His bright eyes crinkled in silent laughter as he picked up his cup with both hands and drank. He set it back down. "So you are not as much the Westerner as I had feared," he said without looking at her.
"No." Ransom willed her hands not to tremble. She had never lied to her grandfather, but knew she would have to if he questioned her. Even seventeen years ago, when she had first thought of leaving Tokyo, she had never lied to him about her reasons. Of course, she had never told him the real reason she had to leave, either. Grandmother had helped with that.
She sipped the tea and wished she could have stayed away until everything that was before her had passed. Except that, even had she stayed away tonight, their paths would have still intersected tomorrow at the meeting. She wondered if Saburo would be there, then felt a chill race down her spine. She sipped again and let the warmth of the tea fill her.
The living room was small and close, overfilled with old furniture her grandmother had never been able to part with, rattan and bamboo constructions that smelled of the oils her grandmother had rubbed into them to prevent aging and cracking.
A dozen pictures framed in white bamboo and neatly arranged adorned the wall in front of them. The subject in the stills were of modern things that seemed out of place in the surroundings of the room. She stared at them, recognizing them a moment later.
"My pictures," she said.
"Yes," the old man replied, looking at the wall. "Only a few of the ones you took of Japan." Mount Fuji loomed close in many of them.
"Grandmother always kept them away."
"Yes, she thought that by seeing them there, it would remind me how very far away you were." He placed the empty teacup to one side. "In a way, they do. Yet in another they help me hold your grandmother close to me."
"I'm glad. I have others, of grandmother, if you want."
"No, Michi, these serve me well enough."
"But grandmother is in none of them. Those pictures are ones from early in my career."
The old man lifted a hand and swept it slowly down the length of the bamboo frames. "To you, these are pictures, memories of the beginnings of your success. To me, these are places where your grandmother and I made memories." He tapped his forehead. "Your grandmother is here, always with me. I don't need a picture to remind me of her."
She nodded, and he gathered up his teacup and got to his feet. Ransom followed him. She watched him wash out the teacups and pot, then put them carefully away. He turned to face her. "I'm going to the garden. Will you join me?"
"Yes."
The garden was small, like the house, and had been built and groomed by her grandparents. It was a place of peace and security. Lacquered wood shone under the moonlight. Barefoot from being in the house, she felt the sanded smoothness of the deck beneath her. The high fence surrounded them. As a little girl she had often thought the fence was strong enough to keep the rest of the world at bay. Now she knew it was no more than a collection of sticks, and that her grandfather was flesh and blood, not invulnerable to the evils that lurked on the other side.
He knelt and took out a tiny pair of scissors and began to trim a bonsai tree with practiced efficiency. He caught the clippings in his free palm and pocketed them as he worked. "What matters have brought you home again?"
"The business consortium Hosaka-san is assembling." The scissors never wavered from their task, but she saw a shadow pass across his face.
"You have heard of the violence the Westerners have used against the proposed members of the consortium?"
"Yes. I filed reports on some of them." Dark memories filled her mind. "I was at the assembly plant in Detroit within hours of the attack."
"I've heard that was very bad."
"It was. Many people were killed."
"Is this the kind of work you do now?"
"Some of it."
"I remember only the pretty pictures you used to take for the travel magazines, and the interviews you did with Japanese who had made their new homes in America."
"I also do special news reports, Grandfather, and have been doing them for years. Only a few months ago I helped police in San Francisco track down and capture a serial rapist in Chinatown. He was later tried and convicted, and people could return to the streets of their neighborhood without fear."
His silence told her she had embarrassed him with the sexual aspects of the story.
"I'm good at what I do," Ransom said, "and I'm proud of the effect I can have on people who are involved. My mother died at an early age after having me. Father died in Vietnam, and I never got to know him the way I got to know you and Grandmother. I am what I am because of you and her. At least the successful part of me. My shortcomings are my own."
"You are very generous."
"No. I only say it because it is so."
He turned from the tree. "And what do you hope to accomplish here?"
"I want to bring out the truth of the attacks."
"I see. And what truth is that?"
Ransom took a deep breath and steeled herself. "I think someone in the consortium helped plan them."
"Do you have proof of this?" The edge in the old man's voice was razor-sharp.
"No. Only thoughts."
He nodded, then resumed his clipping. "You know I have pledged loyalty to Hosaka-san for saving your grandmother's life years ago."
"Yes." It had happened over forty years ago, immediately after the war. Her grandfather had been a young man with a wife and young daughter. The fishing village where they had lived in Okinawa was too small to have a proper hospital. Joji Hosaka had been a big man in the black market at the time and, after realizing the skills the young Kiyosha Ogata had to offer, quickly arranged for his ill wife to be flown to the mainland for treatment.
After her recovery, Michi's grandfather had moved to Tokyo and built a house on the land Hosaka had provided, then set about providing those services. Ransom's grandmother had given her only hints about the types of things her grandfather did in Hosaka's name, but she had seen him come in injured at times, found his clothes stained with blood that wasn't his. "Obligation is a hard thing to bear," she said in a quiet voice.
"It is also the essence of everything I am. Do you understand this, too?"
She nodded, understanding only too well. It was his sense of honor and obligation that provided the unbreakable walls of the current maze she found herself in.
"It would be a hard thing for me to decide between my honor and family."
"I know," she said in a hoarse voice. "Remember what you told me when you decided to train me as your father had trained you? You told me that you'd felt you made a mistake by not sharing yourself completely with my mother, by not teaching her the things you had been taught. You said you fell this is part of what made her turn away from you and try to marry my father in hopes of going to America. Remember?"
"Yes. You were very small. I did not know if you would truly understand."
"Maybe I didn't then, Grandfather, but I do now. And Grandmother understood. There aren't many like you left in the world, even in Japan." Ransom felt the tears well up in her eyes.
"Sometimes I feel that way, too." He took her tears away on his fingertips. "With your mother I was ashamed that I had no learning better to give her. This is a man's trade, handed down from father to son, and only a woman when there is a need. Defense is one thing. Learning to kill, quite another."
Chapter Thirteen
Yemon Hosaka left his Mercedes in front of the health club. Two men separated from the night shadows near the entrance and approached him. He identified himself in a tight voice and hurried through the sliding door as one of the men opened it for him.
"I am sorry, Hosaka-san," the man apologized. "I did not recognize you."
Yemon ignored the man. The guard was one of several Yakuza his younger brother insisted on keeping on a private payroll despite objections from their father and himself.
The interior of the health club smelled of leather, soap
and cheap cologne. The atmosphere was muggy and misted his glasses. Irritated, he took them off and wiped them with a monogrammed handkerchief from his back pocket, never touching the one set so carefully in his jacket. He came to a halt at the narrow desk and slapped the countertop with his palm impatiently.
A young man with hair to his shoulders came around the corner. He put on a smile and waved to the empty chairs stationed around the pots of plastic plants. "As you can see, we are closed."
"Where's Saburo?" Yemon flicked a glance at his watch. It wouldn't be long before their father figured out where his brother was. Between them they had exhausted most of Saburo's usual haunts.
The young man put both hands on the countertop and shook the hair out of his eyes. He wore black chinos, a lightweight black jacket and a black T-shirt. If they hadn't been different sizes, Yemon would have believed the man had filched the clothes from Saburo's wardrobe. "I don't know you," the man said.
Unable to keep his anxiety and anger in check anymore, Yemon slapped his cupped palms over the man's ears, then grabbed the lapels of his jacket and hauled him over the counter.
The guy went down hard but came up immediately with a switchblade snapping into the locked position. Yemon didn't bother to feint. He swept a leg out and kicked the knife away, breaking several of the man's fingers in the process. He placed two fingers on the man's throat and shoved him backward into the wall beside the door. The counterman gagged, grabbing for his throat with his uninjured hand. Yemon closed in.
"Fool! This jacket alone is worth more than you are. Where's Saburo?"
The counterman shot a brief glance at the two guards outside the entrance and, seeing that they weren't interested in helping him, said, "In the pool."
"Is he alone?"
"No."
"Who's with him?"
"A couple of whores he brought with him."
Yemon nodded. "Much better. In a few minutes another man will arrive — an older man. He's Saburo's father. If you treat him with the same disrespect and insolence you've shown me, he'll have you killed. Do you understand?"
"Yes." The man gripped his broken hand, his features white with repressed pain.
Yemon curled a finger at one of the guards and waited until the man stuck his head into the lobby. "I've given this man fair warning that my father will be here shortly. If he continues to show disrespect at that time, shoot him. Or I'll have you shot."
The guard bowed. "Of course, Hosaka-san."
The counterman's eyes widened as the door closed. He released his injured hand and bowed without looking away from Yemon. "Someone should have told me who you were, Hosaka-san. Otherwise I would never have behaved as I did. Please accept my apologies."
"As a guard, you're a pathetic creature. You should know everyone who has cause to see my brother, and know everyone who hasn't." Yemon left the man, straightening his tie as he went. He glanced briefly at his reflection in a glass display case. Despite the exertion and violence, his appearance was impeccable. Satisfied, he pulled the door open and walked down the narrow hallway.
The stench of chlorine filled his nostrils as the swing door closed behind him. Someone had turned the overhead lights off, and he stood still while his night vision adjusted. Echoes of splashing water sounded ahead of him, followed immediately by feminine giggling. He moved forward, able to make out the perimeters of the indoor pool.
Garish blue-green underwater lights lit up the Olympic-sized pool. Three bodies, reduced by the lights to two-dimensional silhouettes, moved within the lighted rectangle. There was more giggling, then a man's voice saying something too low to be heard.
Yemon wrapped himself in silence, knowing he wouldn't be seen by the pool's occupants until he was practically upon them. A girl came up out of the water at his feet, shaking her hair out of her eyes. She was Korean, pretty, with long dark hair that floated on the water's surface behind her. Her thin lips formed an O of surprise, then she dived back under the water. A second later she broke the surface and called out Saburo's name in a panicked voice.
"Yemon," Saburo shouted. "Come on. Join us." There was no doubt that he was high on something.
Saburo lounged in the deep end of the pool, his back to the wall. He was bigger than Yemon, at least three inches taller and forty pounds heavier, though none of it was fat. Where Yemon had the delicate looks and dancer's physique of their mother, Saburo had inherited the gnarly bulk of their father. He was broad-chested, long-limbed, with almost no neck separating his head from his shoulders. Naked, the tattoos that covered his body from midforearm to neck to midcalf were clearly visible — warriors challenging dragons and other mythical beasts. Colorful fantasy figures from Japanese mythology twisted around his arms, legs and trunk. It had taken thousands of dollars and long years of painstaking work to embroider that indelible history on his brother's skin.
"Who's this?" asked the woman in the crook of Saburo's arm. She spoke Japanese, but with a British accent. Her ebony skin bespoke her African ancestry.
"My brother," Saburo replied, reaching for a wine bottle that sat at the edge of the pool.
The black woman raised an arm from the water and waved Yemon in with her scarlet-nailed fingers. "Come in, brother." She smiled. "I promise that I'm more than enough woman for the both of you." She breathed deeply, causing her large breasts to rise from the water.
Saburo roared with laughter, and Yemon felt his cheeks burn with embarrassment. "Yemon, I'd like you to meet Fuzzy Knight…" the black woman nodded regally"…and Cinnamon Spice." The Korean woman bowed her head. "They work together."
"Of course. But unless you want Father to meet them, as well, I suggest you get them and yourself out of there."
A frown darkened Saburo's face, and he cupped one of the woman's breasts in defiance. "You think he hasn't seen women such as these? Our father's no saint as you would believe him to be. He's a man of the earth, of the people, no matter how he would like others to forget this."
Yemon said nothing. He had learned long ago there was no use arguing with Saburo when he was high.
"Father has had dozens of women like this," Saburo said. "Even while mother was alive. I know this isn't a surprise to you. You learned to turn your face even as she did." A gloating smile lifted the corners of his mouth. "I've had some of the same women, and they tell me I'm better than my father ever was."
"Father's very angry with the way your man tried to handle things at Foreign Affairs this morning," Yemon said patiently. "He's been searching for you most of the day."
"I'm sure he has," Saburo said sarcastically. "In between bouts of reassuring the different members of his precious consortium."
Yemon was surprised at the anger in Saburo's words. "He's striving to further the economic interests of Japan," he stated in a reserved voice.
"And letting the Americans get the better of him." Saburo shook his fist. "I'm not going to let them trample over me, no matter what Father says. I'm going to take my stand against them and not let them push me away as if I'm a dog begging for table scraps."
Yemon held out a towel he'd picked up from the floor. "Please." He tried to say it with sincerity.
"Why are you here?" Saburo demanded, making no move to swim across the pool.
"Because you're my brother."
"Is that the reason, truly?"
"Yes."
Saburo shook his head. "I don't believe you."
Yemon dropped the towel.
"You lack ambition." Saburo smiled lazily. "You lack drive and stamina, and the simple courage to reach out and take something you want. Instead of finding your own world to conquer, you wait patiently for the one Father will hand down to you. You have much at stake here. If Father's consortium goes through, you stand to inherit a kingdom whose boundaries are governed only by fiscal sheets rather than physical confines. Don't you think I know that?"
"I don't know what goes through your mind. I haven't since we were children."
"Yes, you do. You know me be
tter than our own father."
"Who will be here at any time," Yemon reminded him.
"Did you tell him I was here?"
"No, but it won't take him long to figure out."
Saburo drank wine from the bottle. "Tell me something. If this consortium goes through as Father plans, and you do inherit it at his death, will you cut me in for a piece of it?"
"The consortium will be an entity that will decide its own future," Yemon replied. "It will require a strong hand at the helm, but it will have a life of its own."
"Do you intend for that hand to be yours when the time comes?" Saburo's words taunted.
"I think it could be so."
Saburo's eyes gleamed. "So, perhaps you have ambitions after all, brother. But would you seek to defend it yourself as actively as I have? Would you attempt to kill the Americans who have cowed our government into allowing them into our country? Would you put a price on the heads of the men who were part of the attack yesterday morning?"
"You have done that?" Yemon felt the anger surge up inside him again.
Saburo laughed. "Yes, and I'm paying whether they're dead or alive. I won't retreat before the enemy as you and Father seem intent on doing. I'll fight back until I'm dead."
"You're worse than a fool," Yemon said in a hard voice. "We don't even know if it's the Americans who have been attacking the businesses in the United States. It may be someone else."
"Who?"
Yemon waved the question away as he thought about the consequences of his brother's irrational actions. "As always, you're too impulsive."
"How quickly Father's words come to your lips." Saburo's tone was mocking. "Yet when your wife was killed three years ago, who did you come to when you wanted vengeance?"
"He would never have agreed." Yemon looked at his brother and wished he would shut up. The whores would learn too much if this kept up, and one thing he had learned very early, from his father as well as others, was that people who knew too much were simply too dangerous to keep around.
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