Angel Eyes (49 page)

"In other words, there wasn't to be any," Russell said.

"Not necessarily. I think he was saying there was going to be a future only if he wanted it."

"Nice."

''But isn't that typical of men?''

"Tori, don't start. Most women have minds of their own, too."

"Yes, but it's what's been drummed into those minds that troubles me." She shrugged. "Anyway, as far as Yen was concerned, he wanted us to start where we left off that afternoon in the Kokedera. I did my best to dissuade him.''

"I'll bet."

"All right. Part of me wanted to be with him. I've never aspired to sainthood. What possible good would it do me? I'm only human."

"From this confession can I assume that you allowed the affair to continue?''

Tori was silent for some time. ''In a matter of speaking,'' she said after a while.

"You're going to have to do better than that," Russell said. But there was no edge to his voice, for which Tori was grateful.

"The affair continued," she said, "only under my conditions. Which were that we not be seen in public together, and that I never under any circumstances come to his house. And it worked, for a while. I continued to mind the business aspect, hoping at some point to hint to him my interest as an investor in unconventional multinational deals.

"I never got the chance to make my pitch. A territorial war erupted between Hitasura and Big Ezoe. Fukuda was recalled from Kyoto, where she had been managing a large, complicated arms deal for Big Ezoe, and that was that.

"Within twenty-four hours of Fukuda setting foot in Tokyo, she knew Yen was seeing someone else. Within forty-eight hours, she had discovered that that someone was me."

"Efficient bitch," Russell said.

"You don't know the half of it," Tori said. "She methodically tracked me down. She had more contacts than I had, and a great deal more obsessiveness. In the end, it was Deke who warned me, but by then it was too late. Fukuda was locked on to me, and I couldn't shake her."

"What happened?" Russell's expression showed that he was plainly fascinated by this dance of death.

Tori described the confrontation in the tunnels below Tokyo. "When the explosive she threw tore open my hip, Fukuda knew I was helpless. Then she heard the train coming, and she left me on the tracks to die.''

"Stupid of her."

"Yes. Hitasura got to me before the train did."

"That's too bad for Fukuda," Russell said.

Tori couldn't help laughing at his bravado, even though she knew that where Fukuda was concerned, nothing was amusing.

Then he said, "Damnit, you should have told me all this at your original debriefing.''

"You wouldn't have listened," Tori said. "At that point in time you weren't interested in my views about anything."

"That judgment wasn't for you to make."

"It's the truth."

"You were under discipline," Russell said. "The truth has absolutely nothing to do with it."

He was right, of course, but Tori was damned if she was going to give him the satisfaction of eliciting an apology from her.

"Hitasura is coming," Big Ezoe said in Fukuda's ear.

"I can see the vehicle now," she said into the pinpoint mike wrapped around her head.

''Where are you?''

''At the Kinji-to,'' Fukuda said. It was amazing, she thought, what the new fiber optics could do. Big Ezoe sounded as if he were inside her head instead of some miles away.

"Good," the voice in her head said. "Everything is ready. You are the guide."

"Yes," Fukuda said. She could see the moving van coming her way, and she stepped inside the glass-doored entrance to the Kinji-to. "That is what you trained me to be."

"Hitasura has an ally.''

"From your tone of voice," Fukuda said, "I'm sure it's someone I know.''

"Tori Nunn." .

There was an exhalation from Fukuda, soft, but with an instant sense of forewarning, "In that event," she said, "don't bring Koi in too quickly. I want my chance."

"Last chance," Big Ezoe said.

"Not mine. Tori's."

Hitasura said, "We're here."

"Where's here?" Russell asked.

The moving van had pulled over to the curb, and Hitasura was ushering them out of the mobile living room. He pointed upward as they climbed off the rear of the van. They were parked in front of a massive postmodern structure that soared upward in pyramid fashion, an artistic chunk of twisted chromium, steel, orange-rusted iron, all dominated by enormous green-tinted windows.

At this time of the night the building acted like a mirror, reflecting the spectroscopic patterns of the city's skyscrapers, neon lights, the movement of its traffic in odd, skewed angles.

"This is the Kambata Museum," Hitasura said. "But for obvious reasons, everyone calls it the Kinji-to, the pyramid." He began walking toward it. "It's new since you were last here, Tori. It houses quite an amazing array of martial arts antiquities." He glanced at the entrance. "It's Monday. The museum's closed to the public."

"This is where Fukuda was last seen?" Russell asked.

"It's where she is," Hitasura said.

"Then she's here for a reason,'' Tori said.

Hitasura nodded. "You're the expert on Fukuda."

"Do you think there's any chance she's been tipped off that we're after her?" Russell asked.

Tori looked at Hitasura, who shrugged. ''In the end, it doesn't matter," she said, moving up the granite and steel front steps. "We've got to go in and get her."

But Russell, right behind her, caught her shoulder, spun her around. ''You're wrong. Tori,'' he said. ''It matters a great deal. If she knows we're coming, there's a good chance she's prepared for us. Knowing that should change our strategy."

''Okay,'' Tori said, ''how should it change?''

"I'd like to get more people here, for one thing."

Tori shook her head. "We've got to make as little noise as possible. The more of Hitasura's people we call in, the better chance we have of bringing the Tokyo Metropolitan Police down on us."

Russell thought about this for a moment as his eyes searched hers. At last he said, so that only Tori could hear him, "I don't like being involved in vendettas. They're invariably unhealthy from any point of view.''

Tori gave him a brief nod. ''I understand." Then, for just a moment, her expression softened, and she said, "Russ, did you ever have an itch you couldn't get to? Tell me, what would you do if you suddenly got a chance to scratch an itch like that?"

Russell's hand fell away from her shoulder. "Well," he said, ''at least you'll have me to look after you.''

Tori grinned at him, and the three of them went up the steps. The front doors were closed but unlocked. Russell looked briefly at the lock to see if it had been jimmied open; there was no damage that he could see. Had Fukuda picked the lock or did she somehow have a key?

Clandestinely, Russell checked his armaments: .32 caliber Colt, lightweight titanium-handled boot knife, garroting wire with wooden handles. Everything checked, but somehow he did not feel all that much better. This Fukuda sounded more like a ghost than any woman he had ever met. He could feel the fear emanating from both Hitasura and Tori, and it worried him.

Tori, leading them slowly into the interior of the Kinji-to, was thinking of Sun Tzu. If you cannot choose the ground for war, he had written, make certain you choose the time. Tori wondered whether she would have that option. Not, she knew, if Fukuda had anything to say about it.

They were moving through the vast hall that made up the centerpiece of the museum's main space. Enormous slabs of green-tinted glass hung suspended three stories over their heads. Their intervals and angles brought to mind a futuristic version of the assembly of war banners arrayed in the great rooms of medieval castles.

On either side of the central aisle down which they made their way, the hall was filled with exquisite examples of armor from as far back as the tenth century all the way to the early nineteenth century.

Tori, Hitasura, and Russell moved through this thrilling yet somber reminder of Japan's past, a unique entity in which the lines of history and myth were often blurred and, more, exchanged places.

Tori paused. She could hear what at first sounded like the rough soughing of a storm wind through pine boughs. Then, as she listened more closely, as the sound built, guttural, throaty, it became the noise of the stalking lion, a great predatory beast about to open wide its jaws as it came upon the exposed flank of its prey.

"What in God's name is that?" Russell said. The short hairs at the back of his neck had begun to stir.

"She's here somewhere," Hitasura whispered.

"Yo-ibuki," Tori said to Russell. "In karate there are two forms of breathing. Yo-ibuki is the hard, aggressive style used in attacks."

"I never learned that in the Virginia courses," Russell said.

''Naturally.'' Tori did not take her eyes off the interior of the hall stretching away from them. "Isn't that why you're out here in the field?"

Green light saturated the hall in degrees, thick swathes, deeper or lighter depending on whether at any given place the glass slabs overlapped one another. The effect was spectral, in some ways sinister, as the thick, unnatural illumination highlighted cuirasses of iron here, or there an ancient ornate kawara corselet of layered leather "scales," cured to the hardness of metal.

These magnificent suits of armor were pieced together with intricate laces of differing patterns and colors whose styles, over time, had been the way samurai differentiated between clans and rank within an army.

Now Tori could see in the dimness ahead of them the hiodoshi suit of armor of the Empress Jingo, known as Red Lacing, because of the dark crimson laces used to tie the pieces together,

As she watched, she saw the headpiece move. The mask below the high, horned helmet-dark, the old leather stained with the blood of enemies-turned in their direction. At the same time, the Empress Jingo's suit of armor came down off its pedestal. The sound of the yo-ibuki filled the hall, echoing through the centuries of battle attire.

Beside Tori, Russell was already in his semicrouch. Tori saw the Colt in his hand, yelled "No!" but he either didn't understand or didn't care. Russell had his own ideas of protecting her from being embroiled further in her blood feud with Fukuda. He pulled the trigger.

Tori had an instant's glimmer of the suit of armor being thrown backward by the impact of the bullet before the hall was lit up in a blinding glare.

The percussion hurled them off their feet. Tori felt as if a gigantic hand had been slammed into her chest. The noise of the percussion rattled her eardrums, making them ache, then, in its aftermath, filled them with white noise.

Fukuda was an expert in miniaturized explosives; Tori had thought that her story had made that evident to Russell, but apparently not.

As she struggled to regain equilibrium. Tori knew that Fukuda would not have been foolish enough to attempt a frontal assault on them. But the rigging of the armor told Tori a great deal. For one thing, Fukuda had some forewarning of their arrival, so her network of contacts must be stronger than ever: Tori and Russell's entrance into Tokyo had been highly clandestine. For another thing, Fukuda had chosen the Kinji-to, this pyramid, as her field of battle. Tori knew they had to be doubly careful.

How many more surprises did Fukuda have lying in wait for them? Tori knew Fukuda's strategy. She loved the convoluted, the oblique forms of assault. What she could not abide was a direct frontal attack. Tori would keep this in mind.

Tori rolled over, heard a groan.

"Russ?"

The groan came again, and Tori, drawing herself onto her knees, pulled Russell into a sitting position. "Are you okay?"

He nodded, but his eyes still looked slightly dazed.

Tori looked around, but there was no sign of Hitasura amid the rubble. Christ, she thought. What's happened to him?

She got to her feet, Russell beside her.

"Stupid," Russell said.

"What?"

"Remind me not to go off half-cocked like that."

"Very funny."

They made a careful search for Hitasura, but they could find no sign that he had ever been there. Russell looked at Tori.

"Don't say it," she said. "I won't believe that he's betrayed me, too."

"I hope you're right," Russell said. "But the evidence suggests that he led us straight into a trap."

They moved off, heading farther into the dimly lit interior of the hall. Soon the hall narrowed into a corridor; the deeper they got, the darker it became. Russell took out a pocket flash, handed it to Tori. She flicked it on, played it in a shallow arc ahead of them-and immediately stopped in her tracks.

The concentrated beam of the flash picked up a shining strand, a thread like a spider's webbing, strung across their path. Tori touched Russell, pointed wordlessly: the monofilament was strung approximately at waist height. Even at walking speed, the monofilament would cut deeply into flesh.

Tori went down on her knees, then lay on her back. Russell followed her lead. Using the flash pointed upward, she began to slither beneath the deadly monofilament.

She was halfway past it when she felt a pressure across her shoulders. Her scalp began to prickle and she felt a line of sweat snake itself between her shoulder blades. She tried to turn her head, but she could not see what was directly in front of her.

"Russ!" she hissed. "I'm stuck! Get up here!"

He began to slither up on her right, but she stopped him with a guttural noise. "Get on top of me!" she whispered. "Whatever's stopped me goes from shoulder to shoulder."

Russell moved, scrambling over her.

Tori felt the comfortable fit of his body on hers, looked upward into his face. "What do you see?"

"Another monofilament," he said softly. "I guess it was meant to get you at the ankles.''

"Or stop anyone alert enough to have seen the first monofilament."

"What do you want to do?" Russell asked. "I can easily drag you backward.''

"No!" Tori said. "I can feel an odd tension that came into the monofilament as I stretched it. I think there's some kind of trigger that will go off when the tension's broken.''