Eric van Lustbader - Nicholas Linnear 05, page 5
“With Okami that would be a mistake.” Chosa drained his cup, ran his fingertip around the bottom, picking up the limp tea leaves. He deliberately ignored the Daijin’s pain; to do otherwise would make Naohiro lose face.
“But surely if Okami were alive, we would have heard some word of him by now.”
Chosa sucked his fingertip into his mouth, chewed meditatively on the bitter leaves. “True, I have heard no word of Okami. But his would-be assassin is now dead, so firsthand verification is impossible.” He smiled, putting his hand over Ushiba’s. “Don’t worry about the Kaisho. His power has been destroyed. It is as my grandfather said, ‘Count as friends only those who have the ability to destroy you’.” Chosa cherished these moments because they were the only time when he could confront Ushiba honestly.
“If you truly thought Mikio Okami was alive, you would do something about it,” Ushiba continued as he tapped ash off the end of his cigarette. “He was your problem.”
“Yes. The Kaisho.” Chosa’s face was thoughtful. “A latter-day shogun. What a disaster he was for us! So much power concentrated in one man. Disgraceful!”
“Disgraceful only because he managed to put himself beyond the scope of even your power. I, myself, could admire him for that.”
“Pah!” Chosa appeared disgusted, “With all your spies, don’t tell me you didn’t know I was the one who ordered his death.”
Ushiba’s beautiful face turned hard. “Your habit of making fun of me will be the death of you, one day. I assure you I knew nothing of that plot”
Now Chosa could not contain his mirth. “Of course the Americans have put a hole in your stomach. You’ve been busting a gut trying to understand their humor.”
“And you,” Ushiba said, scowling, “have picked up too much from them.”
“Well, if so, I’ve lost nothing in the process, so I wish you’d quit worrying about it. Bad for your stomach.”
“So’s this tea.” Ushiba pushed the cup away from him. He got up, went quickly to the bathroom, leaving Chosa alone with his thoughts.
It was true, he thought mournfully, the Americans would be the death of Naohiro. That would be a sad day, for he, Chosa, would lose his edge with the other oyabun, his shining path to the ministries of Japan. Well, it was a difficult decision, but he knew he must plan for that day. Naohiro was not getting better, despite the best efforts of his physicians. He should have been in hospital months ago for a week of intravenous drug therapy and utter calm, but Naohiro would not - or possibly could not - agree to it
Naohiro possessed kan, a word adapted from the Chinese that referred to the home of a ruling mandarin. In modern Japanese it was the definition of power for the bureaucrat and was the basis for the word kanryodo, the way of the samurai-bureaucrat.
Naohiro was a true samurai-bureaucrat. His work at MITI meant everything to him. The one sure way to kill him quickly, Chosa mused, would be to take him away from his work. The physicians knew that so they had not insisted.
Chosa revered Ushiba; he might even in his own way love, him. But Chosa was, first and foremost, a pragmatist. In the world of violence and treachery that he inhabited, there was little room for compassion or sentiment except as acceptable symbols at specified and infrequent intervals.
Ushiba returned to the kitchen, whitefaced and silent. He lit another cigarette, stood silently smoking for some time.
Knowing he had offended the Daijin, Chosa now sought to win back the ground he had lost. He went to the refrigerator, brought back a carton of milk from which he filled Ushiba’s teacup. “Cheer up, my friend. At least, you don’t have to worry about Tomoo Kozo anymore.”
Ushiba gave a disgusted grunt “Crazy oyabun! He tried to destroy Nicholas Linnear and wound up being killed by his prey.”
“Look on the bright side. The Kaisho’s inner council is better off without him.”
Ushiba shrugged as he sat down. “That may well be true, now that you and Tetsuo Akinaga have agreed on Tachi Shidare’s accession to oyabun of the Yamauchi clan. You two will have more control than you did when Kozo was the Yamauchi oyabun.”
Ushiba scowled as he looked down into the milk. “But you had best make certain Linnear never discovers that it was Kozo’s man tailing his wife when she had the fatal accident. Considering how he feels about Yakuza in general, he’d come after all of us, not just the Yamauchi. The police we can control through the politicians whom we own, but Linnear is the one man who can destroy us.”
Chosa grunted “We’ve made certain that Linnear will never learn the true nature of the incident. The truck driver knows nothing more than he gave to the police in his statement. There was no mention of the white Toyota. Even Tanzan Nangi has no idea that Kozo was having Linnear’s wife followed. Why would he? Kozo was crazy, we all knew it. What did Kozo have to gain by having her followed?”
“That’s simple. Once Kozo learned of the link between Okami and Linnear, he put Linnear’s wife under surveillance in hopes of finding her husband.”
“Who was this man she went to meet, who she spent the night with in a Tokyo hotel?”
“He was her lover, an advertising executive.” Ushiba continued to stare into his milk, smoke curling around his face. “They were both innocent.”
“Yes, but we didn’t know that then. All Kozo knew was that the man was an American who, upon arriving in Japan, had gone straight to Tanzan Nangi. Kozo, already wary of our American partners in the Godaishu, became suspicious.”
“Paranoid, you mean,” Ushiba said in contempt.
“There is always a whiff of paranoia to suspicion, isn’t there?” Chosa was thoughtful for a moment. “In any event, Kozo had Linnear’s wife followed. She must have spotted the white Toyota following her and panicked.”
“So the death of Linnear’s wife was accidental.”
“Not at all,” Chosa said thoughtfully. “If you think about it, it’s Linnear’s fault. The life he chose to live murdered her. She was always looking over her shoulder, jumping at shadows.”
The Daijin laughed harshly. “You’ve put an interesting spin on nasty events.”
“Nicholas Linnear. As you have said, he’s very dangerous, highly skilled. There isn’t an oyabun alive who isn’t terrified of him.”
“Except you, eh?” Ushiba said archly.
“Especially me.” Chosa poured himself more tea, tried to ignore Ushiba’s milky cup. “I have a more realistic respect than most for Linnear’s hatred of the Yakuza.”
“Don’t let’s bring a sense of personal vengeance into a situation that is already fraught with enough difficulty.”
“Is that what you think?” Chosa eyed Ushiba. “I’m going after Linnear for a very good reason. Somehow, Okami learned of my plot to have him eliminated, and he responded in an altogether extraordinary manner - he enlisted the aid of Nicholas Linnear.”
Ushiba shook his head. “But how was that possible? Linnear despises all Yakuza.”
“Of that I have no doubt. But inside Linnear is Japanese, just as his father, Colonel Linnear, was. There is a family debt owed to Okami and Linnear is obligated to fulfill it. Giri. He became Okami’s protector. That is why I have no faith in the assumption that the Kaisho is dead. And that is why I put to you that Linnear must be destroyed.”
“Whatever arguments you put to me, I must forbid you to act against Linnear.”
Chosa looked at him archly. “You forbid me?”
“Listen to me, I am the voice of reason. Kozo tried it and he’s dead. But I know you. You think you’re better than Kozo. You think you can outsmart Linnear.”
“I know it. He is a man, after all, not a machine or a god. And he is vulnerable just like any man.”
“You will jeopardize the entire Godaishu because you want to prove your erection is bigger than his.”
“Spoken like a true woman.”
Ushiba stubbed out his butt, got up, and went over to the kitchen window so he could drink his humiliating milk in privacy. Having to ignore Chosa’s cruel wit was bad enough. He did not want to think about Nicholas Linnear or the pitched battle Chosa was precipitating. Instead, he peered through the glass. All he could see was a thicket of steel, tinted glass, and ferroconcrete. It was quite a sight, a testament to how successful his policies had been, how far and how fast Japan had grown. Too fast, he thought now. Like a child who has learned to run before he can walk, Japan now stumbles in its prodigious efforts to outproduce the West.
Ushiba turned back to the oyabun. “Linnear is not like other men.”
Chosa was very relaxed now, this worried Ushiba, who turned back to the window. He knew what that studied calm portended: imminent action.
“Rubbish. I happen to know the origin of Linnear’s intense hatred for the Yakuza. I intend to make it his Achilles’ heel. Men who hate deeply are careless men.”
Ushiba felt the knife twisting in his stomach, saw his grimace reflected grotesquely back at him. With a convulsive gesture, he brought the cup to his lips, drained it. The milk would not be enough, he knew. Just as the regulations he was putting into effect would not be enough to stem the tsunami of the economic slide.
The present was bitter, indeed, for him. The bureaucracy had failed in its promise to protect Japan’s central banks, three-quarters of whose assets were in equities and real estate. With the Nikkei at less than 60 percent of its value of just a few short years ago and property values at ten cents on the dollar, the banks’ assets were perilously low.
The present invidious cycle that had developed was proving resistant to Ushiba’s best efforts to break it. The economic malaise had caused a flood of corporate bankruptcies, putting even more pressure on the banks’ monetary reserves. This, in turn, had made investors so fearful they were continuing to sell equities at an unprecedented rate, despite the government’s assurances as to Japan’s overall economic health.
The trouble is, Ushiba thought sourly, after all the scandals of corporate end bureaucratic kickbacks mid illegal payments, the man in the street believes we deserve everything we’ve brought on ourselves - and he’s justified in that opinion,
He turned around, abruptly disgusted with these self-pitying musings. What was he so worried about, anyway? They had the Godaishu. Whatever disasters were lurking short-term for Japan, they would not affect the Godaishu. The men who comprised the Godaishu, global in design, generating assets from all over the world, were insulated against any short-term setback; even the involvement of Nicholas Linnear. If Chosa said he had a way of neutralizing Linnear, Ushiba had no choice but to believe him. Anyway, he wanted to believe him.
He also wanted more milk, but he would not ask his friend. What good would it do, anyway? he asked himself bitterly. Everyone, Chosa included, thought his pain stemmed from a bleeding ulcer. Good. He had fooled them all. How quickly they would be rid of him if they knew he had stomach cancer.
Inoperable. That is what he had told his physicians when they had described the aftermath of cutting him open: an invalid who could not even digest food on his own, riddled with bags, tubes, and hoses like some subhuman beast. No, no. That humiliation was not for him. Better the silence of the grave.
“One thing I know for certain,” Chosa said, “is that the Godaishu has a better chance of reaching its goal now that Mikio Okami is gone.”
Ushiba was pensive. “Okami lost faith in what he had set in motion. Why? I ask myself this question over and over. Okami always was a patriot. He understood that purges needed to be implemented in order to stem the moral decay that had rotted Japan ever since the Americans forced us to adopt a constitution they wrote for us.”
“What does it matter? Okami is history,” Chosa said with finality. “Whatever he thought no longer matters. We have our future laid out in front of us. It is our karma, my friend, and we are so close I can taste victory.”
Ushiba, wishing he possessed the oyabun’s surety of the future, said, “Be that as if may, we still have problems that must be solved. The Americans, first and foremost, must be dealt with. Already their dominance in fiber optics and telecommunications is threatening our future. The twenty-first century will be dominated by those companies that can transmit data most quickly and efficiently.”
“Another reason to fear Linnear. His company, Sato-Tomkin Industries, holds multiple patents on proprietary telecommunications technology that for now we can only dream about. Sato-Tomkin is currently in mainland China, India, and Malaysia laying miles of fiber-optic cables that will one day transform those countries into true competitors of ours.”
“Once again, I warn you. Linnear is ninja and he is exceedingly clever,” Ushiba said. “I have attempted to intimidate him with no success. He quietly brings to bear a force greater than the one leveled at him.”
“It’s not your job to worry about Linnear.”
“No, but it’s my duty to protect the Godaishu. Going after Linnear presents an unconscionable risk to us all. To involve him in our affairs now -“
“He is Okami’s protector,” Chosa snapped. “He’s already involved.”
They were on a bus ride to nowhere. Or so it seemed to Nicholas as he sat beside Bay. The old crate that would have passed for a bus twenty years ago bounced along a potholed tarmac road. The interior stank of animals and urine; at every jounce the dozen or so caged chickens let out a chorus of raucous squawks that made the yellow bird jump in anxiety. The yellow bird was in a tiny bamboo cage beside the driver’s head, wired from the ceiling of the bus. Nicholas had heard it said that Vietnam was the one country where people took birds for walks and ate the dogs for dinner. Shindo had cautioned him never to ask what kind of meat he was being served.
Perhaps this four-wheeled death trap was being used as a truck to transport these chickens to market, for there were no other human passengers and none were waiting for it along the dark, pitted road. How Bay even knew of its existence was beyond him, but it had been waiting for them three blocks from the spot where she had tied up the boat. Twenty minutes later, they were out of Saigon proper, beading southwest.
“Where are we going?” he had asked Bay.
“The Iron Triangle.” By which, he surmised, she must mean Cu Chi. This region had become infamous thirty years ago for its miles-long network of multilevel tunnels that allowed the Viet Cong to control the area just sixty-five miles from Saigon. The Vietnamese had begun the tunnels during the 1940s in their war against the French. The hard-packed red earth of the area made it ideal for digging, and decades later, the network had undergone extensive expansion and renovation until it stretched all the way to the Cambodian border.
Nicholas said, “Bay, I want some answers now. What was your relationship with Vincent Tinh?”
Bay stared out the window. Her hair, bound in a long, thick tail, wound over her shoulders. She seemed a strong, motivated woman - no wonder her pose as a man had proven so successful. She had the kind of face that, though entirely feminine, would need minimal makeup to turn her into a convincing male persona. This almost androgynous nature made her all the more intriguing, especially because she carried it so unselfconsciously.
“He never employed me, though he tried,” she said at last. Her head was still turned slightly away from him, but he could see her in ghostly reflection in the dark window. “He tried to make it with me as well. But I knew his reputation, knew that if I said yes to any one of his proposals, I would be sucked wholesale into his world.” Her fingers fidgeted in her lap. “That I couldn’t afford. I’m an independent operator - a kind of go-between, sometimes even a mediator between… factions.”
“By ‘factions’ I assume you mean drug warlords, arms merchants, terrorists, and the like.”
Bay said nothing for a long time. The bus rattled on, the chickens squawked, and the yellow bird hopped from perch to perch as if stung by jolts of electricity.
“Whatever you may think of me, Chu Goto, I have worked very hard to gain an enviable position. I am beholden to no one, yet many people of influence owe me favors. I wonder if you understand the importance of this? Perhaps not. My country is different from all others. It takes time, patience, and acceptance to understand the nature of Vietnam. I promise that judging us by your standards can only end in disaster for you.”
For someone else, perhaps, it would have been easy to dismiss the words of a woman. But for Nicholas, time, patience, and acceptance were three virtues of paramount importance. Also, he had learned the necessity of “seeping in,” of absorbing by immersion the strange, the bizarre, and the frightening. Vietnam was a terrifying culture to the outsider, and terror had a habit of placing its hand across one’s eyes at precisely the wrong time. Bay was right: it would be a disaster for him to judge her as he might a Japanese or an American.
“I appreciate your insight, Bay,” he said carefully. “Can you tell me anything about Tinh’s death?”
“It was no accident, but I imagine you already know that.”
“Yes.”
“Do you also know that he was murdered in the Chinese manner?”
“Chinese? I don’t think I understand.”
“Once upon a time, the Chinese warlords of the Shan mountains eliminated their enemies in the manner in which Vincent Tinh was killed. They shot them, then left them to be found in the acid that helps refine the tears of the poppy into opium. It served as warning to others who would try to betray them.”
“You mean they don’t do it anymore?”
Bay ducked her head so that her hair swung across one shoulder. “In a manner of speaking. They no longer exist. They have been supplanted by one man who now virtually controls the poppy trade.”
“Really? I have never heard of such a man.”
“I’m not surprised.” Bay’s eyes watched his with neither fear nor judgment. “To speak his name is to court instant death.”
“All right. I accept that. But is this man responsible for Tinh’s murder?”
Bay’s eyes, dark as coffee, held his. “I will tell you a story about this place where we are headed. It is called Cu Chi. You have heard of it?”
