Free The Miko - 02 by Eric Van Lustbader Page A

fine, tufted hair, the liver spots high on his domed forehead, and the rather weak chin all combined to paint a portrait of a bland, unremarkable man. Nothing could be further from the truth.
    His slender-fingered hand came away from the phone; already his mind was racing. He did not like the sudden murder of the sensei ; he knew well Kusunoki’s power and was astonished that the sensei had been overpowered at all. Still, he was trained to use any and all unforeseen circumstance to his benefit, and striking swiftly and surely during times of confusion was standard procedure.
    Contrary to what his brethren back home espoused, he enjoyed working with these locals. While he would never invite one to marry his daughter—if he had one—he could admire their expertise, their dogged persistence, and, above all, their rabid fanaticism. This fascinated him; it was also his secret weapon against political assassination back home.
    While his position, among all his brethren, was most secure—simply because he fed them a steady diet of fear and secrecy, two elements which never failed to catch their attention—still one found it good practice to keep shuffling the cards, keeping options open, finding the soft spots in one’s superiors’ private lives that would turn the key in the lock of one’s future. That was a lesson he had learned well and hard.
    He turned away from the phone, activating the portable but very powerful 512K computer terminal, rechecking the myriad random elements he had thrown at the original program. Still it was holding up.
    His grunt in the otherwise silent room told of his satisfaction. With an effort, he rose and lumbered to the door as thick and impenetrable as a bank vault. Dialing the combination, he let himself out.
    Nicholas left the dazzling glitter of the enormous hotel behind him, a city within a city, and took the immaculate, silent subway into the Asakusa district. The blank-faced jostling throng who rode along with him with their fashionable clothes and French-style makeup were outwardly very different from the members of the war generation. Yet Nicholas could not forget what happened here—as it did throughout all of Tokyo—on March 9, 1945. The firebombing by American warplanes.
    Here in the Asakusa district, people sought the sanctuary of the great and beloved Buddhist temple of Kannon, the goddess of Pity. Built in the seventeenth century, this was thought safe because it had survived all the great fires of Tokyo as well as the most infamous earthquake of 1923. But as hundreds crowded inside, the long, arching timbers, so lovingly wrought by artisans of the fabled past, caught fire. The gray slat roof which had been such a staunch landmark for hundreds of years collapsed inward, crushing the already burning throng. Outside, the ancient stately gingko trees of the surrounding gardens burst into crackling torches, pinwheels of sparks arcing into the howling crimson night, running along street gutters like voracious predators.
    Asakusa, like the rest of the city, bore no scars from that time, Nicholas realized. The Japanese had been very careful about that. In this downtown area of Tokyo, more than in any other place in the city, perhaps, the ethos of Japan’s splendiferous Edo period still held sway.
    Crowds clouded the gates of Kaminarimon, streaking its great two-story vermillion face with their darting shadows. A scarlet and ebon rice-paper lantern of gigantic proportions swung between the two red-faced wooden statues of the gods of wind and thunder, the bodyguards of Kannon, who, though she failed her people once in the incinerator of the war, was worshiped and loved still.
    Dodging those Japanese on the run, Nicholas took the stone-paved Nakamise-dōri, passing sweet and souvenir shops piled high with wares.
    On impulse he turned down a near side street, strolling slowly through the relative gloom. He stopped abruptly in front of a tiny storefront that spelled out “Yonoya” in