Second Skin (3 page)

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 burn like 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 returned 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-dōri, and Mick told the taxi to pull over. He paid the fare and they got out, heading for Mūdra, 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 Kaigan-dōri. 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 Woodpecker top knots, their lips glossed in black.

‘What is it?’ Giai asked.

Up ahead, two bikers in luminous trench coats and multiple 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 Mercedes, 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 convulsing through which Mick slithered, heading up Kaigan-dōri, 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 behind him.

He saw the Mercedes swerve left at the last possible instant, into a narrow alley, and he followed, his legs churning easily, his heart racing nicely, his lungs pumping in exhilaration. 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, ‘Jōchi, well done!’

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

Napoleon

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-clogged 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 Nicholas 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 depression 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 practice – had begun in earnest, and those remaining in jobs had not seen a pay raise in four years. On the way to Shinjuku this evening, Nicholas had seen outside food shops long lines made up of housewives who insisted on buying Japanese 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 belligerent 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 embarrassment to the Japanese government to have these profits going directly to the dictatorial and paranoid regime that ruled the north.

For the 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 Koei’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
oyabun.
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 Nicholas 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 Tanzan Nangi – that had been created from the merger of Sato Petrochemicals with Tomkin Industries, the company Nicholas 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 Tōrin is getting nervous. He’s wondering why you’re not already down at Indigo to greet them.’

‘I’ve still got to make a last check at research and development 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 instantaneous 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 combination 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
keiretsu,
had been undergoing a painful restructuring.

Keiretsu
– holdovers from the prewar family-run
zaibatsu
– were groups of interlinked industrial companies composed 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 became 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. Despite 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 telecommunications, and to that end, the vast majority of the
keiretsu’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 impossibly 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 Trans-Rim CyberNet in Japan while representatives from America, Russia, Vietnam, Thailand, 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 inextricably 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 autodialer 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 the pocket of his tuxedo, drew out a small matte-black rectangle slightly smaller than a cellular telephone. 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 absence 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.