Eric van Lustbader - Nicholas Linnear 05, page 43
“In London I met a friend of yours. Vesper Arkham.”
Serman twitched like the subject of a Skinnerian psych project Rat in a maze.
“Vesper who?” He was no good at this.
“Arkham, Doctor. Vesper Arkham.”
“I’m not sure I -“
“She’s your normal contact,” Croaker snapped, abruptly dropping the façade of cordiality. Serman was like a lake in spring: he was covered with a sheet of very thin ice. “And she’s very concerned about the updates you’ve stopped giving her.”
Serman blinked. “Updates?”
It was time, Croaker judged, to leave it to intuition and gamble everything. “Yes, Doctor. From the project you and Abramanov have been working on. What is it called?” A sick look was coming to Sermon’s face, and Croaker felt a surge of triumph. “Ah, yes. Torch.”
Serman’s legs seemed to have turned to jelly. Croaker held him up by the elbows, directed him to one of the chintz-covered sofas.
“Are you all right, Doctor?”
Serman’s bluish lips moved. “Vesper promised me no one else would know about those reports,” he whispered.
Croaker was near the center, he could taste it on the electrically charged air. “What kind of deal did Vesper have going with yon?”
Serman jumped up. “It was Vesper who allowed the transmission between me and Abramanov to keep up. Without her, it would have eventually been picked up by the special subcarrier tracker used here as an antibugging security measure. In return, she insisted on being kept up-to-date on our high-flux neutron project.”
Serman jammed his hands in his pockets, went to one of the curtained windows and stared out. “I want to make something clear. I’m not a traitor. I’ve worked for the government all my life. I’ve been a dedicated man. But dedication…” He turned around. “Such dedication needs to be rewarded, damnit! Instead, I’ve been entombed here. I can’t go anywhere, do anything, see anybody without forms to fill out, questions to be answered, suspicions raised. As far as the world at large is concerned I died five years ago. But, I’ll tell you, this is worse than death.”
“Why don’t you quit?”
Serman looked at him wide-eyed for a moment before bursting out into laughter that racked him so thoroughly tears spilled out of his eyes.
“Good God, man, look at where we are!” he gasped. “You don’t just walk away from a place like this. Your brain is too full of equations that impact national security.” He dabbed at the corners of his eyes with his sleeve. “This is a lifetime job. The fact that they never tell you that when you sign on is another matter entirely.”
Croaker felt little sympathy for Serman. “So staying had nothing to do with the high-flux neutron project.”
“Of course it did,” Serman said with the impenetrable lope of the scientist. “He said with my help he’d had a breakthrough. He’d been able to create a transuranic isotope that was stable. Do you know what a transuranic isotope is?”
“Yes, it’s a radioactive substance with an atomic number higher than uranium - that makes it potentially deadly to humans. And I also know that he’s taken this isotope and has made a devastatingly dangerous weapon out of it.”
“Torch.” Serman abruptly sat down. “Yes. I think I know what Abramanov did to create element 114m, but for some reason I haven’t been able to duplicate his success.” He stopped, put his head into his hands. “We had such hopes. An almost endless fuel, cheap to make, an end to the ongoing energy crisis. What a dream!” He looked up. “But that’s all it is, a dream. Abramanov has made the ultimate weapon out of it.” Serman looked bleakly at him. “Because so little of it is needed for a powerful explosion, its potential use lies in hand-held nuclear devices. In today’s world of terrorists and small ethnic wars, it fits all the criteria for the ultimate weapon: it’s portable, devastating, and clean.”
Croaker had an idea. “Can you contact Abramanov now?”
“No. All communication abruptly ceased five days ago. I have had no reply to my repeated queries.”
“How are you involved with the weapons being stolen from DARPA?”
“What are you talking about?”
He could see that Serman knew nothing about Vesper’s other activities inside DARPA. He had thought to bundle Serman off to the security office at the other end of the complex, but now he thought better of it. Somehow Croaker had to get Serman out of the DARPA facility and contact Nicholas. Now, more than ever, the Torch 315 detonation date must be stopped.
He had Serman fetch him one of the doctor’s white lab coats, then he pumped Serman in detail about the complex’s layout and the doctor’s daily route and routine.
Then he had Serman lead him back to his lab. He sat at the zinc countertop in the light of one lit Bunsen burner while Serman crouched beneath, hidden by shadows and the lab stool. It would have been easiest to change his plan and leave with Serman without waiting for Vesper to show up, but instinct told him that would be a mistake. He could not leave in place a mole planted so deeply inside the Nishiki network she had access to Okami himself. He had to take her down and do it now while he could have a degree of control over the killing ground. And yet something kept intruding, a tickle of intent at the periphery of his thoughts. Something Serman had said he had let slip through…
A shadowy figure slipped silently through the doorway.
“So you are here.”
He recognized her voice, Dedalus’s mole. He did not move, but he felt as if a laser beam was sighted between his eyes.
“Would you come with me. We have much to discuss.”
Croaker studied her face. She was taking it well, he thought. There was not a trace of surprise on her face. That capped it: Dedalus had told her he was here. She was his mole - and she had access to Okami. No wonder his adversaries had found Okami in London. She had betrayed him.
“You’re a sight,” Croaker said, looking at this newest incarnation of Vesper Arkham. She wore black leggings and a quilted black jacket over a silk blouse. Her natural blond hair was pulled tightly back from her face, which was set in a troubled scowl. She had never looked more beautiful - or more deadly. “We do have much to discuss.” He smiled, raising his biomechanical hand, its stainless-steel nails fully extruded. “But this time I’m ready for you.”
“You idiot,” she said, stunning him to immobility. “Where the hell is Serman? I’ve got to get you both out of here before you’re shot dead!”
“Tachi Shidare is dead,” Tetsuo Akinaga said. “And now that Chosa has committed suicide, the inner council no longer exists.”
Ushiba said nothing. When he had received the message from Akinaga, he had actually considered postponing the meeting. He was exhausted unto death. The guilt he felt over Chosa’s death was only partially mitigated by the certain knowledge that it had been necessary. The security of the Godaishu had to be maintained at whatever cost. You should get out before you make a fatal mistake and the force of your own politics runs you over, Ken had told him. And he well understood the wisdom of his words because he had answered. When the game becomes a burden, the rules change and the hunter is most in danger of becoming the tainted. He remembered his feeling of renewed power as he had said, One is born smelling the blood.
That statement, so filled with the arrogance of youth, was simply not true. The blood was what had made him so certain that Chosa’s and Akinaga’s vision of the Godaishu was sound, that their diatribes against the despotism of the Kaisho had to be acted upon. Only now could he see how the bloodlust for power had bonded all of them.
With Chosa and Shidare gone he could not help thinking that they would not have come to these dire straits had they not made the tacit decision to do away with the Kaisho. Mikio Okami’s firm hand would have led them down an altogether different path. It was up to him, now, to steer a dear path for the Godaishu, and the council.
“What happened to the young oyabun?” he said now.
Akinaga shrugged. “It was not of my doing. Shidare was struck down by an assassin in Yoshino.”
“Yoshino? What was he doing there?”
The two men were sitting in the sparely furnished main room of Tomi, the obelisklike concrete structure Akinaga had built for himself as a retreat. It rose on a two-hundred-square-foot lot in the center of Tokyo. Tomi, from the word meaning a kind of watchtower that could command a wide view, was one of the oyabun’s various secretive quarters. Like a commander during wartime, he had many avenues of escape from the pressures of his world. A set of steep stone stairs rose from street level beside a narrow parking space. Above was the room they were in, along with a tiny kitchen. A black iron spiral staircase in one corner led up to the bedrooms and bath. Ushiba had never found it a comfortable space, but it was efficient in a manner befitting a Spartan commander.
Blocks of beautiful kiaki - the only wood in the room - had been carved into a low table at which they knelt. Tea and cakes had been laid out when Ushiba arrived. Certainly, Akinaga had not prepared them; it was his subtle way of bringing to Ushiba’s attention that there was someone else in the house, unseen but available if needed.
“Shidare was in Yoshino doing his job, one suspects,” Akinaga said. “Tracking down Nicholas Linnear in order to kill him. It seems that, like Tomoo Kozo, Shidare was unsuccessful.”
“Now we’re in for it,” Ushiba said. “If Linnear knows Shidare was Yakuza and, further, a member of the inner council, he cannot fail to know where to come next.”
“Don’t you find it interesting,” Akinaga said, shrewdly changing the subject, “that Linnear would be in Yoshino? Why? Perhaps that is where the Kaisho is in hiding.”
“Our first concern should be Linnear. Because of Chosa’s foolhardy act Linnear is sure to come to Tokyo looking for you. I can help with- “
“I think you have done just about enough, Daijin.”
Ushiba looked in mute disbelief at Akinaga.
“With Chosa and Shidare gone, there is only me, Chief Minister.” The oyabun leaned over the kiaki table. “Your position on the inner council was always of an advisory nature, but over the past year it has not been lost on me that your attendance, opinions, and influence have been on the rise. It began even before we drove Okami from the Kaisho’s position, and ever since then you seem bent on gaining power exponentially.” Akinaga’s face twisted. “You see, that’s what this little exercise has been in aid of.”
“What exercise?” A rime of ice was forming in Ushiba’s lower belly.
“I gave you Chosa on a platter, and much to my satisfaction you ate him whole.” Akinaga gave a booming laugh. “Imagine! I turned you against your friend! Amazing, really.”
Ushiba was ashen faced “You’d better explain yourself.” He could not quite manage to hold his voice steady.
“It was I who acted on the plot to assassinate the Kaisho. That weakling Chosa tried to steal my thunder.”
“But the plot failed.”
“It drove the Kaisho into hiding; it stripped him of all power and influence,” Akinaga spat. “Okami might as well be dead; the result is the same.” He took out a cigarette, lit up leisurely. “Then I suborned Shidare. I convinced him that he had no power unless he aligned himself with a member of the inner council. He was a pragmatic young man and he agreed. So I sent him off to do away with Linnear.”
“You!”
“Of course! I knew that Shidare was tanjian. Only another tanjian had a chance to destroy Linnear, but I suppose I discounted Shidare’s youth. He failed.”
“But Chosa -“
“Ah, Chosa!” Akinaga luxuriated in the smoke from his cigarette. “Chosa and I were due to come to blows sooner or later. His ambition was to take over the Kaisho’s position - and so is mine. The inner council wasn’t big enough for the both of us.”
“But he had too much power for you to go after him yourself.”
“Precisely. I let you do it for me.”
“But Yoshinori told me -“
“Yoshinori told you what I wanted him to tell you. The old boy always does what I ask. We have an understanding that goes back decades. We could always count on one another.”
“And I believed him.”
“Why shouldn’t you? I would have, in your place.” Now, to Ushiba’s fury, Akinaga gave him a compassionate look. “He was such a consummate actor. It was his hobby, you see, acting, a kind of grand passion. He loved it so!”
Akinaga rose, went to one of the small windows buried in the rough concrete wall. He stared down onto the narrow street where traffic whizzed by.
“Now I have what I want. With Chosa and Shidare gone, there is nothing to stop me from succeeding Okami as Kaisho.”
“But Okami still lives.”
“Yes, he does.” Akinaga was truly terrifying in his calmness. “But I know, more or less, where he’s hiding. And when I take possession of Torch from Floating City, Okami will be nothing more than a cinder floating above the rooftops, and Rock will have ringing validation of the power of Torch. Our partnership will be extremely fruitful.”
“So this is why you lobbied so hard for the Floating City partnership,” Ushiba said, stunned. “You had made a private deal with Rock and Mick Leonforte for Torch.”
The ghost of a smile on Akinaga’s face was positively eerie, and as Ushiba struggled to his feet, he could feel the chill of fear creeping through him. They were now in the situation that Okami had forestalled in becoming Kaisho: a despotic leader, one Japanese voice controlling the Godaishu. It was intolerable. “This grasping for control won’t succeed. I’ll do everything in my power to stop you.”
Akinaga turned to look at Ushiba. “Chief Minister, I fear you are overstepping yourself. You have no power.”
“By God, you’ve got nerve.”
“I’ve got more than that,” Akinaga’s smile turned serpentlike. “I feel sorry for you, Chief Minister, I really do. We’re of the same generation, we enjoy many of the same sensibilities, but over the course of tune I’ve sounded you out. You’ve changed since Okami was banished. Sometimes, I’ve been astonished when, talking to you, I’ve thought the Kaisho resurrected. I’ve come to the sad conclusion you’re too much like him.”
“What if I am? There’s nothing you can do about it.”
“Oh, but there is.” Akinaga stubbed out his butt in a green metal ashtray iridescent as the carapace of an insect. “I’m holding all the cards.”
Akinaga walked to a black metal grid filled with books on architecture and history. From between them he pulled out a sheaf of rice paper. “You know what these are,” he said, that deadly smile pinned to his face.
“Torinawa,” Ushiba said with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Akinaga brandished them over his head. “Yes.” Torinawa, which was a special rope used by samurai for binding criminals, meant, in the perverse manner of the Yakuza, a pledge from a leaderless clan to follow the orders of another. “Here I have the torinawa from the Kokorogurushii and the Yamauchi clans. They now follow me, I am, in effect, the inner council. And from this moment on I am the new Kaisho.”
Silence rolled like thunder through the ferroconcrete room. Ushiba wanted to run and hide, but like the good samurai he stood his ground and took his punishment. He should never have acquiesced to the inner council’s plan to depose Okami. They had portrayed him as a power-hungry despot, while just the opposite was true. Kozo was planning to murder Nicholas Linnear, and Chosa and Akinaga were plotting against one another to become the next Kaisho. Even as all of them pledged that there would never be another Kaisho.
“So,” Akinaga said, “now you understand the true nature of the present situation. I own you, Daijin, and believe me, I plan to milk your influence and contacts for all they’re worth. Within thirty hours Mikio Okami will be dead and my triumph will be complete. You will be my loyal right hand. I will give the orders and you will carry them out in the arena of international economics both at MITI and in the Godaishu.” Akinaga took two swift steps toward Ushiba. “Is all this quite dear, Daijin?”
Ushiba took, a deep breath, let it go. “Yes.” That one word had a finality he could never have dreamed of before this moment.
“You’re nuts if you think I’m going anywhere with you,” Croaker said. “Every time I see you you’re another person.”
“Another time, another place, another identity,” Vesper said in the semidarkness. “For the love of God, come on!”
He did not budge. He could hear the quiet hiss of the Bunsen burner. By its eerie light he looked at Vesper, wondering which incarnation he was seeing. Watching her was like looking at someone reflected in a series of fun-house mirrors: each distorted image took you further away from the truth, the reality, until you felt as if the reflections themselves must be the reality.
Her head twisted. “I hear him! He’s coming!”
“Cut this out I don’t-“
“Damnit, you already gave Serman away to Dedalus! D’you want to sacrifice us both as well?”
In truth, he could hear sounds echoing down the hallway. Unmistakably, they were coming closer. Was she telling the truth? Was it Dedalus who was coming?
“Give it up,” he said. “I know all about Torch. I know that Okami is in London and that he’s targeted for the fifteenth. I know you’ve betrayed him to his enemies.”
“You’ve been talking to the wrong people. I’ll explain everything to you if you’ll just move out of here before we’re both trapped.”
“You’re a liar seven times over. I’ve proved to my satisfaction you’re Dedalus’s mole inside Okami’s network. Which one of you am I to believe?”
He could hear the rising note of anxiety in her voice. “Believe me if only for this one moment. We’ve got to get out of here. Now!”
Something wasn’t computing. If she was the enemy, why didn’t she just keep him here until Dedalus came? What was he to believe? And now that tickle at his consciousness took hold.
