Dragon dp-10 Page 19

  “Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles are the ports where the Murmoto auto carriers dock.”

  Pitt went silent as Stacy worked up his legs, combining shiatsu with Swedish kneading methods. She massaged his arms, back, and neck. Then she lightly slapped him on the buttocks and ordered him to turn over, but there was no response.

  Pitt was dead asleep.

  Sometime during the early morning hours he came awake, feeling her body wildly entangled with his. The movements, the sensations, the soft cries of Stacy’s voice, came through the mist of exhaustion like a dream. He felt as though he was soaring through a thunder and lightning storm before it all faded and he plunged into the black void of deep sleep again.

  “Surprise, sleepyhead,” said Congresswoman Loren Smith, trailing a finger down Pitt’s back.

  Pin’s mind brushed away the cobwebs as he rolled onto his side and looked up at her. She was sitting cross-legged in bare feet on the empty side of the bed wearing a flowered cotton knit top with a crew neckline and sage-green sailcloth pants with pleats. Her hair was tied back with a large scarf.

  Then suddenly he remembered and shot an apprehensive look at the opposite side of the bed. To his lasting relief, it was empty.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be doing wondrous deeds in Congress?” he asked, secretly pleased Stacy had left before Loren arrived.

  “We’re in recess.” She held a cup of coffee out of his reach, tempting him.

  “What do I have to do for the coffee?”

  “Cost you a kiss.”

  “That’s pretty expensive, but I’m desperate.”

  “And an explanation.”

  Here it comes, he thought, quickly focusing his thoughts. “Concerning what?”

  “Not what but who. You know, the woman you spent the night with.”

  “What woman was that?” he asked with practiced innocence.

  “The one who slept in this bed last night.”

  “You see another woman around here?”

  “I don’t have to see her,” said Loren, taking great delight in teasing him. “I can smell her.”

  “Would you believe it was my masseuse’

  She leaned down and gave him a long kiss. When she finally pulled back, she handed him the coffee and said, “Not bad. I’ll give you an A for creativity.”

  “I was conned,” he said, hoping to change the flow of the conversation. “This cup is only half full.”

  “You didn’t want me to spill it all over your blankets, did you?” She laughed as if actually enjoying Pitt’s indiscretion. “Drag your great hairy bod out of bed and wash off that perfume. Not a bad odor, I admit. Rather expensive. I’ll start breakfast.”

  Loren was standing at the counter slicing the grapefruit as Pitt came out of the shower for the second time in eight hours. He wrapped a towel around his hips, stepped up behind her, and circled his arms around her waist. He nuzzled her neck.

  “Long time, no see. How did you ever get along without me for so long?”

  “I buried myself in legislation and forgot all about you.”

  “You didn’t find time to play?”

  “I was a good girl. Not that I’d have been bad if given half the chance, especially if I knew you weren’t wasting any time since coming home.”

  Loren bore up quite well, Pitt thought. There was only a slight flush of jealous anger. But she knew better than to crowd the issue. Pitt was not the only man in her life. Neither dictated to the other or displayed undue jealousy, situations that made their affair all the more desirable.

  As he nibbled her earlobe, she turned and put her arms around his neck. “Jim Sandecker told me about the destruction of your project, and how you barely escaped.”

  “That’s supposed to be secret,” he said as they brushed noses.

  “Congresswomen do have privileges.”

  “You can have privileges with me any time.”

  Her eyes turned dark. “Seriously, I’m sorry the facility was lost.”

  “We’ll build another.” He smiled down at her. “The results of all our tests were saved. That’s what counts.”

  “Jim said you came within seconds of dying.”

  Pitt grinned. “Water under the bridge, as they say.” He released her and sat down at the table. It seemed just another Sunday morning domestic scene between a comfortably married man and his wife, yet neither Loren nor Dirk had ever been married.

  He picked up a newspaper she’d bought along with the groceries and scanned the stories. His eyes stopped at one article, and after scanning its contents he looked up.

  “I see you made the Post again,” he said, grinning. “Getting nasty with our friends in the Orient, are we?”

  Loren expertly flipped an omelet onto a dish. “Ownership of a third of our businesses has been transferred to Tokyo. And with it went our prosperity and independence as a nation. America no longer belongs to Americans. We’ve become a financial colony of Japan.”

  “That bad?”

  “The public has no idea how bad,” said Loren, setting the omelet and a plate of toast in front of Pitt. “Our huge deficits have created an open door for our economy to flow out and Japanese money to rush in.”

  “We have only ourselves to blame,” he said, waving a fork. “They underconsume, we overconsume, burying ourselves deeper in debt. We gave away or sold out our lead in whatever technology that wasn’t stolen. And we stand in line with open pocketbooks and tongues hanging in greedy anticipation to sell them our corporations and real estate to make a fast buck. Face the facts, Loren, none of this could have happened if the public, the business community, you people in Congress, and the economic cretins in the White House had realized this country was engaged in a no-quarter financial war against an enemy who looks upon us as inferior. As it stands, we’ve thrown away any chance of winning.”

  Loren sat down with a cup of coffee and passed Pitt a glass of orange juice. “That’s the longest speech I’ve ever heard you give. You thought of running for the Senate?”

  “I’d rather have my toenails torn out. Besides, one Pitt on Capitol Hill is enough,” he said, referring to his father, Senator George Pitt of California.

  “Have you seen the senator?”

  “Not yet,” Pitt said, taking a bite of egg. “I haven’t had a chance.”

  “What are your plans?” Loren asked, staring wistfully into Pitt’s opaline green eyes.

  “I’m going to putter on the cars and take it easy for the next couple of days. Maybe if I can tune up the Stutz in time, I’ll enter it in the classic car races.”

  “I can think of something more fun than getting greasy,” she said, her voice throaty.

  She came around the table, reached down and took a surprisingly strong grip of his arm. He could feel desire flowing from her like nectar, and suddenly he wanted her more than he ever had before. He only hoped he was up to a second round. Then as if drawn by a magnet, he allowed himself to be pulled to the couch.

  “Not in the bed,” she said huskily. “Not until you change the sheets.”

  27

  HIDEKI SUMA STEPPED out of his private Murmoto tilt-rotor executive jet followed by Moro Kamatori. The aircraft had landed at a heliport beside a huge solar plastic dome that rose fifty meters into the sky. Centered in a densely landscaped park, the dome covered a vast atrium that comprised the inner core of a subterranean project called “Edo” after the city renamed Tokyo during the Meiji Restoration in 1868.

  The first unit of Japan’s new underground frontier, Edo, City was designed and built by Suma as a scientific research and think-tank community that supported 60,000 people. Shaped like a great cylinder around the atrium, the twenty-story circular complex contained living quarters for the scientific community, offices, public baths, convention halls, restaurants, a shopping mall, library, and its own thousand-man security force.

  Smaller underground cylinders connected by tunnels to the main core held the communications equipment, heating and cooli
ng systems, temperature and humidity controls, electrical power plants, and waste processing machinery. The elaborate structures were constructed of ceramic concrete and reached 1500 meters deep in the volcanic rock.

  Soma funded the project himself without any government involvement. Any laws or restrictions that hindered construction were quickly resolved by the enormous power wielded by Soma’s corporate and underworld tentacles.

  He and Kamatori boarded a concealed elevator that took them to a suite of his corporate offices covering the entire fourth floor of the outer cylinder. His secretary, Toshie Kudo, stood waiting as the doors opened to his heavily guarded private office and apartment. The spacious three-tiered rooms were decorated with delicately painted screens and murals and showcases of beautiful ceramics and sixteenth-century robes of ornately woven brocades, satins, and crepe. Paintings of land and seascapes covered most of the walls, some depicting dragons, leopards, tigers, and hawks that represented the martial prowess of the warrior class.

  “Mr. Ashikaga Enshu is waiting,” announced Toshie.

  “I don’t recall the name.”

  “Mr. Enshu is an investigator who specializes in hunting down rare art and negotiating its sale for his clients,” explained Toshie. “He called and said he’d discovered a painting that fits your collection. I took the liberty of setting an appointment for him to display it for your approval.”

  “I have little time,” said Suma, glancing at his watch.

  Kamatori shrugged. “Won’t hurt to see what he’s brought you, Hideki. Maybe he’s found the painting you’ve been looking for.”

  He nodded at Toshie. “All right, please send him in.”

  Soma bowed as the art dealer stepped into the room. “You have a new acquisition for my collection, Mr. Enshu?”

  “Yes, I hope so, one that I believe you will be most happy I was able to find for you.” Ashikaga smiled warmly beneath a perfect mane of silver hair, heavy eyebrows, and full mustache.

  “Please set it on the stand in the light,” said Suma, pointing at an easel in front of a large window.

  “May I draw the blinds open a little more’?”

  “Please do so.”

  Enshu pulled the draw lines to the slatted blinds. Then he set the painting on the easel but kept it covered by a silk cloth. “From the sixteenth-century Kano school, a Masaki Shimzu.”

  “The revered seascape artist,” said Kamatori, displaying a rare hint of excitement. “One of your favorites, Hideki.”

  “You know I am a devotee of Shimzu?” Suma asked Enshu.

  “A well-known fact in art circles that you collect his work, especially the paintings he made of our surrounding islands.”

  Suma turned to Toshie. “How many of his pieces do I have in my collection?”

  “You presently own eleven out of the thirteen island seascapes and four of his landscape paintings of the Hida Mountains.”

  “And this new one would make twelve in the island set.”

  “Yes.”

  “What Shimzu island painting have you brought me?” Suma asked Enshu expectantly. “Ajima?”

  “No, Kechi.”

  Suma looked visibly disappointed. “I had hoped it might be Ajima.”

  “I’m sorry.” Enshu held out his hands in a defeatist gesture. “The Ajima was sadly lost during the fall of Germany. It was last seen hanging in the office of the ambassador in our Berlin embassy in May of nineteen forty-five.”

  “I will gladly pay you to keep up the search.”

  “Thank you,” said Enshu, bowing. “I already have investigators in Europe and the United States trying to locate it.”

  “Good, now let’s have the unveiling of Kechi Island.”

  With a practiced flourish, Enshu undraped a lavish painting of a bird’s-eye view of an island in monochrome ink with an abundant use of brilliant colors and gold leaf.

  “Breathtaking,” murmured Toshie in awe.

  Enshu nodded in agreement. “The finest example of Shimzu’s work I’ve ever seen.”

  “What do you think, Hideki?” asked Kamatori.

  “A masterwork,” answered Suma, moved by the genius of the artist. “Incredible that he could paint an overhead view with such vivid detail in the early sixteen-hundreds. It’s almost as if he did it from a tethered balloon.”

  “Legend says he painted from a kite,” said Toshie.

  “Sketched from a kite is more probable,” corrected Enshu. “And painted the scene on the ground.”

  “And why not?” Suma’s eyes never left the painting. “Our people were building and flying kites over a thousand years ago.” He turned finally and faced Enshu. “You have done well, Mr. Enshu. Where did you find it?”

  “In a banker’s home in Hong Kong,” Enshu replied. “He was selling his assets and moving his operations to Malaysia before the Chinese take over. It took me nearly a year, but I finally persuaded him to sell over the telephone. I wasted no time and flew to Hong Kong to settle the transaction and return here with the painting. I came directly to your office from the airport.”

  “How much?”

  “A hundred and forty-five million yen.”

  Suma rubbed his hands in satisfaction. “A very good price. Consider it sold.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Suma. You are most gracious. I shall keep looking for the Ajima painting.”

  They exchanged bows, and then Toshie escorted Enshu from the office.

  Suma’s eyes returned to the painting. The shores were littered with black rock, and there was a small village with fishing boats at one end. The perspective was as precise as an aerial photo.

  “How strange,” he said quietly. “The only painting of the island collection I don’t possess is the one I desire the most.”

  “If it still exists, Enshu will find it,” Kamatori consoled him. “He strikes me as being tenacious.”

  “I’ll pay him ten times the Kechi price for the Ajima.”

  Kamatori sat in a chair and stretched out his legs. “Little did Shimzu know when he painted Ajima what the island would come to represent.”

  Toshie returned and reminded Suma, “You have a meeting with Mr. Yoshishu in ten minutes.”

  “The grand old thief and leader of the Gold Dragons.” Kamatori smiled mockingly. “Come to audit his share of your financial empire.”

  Suma pointed through the huge curved windows overlooking the atrium. “None of this would have been possible without the organization Korori Yoshishu and my father built during and after the war.”

  “The Gold Dragons and the other secret societies have no place in the future Nippon,” said Kamatori, using the traditional word, meaning “source of the sun.”

  “They may seem quaint alongside our modern technology,” Suma admitted, “but they still share an important niche in our culture. My association with them through the years has proven most valuable to me.”

  “Your power goes beyond the need for fanatical factions or personality cults or underworld syndicates,” Kamatori said earnestly. “You have the power to pull the strings of a government run by your personal puppets, and yet you are chained to corrupt underworld figures. If it ever leaked out that you are the number two dragon it will cost you dearly.”

  “I am not chained to anyone,” said Suma in a patient explaining tone. “What the laws call criminal activity has been a tradition in my family for two centuries. I’ve honored the code by following in my ancestors’ footsteps and building an organization on their foundation that’s stronger than many nations of the world. I am not ashamed of underworld friends.”

  “I’d be happier if you showed respect for the Emperor and followed the old moral ways.”

  “I’m sorry, Moro. Though I pray at Yasukuni Shrine for the spirit of my father, I feel no urge to venerate the myth of a Godlike Emperor. Nor do I take part in tea ceremonies, meet with geishas, attend Kabuki plays, watch sumo wrestling, or believe in the superiority of our native culture. Nor do I subscribe to the new theory that we are s
uperior in our customs, intelligence, emotions, language, and particularly the design of our brains to people in the West. I refuse to underestimate my competitors and indulge in national conformity and group thinking. I am my own god, and my faith is in money and power. Does that anger you?”

  Kamatori looked down at his hands that lay open in his lap. He sat silent, a growing look of sadness in his eyes. Finally he said, “No, it saddens me. I bow to the Emperor and our traditional culture. I believe in his divine descent and that we and our islands are also of divine origin. And I believe in the blood purity and spiritual unity of our race. But I follow you too, Hideki, because we are old friends, and despite your sinister operations you have greatly contributed to Nippon’s new claim as the most powerful nation on earth.”

  “Your loyalty is deeply appreciated, Moro,” said Suma honestly. “I’d expect no less from one who takes pride in his samurai ancestry and his prowess with the katana.

  “The katana, more than a sword, but the living soul of the samurai,” Kamatori said with reverence. “To be expert in its use is divine. To wield it in defense of the Emperor is to ensure my soul’s rest in Yasukuni.”

  “Yet you’ve drawn your blade for me when I’ve asked you.”

  Kamatori stared at him. “I gladly kill in your name to honor the good you do for our people.”

  Suma looked into the lifeless eyes of his hired killer, a living throwback to the times when samurai warriors murdered for whatever feudal lord offered them security and advancement. He was also aware that a samurai’s absolute loyalty could be reversed overnight. When he spoke, his voice was pleasantly firm.

  “Some men hunt wild game with a bow and arrow, most use a firearm. You are the only one I know, Moro, who hunts human game with a sword.”

  “You’re looking well, old friend,” said Suma as Korori Yoshishu was ushered into his office by Toshie. Yoshishu was accompanied by Ichiro Tsuboi, who had just arrived from the United States after his debate with the congressional select subcommittee.

  The old man, a devout realist, smiled at Suma. “Not well but older. A few more passings of the moon and I’ll sleep with my esteemed ancestors.”