He unclipped her bra and pulled it off. Her nipples stood out from her flat muscular chest. As he rolled her back she had somehow managed to get his jeans undone.
‘Stop,’ she commanded.
He propped himself up on one hand. ‘What?’
‘Take your socks off, you goddamn Brit. At once!’
He laughed. ‘OK, OK!’
It proved difficult with his legs pointing up in the air as the jet soared into the blue.
The front door swung open. Stafford was on the other side.
‘Oh – hello,’ said Jim.
‘Afternoon, sir.’ He nodded. ‘Afternoon, General.’
Jane smiled. ‘Colonel,’ she said.
‘Colonel?’ enquired Jim, turning back.
‘I’ve been busted down. How else do you think I can get out and about?’
Jim’s concern showed on his face.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, smiling. ‘I asked for the demotion. It was either that or a permanent desk job.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Stafford, ‘but you have a visitor.’
‘Visitor?’ said Jim, his happy bubble popping.
‘From Japan.’
‘The professor?’ he exploded. ‘You are joking?’
‘Going back to school?’ asked Jane, innocently.
Jim groaned. ‘It’s a long story I was saving for later.’
‘Sounds interesting,’ she said, following him.
‘Well, actually, now you come to mention it, it is.’ He laughed.
Akira got up as they entered.
Jim noticed Stafford had had the window replaced. That was quick, he thought. ‘Professor,’ he greeted him, smiling as best he could. Akira bowed. Jim shook his short hand. He could feel the man’s tension. ‘This is my girlfriend, Jane.’ She bowed and Akira reciprocated. ‘How can I help you?’ He threw himself onto the sofa.
‘I want you to sell me the objects.’
‘OK, sit down,’ said Jim. ‘No funny games this time, eh?’
‘No,’ said Akira, perching uncomfortably on the edge of his seat.
Jane sat on the sofa arm.
‘First I must apologise for my previous actions. I do not know what devil entered me.’
‘What did he do?’ asked Jane.
Akira squirmed a little.
‘Nothing really,’ said Jim. ‘Just tried to chop my head off.’
Jane looked at Akira, who wasn’t making any attempt to contradict what Jim had said. She seemed perplexed. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘That’s fine, then.’
‘It’s all right, Professor,’ said Jim. ‘I don’t hold grudges.’ He flexed his shoulders as if that might not be totally the case. ‘Anyway, I accept your apology.’
‘Thank you,’ said Akira. ‘I would like to make you an offer for the objects.’
‘Go ahead.’
Jane threw a glance at Stafford, who stood by the door with a tray in his hand and a white cloth on it. There was a pistol under the cloth – she could tell even at that oblique angle. She stiffened and stood up.
‘It’s hard for me to know what to pay,’ said Akira. ‘What would you suggest?’
‘Make me an offer and we’ll go from there.’
‘As you know, they are very precious.’ He put the fingers of his long arm to his lips. ‘A hundred mirrion dorrars.’
‘A hundred billion dollars,’ replied Jim pretending to mishear. ‘OK, I’ll accept a hundred billion.’
‘No, no, no,’ said Akira, his eyes bulging. ‘Mirrion not birrion.’
‘A hundred million,’ said Jim, laughing. ‘That’s like a nice Van Gogh, right? A hundred million is peanuts.’
Jane was giving him a questioning look.
Akira closed his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, opening them, ‘but I cannot negotiate these kinds of vast sums. I simply do not have the authority.’ He suddenly looked desperately sad.
Jim felt a bit sorry for him. ‘What do you think they’re actually worth?’
‘The regalia are beyond price,’ sighed Akira.
‘Are you talking about the Japanese regalia?’ asked Jane.
Jim nodded.
She seemed confused.
Jim jumped up. ‘Let’s ask Mr Google,’ he said, striding to his desk. He opened a browser. ‘What is the value of the British Crown Jewels?’ he typed. ‘The British Crown Jewels are worth thirteen billion pounds, apparently.’
‘What’s the Mona Lisa worth?’ asked Jane.
Jim typed. ‘Wow – only a billion. Anybody got any other comparisons?’ he asked. ‘It says here that the Emperor’s palace was worth seven trillion dollars in 1989, more than all the real estate in California. So if his house is worth that, how much for his Crown Jewels?’
‘The Japanese Crown Jewels,’ said Jane. ‘What’s this all about?’
Akira stood up. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry, I understand you are angry with me and I do not wish to make things worse. Can I suggest a plan?’
‘Why not?’ Jim said, grinning.
‘I will bring a small group of experts to examine the objects.’
‘Wait a minute,’ said Jim.
‘No, no, no, please,’ protested Akira. ‘They will examine the objects on your terms. They will then advise others on any offer. Then it will be for you to make arrangements with the correct authority as to what price is fair and reasonable. Does this seem possible to you?’
Jim shrugged. ‘Yeah, sounds fine.’
Akira bowed. ‘Then it is agreed.’
Jim nodded. ‘Yes.’ He waved a finger at the professor. ‘But no more tricks.’
Akira bowed again. ‘No more tricks.’
Jim glanced at the window. ‘Oh, shit! It’s low tide and what a beauty! It must be full moon.’ The stony foreshore now fell nearly twenty feet to the neap tide line. ‘Come on,’ he said to Jane and Akira. ‘Let’s take a look before the tide turns.’ He went to the window, opened it and raised his foot over the sill. ‘Come on, Professor, let’s see if we can find some more treasure.’
Jane came down the twelve steps after him in three easy movements.
Jim breathed in the muddy scent of the Thames. He loved the dank clay odour. He trudged to the waterline across the shingle that clattered under his feet. He gazed back at the row of Victorian and eighteenth-century warehouses that fronted the river. It seemed to him that he was looking into another era, as if time had moved at a different pace on the steeply sloping foreshore, leaving it as a gateway to another age.
He could almost hear the sounds of the past, the barked messages and greetings along the once frenetic riverbank. The Thames had been a heaving thoroughfare. For most of the city’s life, the river had been the key artery by which people had preferred to travel, rather than braving the smelly, polluted and crime-ridden streets. Now it was placid and empty, with only the occasional boat travelling on it. Like a deserted Roman road buried in a field, an empire had fallen and its broadways had been forgotten.
Akira struggled down onto the beach and walked towards them.
‘Look here,’ said Jim, as he arrived. ‘See where the stones stop and the mud starts? This is where the metal is dropped by the tide. You look here for things – along this line.’
Akira bent down to pluck out a fragment that flashed silver. He pulled and a glistening black and silver chain snaked out of the mud. ‘Like this?’ he said.
Jim looked into his blank but nonetheless questioning eyes. ‘Let me see.’ He was amazed at Akira’s instant success. He took and examined the watch-chain. It was made of links meshed together in a tightly interwoven cord. ‘I’ve never found anything this good in the hundred times I’ve been down here,’ he marvelled.
‘Then keep it,’ said Akira, ‘as a token of goodwill.’
‘No,’ said Jim. ‘I couldn’t. It’s special. You found it so it’s yours.’
Akira bowed.
Jim smiled. ‘Let’s see if you can find anything else.’
Akira turned and bent down. Jim caught a
glimpse of something else silver on the ground.
Akira picked it up and offered it. It was a bottle cap. ‘I’m afraid my luck has ended.’
‘Oh!’ squealed Jane, from ten yards away. ‘Now that’s more like it.’ She held up a gold-red tube. It was a wartime .303 round. She spotted a scatter of red laser light at the professor’s feet and looked up at Jim’s apartment: a top-floor window was open. She shook her head. ‘We’ve really got to have a talk with Stafford.’
32
Kim looked out over Tokyo from the fifty-fourth floor. On a clear day the view to Mount Fuji was breathtaking but it had been a long time since anything had lifted his jaded mood. He had thrown up many such great blocks by the power of his will. He built what he liked because no one dared stop him. He built with the huge debt he was allowed.
He owed his banks so much money that only by constructing newer buildings, bigger and higher, could he justify his empire having the assets necessary to cover its giant liabilities. Like a staggering man about to fall, he had to run headlong to stay upright. Without forward momentum he would come crashing to the ground.
Money was a fiction, an illusion built on confidence. They saw his towers and could not value them, so everyone was happy when he told them he was easily able to continue to pay what was due. Yet they all knew that it was only the negligible interest rates in Japan that let the fiction roll on.
If they had to be sold, Kim’s assets could not cover his mountains of debt. His ten billion dollars of loans were secured by no more than five billion dollars of property, if he was forced to sell them in the depressed market that had dragged on in Japan for more than two decades. Once he had been a mighty billionaire, but the grinding deflation of the last generation had ground once stratospheric property values back to earth. Yet the debt stayed, and all that kept it serviced was yet more borrowing. He was now a minus billionaire, living like a king off the vast loans that piled ever higher.
If he could lay his hands on the regalia, he could pay everything off in one transaction.
The lights of the buildings lit the heavy clouds, and the rain shone as it fell. He stared out over the vast city.
Tokyo was built inside the crater of a giant active volcano. Mount Fuji was merely a pimple on the rim of a huge, festering boil. One day it would explode and everyone would die. The skies would fill with ash and the world would fall into a decade of never ending winter. Civilization would wilt and humanity shrink back to a level not seen for a thousand years. Sometimes he wished it would happen in front of him and end his predicament in a disaster so great his calumny would be drowned in its overwhelming monstrosity. Now he had a different hope.
He turned to his desk and poured sake into a tall glass. He took a net on a short stick and fished in a bowl, catching an almost transparent prawn. He flicked the prawn into the glass of sake. He lifted the glass and watched the creature twist and turn. He wondered what it felt. He wondered if it thought and, if so, what it was thinking. Was it in agony? He could see its black eyes twisting, the blood that pulsated through its delicate veins into its brain. Man could not even dream of creating such a complicated and refined thing. He tilted his head back and poured the contents of the glass into his mouth. The prawn struggled as he bit on it with a crunch.
The sharpness of the sake contrasted nicely with the slight oiliness of the flesh. The living always tasted so much finer than the dead.
33
The cab drew up and the driver lowered his window to look out at the shop’s sign. ‘Here we are, gents, Karate Arigato.’
The cab was made for five people but the five Japanese men barely fitted.
‘Please wait,’ said the big guy on the kerbside jump seat.
‘Sure, guv’nor,’ said the cabbie. There was forty pounds on the cab’s clock, and the prospect of another forty or fifty for the drive back was music to his ears. ‘I’ll happily wait here for you rather than go back to central London empty.’
The Japanese grunted, taking it for granted that the cabbie had agreed in the affirmative.
Karate Arigato survived mainly on its mail-order business to martial artists, fans and fantasists. It was at the end of a row of scrappy shops set on a main road heading out of town towards Walthamstow in the far north-east of London. In the window there was a picture of Fred, the owner, advertising karate lessons. Fred taught kids karate at night and ran the shop in the daytime. He had been a pretty good fighter when he was young but now his hips and knees were blown. Perhaps thirty years ago, before huge shopping malls and parking restrictions were invented, the row of shops would have been bustling, but now they were barely visited, clinging precariously to commercial existence.
Fred didn’t notice five large Japanese get out of a black cab in front of the shop. He was busy listening to the radio and reading the newspaper at the same time. This meant that neither the news nor the discussion on the radio made much sense to him. However, the activity passed the time. It was a pleasant surprise when the buzzer on the door went as it opened. He stood up to see five burly Japanese men walk in. They seemed rather too big for both their suits and his shop.
They were soon admiring his samurai swords. Swords had been illegal for a few years now but no one had bothered him. It wasn’t clear which were or weren’t banned. His swords weren’t sharp and they were handmade. Fred reckoned that made them legal, but he was glad he hadn’t been challenged by the authorities. The swords were just for decoration, he reckoned, to be hung on the walls of those, like him, who admired martial arts.
The only people who normally cared about his throwing stars, cod warlock broadswords and num-chucks were his fun-loving clientele. Through the door to the back of the shop there was a pile of packing material to send this paraphernalia on its way to the bedroom samurai and closet Wiccans who collectively kept the financial wolf from his door. Some of his gear might look a bit wicked but no one ever did any harm with it.
The Japanese smiled a lot and bought themselves a sword each. It was nice to have a till full of fresh fifty pound notes. They bought sharpening stones too.
‘Sayonara,’ said Fred, as they left.
34
Jim had one hand in his jacket pocket. He was gazing into Jane’s eyes across the table. She looked completely wonderful in her little black dress. She was absolutely perfect. ‘How was your pudding?’ he asked.
‘Just great! I loved the way they blew it up in the saucepan.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘it was magic.’ He smiled broadly. ‘I’ve got a question for you,’ he said, gripping the object in his pocket.
‘What’s that?’ She glanced away as someone at the next table stood up. She looked back at him and smiled distantly.
He took the box from his pocket and opened it. ‘I wondered if you’d marry me.’ He held out the box. The diamond in the solitaire was about the size of an American quarter.
She hesitated. She picked the box up and examined the canary yellow stone. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not ready.’
Jim closed his eyes and sat back. He dropped his head.
‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘it’s very sweet of you.’
‘Put the ring on and think about it.’
She took it out of the box and put it on. It was loose on her finger. The giant stone flashed and twinkled.
The head waiter was trying to catch Jim’s eye. Jim shook his head: now was not the time to bring in the string quartet.
‘It looks ridiculous,’ said Jane, eyeing the huge sparkling rock. ‘It’s great but it doesn’t look right on me.’ She slipped it off, pushed it back into the box and closed the lid with a snap. She peered at Jim as if she was a naughty little girl. ‘Jim, do I look like someone ready to get married?’
‘What are you waiting for? Someone better to come along?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Just a better time. I’m just not finished yet.’
‘Finished? What’s not finished? You mean maybe you’ve not finished yourself off yet?’
> ‘Come on – let’s not spoil the evening.’
‘Hold on,’ he said, ‘you told me you’re not ready yet.’ He held his hand up. ‘OK, so this is not a negotiation. I said, “Will you?” and you said, “No.” That’s right, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, that’s right. Not now.’ She took his hand across the table. ‘You mean a lot to me, you really do…’
‘But?’
‘But however much I think of you, I love what I do more.’ She squeezed his fingers. ‘I just haven’t had enough of what I do. I don’t want to give it up, not for anything, not even for you.’
Jim looked grim. ‘How long will it be before you want something more?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t make any promises. It doesn’t have to come between us.’
‘No, I suppose not.’ Jim looked over his shoulder. The musicians who had briefly filled the doorway were making their way out again with their instruments, ushered by the head waiter.
Jane was watching them. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Let me ask you something.’
‘What?’
‘Will you stick around for me?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
She was pushing the box back to him. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘I’d like that very much.’
He put it back in his pocket.
‘Can I ask you something else?’ she said.
‘Go ahead.’
‘How much was that ring?’
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘No, you’re probably right.’
35
The chief priest of the Shinto shrine sat cross-legged on the floor. Behind him four priests stood by drums they were beating in a set of interlocking rhythms.
He read the scroll again. The calligraphy was the work of the high priest of the Ise Shrine.
A lost mirror
Reflections from the deep sea
Now are seen again
He laid the parchment in the urn of glowing charcoal, the heat bathing his hand. He watched the cylinder of paper first crease, then smoke. A flame licked up around it, rose up the sides and began to dance. He fanned his face. He closed his eyes and fell into meditation. He knew that the Yata no Kagami was a myth, as was the sword Kusanagi, which his temple guarded. It had been his first act when he had been elevated to check the package for the sacred item. He had retraced the same path as his predecessors, their careful study a tortured path he had followed years after them. Every fold had its many fathers and they, too, had found nothing inside the package but a thin gold bar to weigh down the box and a sheet of paper with a letter written in archaic script. He had held the letter and tried to read it but the writing was faint and indecipherable. He had closed the package and refolded the paper, as had his predecessors, and sealed it with his own seal as they had done in their time. Like the generations of chief priests before him, he had been left to ponder its meaning. It was a profound journey that only a few had been privileged to experience over those many centuries.
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