Into the Shadows

by Jordan Weisman

  Raven affixed a small pin to the lapel of a tan sports coat he'd brought along. I’d seen the pin before and thought the design a bit curious but fairly plain. It appeared to be a billowing black curtain with details traced in gold. I had no real idea of its significance, but Stealth seemed impressed, so I decided it must be important. I also noticed that the trio of Yakuza types approaching us wore pins on their lapels. The design on their pins appeared to be four concentric boxes tipped onto one corner, with an "X" dividing the design into quarters.

  I also saw, as they opened their jackets, that they carried Uzis.

  Raven opened his door slowly and stepped out of the Rolls, keeping both hands fully visibile. I opened my door and slid out of the car, but remained with the bulk of the armored beast between me and the Yakuza closing on us. I unzipped my leather jacket enough to make my Viper immediately available. Behind me, Stealth opened his door, but wisely remained in the passenger compartment for his very appearance could have provoked a reaction.

  Beyond the triple-team heading for Raven, I saw a Yak walking over to the man and woman beside the Westwind. The Yak bowed and the man returned the gesture awkwardly.

  He handed the Yak a bottle-shaped gift wrapped in green plastic and tied with a yellow ribbon, then he and the woman followed the Yak back toward the Zeppelin. The man walked as though his knees needed tightening, but his female companion seemed structurally sound and in perfect working order.

  Raven bowed to the trio, which brought them up short. They returned his bow, but without making it as deep or holding it as long. They must have realized their mistake as they closed to shake hands with Raven. Perhaps it was that little pin on his lapel, because they suddenly jackknifed over into bows that looked more like they’d been swatted in the stomach with a steel bar. After a quick parlay, Raven headed back toward us. one Yak following several steps behind him and the other two hastily making their way back to the Avanti.

  As the older man at the Avanti was heading in to the Zeppelin, Raven waved Stealth out of the car. "They’re going to see if Mr. Yamamoto is willing to let me pay my respects."

  Stealth straightened up and handed Raven a black lacquered chest with gold fittings and mother of pearl inlay in the same black curtain design as his pin. The chest wasn’t much larger than a shoe box, and I recalled having seen it in Raven’s trophy room, but I’d never looked inside it. Raven passed it over to the Yakuza, who accepted it with another bow, then hustled ofF with it to the Graf Zeeland.

  I looked over at Raven. "So, what’s our play?"

  "We leave our weapons here in the Rolls and wait for an escort to the Zeppelin. We allow ourselves to be patted down-—to show respect for Yamamoto more than to reassure his security people—then we do what they ask us to do. Just remember, Yamamoto is in his sixties, so he remembers the days before the Awakening. He sees no excuse for behaving in an uncivilized manner, be you augmented, metahurnan, or just a plain, everyday human. If Cortez is as anxious a young man as Nadia indicates, I suspect he will rub the oyabun the wrong way."

  I set the Viper on the driver's seat. "I think I'll wait here for you two. You know me. I’ll slurp my tea or something and ruin it all

  Raven shook his head. "You must come. Wolf. Not only do I need you to verify that Nadia is not dead, but your reputation precedes you. I told the Yakuza that you were the man who took down their hitter who went rogue eighteen months ago."

  "They don't hold grudges, do they?" I winced. A Yakuza hitter had been sent to kill an informant, but the informant shot him with a hypodart full of some drug. The hitter’s brain fried, and instead of going after his target, he started to rip up Little Tokyo. I was out with a Japanese woman that very evening, which made me the right person in the wrong place at the wrong time. Luckily, I was able to tear him up faster than he was able to do me in return.

  Raven laughed lightly. "No, they don’t hold grudges for things like that, but you would be slighting his honor if you did not join us."

  The Yakuza sent back for us mopped his brow with a handkerchief before bowing. "You will come with me, please."

  I lagged behind as he led us around the stern of the craft and toward the private entrance to the first-class section. The Graf Zeeland looked so tall and beautiful that I once again felt the awe they'd always inspired in me as a child. Beneath the teflon coating, I could see the outline of the planking that made up the hull. It struck me that building such a vessel of wood must have taken forever, and, therefore, made a ride on the thing hideously expensive. Then I realized that anyone who could afford to take two days to fly from New York to Seattle instead of hopping a bullet train certainly did not care about money, and wanted to travel in style.

  Travel in style they did. The entry way on the Graf Zeeland looked to me like the inside of a museum from over a century and a half before. The walls glowed with the richness of stained oak paneling. The floor strips had been matched by master craftsmen so that the grain of the wood formed concentric circles and floral patterns. Brass had been used for all handrails and fixtures, while all the windows were of etched glass and crystal hung from every chandelier.

  The Yakuza led us into a small antechamber, where we were bidden to remove our shoes—at least Raven and I were. He patted us down, then handed us each a white silken robe embroidered with a green heron on the back. We all removed our jackets to don the kimonos, and Raven carefully transplanted his curtain pin to the new garment. The Yakuza presented Raven and me with slippers—which was just as well because I was not wearing my go-visiting socks—then again invited us to follow him.

  We passed through an internal corridor that I guessed ran down the midline of the Graf Zeeland’s upper deck. Everything looked so beautiful that I wanted to touch it to assure myself it was real, but I didn’t.

  I looked back at Stealth. "I’d love to travel on a zeppelin."

  Stealth nodded knowingly, "It is relaxing."

  I stopped. "You’ve been on one, for a trip, I mean?"

  "To the east and back."

  Vintage Stealth. He never said where he started from, went to. or why he took the trip at ail. And, knowing Stealth, all the details on the trip were contained in some poliec file somewhere, stored under the heading "Homicide: Unsolved."

  I let out a low whistle. "It must have cost a fortune.’

  The Murder Machine shrugged. "I don’t know. I didn't pay the bill."

  Our guide turned the corner and brought us to a different section of the Zeeland. Here the decor shifted from Tsarist opulence to Imperial elegance. Translucent shoji panels admitted warm light into the narrow hallway we traversed. Though I knew the paper and wooden lattice walls were very thin, white noise generators fitted into the ceiling muled any conversations being carried on by the silhouettes we passed.

  The Yak rapped gently on the baseboard beside a sliding panel, then opened it for us. Raven knelt on the edge of the raised floor platform, bowed to the occupants of the room. then eased himself in without ever rising from a crouch. I did my best to imitate him fully, even to the point of pressing my nose to the tatami mat in the room, then worked myself to the left of and slightly behind Raven. Stealth managed to bow and to kneel without looking the least bit ungainly, then settled down across from Raven, diagonally facing both him and the oyabun.

  The oyabun, Hidiki Yamamoto, impressed me with his stern serenity. He wore a gray kimono emblazoned with the concentric box-and-"X" on both breasts and the top of each arm. I could see she hint of a tattoo on his right arm near the wrist, but he seemed to prefer to keep it hidden. Though Raven had said Yamamoto was born before the Awakening. I saw no gray in his closely trimmed hair, and aside from a well-healed scar on his left check, nothing in his face hinted at his age.

  His gaze arid mine brushed one another for a single, electric second. At first. I got nothing from his eyes, but felt as if I were naked and turned inside out. I heard a low growl from the Old One, and in this case. I concurred fully with his caution concerning th
e Yakuza leader. Then, reflections of the Kobe fire in his flat, black eyes told me that, even if he had not intended for the Nullzone to burn, he was not moved to pity or remorse when it did go up.

  Yamamoto smiled deliberately and mechanically, then inclined his head toward the other two people in the room. "Permit me to make introductions. Dr. Raven, this is Samuel Cortez of Natural Vat and his companion, Wakako Martinas. Raven’s friends are Wolfgang Kies and Kid Stealth."

  Though I'd been relegated to secondary status in the introduction, I gave Yamamoto points for having pronounced my first name precisely and having worked around the 'i' in the middle so well.

  Sam Cortez did not impress me at all. Though he was a good-looking man, he struck me as the type who was all too aware of it. He was in kimono just like the rest of us, but on him it seemed ill-fitting and wrinkled. Despite that, he wore it deliberately gapped open at the chest so that all the world could see his Daimyo rose power shirt and Boesky blue power tie.

  Yamamoto, who had more than half a century’s practice at sitting on his knees, and Stealth, whose knees were mostly metal and whose lower legs lacked sensation, seemed not to mind assuming the formal Japanese position. I resigned myself to being unable to walk without assistance after the audience, and Wakako seemed to be weathering the storm well, but Cortez shifted and fidgeted visibly.

  Raven? If he was the least bit uncomfortable, he never showed it. He was a rock.

  Wakako, on the other hand, had nothing in common with a rock. Her looks suffered a bit in comparison with Nadia and Valerie, but not by much. She sat tall, her blue-black hair gathered into a ponytail She had a full figure for a petite woman, and her eyes sparkled with the Latin love of life. Because they were so blue, I figured they had to be implants, but it was hard to be sure Her flesh tone fell midway between the olive of her Spanish blood and the amber tone I’d have expected from her Japanese forebear. The almond shape of the eyes added to her exotic appearance. Reluctantly, I conceded that Cortez had to have something going for him to attract a woman like her.

  Yamamoto addressed himself to Raven. "Mr. Cortez has just informed me of the sad death of his superior in Natural Vat. Ms. Nadia Mirin. I have suggested he might want to rethink a deal between our two firms until Ms. Mirin has been properly mourned, but he has insisted on working through his grief."

  Raven's voice adopted the same hushed and respectful tone as Yamamoto. "It is truly well, then, that I have joined you because I can lift the heavy burden from Mr. Cortez's heart. Nadia Mirin is not dead."

  "Impossible!" Cortez's eyes grew so wide they looked like fried eggs with black yolks in the middle. "I mean, the news-fax says she and another person were killed in the blast that destroyed her apartment. The coroner says he will have the bodies identified in five hours."

  Raven shrugged. "I have just left Nadia Mirin, as both my comrades can verify."

  Yamamoto and Cortez caught me in a crossfire of dagger-stares. "If she’s dead, she's left a very pretty corpse." I smiled broadly because I knew it would infuriate Cortez. "And if she’s a corpse, I’m going io register with Lone Star as a necrophile. "

  Yamamoto looked over at Stealth. "And what do you say, Koroshi-no-Stealth? "

  "Amateur assassins offer only amateur results."

  A shadow appeared at the shoji door and rapped on the floor. The panel slid back to reveal a Yakuza with a tray bearing a sake flask and three cups. All three cups were black with gold trim and decorated with a design identical to the tine on Raven’s pin, I realized immediately that the sake service had been in the box Raven had handed over earlier.

  Yamamoto looked surprised for a nanosecond. "What is this?"

  Cortez sat up a little bit taller. "I have brought you a gift of sake. "

  "And knowing that, I brought this sake set so that, like our visit and talk here, our gifts could work to your advantage." Raven’s explanation brought a nod from Yamamoto. Cortez, being as dense as depleted uranium, smiled broadly, not realizing that Raven had trumped his gift.

  The Yakuza set the tray before Yamamoto, then retreated from the room and closed the panel. "This conflicting new information concerning Ms. Mirin disturbs me. I do not wish the woman harm, but I believe that, while she lives, she is in the position to sign the contract with North American Transport. Is this not true?"

  Cortez nodded, doing his best to keep the worry from his face. "Hai, Yamamoto-sama. However, we have only Raven's word that she is alive. Dr. Raven is known in Seattle as a busybody who interferes with the affairs of others for his own reasons, or perhaps those of his elven masters."

  Stealth’s face took on the same expression it had shown when Braxen accused Raven of murdering Nadia. I must have had the same look because Cortez suddenly paled. Raven, on the other hand, remained calm. "Mr. Cortez should be aware that I bring you this news, oyabun, only to assist you. If a deal is signed with Mr. Cortez, and he cannot deliver as promised, it would be a loss of face."

  Yamamoto closed his eyes while he thought, then opened them but did not smile. "I will instruct the Captain to remain here for another five hours so that I may accept an offer to visit a friend at his estate." His shark-eyes flicked toward Cortez. "You and Wakako will join me at William Howell's home. If, as you say, the coroner identifies Nadia Mirin's body within the next five hours, we will conclude our business."

  "You, Dr. Raven, would agree that it is possible to purchase an autopsy that identifies Nadia Mirin as one of the bodies found in the penthouse. To preclude this possibility, you will bring Nadia Mirin to me at the Howell estate."

  "I understand your desire to meet her, oyabun, but how can you be certain I have not purchased a false autopsy and found an actress to play the part of Nadia Mirin?"

  Yamamoto smiled in a manner I found distinctly unpleasant. "The proof that she is Nadia Mirin will be her ability to sign a valid contract with North American Transport. I shall accept nothing less."

  I had to hand it to him. Either way. he got Natural Vat and North American Transport linked in a deal that made him the big winner. Looking at Cortez, I knew that he’d already begun to plot ways to prevent us from getting Nadia to the estate, and I didn't imagine any of them to be fun-filled.

  Raven bowed his head slightly. "And, oyabun, if Ms. Mirin refuses to sign the contract after I have brought her to you?"

  Yamamoto’s eyes became black slivers. "I would expect one of the Korumaku-kai could manage events better than that. Dr. Raven."

  "And even the Korumaku-kai know that ordering the wind is a waste of breath. She has not negotiated this contract."

  "But her subordinate did. I would expect her to accept responsibility for her subordinate’s actions."

  "As you did in Kobe?"

  Yamamoto stiffened, then nodded with great control. "I have been away from my homeland for a long time. I will have this contract in place for my return."

  Raven kept his hands flat on the top of his thighs, but I sensed the tension in him. "And what is our payment if we fail to deliver?"

  Yamamoto said nothing, but picked up the sake flask and started to pour for Cortez. He filled the cup with four even pours from the bottle. He started to repeat the same precise ritual with Raven, but Doc picked up the cup after the third pour and gently blocked Yamamoto’s effort to fill the last quarter of his cup. Only after Yamamoto filled his own cup with three even pours did I begin to suspect that the number four had some significance.

  Raven raised his cup in a salute, then sipped the sake. Yamamoto did the same, but Cortez tossed his off like a shot of whisky taken to steady the nerves.

  Yamamoto bowed to his guests. "Forgive me for being so abrupt, but I must take your leave now so that I may prepare for our meeting later." He looked at the cup in his hand, then set it down on the tray. "I will have your sake service cleaned and returned to you at that time, Dr. Raven."

  "It is yours, oyabun, that you may remember your visit to Seattle."

  Yamamoto’s dark eyes glittered like p
olished onyx. "It is already unforgettable. I will see you by 5:00 A.M. local time."

  * * *

  Outside and well away from the zeppelin, the feeling had begun to return to my legs. "What did Yamamoto mean by expecting more from one of the ‘Korumaku-kai?' "

  Raven allowed himself a grim smile. "The pin I wear and the sake service are from the Korumaku-kai—the Black Curtain gang. Suffice it to say, like your having killed the Yakuza who went mad, it has certain significance in Yakuza circles. He expects me to deliver Nadia, and that she will sign."

  I opened the rear door of the Rolls for him. "What happens if she refuses?"

  Angry blue lights played through Raven's eyes. "Do you recall the way he poured the sake?"

  I nodded. "Four for Cortez, then three for you and himself, but only because you blocked a fourth pour for yourself. "

  "Very good." Raven sank back into the shadows of the back seat. "In Japanese, the word for four is shi. In pouring the sake, he told both of us what would happen if we fail to meet his demands."

  I shook my head. "I’m missing something."

  Stealth’s whisper was like dry leaves rustling through a graveyard. "Shi has another meaning in Japanese. It means death."

  IV

  Being under a Yakuza death-threat did little for my peace of mind, but I grew even more uneasy as we drove back to headquarters. I could feel the city coming alive with gangs on the move like armies of ticks marching over a dog’s hide. No one took a shot at us. but the knots of people hanging about on street corners or in alleyways looked more agitated than usual. Something big was going down. Everyone felt it and wanted to be a part of it.

  After Raven reported the situation with a call to Tom Electric at headquarters, he had Stealth use the mobile phone to call together his Redwings. Ever since Etienne La Plante abruptly fired him. Kid Stealth’d taken to doing anything he could to annoy the crime boss. This included saving other employees from the gruesome ends La Plante might use to dispose of them. He’d gathered these refugee gangsters—none of whom I cared to be around—into his own cadre. Raven’s willingness to sanction their participation in our deeds meant that things had become very serious.