by Dean Koontz
"Are you going to kill me?" she asked.
"Of course not."
"Oh, then you were worried about my heart."
"What are you talking about?"
"My heart."
He shook his head.
She said, "Fear is good for the heart. Speeds it up. Gives the heart muscles much-needed exercise. Cleans out the system. How nice of you to be worried about my heart, Mr. Canning."
He put the pistol back in his holster. '"I'm sorry."
"But my heart needed the exercise!" she said.
"I'm sorry for almost shooting you."
"Was it that close?"
"Close enough."
She put one hand to her breast. "Now you're giving my heart too damned much exercise." She stepped back a pace and said, "Do you have any luggage?"
"Two pieces."
"Bring it."
He fetched the suitcases and followed her into the adjoining room. It was a large, airy bedchamber decorated with imitations of old Japanese rice-paper water-colors and with genuine eighteenth-century Japanese furniture.
"This won't be good enough," he said.
In the middle of the room she stopped and turned to look back at him. "What won't be good enough?"
"Someone will be watching the door to my room."
"Right you are, Mr. Canning. You're under surveillance."
"If I don't come out and make a target of myself, sooner than later there are some goons who'll break in there and try to get me."
"Break right into your room?"
"One way or the other."
"What is Japan coming to? It's as bad here as in the States."
"And if I'm not in my room," Canning said, "they'll know that I didn't go out the front door. And they'll know I couldn't have climbed out onto the window ledge with two heavy suitcases. So the first place they'll look is in here."
She clapped her hands. "Marvelous!"
"What's marvelous?"
"Your magnificent exhibition of deductive reasoning," she said brightly. She gave him a big, very pretty smile.
He felt as if he had stepped into a whirlwind. He didn't quite know how to deal with her, and he couldn't understand why McAlister had put him in the hands of a woman, any woman, and especially this woman. "Look, Miss Tanaka, when these men don't find me next door, they'll simply come over here. They'll find me here. And they'll shoot me."
"Ah, I have confidence in you," she said. "You're much too fast on the draw for them." She rubbed her stomach where he'd held the gun on her.
"Miss Tanaka—"
"They won't shoot you," she said. "Because you won't be here." She turned and walked toward what he thought was the bathroom door. Over her shoulder she said, "Come along."
"Where to?"
"You'll see."
He followed her out of the bedroom onto a narrow railed deck that overlooked the first-floor living room of a two-floor suite. A bathroom and another bedroom opened onto the deck, and a carpeted spiral staircase wound down to one corner of the living room. A huge crystal chandelier hung from the roof of the gallery.
Downstairs, she turned to him and said, "They will not be expecting you to enter a room on one floor and immediately come out of a room on the floor below."
"I believe you've got something," he said.
"Charm," she said.
"Excuse me?"
"Come along."
At the front door of the suite, she reached for the brass knob, then let go of it, turned, and put her back to the door. She held one finger beside her lips. "Sssshh!"
He put down his suitcases and listened to the voices in the hotel corridor.
"Don't go for your gun," she said, grinning at him. "It's just the bellhop moving new guests into the room across the hall. Killing them might be exciting, but it would accomplish nothing." She closed her eyes and listened to the voices beyond the door.
He was standing no more than two feet away from her, and he did not close his eyes. For the first time since he'd seen her upstairs, he had an opportunity to study her face, to look beyond the hair-line scar on her upper lip and the beauty mark on her left cheek. Her forehead was broad and seamless. Her eyebrows were two natural black crescents, and her eyes were deeply set for an oriental face. She had a pert nose, very straight along the bridge, delicate nostrils; and her breathing was as quiet as the flight of a moth. With her high perfect cheekbones, aristocratic haughtiness, and shockingly ripe mouth, she might have been one of those high-priced fashion models who periodically took Manhattan, Paris, and London by storm. Her flawless complexion was the shade of aged book paper, and the sight of it somehow made him feel all warm and loose inside.
And what of the body that went with a face like that? he thought.
He looked down at the rest of her. But she was wearing a long belted trenchcoat that concealed everything except the crudely defined thrust of her breasts and the tininess of her waist. When he looked up again, he found that she was watching him.
Her eyes were large and clear. The irises were as black as her hair. They fixed on his eyes and seemed to bore straight through him, pinning him like an insect to a velvet specimen tray.
He blinked.
She didn't blink.
Suddenly his heart was beating so hard that he could hear it. His mouth was dry. He wanted to sit down somewhere with a drink and knit his nerves together again.
"Now," she said.
"Now what?"
"Time to go."
"Oh," he said quickly.
She turned away from him and opened the door. She leaned out, looked left and right, then went into the hall.
Picking up his suitcases, he followed her. He waited while she locked the suite, and then he trailed her down the corridor and through a brightly marked door into a concrete stairwell.
"We don't want to go out through the lobby," she said. "They think you're in your room, and they won't be expecting you down there—but one of them might be lurking about just the same. I have a rented car parked near the hotel's side entrance."
Their footsteps echoed flatly off the concrete walls.
At every landing Canning expected to see a man with a gun. But there was no one on the stairs.
Once he had to call to stop to catch his breath. His shoulders ached from the weight of the bags; he rubbed the back of his neck and wished he were sitting in a hot bath.
"Would you like me to take one of those?" she asked, pointing at the suitcases.
"No, thank you."
"I'm stronger than I look."
"That's what McAlister told me."
She grinned again. She had fine, brilliantly white teeth. "What else did he say about me?"
"Well, he said that the scar on your upper lip came from a fight you were in."
"Oh? A fight?"
"Some mean bastard carved you with a broken bottle."
Laughing lightly, she turned and went down the stairs, two at a time. She was almost skipping.
He plodded.
Outside, she helped him put his suitcases in a sparkling white Subaru, then went around and got in behind the wheel. When she drove away from the curb, the tires smoked and squealed, and Canning was pressed back into his seat.
He turned around and looked out the rear window. But it was soon evident that they had not been spotted and followed by any of The Committee's agents.
"Where are we going?" he asked, facing front again.
"Hotel New Otani."
"Where's that?"
"Not far."
To Canning's way of thinking, even one block was too far. The frenzied Tokyo traffic was not like anything he had seen before—or like anything he wanted to see again. There did not appear to be any formal lanes along which traffic could flow in an orderly manner; instead, strings of automobiles and trucks and buses crisscrossed one another, weaved and tangled with insane complexity. And the motorbikes, of course, zipped in and out between the larger vehicles, as if their operators had never been told about
pain and death.
Initially, Canning felt that Lee Ann Tanaka drove like a certifiable maniac. She swung from one informal "lane" of cars into another without looking to see what was coming up behind her; and other cars' brakes barked sharply in her wake. Repeatedly, she stopped so suddenly and forcefully that Canning felt as if he were being cut in half by his seatbelt. She accelerated when there was absolutely nowhere to go, somehow squeezed in between trucks and buses that appeared to be riding bumper-to-bumper, gave a score of pedestrians intimations of mortality, and used the car's horn as if she thought this was New Year's Eve.
Gradually, however, Canning realized that she knew precisely what she was doing. She smiled continually. She did not appear to be frightened by the dozens of near-collisions—as if she knew from experience the difference between destruction and a millimeter. Evidently she was as at home in the streets of Tokyo as he was in his own living room.
He said, "How long does it take to become a carefree driver in this traffic?"
She shrugged. "I don't know."
"Well, how long have you been driving here?"
"Since the day before yesterday."
"Oh, sure."
She glanced sideways at him. "I'm an American," she said somewhat sharply. "I was born and raised an American. I'm as American as you are. I was never in Japan in my life—until the day before yesterday."
"Oh, God," he said miserably.
"I flew in from San Francisco. Took a written test and an eye exam at the licensing bureau's airport office. Rented this car and been winging it ever since." As she spoke she swerved out of her lane, cut off a city bus and beat it through the intersection under a changing light.
"I thought you'd driven here all your life."
She cornered hard, nearly running down several pedestrians who had edged out from the sidewalk. "Thanks for the compliment! It's really not as awful as it looks from the passenger's seat."
"I'll bet."
"The only time it gets hairy is around nine in the morning and five in the afternoon. Just like in any American city. And you know what the Japanese call the peak traffic hours?"
"I couldn't guess."
"Rushawa."
"Rush hour?"
She spelled it for him, switching lanes twice between the first and the final letters.
He smiled appreciatively. "But since you haven't driven here all your life—do you think you could slow down?"
She whipped the car to the right, stood on the brakes, stopped the car on a hundred-yen coin, and switched off the engine.
Lifting his head from his knees, Canning said, "Jesus! I only asked you to slow down—"
"We're here," she said brightly.
"What?"
"The Hotel New Otani."
Dazed, he glanced up just as the uniformed doorman opened the door of the Subaru. The man leaned in, smiled at Canning, offered a hand to help him out of the low-slung little car, and said, "Konnichiwa, sir!"
Afternoon, yes, Canning thought. But was it good? And could it be the same afternoon that he had got off a plane from Honolulu? So much seemed to have happened in the frenetic company of Miss Tanaka. Days seemed to have passed. "Konnichiwa yourself," he said.
As they followed the doorman and Canning's luggage into the hotel, Lee Ann took his arm and said, "We don't have to register. I've done that already. We're traveling as Mr. and Mrs. J. Okrow. I figure that once The Committee's agents know they've lost you at the Imperial, they'll start checking other hotels —but not for married couples. And if they manage to get their hands on the hotel register—well, the name Okrow sounds Western to the Japanese desk clerk at the Otani, but it probably will sound Japanese to most Westerners."
"It does to me."
"You see!"
"You think of everything," he said, genuine admiration in his voice.
"I try to," she said, beaming up at him and squeezing his arm in a fine imitation of wifely pleasure and devotion."
The room she had booked for them was attractive and spacious. Two double beds dressed in white chenille and boasting dark caned headboards were set against one wall. A matching caned nightstand stood between the beds and held a twin-necked lamp, a telephone, and menus from the hotel's restaurants. On the other side of the room, there was a combination desk-dresser with a wall mirror above it. There was also a color television set on its own wheeled cart. Two Danish-style armchairs stood on opposite sides of a small round coffee table. The wallpaper was pebble-textured and cream-colored, except for the wall opposite the windows: that was decorated with an abstract brown and green and white mural of mountains and bamboo fields. In the bathroom—with separate tub and shower stall, sun lamps, and bidet—there was a full bottle of whiskey and another of vodka standing on the makeup counter. A small refrigerator hummed to itself in the niche under the sink, and it was stocked with a variety of soft drinks.
Taking off his jacket, Canning said, "You must think I'm a real boozer."
"I like to drink, myself."
"The agency never bought me whiskey before."
"You haven't been playing it right." She sat down in one of the armchairs and folded her hands in her lap. "You like the room?"
Hanging his jacket in the foyer closet, Canning said, "Well, it isn't as nice as the George V in Paris or the Sherry-Netherland in New York. But I suppose it'll do."
She was looking quite pleased with herself. "We've got to spend the next sixteen or seventeen hours in here. Can't take a chance of going out to dinner or breakfast and being spotted by your friends from the Imperial. We'll have food sent up. So ... If we're going to be imprisoned, we might as well have all the comforts."
He sat down in the other armchair. "We're going to Peking in a French jet?"
"That's right."
"Tell me about it?"
"Didn't Bob McAlister tell you about it?"
"He said you would."
She said, "It belongs to Jean-Paul Freneau, a very classy art dealer who has headquarters in Paris and branch offices throughout the world. He deals in paintings, sculpture, primitive art—everything. He's a valued friend of the Chairman."
Canning made a face. "Why would the Chairman maintain a close friendship with a rich, capitalistic French art dealer?"
Lee Ann had the rare habit of looking directly at whomever she was talking to, and now her black eyes locked on Canning's. A shiver went through him as she spoke. "For one thing, now that China is at last moving into the world marketplace, she needs contacts with Western businessmen she feels she can trust. Freneau has helped to arrange large contacts for the delivery of Chinese handicrafts to the Common Market countries. More importantly, Freneau has helped the Chairman to buy back some of the priceless Chinese art taken out of the country by followers of Chiang Kai-shek in 1949. Every time some wealthy Nationalist puts a piece or a collection on the market, Freneau is there with the highest bid. He's the agent for Red China in its attempt to keep the Chinese heritage from being spread throughout the private collections of the West."
"And why is Freneau so willing to cooperate with the CIA?"
"He isn't," she said. "He's cooperating with Bob McAlister. They've been friends for years."
"When do we leave?"
"Tomorrow morning at nine."
He thought for a moment. Then: "I guess the only other thing is the list of names. The three agents we have in China."
"You really want me to go through that now?"
He sighed. "No. I guess tomorrow on the plane is soon enough. But I do want to know about you."
She raised her eyebrows. "Oh?"
"You're a surprise."
"How?"
"When McAlister described Tanaka . . . Well, I didn't think . . ."
Her lovely face clouded. "What are you trying to say? That you don't like working with someone who isn't a nice lily-white WASP?"
"What?" He was surprised by the bitterness in her voice.
"I am as American as you are," she said sharply.
/> "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. It isn't your ethnic background that bothers me. I just wasn't expecting a woman."
Gradually her face unclouded. "That's exactly Bob McAlister's sense of humor."
"So tell me about yourself."
"If we're going to sit here and jabber much longer, I want a drink." She stood up and took off her trench-coat. She was wearing a red silk blouse and a long black skirt, and she looked better than any woman he had ever seen. "Can I get you something?"
"Whatever you're having," he said.
She came back from the bathroom a few minutes later and handed him his glass. "Vodka and orange soft drink."
He clinked glasses with her in a wordless toast. After he had taken a good swallow of the concoction, he said, "Once in the car and then again just a few minutes ago, you got very hot under the collar when you thought I was questioning your Americanism. Why so sensitive?"
Hesitating for a moment, pausing to sip her drink she finally said, "I'm sorry. It's a problem I have, a psychological problem I understand but can't lick." She took another drink. She seemed unwilling to say anything more, then suddenly explained it with a rush of words that came almost too fast to be intelligible: "My mother was Japanese-American, and my father was half Japanese and half Chinese. He owned a small shop in San Francisco's Chinatown. In 1942, about the middle of May, they were taken from their home and put in a concentration camp. You must know about the camps where Japanese-Americans were kept during World War Two. They called them 'assembly centers' but they were concentration camps, all right Barbed wire, armed guards, machine-gun posts guarding them . . . They spent more than three years in the camp. When they got out, after V-J Day, they found my father's store had been stripped of merchandise and rented to someone else. He received no compensation. They had also been evicted from their home and lost their personal possessions. They had to start all over again. And it wasn't easy—because banks and businessmen just weren't in the mood to help any Japanese-Americans."
Leaning forward in his chair, Canning said, "But you aren't old enough to have lived through that."
"I'm twenty-nine," she said, her eyes never wavering from his. There was a thread of fear woven through those black irises now. "I wasn't born until well after the war. That's true. But I was raised in an emotionally torn hoursehold. My parents were quietly proud of their Asian ancestry, but after their ordeal in the camp they were anxious to prove themselves 'native' Americans. They became over-Americanized after that. They even stopped writing to relatives in the Old World. They taught me Chinese and Japanese in the privacy of our home, but they forbid me to speak it outside the home. I was to speak only English when I was out of their company. I was twenty-four before anyone but my mother and father knew I was multilingual. And now I seem to have this need to prove how American I am." She smiled. "About the only good thing to come of it is a very American drive to achieve, achieve, achieve."