Giri (18 page)

Sparrowhawk gazed at Molise from the corner of his eye. “And with that, Mr. Chihara was living on borrowed time, expendable to both you and Mr. Ruttencutter.”

Molise’s smile was wire thin and glacial. “Sometimes you just get lucky in life. Seems me and Ruttencutter wanted the same thing at the same time.”

“Not so lucky for Mr. Chihara, I’m afraid.”

“Lucky for you, though.” Molise looked down into his drink. “Still want that job in New York?”

In his office at Management Systems Consultants, Sparrowhawk finished reading the last page of the report on Michelle Asama, made his final check mark, then tossed his gold pen on the desk. He brought his tea to his mouth, sipped and recoiled. Cold. He set the cup aside, but decided against asking Mrs. Rosebery to make him another cup. He wanted to be alone for a while longer, to think about Saigon, about what he had done there on that final night, rather than return to Manchester and be poor again.

Chihara’s villa. The smell of tea, fish, cinnamon on the humid night air. Inside the sprawling, whitewashed building George Chihara lay facedown on the tatami that covered his living room floor. Robbie, knee on the back of Chihara’s neck, grinned. He knew what was coming next.

Sparrowhawk pressed Chihara’s right wrist into the mat and aimed a Colt .45 automatic at the back of the Japanese’s hand and as Robbie giggled, the Englishman pulled the trigger.

No shot. No sound. No bullet.

Chihara, nevertheless, felt a horrible pain.

The .45, a CIA weapon, had been converted to fire darts that tore into the body with the force of a bullet and killed without making a sound.

The dart ripped into Chihara’s hand, driving through bone, tendons, ligaments, pinning the hand to the floor. Somehow he managed not to cry out, but stiffened and gritted his teeth; the veins in his temple pressed hard against his perspiring skin.

Minutes ago, Sparrowhawk, Robbie and Dorian had killed the seven guards in front of the villa, catching them unawares while they loaded the truck with flat wooden packing cases. Then the Englishman and the two Americans had rushed into the villa, killing three more guards and two servants. Chihara was their prisoner. But before they had reached him he had yelled something in Japanese. A command? A warning? Sparrowhawk didn’t know. He did know that three women at the top of the winding staircase had turned and run toward a room behind them, locking themselves inside.

At the same time a car nearing the villa had suddenly pulled away.

Questions, calling for immediate answers.

Sparrowhawk tapped Chihara's bleeding hand with the barrel of the .45. “Once more. Who was in the car that just left here? What did you yell out to them?”

Chihara’s breathing was raspy, ugly. He said nothing.

Sparrowhawk stepped over his prone body. The chunky Japanese tried to throw Robbie off and failed. Attempting to quiet him Robbie dug the point of a k-bar into his ear. Still Chihara struggled. He knew that Sparrowhawk was about to work on his other hand and so he shifted, attempting to hide his left arm under his body. Robbie, however, punched the Japanese in the left bicep with vicious force. Chihara went limp. His arm was stunned, pained.

Without a word Sparrowhawk pulled the arm away from the body, stepped on the wrist, fired a dart into the hand. The steel-tipped projectile tore off the pinky and ring fingers. Blood spurted onto the tatami and Chihara, crazed with pain, almost succeeded in throwing off Robbie.

Sparrowhawk said, “Who was in that car? What did you say to them?”

“Servant,” Chihara whispered. “Told him to escape”

The Englishman looked at Robbie, then at Dorian, who held an M-16 on several quiet Vietnamese servants. Eyes on the group, Dorian said, “Hey, Birdman, suppose the fucker’s lying. Suppose whoever was out there has gone to bring back help.”

“That’s occurred to me. Which is why we’ll be moving on. But first, we have three women upstairs.” He looked down at Chihara. “Are they armed?”

Silence.

“Robbie, be so kind as to turn the gentleman over and don’t be too nice about it.”

Robbie wasn’t.

Chihara’s hands bled profusely. His round face was beaded with perspiration. His nostrils flared as he fought against the pain. But his eyes, hot with hatred, never left Sparrowhawk.

The Englishman touched Chihara’s scrotum with the .45. “I shan’t ask you again.”

Chihara quickly said, “They have no guns.”

“Observe, Robbie, how threatening to remove a man’s penis tends to concentrate his mind. Dorian, keep an eye on things down here. Robbie and I are going upstairs to see to the ladies.”

There was a light in Robbie’s eyes. “Hey, major, Paulie said something special. Like do a number on them.”

“I know what Paulie said, but we’ll do things my way, if you don’t mind. We only have Mr. Chihara’s word that his warning was issued to a servant and no one else. I’d hate to be caught here by some of Mr. Chihara’s more violent associates. Besides, there’s no need to drag things out. Dispose of the women as quickly as possible and that will be the end of it.”

“You’re the boss.”

On the second floor the two men thumbed the safety off their M-16s and cautiously made their way from door to door, trying each knob, holding their breath. The last room on the right, its door locked, made them stop.

Sparrowhawk nodded at Robbie, who held the butt of his M-16 tight against his hip, aimed at the lock and jerked the trigger. The lock disappeared, ripped from the door along with chunks of wood. Robbie kicked the door open and the two rushed in, crouched, eyes and rifles sweeping the room in front of them. Silence. A clock ticked on an end table and warm night air came through an opened barred window to mingle with the smell of perfume.

Robbie saw them first. He pointed, a forefinger aimed at a four-poster bed.

Sparrowhawk took a step forward, then stopped. On the bed two Japanese women lay side by side, their blood-covered bodies limp in death. One was small, her dark hair mixed with gray; the other was young, in her early twenties. A bloodstained knife lay near a pillow, while a second knife had slipped from one dead woman’s hand to fall to the floor. A third woman, also in her twenties, sat in a stuffed chair facing a dressing table. Her bloodied corpse stared unseeing into a large oval mirror. Each woman had her ankles tied together.

Ritual deaths. Sparrowhawk knew it. And yet he knew nothing. There had to be a reason for these three deaths, an important reason.

“Killed themselves,” he whispered. “Took their own lives. Bloody fools.”

He had to know why. A heat that reminded him of the oppressive air in a Manchester steel mill suddenly seemed to fill his brain, leaving him weak and uneasy.

Robbie said,
“Seppuku.
Read about it, but never seen it before.” He was detached, unaffected, totally at ease with what was around him.

Sparrowhawk looked at him.
“Hara-kiri,
you mean.”

Robbie shook his head. “Wrong term.
Hara-kiri’s
the term, but even that’s only used by people outside of Japan.
Seppuku’s
the word. Means stomach cutting. Samurai and high-class people kill themselves this way as a matter of honor. It’s like death is your own business. You pick the time, the place. You cheat your enemy, stop him from doing what he wants with you. You escape, you might say. Avoid disgrace. Most of the time only important people were allowed to kill themselves this way. Never saw it done before. Read about it, but never saw it.”

“Is it part of that karate business you practice all the timer.

Robbie shook his head. “No way. Belongs to old-time samurai. Stab yourself in the stomach. Knife goes in low on the left side, then you drag it across and up. A guy stands behind you with a sword, they call him a
kaishaku,
sort of a friendly executioner, and when he thinks the pain is too much for you he swings that sword and wham, there goes your head. I mean like your guts are sliding out onto the floor and the pain has to be something, so this
kaishaku,
he’s doing you a favor by killing you.”

Robbie moved closer. “See? Notice something. These women didn’t cut themselves in the stomach. Look here. Cut themselves in the neck. That’s how women are supposed to commit
seppuku.
Find that artery and you dig in. Those knives are called
kai-ken.
Special weapons for women. Like they use them on themselves or you or whatever.”

Sparrowhawk shivered. “Dear God, where did they find the courage?
Where?”

Downstairs Chihara sat on the floor, bleeding hands resting on his thighs. Blood dripped from his ear where Robbie had cut him with the k-bar. The Japanese looked up at Sparrowhawk with contempt and defiance. The Englishman felt uneasy. Something told him it would be wiser to kill this man and be done with it.

“It is easy to die unwillingly,” Chihara said. “The difficult thing is to die submissively.”

Sparrowhawk ached to kill him. But that’s not what Paul Molise wanted.

He said to Chihara. “They’re dead. Doesn’t that bother you?”

Slowly, a small smile on his wide face, the Japanese shook his head.

“You’re lying.”

Chihara looked away.

“I said you’re lying. Tell me you’re lying or I’ll kill you here and now.”

“You won’t kill me. And the women have escaped from you. We have won. A samurai does not fear
shi.”

Sparrowhawk looked at Robbie, who said,
“Shi
means death.”

The women. Now Sparrowhawk knew what he felt when he saw them; he felt afraid and he felt cheated, as if they had put something over on him, as if, yes, they had won.

Chihara said something in Japanese. Robbie smiled and shook his head. “No way, José. Never happen.” He looked at Sparrowhawk. “Man says even if we kill him, says he’s going to kill us all. You, me, Dorian, Molise. Says there’s no way we can stop him. Something about reaching past death to get all four of us.”

“Why were their ankles tied together like that?”

“Part of the ritual. When women commit
seppuku
they tie their ankles together to protect their modesty. Don’t want their legs to be getting twitchy in death and flying all over the place and letting guys have, a cheap thrill looking up their dresses. Japanese are polite all the goddamn time.”

Dorian, rifle still on the cowering servants, caught Sparrowhawk’s eye. “Hey, Birdman, how about it?”

Sparrowhawk nodded. It was not true that God alone could finish. Robbie, as always, was alert and needed no prompting. Safeties came off and without a word the three fired into the servants. Doomed Vietnamese men and women screamed, pleaded, attempted to flee. Round after round of bullets tore plaster from the wall, shattered windows, shredded furniture and lifted hysterical servants from the floor to slam them into the chairs and tables. Shell casings popped from the rifles to bounce around on the tatami like brass insects.

Sparrowhawk held up a hand and the shooting stopped. Blue smoke rose from the heated weapons. In front of the three men lay mutilated and mangled human beings covered with plaster dust, furniture chunks and broken glass from windows and French doors, their bodies appearing little more than bloodied rags. Do and have done, thought Sparrowhawk.

He spun on his heel. “Bring the little Jap and let’s get out of here.”

In the truck, Robbie drove while Sparrowhawk sat beside him. Dorian and a bound Chihara were in back, hidden by packing cases, luggage and household items. Sparrowhawk could hear Dorian tearing at the suitcases. Looting, as usual. A witless ass, Dorian, and greedy to boot. Sparrowhawk had negotiated one hundred thousand dollars apiece from Molise for him and Robbie, payment for their services tonight. And still Dorian played the role of the vulture.

The Englishman did not dwell too long on Dorian’s shortcomings. There was something else to do in connection with Chihara’s villa.

A half mile from the village the truck pulled over to the side of the road where Sparrowhawk, via a hand radio, called down a rocket attack on Chihara’s tastefully appointed home. The attack, plus keeping Manny Decker occupied elsewhere for the past forty-eight hours, indicated that Ruttencutter, on rare occasions, could be a man of his word.

In the warm night and to the thunder of distant artillery, the truck moved along wide boulevards lined with tamarind trees, avoiding crowds and traffic where possible, carefully eyeing cyclo drivers, child beggars, old men in the conical hats of Viet peasants, teenage whores and others who might be a stalking horse for bands of armed looters. Safeties off, Sparrowhawk ordered. Grenades to be near at hand.

No more thoughts of
shi
and George Chihara. Instead Sparrowhawk put his mind on the five hundred thousand American dollars to be deposited in his name in a Liechtenstein bank, and on the job of a lifetime waiting for him in New York; and he told himself that the deaths of three Japanese women held no meaning for him.

Sparrowhawk would build a new life on the corpses of George Chihara and his wife and daughters. As for reaching out from beyond the grave, the thought was a rather feather-headed notion, the prattling of a simpleton.
Shi,
Mr. Chihara, was the end of all things, a silence.

A second reading of the Michelle Asama report pushed Sparrowhawk into making a telephone call to Belgium. Using an unlisted phone kept in a locked bottom drawer of his desk he dialed Nial Hinds, a British arms dealer with warehouses in Brussels and Liege. Liege was where Hinds spent most of his time; the French-speaking Belgian city was the center of the European arms trade, and had been since the Middle Ages. An arms fair was held here each week, drawing hundreds who moved among displays of rifles, pistols, grenades, tanks, missiles as though strolling through a vegetable market Hinds, like all arms dealers, welcomed cash customers of any ideological persuasion.