Of one thing Bliss was certain: thiswhatever this waswas part of Zilin"s plan. He knew of his death, had wanted her with him at that moment. Hadn"t he trained her for it? Hadn"t he brought her to da-hei times before? In preparation. She was sure of that now. In preparation.
For what?
"is, as you can see, of exceptional quality." Heard her father, close now, speaking in hushed tones. "Great red fire, a superb example."
"Australian, isn"t it?" Danny, number three son.
It was very late, four in the morning, almost.
"I want you to find out where this was bought."
Bliss at the cabin door, fingertips pressed against the wood, picking up the vibrations of conversation. Still half immersed in da-hei, aware that her place was inside the cabin rather than in the corridor.
"Father?"
Three Oaths looking up, Danny"s round face, so similar to that of his father"s, swinging around.
"Bou-sehk. Are you all right?" A constant query these days, the look of concern on his face an agony inside her. But how to explain to him what was taking place inside her when she herself was unsure?
"Yes," she said. "I"m fine. I was dreaming of a great jewel, a fire opal filled with crimson flame." Glancing down and seeing in the center of the table the object of her dream, the opal, the very one. And before either of the men could say or do a thing, she reached between them and scooped up the stone.
"Bou-sehk"
"Father, a thousand pardons for interrupting you but it seems that I have seen this opal before." With an effort, she lifted her gaze from its heavy fire. "I overheard you asking Danny to find out where this was bought. Is it important?"
For a moment, Three Oaths considered lying to her for her own good. He was worried about her but felt unable to come to a decision as to how to help her. Now, seeing the look in her eyes he knew so well, he did the only thing he could: told her the truth.
"Jake gave it to me before he left for j.a.pan. He was followed by anoperative who delayed him from reaching the junk when he had planned to, the night Zilin was murdered."
"Did Zilin know of his arrival?"
"I think so, yes."
Bliss staring into the face of the opal, turning it over and over at the slender tips of her fingers. The fire broke apart and coalesced. In its aqueous glimmering she thought she could see the countenance of the Jian.
"Bou-sehk a ?"
"Father, I would like to"
"It is out of the question," he snapped, afraid for her. "It is for Danny to do. He"
"Would you keep me here like a prisoner?"
"What nonsense!" Three Oaths protested. "You are free to go when and where you wish."
"As long as my sister, Ling, accompanies me," Bliss said. And when he made no reply. "Like a patient, then."
"I do not" He broke off, turned to his number three son. "Danny, please leave us."
The young man nodded and when the door had closed on his back, Three Oaths said, "Bou-sehk, bou-sehk, what would you have me do? Send you into known danger when I am uncertain of your physical state?"
"The only danger," she said angrily, "is that I will die of inaction and worry over Jake. This is what you have consigned me to."
Three Oaths shook his head. "I do not think that you yourself are aware of what is wrong with you."
"Nothing is wrong with me." Roar of da-hei"5 inchoate power. "But you are right, I am not the same as I was before a my G.o.dfather died," She sat down on the chair that Danny had vacated, ran a hand through her hair. "Shi Zilin was my last link with my past. His mentor, the first Jian, was my great-grandfather. It was to Shi Zilin that my mother came in her time of greatest need. Without him I might never have been born. Certainly I never would have come to Hong Kong, never had you as my father.
"Yes, I am different and I don"t deny it. There is a Void where before there was energy, a connection. I accept his death, Father. Buddha willed it. Joss. But I cannot be unaffected. I am not the same and I cannot pretend that I am."
"No one is asking you to be," he said softly.
"Well, then."
Three Oaths contemplated this young woman whom he had raised and wondered at the boundlessness of his love for her. "I will not sacrifice you to the service of the yuhn-hyun."
"It has already been done," she said. "You made that decision long ago, Father. You have trained me. Now please allow me to do what I was molded for."
I regret "Too late for regrets, Father."
And Three Oaths knew the wisdom of her words. Thus he capitulated and gave her all the information Jake had pa.s.sed on to him regarding the fire opal.
When he was done, Bliss smiled and, leaning over, kissed him on the cheek. At the same time, she closed her fingers over the stone.
Jake heard voices. The dead were shouting in his ear. Their bones rattled, setting his teeth on edge; their naked jaws clashed together with an alligator"s snap; their bony fingers pointed, clicking like insects" mandibles.
Their message seemed important, which was why, he supposed, they continued to shout. Jake said nothing; their tirade persisted unabated.
He wondered what it was that could be so d.a.m.ned vital. The cacophony was beginning to annoy him. If he was dead, nothing was that urgent. If he was not dead a Blackness mutated into charcoal, a whiff of grit blown into his face. He began to choke on the smoke as the gray began to swirl, coalescing light.
Blood and skin, flecks of flesh made bright by the quick gush of crimson the result of the Bison"s invasion of Mikio"s house. The percussion a Opened his eyes.
a throwing Mikio"s body into him, ribbons of skin in gaudy, gauzy patterns with the kimono, the great three-lobed wheel kamon, the Komoto crest, bursting apart. The percussion a Opened his eyes and saw that he was lying in a room made all of polished cedar.
a mangling Mikio"s body, tangled up in his, the heat already forming, a sheet of screaming fire, and in the end, just before consciousness was extinguished, the horrendous sight of what was left ofMikio"s face, only blood and b.l.o.o.d.y bone, pink and shiny, a grinning death mask.
Saw a line of shoji, partly openthe green of trees beyond?and on the other side of the room a closed fusuma, a wooden door with an opaque center panel of brocaded silk. As he watched, it slid silently open on its track. Heard a bird begin trillingfrom the trees outside? he could be sure of nothing, senses still filled to overflowing with the percussion, the weight of Mikio hard against him, a human body coming apart beneath the strain of forces too great to bear.
Mikio, my friend!
A corridor of shadows opening up in front of him and Jake squinted as a figure entered the room. On silent, tabi"d feet it approached and bent over him.
Jake looked up, willing the ghosts of cordite and smoke away, the white noise of the percussion from his burning ears, up into the face that he knew so well.
"Mikio-san!"
The first thing Andrew Sawyer thought of when it began was: I"ve got to find the Zhuan.
Then, knowing that was impossible since he had no idea where the Zhuan was, he grabbed the phone in his cubicle and dialed Three Oaths" number. Far below him, the floor of the Hang Seng, Hong Kong"s stock market, was a maze of activity. Like a pit of writhing snakes, the motion was nonstop and frenetic.
Sawyer reached inside his suit jacket, peeled his expensive silk shirt from his clammy skin. It was stained, soaked through with sweat. d.a.m.n, it, he thought anxiously as the phone rang at the other end of the line, where the h.e.l.l are you?
His nervous gaze swung like a pendulum from the numbers on the high board to the hive of activity surrounding Peabody, Smithers and Tung Ping An, two of the largest investment brokerage firms. The signs were unmistakable from both quarters.
At last the burring stopped and Sawyer gasped in a breath.
"Weyyyy."
"It"s begun," he said. "The worst is happening."
"Where are you?"
"The Hang Seng." The Hong Kong stock exchange.
"It"s bad?"
"Worse than bad. Today I"d gladly take bad home to bed with me."
"I"ll be right over," Three Oaths said.
"Dear G.o.d," Sawyer said into the already dead line. He replaced the receiver with a hand already numbed by shock and fear.
Next to him, his a.s.sistant was continually pa.s.sing slips of paper over to him with fifteen-minute updates on stock transfers and movements.
They all pointed to the same thing and had done so since the opening of the trading day: blocks of ten thousand shares of InterAsia stock were being bought up at sporadic intervals by the two brokerage firms, Peabody, Smithers and Tung Ping An. What was odd about that was that the blocks were not being disbursed.
Because InterAsia was a relatively new issue and because of the volatility of the Hang Seng, great fluctuations in price and selling and buying patterns were not uncommon during the course of the day"s trading. It was also usual for Sawyer, who was nominal market caretaker for InterAsia, to monitor all purchases of blocks of over one thousand shares. His network ran checks of who the trading firms were buying for, even if that often led back to nothing more than dummy corporations.
Disburs.e.m.e.nts as much as buy and sell orders gave Sawyer and the other senior members of the yuhn-hyun the pulse of the market, kept the multiarmed corporation running smoothly.
Today, though, between them the two brokerage firms had bought up close to seventy-five thousand shares of InterAsia stock, yet there was no record of any disburs.e.m.e.nt whatsoever. This fact, more than any other, had set Sawyer"s nerves to tw.a.n.ging uncomfortably. InterAsia was under corporate attack.
But by whom?
He heard a disturbance behind him loud enough to bring him out of his nervous musing. He turned around and his jaws clicked shut with a painful resound. Three Oaths was hurrying up. The elderly Chinese was pasty-faced. Beads of sweat stood out along his wide forehead.
"Bad news," he said, gasping as he entered the cubicle. Sawyer"s a.s.sistant had to give way in order to make room for him in the tiny s.p.a.ce.
"More than this?" Sawyer"s hand spread out to take in the crowded floor below. "I don"t think you grasp the gravity of"
"Southasia," Three Oaths interrupted. "The news of the scandal is all over the Colony."
"Oh, mother." Sawyer collapsed back into his chair. In a moment he had begun to shake. "The bank?"
"The run is on," Three Oaths said. "And unless it can be stemmed right away we"re not going to have sufficient funds to cover it."
"G.o.d-bleeding-d.a.m.n it!" Sawyer had visions of his entire life going to waste, all the work, sweat and dedication to building Sawyer & Sons into one of the preeminent trading houses in the Far East. And what for? he asked himself. To have it all end in disaster? Christ, no! His blazing eyes locked with the other man"s. "We just may lose Southasia and InterAsia in the same week."
"Fornicate unnaturally all our enemies!" Three Oaths rumbled. "That means we"ll lose control of Pak Han Min and Kam Sang. Just what my Elder Brother warned we could not allow."
"Kam Sang?" Sawyer cried. "Who in the name of the Holy Trinity cares a pox-ridden dog about a project six hundred miles away that we know nothing about anyway? It"s our own trading firms that"re on the block now. If InterAsia is successfully raided we"ll have worked all our lives for nothing. Do you understand, Honorable Tsun? Nothing at all!"
"You gave us quite a start, yumi-tori."
The holder of the bow. It was an honored t.i.tle given to a warrior of rank, a master archer. Who was calling him yumi-tori? "Mikio-san?" Who would know that he was a kyujutsu sensei other than a "Is it really you?" He started upward in order to see the face more clearly in the room"s filtered light and a shaft of pain seared through him.
"Easy, Jake-san." Mikio"s soothing voice. "Yes, it is I. But, please, you must take it easy. You"ve had a bad time of it."
"But how?" He felt a pressure on his shoulders, holding him down and, turning his head, saw a young woman in a persimmon-colored kimono. Beneath, she showed just a line of underkimono the color of flame.
He turned his attention back to Mikio. His head was reeling. "How?" he whispered. "I saw you die in your study. I was there when your enemies fired the Bison. I felt the explosion tear your body apart."
"That body is what saved your life." Mikio Komoto smiled down at Jake, but behind it there was a great deal of strain. "I tried to warn you, Jake-san. I tried to keep you away. It had to be done in an oblique way since I suspected that all my communications were being monitored by my enemies.
"I deliberately did not answer your calls. I thought perhaps you"d understand and accept the difficult circ.u.mstances. I bade Kachikachisend you back to Hong Kong when I received news of your arrival here. Hong Kong is where you belong, neh? Not here in the midst of my war.
"But it was my error, my friend. I forgot just how persistent you can be. I am eternally grateful to the Amida that you were not seriously injured."
"Tell me," Jake said, "what happened?"
"It was a ruse," Mikio said. He wiped the flat of his hand through the short bristles of his salt-and-pepper hair. "It fooled you; well, then, it fooled my enemies as well. As you may have already surmised, that was not me who you tracked from Jisaku back to my house."
"Kachikachi!" Jake suddenly remembered the diminutive Yakuza"s treachery.
"All part of the ruse, Jake-san. Do not fear. My Kachikachi is still loyal to me. Still and always, my friend. But his role-playing seduced the Kisan clan into believing they could make one preemptive strike against me and end this b.l.o.o.d.y battle once and for all. Without an oyabun who will command the respect and allegiance of all the clan a war cannot be carried out."
"Then who died in your study?"
"A brave man," Mikio said. "A hero of the clan. He volunteered. It was a samurai"s death and while I mourn his pa.s.sing, I rejoice in his good fortune. His kami will be exalted a and now I have my edge over Kisan. In their eyes, I am dead, the position of my clan is untenable. It is the end for us, they believe."
"I almost screwed the whole b.l.o.o.d.y brilliant scheme up," Jake said.
"I should have understood your desires more completely. I should have antic.i.p.ated this."
"You could not have antic.i.p.ated my father"s murder."
"Shi Zilin dead? Amida! But do you know who?"
"Yes," Jake said and Mikio noticed that his voice turned bitter. "A dantai a.s.sa.s.sinated him, Mikio-san. A Yakuza dantai."
"But that is absurd," Mikio said quickly. His utter dismay was evident on his face.
"I fought them," Jake said. "They killed my father and seriously injured Bliss, who"s in hospital now. There can be no mistake. I saw their tattoos myself, Irezumi."
"Irezumi," Mikio breathed. He sat back on his haunches. "But who would send Yakuza to Hong Kong? No oyabun I know of would dare risk so open a strike on foreign territory."
"Yet Yakuza only take their orders from oyabun," Jake said. "Thatis one reason I had to come here, Mikio-san, one reason why I did not use the ticket Kachikachi gave me. It is imperative that I find out who is behind my father"s murder. His entire ring is under attack and there is no defense I can take without first knowing who my enemies are."
Mikio nodded. "I see. You did the wise thing, Jake-san. The only thing possible." His eyes were far away, filled with thought. "But the Amida watches over us. He has protected you and for that we should all be grateful. Now"