"Van Lustbader, Eric - Jake Maroc 01 Jian(eng)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Lustbader Eric)

In time, Higira could no longer contain himself and he began to fidget. In games of go, Kisan had observed that Nichiren employed just this tactic, engendering in his opponent an ill-conceived placement. Then, with an as-toundingly rapid series of moves, he would cleave to the secret heart of each game, penetrating his adversary's defenses, at last laying down the winning stone.
When beads of sweat could be discerned on Higira's forehead, scarring it like his concave cheeks, Nichiren's slash of a mouth curved upward at its ends.
From folds hidden inside his flowing black-on-black kimono he produced a gold key. This he applied to a lock hidden in the grain of the wood floorboards beneath the tatami. A section of wood came up. From within, Nichiren lifted a woven basket approximately the size of a woman's hatbox. This he placed on the lacquer table precisely over the spot where Kisan's kamon was embedded.
Higira was dumbfounded. "Is this it?" he asked somewhat stupidly.
By way of answer, Nichiren lifted off the top of the basket and laid it with a certain reverence on the tatami beside him.
"What is in there, please?" Higira's mouth was sticky with a lack of saliva.
Nichiren pushed his kimono sleeve back with one hand while plunging the other into the basket. When he pulled it out, Higira's tongue clove to the roof of his mouth.
"Ooof!" he exclaimed, just as if he had been hit in the solar plexus. He saw, held up before him, a severed human head. Blood still oozed from the stump of the neck, and because it was being held aloft by the hair, the head twisted slightly to and fro.
"Amida! Shizuki-san!"
"Your departmental rival," Nichiren said softly. "You wished your own promotion assured, did you not?" His voice was high and singsong, a trait associated more with a Chinese than a Japanese.
"Yes, but . . ." The slight twisting motion made Higira queasy in the pit of his stomach. Even so, his eyes could not leave the grisly sight, like a bloody war banner before him. Thus mesmerized, his voice was as slurred as a drunkard's. "I did not mean this. I ... I had no idea ... I ..."
"Shizuki-san was favored by keibatsu," Nichiren said, his high, odd voice heightening the bizarreness of the scene. "He was scheduled to marry Tanaba-san's-your chief's-daughter. That would have, so I learned, sealed his fate . . . and yours. You had good cause to be concerned, Higira-san. The marriage would have pushed him ahead of you."
"You came to the right people," Kisan said, " to solve your problem."
"But this . . ." Higira felt as if he were in the grip of a nightmare. He wanted to feel elated, but he dared not. His terror at what his request had unleashed gripped him with iron claws.
"In another ten days," Nichiren said, "it would have been too late. Shizuki-san would have been married, part of Tanaba-san's family and therefore untouchable."
"You can see that there was no other alternative," Kisan said. He stared at his guest. "Higira-san?"
"Yes, yes." With a supreme effort, Higira pulled himself back from the abyss toward which these revelations had been inexorably pushing him. All his training told him how evil this was. Yet he was here. He had come willingly to ask their aid in his predicament. His greed and his ambition had rendered him blind to consequences that, he saw now, were like ripples on a lake, moving outward from their source, affecting the whole.
Like it or not, he knew that he had stepped across an invisible but nonetheless powerful barrier and could never return to the safety and security of his previous life. Home and hearth had never seemed so far away to him. Henceforth, he would have to live according to his greed and his ambition. He closed his eyes for a moment, as if thus sealing his karma with a physical act would somehow reassure him.
"Now your career is free of rivals," Kisan said, very pleased with the situation. Nichiren had researched Higira's predicament well. If Higira had not come to them seeking aid, they would have manufactured a series of events that would have manipulated him into making the request. But this way, Kisan thought, was so much less complicated. "In several years Tanaba-san's chronic illness will become insupportable even for such an iron-willed man as he. Time will force him to step down." He smiled broadly, his small white teeth gleaming like a fox's.
"Then we shall all celebrate, eh?" He laughed. "Chief of Police Higira. How does that sound to you, my friend?" He nodded. "You see, we are delighted for you. You are part of our family now. We will take care of you."
The three men lifted their tea cups in unison. As they drank, a discreet knock sounded. Nichiren rose and crossed the room to a fusuma directly behind Kisan. Sliding it open, he stood very still, as if he were contemplating a complex and slightly puzzling object of art.
He stared straight ahead at the face illuminated within the dusky semi-darkness. At length he said, "So you've come, after all. Really, I never believed that you would."


Outside the nawanoren, the rain pattered dolefully, slipping off sprays of leaves bowed beneath its weight.
"Yappari aoi kuni da!"
From across the street, the doorway to the nawanoren appeared framed by a jungle of blue-green irises and hydrangeas. Hybrid gardenias of the same family of hues peeped out here and there as if shyly seeking recognition.
"It is a green country!"
Jake Maroc smiled to himself as he heard Mandy Choi repeat his whispered exclamation. Crouched as the two of them were in the dripping doorway directly opposite O-henro House, it was important to keep noise down to a minimum, even though the rain was a great help in that regard.
But of course it was a green country, Jake thought. It was tsuyu, the time of the "plum rains." The Japanese found pleasure in such a multiplicity of major and minor occurrences, they had created a word for that feeling. Odayaka. That pleasure could pertain to a person just as well as an inanimate object such as a stone, or a changeable one, such as the sea or the weather. Aoi, that host of varying blue-green which burgeoned beneath the early summer tsuyu, was the most odayaka of all colors in nature.
Jake glanced at his chronometer. "Mandy, go get the others," he whispered in Japanese. "It's almost time."
The small Chinese nodded and disappeared into the rainfilled night. In a moment he returned with four men. All were Chinese, trained by Jake himself at the Hong Kong Station. Though they spoke perfect idiomatic Japanese, this was their first journey here. For Jake, it was another story entirely.
He watched them as they came, as proud as a father with his sons, in their precision and expertise. They were dressed alike: V-necked white T-shirts, khaki trousers flared at the thighs like riding breeches. Hachimaki, wound calico headbands, encircled their gleaming foreheads. On their feet were jikatabi, rubber-soled boots that had a split between the big toe and the others and fit more like gloves than shoes. They were as soft and pliable as Indian moccasins, so that one could still grip with the foot.
In short, the six of them appeared to be nothing more than a group of workmen, huddled in a doorway on their way home. That was precisely the impression they wished to give.
Jake had been counting off the seconds in his mind so that he did not have to look at his chronometer again. This close to the jump, he did not want to look away from the door. His information had been exceptionally precise about the time.
"Jake," Mandy Choi said, close by his side, "what if he's not there?"
"He's there, all right."
Mandy watched the manic intensity in his friend's face and felt a slight chill go through him. I wish we had never come, he thought. This is the fourth day of the month. He knew what that meant. In numerology, four was the number of death. A very bad omen.
All gods protect us, he thought now as he said, "The danger here is acute. Did you ever think to distrust your source?"
"He's there," Jake repeated. "My information's accurate."
If only it were someone other than Nichiren, Mandy thought. Anyone. I'd sooner take on the Christian devil himself, if he exists.
But Nichiren and Jake . . .
There was too much history between them, the river of hatred too dark and too wide. When it comes to Nichiren, Mandy thought, Jake does not think clearly. Therefore I must look after him.
Jake took three deep breaths. He could feel the tension and the accelerated pulses behind him like a tide urging him on. Nichiren, he thought, at last I have you. Black images threatened to swamp his awareness. Thoughts he had locked away securely tore from their moorings, whirling upward in anarchic disarray. And with them, emotions.
Blood rushed in his ears like a battle cry.
"All right," he said thickly. "Let's go."
Neons turned the bed of the street to pinks and pale electric greens. Their shadows, as they passed, brought the darkness of the night back to the macadam. The few passersby were withdrawn behind the shields of their ama-gasa, backs bowed against the slanting rain. A dog barked disconsolately down an alleyway, the narrow walls lending a desperate note to the echoes.
The edge of the city, like the blaze from a hearth, seemed dulled by distance, the throbbing of its vibrant colored lights watered down by the weather.
Jake led the way through the beaded curtains, hearing the preternaturally loud clatter they made as he parted them. He was aware of Mandy close at his side, the others behind him, and felt the brief flutters in his stomach subsiding. He was no longer an individual; he was part of dantai, the group. He was back in Japan.
"There's a drain break down the road," Mandy said as patrons' heads turned and the manager came through from the tiny kitchen off to one side. He shrugged. "All this rain. Tsuyu. We have to check all the buildings within these six blocks."