Second Skin (69 page)

‘Oh, Michael, how I’ve failed you.’ She was weeping.

‘No, no.’ After all this time he was astonished how tender he felt toward her, how powerful a force she remained in his life – the only force, he realized with a painful lurch of his heart. The second skin he had so painstakingly constructed upon the ashes of his old personality disintegrated, leaving him breathless and vulnerable.

She kissed him then – with passion or with a sisterly tenderness? He could not tell, realized he did not want to know, and his torment began all over again.

With an animal cry, he thrust her away from him – perhaps too roughly, because she fell back and he saw a shadow standing there on the walkway, as familiar as his own. It was Nicholas, his doppelgänger.

Mick ran at Nicholas in a headlong rush, even as Jaqui screamed at him to stop. But why stop? Mick was already doomed, damned by emotions he was powerless to change or control. He loved Jaqui with all his heart and soul, he knew that now with the kind of giddy elation one feels in a speeding car that has gone out of control. In that split instant before impact, all things seem possible. The laws of the universe have been suspended, even life and death have reduced meaning in the maelstrom of this cosmic free fall.

He hit Nicholas as hard as he could, rocking him backward. Or so he thought. He slammed against the railing, saw that Nicholas had stepped to the side, avoiding the brunt of the blow. Then he felt the dark eye of Kshira and he smiled. It was the smile of an ancient god awaking from a long slumber, the smile of the satyr called to revel in the darkness of the night.

He sent his psyche outward, like a missile thrown into the ether, and as he saw the surprise register on Nicholas’s face, he smashed him across the face with both fists, did it again, a third time, until Nicholas was bent backward over the railing. He teetered there for a moment as Mick tried to flip him over the top rail.

Nicholas, battling Mick both mentally and physically, felt under siege. Many of his defenses were down at the moment he felt the implosion of Mick’s psychic attack. The last of the Banh Tom venom was working its way out of his system, but the hypermetabolizing had exhausted much of Nicholas’s psychic energy. That inner engine had been hard at work on mortal problems for hours. Even he had his limits, and he had now overreached them.

As Mick levered him over the rail, Nicholas lost all sense of balance and the dark eye of Kshira blinked. Sensing this, Mick pushed all the harder, and Nicholas knew he was going over, down into the void, to be impaled on some rooftop equipment far below.

In that instant when he hung almost upside down, while Mick pushed him farther over the rail, he felt something. It was not Kshira, not Akshara, but it was psychic. Perhaps it was the hand of God, reaching down through Tokyo’s industrial dawn to steady him. At that instant, he had no more time to analyze it. He used it.

His legs came up and clamped around Mick’s hips. Then he slammed the knuckles of his fists into the sides of Mick’s neck. Mick let out a shocked sound and his grip weakened. Nicholas pushed, and Mick staggered back against a bundle of thickly coiled PVC pipes. He took out a small blade, held it in front of him.

‘Michael, no!’ Jaqui cried.

He ignored her, rushing at Nicholas, who sidestepped him. He turned and ran at Nicholas again, feinting to the right this time, then coming in from the left, slashing Nicholas’s forearm, getting inside his guard and going for the throat.

Nicholas reached up, hauled mightily on one of the PVC pipes, which split at a joint. Steam burst out in a stinging cloud and he directed it at Mick. The vapor struck Mick full in the face. He screamed, lurching backward so hard he bounced off the railing, lost his footing, and when he slammed against it a second time, was hurled over the rail with such force that he was thrown out and away from the tower, tumbling head over heels down, down into the city below.

Jaqui did not cry out, she did not move for a long time. She bit down on her knuckle hard enough to draw blood. The steam continued to hiss from the broken pipe, sending vapor climbing through the bulwark of the tower’s exoskeleton and into the white sky. Somewhere not far away, the sounds of police sirens knifed through the small city noises.

Nicholas crouched against the wall where Mick had made his last stand and tried to gather himself. He was dizzy and sick at heart. At last he looked up at Jaqui and said, ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t save him.’

She took her bloody knuckle out of her mouth and her sea-green eyes swung around to him. ‘That wasn’t your responsibility.’ Something had gone out of those astonishing eyes, the peculiar light he had noticed when he had seen her at Honniko’s and again briefly at Both Ends Burning. And it was at that moment he realized something.

He stood up shakily, using the wall as support. His forearm ached where Mick had sliced it. ‘You saved me, didn’t you?’

She came to him and, ripping off a sleeve of her blouse, tied it tightly just above his wound. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Oh, I think you do,’ he said, watching her. ‘At the moment when your brother was about to push me over the rail, I felt something. A hand steadying me, something.’

‘Perhaps it was Michael himself,’ she said as she walked to the railing. ‘He apparently collected some extraordinary powers in his travels.’

‘How could it have been him? He wanted so desperately to destroy me.’

She was looking out and down at the line of police cars crawling along the avenue far below, making their way to the base of the tower. A pink glow, softened by distance, illumined her face. She shook her head. ‘It wasn’t you he wanted to destroy, Mr Linnear. It was a part of himself he could no longer tolerate.’

‘Maybe you don’t know the crimes he committed.’

Her mouth twitched in an ironic smile. ‘Mr Linnear, I know more than that. I know everything Michael was capable of.’

He looked from her down to the spot where Mick lay like a dark star, spent of its incredible energy, that had until recently burned so bright in the night. ‘His death was like his life, wasn’t it? Spectacular, theatrical, a kind of work of art – just as is prescribed in the
Hagakure,
the book of the samurai.’

He said nothing more for some time. What must she be feeling? She had not shed a tear for her brother. How deeply had she cared for him?

She turned to him, pressed her back against the railing. The wind, freshening over the Sumida River, tousled her hair, and now he could see the extreme sorrow etched in her face and knew she would never look the same again. Would those sea-green eyes ever sparkle as they once had? he wondered.

‘I’ll tell you what’s funny, Mr Linnear. Funny in an ironic and tragic kind of way. Michael was so sure I was pure and untainted. Holy, he called me. That was his dream of me, his fantasy. And, of course, it was false.’ She crossed her arms over her breasts, hugging herself. ‘Will you hear my confession?’

‘I am no priest. I don’t think –’

‘Please!’

‘All right.’ How could he deny those eyes anything? ‘As you wish.’

‘Not as I wish, Mr Linnear. As God wills it.’ She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘Michael committed terrible crimes and so have I.’

‘Excuse me, Mother, but your brother was a murderer.’

‘And so am I.’

Those sea-green eyes captured his and would not let them go.

‘Mother –’

‘You remember Nguyen Van Truc, the man who was to take the stolen CyberNet data to Honniko and then to my brother?’

Nicholas blinked. ‘How would you know about the stolen data and Nguyen –’ And then he realized that it had been through Honniko.

‘You followed Van Truc and you caught him,’ Jaqui went on. ‘You switched the floppy disc and then you hypnotized him so he would not remember being caught. But something went wrong and hours after he delivered the disc to Honniko, he told her he began to remember what had happened.’

Nicholas could not take his gaze off her. ‘So Honniko told you.’

‘Yes.’

‘And?’

‘And I did what I had to do. I couldn’t allow Michael to find out about your ruse prematurely. Plans were already in motion.’

‘What plans?’

‘You will know, in time.’

He continued to look at her. ‘You killed Van Truc, didn’t you?’

‘As I said, I did what I had to do.’ There was something in her eyes, something new. ‘Van Truc had to be silenced.’ It spun there, dark and mysterious, like the inscribed tablet of an unknown race.

Nicholas knew what it was and he was already stretching for her as she went over the railing. She collapsed like a paper doll as she slipped over the top rail and began to fall.

Nicholas reached the railing and bent, grabbing her wrist.

‘Mother, this is not the way.’

She looked up at him, her eyes dimmed and clouded. ‘I came here to save Michael and to heal him, and I failed. I failed my order and my sacred oath to God.’

She looked so fragile, dangling there at the end of his arm, and touching his psyche to hers, he felt just how deeply she had been scarred. ‘Whatever you have done, Mother, I cannot believe God wishes you to give up your life – and your eternal soul – for it.’

Her hair whipped about her face, partially obscuring her sea-green eyes. Light was coming now, hard and jangly, flashbulbs popping in the skyrise windows as it muscled through the clouds. ‘I haven’t confessed it all. The worst part remains.’

‘Then confess and be done with it. Live.’

‘Let me go, I beg you. God cannot want me to live with what I carry in my heart.’

‘Surely that is for God to decide,’ he said as he slowly and deliberately pulled her back over the rail to safety. ‘Not you.’

Where
are you hurrying to?
You will see
the same moon tonight
wherever you go!

Izumi Shikibu

Tetsuo Akinaga came to the Kaisho’s funeral. Brazenly, he entered the Nichiren Buddhist temple while a full retinue of twenty
kobun
and under
-oyabun
assembled outside in the afternoon sunshine. It was more than a sign of respect. It was a show of strength. After the internal struggle between Mikio Okami and his inner circle of
oyabun,
only Akinaga remained, and the tall, cadaverous Yakuza wanted everyone to know that he was consolidating his power.

In the lull between the service and the burial, he planted himself squarely in front of Nicholas Linnear, and they commenced the ritual Yakuza greeting by stating their names, rank, and clan affiliation. That done, Akinaga wasted no time: ‘I understand you have been looking for me.’

The red and gold splendor of the temple interior seemed hollow, and at the same time as bright and garish as a Ginza neon sign. Although Akinaga had chosen his moment carefully, when the few mourners allowed at the service had filed outside, Nicholas could see Honniko standing to one side, watching the confrontation, listening intently as these two males locked horns. Koei, seeing Nicholas, as if trapped on a promontory at high tide, had made a move toward him, but he had signaled her with his hand and she had reluctantly turned into the sunshine, her outline as indistinct as the image in an old and overexposed print.

‘Tanaka Gin was compiling the last of the evidence against you,’ Nicholas said, carefully keeping his enmity hidden. ‘All of it is entrusted to me. As soon as Okami-san is buried, I will present it to the chief prosecutor himself.’

‘Yes, yes, I know all this.’ Akinaga seemed unconcerned. ‘A pretty fairy tale is still a fairy tale.’

‘I
do
have the evidence.’

Akinaga inclined his head. ‘Of this I have no doubt. And I know of your appointment with Ginjirō Machida. However, I strenuously advise you to cancel that appointment and turn your evidence over to me.’

‘You are insane.’

‘Far from it. Hatta-san is dead and, with him, his testimony that he, not your misbegotten friend Tanaka Gin, was on my payroll. Without Hatta, Tanaka Gin will rot in jail for a very long time. In this day and age of public outrage, the government cannot afford to take kindly to one of its own crawling into bed with the Yakuza.’

‘The case against Tanaka Gin is not strong,’ Nicholas said, but already he sensed where this was going and his heart sank. He wished for sunshine, for Koei’s warm and knowing presence beside him.

Akinaga shrugged. ‘Perhaps not, but it does not really matter. The government has a duty to assuage the public. As usual, truth doesn’t enter into it. Rest assured they’ll make a scapegoat of Gin; and they’ll throw the maximum sentence at him after he is convicted. I know. I have my sources.’

Nicholas was aware of the priests and mourners – Kisoko, Nangi, Koei – drifting farther away toward the cemetery like water flowing downhill. Only he and Akinaga remained, and Honniko, still as a statue in the shadows of a corner of the temple.

‘And if I hand over the evidence?’

‘Not if, Linnear-san, when. Then I make a public statement, exonerating Gin.’

‘Who will believe you?’

‘A witness of unimpeachable character will come forward to corroborate every word I say. Tanaka Gin will be set free within four hours. This I guarantee.’

Tanaka Gin’s life for Akinaga’s. It was not a fair exchange, Nicholas thought, but then what in life was?

‘I will see you an hour after the burial,’ Nicholas said. ‘At the Nogi Jinja in Roppongi.’

‘A fitting site.’ Akinaga inclined his head. ‘I am pleased.’ At that moment, one of Akinaga’s retinue, ranged on either side of the temple’s main entrance, entered, handing him his cellular phone. He spoke into it in terse, one-word sentences, then handed it back to his
kobun,
who withdrew outside.

‘You will leave now, won’t you, Akinaga-san?’

Akinaga turned his narrow, skull-like head as if annoyed at a songbird’s incessant chittering. ‘This chat has been so pleasant I would wish to prolong it, but as it happens my presence is required elsewhere.’

Akinaga made the minimal bow, almost an insult, turned, and was about to depart when something made him turn back. ‘My apologies, but I never paid my condolence for the death of your wife.’