedrich Nietzsche

 

10
Tokyo

Nicholas found Tanzan Nangi in a back room of Kisoko's
town bouse. It was on the top floor, a place of musty smells
from long disuse. Cobwebs crisscrossed the windows like
bars in a prison. Somewhere a clock with an enormous pen-
dulum was ticking sonorously. The pendulum's shadow was
cast across the dusty wooden floor like an admonishing
finger.

Nangi was draped across an antique sleigh bed of bitter
black ebony. The white sheets in which he was tangled were
heavily stained, and when Nicholas approached, he could
see blood, black as night, black as the ebony of the bed.

He called Nangi's name but it was as if something in the
walls absorbed his voice. The ticking of the clock. Or was
it Nangi's heart? He bent down and, scooping Nangi up,
turned to take him away.

The ticking turned metallic. In the semidarkness, he saw
another shadow cut through the swinging blade of the pen-
dulum. He went slowly back across the room the way he
had come. It seemed a very long way; with each step Nangi's
gray body grew heavier.

"Who is it?" Nicholas called. "Who's there?" But, again,
the walls caught his voice and absorbed it.

Then, he saw movement, and the shadow of the pendulum

was blotted out. Someone-he could not see who-seemed
to be sitting cross-legged on the floor. He was blocking the
only exit from the room.

Nicholas opened his tanjian eye, extending his psyche out-
ward to get a sense of who was blocking the way.

That won't work here.

Then, inexplicably, Akshara shut down. He gave a little
cry, just as if he had extended his arm into unknown black-
ness only to have it lopped off at the shoulder. A cold shud-
der ran through him as, unbidden, his tanjian eye closed.

And, in that instant of panic, he saw the seated figure
levitate off the floor. Floating, floating, a soft laughter echo-
ing, bouncing off walls that absorbed his own voice. And
then the figure shot toward him with such malignant intent
Nicholas threw one arm reflexively across his face ...

And awoke sitting bolt upright.

"Nicholas, are you all right?"

He looked up into Honniko's anxious face. "Where am
I?"

"In my apartment in Sunshine City. You had a-I don't
know what to call it-a seizure like the ones you had just
before and at lunch. Marie Rose and I managed to get you
to my futon before you passed out altogether." Honniko
knelt on the bed, wiped his forehead. "You're sweating.
Maybe you're sick?"

He shook his head. "No. It's just a nightmare." But such
a real nightmare, he thought. He put his head in his hands,
went into prana to cleanse his respiratory system. The bouts
with Kshira were getting worse; he had no memory of this
one. It seemed clear to him now that deliberately sum-
moning Kshira was making the involuntary seizures more
acute.

"Where is the mother superior?"

"She left. I don't know where." Honniko said it in a tone
that made him understand she was not supposed to ask.

He looked up at her. "That story you told me-about
your mother, Eiko, my father, and Johnny Leonforte-"

"It's not a story. It's the truth."

"Why did you tell me now? You must have known who
I was the first time we met. Why didn't you tell me then?"

"I wanted to but-" She stopped abruptly, turned her
head away. "I have too many secrets," she whispered.

"Like being Londa."

She nodded, her blond hair gleaming. "I didn't want you
to know-or even suspect." She took a ragged breath, as if
she were holding something mean and nasty tight to her
breast. "I didn't want you to misunderstand-to hate me."

"Why do you do it? You don't have to be involved in the
sex club scene."

"Have to?" She almost laughed. "I want to." Her smile
faded. "Now I have shocked you." He said nothing and her
eyes held his, their gaze probing. "But maybe not I'm like
my mother-she got involved in the toruko because she
wanted to. Also, it was what the order required of her. She
did God's work and so do I."

"I don't understand. God requires you to perform sex acts
on men?"

"God requires me to gather secrets. God asks me to help
the order amass power. In this world, a woman's work is
done in prescribed ways. Not so much has changed over
the centuries."

"Then it's not so tough a life after all."

Honniko laughed. "You know, I liked you right away.
There's a difference. A-" She leaned across impulsively
and kissed him hard on the lips.

Nicholas took her by the shoulders and looked deep into
her eyes. "I liked you, too. From the moment I first saw
you in the restaurant." She kissed him again with a naked
hunger that pulled on his heart. He disengaged himself. "But
this isn't such a good idea."

"I'm not a whore." That defiant look again.

"It wouldn't matter to me if you were." He looked at the
small statue of the Madonna on a high shelf. "You haven't
lost your faith."

"Not in God," she said, following his gaze. "But men can
be such bastards." She reached out and touched him. He
thought the naked hunger would be in her eyes, but perhaps
he still underestimated her. It wasn't sex she wanted from
him; from her vantage point, sex was a devalued commodity.

He smiled and took her hand in his, kissed her palm once,

then let it go. "It's after eight." He got off the futon and
she swiveled around to look at him. "I've got to get going."

"You'd better wash up first," she said. "You look like
you've been in a war."

He stared down at her a moment. I have too many secrets,
she had told him. How many more was she hiding? he won-
dered. "By the way, do you have any idea why Jochi, your
fellow maître d' at Pull Marine, would want to kill me?"

"What do you mean?"

"I played a very dangerous game of motorcycle tag with
him earlier today. He was on a police cycle and, judging by
the way he kept on my tail, he was a very determined man."

"No, I-" She looked surprised-shocked even. "What
happened?"

"I made it through a hole in the wall and he didn't."

"I'm glad you weren't hurt." Her shock seemed to
deepen. "But as for Jochi, I have no idea what he was up
to."

She didn't, but Nicholas certainty did. Honniko, Jochi,
Pull Marine, were all intimately connected to Mick Leon-
forte. Perhaps Mick even owned the restaurant This little
game of charades Nicholas had played with Honniko told
him one thing: she genuinely did not know about Jochi's
most recent actions. Maybe he couldn't yet trust her fully,
but he knew now that though she was in the enemy's camp,
she was not the enemy.

"The Denwa Partners want an immediate meeting,"
Kanda Torin said as Nicholas strode into his office at Sato
International. The night staff was in place and the place
hummed as if it were the middle of the morning. "I have
been trying to contact you via your Kami while working
on possible responses. I didn't want to leave until I spoke
with you."

"Put Denwa off," Nicholas said, running quickly through
the electronic messages that had not been automatically for-
warded to his Kami. More problems in the Saigon operation.
Continuing instability in South America. And three mes-
sages-the last one urgent-from Terrence McNaughton,
the company's D.C. lobbyist. Nicholas saw that McNaughton
had reduced to three the candidates for president of Sato-

Tomkin, the American company Nicholas had merged with
Nangi's Sato International

"I can't put them off," Torin was saying. "The contract
we signed with them stipulates we must brief them in person
every thirty days. We're five days overdue."

"Put them off a couple of days more. We can't have much
to report yet on the CyberNet. It's only been on-line in
Japan for four days."

"Linnear-san, they have requested this meeting because
they have grave doubts about Sato International's long-term
viability as a keiretsu. The CyberNet, along with our fiber-
optic businesses in South America, have drained us dry."

Nicholas looked up, concentrating fully for the first time.
"They're overreacting. All we need is an infusion of short-
term capital to get us through the next six months."

Torin hesitated, a look of obvious pain in his eyes.

"Go on. Spit it out."

"Pardon me for saying this, Linnear-san, but in their
minds you are gaijin-and as such unreliable to be in charge
of their investment. They have one hundred fifteen billion
yen tied up in Sato through Denwa." That was more or less
the equivalent of $2 billion. "Unless we meet with them as
soon as possible, they are threatening to seek legal remedy."
Torin's eyes looked bleak. "They will sue for control of
the CyberNet."

"That would just about kill Sato. Christ, how did we get
into such a mess?" But Nicholas knew. He should have been
here. With Nangi so infirm, there had been only Torin to
take up the slack. Ambitious Torin, who, he reminded him-
self, was behind the CyberNet deal with Denwa. He thought
for a moment. "Okay, set the meeting for ten tomorrow
morning."

He put his eyes back on his notes, read through them
twice before he realized he could not remember a word of
what he'd read. Torin was cooling his heels, patient as sand
Let him wait, Nicholas decided.

He tried McNaughton but the time was wrong and he got
his voice mail. There was a note for him to press in his code
to download the files on the job candidates. Nicholas
plugged in his Kami and downloaded the data. While he
was doing that, he searched for a message from Okami.

Nothing. What had happened to him? The phone rang. The
night manager of the Osaka field office had a problem with
his fiber-optic contracts, and by the time Nicholas solved it
Torin was back. With no time to review the McNaughton
data, Nicholas pocketed his Kami, put an expectant look on
his face as he looked up. Torin was still dutifully standing
there.

"You came up with the Denwa Partners notion, which
may turn out to be brilliant or a catastrophe," Nicholas said,
"but how could you allow Nangi-san to sign a contract with
such onerous clauses?"

"I did nothing," Torin said in true Japanese fashion. "The
Denwa Partners left us no leeway for negotiation. They
knew we were desperate to get the CyberNet on-line and
that we had nowhere else to turn."

"If I were here, I could have found American partners
not quite so eager to squeeze our nuts into a tin can."

"I wish you had been here. We could have used your
wisdom and experience. I admit I might have been influ-
enced in no small part by Nangi-san's overriding enthusi-
asm." Torin ducked his head deferentially. "But, again, that
had a great deal to do with you. The vid-byte technology
our American R-and-D division provided us fired him up.
This recession has been a long, grinding affair and, along
with the ongoing political destabilization, I think people of
his age have had a fear that the country was on the verge
of disintegration."

"Something new is forming beneath the slough of the old
hike a second skin. We should not be afraid of what it repre-
sents." It was only after Nicholas said it that he realized the
same sentiment could be applied to his personal situation.

Let the darkness come.

Kshira.

His eyes flicked up at Torin and he made a decision.
"Nangi-san has made it clear that I should trust you, so I
am going to tell you what I plan to do tomorrow at the
Denwa Partners meeting. From what I have been able to
gather, I think they are going to make a run at wresting
control of the CyberNet from us. We cannot allow that to
happen. I am going to need your help if we are to defeat
the Denwa Partners."

Torin nodded. "I am honored that you are taking me
into your confidence, Linnear-san. Rest assured I will do my
utmost to prove worthy of your trust."

 

Kanda Torin did not go home after work. He went, in-
stead, to his car and made a brief call to a coded address
on his Kami. Then he drove through rain-slick streets in an
almost aimless pattern. More than twice, he doubled back
on his route, watching in his side mirror for any cars that
stayed with him. There were none.

At last, he arrived at a ferroconcrete building in Toshima-
ku studded with antennas and a satellite dish. A large and
incongruous mirror jutted from one corner, angled to catch
the sun and reflect its rays onto a minuscule and otherwise
shadow-stifled garden beside the building's entrance. At the
far corner of the block a bar's neon sign flickered like an
eyelid with a nervous twitch.

Glancing at the car's clock, he saw that he was early. He
turned on the radio and listened to the latest political news.
The smart money had the reactionary Kansai Mitsui in the
lead for prime minister. Hitomoto, the finance minister,
looked as if he couldn't muster coalition support. And while
all the waning political parties dithered, the economy was
going to hell. Dead meat, Torin thought.

Cars hissed by his window, throwing up brief sprays, rain-
bowed in the overbright urban night. A pair of headlights
split the rain and streetlights flared off the hood of a large
van as it passed by. Silence.

Torin looked at the dial of the illuminated clock and got
out of the Lexus. He went up the block and into the bar.
He took the last stool and ordered a Suntory Scotch and
water. It was placed down on the dark wood bar on top of
a small piece of folded paper. Someone was singing badly
and drunkenly along with a karaoke version of Frank Sina-
tra's "My Way." Torin regarded this man with a certain
amount of envy. He was a typical Japanese salaryman, with
a boring job, a good salary, benefits, a wife and no doubt
children at home. What did he know of high-stakes intrigue,
industrial espionage, a man so formidable as Nicholas Lin-
near peering suspiciously at his every move? Life was simple

for him; at the end of the day he could afford to sing kara-
oke and get blind drunk.

Torin took the tiniest sip of his Scotch, set the glass down,
aware of the well of self-pity that had opened up inside him.
Keep calm, he thought. Big ambitions mean taking big risks.
That's what you wanted, isn't it? He took another sip of his
drink. As he put the glass down on the bartop, he slipped
his hand over the paper. Unfolding it in his lap, he read the
instructions. He left the Scotch on the bartop. The drunken
man had segued into "Strangers in the Night" and it was
painful. Torin paid for his drink and left the bar.

The Nogi Jinja was lit up like a stage set, but then, Torin
reflected, all of Roppongi was, in many ways, a stage set. By
day, it gleamed with the newest fashions, the most expensive
jewelry, the most extravagant art. By night, it glittered be-
tween the raindrops, throbbing to the beat of hip-hop, way-
cool acid jazz, and the massed guttural roar of sleekly
painted motorcycles. It was a bit of living sculpture, an ultra-
modern torso on which could be placed many heads, de-
pending on the time of day and the Zeitgeist of the times.

He found Akinaga's hideaway without difficulty and took
the stainless-steel and cut-glass elevator to the top floor of
the narrow high-rise. The door to the just-released oyabun's
apartment was open as he stepped into the hallway. This
should have made him wary.

The darkness inside seemed alive, waiting for him. It was
hot and sticky, as close as the inside of a coffin. He breathed
shallowly through his mouth. There was a stench in here,
like rotting flowers, like death reaching out its hand. It all
but made him shudder. Then the lights blazed on, making
Torin blink rapidly.

"Good evening, Torin-san," Mick Leonforte said as Torin
came into the apartment. Someone closed and locked the
door behind him, then disappeared into another room. It
was Jochi. He had recovered from his high-speed motorcycle
pursuit of Nicholas. Mick had sent him after Nicholas to
keep him from making his rendezvous with Mikio Okami at
the Shitamachi Museum. Mick, who, as a Denwa partner,
had access to a Kami communicator and the TransRim Cy-
berNet, had "read" Okami's vid-mail to Nicholas setting up

the meet. He had sent Jochi out to keep Nicholas away from
the rendezvous site long enough for Mick to snatch Okami.

"Pardon me," Torin said to Mick, "but do I know you?"

Mick gave a mock-bow, an offensive parody of Japanese
custom, said, "I can imagine your surprise and confusion,
Torin-san. You had been expecting Akinaga-san to greet
you at the door." He smiled an unpleasant smile. "The great
oyabun is otherwise occupied, but he kindly informed me of
your imminent arrival." Mick ushered him into the living
room. "He offers his apologies and asked me to take his
place. He and I have come to a certain arrangement."

"And you are?" Torin stopped in his tracks, all the breath
going out of him. "Good God."

He stood, rooted to the spot, staring at an old man who,
naked, was hanging upside down from a chain from the ceil-
ing. His skin was as white as milk, except for his neck and
face, which were ruddy with blood. Over almost all his body
great swaths of intricate irezumi spread like tapestries in a
great hall. Mythical creatures, female sirens, great mailed
warriors brandishing gleaming weapons, fire, ice, and wind-
whipped rain, all painstakingly tattooed into the skin, spoke
eloquently of the Japanese idea of machismo: violence
turned inward, an exotic display of masochism.

At the old man's side was a stainless-steel IV stand from
which hung a soft plastic bag filled with a pale amber liquid
that was by drips entering a vein on the inside of his left
wrist, which was curled up like the claw of an animal.

"What is this?" Torin whispered hoarsely without taking
his eyes from the terrible but irresistible sight of a human
being so grotesquely trussed and demeaned.

"This," said Mick with the grand flourish of a ringmaster
at a circus, "is Mikio Okami, oyabun of oyabun, the
Kaisho."

"The Kaisho," Torin said, unable to wrench his gaze
away. "I thought he was a myth."

"So was the concept of a round earth, once upon a time."

At last, Torin tore his eyes away from the Kaisho and
stared at Mick. He could see this man was clearly enjoying
himself. "I don't understand any of this."

Mick was grinning madly. "All in good time." He gave

that mock-bow again. "Michael Leonforte. I am in the pro-
cess of making a leveraged buyout of Akinaga's business."

Torin goggled. "Akinaga-san is Yakuza. Even if I could
believe he would willingly give up his leadership of the Shi-
kei clan-which is quite out of the question-he could never
designate you as oyabun to succeed him. You are gaijin."

"Fuck that This is a brave new world-and a brave new
world order. Wake up. You guys are no longer ichiban, no
longer number one. The game is global now, buddy. Fuck,
everything's interconnected. Which means, if you're clever
enough, anything's possible!" Mick came and slung his arm
around Torin's shoulder, another horrendous breach of eti-
quette from which Torin literally cringed. Mick liked his
discomfort just fine. "You better be ready to make alliances.
Strategic partners are the only things that will save you."
He squeezed Torin's shoulder hard. "And, believe me, I'm
not offended. When you get to know me better, you'll un-
derstand that anything is possible for me."

Torin broke free of Mick's vile embrace and pointed to
Mikio Okami. "Why have you done this?"

"All part of the master plan, Torin-san, don't you worry
about that. You just concentrate on your part."

Torin turned. "My part?"

"Sure." Mick bobbed his head. "That's why you're here,
isn't it?"

"I came to see Akinaga-san."

"Yessir, you did. You work for the great oyabun, don't
you." Mick spread his hands. "Which means you work for
me now."

"Where is Akinaga-san?" Torin asked, looking around. "I
want to-"

He stopped, his heart a trip-hammer in his chest. The
muzzle of a .38-caliber automatic was pressed hard against
his temple.

"Let's get the ground rules straight. You don't want any-
thing anymore except to do what I tell you. Is that clear?"

Torin nodded.       -*"

"You have been rising like a phoenix on Akinaga-san's
money and by his benevolent hand," Mick continued in a
calm and studied tone. It was nothing short of miraculous,
Torin thought dizzily, how Mick's voice could change like

the skin of a chameleon, evoking different and compelling
emotions. "The hand that took you off the street, out of the
Nihonin, the nouveau nihilists whose daddies worked too
hard, made too much money, became too successful for then-
offspring to possibly emulate. So rather than compete with
daddy and fail, you dropped out, joined mindless thrill-kill
cults, slept days, drove endlessly through the nights, did
drugs and sex, believed in nothing and tore yourself to
shreds."

There was a pause during which Torin tried unsuccessfully
not to look at Mikio Okami's tattooed body.

"I would say that pretty well defined you when Akinaga-
san took you off the streets, neh?"

Torin, horrified, said nothing.

"He gave you a home, provided you with an education
and a purpose." Mick shrugged. "What more could you
want or need?" Then he laughed harshly. "I'll tell you what.
Fucking Akinaga's a miser. Think he cares about you? Shit,
no. He doesn't care whether you live or die, as long as
you're of use to him. With me, the sky's the limit, get me?
You can make a fortune, and I mean that literally. You can
even run things, if you've got the right attitude." He
clutched Torin's crotch. "And the balls for it. Interested?"

Torin nodded again.

Mick made the gun disappear.

"Okay, then," Mick said, seemingly mollified. "Here's the
deal. You're inside Sato International, which means you're
valuable to me. I control Denwa Partners." He laughed.
"You should see your face, Torin-san. Don't look so sur-
prised. I've been manipulating events for quite some time.
I whacked Rodney Kurtz, but not before I fucked his wife
in as many places and positions as I could think of. Giai
Kurtz despised her husband and she was all too pleased to
vomit up all his secrets. I got Kurtz's cut of Denwa from
his estate, I overruled the one piece of opposition inside
Denwa-"

"You murdered Ise Ikuzo."

"Yah." Mick licked his chops. "And I did a fine job of it,
too." He laughed. "Who d'you think called for tomorrow's
meeting between Linnear and the Denwa Partners? Yours

truly. That's when I take control of everything-Denwa, the
CyberNet, Sato International."

Torin's eyes followed Mick as he began to move. "I don't
believe you."

Mick went to a sideboard. As he passed Okami, he
punched him casually in the stomach. Okami gave a low
groan. Mick went to a small me'tal surgical table on which
were a line of vials and test tubes. He poured some liquids
into two small teacups, brought them over to where Torin
stood. He held them out.

"Okay. One's got colored water in it. The other has some
of what was fed to Kappa Watanabe, your tech." He hooked
a thumb. "Also the great Kaisho here." He smiled benignly.
"It's called Banh Tom. Care to try some?"

Torin recoiled. "What is it?"

"As I said, it's only colored water."

"No, the other one."

Mick shrugged. "You said you didn't believe me when I
told you I was going to take control of Sato tomorrow."

"I can't believe it."

"You mean you won't believe it." Mick frowned, turning
pensive. "Why is it human beings refuse to believe the evi-
dence in front of their eyes? What makes the mind create
safe little kingdoms of its own when the world is such a very
dangerous place?" Again, he offered the two cups. "Okami-
san's being slowly poisoned with a very nasty brew I discov-
ered in Vietnam. You don't believe me and it's important
that you do. So drink up!"

"I believe you," Torin said, not making a move. He was
wide-eyed and his pulse was jumpy.

"No you don't. I see that look in your eyes and I know."
Quick as a wink he flipped one wrist, downed the contents
of one cup. He let it drop to the floor and smacked his lips.
Then his hand whipped out and, strong as wound leather,
gripped Torin's wrist.

Slowly, inexorably, he drew Torin toward him. "Drink,"
he said, shoving the second cup into Torin's face. "Drink!"
he commanded. The porcelain of the cup clicked against
Torin's front teeth.

"It's join or be trampled underfoot, Torin-san." Mick

grinned. "It's now or never. I am the future. What do you
say?"

Torin opened his mouth, either in protest or in acquies-
cence, and with a little practiced flip Mick dumped the pale
amber liquid down his throat. Torin coughed and almost
choked. He wanted to vomit but Mick clamped his jaws
tightly shut.

"You're not gonna die from this, stupid," Mick hissed into
Torin's ear. "But you will become a believer."

Abruptly, he let go, and Torin stood swaying slightly, star-
ing at Mick as he went in and out of focus. Torin blinked
heavily. He wanted to move but his legs felt like lead
weights. He lifted an arm instead, found to his horror that
it was trembling in palsy. It was as if he had aged fifty years.
The thought was terrifying. He stood, trying only to breathe,
hearing the labored pulse of his blood pumping through his
arteries 'and veins, slowing like a grandfather clock someone
had forgotten to wind down.

And then, with an almost audible pop! he snapped back
to normal. His pulse increased, his blood raced through his
veins, and he could move again. He looked inquiringly,
mutely, at Mick, who winked and nodded at him.

"Yup. Take too much of that baby and you don't come
back, get me?"

Torin, petrified with fear, stared at Mick as if he'd just
grown another head.

"Now you know there's no turning back. Nangi and Lin-
near aren't going to return to their- cochairmanship of Sato
International. Not ever. Have you got that fixed in your
mind?"

Torin swallowed hard and nodded. "Linnear has a plan
for the Denwa Partners meeting tomorrow morning. He be-
lieves we will lose control of the CyberNet and perhaps even
the keiretsu itself."

"In that he is quite correct. But he has already lost control
of the situation; nothing he can do now will stop the inevita-
ble from occurring." Mick pulled Torin close. " 'Cause
here's my intention come tomorrow morning. I have Denwa
Partners sewed up, so whatever I propose they'll go along
with, but I need someone inside Sato to back me. You have
Nangi's confidence, everyone knows that The division vice

presidents have no real power outside their own kobun.
That's the way Nangi and Linnear set things up and I don't
blame them. But the bottom line is the vice presidents have
no power to fight me. And when you approve of my becom-
ing interim chairman-"
"Haven't you forgotten Nicholas Linnear?"
"No," Mick said, grinning like a wolf, "I haven't forgotten
him." He threw his arms wide to encompass the surreal-
looking apartment with Mikio Okami hanging upside down
like a side of Kobe beef. "That's what this is all about,
genius. It's all about Nicholas Linnear."

Nicholas and Tanaka Gin were walking down a street in
Jimbocho, the booksellers district of Shitamachi. During
business hours every kind of book could be found here, from
the most erudite scientific text to the greatest of literature
to pure pornography.

It was raining lightly, almost a mist that floated straight
down as if from heaven. It gave the streetlamps an almost
surreal aura, as if they weren't real at all but had been
imagined by René Magritte.

"It's a lock. Mick Leonforte killed Ise Ikuzo," Nicholas
said. "Which means he killed Rodney Kurtz and had Giai
Kurtz killed as well." He told Tanaka Gin about his visit
with Toyoda, the armorer.
"Is it enough to arrest him?"

"That's more your expertise than mine. But we have this:
Toyoda positively ID'd Mick from the Army photo you dug
up, he made the push dagger from Mick's own design, and
he told me the thing was built so it could slash as well as
puncture. I drew the blade signature for him and he con-
firmed that, as well. By the way, he said this thing could
bring down a wild boar at full charge."

Tanaka Gin gave a low whistle. "Just the right instrument
for a Messulethe ritual."
Nicholas nodded. "You bet."
"Then we have him."
"Maybe. If we can find him."

"Oh, we will." Tanaka Gin's eyes were alight. "We'll find
him because he wants us to. He left the first clue at Mudra
by having Giai Kurtz killed outside. As I said, he had all of

Tokyo to play with, why have her hit just outside a club he
frequented? And why use a very special weapon to ritually
slaughter his victims?" Tanaka Gin stopped. "See, he knows
you, Linnear-san. He knew you'd take a long hard look at
Ikuzo's wounds, and you'd know. I think he had the push
dagger made by Toyoda-san because you know him."

Nicholas nodded. "Go on."

"He's playing a dark game, dancing all around you, get-
ting closer and closer, like a moth to a flame."

"And when he gets too close?"

Tanaka Gin shrugged. "Who knows?"

Nicholas thought this over while they continued to walk.
At last, he said, "There's something else. Just before I met
you, I followed Kanda Torin, the young executive at Sato,
to a bar in Toshima-ku, and then to a building in Roppongi
that overlooked the Nogi Jinja. Torin went into it." He de-
scribed in detail the location and appearance of the building,

there being no actual addresses in Tokyo.

"We've caught a break. I know who he went to see,"
Tanaka Gin said. "It was Tetsuo Akinaga."

"Are you certain?"

Tanaka Gin nodded. "I have made a study of his life. He
owns many businesses, most under false identities or shell
corporate names. About three years ago, another of these
phony companies came to our attention. This one, however,
seemed to have no particular use. Until, that is, I probed a
bit more deeply. It seems as if Akinaga has been using it to
buy a series of apartments all over the city. He uses them
all from time to time. This is one of them."

"So I was right to distrust Torin. He's working for
Akinaga."

"It would seem so."

Nicholas shook his head. "How did he fool Nangi-san so
thoroughly? Nangi-san is such a good judge of character."

"It's not all bad news. At least now you know the face
of the enemy."

"The faces, you mean." Nicholas looked at Tanaka Gin.
"It seems, my friend, we are faced with many enemies."

Guided by the information he had gotten from Mikio
Okami, Nicholas led them to a side street. Bright lights
glowed from windows, In people's homes, TVs were on, ev-

eryone sitting around after dinner, watching the news or one
of those silly game shows where every contestant was eager
to humiliate himself in front of 10 million people.

It was an ordinary street in every way, just like thousands
of others throughout the city, and Tanaka Gin felt a brief
but distinct pang. How easily this could have been his life-
a small apartment on a quiet side street, a wife and two
children, dinners home every night, weekend outings, two
vacations a year-skiing in Hokkaido, sunning in Hawaii-
a bond fund for his children's education. Simple, neat,
comfortable.

Tanaka Gin found that he had broken out into a cold
sweat. He imagined animals in their zoo cages felt much
the same way-just as he imagined his enigmatic companion
also felt

They reached the address he had been given and rang the
bell beneath which was a neatly lettered name: J. kana-
gawa. They were buzzed in and, a moment later, were out-
side the door to Kanagawa's apartment.

Kanagawa turned out to be a distinguished-looking gentle-
man in his midsixties, with silver hair and mustache, a round
face, and robust body. He greeted them formally, introduced
them to his wife and his twelve-year-old grandson, who was
visiting them, and then led Nicholas and Tanaka Gin into
his study.

The apartment was larger than Tanaka Gin had ex-
pected-three bedrooms, plus another room Kanagawa had
turned into his sanctuary. And it was expensively furnished.
Kanagawa's wife served them green tea and soybean sweets,
then departed as silently as she had arrived. Through the
walls of the study, painted a pleasingly serene green-gray,
they could hear the muffled voice of the television.

Kanagawa had filled his sanctuary with books, and the
walls were festooned with degrees and awards of merit from
Todai-Tokyo University, the country's most prestigious in-
stitute of learning. Also, photos of Kanagawa with a vast
array of dignitaries and VIPs. Some of them-former prime
ministers, the new emperor-Tanaka Gin recognized, others
he did not.

They sat and had tea. After the rituals of niceties had
been dispensed with, Kanagawa said, "In your phone call

you said your business was of some urgency. May I inquire
what the Bank of Japan could want with me?"

This had been Tanaka Gin's cover story. He had not
wanted to alert Kanagawa to the true nature of the interview
by prematurely giving away his identity.

Nicholas crossed his arms over his chest as Tanaka Gin
flipped open his notebook. "You are head bursar for Todai,
Kanagawa-san."
" "Yes."

"And how long have you had this position?"

"Fifteen years."

"And before that?"

"I was assistant bursar." Kanagawa's eyes narrowed.
"Look here, all this is a matter of public record. I imagine
you knew it before you came here."

"Indeed." Tanaka Gin looked around him. "And how
much do you pay in rent for this apartment?"

"Pardon me?"

A look of alarm had dawned on Kanagawa's face. Tanaka
Gin would have felt sorry for him under other circum-
stances. His life had no doubt been placid as a calm lake
before tonight. Too bad.

"And all these furnishings," Tanaka Gin continued relent-
lessly, "very expensive, I imagine. Tell me, what do you earn
as chief bursar?" He nipped closed his notebook and stared
hard into Kanagawa's flushed and astonished face. "Never
mind. I already know." He displayed his credentials, and
when Kanagawa's eyes dropped to read them, he said, "I'm
afraid you're in serious trouble, Kanagawa-san."

The older man looked back at him, frightened. Tanaka
Gin imagined he could see all Kanagawa's sins fluttering in
his eyes, coming back to haunt him.

"How serious?" Kanagawa managed to say. His eyes, be-
traying him completely, strayed to the door to his sanctuary,
beyond which his wife and grandchild sat, oblivious to the
darkness that had suddenly crept into the apartment.

"That depends," Nicholas said sharply, "on how willingly
and completely you are willing to help us."

"And if I plead ignorance?"

Tanaka Gin leaned forward. "Let me lay it all out for
you, Kanagawa-san. You have been systematically taking

money from Tetsuo Akinaga in exchange for admitting cer-
tain young men to Tokyo University who, over the years,
Akinaga has sent to you. In addition, you have seen that
these people have graduated, falsifying their grades if and
when necessary. This is not speculation on my part; I have
obtained records, transcripts. I have gained access to your
bank accounts-all six of them. Over and above the obvious
penalties for tax evasion, serious criminal charges can and
will be filed against you for aiding and abetting a known
Yakuza oyabun." Tanaka Gin very deliberately looked
around the room. "All this, Kanagawa-san-your comfort,
security, and standing in the academic community-will be
stripped from you."

Kanagawa shuddered. He seemed on the verge of tears.
Tanaka Gin could very well understand. For a man like him,
comfort, security, and especially his reputation were
everything.

"You made a stupid mistake," Nicholas said in that same
hard and commanding tone of voice. "Don't compound it
now by making another one."

"What is it you wish to know?"

"There is a man within my own office," Tanaka Gin said,
"who, like you, is on Tetsuo Akinaga's payroll. Tell me who
he is."

"And then?"

"Don't try to bargain with us," Nicholas snapped. "It is
beginning to smell bad in here."

Kanagawa's eyes swung away from Nicholas and he licked
his lips. "You must understand, Prosecutor, this ... informa-
tion is the only thing I have of value. Give me something
for it Please."

"Give me the name.

"Hatta." Kanagawa spat it out almost convulsively. "The
man you want is Takuo Hatta."

Tanaka Gin sat very still for several moments, then un-
coiled like a tightly wound spring as he stood. He waited
for Nicholas to join him. "Very well, Kanagawa-san. As of
this moment, you will sever all ties with the oyabun Tetsuo
Akinaga. You will have no contact with him whatsoever. If
you do, I will know and I will expose your connection with
him and you wut be ruined."

"But-" Kanagawa looked up at the two men with terror.
"If I break off now, he will know what I have done."

"By then it will be too late for him," Tanaka Gin said.
"Those are my terms, take them or leave them."

"I want my life back," Kanagawa said softly.

"Then take possession of it," Nicholas said as they went
to the door. "And think about how you almost lost it."

The staircase smelled of concrete dust and rain. They fol-
lowed many damp footprints down concrete stairs.

"What do you think?" Tanaka Gin asked. "Is he suffi-
ciently frightened to put his past behind him?"

"I think he'd rather cut off his arm than talk to Aki-
naga again."

Outside, the street was splattered with rain. A large black
Toyota sedan was sitting at the curb. When Nicholas and
Tanaka Gin emerged from Kanagawa's building, all four car
doors opened simultaneously and out came four men: two
uniformed policemen, one plainclothes detective, and Gin-
jiro Machida, chief prosecutor and Tanaka Gin's boss.

"Machida-san!"

Tanaka Gin's greeting was almost a martial salute. Nicho-
las, positioned just behind and to the right of his friend,
could see that Tanaka Gin had taken in the entire scene
with a single glance.

"Gin-san." Machida bowed perfunctorily. The uniforms
spread out on either side of him, the detective immediately
behind. This man had the hungrily expectant aspect of a
second in an old-fashioned western duel.

Machida spread his hands, as if apologetically. "I waited
as long as I could." A car went hissing by behind them, but
there was a silent space between them, deep as a chasm.
"Tetsuo Akinaga is no longer in custody. His lawyers de-
stroyed your brief against him." With a sinking heart Tanaka
Gin noted that he had said "your brief not "our brief."
Machida was here on damage control, no doubt about it.

"Gin-san, will you come voluntarily with me?"

"Where are you taking me?"

"To police headquarters." It was the plainclothes detec-
tive who spoke, and as he did so, the two uniformed cops
took one step forward.
__ "Certainly. But what for?"

The detective was about to answer, but a small motion
from Machida silenced him. "There are suspicions, Gin-san.
And more-allegations that someone in my department is
on Akinaga's payroll."

Two more cars went by with the benign sounds of a wom-
an's skirt swishing. Between the men, the chasm only
deepened.

At last, Tanaka Gin said softly, "You believe I am
guilty?"

"It is the errors in your brief that got Akinaga sprung."
Machida shrugged. "You see how it looks."

"But I was the one who arrested him in the first place."
Even as Tanaka Gin said it, he knew how foolish it sounded.
He saw contempt in the detective's eyes, and Machida was
looking at a point just past his left shoulder, and ignoring
Nicholas completely.

"A case is pending against you," Machida said. Then he
walked to the far side of the black Toyota, as if disassociat-
ing himself from what was to come.

"Would you step into the car, please, Gin-san," the detec-
tive said in a neutral tone. Tanaka Gin glanced at his boss.
He had not even offered the tiniest expression of confidence.

Nicholas, sensing Tanaka Gin was about to move, hooked
two fingers into the prosecutor's right rear pocket, deftly
lifted his wallet. It looked as if Tanaka Gin wouldn't need
it anytime soon, and where Nicholas was headed, he might
be in need of an official identity.

"Stand tall," Nicholas whispered in Tanaka Gin's ear, but
the prosecutor did not reply. Rain began to drum across the
top of the Toyota as Tanaka Gin ducked inside. The uni-
forms were already flanking the car, waiting for the
detective.

"I know you," he said to Nicholas. But there was nothing
in his voice. Nothing at all.

 

11

West Palm Beach/Tokyo

When Margarite heard the gunshot, she screamed and
jumped out of the chair in which she had been- sitting.

She was still in the same room where Paul Chiaramonte
had tied her spread-eagle on the bed. She had slept fitfully
for several hours following Caesare's first interrogation. He
untied her, had allowed her to use the facilities as often as
she needed, even let her take a shower. God, how she had
stunk. It sickened and humiliated her to smell the stench of
terror on her, and she had soaped herself as obsessively as
Lady Macbeth had washed her hands to rid herself of imagi-
nary blood. But then it was back to the interrogation-
though not, thank God, the bed and the ropes binding her
at wrists and ankles. And, though she begged him for it, not
even an instant's glimpse of Francine. Her heart ached with
a black and awful pain. Her baby. Was Francine all right?
If it came down to choosing between her child and giving
up the secrets of the Nishiki network, she knew what she
would do. She could delay a certain amount of time, but
then Caesare would run out of patience and when he
brought Francie in and put a gun to her head, she would
tell him everything.

She had begun to cry. Maybe Dominic would have han-
dled it differently. No doubt, he would have found a way

out of this bind, but she was a mother, and her first-and
only-imperative was to save her daughter's life.

In the night, in between her bouts of fitful sleep, she had
chafed in the clothes Caesare had brought for her after her
shower, not new clothes, someone else's-his current mis-
tress's? That would be ironic. But there was something fa-
miliar here in the darkness, not the clothes themselves-
they were of colors better suited to a blonde than someone
with her dark hair. But something definitely was familiar
about them. What?

Her nostrils had flared wide. The scent. Whose? Someone
she knew, someone close to her. Who? She could not think,
though she spent the early-morning hours racking her brain.
But her thoughts felt encased in a lead-lined box marked
panic,

Then, in the morning, Caesare had come himself with
food and coffee, and humiliated again, she had eaten like
the starving animal she was becoming. She was aware of
him watching her like a trainer will his charge in a zoo.

Then, with her sitting unbound in a chair, they had begun
the interrogations again, and he had quickly come to the
end of his patience. Throwing the coffeepot across the room,
he had stormed out.

And a moment later, she had heard the single pistol shot.

She had leapt up and stupidly, irrationally, had rattled the
locked doorknob like a berserk gorilla. All she could think
of was him putting the gun to Francie's head. Then, crying,
"No! No! No!" she had begun to slam her shoulder into the
door, shuddering painfully at each impact, but keeping at it
nonetheless. Until she had heard the key in the door turning
and she had stepped back, had, in one last lucid moment,
sat back down in the chair where he had left her, her body
coiled as tightly as a spring, her shoulder and ribs white
with pain.

But the moment Caesare appeared in the open doorway,
a gun in his hand, she lost it completely, hurtling from the
chair with such speed and ferocity he had no chance to
sidestep her. She barreled into him, heedless of the weapon,
and together they crashed back into the living room. She
clawed at him, pummeled him, and at last got her knee
between his legs and drove it up into his crotch.

She was up and running as his breath came out of him in
a whoosh!-her eyes wide and staring, screaming, "Francie!
Francie!"-bounding through the house, frantically search-
ing every room, finding them all empty, blessedly devoid of
her body. Until at last she found herself, sweat-streaked and
panting, back in the living room, staring at a newly made
bullet hole in one of the sofas.

She swung around to where Caesare, disheveled, holding
on to a chair back with one hand, while pressing his groin
with the other, stood staring darkly at her.

"You bastard!" She wanted to scream but she had no
strength left. The adrenaline fit of terror that had ripped
through her when he had made her think he had shot
Francie had run its course, leaving her weak and shaken.
She collapsed onto the sofa, her head in her hands.

"Oh, dear God," she whispered.

"You're playing in the wrong arena," Caesare said. "Fool-
ish, really, to think you could keep the family together after
I whacked Tony. You should have raised the white flag."

"When should I have done that," she asked without look-
ing at him, "before or after your wiseguys whacked my
driver right in front of my face?"

"Fuck you talkin' about. It was your call to bring in the
cop. And Paul tells me you blew away one of my men your-
self. I think he admires you for that."

Her head came up and Caesare was momentarily startled
by the dark, feral look in her eyes. "Stop dicking me around.
You had your campaign against me planned well before you
knew whether I would give up or not. You stole my com-
pany out from under me."

"That was business, Margarite." He shrugged. "I saw a
good opportunity and I took it."

"Bullshit." She swiped her hair from her face. "You knew
what that company meant to me. I built it from the
ground up."

He spread his hands. "It's only a company, for chrissake."

"It was my fucking legs, you moron." Her hands closed
into fists. "It defined me, made me what I was. Besides my
daughter it was the only thing in my life I've ever been
proud of." She waved a hand. "Oh, why am I bothering?
You wouldn't understand in a million years."

But the truth was Caesare did understand. The truth was
that he respected her more than he had ever respected that
gavonne Tony D. What Dominic saw in him Caesare would
never figure out But this woman had stood up to him, had
taken whatever he had dished out. She had been shot at,
had reacted with courage in firing back at her assailants, had
further been bold enough to enlist the help of an NYPD
detective, and if not for Paul Chiaramonte, would have got-
ten away from his machine. Then she had withstood the
assault of psychological torture.

But now, looking at her curled on the sofa, he knew he
had her. All he had to do was drag in the kid and openly
threaten her with bodily harm and Margarita would fold like
cards in the wind.

It was time to call Paul out of the guesthouse and get the
kid over here. He went painfully over to the intercom. After
buzzing Paul three times with no response, he called in a
couple of the guards and ordered them to hustle over to
investigate.

It seemed an eternity before the intercom buzzed. Hitting
the button with the bun of his pistol, Caesare barked,
"Yeah?"

"They're gone," came the metallic voice.

"Fuck d'you mean?"

"We searched everywhere," the voice came back, raspy
and devoid of emotion. "The house, the grounds, every-
where. Chiaramonte and the girl have split."

"How the fuck's that possible?"

"I dunno, boss. They just-"

Caesare pointed the muzzle of his pistol at the intercom
and, with a deep roar of rage, fired.

"He'll kill my mom."

Paul Chiaramonte stared into those keenly intelligent eyes
and said with every ounce of sincerity he could muster, "No,
he won't."

"Bullshit." Francie was sitting, staring out the window at
the soft parade of semidressed people along South Beach's
Ocean Boulevard.

"It ain't bullshit. You were the leverage, see? Why he
wanted you inna first place. Your mama will do anything

for you-even betray her own people. Bad Clams knows
that," Paul flailed his arms. "And, hey, get outta the win-
dow. Whatta you, a sign?" He shook his head. "Like I was
sayin', without you-"

"Without me, she's of no use to him." Francie turned
back into the hotel room, which was decorated in high-tone
art deco fashion, with blues, greens, and purples that made
the eyeballs ache. "We should never have gone without
her."

"We got the chance an' we took it. That's what life is
all about."

Francie shook her head. "Life's not about running out on
people you love-not for any reason."

"Tell that to my father," Paul said darkly. "He ran out
on me V my mom when the shit came down."

"So that's your reason for doing the same thing to the
members of the Abriola family who treated you like one of
their sons?"

He jammed his hands in his pockets and said nothing.

Francie cocked her head. "Don't you get ft?" she said
softly. "Without me Mom won't tell Caesare anything and
he'll turn on her. He won't care if she lives or dies."

Paul, damning her to six kinds of hell, was staring at her
fixedly. "You don't give your mama half enough credit."

"Maybe. But what if you're wrong?" Her eyes caught his.
"I think Caesare is out of her league."

He was just thinking she might be right when she said,
"We gotta go back."

" 'Scuse me?" He shook his head. "I got wax inna ears.
I thought you said we gotta go back."

"Right." Francie nodded. "We gotta go back and get
my mom."

Paul goggled at her. "We'll all get shot to death, is what
we'll get."

She shook her head. "No, we won't Caesare wants me."

"Sure he does." Paul rolled his eyes and said slowly and
carefully, "But we don't want him to get you, an' if we go
back, guess what?" He threw up his hands, as if to say, Kids!

"Not necessarily."

"Wha'?" Paul's head turned so quickly his vertebrae
made a cracking sound.

"Listen to me," Francie said, slipping from her perch on
the windowsill. "I've got an idea."

"Yeah, well, I don' wanna hear it You wanted t'go
straight t'the airport. Bad Clams woulda been able to track
us for sure."

"Okay, so maybe that was a bum idea." Francie pulled
him down onto the bed. It was covered in a spread whose
pattern was reminiscent of something Frank Lloyd Wright
would have designed. "But going back isn't."

"You're nuts, you know that? The place is crawling with
burton men. How we gonna get past 'em?"

"No problem. They're going to let us in." Francie was
grinning. "You put a gun to my head and tell them I escaped
and you caught me. You're just bringing me back is all."

Paul rested his hands on his thighs. "Okay, genius. Then
what?"

"Then we get my mom and split."

Paul sighed. "An' I s'pose Bad dams will sit back an' let
me do that."

"Of course he won't." Francie pointed her forefinger and
cocked her thumb like a gun. "But when he tries to stop
us, you'll shoot him."

Paul laughed. "Kid, you give me too much credit."

She jutted her chin. "Don't have the balls for it, huh?"

Paul jumped up. "Would you, for the love of God, stop
talking like, like ..."

"Like what?" There was a defiant tone to her voice, hard
as brass.

His hands flew in small circles. "Like a guy, damn it! Why
don't you act like what you are?"

"Did Jaqui?"

He pursed his lips, spurted air through them. "Did she
what?"

"Act like a girl?"

"Sure she did." But it was a lie and they both knew it.
Paul raked a hand through his hair, sat down abruptly. "Ah,
nuts." He glanced at her. "My life went to shit the moment
I met you."

"It already was shit." She went to the minibar and opened
it. "Want something?"

"Nah, ever notice the prices they put on that crap? Six
bucks for a Coke? What a rip-off."

"What do you care?" She threw him a can of Coke, took
a diet Coke for herself. "Chances are you're not going to
pay for it"

He laughed and they popped the tops at almost the same
time. He took a swig. It felt almost as good as a beer going
down. Thing was, he didn't like to drink around her. It was
probably stupid, he knew, but he couldn't help himself. He
felt proprietary toward her, as if she were his own daughter.

"How come you're so smart?"

"I'm not so smart." She ran her tongue around the beaded
top of the can. "I just wised up pretty quickly. But I have
to say I had some help. My mom, once she straightened
herself up. Uncle Lew. And, the more I think about it, Sister
Marie Rose-Jaqui, I mean." She crossed one leg over the
other, rocked it gently, watching her toes bounce up and
down. "I used to hate her. What a little Hitler she is, I used
to tell my mom. Rules, discipline, the law of God. 'You
should've been a watchmaker,' I once told her. 'Or a drill
instructor.' Her eyes rose to meet Paul's. You know what
she said to me? 'It's about time you paid me a compli-
ment.' " Francie shook her head in disbelief. "I think I threw
something, a plaster statue of the Virgin Mary or something.
Shattered it into a million pieces."

"Uh-oh. That's bad."

Francie drank some diet Coke. "You'd think so. But Sis-
ter Marie Rose never got angry with me no matter what
nasty stuff I pulled. That was smart, now I think of it. I
guess I was trying to get her mad, and when I found out
she wasn't going to bite, I lost interest in being a beast
around her." She took another swallow. "That was half of
it. The other half was when I discovered she never told Mom
how badly I acted with her. 'Sister Marie Rose says you're
such an angel,' Mom said to me one day. 'I wish I knew her
secret.'" Francie drained the can, put it aside. "Right then
I knew. Sister Marie Rose was on my side, no matter what
That made such a difference. My mother first took me to
see her when I was eight, and I saw her regularly. Then,
later, when I was sick with bulimia and everything-I mean,

really sick in my head, you know?-I needed someone who
wasn't going to judge me."

"Yeah, but all those rules she laid on you."

"But, see, they weren't hers. They were God's rules."
Francie put her hands together as if in prayer, "Then I found
out that Sister Marie Rose had no rules of her own and I fell
in love with her. She was my kind of person." She laughed
somewhat embarrassedly. "Imagine, a nun-and she was tha
only one I could talk to-until Uncle Lew."

"That would be Lew Croaker, the ex-cop."

"You know him?"

He shook his head. "Only what I've picked up from Bad
Clams." Paul paused a moment. "You think he's a good
guy, huh?"

Francie's eyes lit up. "Yeah."

He got up and put his half-finished Coke on top of the
minibar, then rubbed his palms down the sides of his trou-
sers. He took out his gun, checked the cartridge. Then be
replaced it, turned around to face her. "I may be nuts myself
for sayin' this but-" He nodded and gave her a lopsided
grin she decided she liked a whole lot. "Okay, let's go back
an' get your mom outta that den of thieves."

 

"You are so very beautiful."

Nicholas smiled at the slim European man with short hair
and sensual lips.

"Care to accompany me? There's a love hotel right
around the corner."

"Sorry," Nicholas said. "I've already got a date."

"Some other time, maybe." The European slinked off to-
ward another candidate on his predatory quest.

Nicholas went to the bar and ordered a Scotch and soda.
He was in Twenty-One Roses, a gay bar in Shinjuku
2-chome. Many eyes wandered in his direction. He did not
feel threatened in this atmosphere. Nanshoku, the idea of
lust between males, had a long and hallowed history in
Japan, where among samurai, showing any affinity toward
women was considered a sign of weakness. Taking a young
man or, even, a boy as a lover had its roots in the culture
of ancient Greece, where the male form was revered. In

Japan, the practice was widely attributed to the influx of
Buddhist monks from China.

Nicholas paid for his drink, turned, and scanned the room
for any sign of Takuo Hatta. The prosecutor was notorious
for spending a couple of nights a week in one gay bar or
another in this district. Nicholas had confirmed with Hatta's
wife that he was not at home. Twenty-One Roses was the
fourth bar Nicholas had been in that night. Male couples
were slowdancing on the packed and minuscule dance floor,
the bar was three deep, and everywhere bodies pressed las-
civiously against one another. The place was dark and
smoky, with a vaguely thirties look of seedy decadence that
was at once evocative and comforting to its habitués.

Nicholas was propositioned twice more, was groped once
intimately, and had made up his mind that this place was a
real meat market when he saw someone who looked like
Hatta emerging from the men's room. With some difficulty
he made his way through the shifting, sweaty throng. Some-
one grabbed his ass, and as he slithered through the dance
floor, a Japanese salaryman with a wedding ring kissed him
hard on the lips.

Nicholas survived it all and, arriving on the other side of
the barely controlled melee, discovered that the figure was
indeed Takuo Hatta. Unfortunately, Hatta spotted him. His
eyes opened wide behind his spectacles and, shoving aside
a pair of young men pawing each other, broke into an un-
gainly run.

Slick as an eel, he made it to the front door before Nicho-
las could get to him. He darted out the door. Nicholas, feel-
ing as if he were stuck in a dream, made progress as slowly
as if he were in quicksand. Using his elbows, he wedged
himself into one of the two main traffic lanes and was
whirled, possibly by centrifugal force, toward the door.

Gaining the street, he saw Hatta opening the rear door
of a big black Mercedes sedan idling at the curb. Nicholas
shouted as he sprinted toward the car, and Hatta jerked his
head around, his eyes opened wide in fear. He dove into
the backseat of the Mercedes as the driver threw the car in
gear and depressed the accelerator.

With a harsh squeal of rubber, the Mercedes peeled away

from the curb, banged to a temporary halt as it hit the front
fender of a cruising taxi. It lurched, swung out in a wider arc.

Nicholas, who had been gaining on it, threw his body for-
ward just as the driver accelerated the car again. He lunged
out, extending his body fully, and grabbed onto the open
window frame as the Mercedes hurtled into the rain-
slicked street.

A wiry Yakuza kobun was driving the Mercedes. Now
the kobun spun the wheel hard over, almost rocketing the
Mercedes into the stainless-steel grille of an oncoming truck.
Nicholas's body slammed hard against the side of the car as
he hung on. The Mercedes rocked on its shocks as, amid
the shrill blare of an air horn, the kobun righted it and
hurtled it down the street. As he did so, he swerved back
and forth. Every time he jerked the car to the right Nicho-
las's shoes would be flayed by the tarmac; and on each left-
ward cut the prosecutor would be thrown hard against the
door. And when the kobun took a skidding left turn, it
seemed just another evasive maneuver.

Nicholas was reaching into the interior for a better hold
when something black and looming caught in the periphery
of his vision. He turned his head slightly, saw the narrow
blackness of the alley coming up fast and knew he could
not remain where he was-there was hardly enough roonj
for the Mercedes itself to squeeze through.

A whump! and crackle as the near-side headlight smashed
against a soot-encrusted wall presaged the car's entrance
into the alley. With no time to spare, Nicholas dropped his
legs, let his heels hit painfully on the tarmac, bump up, did
it again, this time harder, and used the more powerful bump
upward as momentum to swing his body up over the open
window and onto the roof of the car.

The Mercedes' rocketed down the alley in a squeal of pro-
testing body metal and occasional bright blue showers of
sparks at the contact. Nicholas, on his stomach, was holding
on with the curled tips of his fingers to the trim at the top
of the windshield.

An explosion close to his ears caused him to twist his
body, almost losing his fingerhold. Another one and he saw
a chunk of the roof disintegrate, and he thought, The bas-

tard's shooting at me! He rolled back across the roof the
other way as a third shot took a chunk of metal off.

Behind the wheel, the kobun dropped the gun on the seat
beside him so he could grip the wheel with both hands, then
slammed on the brakes. He was gratified to see Nicholas
hurtling off the roof into the alley in front of him. He
grabbed for the gun, but by that time Nicholas was running
directly at him. The kobun stamped on the accelerator. In
this cramped spot there was nowhere for Nicholas to hide-
In a tenth of a second, Nicholas would be plowed under the
vehicle. The kobun liked the sound rushing steel made when
it hit a human body, but he liked the feel of it even more.
There was a rush of power so strong ...

Then he jerked back reflexively as Nicholas slammed
heels first into the windshield. The safety glass spider-
webbed, collapsing inward but holding together. The kobun
heard Hatta screaming from the backseat and was distracted
long enough for Nicholas to make a second powerful kick
that broke through the safety film and showered the kobun
with glass fragments. His finger closed around the trigger of
the gun and he fired point-blank at the figure coming at him.

Nicholas felt the searing heat of the bullet even while his
ears rang from the percussion of the shot. He felt something
tear through the shoulder of his jacket, just as if he'd
snagged it on barbed wire. Then he had slid halfway into
the seat. The kobun slammed on the brakes, as much for
self-preservation as for an offensive maneuver, hurtling
Nicholas into the padded dashboard. The back of his head
smashed into the CD player, and his legs got tangled up in
the gearshift.

Pain exploded in his ribs and he grunted. There was a
metallic taste in his mouth, and he felt the second blow
through a veil of pain and growing numbness creeping up
his side. He tried to roll out of the way of the blows, fetched
up hard against the glove compartment for his efforts.

The kobun's eyes were glossy, fever bright as he brought
more and more adrenaline into his system. He was a young
man in his early twenties, with a shaven head and veins
popping along the curve of his shiny skull. Nicholas could
see by the dilation of his pupils that he was on something,
possibly cocaine. His strength was superhuman.

Another blow descended, this one more vicious, intended
to crack a couple of vertebrae. Nicholas did not try to evade
or ward off the blow, but instead reached out and caught
the kobun's hand. In the process, the sleeve of the kobun's
jacket rode up to his forearm, and Nicholas could see the
beginning of the complex irezumi, the tattooing almost all
Yakuza wore like a uniform. If he could see more of it, he'd
know to which clan this man belonged.

Right now, however, he had other, more immediate con-
siderations. The kobun bent forward from the waist, using
the superior leverage of his position to pin Nicholas on his
side back into the footwell of the front seat. He applied
more and more pressure, exerting it slowly, inexorably, with
the full knowledge of his advantage.

An expression almost of curiosity crossed his face as Nich-
olas uncoiled his upper leg, smashing his kneecap into the
leading point of the kobun's ribs. There was a sharp cracking
sound. Curiosity metamorphosed into disbelief and then into
a kind of disappointment bordering on astonishment as the
kobun realized that his ribs were broken.

A bloom of pure rage shot through him, aided and abetted
by the drugs he had ingested. He clamped down on the
pain, went after Nicholas with the switchblade he kept in
his waistband.

Nicholas took a slash to his shoulder before jamming an
elbow into the kobun's Adam's apple. He twisted away as
the kobun, already beginning to gag, stabbed out in desper-
ate reflex. The gearshift moved and the blade, bouncing off,
buried itself in the polished leather of the seatback. Then
Nicholas used his lower body against the kobun.

It was a mistake. The kobun's foot slipped off the brake,
pushed down spastically on the accelerator. The Mercedes
shot forward with a ragged spray of blue and white sparks,
careening off one wall, then another, hurtling out of the
alley with terrifying speed.

Hatta screamed from the backseat. Nicholas made a des-
perate grab to take control of the wheel, and the kobun
managed to jerk the switchblade free and make another at-
tempt to disembowel Nicholas.

The Mercedes, more or less out of control, slammed into
the rear end of a Nissan. Careening sideways, its tires

screeching, it hit the opposite curb and, half-righted, kept on
going, jumping the sidewalk. Pedestrians scattered, shouting
through the massed blare of horns.

The edge of the blade came so close to Nicholas's neck
it felt as hot as a furnace. Then, with a ragged wrench,
Nicholas broke the kobun's wrist. As he yelped in pain,
Nicholas used his elbow to smash the kobun's nose flat
against his cheeks. The kobun rocketed back in the seat in
a welter of blood, collapsing upon the wheel.

Nicholas hauled the kobun's torso backward, trying to
kick his foot clear of the accelerator. He managed to steer '
the Mercedes back onto the street, but it was no safer there,
since they were now headed down the street the wrong way,
toward oncoming traffic and an intersection with the wide
Meiji-dori.

Sweat broke out on Nicholas's face as he tried to get to
the accelerator or brake, but the kobun's feet were wedged
tight. Nicholas felt dizzy, a buzzing in his brain. No! he
screamed silently. Not now! He fought down the oncoming
Kshira seizure. Had he blacked out for an instant? The
broad side of a trailer truck coming into the intersection
rushed up at them with frightening speed. Nicholas aban-
doned his efforts to get to the pedals, instead threw the
gearshift into neutral, switched off the engine.

The side of the truck looked as large as a building facade
as they shot toward it. The engine was off but the momen-
tum of the car continued to propel it forward. Nicholas
pulled hard on the wheel and the Mercedes did a one-eighty.
Blood rushed to his head as centrifugal force kicked in.
Hatta continued his terrified screaming from the backseat,
and the world became one long blur. Colors streaked by,
then merged, images elongating, then disappearing alto-
gether into this new and curiously exhilarating reality. All
of this happened in a tenth of a second, but the sense of
being so out of control was liberating. Nicholas felt his heart
beating fast and close inside his chest. No sense of danger
or of imminent death occurred to him.

Then the car came out of it, they were rear-ended, not
hard but enough to throw Hatta against the back of the
front seats and to make Nicholas's molars click together.
But now, with the engine dead, much of their momentum

was dissipated, and Nicholas was able, at last, to guide the
Mercedes to a gradual stop curbside.

There was a sour stench inside the car. The sound of the
hot engine ticking over was slowly overtaken by the scream
of sirens, the pounding of running feet. With an effort, Nich-
olas turned around, saw Hatta crouched half-off the seat,
heaving. He had vomited all over the backseat

The sound of the sirens was increasing. Quickly, Nicholas
took up the knife and slit open the kobun's jacket and shut
to reveal the fantastic irezumi. Noting the kobun's clan affil-
iation, he got out of the car, went around to the back,
opened the door. By this time, the cops had arrived and he
produced Tanaka Gin's wallet and flashed them the creden-
tials. Invoking prosecutor's privilege, he hauled the cowering
Hatta out of the backseat.

Rain light as an angel's kiss fell on Nicholas's face, clear-
ing his mind. The police lights were flashing, merry as a
carnival in full swing, and a crowd had begun to form. Some
of the officers went to disperse the onlookers and to direct
traffic, which was backed up all along the avenue. Others
were waiting for Nicholas to make a statement. An ambu-
lance drew up, its lights adding to the dark carnival atmo-
sphere, but no one suggested Nicholas get in. Paramedics
disembarked and, peering into the Mercedes, prepared to
extract the twisted form of the kobun from behind the
wheel.

Nicholas noticed skid marks on the tarmac, dark as scars
against the rain-slicked surface, and only slowly realized they
had been made by him. His mind was beginning to function
normally again. He sucked deeply of the night air. As he
did so, he leaned in toward Hatta and whispered, "You're
mine now, traitor. Unless you want me to hand you over to
the police this instant, you'll do and say exactly as I tell you.
Is that clear?"

Hatta nodded, white-faced and utterly spent, and Nicholas
turned to the patiently waiting sergeant, "I'm ready to make
my statement now."

 

12

West Palm Beach/Tokyo

Two burly men with .38 revolvers in their armpits burst into
Room 421 of the Aquamarine Hotel in South Beach. By the
time they had taken a single step into the room, their guns
were drawn. One took the bathroom, the other the closets.
One looked under the bed while the other stepped into the
hallway and gave a signal.

Caesare Leonforte strode into the room, Vesper just be-
hind him. "Where's that little weasel?"

None of them, not even Vesper, knew whether he was
referring to the kid or Paul Chiaramonte.

"Fuck they get past you?" Caesare asked one of the burly
men. He had oily, curly hair and eyes too close together.

"He told us the kid wanted a diet Coke an' she slipped
him inna kitchen of the guesthouse," the man said. He was
still panting from having taken four flights of stairs while his
boss and the girlfriend took the elevator. He was sweating
heavily and was pissed off they had found no one. He waved
his pistol around as if looking for someone to plug.

"Put that fuckin' heat away," Caesare said. "What're you
gonna shoot, the fuckin' roaches?"

"Okay, so we start inna kitchen ova guesthouse," the man
said, sliding his .38 into his sweaty armpit. "We find nothin'
inna kitchen so we go outside. The guys, the dogs, no one's

seen shit." He threw out his arms at the same time he
hunched his shoulders. "So whatta we s'posed t'do?"

Caesare couldn't be bothered replying to this sad tale; he
was staring at the empties atop the minibar, "Cokes and
diet Cokes," he said softly. "They were here, all right."

"But no one saw them leave," Vesper said.

"Yeah." Caesare nodded. His brow furrowed. "Fuck
they're in such a hurry now?"

"Let's get after them," one of the burly men said. He was
itching to use his pistol.

"We got the airports, the bus terminals, train stations, all
covered," Caesare said as if to himself. "The rental cars
know t'call if a man of Paul's description tries t'rent. The
only other possibilities-stealing wheels or buying a used
one-I'd rule out. Paul'd be an idiot to risk the cops, an' I
know he doesn't have the bread to buy."

"You don't even know whether he's taken the kid or he's
trying to find her," Vesper said.

Caesare pointed to the empty cans. "They're t'gether all
right," he said in his nastiest voice. "I don't know what the
fuck Paul thinks he's up to, but you can be damn sure I'll
make him wish he'd never thought of it." He made a curt
gesture. "You two take to the streets round here. Make sure
you check the cans in alia bars an' restaurants. Also, the
hotels. Stick to an eight-block square. If the hotel still thinks
they're holed up here, they haven't been gone long."

 

"Akinaga isn't taking calls; he can't be disturbed," Hatta said,
putting down the public phone. He jammed his hands in his
pockets, hunching his shoulders as his shoes scuffed against the
sidewalk. "That means he's at Both Ends Burning."

"I want Akinaga and I want him tonight," Nicholas said.
"And believe me, I won't let you out of my sight until
you've gotten me near him."

Nicholas, standing near the Shinjuku intersection of Meiji-
dori and Yasukunidori, was watching the rain distort the
neon colors in the wide avenues, sending them floating off
the dark surfaces like kites on Boys' Day. "What is Both
Ends Burning, S-and-M club, gay bar?"

Hatta hesitated until Nicholas swung around, shot him a

menacing glance. "S-and-M membership-only club, yes, but
it's a very special place. All the top people are members."

Nicholas was on the lookout for big shiny cars driven by
Yakuza kobun. Having encountered one tonight had been
more than enough, but he was taking no chances. Hatta was
being protected, and now that the primary protection had
broken down, perhaps a backup was somewhere out there
waiting for a chance to take him back. Nicholas was also
thinking of the name Both Ends Burning. That was the club
outside which Ise Ikuzo had been slaughtered as an example,
perhaps by Michael Leonforte. An odd kind of coincidence.
"Top people?" Nicholas echoed.

That tiny hesitation again. Hatta's appearance was dishev-
eled and he smelled terrible. By design, Nicholas had given
him no opportunity to clean himself up. There were times,
Nicholas believed, when humiliation cleansed the soul as
nothing else could.

Then Hatta nodded his head. "You know. Politicos, bu-
reaucrats, businessmen. No salarymen allowed." Meaning no
low or middle-level management people. "Both Ends Burn-
ing skims off the very top, and everyone with influence
wants in. That's why Akinaga makes it a kind of unofficial
home away from home."

Nicholas was thinking. Something had been nagging at
him ever since Hatta had confessed his sleazy relationship
with Tetsuo Akinaga. Akinaga was oyabun of the Shikei
clan, but as he noted from the pattern of the irezumi, the
kobun who had been protecting Hatta was from the Yamau-
chi clan. Ever since its last oyabun, Tachi Shidare, had been
killed, the Yamauchi had been run by a triumvirate of
under-oyabun because none of them had enough backing
within the clan to consolidate power. Was Akinaga making
a bid to take over the Yamauchi? There had been rumors
that he had been trying to run Shidare. In any event, Aki-
naga had tried at least once to have Nicholas killed. Nicholas
now said, "If Akinaga hangs out at Both Ends Burning,
what about other Yakuza oyabun?"

Hatta nodded. "Of course. Almost all of them. But only
oyabun and under-oyabun."

Pieces, floating in darkness, coming together, perhaps.
"Are you a member?"

Hatta hesitated once more, then nodded his head in assent

Nicholas was silent, watching the silver rain fall between
the glass behemoths of Shinjuku. "You're important enough
to have a pipeline to Akinaga. You know where he hangs
out, so let's see how well they know you there."

Hatta was, indeed, a member. And so well known he
didn't even have to produce his card, they knew him on
sight. As a guest, Nicholas was required to sign in. He used
Mick Leonforte's name. They were both given plastic cards
with laser-printed emblems.

"Why do you want me here?" Hatta whined as they de-
scended a long flight of stone stairs, slick and uneven from
decades of wear. "This can only end badly."

"I have no doubt." Nicholas prodded him on. "But you
were there at the beginning, you were willing to destroy
Tanaka Gin; now it's only fitting you be there at the end."

The stairway was lit by a line of nickering fluorescent
tubes recessed into niches covered with the kind of metal
grilles found in prisons. The unpleasant monochromatic illu-
mination turned their skin as pale and waxen as that of a
two-week-old corpse. Bone-jarring rock music made its way
through the stone flooring, the soles of their feet, rising like
needles up their legs.

A long, narrow passageway lay before them. The end was
smothered in darkness. The floor was a series of flat stones
slightly raised from a stream of black, purling water that
appeared to drop off precipitously on both sides before the
curving stone walls rose to meet in a kind of gothically
arched ceiling. Wan disks of light filtered down from weak
bulbs in wire cages. They looked to be traversing an under-
ground cavern, possibly just above the level of the subway.

At length, they came to a metal gate, not unlike the port-
cullis in a castle. Behind it sat a moonlighting sumo of gar-
gantuan proportions. He rose as they approached, took the
plastic cards they slipped through the bars, ran them through
a machine. The portcullis opened silently and smoothly on
hidden gimbals, and he handed them back the cards.

The musk was palpably louder now, a frenzied tribal tat-
too, insistent as a heartbeat. They were confronted with a

short, cramped entryway, dense with moving bodies. Squeez-
ing through the mob, they found themselves in a long, low

room. The heat and humidity of hundreds of human bodies
made a dense, tropical fog. Colored lights flashed, strobes
popped off at irregular intervals, and complex acid-jazz-a
combination of jazz tonalities, hip-hop beat, and the occa-
sional rap voice-blew through the swaying bodies like a
moist wind through a forest of bamboo.

As he and Hatta moved slowly through the mob, Nicholas
saw the minister of finance, the minister of commerce and in-
dustry, the ministers of the Textiles Bureau, the Commercial
Affairs Bureau, the International Trade Promotion Bureau.
After he spotted the superintendent of international trade, he
stopped counting. Then there were the members of the Lib-
eral Democratic Party, the Socialist Party, the New Lands
Party, the deputy justice minister-the list was virtually end-
less. Members of the top ten industrial keiretsu were, here and
there, in evidence, as were a number of Yakuza oyabun.

Nicholas headed in their direction, looking, for Tetsuo Aki-
naga. He saw a youngish oyabun he did not recognize talking
to the chief of the Consumer Goods Industries Bureau and
wondered what deal was being born. Hatta was trying to drift
off, but Nicholas kept him close.

"Where is Akinaga?" Nicholas hissed.

"I don't know," Hatta almost shouted over the din.

They passed a circular bar, six deep with clamoring men, all
commanders of industry, bureaus, or illegal activities. It was
curious and unsettling to see them scrabbling for drinks,
shouting and gesticulating like commodities traders in the pits.

"Is it like this every night?" Nicholas asked.

Hatta nodded.

How many deals were consummated in the shadows?
Nicholas asked himself. Each night, more of Japan's future
was decided here than in the chambers of the Diet, the
parliament. Here was the nexus of power, the great, dark
engine that kept Japan chugging along in the traditional
ways. Forget all the talk of reform, the lip service paid to
clearing away the traditional abuses, finding new ways to
conduct business among the steel triangle of business, bu-
reaucracy, and politics. Too much money passed hands here,
too many accommodations were-made, too complex a web
of friendship and favoritism that extended in all directions
out of the light of public scrutiny. The people here-and

not only the Yakuza-had grown too comfortable in this
humid darkness where power was passed as an amulet from
hand to hand, and all things were possible.

Nicholas, scanning the human cacophony, felt Hatta stiffen
slightly, and without turning his head, Nicholas shifted his
gaze. He looked where Hatta had looked. At first he saw noth-
ing but a haze composed of smoke, heat, sound waves, super-
imposed over a kind of chain-mail curtain of human bodies.
He probed the semidarkness with his eyes and then with his
psyche. He opened his tanjian eye and felt something slippery
as a tadpole skitter away from his consciousness. He tried to
follow it, but there were too much sensory data sweeping over
him and he began to close his tanjian.

At that instant, something odd happened. As the light
from his tanjian eye faded, he became aware not of the
familiar darkness but of a maelstrom. Ten thousand bees
buzzed, a rising chorus, and he instinctively recoiled from
the onset of Kshira.

But this time he felt himself cradled as into his mind came
Kisoko's whispered words: Let the darkness come.

The darkness was coming, a black orb opening, the veil
of darkness shielding him from the psychic clatter of hun-
dreds of other souls. Silence. And then, in one corner of that
silence, a silver flash, as if from the tail of a fish breaking
the skin of the water, a ripple in the darkness, a trail of
phosphorescence along which he found himself moving, glid-
ing between closely pressed people in earnest consultations,
in amorous embraces, in meaningless conversations, in
sweaty transactions, in venal quid pro quos, in malicious
double crosses, in dangerous alliances.

Through this thorny lexicon of human endeavor Nicholas
dragged Hatta, the traducer, the craven, as if he were a
bleating sheep Nicholas was taking to market.

Through the black silence of Kshira, Nicholas identified
Tetsuo Akinaga, not with his eyes but with his mind. The
dark eye of Kshira had marked him just as if Nicholas had
shot him with a quiverful of arrows. Nicholas honed in on
him, quartering the room, coming toward him at an angle
that would make escape that much more difficult. When he
was near enough to Akinaga to glimpse him through the
throng, he said to Hatta, "This is the end."

He was almost close enough to the oyabun to reach out
and touch him. He drew Hatta closer to him so that he
would not make a sudden break. Akinaga was deep in a
strategy session with a high-ranking member of the New
Lands Party and Kansai Mitsui, the oyabun's candidate for
prime minister. It was clear Akinaga had not spotted Nicho-
las, who was maneuvering in to give him no room to run,
and Nicholas wanted to keep it that way.

He was fully concentrated on Akinaga when he heard his
name being called, felt a lunge to his left, and swinging his
gaze, saw Honniko.

"Nicholas!" she cried. "Nicholas!"

At that moment, there was a rush on his immediate right
and Hatta slammed into him, crying out as he was literally
lifted off his feet. Nicholas felt a hot spray of blood, whirled
to feel Jochi's hot breath on his face. Hatta was squirming like
a fish caught by a boat hook, and another spray of blood flew
up.

Jochi grunted and rushed Hatta, jamming him harder
against Nicholas's right side. At the same time, the dark eye
of Kshira told Nicholas that Akinaga was slithering away
from the commotion, eeling backward into the shadows,
heading for one of the rear exits almost directly behind him.

Nicholas swiveled away from Jochi's attack, bringing
Hatta with him. The long knife blade came free of Hatta's
side, and he began to bleed like a stuck pig. All around,
people locked into their hermetically sealed worlds were
oblivious. They continued to dance and jostle and bob up
and down, drink and smoke and talk and negotiate deals.

"Honniko!" Nicholas cried, letting Hatta go. He grabbed
her wrists, pulled her to him through the thicket of bodies.
"Hatta-san's been hurt-stabbed by Jochi."

Her eyes were wide.

"I think he was after me." Nicholas turned, saw the tall,
slender woman cradling Hatta. There was blood all over her
lap. As he stared down, her head came up and he was fixed
in the gaze of those wide-apart green eyes. What was the
mother superior doing here? he wondered.

"Take care of him," Nicholas said to Honniko. "Get a
doctor or an ambulance, preferably both."

Honniko looked up from where she knelt beside the
stricken Hatta and Sister Marie Rose. "Where are you-?"
But he had already been swallowed up by the crowd.

 

Lew Croaker, looking ten years younger and as unprepos-
sessing as a florist's assistant should, entered Caesare Leon-
forte's compound in the back of the green and yellow
Amazonia Florist van that daily delivered fresh flowers to
the white mansion. Rico Limon, the F/X guru, had been
right: even his mother wouldn't recognize him. The latex
prostheses-nose, cheeks, forehead, and the small but cru-
cial areas at the sides of his mouth-were perfect, having
been designed off the death mask Rico had made of his face.

"These babies are made to withstand the glare of hot lights,
but not without almost constant touch-ups," he had warned
Croaker of the prostheses, "so my best advice is stay out of
the noonday sun. And whatever you do, don't press the left
side of the nose until you want reinforcements."

As usual, the van was stopped just inside the gate so
guards could visually examine the contents and the dogs
could get a good sniff at everyone and everything. For one
terrible, irrational moment, as one of the dogs came up to
him, Croaker was afraid it could sense the latex. But, as it
turned out, the guard with the hairy hands was more inter-
ested in him because Croaker's was a new face among the
regular tradespeople.

"Molly's on vacation," the driver of the van said.

"Yeah?" Hairy-hands said, staring at Croaker as if this
were a contest of wills. "Where'd Morty go? Fuckin' Alaska
t'get outta this heat?" He guffawed.

"He took his kids to Disney World."

"Fuck you talkin'?" Hairy-hands's eyebrows shot up.
"Seemed t'me ol' Morty was a little light in the loafers."

"Nah," the driver said, obviously used to this kind of
cross-examination, "that'd be me."

They both had a good laugh at that. Croaker risked a
smile at Hairy-hands and was rewarded with a scowl. The
other guard pulled the dog back, and Hairy-hands slarftmed
the van door shut. "Get on up there. Boss don't like the
smell a dvin' flowahs."

With a profound sense of relief Croaker took his biome-

chanical hand out of his pocket where he had kept it hidden
throughout the visual check.

"C'mon, c'mon," he urged the driver.

It was just after two p.m. and he was both anxious and
annoyed. He had been all set to penetrate Bad Clamsville
at eight this morning in La Petite Bakery's truck, which
daily delivered fresh croissants, rolls, and baguettes, when
by sheer good fortune he had discovered the dispatcher try-
ing to make a call into the compound. Subsequent interroga-
tion by the backup team of federal agents Vesper had
requested had revealed that the dispatcher was on Bad
Clams's payroll. It had given everyone involved-including
Croaker-a queasy feeling. How much of the area infra-
structure was under Bad Clams's thumb? There was no way
of telling, but when they invaded the Amazonia premises,
all outgoing calls were carefully monitored.

They spent'the next forty minutes removing yesterday's
flower arrangements and replacing them with the load they
had trucked in. Croaker was upstairs in a sitting room, put-
ting the finishing touches on a tropical-looking centerpiece
when Hairy-hands sauntered in.

"Where's your dog?" Croaker said, placing a fiery-red
bird-of-paradise in place.

"Very fuckin' funny," Hairy-hands said. He was so close
Croaker could smell the sour remnants of lunch on his
breath. He stuck out a sausagelike finger, the top of which
was a forest of curly black hair. "What's zis?"

Croaker looked at him.

"Zis?" Hairy-hands pointed more emphatically to a white
flower. "What'sa name?"

Croaker had no idea. "Delphinium," he said "Where's
the can? I gotta pee."

Hairy-hands glowered at him. "Downa hall. I'll take ya."

Croaker dutifully went out into the hall at Hairy-hands's
direction, feeling him like a brick wall at his back. He
opened the door to the bathroom inward. At the same mo-
ment, he jammed his left elbow in Hairy-hands's solar
plexus. He whirled, but before he could get his biomechani-
cal hand around Hairy-hands's throat, the big man slammed
the heel of his hand into the point of Croaker's chin.

He flew backward, hitting the cool tile bathroom floor on

one hip. In one stride, Hairy-hands was on top of him, shak-
ing him this way and that, then slamming him back against
the side of the porcelain tub. Croaker felt lances of pain
radiate from his side as he made an inarticulate sound.

Hairy-hands bent over him, grinning, and Croaker, his
biomechanical hand balled up, drove his fist into the big
man's clavicle. It cracked beneath the force of the blow, and
Croaker's stainless-steel and polycarbonate fingers opened
like the petals of a poisonous flower, pressing against the
carotid artery in the side of Hairy-hands's neck. The big
man slipped to his knees, his huge hands flailing, still trying
to do damage, and Croaker chopped down with his other
hand onto the bridge of Hairy-hands's nose. He collapsed
amid a welter of blood.

Croaker tried to stand up, slipped on the tiles, righted
himself by grabbing onto the sink. He saw himself in the
mirror and did not like what he saw. He was breathing hard
and his side hurt like hell. He wanted to splash cold water
on his face, but what with the prostheses and the makeup,
it was out of the question. His nose was slightly askew and
he fixed it as best he could.

He turned back to Hairy-hands. Quickly, he undressed
him, then with a grunt got him into the tub. He took out
several plastic notched ties, bound his ankles and wrists.
Then Croaker emptied the pockets of his green and yellow
Amazonia overalls, took them off, and balling them up,
threw them into the tub. He drew closed the plastic shower
curtain on which was imprinted a French lawn-party scene
à la Toulouse-Lautrec.

He climbed into Hairy-hands's clothes and immediately
began to smell like onions and peppers. He studied himself
in the mirror. The trousers were too big, but by notching
the belt tighter he judged they didn't look too bad. •

He stuffed all his paraphernalia into his new clothes, took
Hairy-hands's snub-nosed .38 in its shoulder holster, and
swung it into place. All set. He checked the room one last
time, neatening knickknacks here and there. Then he went
out into the upstairs hallway, shutting the door behind him.

There was a commotion behind him, people coming up the
stairs. He turned and almost ran right into Caesare Leonforte.

 

 

*    *    *

 

"Hot as a fuckin' furnace out there," Caesare Leonforte
said as he strode down the second-floor hallway of his house.
When he brushed by one of his men standing there, he was
already calling for Vesper, who hurried behind him. It
wasn't exactly as if Caesare remembered the man-he had
only given him the most cursory of glances-but, like a rib-
bon of paper fetched up against a stanchion, something stuck
in his mind, fluttering there.

Caesare went into his office, immediately turned down
to tundra level the thermostat that controlled the central
air-conditioning.

"That fuckin' Paul," he said. "I give him everything a
man could ask for-money, opportunity, a chance to show
his smarts-an' what does he do? He turns around an' fucks
me inna ass." As usual when he was agitated, the shell of
sophistication he had carefully crafted cracked, and more of
his street accent came out. "But I don't want any a this to
fuck with our rendezvous with Milo," he said over his shoul-
der to Vesper as he checked his gold Patek Philippe. "I
gotta make that pickup in less than an hour an' I gotta settle
a score." His huge fists struck his desk with a resounding
thud, and he stared out the window. "I haven't heard from
the boys in South Beach an' I don't like leavin' loose ends."

He took out a cellular phone, auto-dialed a number.
"Fuck!" he shouted, throwing the phone onto his desk. "No
answer. Out of range or out of brains. Either way, they
haven't found Paul an' the kid."

Vesper waited a beat. "You haven't told me why your
friend Paul would kidnap his girlfriend's kid."

"An" I appreciate you keepin' your nose outta it." Cae-
sare was still staring blankly out the window, as if by sheer
force of will he could bring them back. "Actually, you're
right. The story I told you makes no sense now." He sighed.
"The broad isn't Paul's dish, she's a business rival a mine.
She got a little, you know, overambitious, stepped outta line.
I had Paul bring her an' her kid here."

"Why the kid?"

"Persuasion. The kid's more important to her than her
business."

"That's pretty low, isn't it? I mean, the Sicilians have rules
against that sort of thing, don't they?"

"Fuck th' rules!" Caesare shouted. "The rules're for old
men with black suits an' arthritis." He pounded his chest.
"I make the rules around here an' fuck anybody who doesn't
like it."

Suddenly, Vesper saw his whole body stiffen like a hunt-
ing dog on point.

"Well, holy shit, will you look at that!"

Vesper came up behind him, stared over his shoulder at
the scene unfolding outside. Her heart skipped a beat.
Through the window she could see Paul Chiaramonte lead-
ing Francie through the compound. He was accompanied by
two of Caesare's thugs. One of the dogs, at the extreme end
of its chain, was sniffing at Francie's knees. As they came
toward the house, Vesper and Caesare could see that Paul
had tight hold of Francie by the back of her blouse.

"Now what d'you suppose that's all about?" Caesare said
as he drew a .38 from his desk drawer and checked the
cylinder.

"It looks hike he's bringing her back. Maybe you were
wrong about him."

"Yeah?" Caesare snapped the chamber back in place.
"We'll see about that,"

As be turned away from the window, his cellular phone
rang. For an instant he thought about ignoring it, then he
snatched it up, yelled into it, "Yeah! What?"

"It's White Wolf."

Caesare rolled his eyes. The chief of police, who was on
his payroll, read too many spy novels. He insisted on using
code names and something he called a parole-an exchange
of these secret names, changed periodically, that identified
two otherwise anonymous voices over the phone.

"Green Dolphin," Caesare said, his mind on Paul Chiara-
monte and whether or not he had crossed him.

"On the matter of the killing of that ex-NYPD cop,
Lewis Croaker."

"Yeah, what about it? I told you to make sure the in-
vesti-"

"Forget the investigation, It was the most cursory thing
I've ever seen, and there's a good reason why. Croaker
never was admitted to any area hospital,"

"Course not. I croaked Croaker." Caesare laughed at that.

"I wouldn't be so sure of that. I just spoke with the coro-
ner and he has no record of the body, either. I went through
the prelim crime-scene reports. The team that secures the
crime scene is required to get the particulars of anyone in
or around it. That includes the ambulance crew. I called the
hospital and got an official runaround. Then I made some
unofficial calls, if you get my drift, and I came up with this
kick in the head: the ambulance dispatched to the crime
scene was a phony."

All thoughts of Paul Chiaramonte and Francine Goldoni
DeCamillo evaporated. Caesare slowly swung around until
he was looking right at Vesper. Two things were now possi-
ble and he didn't like the feel of either of them. Either
Croaker was dead and the feds had him, which meant a
thorough clandestine investigation that might or might not
be beyond his reach, or it was all a setup and Croaker was
still alive. Which meant that Vesper, who had after all shot
him, wasn't what she was pretending to be.

"So who picked him up?"

"I don't know. Believe me, that was as far as I could get."

Caesare took a deep breath. "You sure about everything
you've told me?"

"As sure as anyone can be in this uncertain world."

Caesare nodded slowly. "Thanks. You've been a big
help."

"A word to the wise. I have no control over whatever is
happening, so until this blows over, I'd rather we didn't have
any further communication." The chief of police laughed,
but with an ambivalent note. "Remember me in your will."

As Caesare broke the connection, a memory fluttered in
his mind like that ribbon of paper caught on a stanchion.
The man he had bumped into in the hallway. Caesare could
just about see-his face: nothing remarkable about it at all-
except he was sure he'd never seen it before.

With a growl of disgust and rage, he yanked open the
door and kicked it back so that it banged against the rubber
doorstop, twanging like a bow.

"That guy!" Caesare burst out into the hallway, Vesper
just behind him. "Where's that fuckin' guy!"

The goon who was standing guard on the landing looked
at his boss and said, "What guy?"

"The guy!" Caesare screamed, gesticulating madly. "You
know, the jamoke who I bumped into a minute ago."

"What guy? Mikey? Joey? Fredo? Who?"

"Not any one of those, you moron!" Caesare shouted,
pushing past him and thundering down the stairs. Caesare
wanted to describe the guy, but he realized there was noth-
ing to describe. He was just a guy - big, muscular, but fea-
tureless. "The fuckin' guy!" he screamed in frustration.
"One a you morons musta seen him! Fuck do I pay you
for? Stand around an' scratch your nuts?"

He pushed past two more men on the first floor just as
the front door opened. He whirled with the grace of a ballet
dancer, his .38 coming up, expecting to confront Paul and
Francie, but instead, Joey loped in. He looked flushed and
worried, which wasn't Joey's normal state.

"Boss, there's a copter headin' our way!"

Caesare lifted his hands. "So fuckin' what? We get chop-
pers in here alia time!"

"I put the specs on it," Joey said, meaning binoculars.
"This one's a fed."

"A fed copter?" Caesare couldn't believe it, but Joey's
head was bobbing up and down like one of those annoying
plastic dogs in the back window of a car. A small, almost
reverent hush filled the grand foyer of the mansion, as if
the shadow of the red death had entered.

"Yeah," Joey said, a little more breathlessly. "It's like
a fuckin' Nam gunship, fulla cammos wit' sniper rifles an'
semiautomatics. It's comin' in low, right ovah the tops a
the trees."

"C'mon!" Caesare grabbed Vesper and headed through
the now crowded foyer into a back corridor leading to the
kitchen. His head felt as if a balloon were inflating inside it,
and he could not control a throbbing in his temples.

"This way," he hissed as he grabbed her arm and pulled
her bodily into the walk-in pantry. It was cool and dark and
that was good. Like a blind man in his own house, Caesare
knew every inch of this room because he had personally
overseen its construction. He felt his way to the right rear
corner. At the bottom of the floor-to-ceiling shelving, he
pushed aside two cans. His fingertip depressed a button, and

as he was rearranging the cans, a breath of sulfurous air
wafted up at them like the exhalation of a demon.

"Down," he whispered, placing a hand on the back of
Vesper's head. He went down the shallow steps behind her,
then felt for another button, and the sliding panel closed
just over his head.

Down here, it stunk like the pits of hell. The mansion had
no basement. This was typical of Florida houses because the
water table was so near the surface. But after one of his
holding companies had bought this compound, he had had
this shallow escape route trenched in. He had told the build-
ers that it was for existing and future fiber-optic cable bun-
dles and auxiliary electrical lines, but he'd made sure it was
wide enough for him to traverse.

He guided Vesper through the darkness, one hand firmly
on her to keep her bent over in the low space, but also to
keep control of her. She was the only immediate element in
his life he now had control over, and this was important to
him either way-whether she was who she said she was or
whether she had betrayed him, was part of the conspiracy
Croaker and the feds had launched against him.

On the most basic level, there was no difference, he re-
flected, as he crawled through the damp, sulfurous PVC pip-
ing, away from the house, the compound, and the feds. What
mattered was that she was with him. She was like a magic
amulet, his protection against, as the chief of police had said,
an uncertain world. Either he would have her as his lover
or as a hostage. Croaker and the feds could go fuck them-
selves till they turned blue.

Croaker, feeling stiff and uncomfortable in his prostheses,
hurried out the front door and into the broiling Florida sun.
He immediately began to sweat, and remembering Rico Li-
mdn's admonition regarding heat's effects on his disguise,
he began to sweat all the more.

He approached the two goons who were riding herd on
the dark-skinned man who had a gun pressed into Francie's
side. He'd always found the best defense to be an offense,
so he shouted, "What the hell's going on here?"

"I let the brat outta my sight for a minute," the dark-

skinned man said, "an' you can tell Bad Clams I found 'er.
My fault, but all's well that ends well."

"Who the fuck're you?" the goon with the dog on the
chain said.

"Joey Hand," Croaker said, displaying his biomechanical
hand. He studiously ignored Francie's brief wide-eyed look,
but he wondered why she dug her elbow into the dark-
skinned man's stomach while the goons were staring at him.

"Don't know no Joey Hand," the goon said. The dog did
not care for his agitation and was whining at the end of its
leash. It looked as if it was itching to get its teeth into
Croaker's thigh.

"From the New York machine," Croaker said, verbally
dancing as fast as he could. "The boss brought me down to
help 'im deal with the DeCamillo broad an' the brat"

"This here's Paul Chiaramonte," the other goon said.
"He's from the New York machine. He brought the broad
an' the brat down." He looked from one to the other. "How
'bout it? You two know each other, or what?"

Croaker saw Paul Chiaramonte open his mouth and al-
most make a sound as Francie stepped on his instep. He
smiled, his eyes watering a bit. "Sure. Who doesn't know
Joey Hand in New Yawk?" He shot out a hand, which
Croaker gripped as their eyes locked. "We met-where was
it? In Bensonhurst, must've been-the Donelli wedding."

"Right," Croaker said, feeling a line of sweat creep down
his spine. "The Donelli wedding. Helluva affair, wasn't it?"
How did actors keep this ton of shit on their faces without
its melting like candle wax? he wondered.

"Jesus," Paul said, getting with the program, "was it not?
Remember Rose?" He pushed out his chest.

"And Sophia singing like a drunken lunatic."

"Okay," the goon with the dog said, "enough of This Is
Your Life." He turned to Croaker. "The boss ain't sure
about Chiaramonte. What does he want we should do with
these two for the time being? Inna main house?"

"I wanna see my mom!" Francie cried, and began pulling
Paul toward the guesthouse.

Croaker blessed her for her quick wit. "No," he said. "He
wants the broad and the brat together so we can keep a
better eye on 'em."

The second goon nodded. "Sounds good t'me. We don't
want a repeat ova escape. The boss'll roast us alive."

They went across the emerald lawn, past high privet
hedges and neat lines of boxwood interspersed with flower
beds. Their soles made a hollow sound against the brickwork
around the pool, and Croaker was acutely aware of the
quick clicking of the dog's long nails. Above their heads, a
bird flitted among the cool leaves, free from the cruelty of
man-made crises.

Croaker saw the guesthouse, shining brilliant white, and
he imagined Margarite inside. What kind of shape was she
in? Was she all right? He wanted to break into a run and
he could feel the adrenaline pumping through him.

They were on the brick path to the front door when they
heard the thwop-thwop-thwop! of a helicopter's rotors and,
looking up, saw what looked like a military gunship coming
in low and fast.

"Fuck is that?" the first goon said as his dog began to
bark, leaping in the air as if possessed.

Croaker smashed his biomechanical fist into the goon's
side and he crumpled over. The dog whirled almost in mid-
air, its eyes bright, its jaws snapping. Grabbing the plastic
snap-guard from his pocket, Croaker jammed it over the
dog's muzzle, then pressed the point of a tiny tranquilizer
dart into its neck.

"Hey-!" Croaker heard the second goon cry out and,
turning, saw the goon, a bloody gash in his temple, going
down from a blow from the butt of Paul Chiaramonte's gun.

Paul looked at Croaker. "You know who I am, but who
the fuck're you?" He had to shout over the growing noise
of the chopper.

"Uncle Lew!" Francie cried, running into his arms. "I
knew you'd come find us!"

Paul looked at the two of them with what Croaker sensed
was a kind of sadness. At that moment, Paul seemed very
much apart from this goonish world, as isolated as an arctic
ice floe.

As they huddled in the doorway, Croaker said, "I know
all about you, buddy."

"No, Uncle Lew, you don't," Francie said.

Paul tousled her hair. "I fucked up big time, I know. But

I made a deal with Francie, I promised t'get her and her
mom outta here an' I aim t'do that."

Leaves were whipping all over the place and eddies of
wind rattled the glass panes of the windows. Croaker
glanced from Paul to the lowering copter. "You still have
some way to go." Croaker gestured with his head. "How
many guards inside?"

"Two. But that was before I split with the kid. May be
more now."

"Okay," Croaker said, the gun he had taken from the
goon upstairs in the main house at the ready. "Let's do it."

As Paul knocked on the door, he turned to Francie,
placed her out of harm's way. "Now just stay there, will you
promise me?"

She stared at him, then at the copter out of which men
in camouflage outfits were leaping. "Uncle Lew, what's
going on?"

"Just stay here," Croaker said as the front door opened
and Paul slammed it back on its hinges as hard as he could.

Croaker bulled his way into the hallway, saw a goon com-
ing out of a back bedroom, skidded sideways as the goon
aimed and squeezed off a shot that slammed into a cabinet.
Croaker, landing on one shoulder, fired three times, and the
goon was knocked backward into the doorframe. He went
down and stayed down.

Croaker turned in time to see Paul struggling with the
goon who had opened the door. The goon used a right cross
to deck Paul, and Croaker took up a chair and threw it. The
goon ducked right into Paul's fist. He went down on one
knee and Paul chopped him viciously across the neck.

Croaker went through room after room and found them
empty. He waved Paul back, then cautiously entered the
back bedroom through the open door. The king-size bed
was to the right, the door to the room, a dresser and mirror
to the left. Straight ahead was a bathroom.

To his right, he saw Margarite kneeling on the bed, her
eyes wide and staring, her mouth opened in a soundless
scream. At almost the same instant, he saw the dark splotch

in the corner of his vision, reflected in the mirror-someone
standing hidden behind the open door. As he took a step
toward Margarite, he fired back over his left shoulder point-

blank at the door. The bullets broke through the hollow-
core door and he heard a heavy thump. Stepping around
the door, he pulled it toward him, saw the body of a third
goon who'd been hiding there. He used the front of his shoe
to pull the gun from the goon's hand, then bent to check
his pulse. There wasn't any.

"Who-?"

He came around from behind the door, already pulling
off his prosthetic nose. "It's me, Margarita. Lew."

"Oh, my God!" She scrambled off the bed and into his
arms. "Lew."

He kissed the side of her neck as she clung to him. It had
been a long time since he had held her, and he savored
the moment.

"It's all over," he said. "You're safe and so is Francie."

 

Tetsuo Akinaga was nowhere to be seen, but Nicholas
glimpsed the figure of Jochi disappearing through the exit
door in the left rear of Both Ends Burning.

The exit opened not onto a back alley or the street but
onto a lightless and stifling corridor at the end of which was
another door slightly ajar. Nicholas moved carefully through
the darkness until he reached the door, which was painted
metal, a fire door. He pushed it slightly open, peered out
into an alley. It was deserted. He wondered whether Jochi
and Akinaga had come this way.

Back in the corridor, he opened his dark eye-and-the
blackness fell away. He became aware of the square outline
in the ceiling, the trapdoor and the cord hanging down from
it. Pulling it, he saw a set of steel steps slide down. He went
up them, ducking over to make it through the small
trapdoor.

He found himself in the back room of a video-game par-
lor. Making his way past stacked cartons and the hulks of
older machines, he opened a door onto rows of machines'
spewing the complex graphics and elemental noises of ul-

traviolent computerized confrontations. Hunched over the
pixel-dominated screens were mesmerized teenagers-many
of them Nihonin in their black leather outfits, tattoos and
body piercings, their hair buzz-cut or maned, their eyes

heavy with the attitude of menace forged from the excess
of empty leisure.

Nicholas scanned the room, which was as large as any
pachinko parlor. Strings of neon lights ran around the walls
where they met the ceiling, often spelling out the brand
names of the game manufacturers in brilliant starburst
patterns.

Here was their life in its figurative nutshell: the control
of little men on little screens, life and death played out in
concentrated bursts of color, light, and sound, all played at
amphetamine speed. They had dropped out of their fathers'
highly controlled life and dropped into another, one without
any sense of responsibility or decay. Here among the ma-
chines that re-created the lives of their combatants over and
over without ever missing a beat, they were immortal, sus-
pended in time. With one night identical to the last, the
future had been obliterated as effectively as the past.

Nicholas went through the video-game parlor, seeing
nothing, hearing nothing, searching for Jochi. He passed the
cashier in her tower of neon and plastic and went up a steep
flight of stairs. A jammed, raucous bar decked out as one
dazzlingly colored screen from a popular video game led
into another room, quieter, almost hushed. Muted shades of
charcoal-gray and wood-brown bare walls were hung with
huge black-and-white photographs of Jack Kerouac, Alan
Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, an achingly young Marlon
Brando in his role in The Wild One, a ferocious Jim Mor-
rison onstage in full leather regalia, clutching a microphone,
a softly lit, expertly retouched studio publicity still of Law-
rence Harvey, a sultry James Dean exuding the scary
longeur of the temporarily sated predator, a grainy shot of
T. E. Lawrence, his desert-seared teak skin contrasting
sharply with the white Arab burnoose he wore.

A number of tiny tables were scattered around the cool,
dimly lit room, and on a small platform that hardly deserved
the name stage, a young man slouched in black boots, knife-
blade-narrow trousers, T-shirt, and leather vest A half-
smoked cigarette lounged at a corner of his mouth as he
recited what many in the room mistakenly thought of as
poetry. Everyone was drinking coffee or an ornate variation

thereof. The atmosphere was thick with cigarette smoke and
resuscitated beat attitude.

Nicholas entered a stainless-steel kitchen as long and nar-
row as a hallway. He squinted through the bright fluorescent
lights, ignored the questions put to him by one of the cooks,
and made a thorough search. It looked like a dead end, and
back in the coffee bar he took a long, penetrating look
around.

He saw neither Akinaga nor Jochi, but he did see some-
one he knew. He went over, took a spare chair from the
back of the room, slid it next to the Nihonin and his pals.

Kawa looked languidly over at him. "Hey," he said, and
gripped Nicholas's hand in a firm American bikers' grip. His
snow-white hair looked eerie in the half-light.

Nicholas nodded his head toward the minuscule stage.
"You like this stuff?"

"It sucks," Kawa said, and his table snickered. He
shrugged. "But, hey, the atmosphere's right for the
moment."

Nicholas put his head close to Kawa's. He smelled of
cloves and pot. Nicholas wondered whether he was on any
other drugs. "You see someone-maybe two people-hur-
rying through here a short time ago?" He gave them a brief
description of Akinaga and Jochi.

Kawa's eyes opened wide. "Hunt?" he inquired in his odd
kind of shorthand.

When Nicholas nodded, he conferred with his compatri-
ots. The knot broke and he said to Nicholas, "Maya might
have seen something of the sort, but she wasn't paying too
much attention. The rest of us, no sale."

Nicholas turned to Maya, a Japanese girl with dyed-blond
hair and fever-bright eyes, but Kawa was right, whatever
She might have seen lay light-years away behind those
stoned eyes.

"Hey, don't sweat it." Kawa winked at Nicholas. "If they
did come this way, I have an idea where."

"Show me."

Nicholas followed Kawa back into the kitchen. The smell
of freshly brewed espresso was a sharp tang, mingling with
the released zest of fresh lemons. A latte machine was hiss-
ing like a nest of vipers. Past the stinking toilet was the

space used to stack garbage in neat plastic bags. Beyond
that, as Nicholas had already seen, was a blank wall.

But now Nicholas could see that none of the bags were
resting against this back wall, and as he watched, Kawa de-
pressed a hidden stud. The plasterboard wall slid back, re-
vealing a small elevator.

Nicholas stared at it for a moment much the way he would
an asp showing its fangs. "Where does this go? The street?"

"No," Kawa said. "It goes up to a high-rent restaurant."

Nicholas felt the undercurrent of a premonition. "Do you
know the name?"

"Yeah, sure. Pull Marine."

The restaurant where Honniko and Jochi worked as part-
time maître d's while toiling in the service of Mick Leon-
forte. Pull Marine, the nexus point. He looked at Kawa.
"You think the manager of this place is around?"

"I saw him a while ago. He was on his way out, but take
a minute and I'll check."

Kawa disappeared through the steam of latte and coffee.
In a moment, he had returned with a short, balding man
with sharp features and cunning eyes. "This is Suta-san," he
said, and the short man bowed.

Nicholas, returning the bow, whipped out Tanaka Gin's
prosecutor's credentials before Kawa could introduce him.
He saw the Nihonin's eyes flick over the opened wallet. If
he was surprised, he didn't show it

"How may I be of service?" Suta said.

"the Prosecutor's Office is investigating a multiple homi-
cide," Nicholas said not untruthfully. "The trail has led us
back to this building. Can you tell me who owns it?"

Suta rubbed his hands together, happy that it wasn't he
who was somehow under investigation. "Firstly, this is a
series of buildings-three linked together by a warren of
very old subterranean corridors-or so I am told." His hands
made little washing gestures. Nicholas was prepared for him
to say that the buildings were owned by a corporation he
would be able to trace back to Tetsuo Akinaga.

"The history is perhaps interesting," Suta continued,
"though, I suppose, only to a select few. A corporation
owned it for many years-perhaps ten. Sterngold Associates.
Recently, it was bought by a company named Tenki."

Nicholas's mind was reeling. Sterngold had been owned
by Rodney Kurtz, the German industrialist whom Mick had
ritually murdered. Tenki was Mick's own company.

"I imagine Sterngold bought up the three buildings,"
Nicholas said.

Suta shook his head. "No, they were already a parcel
when Sterngold bought in."

"May I ask how you know all this?"

"Certainly." The bald head nodded. "My father built up
a modest real estate business, which I now run." Suta ges-
tured. "This club is a hobby for me. My wife died several
years ago and I find my life--more pleasant-when it is
filled."

"So your office did all these transactions?"

Suta nodded. "Hai."

Nicholas's mind was racing. "Who did Sterngold buy the
three buildings from?"

Suta shifted from one foot to another as if his feet hurt
"I really shouldn't say."

This was interesting. "Why? There are no secrets from
the Prosecutor's Office."

"No, no, nothing like that." The hands were washing
again. "But I hesitate to intrude on an individual's-"

"The entire parcel was owned by an individual?"

Suta nodded. "Yes, dating back a long time, to before the
war in the Pacific. An individual by the name of Okami-
san."

Nicholas felt as if he had been punched in the stomach.
Taking a careful breath, he said, "Mikio Okami, the Ya-
kuza oyabun?"

"No. His sister. Kisoko."

Dark shards spinning in his mind, wheels within wheels
within ... "You mean it was sold by the family?"

"No. I was required to inspect the deed prior to the clos-
ing. It was in the name of Kisoko Okami."

Nicholas was lost in thought. What did Rodney Kurtz,
Mick Leonforte, and Kisoko Okami have in common? He
could not imagine. All of a sudden, reality had been turned
ninety degrees, all the disparate pieces upended out of their
assigned slots. Nothing was what it had appeared to be five

minutes ago. In a moment, Nicholas realized that Suta was
watching him expectantly.

Nicholas bowed. "You have been extremely helpful, Suta-
san," he said formally. "I will make note of that in my
report."

Again, relief flooded Suta's face. He could not stop bow-
ing, but at length he left them in the kitchen, standing by
the closed door to the elevator.

"Hunt just got a little more interesting," Kawa said, and
Nicholas could see a spark of interest briefly illumine Kawa's
icy nihilistic facade.

"You could say that."

Kawa inclined his head. "You going up there?" He meant
Pull Marine.

"I've got no choice." Nicholas reached out, pressed the
single button, and they could hear the whir of machinery
over the hiss and pop of the kitchen.

"Coming down," Kawa said.

The door opened and Nicholas stepped in. When he
turned around to face the closing door, he saw the Nihonin
with one thumb upraised.

"Hey," Kawa said. "Blood tonight."

The door shut and Nicholas rode up in darkness. The tiny
cabin smelted faintly of a woman's spicy-sweet perfume and
a gamey, masculine odor. Whatever lights the elevator had
weren't working. Nicholas had not pressed a button but he
was ascending. Was the elevator on automatic, rising and
descending between the coffee bar and Pull Marine like
the tide?

Nicholas felt a whiff of air on his cheek. Were they passing
vents in the shaft? Unlikely in this maze of three interlinked
buildings. His eyes seemed to go out of focus and he lost
his balance.

Kshira?

But no, he did not hear the telltale buzzing of ten thousand
bees in his head. In fact, his mind seemed completely unruf-
fled, still as a summer pond, devoid of volition and decision.

His last thought, disconnected, as out of context as a clown
at a funeral, was the word gas.

Then the world dropped far and fast into a pit of utter
blackness.

 

13

West Palm Beach/Tokyo

Caesare pushed away a pile of accumulated dirt, silt, sand,
and rotting leaves that was rapidly decomposing into humus.
The far end of the PVC pipe debouched more than a city
block away from the house, beside a private dock on Lake
Worth. He wriggled out, brushing off a dark coating of detri-
tus and insects, then turned back and gave Vesper a hand.

While Caesare climbed into the Cigarette, Vesper looked
back at the compound, which now looked like the grounds
of a military training exercise. The moment the fed copter
had touched down the agents dismounted from its landing
struts and a voice over an amplified loudspeaker had cau-
tioned those inside the compound to lay down their arms
and stand still with their hands in the air.

Vesper, wondering about her friends, said, "Aren't you
the least bit interested in what's going on there?"

Caesare, having made sure the tank was topped off, cast
off the bow line. "If my life has taught me anything, it is
never to look back."

"But these are your people. They put their lives on the
line for you. Don't you owe them something?"

Caesare glanced at her. "To a man they're greedy and
stupid and, essentially, lazy."

"But they're loyal."

Caesare raised a hand. "I could getta a dog t'do that."
He gestured. "C'mon, c'mon. An' cast off the stern line as
you come aboard."

A moment later, he had started the engine and they eased
out of the dock, swinging first east, then south in a perfect
arc, their wake churning white and foamy. When they were
past the small island that housed the U.S. Coast Guard Res-
ervation, he put on speed! The Cigarette went up onto plane,
the huge arcing wake forming almost immediately, the sound
booming across the lake, and soon they had left the lights
and sounds of encroaching chaos far behind.

 

Wade Forrest came off the copter with his heart beating
fast He was dressed in full cammo and he held a machine
pistol in his right hand. He had lifted off the moment he had
received the electronic, signal from Croaker's homing device.

Already his people were rounding up these Italian goons,
who stood awestruck at the firepower of the United States
government. Forrest, bent over and squinting against the
rotor's wash, spoke authoritatively into the headset built into
his helmet. In truth, he felt overlarge and bulky in his bullet-
proof clothes, but regs were regs and he was not about to
make an exception. He had spoken to his daughter yester-
day. He had interrupted her birthday party, could hear the
music and the noise in the background, and he had felt a
certain sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. They had
talked for five minutes, but after he had hung up, he realized
be couldn't remember a thing she'd said to him. He'd been
too busy wishing he'd been there, wishing he'd been to even
one of the milestones in his daughters' lives. But his job
being what it was, he hadn't made any. And now he didn't
even have this snippet of conversation to keep with him. On
impulse, he'd called back, but his daughter was somewhere
outside. A friend promised to retrieve her, but after five
minutes of listening to music and bursts of laughter and
nothing else, he'd hung up. Anyway, he'd had a great deal
of work to do.

Now he was busy deploying his men. He strode through
the grounds of the compound like Lee at Chancellorsville,
an armed aide at his side. Men were pouring out of the
main house under armed guard, others were being led from

the perimeter of the fencing where they had been hiding or
trying to make a run for it. Not a shot had been fired.

On the other hand, there was no sign of Caesare Leon-
forte, and Forrest ordered an immediate thorough search of
the main house. He found Croaker in the guesthouse, where
he had subdued three men who had been guarding a hand-
some but disheveled woman with dark hair and light eyes.
Forrest recognized her immediately. She was standing with
her arm around a girl of eighteen or so, her daughter, For-
rest guessed. There was another man in the room, whom
Forrest didn't know and didn't care about.

"Margarite Goldoni DeCamillo," he said in the formal
voice he had learned to evoke in the Virginia academy
where he had received his advanced training, "you are
hereby charged with the murder of one Franco 'the Fish'
Bondini." He took out the cuffs. "Three separate eyewit-
nesses have identified you as the woman who shot Mr. Bon-
dini dead on Park Avenue and-"

"What?" Margarite had a stunned look on her face. "But
that was self-defense."

"Maybe, maybe not." Forrest snapped the cuffs on her,
read her her Miranda rights.

"But I'm not guilty!" Margarite cried. She looked from
Forrest to Croaker. "Lew," she implored.

Croaker, who was in the midst of ditching the rest of his
prostheses, said, "Forrest, what the hell d'you think you're
doing? This is utter bullshit and you know it. They killed
her driver-"

"Bodyguard." Forrest leered. "What kind of business
d'you think she's in?"

Croaker took a step toward the fed. "They shot to death
the man standing beside her and were about to execute her."
Light glinted off his makeup. "No jury in this country will
convict. In fact, no D.A. will charge. Under the law, she's
entitled to defend herself if she's in fear for her life. It's just
like she said, self-defense."

"You've done your bit, now kindly let me do mine. Get
the hell out of my face."

"Like hell I will"

"Look, Croaker, I have a federal mandate to make cases
against the remaining Families and she's Goldoni."

"This isn't a case, it's a farce. Do you really believe the
government will allow itself to end up with egg on its face?
They're gonna need a patsy, and you are it. Your fast-track
career's going in the shitter."

The cords on the sides of Forrest's bull neck were pop-
ping. "Like I said, get the hell out of my way."

Croaker took another step toward Forrest, lowered his
voice. "For God's sake, take the cuffs off her, man. She's
been through hell here. Bad Clams had her and her daugh-
ter kidnapped."

Forrest's eyes flickered like one of those exhibits in a
house-of-horrors exhibit. "Step aside, I tell you, or by God
I'll arrest you along with Mrs. DeCamillo." He reached out,
grabbed the chain between the cuffs, jerked it so that Marga-
rite stumbled forward.

"Mom!"

"Easy, kid." Paul tried to hold her, but Francie ducked
her shoulder and broke past him on an end run. She
slammed into Forrest, her arms flailing.

"Get her off me, will ya?" Forrest cried, but before the
other feds could act, Croaker snatched her up and whispered
in her ear, "Stop it. This won't do any good."

Francie was crying, turning in Croaker's arms until she
had buried her face in the crook of his shoulder. He saw
that Margarite's heart was breaking, and his with it. Had
she ever contemplated the physical reality of being arrested?
he wondered. If she had, she had certainly never considered
the possibility of its happening in front of her daughter.
After making it this far, Margarite almost lost it as Forrest
led her out the door into tbe secured compound.

 

Nicholas heard a humming, but it was coming from a long
way off. The humming went on, a disembodied sound that
gradually became a melody wafting in darkness. The melody
unfurled like a black sail, complex and strangely familiar.
Nicholas had heard it before. It was a piece of Richard
Wagner's Die Lieder von der Erde.

Coming up like a skin diver from the depths, he felt an enor-
mous need to take a breath. He tried to do so but nothing hap-
pened. His lungs refused to work. He tried to focus his mind,
to open his tanjian eye, but something was holding him back,

like the web of a spider, and he could not find kokoro, the
center of all things. His mind felt encased in amber. Putting
one thought after another was enormously difficult.

His lids felt glued shut and he opened his eyes with some
difficulty. He found himself in a bare room and he had a
moment of blind panic. Then he realized be was hanging
upside down. His heart thudded heavily in his chest. Across
from him, against the opposite wall, Mikio Okami hung from
a chain in what he assumed was an identical position. An
IV dripped into the inside of Okami's left wrist, and by
turning his head just slightly Nicholas could see a similar
contraption dripping liquid into his own vein. In this posi-
tion, he could see the wall at a right angle to him, saw a
third chain and an IV rig. This spot was, however, empty.

"Okami-san," he whispered, and then more urgently:
"Okami-san!"

The Kaisho opened eyes turned rheumy. He blinked sev-
eral times, like an owl in bright light.

"Linnear-san." He sighed heavily, his words slurred by
drugs. "Caught in the same trap."

"Don't give up hope. We'll get out of this."

The look Okami gave him sent a shiver down his spine.

"Death waits for all of us," the Kaisho said slowly. "Our
sole duty is to see that it has meaning."

"There will be no death here," Nicholas vowed.

Mikio Okami tried to smile. "Give it meaning," he rasped,
his eyelids already closing in drug-induced stupor.

"Okami-san!"

There was no response. Nicholas himself was struggling
with thought. What had happened? He had been in the
S&M club Both Ends Burning, Hatta had been knifed by
Jochi, and Nicholas had taken off in pursuit. Corridors,
sounds, bright lights, shadows shifting, the rich smell of cof-
fee brewing-all these and more were a jumble in his mind.
Then, like a flare in the darkness, he remembered ascending
in the coffinlike elevator, the whiff of air brushing his cheek.
He'd been gassed; it had been a trap. Honniko, Kawa, Suta,
were they all in on it?

Flash of Kawa's grinning face, his thumbs-up sign, and his
enigmatic farewell, Blood tonight.

The German lied recommenced, and now Nicholas be-

came aware of someone else in the room. This person was
moving, working busily and humming industriously all the
while. At that precise moment, the figure turned and stared
directly into Nicholas's face. He came over, lifted Nicholas's
head by the hair.

"Had a nice nap?" He rattled Nicholas's IV. "Comfy in
our little den?"

A shaft of pale light filtering down from above picked
out features on the figure's face, and Nicholas recognized
Mick Leonforte.

"And it is our little den. This is Tenki, the old toruko
where Colonel Linnear spun his busy little spiderwebs just
after the war." Mick was grinning. "Quite an odyssey you
took getting here, I must say." He pursed his lips in mock
sorrow and shook his head. "Too bad unlike Odysseus you
didn't have a goddess to advise you." He spread his arms.
"There's no Athena here, no one to get you out of this. So
here you will stay while I make my bloodless coup against
your vast, far-flung empire." He stroked the side of Nicho-
las's face. "Sweet, sweet revenge."

The hand withdrew, and abruptly, his tone changed, be-
coming declamatory. "I must say you've done well by your-
self. Marrying into money and power and Tomkin
Industries, merging it with Sato at just the right time, ex-
panding from computer chips to hardware design, to fiber
optics, moving into every emerging market you could stick
your fingers into. And then there's your crowning achieve-
ment: the TransRim CyberNet." Mick nodded. "Oh, yes,
you've done well indeed. Almost as well as I would have
done had I not been forced into the shadows to escape the
long arm of the law." He guffawed. "What law? What am
I thinking of? I am the law."

He let Nicholas's head go. "But you overextended" He
nodded toward Okami. "And then you get caught up in old
grandpa's own nightmare, and guarding him against assassins
took you out of the Sato program for fifteen months. Too
long in this day and age. Hell, in your business two months
is too long to be away. You lose the feel, the flow of the
changes. You forget your abilities, your predictive capacities
become impaired." He grinned again, adjusting something

on IV. "You created your own soft spot, Nicky boy, and I
sank my jaws into it like the predatory animal I am."

"It felt good, but ..." Mick frowned. "I must say it was
something I had to get used to. In a way it was like getting
myself bloody. You and me, you know, we have a special
bond. And why? Because our fathers fucked with one anoth-
er's lives. They toyed and tinkered and brought each other
such misery. Just like I am doing with you. I slept with your
woman, over and over and over, and no matter what she
tells you, she enjoyed it."

He snapped his fingers. "Hey, but don't take my word
for it." He turned, rummaging around before pulling out a
portable tape recorder. He popped in a cassette, pressed the
play button, and put the machine next to Nicholas's ear.

"Listen ..."

Nicholas tried to turn his mind away, to blank it out, but the
drug was all through his system now, and he had had no time
to try to hypermetabolize it out. Besides, more was entering
his open vein with every drip of the IV. So he heard in agony
the pants and moans, the whispered endearments, and then
the slow, obscene crescendo of moans, cries, and screams. Was
that Koei's voice? How could he know through the distortion
of the tape and the drugs? But it might be, and that was what
Mick intended and it was enough.

"Ah, I see it in your face, the knife thrust has been felt."
Mick switched off the tape recorder and knelt down in front
of Nicholas's face. "But I want you to know something-
and it is the most important thing in this little construct of
mine: What I do here to you-to those you love, to every-
thing you have spent so many years building, to you-I do
not because of what happened between our fathers." He
gestured as if waving to an unseen crowd. "Let their ghosts,
whatever hell they may inhabit, continue their enmity on
their own terms. I refuse to be bound by what went on
before me. I am a deconstructionist, after all. I repudiate
the past." He made a slow fist. "I use history for my own
ends, I correctly interpret what went before, torching to ash
the so-called facts cited by the cabal of criminals who sedi-
tiously call themselves historians. Sedition, certainly, because
their lies serve to undercut the transformation of mankind."

Mick's head tilted back and his features rose into the wan

light like a dark and dangerous sea creature disturbing the sur-
face for the first time. "We are, after all, merely heralds, im-
precisely marked dice cast in the great game of chance by
Zeus, Jove, Odin, whatever name you wish to put to Heracli-
tus's divine child. We, too, are children of the great philoso-
pher Heraclitus, Nicky boy, because we know what he did: the
change and strife are the natural order of the universe."

Mick's head whipped forward as his lips pulled back from
shining teeth. "I cannot-I will not-seek revenge for what
Colonel Linnear did to my father because that would require
a conscience, and the plain fact is I have none. The social com-
pact, Nicky boy, so revered by civilization, is the single worst
transformation human beings were ever forced to undergo. I
would willingly submit myself to the fictionalized 'horrors' of.
a concentration camp, so ubiquitously and falsely dissemi-
nated-if anything like them bad ever existed-rather than
give up the best part of my humanity to society.

"To become a sociable and pacific creature is tike asking
a fish to adapt to the land. What you have taken away is
the very essence, the primordial ichor gifted us by the gods.
Nietzsche taught me this: we once were happily adapted to
an existence closest to godliness-we roamed free in the
primordial wilderness, we went to war and gorged ourselves
on adventure and conflict."

Mick peered into Nicholas's drug-fogged eyes. "All these
things, you understand, were in our innate nature-they
were instinctual. And what did the social contract do? It
instantly said, 'Fuck you,' to those instincts, branding them
evil, shameful, insane. The social contract not only castrated
man, but forced him into a straitjacket. But here's the thing,
the very essence of the deed: society could only muzzle our
instincts; it could not kill them."

He wiped his hands on his trousers as he stood up. "So
began the subtle game of sublimation, of small covert satis-
factions, venal and perverted, in place of the overt ones to
which we were accustomed and to which we were entitled.
But it got worse. Confinement and the lack of a constant
supply of external enemies turned man in upon himself, per-
secuting, terrorizing himself. There is, I am sure you are
aware, having lived in Japan for so long, a peculiar kind of
violence that builds up in humans who are heavily repressed.

And when at last it is released, it is terrible, awesome to
behold. This is what happened. Bereft of his natural hunting
grounds, told that his natural predatory instincts were crimi-
nal, man went slowly mad." Mick's arms swept out in a
grand gesture, again as if he were surrounded by an audi-
ence. "You have only to look at the world to know what I
say is the truth. Where should we look? Bosnia, Rwanda,
Cambodia, Russia, Ukraine, Iraq, Haiti, Colombia, Italy,
Germany, the United States. Shall I go on?" He turned his
head. "What would be the point? Hatred is running like
poisoned blood all across the globe. Madness stalks us.
Total, complete madness."

Mick slipped on his push dagger. The Damascus blade
was dark as night, filmed with a thin sheen of oil. He flexed
the push dagger so the blade caught the light, showing its
striations. "So, you see, here we are, the two of us, mirror
images, the darkness and the light, sunshine and shadow."
He cocked an ear at an imaginary response. "What, you
say, good and evil?" He shook his head sagely. "No,
Nicky boy, that particular comparison's meaningless. The
two of us have transcended such notions. We have gone
beyond good and evil into another realm entirely. For there
to be good and evil we would have to hate one another,
and we don't, do we?" He shrugged. "At least, I don't hate
you. God alone knows what you think of me." He laughed,
a brutal, eerie sound bouncing off the walls like a hardball
with a load of spin. "Not that it matters, because a portion
of the essential paradigm is missing. We're opposite but un-
equal, and d'you know why, Nicky boy?"

With his free hand, Mick grabbed Nicholas's hair again,
this time, yanked his head back and forth viciously. "Be-
cause you're a Jew. Your father was dogged by this fatal
flaw-in fact, I believe he hid it often enough-and so are
you. Jeez, what were you thinking? You could get so orien-
tal your skin turned yellow, but it wouldn't be worth a damn.
You can't outrun heritage no matter how hard you try. So,
you see, I can't hate you because you're inferior, too far
beneath me to evoke such a strong emotion."

Without another word, he turned on his heel, and crossing
the room, he stood in front of Mikio Okami, staring up at
him with opaque eyes. A curious stillness settled over him,

and something deep inside Nicholas's drugged mind shouted,
No! You can't! Because Nicholas recognized this as the first
stages of the shaman's ritual. It was the summoning of power
that would bring about an act of primeval magic.

Nicholas drove himself into a frenzy, willing himself to
overcome the drug being pumped into him. He knew what
was coming as surely as if he could see into the future. His
mind was screaming for his body to react, but all he could
manage was a soft tinkling of his chain.

Across the room, Mick was smiling gently. "It's coming.
You know it's coming."

Nicholas did. He had some experience with the Messulethe,
the ancient psycho-mages; he had seen firsthand the grisly re-
mains of Mick's incantatory rituals. Think! Nicholas's mind
screamed. If s just like walking. Put one thought in front of the
other. From the symptoms, he had begun to zero in on what
the drug was not. It was a nerve toxin as well as a vascular
inhibitor. Given that it was being administered by Mick
Leonforte, the chances were good it was Banh Tom venom,
the same toxin used on Kappa Watanabe. He knew how to
hypermetabolize its chemical constituents because he had
done it with Watanabe and had saved his life, but this was an
altogether different situation. He was held virtually spell-
bound by the slow drip of the poison into his bloodstream.

All the same, he had to try. Mentally gritting his teeth, he
began the hypermetabotic process, but he was so slowed down
by the drug the chemical changes had little or no effect.

Meanwhile, the atmosphere in the room had turned dank
and dark, as if swirls of black mist were crawling up the
walls, whorling into the wan light, turning it as ashy gray as
a shroud.

"It comes!"

Mick's cry was a howl of triumph, of the wolf pouncing
upon the exposed underbelly of the deer.

No!

All at once, Mick was in motion. His daggered fist drove
forward, and the dark blade of Damascus steel plunged to
its guard into Mikio Okami's chest. There was a rending as
of a soul in torment or a door too long shut being pried
open. The offal stench of the abattoir rose like a miasma,
and blood, dark as oil, began to flood the room.

 

14

Florida Coast/Tokyo

Out on the high seas Caesare Leonforte was a different
person. Like a shark returned to open water, his movements
were connected to a deeper, one might even say more pri-
meval, imperative. Seeing him drive the sleek Cigarette, con-
sulting charts, navigating surely and deftly, legs spread and
slightly flexed against the pitch and roll, Vesper had the
feeling he had left all his cares behind him.

At least, this is what she would have thought if Caesare .
had been any other person. But he was not. Over the course
of days and nights with him she had come to know him
better, perhaps, than she had ever wanted to. The fact was,
Caesare had no cares. Not a one. He had no loyalty, he
cared about nothing and no one but himself. If there had
ever been in him the human capacity to love, it had been
squeezed out of him by circumstance and this studiedly per-
verse nature. He despised his father while yearning to emu-
late nun; he was openly contemptuous of his sister, Jaqui,
while in some way needing her approval. He was a seething
mass of contradictions that, far from canceling one another
out, were perpetually at war. That made for a volatile and
unpredictable mix.

"Fucking feds," he said as he drove the Cigarette toward
its inevitable rendezvous with Coast Guard cutter CGM

1176. "Alla time on my ass. I thought I had 'em buffaloed,
thought I had 'em in my back pocket But the feds have
more heads than a fucking Hydra." He spoke quietly,
fiercely, as if talking to himself. Vesper, standing just behind
the wind- and spray-whipped cowling, wondered if he was
aware of her presence. "Gotta regroup, gotta call in the
favors, pull the strings, set 'em to dancing my tune again."

Vesper shaded her eyes. In the distance, she could see a
Coast Guard cutter. It seemed to be lying still on the ocean,
idling its engines. Caesare saw it, too, because he changed
course to port, heading toward k. He came down off of
plane, ran on another hundred yards or so and cut the en-
gines. He directed Vesper to drop anchor and she activated
the electronic winch. With a soft plash, the anchor slipped
out of its resting place forward.

The Coast Guard cutter was near enough for Vesper to
make out its designation: CGM 1176. The boat Milo cap-
tained. She could hear the throaty gurgle of its diesels, and
with a puff of blue smoke from its stern, the cutter headed
slowly toward them.

They boarded it without incident and Milo ordered the
cutter to reverse engines. Caesare did not acknowledge
Milo's presence at all, except to say, "Things are fucked
back at the house. We won't be coming back to the
Cigarette."

Milo nodded. He looked trim as a greyhound ready to
race in his crisp white uniform and close-clipped beard. His
eyes strayed momentarily to Vesper's as if searching for fur-
ther explanation. She smiled at him, and while Caesare went
aft to check on the arms shipment they would exchange for
the cocaine, she slipped into the cabin near Milo.

"What's the hell's up with him?" Milo asked out of the
corner of his mouth. Up close you could see a fine webwork
of wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and mouth. As usual,
his eyes were hidden behind reflective sunglasses.

"Feds raided the compound," she said softly. "Came in
by armored copter. They threw the whole nine yards at us.
We escaped by a hairsbreadth."

Milo's thin lips went even thinner, which, for him, con-
noted grave concern. "I better talk to him. The pipeline

could be in jeopardy." But he stopped as Vesper put a hand
on his arm.

"I wouldn't go anywhere near him right now if I were
you. He'll take your head clear off."

"I hear ya." Milo paused to give a course correction to
the pilot. Then he nodded to Vesper and she followed him
to a more private part of the cockpit. "Listen," he hissed,
putting his face close to hers, "I got my whole career-shit,
whatam I saying? My entire life wrapped up in this
operation."

"The arms pipeline into DARPA, you mean?" She was
talking about the highly secret government advanced weap-
ons project from which Caesare was diverting product to sell
to the highest bidder overseas.

"Yeah, yeah." He looked at her and sneered. "You think
I'd waste my time with cocaine smuggling? No fucking way,
man. Too many Latino types wound tighter than a duck's
ass on machismo. They'd blow an Anglo away as soon as
look at you. No, I got into this for the weapons. Hobby of
mine, you know."

Vesper didn't but she made approving noises.

"Anyway," Milo said, licking his lips, "I gotta stake inna
pipeline. A big stake, know what I mean? Shit, it's my con-
tacts that got the big guy inta it in the. first place, so I get
a cut of all the action. I'm a player, see, not a fucking mule,
and now that the shit's come down I don't want any of it
sticking to me."

"In other words, you want denial of accountability."

She could see the squint lines around Milo's eyes deepen.
"I want to smell clean all the way through this, that's what
I fucking want."

She could sense how frightened he was, a man on the
fringe of lawlessness, loving his job, but having gotten bored
maybe, wanting something more, and being given a chance
at it, had jumped without looking how far down he could
fall He'd said it himself-he was a player not a mule. That's
what Milo had wanted all along, but now that the shit had
hit the fan, he wasn't prepared.

"Don't do the crime if you can't serve the time."

Milo jumped as if he'd come in contact with an electric
current. "What the fuck? I'm not serving any time."

"I can arrange that."

"Yeah? Who the fuck are you, the queen of fucking
Sheba?''

"I'm the one who can provide you with a denial of ac-
countability." She looked at him. "You do want to save your
own ass, right, Milo?"

She could hear his exhalation of breath, and his head
moved so that even without being able to see his eyes, she
knew he was looking at Caesare. She knew he was going to
jump ship even before he said it. Why not? Caesare had no
loyalty to his people, so when push came to shove, why
should they be loyal to him?

"If he knew ..."

Milo was speaking of Caesare and she knew it. "He won't
You leave him to me." She waited a beat. "Are you
signed on?"

Milo moved his head again and sunlight flashed across his
mirrored lenses. "I do no time. Is that solid?"

"Guaranteed."
Milo licked his lips and nodded.

Vesper had decided to pump him right then and there
for the details of how they had penetrated the government
safeguards when Caesare called her aft. She went with the
obedience of a dog without even a glance at Milo.

Caesare was waving his arms around wildly. "Will ya look
at this?" he shouted over the roar of the engines. He pointed
down to where he'd pried open the top of a crate covered
with government seals and official warning stickers.

Vesper bent to take a look and he grabbed her by the
back of the neck so hard that she saw stars. Before she
could catch her breath, he jammed her head into the edge
of the open box of weapons. Forward, Milo, who had been
watching from the shadows at the edge of the cockpit,
turned away.

Half-dazed and hurting, she heard a metallic click, felt the
cool metal muzzle of his gun worming its way painfully into
her ear.

"You fucking little bitch," he spat. His face was a twisted
mask of rage. "Did you think you'd get away with it?"

She had a hard time forming words, but at last she man-
aged to answer, "Get away with what?"

Caesare cuffed the back of her head. "You fucking ratted
me out to the feds."

 

The vaguely triangular shape, glistening, dark as death,
hung before Nicholas's eyes. He could smell it, and even
through the drugs, his stomach quailed. He was hypermetab-
olizing the Banh Tom toxin, but it wasn't fast enough.

"Here it is! Power!"

Mick Leonforte held Mikio Okami's heart in his hand,
and as Nicholas watched, horrified, he bit into it. Like the
butcher he had become, Mick was covered in blood. Mikio
Okami's blood. Nicholas did not want to look at the swaying
corpse across the room, the lifeless husk that had once been
the Kaisho of all the Yakuza, now mortal as the next man.
Worse, he had been reduced to a slab of meat.

Mick chewed slowly, thoughtfully, ecstatically, wordlessly.
The time for speechmaking was over, Nicholas knew; the
time for deeds had arrived. Nicholas knew a great deal about
shamanism. He knew, for instance, of the power of human
organs to instill superhuman strength and endurance into
the eater. The greater the warrior whose organs you in-
gested, the more strength and endurance you achieved. But
there was more. In taking from your enemy his vital organs,
in destroying them utterly by eating them, you deprived him
of his place on the mandala of life, of being born again.

Mick finished the heart. He strolled to the corpse, made
another slash in it with a precise but offhand flick of his
wrist. He returned to Nicholas carrying a darkly purple,
slithery object. Okami's liver. This Mick thrust against Nich-
olas's chest like a poultice. Mick began to chant in a strange
Vietnamese dialect.

"You are ill. Terminally ill It is your Jewishness. It's like
a blood disorder, it has damaged you, turning you into a
lower order of life. I can save you, perhaps, if that is what
pleases me." He gave a laugh that was part bubbling chortle.
His lips and chin were dark with blood.

He resumed his chanting, his eyes closed to slits, his body
swaying slightly in trance. Then he snatched away the liver
and, with a growl, bit off a piece, then another. Curiously,
he did not chew but held them in his mouth.

He put his stinking face close to Nicholas's and said with
a half-full mouth, "Eat! Eat!"

He offered up the liver but Nicholas held his lips firmly
shut. Mick smiled, almost benignly, and slammed his fist into
Nicholas's solar plexus. Air escaped Nicholas's mouth as it
gaped open. Mick put his lips over Nicholas's in a terrifying
kind of kiss, spat the bits of liver into his throat.

Nicholas's jaw snapped shut and he gagged. Mick clamped
his hands across Nicholas's mouth and whispered in his ear,
"Swallow, Nicky boy, or Okami will choke you to death."

Nicholas swallowed convulsively.

"Better." Mick nodded.  "Much better." He finished

eating the liver, tearing at it with bared teeth and feral eyes.

When he was done, he said, "I'm not through with you

yet. There's another chapter that needs to be played before

it's done."

He touched Nicholas gently, almost lovingly. "Rest now,"
he said, his voice utterly calm, still and brittle as glass. "You
will need all your reserves of strength in the hours to come."

 

"Deal? What kind of deal?"

But Wade Forrest was not even looking at Croaker when
he said this. They were in the middle of the compound and
Forrest was busy absorbing the status reports from his offi-
cers. The news was all bad: Caesare Leonforte was nowhere
in evidence and no one had any idea how he had escaped.
Everyone in the general vicinity was treated to a choice
five minutes of Wade Forrest's unbridled wrath. Even the
hardened fieldmen, armed to the teeth, seemed to cringe.

By dint of sheer willpower, Croaker kept his mouth shut
long enough to find this out and to learn that Vesper was
also missing. He knew where she was, but then again he
knew where Bad Clams was. Or, more accurately, where he
would be in just over an hour aboard Coast Guard cutter
CGM 1176. This was Croaker's last best shot to save Marga-
rite, and somewhere deep inside him he knew he was saying
his prayers just as he had every night when he had been
a child.

All around them was the sanctified chaos only the United
States government could generate during emergencies or
declarations of war. Armed men in cammo and painted faces

hustled to and fro, shouting orders or receiving updated in-
telligence. The Leonforte button men were being led away
under guard, hands on then- heads. The field radio on the
chopper was feeding blasts of static-laden sound into the
general cacophony. Forrest stood in the center of it all, back
straight, directing and conducting with all the aplomb of a
tuxedoed maestro. Croaker could feel the waves of satisfac-
tion coming off him, as if saying, What a thrill! It's war again.

But like all wars, this one had its downside: despite their
best efforts the main quarry had eluded the elite troops.

"I got a deal for you, Forrest," Croaker repeated into the
teeth of the din.

"I don't make deals," Forrest said simply.

"Sure you do, you just don't know it yet."

Forrest dismissed one of his men, turned to look at
Croaker, who had been in court enough hours to pick up
the most effective psychological tactics of defense attorneys
as well as assistant DAs. He pulled Francine close against
him. She was weeping, and he could feel her shivering
against bun and knew her eyes were locked on her manacled
mother. He hated to use her like this, but it was for all
their good.

Forrest grunted his disbelief. "You're dreaming, brother."

"Maybe, but I don't think so." Croaker stepped closer so
he could lower his voice, making sure he kept Francie at his
side. "See, Forrest, you and I have the makings for a perfect
deal. You have what I want: Margarite DeCamillo."

"Yeah, I got her and she's staying with me." Forrest's
cool skepticism could not completely mask a kernel of inter-
est. "Now what could you possibly have that would inter-
est me."

"Caesare Leonforte."

Forrest's ail-American face clouded over. "Let me tell you
right now, buddy, if you have any information pertaining to
the whereabouts of Leonforte, you'd best tell me now, oth-
erwise I'll slap you with a federal warrant for obstruction
of justice."

"Don't threaten me, Wade," Croaker said softly. "What-
ever you do don't try that."

Forrest, reacting perhaps to Croaker's tone or his use of

Forrest's first name, pulled in his horns slightly. "I'm not
giving Mrs. DeCamillo up, so forget it."

But Croaker could see Forrest making sure he didn't look
directly at Francie's teary-eyed face. "Then you'll let Leon-
forte walk."

"If I have to." Forrest was choking back bile.

"And with him his cocaine connection."

"Fuck it." Forrest hung tough. "We'll find others to bust."

"And his pipeline into the DARPA weapons cache."

At the mention of DARPA, Forrest winced. He bit his
lip. He was about to say something when one of his idiots
reported in. Forrest almost took his head off and the man
backed away, ashen-faced. Forrest returned to chewing his
lips, as if he were a maddened animal in a too-small cage,
ready to rend itself from limb to limb. At last, his restless
eyes alighted on Francine and stayed there for a very long
time.

"Shit," he said. "Shit, shit, shit."

"I think you've lost your mind," Maya said. "What d'you
know about him anyway?"

"He can ride a fucking bike," Kawa said.

He was standing just outside the tiny elevator that had
whisked Nicholas upstairs to Pull Marine minutes ago. Kawa
had gone back to the coffee bar, listened without really hear-
ing the beat poetry. He kept thinking of Nicholas and where
he might be headed. Someone laughed, asked him a ques-
tion, but he paid no attention. He did not notice Maya look-
ing at him from across the table. When he had abruptly got
up and gone into the kitchen, she followed him.

Now Kawa pressed the button and the elevator hummed.

"So what he can ride a fucking bike," Maya said. "Why
should you get involved?"

" 'Cause it's there. Also, that poet sucks." He grinned
at her.

The elevator door slid open and he stuck his head cau-
tiously inside.

"Shit," Maya said. "It smells in there." She turned to him.
"You're going, aren't you?"

He stared at her and she shook her head, placed some-

thing in the palm of his hand. He looked down at it, closed
his fingers around it. "Hey," he said.

Kawa took a deep breath, held it, and stepped inside.
When he turned around, all he could see were Maya's
zonked-out eyes. Then the door closed and he went up.

The door opened and Jochi almost took his head off with
one giant swing. Kawa ducked, felt the fist graze his temple
and strip off three layers of skin. He bent forward, flicked
open the blade of the knife, and went for it.

Jochi grabbed his arm and nearly broke it. The knife clat-
tered to the floor. Kawa, realizing this was no joke, no way-
cool hipster happening he was creating for himself in the
video arcade, did the only thing he could think of: he bit
into Jochi's cheek. The agonizing pressure on his arm let up
just enough for him to use his knee. That seemed to have
little or no effect, as Jochi grunted and pinned him to the
wall.

Kawa grunted, Jochi grinned, and Kawa saw his death
reflected in the older man's eyes. Jochi slammed the heel of
his hand into Kawa's solar plexus and the Nihonin doubled
over. He bucked his knees and slid to the floor. As he
reached out for the knife, Jochi's shoe trod hard on his hand,
making him cry out.

Kawa, truly pissed off now, cleared his head of the resid-
ual pot he had smoked earlier and, using all the strength in
his coiled legs, butted Jochi under the chin. Jochi's head
snapped back and he took one stumbling step away. Kawa
grabbed the knife and, crying a little bit, plunged the blade
between two of Jochi's ribs.

Jochi made an inarticulate sound and he tried to grab the
knife. He whipped backward, wrenching away Kawa's grip
on the handle. He stared down, wide-eyed, at his chest. He
looked up at Kawa. He mumbled something, took a sham-
bling step toward the Nihonin, and promptly fell onto his
face.

He lay unmoving for a long time. Kawa was breathing
hard, crying still and unaware of it. He bit his lip and ran a
trembling hand through his snow-white hair. He continued
to stare down at Jochi. Why wasn't he moving? Then he got
it. Understanding flashed tike lightning across his face and

he vomited. He kept on retching even after there was noth-
ing left to throw up.

Eventually, he felt better. He thought of Maya, waiting
for him down below, and he almost turned back, almost
reached out for the button to open the elevator door and
take him back down to his familiar, anarchic world. But now
something had changed, because he suddenly understood
that what he and his pals had believed was rebellious anar-
chy had its own grooved pattern. It was actually as safe
and tame as going to work five days a week, and now it
seemed empty.

He thought about why he had come, and he went in
search of Nicholas. He found him, eventually, in a back
room of the restaurant, a place that looked as if it hadn't
been used in decades-until tonight.

Walking into the charnel house, Kawa was perversely
grateful he had had to kill a man that night, otherwise the
sights and smells in there would surely have blown his mind
to smithereens.

"What if you're wrong?"

"I'll tell you what, babe, the world doesn't function on
what if, and because of that I don't go around second-guess-
ing myself."

Vesper felt her pulse heavy in her temples even over the
deep throb of the cutter's diesels. She smelled the ocean,
briny and fish-laden, full of life. Spots of spume settled on
her hair. She knew she was at a nexus point. He wanted to
kill her, she knew that as surely as if he had said it. The
coiled-spring tension in his body told her. It was anger, pure
and simple; his empire was coming apart. And she had be-
come the lodestone for his rage. But, as was typical with
him, she sensed something else as well, and she knew she
must capitalize on it if she had any chance of staying alive.

"Shoot me now." She spat. "Go ahead, it's what your
father would have done."

She felt the momentary hesitation ripple through him, and
she extended her psyche to its limits, trying to redirect his
towering rage.

He jammed the muzzle of his gun so hard into her ear
she cried out "What does my father have to do with it?"

"I used to work for him, remember? I was one of his elite
agents in the field." She was growing dizzy from a combina-
tion of mortal tension and using her limited gift. She gritted
her teeth and went on. "He was so obsessed with his secret
identity he became paranoid. Field executions became the
rule rather than the exception. When you get like this, you
remind me of him."

Again a ripple, this time more pronounced. "What do you
mean, 'like this'?"

"You know," she said in her most offhand voice,
"irrational."

It was a risk and she knew it. But she sensed she was
teetering on the brink. Either she would fall into the eternal
abyss or she would survive. There was no middle course.

"Irrational." He said the word as if it were food he was
tasting. "Yeah, right, my father could be fucking irrational.
Not that I'd remember what he was like 'cause he was never
around when we were growin' up." He nodded. "Yeah, he
could be a fuckin' pig, all right. But he was also smart. Smart
enough to fool the feds for decades."

Vesper concentrated. She could hear it now--the darkness
and the light, the two sides, the rage and the admiration he
felt toward his father that he could not reconcile. She could
almost hear in her mind the clash of swords as the two
opinions continued their endless war. No wonder he had to
see the world at large as black and white. Anything else
would be for him utter and complete chaos.    ^

"Yeah, he was smart, all right," Vesper said. "So smart
that you could never control him, though I imagine you
tried." Her back was aching from being bent over and her
head hurt where her cheek was pressed hard against the
wooden box that held the stolen DARPA weapons.

"Fuck you talkin'? I never-"

"Sure you did. You wanted to show the old man what he
had missed out on by running off and leaving the family.
You wanted to push his nose in your accomplishments."

Caesare grunted. "That's crap. Why the fuck would I
wanta do that?" Another ripple and unconsciously he let up
on the pressure of the gun muzzle in her ear.

"To show him you were better, smarter than he was."

"I wasn't in competition with Pop."

"Oh, but you were, and it was the worst kind. It poisoned
you through and through. You wanted revenge, Caesare.
You wanted to hurt him, to pay him back for abandoning
you."

"He had no choice," Caesare shouted. "He'd made a
commitment; it was for the good of the family."

"That's bullshit and you know it." Vesper kept up the
pressure. "He was ambitious-too ambitious for him to con-
sider the good of the family. He got married, had kids, but
by that time he knew it was a mistake. A family, being a
loving husband and father, was not what he wanted. He had
no need for stability; he worshiped change. He wanted
power and money, he wanted to live at the pinnacle."

"No, no, you're wrong." The gun swung away. "I know
you're wrong!"

Vesper stood up painfully and saw he was looking at her
differently. She was no longer the lodestone. She had care-
fully manipulated his rage away from her, turning it back
on himself.

"I'm not wrong, Caesare." Her voice was calm and clear.
"Your father fucked his way through Tokyo. In 1947, he
was sleeping with Faith Goldoni. Then, when that ended,
after he got out of hospital, there were so many others.
Woman after woman, a long succession of skirts-that was
what he called them."

Caesare was white-faced, paralyzed by confronting his
greatest fear, which he had been able to suppress for so
many years. Jaqui had been right all along: he was just tike
his father. But isn't that what he had wanted? Yes and no.
He'd idolized a father he'd never known when he was grow-
ing up. He'd made up stories-long, involved tales that he'd
never shared with anyone about his father's exploits under-
cover. He'd needed those stories to make certain he
wouldn't come to hate his father-as Jaqui had come to--
for walking out on all of them.

Woman after woman-a long succession of skirts. John
and Caesare Leonforte, father and son-two of a kind.
Jesus!

The emotional storm was building. Vesper could feel it
like the first strike of far-off lightning, a slight rumble that

would soon and perhaps without warning turn into a col-
lapse of the universe.

"You're lying." It was a hoarse whisper and there was no
conviction in it; his eyes told her he believed every word.
He was guided by his own intuition now. She had disarmed
him, if not literally then figuratively. That part of his mind
that had for so long suppressed his intuition had been mor-
tally weakened by his thundering anger. "You're so young.
How would you know?"

Vesper took a step toward him. "Because he told me,
Caesare. He bragged about his conquests. It was the verbal
equivalent of notching his belt; telling me-a woman-con-
firmed his stature in his own eyes."

Caesare stared into her face; he wasn't looking at her but
through her to another time, another place.

Vesper took another step closer and kept her voice calm
and without inflection. "If I learned one thing about your
father, it was that he cared about nothing and nobody. It
was almost as if he wasn't human."

Caesare bunked. "Wasn't human?" He swayed slightly as
if in a semitrance.

She was close to him now. "He was incapable of feeling
love, of giving it or receiving it. Love was as alien to him
as breathing water."

He stumbled backward and she followed him, relentless,
taking on the final role in this twisted passion play-the
accusatory finger of his conscience. "And you are just like
him, Caesare."

"No!"

"But, yes." She came on, her eyes electric, her hair fan-
ning out behind her in the wind like some avenging goddess.
"You have no God, no loyalty, nothing. Stripped bare,
you're just what your father was-all ego. I look at you and
I see empty space-a pit-the void."

He shook his head, words beyond him now. His eyes were
wide and staring, fascinated by her, yet repelled by what
she represented.

"Why do you think your sister stopped talking to you?
Just because you hit her?"

"I wish I knew." It was a pathetic whisper, slapped away
by the salt wind.

"But you do know, Caesare. You knew all along. She saw
all this to you and it horrified her. She could have loved
you Caesare- I'm sure she did, at one time. But your indif-
ference and callousness killed that love. Even then you were
becoming your father and she could not bear it." She
pointed a finger. "It was you. You drove Jaqui away and
now she's dead."

Out of the corner of her eye, Vesper saw Milo emerge
from the cockpit. He was about to shout something when
she waved him off. Instead, he pointed aft, into the sun-
whitened sky. She risked a look, saw the copter winging its
way toward them.

Croaker, she thought, and she barely held back a sob of
relief. / know it's him.

In that instant, she heard the gunshot and she jumped.
Milo was running from his position and Vesper looked down
at her feet. Caesare was on his knees, his gun to his head.
He was swaying and she thought for an instant that he had
shot himself. But no, there was still too much ego. Vesper
slipped to her knees and put her hands on him. Her heart
thundered, seemed about to break. His great and powerful
aura had shrunk to the size of a fist, buried now so deeply
within him she knew it would never again emerge.

"I want to do it," he whispered. His finger was tremoring
on the trigger. "I want to."

" "No. You don't." Vesper could feel the blackness within
him, the bitter sense of being a pariah, and the familiarity
of it momentarily sickened her. All the falcons inside her
were loosed like a handful of rice at a wedding. She was
bound to him, all right, but not in the way she feared. It
was the wildness inside her, the call of her own shrieking
falcons that he heard now as she used all of her charisma
to reach out to him, pull him back from the brink of obliv-
ion. The sound of the copter's rotors was louder now, and
the sea around the cutter had begun to flatten in a sun-
drenched disk. She pulled the falcons down around her,
around him, until even the hard shattering of the copter was
obliterated. If she could do this, then she knew she would
fulfill all the promise Mikio Okami had seen in her. Move-
ment all around her on the cutter, movement she held back
from them like Moses with the Red Sea. A connection was

forming, she could feel it. That certain tension went out of
him. Something inside him responded, recognizing a kinship
beyond his comprehension. She glanced up. "The feds are
coming," she told Milo. "Cut your engines. Tell the crew to
surrender quietly." Milo nodded grimly.

She turned back to Caesare. His eyes had a milky quality
she had seen before in the eyes of the newly dead. Where
had his mind gone?

"Jaqui?"

And then she knew. She answered him as he desperately
needed her to do. "I'm here, Caesare."

"Jaqui, I'm ... sorry."

"I know you are."

She pried his fingers one by one from the grips of the gun
and took possession of it. The air was thundering as if with
the beat of angel's wings.

"Jaqui ..." He took a shuddering breath.

"It's all right, Caesare." She took his head in her hands
and held him to her breast, rocking gently. "It's all right
now."

"You look like you died and nobody came to resurrect
you."

"You resurrected me." Nicholas smiled briefly and
gripped Kawa's hand. "Thank you for coming."

"No big thing.';

They were squatting in one of the back storerooms of
the restaurant Pull Marine. Neither of them mentioned the
charnel house in the rearmost room. It was just as well.
Kawa didn't want to know why the mutilated corpse of an
old man was hanging there, and right now, Nicholas did not
want to remember. There would be many nights, he sus-
pected, of remembering.

"Think I oughta get you to a hospital, man."

Nicholas shook his head. Now that Kawa had taken him
off the drip, he was feeling better, he was hypermetabolizing
the Banh Tom venom as quickly as he could, but he was
far from being himself again.

'There's something I have to do and it can't wait."

Flash of bloody-faced Mick. I'm not through with you yet.

There's another chapter that needs to be played before it's
done.

Flash of the Banh Tom venom dripping into his open vein
from the IV. And beyond that the third chain hanging from
the ceiling, empty; the third IV stand with its plastic bag of
pale amber poison and its curling, needle-tipped line, ready
for another victim.

"Hey, man, no offense," the Nihonin said, "but you look
too strung out to go anywhere but bed."

I'm not through with you yet.

Through the haze of the venom Nicholas had worked it
out. He knew where Mick was headed. He stood up and
felt as if he were in an elevator in free fall. Kawa jumped
up, grabbed him around the waist, supporting him as his
knees gave out

"See? What'd I tell you?"

Nicholas turned to the Nihonin. "Kawa-san, the man who
did that is on the loose and I am very much afraid he is
going to kill again."

Kawa stared at him. "Kill like that?" His snow-white hair
lent him a ghostly air, and Nicholas could imagine he was
living a Japanese myth, a warrior being saved from death
by an impish demon.

"Yes."

Kawa shuddered.

"I'm going to need some help."

"Hey," Kawa said with a lopsided grin, "this night's al-
ready turned out to be the trip of a lifetime. I figure why
stop now, right?"

Koei was asleep. It was not a deep sleep. Contrary to
what Nicholas believed, she did not sleep well when he was
out. Resting on her back, she stared out at the Tokyo night
reflected like a dream on the bedroom ceiling. She tried
counting the lights, then seeing what patterns they formed
She closed her eyes and opened them again. It was almost
five and Nicholas had not yet returned. She wasn't worried;
he often stayed out all night, especially since the crisis with
the CyberNet a week ago.

She sat up, saw that she had forgotten to draw the drapes.
Perhaps the lights of the city had kept her up. She rose and

went to the high window and looked out. She could see the
Naigai Capsule Tower just below her, seeming close enough
to reach out and touch. Its steel scaffolding looked like the
home of a gigantic spider. She remembered the Metabolism
movement of the 1970s and had always found its insistence
on segregating parts of the urban landscape as a sinister
attempt to further disconnect people from their environ-
ment She wondered what it would be like to live in one of
those metallic-skinned capsules, then thought she was better
off not knowing.

She sighed. Sleep was impossible now. The sky had turned
an oyster gray; perhaps today the sun would burn its way
through the overcast. She pulled on a short cotton yukata
and, drawing it closed around her waist, padded to the top
of the stairs. At that moment, she heard a sound.

"Nicholas?"

Silence and darkness were the stillborn replies.

She stood very still, her hand on the top of the handrail,
which curved dark and cool, down into the unknown shad-
ows. What had the noise sounded like? A chink, as of metal,
a rustle, as of clothes, a soft tread, as of footsteps? Or was
it only the drapes being moved by the air coming from the
floor registers? She couldn't remember. She couldn't tell.

Slowly, silently, she descended the stairs. It was like sink-
ing into an ocean trench. All the drapes had been drawn
down here against the night lights of the city. Had she done
that before she had gone up to bed? As with most acts
repeated so often they had become unconscious, she could
not recall.

Down in the shadows she felt her breath flutter in her
throat. She stood at the bottom of the stairs, staring so hard
into the pitch blackness her eyes began to hurt. Someone
was in the apartment with her; she knew it with a certainty
that made her heart constrict painfully in her chest.

Sound came to her then, as if clothing against flesh.

"Koei..."

She shivered and lunged for a lamp.

"Don't turn on the light. Please."

Something in the voice caused her to draw her hand back
from the switch.

"It is better for us in the darkness now." It was a female

voice, clear and rich. In the comfortable softness of her
tones Koei recognized a person used to being obeyed.

"My name is Marie Rose. But Michael Leonforte knows
me as Jaqui."

Koei gasped and, feeling the strength go out of her legs,
felt behind her with her outstretched hand for the edge of
an upholstered chair on which to sit. "Jaqui, his sister?"
She perched on the edge as if she were a bird about to
take flight.

"That's right."

Koei could barely manage her voice. "But he told me you
died... a long time ago."

"Someone died, but it was not me." By straining, Koei
could just make out a partial outline of her face. "You see,
I was chosen by God to become the mother superior of the
Order of Donà di Piave."

Koei's breath was a gentle exhalation. "The Order ..."

"You know it. It is funded-and has been so since they
brought the order over from Italy-by the Goldonis. How-
ever, since I am a Leonforte, a ruse had to be used so I
could be installed. That was done." She shifted slightly, a
brief rustle of garments the only sound. "The order has been
in Japan since just after the war. Kisoko Okami, Eiko Shima
and her daughter, Honniko, many others were initiated.
They all became tiles in a vast mosaic."

"But why are you here now? It's five in the morning. You
frightened me half to death." Koei frowned. "And how did
you get in here?"

"To answer your last question first, I picked the lock."
Her voice had changed modulation, as if she picked up the
timbre and intonations of Koei's speech. "I have many such
unexpected talents. As to why I am here now, I will tell
you. My brother needs me."

"Michael? Is he coming here? But how do you know
that?"

"God has told me." Koei sensed Jaqui moving through
the darkness toward the curtains.

With a great crack of thunder, the windowpane blew in-
ward and the thick drapes were hurled backward. Koei
jumped up with a little scream. She was brought up short
as she saw Mick crouched on the windowsill. He was outfit-

ted in strange matte-black garb, girdled by a wide leather
cinch that seemed bound by ropes that dropped into the
oyster-gray darkness beyond the building.

"Michael, what-?"

Koei started as she heard Jaqui speaking perfectly ac-
cented Japanese. She felt as if she were in a dream, hearing
herself speak. Another of Jaqui's so-called unexpected
talents.

"Time to pay all debts, Koei," Michael said in a gut-
tural voice.

Koei stifled a scream as he grabbed Jaqui and, pulling
once on one of the ropes, disappeared out of the shattered
window. In that brief glimpse through the wildly swinging
curtains, Koei had seen that Jaqui had hair just like her own
and was wearing some of Koei's clothes.

"Michael!" Koei cried, hurling herself across the welter
of broken glass and leaning out the window. She could see
him, with Jaqui over his shoulder, sliding down the system
of ropes and pulleys he had connected from the top of the
Naigai Capsule Tower. Now she knew the truth: Jaqui had
deliberately placed herself in harm's way. She had fooled
Michael into thinking she was Koei.

When, eleven minutes later, Nicholas stormed into the
apartment, followed by a strange-looking Nihonin with hair
the color of snow, she had much to tell him.

The energy of the Kaisho, residing like an imploding star
within his stomach and intestines, had honed Mick's senses
to superhuman pitch. It synthesized with the drug he'd in-
gested without which the Nung ritual was ineffectual. The
drug was made from herbs and the ground shell of a horned
beetle indigenous to the hills of Vietnam. The insect, as
large as a child's hand, was trapped, hung in the sun for a
week, where it turned black as obsidian. Then its carapace
was carefully stripped off and ground to grit by stone mortar
and pestle. Its horns were used in the insides of the shaman's
sacred rattle.

It was with these heightened powers that Mick sensed he
was being stalked. Rappelling down from the top of the
Capsule Tower, he hardly missed a beat as he thought of
Nicholas Linnear and reached up over his head to unsnap

a metal clip. This was what he wanted, after all, a chance
to take away everything Nicholas held dear, and then to
defeat him one on one. That was important because Nicho-
las was everything that Mick was not; he was everything that
Mick, as a lovesick young man in the meditation garden of
the Convent of the Sacred Heart of Santa Maria, had longed
to be. Denied by blood and evil circumstance the love of
the one woman he would gladly have died for, he had tried
to outrun memory, love, his past, everything that he had
been and would always be. He had tried to bury all of that
in the wilds of Vietnam by creating an entirely new Michael
Leonforte, but all that he had concocted was a wicked sha-
man's stew, a walking, talking nightmare, a golem, a hollow-
eyed and hollow-souled doppelgänger. Because no matter
how hard he tried, the old Michael Leonforte would not
stay buried. That Michael Leonforte had looked into his
young heart and had found it filled with the unthinkable: a
soulmate whom he could never have and never even love
as he so desperately longed to love her.

As he had said to Nicholas, you can't outrun heritage no
matter how hard you try.

He reached the first capsule and, ducking through a loz-
enge-shaped interstice between steel girders, clambered onto
the black metal grid landing. He unbuckled himself from
his mountaineering rig and, with his heavy bundle over his
shoulder, took off down the landing.

He was eighteen floors up, and as he loped along, he
passed through thick blades of shadow and wan flowers of
light that seemed to have drifted into the tower from an-
other time. The wind soughed with a peculiarly childlike cry
through the webwork. It was punctuated by the humming
and gurgling of the tower's machinery-for the elevators,
the heat and air-conditioning, plumbing and sanitation, the
electricity, phone lines, and television hookups. The conduits
for these services ran in thickly cabled bundles of flexible
PVC throughout the levels, looking much like the veins and
arteries of a cut-open body. His head whipped around as a
bird fluttered through the structure, panicking in a flurry of
wing beats, until it found its way. He wiped sweat away from
his eyes and listened.

 

*    *    *

 

Nicholas had taken a towel from the bathroom and, loop-
ing it over the nylon rappelling line that ran from a spot
just beneath his broken-out living-room window to the top
of the Naigai Capsule Tower, gripped its ends on either side
of the line and dropped to Into the pearly light of dawn.

With this crude method of sliding down the line he had
no way of slowing or otherwise controlling his momentum.
A third of the way down he began to smell charring fabric
and, glancing up, saw an ominous tendril of gray smoke
whipping away from the center of the towel. The abrasion
against the nylon was causing the towel to combust

He was halfway across when the first flame sparked, lick-
ing at the cotton cloth. The very speed at which he was
sliding caused it to flicker out, but almost immediately, more
flames burst through the fabric and he could feel some of
its support give way. He was now approximately three-quar-
ters of the way down to the tower. Below him was nothing
but humid air for hundreds of feet until the roofs of other
buildings rose far below, needled with antennas, satellite
dishes, and the like. It would certainly be a fatal fall

The stench of burning fabric was thick in his nostrils and
he began to sway back and forth beneath the nylon line,
clutching at the fast-disintegrating towel. He looked ahead
and knew he was not going to make it. He sensed the final
rending of the cotton seconds before it happened and, swing-
ing his torso and legs backward to gain momentum, lifted
his legs in an arc up, over his head, until the side of his
shoes clamped the nylon line down which he was speeding.
He could feel the intense friction almost immediately eating
away at his thin shoes, but more than half his weight came
off the flaming towel and it bought him two seconds, three,
precious time at this stage.

Below and ahead, the top of the Capsule Tower loomed
large, the soft light of incipient dawn creeping through the
geometric gaps between the girders. It looked momentarily
beautiful, a powerful atavistic puzzle of a structure like a
Mayan pyramid rising in a precise urban cityscape. He was
coming down to it fast. Only a few seconds more, that's all
he needed ...

He didn't get it The flames ate through the center of the
towel and it came apart in his hands. His head, shoulders,

and torso dropped down until he was hanging vertically off
the nylon line, held to it only by the power in his legs as he
damped the line between his feet He slid down, faster and
faster, the muscles of his legs and feet hard as rock and
beginning to cramp. There was pain there already, as the
friction burned through the leather and thin cotton lisle of
his socks. The skin on the insides of his feet began to blister.

He had no other choice and was readying himself to leap
off when he passed the clip that Mick had unfastened and
the line collapsed, swinging wildly away from the tower.
Nicholas scissored his legs open, leaped for an oblique
girder, missed it, slammed his shoulder against another, and
reaching out, wrapped his arms around a third.

He swung like a pendulum, fighting the pain, the fatigue
of a long, virtually sleepless week, the delayed shock of
Mikio Okami's horrific death, and the residue of the Banh
Tom venom he was still hypermetabolizing out of his system.
Slowly, he steadied himself, fighting the pounding in his
head, a combination of being inverted and having a host of
toxins breaking down inside him.

He drew inward and at the core of himself rejected his
tanjian eye, opting for Kshira. The dark eye opened onto a
violently changed world. He saw the Capsule Tower for
what it was: an unsuccessful attempt to integrate the perma-
nent and the impermanent, the darkness and the light He
saw the city all around as a gray ocean, vast and remote.
Only the tower existed now, black as a crow's head-and the
three people climbing upon it like ants crawling up Mt. Fuji.

The dark eye swung upward, inward, through the inter-
stices of the tower, and he located Mick. He began to climb.

"Michael ..."

Mick paused, crouched upon the metal grille of an outside
walkway. He had been concentrating on Nicholas, on his
approach. He was on the tower, he knew that much. He had
survived the booby-trapped rappelling line.

"Michael..."

That voice. It was not Koei's at all, and yet he knew it as
well as he knew anything in his life. He turned, his heart
flipping over in his chest even before his mind had begun
to work it out. In shock he stared at the woman taking

off a wig. She was dressed in Koei's clothes but she was
not Koei.

He stared into those deep sea-green eyes that out of self-
defense his mind had set adrift in the sea of forgotten mem-
ory. Some memories were too painful and had to be set
aside, relegated to the shadows. They rose up now like spec-
ters in a graveyard. His eyes opened wide.

"Yes." She nodded. "It's me, Michael. Jaqui."

"Jesus, it can't be." He felt as if he had been dipped in
ice, as if someone had reached inside him and turned him
inside out. He felt raw with disbelief. "You're dead."

She took a step toward him. "Am I?"

He cringed as she reached out to touch him.

"Agghh!" he cried. "My God, what's happening?"

"It's God that's brought us together." Jaqui's voice was
soft, soothing, blending into the eerie susurrus of the wind
and the workings of the tower. "See, Michael"-she pinched
the flesh of her arm-"I'm alive and well. My 'death' was a
ruse to allow me to enter the order, which was owned by
the Goldonis."

He was pressed back against the railing that ran along the
outside of the walkways. "But why?"

"Because of the enmity between the Goldonis and the
Leonfortes. No one really knows how it began. Like all such
vendettas it was perpetuated by terrible stories handed down
from one generation to another, and each time they were
retold the stories became more horrible until they passed
into the realm of myth.

"Grandpa Caesare knew this and wanted very badly to
end it, but until I came along, he did not know how. He
was close with the order's previous mother superiors, and
as he observed me growing up, he saw in me the kernel of
an answer.

"It was he who convinced Mom to take me to the convent
when I turned a certain age, and he was right. God had
chosen me to enter the order-and more. After my staged
death, I began to be trained under the name Sister Marie
Rose to replace the existing mother superior. None of that
would have been possible had I not 'died.' The Goldonis
would not have allowed it and neither would Uncle
Alphonse."

"I remember . . ." Mick's voice had taken on a certain
dreamlike quality. "Alphonse was pissed when he came back
from the convent. He was sure he could get you back and
he vowed he would someday. Not long after, you died."

Jaqui nodded. "That was how it was," She took another
step toward him, holding out her arms. "Michael, I'm here
to end once and for all the vendetta. I'm here to heal you."

"Ah, no!" Mick clapped his hands to his ears as he slipped
to his knees. "God protect me from my own thoughts."

Seeing his anguish, Jaqui knelt beside him. "I'm here to
protect you, too, Michael. You have done terrible things,
evil things. You are not the brother with whom I spent eve-
nings on our rooftop, sharing dreams."

Mick's head whipped from side to side. "Don't you see it?
We shared nothing. What we spoke about was all bullshit."

"Why do you say that? We shared the same dream. To
fly as far away from the life of the Leonfortes as we could.
You remember, don't you?"

"Ah, Jaqui. The only dream I ever had that meant any-
thing to me I never shared with you. I couldn't." His eyes
flicked up to that wondrous sea-green gaze that had so capti-
vated him.

"What was it? Tell me. I'm here now. Tell me."

His face twisted up. "I... can't."

"Yes, you can. God will give you the strength."

"God." His face twisted further. "I have fallen so far from
God He no longer exists."

Jaqui reached out. "He exists, Michael. I am here now
because of Him. Believe me, He exists."

"You're so pure, so good, holy even, like a shaman who
has touched the underside of heaven." His eyes squeezed
shut. "God exists for you."

"He exists for everyone, Michael, you included."
He felt her touch him and his desire to shrink away and
hide his face vanished. "Oh, Jaqui, I'm like a leper. Be care-
ful. There must be poison in my sweat." She only held him
tighter. The wind rushed around them as dawn rose speak-
ing in tongues.

"Tell me the dream," she whispered.
He shuddered. "If I tell you, I'll die."

"You cannot die while I am holding you. You have noth-
ing to fear, Michael."

"But I do. I fear myself and ... oh, God, help me, I
fear you."

"Me? Why?"

"What you will think of me if I tell you the dream." He
was trembling as if with the ague. "You'll hate me."

"Then say nothing and just listen." She gathered him to
her. "When we were younger, I had a crush on you. One
night I dreamed you came into my room. It was very still,
as if we were far away from Ozone Park. Perhaps I heard
the distant boom of the surf, I don't know. You came into
my room and though it was pitch-black, I knew it was you.
I felt your skin burning mine as you lay down beside me.
You whispered my name and I whispered yours, and we
made love."

Mick had gone limp in her arms as she spoke. He felt as
if he had turned to liquid. There was a heat inside him he
could no longer control. Tears burned his cheeks even as he
squeezed his eyes tightly shut. It was too much, hearing what
he had longed to hear from her for so many years. He felt
as if he had found his heart again only to have it shattered
to pieces.

When he was able, he told her his dream of them together
dancing at the lantern-lighted terrace on some unnamed part
of the Mediterranean seacoast. "I loved you, I wanted you,
I could not have you," he concluded- "It was impossible,
terrible and terrifying. I was certain I would fry in hell, and
yet it held me in such thrall I could not walk away from it,
much less stop thinking about it. Then you went into the
convent and I knew I had to get as far away from you
as possible."

"Oh, Michael, how I've failed you." She was weeping.

"No, no." After all this time he was astonished how
tender he felt toward her, how powerful a force she re-
mained in his life--the only force, he realized with a painful
lurch of his heart. The second skin he had so painstakingly
constructed upon the ashes of his old personality disinte-
grated, leaving him breathless and vulnerable.

She kissed him then-with passion or with a sisterly ten-

derness? He could not tell, realized he, did not want to know,
and his torment began all over again.

With an animal cry, he thrust her away from him-per-
haps too roughly, because she fell back and he saw a shadow
standing there on the walkway, as familiar as his own. It
was Nicholas, his doppelgänger.

Mick ran at Nicholas in a headlong rush, even as Jaqui
screamed at him to stop. But why stop? Mick was already
doomed, damned by emotions he was powerless to change
or control. He loved Jaqui with all his heart and soul, he
knew that now with the kind of giddy elation one feels in
a speeding car that has gone out of control. In that split
instant before impact, all things seem possible. The laws
of the universe have been suspended, even life and death
have reduced meaning in the maelstrom of this cosmic
free fall.

He hit Nicholas as hard as he could, rocking him back-
ward. Or so he thought. He slammed against the railing, saw
that Nicholas had stepped to the side, avoiding the brunt of
the blow. Then he felt the dark eye of Kshira and he smiled.
It was the smile of an ancient god awaking from a long
slumber, the smile of the satyr called to revel in the darkness
of the night.

He sent his psyche outward, like a missile thrown into the
ether, and as he saw the surprise register on Nicholas's face,
he smashed him across the face with both fists, did it again,
a third time, until Nicholas was bent backward over the
railing. He teetered there for a moment as Mick tried to flip
him over the top rail.

Nicholas, battling Mick both mentally and physically, felt
under siege. Many of his defenses were down at the moment
he felt the implosion of Mick's psychic attack. The last of
the Banh Tom venom was working its way out of his system,
but the hypermetabolizing had exhausted much of Nicholas's
psychic energy. That inner engine had been hard at work
on mortal problems for hours. Even he had his limits, and
he had now overreached them.

As Mick levered him over the rail, Nicholas lost all sense
of balance and the dark eye of Kshira blinked. Sensing this,
Mick pushed all the harder, and Nicholas knew he was going

over, down into the void, to be impaled on some rooftop
equipment far below.

In that instant when he hung almost upside down, while
Mick pushed him farther over the rail, he felt something. It
was not Kshira, not Akshara, but it was psychic. Perhaps it
was the hand of God, reaching down through Tokyo's indus-
trial dawn to steady him. At that instant, he had no more
time to analyze it. He used it.

His legs came up and clamped around Mick's hips. Then
he slammed the knuckles of his fists into the sides of Mick's
neck. Mick let out a shocked sound and his grip weakened.
Nicholas pushed, and Mick staggered back against a bundle
of thickly coiled PVC pipes. He took out a small blade, held
it in front of him.

"Michael, no!" Jaqui cried.

He ignored her, rushing Nicholas, who sidestepped him.
He turned and ran at Nicholas again, feinting to the right
this time, then coming in from the left, slashing Nicholas's
forearm, getting inside his guard and going for the throat.

Nicholas reached up, hauled mightily on one of the PVC
pipes, which split at a joint. Steam burst out in a stinging
cloud and he directed it at Mick. The vapor struck Mick full
in the face. He screamed, lurching backward so hard he
bounced hard off the railing, lost his footing, and when he
slammed against it a second time, was hurled over the rail
with such force that he was thrown out and away from the
tower, tumbling head over heels down, down into the city
below.

Jaqui did not cry out, she did not move for a long time.
She bit down on her knuckle hard enough to draw blood.
The steam continued to hiss from the broken pipe, sending
vapor climbing through the bulwark of the tower's exoskele-
ton and into the white sky. Somewhere not far away, the
sounds of police sirens knifed through the small city noises.

Nicholas crouched against the wall where Mick had made
his last stand and tried to gather himself. He was dizzy and
sick at heart. At last he looked up at Jaqui and said, "I'm
sorry I couldn't save him."

She took her bloody knuckle out of her mouth and her
sea-green eyes swung around to him. "That wasn't your re-

sponsibility." Something had gone out of those astonishing
eyes, the peculiar light he had noticed when he had seen
her at Honniko's and again briefly at Both Ends Burning.
And it was at that moment he realized something.

He stood up shakily, using the wall as support. His fore-
arm ached where Mick had sliced it. "You saved me,
didn't you?"

She came to him and, ripping off a sleeve of her blouse,
tied it tightly just above his wound. "I don't know what
you mean."

"Oh, I think you do," he said, watching her. "At the
moment when your brother was about to push me over the
rail, I felt something. A hand steadying me, something."

"Perhaps it was Michael himself," she said as she walked
to the railing. "He apparently collected some extraordinary
powers in his travels."

"How could it have been him? He wanted so desperately
to destroy me."

She was looking out and down at the line of police cars
crawling along the avenue far below, making their way to
the base of the tower. A pink glow, softened by distance,
illumined her face. She shook her head. "It wasn't you he
wanted to destroy, Mr. Linnear. It was a part of himself he
could no longer tolerate."

"Maybe you don't know the crimes he committed."

Her mouth twitched in an ironic smile. "Mr. Linnear, I
know more than that. I know everything Michael was capa-
ble of."

He looked from her down to the spot where Mick lay like
a dark star, spent of its incredible energy, that had until
recently burned so bright in the night. "His death was like
his life, wasn't it? Spectacular, theatrical, a kind of work
of art-just as is prescribed in the Kagakure, the book of
the samurai."

He said nothing more for some time. What must she be
feeling? She had not shed a tear for her brother. How deeply
had she cared for him?

She turned to him, pressed her back against the railing.
The wind, freshening over the Sumida River, tousled her
hair, and now he could see the extreme sorrow etched in
her face and knew she would never look the same again.

Would those sea-green eyes ever sparkle as they once had?
he wondered.

"I'll tell you what's funny, Mr. Linnear. Funny in an ironic
and tragic kind of way. Michael was so sure I was pure and
untainted. Holy, he called me. That was his dream of me,
his fantasy. And, of course, it was false." She crossed her
arms over her breasts, hugging herself. "Will you hear my
confession?"

"I am no priest. I don't think-"

"Please!"

"All right." How could he deny those eyes anything? "As
you wish."

"Not as I wish, Mr. Linnear. As God wills it." She closed
her eyes and took a deep breath. "Michael committed terri-
ble crimes and so have I."

"Excuse me, Mother, but your brother was a. murderer."

"And so am I."

Those sea-green eyes captured his and would not let
them go.

"Mother-"

"You remember Nguyen Van Truc, the man who was to
take the stolen CyberNet data to Honniko and then to my
brother?"

Nicholas blinked. "How would you know about the stolen
data and Nguyen-" And then he realized that it had been
through Honniko.

"You followed Van Truc and you caught him," Jaqui went
on. "You switched the floppy disc and then you hypnotized
him so he would not remember being caught. But something
went wrong and hours after he delivered the disc to Hon-
niko, he told her he began to remember what had hap-
pened."

Nicholas could not take his gaze off her. "So Honniko
told you."

"Yes."

"And?"

"And I did what I had to do. I couldn't allow Michael to
find out about your ruse prematurely. Plans were already
in motion."

"What plans?"

"You will know, in time."

He continued to look at her. "You killed Van Truc,
didn't you?"

"As I said, I did what Ihad to do." There was something
in her eyes, something new. "Van Truc had to be silenced."
It spun there, dark and mysterious, like the inscribed tablet
of an unknown race.

Nicholas knew what it was and he was already stretching
for her as she went over the railing. She collapsed like a
paper doll as she slipped over the top rail and began to fall.

Nicholas reached the railing and bent, grabbing her wrist.

"Mother, this is not the way."

She looked up at him, her eyes dimmed and clouded. "I
came here to save Michael and to heal him, and I failed. I
failed my order and my sacred oath to God."

She looked so fragile, dangling there at the end of his
arm, and touching his psyche to hers, he felt just how deeply
she had been scarred. "Whatever you have done, Mother, I
cannot believe God wishes you to give up your life-and
your eternal soul-for it."

Her hair whipped about her face, partially obscuring her
sea-green eyes. Light was coming now, hard and jangly,
flashbulbs popping in the skyrise windows as it muscled
through the clouds. "I haven't confessed it all. The worst
part remains."

"Then confess and be done with it. Live."

"Let me go, I beg you. God cannot want me to live with
what I carry in my heart."

"Surely that is for God to decide," he said as he slowly
and deliberately pulled her back over the rail to safety.
"Not you."

Harvest Night

Where
are you hurrying to?

You will see

the same moon tonight

wherever you go!

-Izumi Skikibu

Tokyo/New York

Tetsuo Akinaga came to the Kaisho's funeral. Brazenly, he
entered the Nichiren Buddhist temple while a full retinue
of twenty kobun and under-oyabun assembled outside in the
afternoon sunshine. It was more than a sign of respect. It
was a show of strength. After the internal struggle between
Mikio Okami and his inner circle of oyabun, only Akinaga
remained, and the tall, cadaverous Yakuza wanted everyone
to know that he was consolidating his power.

In the lull between the service and the burial, he planted
himself squarely in front of Nicholas Linnear, and they com-
menced the ritual Yakuza greeting by stating their names,
rank, and clan affiliation. That done, Akinaga wasted no
time: "I understand you have been looking for me."

The red and gold splendor of the temple interior seemed
hollow, and at the same time as bright and garish as a Ginza
neon sign. Although Akinaga had chosen his moment care-
fully, when the few mourners allowed at the service had
filed outside, Nicholas could see Honniko standing to one
side, watching the confrontation, listening intently as these
two males locked horns. Koei, seeing Nicholas, as if trapped
on a promontory at high tide, had made a move toward him,
but he had signaled her with his hand and she had reluc-

tantly turned into the sunshine, her outline as indistinct as
the image in an old and overexposed print.

"Tanaka Gin was compiling the last of the evidence
against you," Nicholas said, carefully keeping his enmity hid-
den. "All of it is entrusted to me. As soon as Okami-san is
buried, I will present it to the chief prosecutor himself."

"Yes, yes, I know all this." Akinaga seemed unconcerned.
"A pretty fairy tale is still a fairy tale."

"I do have the evidence."

Akinaga inclined his head. "Of this I have no doubt. And
I know of your appointment with Ginjiro Machida. How-
ever, I strenuously advise you to cancel that appointment
and turn your evidence over to me."

"You are insane."

"Far from it. Hatta-san is dead and, with him, his testi-
mony that he, not your misbegotten friend Tanaka Gin, was
on my payroll. Without Hatta, Tanaka Gin will rot in jail
for a very long time. In this day and age of public outrage,
the government cannot afford to take kindly to one of its
own crawling into bed with the Yakuza."

"The case against Tanaka Gin is not strong," Nicholas
said, but already he sensed where this was going and his
heart sank. He wished for sunshine, for Koei's warm and
knowing presence beside him.

Akinaga shrugged. "Perhaps not, but it does not really
matter. The government has a duty to assuage the public.
As usual, truth doesn't enter into it. Rest assured they'll
make a scapegoat of Gin; and they'll throw the maximum
sentence at him after he is convicted. I know. I have my
sources."

Nicholas was aware of the priests and mourners-Kisoko,
Nangi, Koei-drifting farther away toward the cemetery like
water flowing downhill. Only he and Akinaga remained, and
Honniko, still as a statue in the shadows of a corner of
the temple.

"And if I hand over the evidence?"

"Not if, Linnear-san, when. Then I make a public state
ment, exonerating Gin.^w

"Who will believe you?"

"A witness of unimpeachable character will come forward

to corroborate every word I say. Tanaka Gin will be set free
within four hours. This I guarantee."

Tanaka Gin's life for Akinaga's. It was not a fair ex-
change, Nicholas thought, but then what in life was?

"I will see you an hour after the burial," Nicholas said.
"At the Nogi Jinja in Roppongi."

"A fitting site." Akinaga inclined his head. "I am
pleased." At that moment, one of Akinaga's retinue, ranged
on either side of the temple's main entrance, entered, hand-
ing him his cellular phone. He spoke into it in terse, one-
word sentences, then handed it back to his kobun, who
withdrew outside.

"You will leave now, won't you, Akinaga-san?"

Akinaga turned his narrow, skull-like head as if annoyed
at a songbird's incessant cluttering. "This chat has been so
pleasant I would wish to prolong it, but as it happens my
presence is required elsewhere."

Akinaga made the minimal bow, almost an insult, turned,
and was about to depart when something made him turn
back. "My apologies, but I never paid my condolence for
the death of your wife."

"That was more than a year ago."

"Yes, I know." Akinaga seemed lost in contemplation for
a moment "It is said in some quarters, Linnear-san, that
nothing will make you react. Is that true? I wonder. You
did not weep at your wife's funeral, and I dare say you won't
weep here today." He lifted a knobby forefinger. "But, if
you indulge me for a moment, I would dearly like to see
further evidence of such Japanese stoicism." His eyes were
alight. "Your wife-Justine, wasn't it?-died in an automo-
bile accident."

Nicholas's heart closed up. "That's right."

Akinaga leaned in a little so that Nicholas could smell the
fish and soy paste on his breath. "Actually, no. She was
being followed by one of my people. She saw him and pan-
icked. Ran right into the front of that truck."

Nicholas felt the rage building inside him. He knew Aki-

naga was baiting him; it had galled him that Nicholas was
so easily resigned to the deal he had set out. He wanted to
punish Nicholas, to exact a response, another pound of flesh
from him before the deal was consummated.

Akinaga shook his head. "That must have been tough to
take. I admire a man who takes a blow to his bowels and
doesn't flinch. Good for you." He smiled thinly. "And here's
another. That friend of hers who was in the car with her
when it burst into flames-who was it again? Oh, yes, Rick
Millar, her former boss. They had just come from an all-
night session in his hotel room. They fucked their brains
out.'' He was staking out Nicholas's face like a wolf in
enemy territory. "That's right, she was cheating on you, so
maybe after all I did you a favor." Then he turned on his
heel and left with the swagger of a modern-day shogun,
trailing his men in his wake like a comet heated by sunlight
forming an incandescent tail.

 

Nicholas stood beside Kisoko in the library of her town
house. It appeared stark with the shelves bare. Boxes were
stacked neatly on the scarred wood floor, and the Persian
carpet had been rolled, wrapped, and tied. The artwork had
been crated and the furniture was either already gone, or
covered with white dustcloths. Light from a bare bulb where
the cut-glass chandelier had been spilled down, its harshness
melancholy, making the room seem cavernous. Already, it
had the slightly musty smell of departure.

"The meeting with the Denwa Partners went well, I
hope?"

"Yes," Nicholas said. "Without Mick to cow them, they
agreed to give us more time. Although, I imagine Nangi-
san's appearance had something to do with it. And Kanda
Torin proved a big help. He knows these people better than
I do."

"That's good," Kisoko said. "You and Torin-san should
come to some form of working relationship."

"We will now." Nicholas studied her face. "Did you know
that Torin was in Akinaga's debt, that he had been working
for the oyabun since before he came to work at Sato."

"No." She shook her head. "I had no idea, and neither
did Okami-san or Nangi-san."

"I found out about Torin and told him I knew. He de-
spises Akinaga but lived in fear of him." Nicholas smiled.
"I believe he's more frightened of me now. As I said, he's
been very cooperative."

Kisoko seemed paler than usual in the dusty light "Do
you think you should fire him?"

"Possibly, but perhaps not. Torin knows more about Aki-
naga than I could ever find out on my own. I can use that.
Plus, Nangi-san was right about him-he's got a sharp
mind."

He turned away, no longer wishing to talk about Kanda
Torin. He had other things on his mind. With little life left,
the house seemed inhabited by ghosts. Nicholas imagined
his father here. Better to think of the Colonel now, than of
what Akinaga had told him. Better to think of Koei or Nangi
or Tanaka Gin or Torin, anything but the horror of Akina-
ga's boast-yes, damn him, it was a boast-that he had been
ultimately responsible for Justine's death, had known so
much about their lives that he knew the relationship be-
tween Justine and Millar better than Nicholas did. What if
he was right? Nicholas asked himself. What if Justine had
been cheating on him? She had been so unhappy, so lost
and he had all but abandoned her to Tokyo while he fulfilled
his debt of honor to protect Mikio Okami. She had begged
him not to go. He had called her twice that night and had
gotten no answer. Had she been out or had she been so
upset she had not wanted to talk to him? Had she been in
bed with Rick? It could have happened that way, he knew.
The truth. What was the truth? He'd never know, but then
again he didn't want to know. Honniko had seen that, had
had the good sense not to approach him in the deathly si-
lence of the Nichiren temple after Akinaga had sucked all
the oxygen, all the holiness, from the place. She had stared,
silent as an image of Buddha, feeling the white-hot cinders
of rage and grief sparking off him like fireworks.

Now, hours later, standing in a place that was a pasture
of grave memories, it occurred to him for the first time that
honor was a cruel and willful mistress.

Kisoko crossed to a sideboard on which stood a tray with
a half-empty bottle of Scotch and two cut-crystal glasses,
and his uneasy musings were shattered,

"Where will you and Nangi-san go?" he asked.

"Anywhere he can rest completely," Kisoko said, splash-
ing Scotch into two glasses. "My son, Ken, has left for the
United States, so nothing is keeping me here for the time

being." She brought the glasses back to him, her heels click-
ing across the wooden boards. He wasn't surprised she
hadn't brewed tea; the occasion called for something more
fortifying. She was dressed in white, the color of mourning:
Shantung silk suit, gloves, a pillbox hat with a veil that had
been in fashion in the sixties and was so again. She looked
very chic in Western garb. He gazed into her sad eyes as
they clinked glasses. They drank to the memory of Mikio
Okami.

"Well, hell," she said, throwing her empty glass across the
room, "he had a long and fascinating life."

Nicholas, looking at the shattered glass, said, "I wish I
could have saved him."

"You did in a way. At least you redeemed him. He came
to love you, Linnear-san, as he had loved no other, including
me." There was no jealousy in her voice, certainly no envy.
"He could be a difficult man. He certainly was a thorny
brother. I wanted to look after him, you see, because from
a very early age danger swirled around him like a whirlpool,
but that kind of behavior only infuriated him. He adored
the danger, thrived on it, really. So I tried to do what I could
from the shadows"-she smiled-"when he wasn't looking."
"With Tau-tau."
"Yes."

"Did he know you were a tanjian?"
"I have no idea. That was not a topic we would have
discussed. Possibly he did."
"About Kshira-"

"Yes. I thought you'd get around to that." She went to
the sideboard, her high heels click-clacking along the floor,
saw there were no more glasses. Nicholas offered her his
and she took it gratefully, splashing in more Scotch, drinking
it more slowly than the first glass. "I must be careful. I
imagine alcoholism runs in the family."

She perched on a covered chair, crossed her legs. She
might have been posing for a portrait, and Nicholas felt
Nangi was a lucky man. "All the dark stories about Kshira
turning people mad-"
"I've seen it happen."

She glanced up at him. "I have no doubt you have. Kshira
is not for every tanjian. Between Akshara and Kshira, it's

by far the more potent of the two forms of Tau-tau. And
because of that, little is understood of it." She decided to
abandon her own warning and downed the remainder of the
Scotch in one long gulp. "I am a Kshira adept, Linnear-san,
so believe me when I tell you Kshira turns mad those who
cannot control it. Do not turn away from it and it will not
harm you. Learn from what is inside you. Explore carefully
and you will be richly rewarded." She gave him an enigmatic
smile. "But I believe you have already learned this lesson."

"And Shuken-the Dominion-the combination of Ak-
shara and Kshira, does it exist? I have heard conflicting
opinions."

Kisoko's eyes regarded him silently, slyly. "And what do
you think?"

"I think I don't know enough about it to make a
judgment."

"Oh, you know far more than most tanjian, Linnear-san."
She rose, replaced the glass on the sideboard. He wondered
if the glance she gave the Scotch bottle, almost as empty as
this house, was one of longing. She turned to face him. "You
see, you hold the answer to your own question inside you."

"What do you mean?"

Click-clack, she came across the room to where he stood.
For a long moment, she stood, regarding him solemnly. She
was filled with sudden emotion, he could tell that much, and
he felt the two of them on the brink of a personal revelation,
a shared intimacy he could not even guess at. "Akshara and
Kshira coexist in you, Linnear-san."

He stood stunned, pinned to the spot. Of course she was
right. The answer to Shuken's existence had been inside him
all this time. He was living proof that the integration of the
two sides of Tau-tau was possible. Kansatsu, his sensei, had
miscalculated. He had not believed Nicholas strong enough
to handle Kshira because he himself had been driven mad
by it. A kind of relief flooded Nicholas and he wished Koei
were here at this moment to share it. .

Dust motes floated in the air and each one seemed to him
to have a history, a tale to tell, a bright spark in the ocean
of time.

"Kisoko," he said at length, "you have been very kind
to me."

"My brother loved you as a son, and that is how I think
of you." She had a direct gaze that reminded him of Koei's.
He felt unaccountably comfortable with her and was sud-
denly sorry she was leaving. "You have a special destiny, a
significant karma. I feel it like the beating of the sun's rays
on my back."

"Like my father."

"Oh, no." She seemed shocked. "Not like his at all. Your
father was an architect and like all architects he was a
dreamer. That was why he and my brother made such a
good team. The Colonel dreamed the future and Okami-san
made it so. He was the doer. But your father's plan for a
peaceful and powerful new Japan was always doomed to
partial failure."

"Why?"

"Only God can imagine the future and make it so." Ki-
soko stared into a column of light slanting in through a
window. So dense was it that it seemed solid enough to walk
on. "Men are only men, after all," she went on in the
dreamy voice of reminiscence, "no matter how extraordinary
they may be. They cannot imagine all possibilities-there
were too many variables even in the monolithic structure
that the Colonel created here of the Liberal Democratic
Party, the bureaucracy, big business, and the Yakuza.
Human nature undid him."

She turned to stare into Nicholas's face, and for an instant
her features were so aflame that Nicholas saw her as she
had been in her magnificent youth. "You see, your father
was not a greedy man so he could not imagine his grand
scheme being undone by greed. But humans are a greedy
lot-money, property, debts of honor, influence, and
power-they want to amass them all. Greed is what brought
the LDP down, greed is what made our current recession,
greed has stymied our government, made weaklings of
strong politicians pushed into an awkward coalition where
no one has control and compromise blocks every effort."

Nicholas thought a moment. "But it was a magnificent
scheme my father imagined and to a great extent it
succeeded"

"Yes, it did." She took out her compact and began to

apply lipstick, by which gesture he divined that the subject
was closed.

He waited a moment while she blotted her crimson lips.
He watched her as she moved around the room, touching
the edges of things-bookcases, moldings-as if they were
old friends who needed her reassurance. Or perhaps it was
she who needed the reassurance.

"I have some questions," he said.

She paused, her hand on polished wood.

"Mother Superior said you were a member of the order."

Her hand found every curve and turning of the carved
wood, dark and mysterious with age. "That's right."

"And it was you, not your brother, who owned the build-
ings once housing the toruko known as Tenki and which
now contains Pull Marine and Both Ends Burning, among
other establishments."

Kisoko's eyes flicked up at him. "The property was in my
name, yes, but the money came from the order."

Nicholas shook his head. "I don't get it. What was the
order doing here during the Occupation?"

"I need some air," Kisoko said, abruptly disengaging her-
self from the room. "Will you join me?"

Nicholas followed her as she went to one of the curtains
behind which was a brick wall. She pushed on the center
and it swung open on a central post Nicholas stepped
through and found himself in a truly astonishing space.

Swirling gravel paths, still damp from days of rain, led
through a series of dwarf maples and conifers like stops on
a mountain road. Water burbled in a small pool within which
spotted carp swam in indolent circles. Obviously, the ware-
house abutting the dwelling was nothing more than a hollow
shell within which this jewellike garden had been planted.

"Do you like it?" Kisoko asked with a sudden and
sweet shyness.

"Very much."

She seemed pleased. "There is so little space in Tokyo in
which to breathe." She sighed. "This is the one place I will
be sorry to leave behind."

She sat on a backless stone bench, and something about
her posture or the brave stoicism that set the features of
her face reminded him of photos of Jacqueline Kennedy at

the funeral of her husband. Outside, in the afternoon's cus-
tardy light, the years seemed to slip off her like old skin,
revealing the young woman the Colonel had known, the
person she still was.

"In all ways the order attempts to serve God." She looked
down at her gloved hands composed in her lap. "It came
into being to do His will." Her head turned in a direction
that led him to believe she was staring into the past. "This
is not often easy. God moves in mysterious ways; he has,
on occasion, given signs to the chosen of the order. These
invariably come in visions. But the visions are open to inter-
pretation. And sometimes-" She halted abruptly and she
passed a hand across her face. "Sometimes there are false
visions."

Her eyes met Nicholas's and they were absolutely unread-
able. "Such a vision came to Mary Margaret, who was the
order's mother superior in 1947, and she dispatched Bernice
to Tokyo on a difficult and dangerous mission. The vision
had indicated that an Army officer in the Occupation would
return to the States, turn to politics, and become a dema-
gogue, building on hate and fear and paranoia to become
president. The vision was apocalyptic: he was a kind of Anti-
christ, pushing the country into war with the Soviet Union."

Nicholas thought- of the story Honniko had told him.
"You researched, identified, and targeted Jacklyn McCabe."

Kisoko nodded. "He fit every aspect of the vision, but
while we were concentrating on him, the real danger was
left undiscovered."

"Sen. Joe McCarthy."

She nodded. "When we discovered our error, we were
mortified. You must understand, Nicholas-san, in those days
the threat of Soviet infiltration and control was all too real.
This is what gave McCarthy his credibility among a large
segment of government and the population; it took us some
time to break that down, and by then a great deal of damage
bad been done."

The long afternoon had grown increasingly steamy and
uncomfortable, and Kisoko took off her gloves, smoothing
them with long, rhythmic strokes of her fingers. A bumble-
bee buzzed somewhere nearby. "The true danger was that
some of what McCarthy was fighting against was real. We

decided to help your father in his quest to make Japan
strong again. Japan stood as a bulwark against the spread
of Communism in the Pacific. The Soviet Union already had
under their control the Kurils, islands that belong to Japan.
What else would they take?" Kisoko brushed a tendril of
hair from her cheek, wrapped it behind one ear. "The old
fascism of Hitler and Mussolini was dead, but a new form
of it was condoned and abetted abroad by the United States
government. It was, in its own way, fashionable." She lifted
a hand. "Now, as the wheel of life continues to turn, it has
become fashionable again, in the guise of religious righteous-
ness and ethnic intolerance."

She stood up, brushed off the skirt of her suit. The sun
had gone in and night was fast coming. "We allowed Mi-
chael Leonforte to play all his cards, not knowing which
ones he held and which he would play. It was God's will
and there were terrible consequences, but there are always
terrible consequences when such dark forces are set in motion."

For an instant, as she went by him, his psyche brushed
hers, and he felt a dark current, swirling, a cold spot, deep
and dark, in a corner of a children's summertime swimming
hole. "Kisoko-san ..."

"Yes?" She turned, expectant, but when her eyes met
his, a veil was lifted from in front of her emotions. She
stopped cold.

"There's more, isn't there, when it comes to Mick
Leonforte."

A lark began to sing, hidden somewhere in the foliage of
the garden. Kisoko drew on her spotless white gloves with
the care and precision of a surgeon entering the operating
theater.

"You're right, of course." Her head came up. "Long ago,
Michael's grandfather invested a small sum of his money
with the order. On his death, a great deal more was added
to it. Michael's grandfather had pegged him for great things,
and he wanted the future prepared for his grandson's
arrival."

"But Mick got rich on drug money he stole from the U.S.
government-sponsored pipeline in Laos. He didn't need the
order's money."

"But he needed our influence, and this is what the money
was used to procure for him without his ever knowing the
source. In the Army, before he went AWOL and began his
career as a renegade. How else do you think he was able to
outwit the military for so long? By that time he'd cemented
the necessary liaisons that kept him one step ahead of mili-
tary justice." Her eyes slid away from his. "So you see, the
order had a very personal reason for wanting Michael
neutralized."

"Then Mother Superior-"

Kisoko nodded. "Was obliged to plot her own brother's
demise."

Back inside, the house was as echoey as a cathedral. "It
was all the worse because Marie Rose-well, her relation-
ship with Michael was, as I believe you saw, quite special.
She came here to try one last time to save him, though I
am quite sure in her heart she knew there was no chance."
She gave him a partial smile. "Still, there is always hope,
neh? It is the pain and elation of being human."

 

"God, I've missed you!" Margarite hugged Croaker to
her.

He kissed her cheek and put his arms around her, con-
strained by the garden in which they stood. All around them
the white walls of the Convent of the Sacred Heart of Santa
Maria rose around them, shining in the sunlight as if newly
washed. Birds flitted among the trees and the drone of the
bees among the rose canes was a lazy and nostalgic sound.

"Francie always adored it here," Margarite said. "As a
child she saw it as a safe haven, but later, when she was so
ill and Tony and I were at our worst, I think she rejected
everything that was safe."

They lapsed into a comfortable silence. There had been
plenty of time on the flight north from Ft. Lauderdale to
think about their lives and how much they meant to each
other. Margarite had also had time to decide what was most
important to her. She wanted to reclaim her company, even
if that meant a court fight. Because of Vesper's diligent work
and Milo's testimony, Caesare was behind bars facing an
airtight case against him for smuggling arms, drugs, and mul-
tiple violations of the RICO act. Vesper had been promoted

to head her own unit of the Anti-Cartel Task Force, re-
porting to its director, Spaulding Gunn. She had put Marga-
rite in touch with the assistant attorney general attached to
the ACTF, who had assured Margarite that she had an ex-
cellent chance of getting a judge to annul Caesare's takeover
of her company on grounds of misrepresentation. And with
Caesare's apparent mental breakdown she had nothing more
to fear from him. As far as her brother's business was con-
cerned, it would have to run without her. She had already
put the mechanism in motion by creating a commission of
the three Family capos most loyal to the Goldonis. These
men were not used to decision by committee, it was true,
but it seemed clear to Margarite that everyone, including
them, was going to have to learn to live by new rules.

Croaker saw her at last turn her head toward the chapel
with its tall, narrow windows so like a fortified castle.

"Are you worried?" he asked.

"Worried? No." She gave him a small smile and gathered
"his hands in hers. "Well, maybe a little." Her face darkened.
"What if I lose Francie, Lew? It wouldn't be fair, would it?
Now that she and I have found each other again. Now that
you're here. She never really had a proper father."

Croaker took their joined hands and kissed the back of
hers. "I think you have to trust her just a little. She's been
through enough to begin to know herself. Her life is just
beginning, Margarite. After all that's happened to her, some-
thing has changed inside her, something new to replace the
old. Let,whatever will emerge, emerge."

 

Paul Chiaramonte stood alone in the stone chapel of the
Convent of the Sacred Heart of Santa Maria and nervously
shifted from one foot to another. The chapel smelled faintly
of stone dust and incense. It was cool and dim, but Paul
found himself sweating. The Latin he heard faintly spoken
and echoing made him nervous. Religious places made him
think of confession, and confession brought up all the sins
he had committed.

"Paul."

He turned at the sound of her voice, and his heart skipped
a beat. Jaqui looked almost regal in the black and white
robes of the mother superior. Behind her, like a

lady in waiting, he was surprised to see Francie. She wore
a plain black dress that covered her from neck to knee. Her
pink-cheeked face at first looked solemn, but as she came
closer, he saw that it was composed. She gave him a tiny
serene smile.

"I knew," Paul said, gazing into Jaqui's sea-green eyes,
which had haunted him for so long. "All these years I knew
you were alive."

Jaqui extended her hands and he took them briefly. They
did not kiss, but Francie could feel an extraordinary current
pass between them, like a heat ripple coming up from hot
pavement in August.

"I must apologize, Paul."

"For what?"

"For that night-in the garden shed when we-"

"No," he said emphatically, "don't apologize. Even then
I knew I couldn't have you forever, but I wanted you that
night, and it was right, Jaqui. It was right."

She moved a little at his use of her secular name. It was'
not that she hadn't anticipated it, but the reality of it pos-
sessed more power than she had expected. It made her think
of her brother Michael, of them dancing together on the
rooftop of their apartment building in Ozone Park. Or had
that been Michael's dream? Her dream? She couldn't re-
member now, they were melded, memory and dream one
seamless whole.

"Thank you. Yes," she said. "It was."

Despite her vow, in her heart part of her was still Jaqui
Leonforte and always would be. Was it always so with the
mother superiors of the order? She put her arm around
Francie, allowed the warmth of her charisma to enfold the
girl, as well as Paul. Was Francie of the chosen? Was she
an agent of change as those before her had been? If so, she
was about to tread a challenging and difficult path. Perhaps,
Jaqui reflected, that was precisely what she needed.

Paul cleared his throat. "It was good of you to see me."

"For a time, you were her protector." He knew Jaqui was
speaking of Francie. "That makes you important to this
order. I thank you from the bottom of my heart."

Her eyes were a world in which he could still become lost.
Paul spent a long time thinking about what he had lost-

and what he had found in the odyssey of his life. It seemed
to him now that the most important lessons were to be
learned closest to home, where the knife clove closest to
the bone.

Staring into Jaqui's eyes, he already knew the answer to
the question he was about to ask, but he asked it anyway:
"Will I see you again?"

"You'll see Francine again, I'm sure." He was leaving her,
perhaps forever, and Jaqui knew it. "God bless you."

 

Damaged light leaked through the rent in clouds dark as a
bruise. Mist rose off the leaf-strewn ground, the pockmarked
stone markers, as if it were morning.

"Say something." Koei stood at his right shoulder like a
sentinel. "Your silence terrifies me."

The cemetery within which the Kaisho lay was still save
for the low chanting of the Heart Sutra, weaving itself on
an invisible loom of light. A breeze ruffled Koei's hair and
then collapsed into the wet heat of the afternoon.

"Akinaga told me everything about the last days, when I
wasn't around." Nicholas said it almost as a sigh, and the
tender regret made her heart constrict. "And it was the
truth."

Almost against her will she said, "What did he tell you?"

Exhausted shadows, broken by tree roots and small mark-
ers, lengthened along the pathways, pooled beneath the
dark crvptomeria.

"That Justine's death was no accident, that she was having
an affair with her former boss."

"And now you're thinking, how could she betray me?"

"Part of me."

"But she didn't." Koei moved so that she was in front of
him, waited until his wandering gaze intersected with hers.
"Whatever you had with her is in here"-she tapped his
head-"and in here"-tapped his heart. "If she had an affair
at the very end, it was because your relationship was already
dead. She knew it; the problem is you only realized it after
the fact. That is where the source of your guilt lies."

"But Akinaga-"

"Forget Akinaga." She would not allow his eyes to wan-
der. "Forget everything for a moment and let yourself be."

"I cannot forget Mikio Okami. He was-"

"You must accept Justine's death before you can mourn
him, or anyone else."

A plover canted down through light lacerated by planks
of cloud, alit upon Okami's marker, stayed for a brief mo-
ment, then departed in a small clatter. And in an instant
Nicholas saw that she was right. He could not allow Akinaga
to destroy whatever he and Justine had had when they had
been happy. Those memories dwelled solely within him now,
like dreams, a landscape apart, full of symbols and portents.
Akinaga could not touch them.

Whatever circumstances had driven them apart could not
be boiled down into so easy a syrup as guilt, not any one
thing or even ten, rather a vast web growing within each of
them, pushing them inexorably apart. He could have turned
himself inside out and the result would have been the same.
What happened could not be helped. Karma.

He reached out and Koei put her hand in his. "I'll miss
her."

"Yes. I imagine you will."

Together they knelt by the side of the marker. Together
they recited the prayer for the dead. Then they rose.

He turned to her. "Koei, you're magic."

The Heart Sutra had finished, but its spell seemed to hang
in the trees like glittering tears. Koei put her head against
his shoulder. "Nicholas, you have been isolated inside your-
self so long." And she felt with an intense sense of relief
his body and his mind-all of him-melt into her.

 

A glowing moon the color of a persimmon broke through
indigo clouds hanging low on the horizon. From where he
lay, naked and relaxed, Tetsuo Akinaga could see the full
moon of Harvest Night illumine the snow on the crest of
Mt. Fuji, white tinged the palest shade of blue.

Akinaga loved Harvest Night. It had great significance for
him because on a Harvest Night many years ago he had
been in a vicious street fight with a kobun of a rival family.
Both had been grievously wounded. Crawling in the gutter
on bleeding hands, he had managed to strangle his barely
conscious antagonist with fingers clawed with hatred, seeing
with immense satisfaction the tongue emerge between

bloody lips, hearing the terrible thick gurgling of lungs de-
prived of oxygen, the heavy stench of fresh fecal matter.

Behind him, Akinaga heard Londa's sweet alto, as she
sang a song unfamiliar to him. "Watching the moon at
dawn," she sang softly as a breath of breeze at sunrise, "soli-
tary, midsky, I knew myself completely"-he felt her coming .
up behind him where he was staring at the persimmon
moon-"no part left out."

As her strong and knowing hands flowed over him like
oil, he said, "It's a luxury to have you with me. And a
reminder. I have had many enemies in my time, but none
of them have lived long." He sighed as her hands did won-
ders for his mind and body. "All have come with one
thought-to destroy me. All have tried, in more ways than
I can now count." He chuckled. "And here I am, the sole
survivor. Even Mikio Okami, the Kaisho, is dead. Yes, in-
deed. I went to his funeral. Well, why not? He deserved to
be honored, if not in life then certainly in death." He cack-
led like an old woman whom the gods have made mad.
"And I must say it was a pleasure to confront Nicholas
Linnear, to know he cannot touch me. He has no proof
against me, he knows nothing but what I have told him. I
played with him like a monkey in a zoo. Poor bastard."
Akinaga sighed. "Londa, you are worth your weight in-"

"Shut up."

Honniko, in her guise as Londa the dominatrix, pulled the
silken cord tight around his neck. A shudder of sexual
arousal went through him, and suddenly, he was as hard as
a bar of iron. Ah, the sheer ecstasy of being helpless. Like
a child again at his mother's breast, soft and warm and cozy
and helpless. He sniffed the air for the flowery, milky scent ;
of her. His mother. He closed his eyes.            •

The cord tightened, and with the pain, the near asphyxia,
he felt ecstasy coming, creeping along his spine to his groin,
pooling there like liquid iron. He could feel the power of
his erection thundering through him, vibrating tike a stroke
of lightning landing between his feet. Sweet pain. She was
good, very good. Oh, yes!

His eyes flew open, bunking like a child's in the sun. Was
it his imagination or was the cord just a bit too tight? He
opened his mouth to say something and gagged as the cord

was tightened still further. His head jerked up, the veins at
the sides of his neck popping. He tried to scrabble up, but
she had planted her knee firmly in the small of his back,
and like an adder that can be picked up once impaled just
behind its head, he could thrash but not get up or roll over.

What was going on? He tried to force air into his burning
lungs, but he could not. If he did not get oxygen soon ...

He saw the persimmon moon grow larger and larger, like
a balloon filling with air, expanding until its very outline
became distorted, until it no longer looked like the moon
at all.

Honniko, watching Akinaga's hateful face fill with blood
and darken like the harvest moon, felt her blood singing.
When he was dead, she, too, stared up at the moon and,
thinking of Nicholas Linnear, of his grief and his rage, of
him standing alone and empty on the stage of the temple,
sang again the last refrain of the song: "I knew myself com-
pletely-no part left out."

Her voice, soft and ineffably sweet, carried up into the
inky sky like a plover, suffused with the divine animation
of God.

 

ERIC LUSTBADER is the bestselling
author of eighteen novels, including
Second Skin, Floating City, The Kaisho,
The Ninja, The Miko, and White Ninja,
which feature his most popular and

enduring character, Nicholas Linnear.

A graduate of Columbia College, Mr.

Lustbader lives in Southampton, New
York, with his wife, freelance editor

Victoria Lustbader, who works for the
Nature Conservancy.