Free Dead Sea by Peter Tonkin Page B

Mercury it never stopped raining, which gave the planet a lot in common with Tokyo this summer. Seething, he looked out of the streaming windows at the districts the taxi was speeding through. He would never have ventured into an area such as this had he not been desperate. And the fact that he was desperate enough to do so now simply filled him with a boiling sense of outrage.
    Had not the far more intrepid Dr Aika Rei not agreed to accompany him? Even at this unnaturally late hour and on a night such as this. Just as it was she who had convinced him that he should keep his good news secret even from his friends at the university; even from his ultimate employers Mr Greenbaum and Captain Mariner. But at least she was willing to help him. And it was she who had made the discreetest possible enquiries about how on earth they could get to the priceless bottle before anyone else could do so. But even her presence was hardly proving to be reliable armour against a seething childish sense that life was being spectacularly unfair to him at the moment
.
    Reona kept an eye on the taxi’s meter, watching the price of this unnerving excursion clock up relentlessly. It made his mind fill with bitter amusement that he, a US dollar millionaire one-hundred-and-ten times over, should be forced to watch his yen so carefully. Particularly as the yen stood at eighty to the dollar this morning. And a mathematical mind such as Dr Tanaka’s had no trouble in calculating that he was a Japanese yen millionaire eight thousand, eight hundred million times over. That made him a billionaire in anybody’s language. A multi-billionaire, if such a thing existed. A multi-billionaire who could not get his hands on his multi-billions.
    A thought that Aika Rei clearly shared. Had she snuggled against him any more tightly, their bodies would have melted through the layers of clothing separating skin from skin. The erotic idea was far more appealing than thoughts about what Mr Greenbaum or Captain Mariner would do when they discovered his perfidy; or about the meteorology of Mercury – or the destination they were heading for. And so he allowed it to linger as the taxi sped through the terrible weather further and further down towards the docks. ‘Where are we now?’ he enquired for perhaps the tenth time since they had left the university.
    â€˜Natsuchimacho,’ came the not very helpful reply.
    Not very helpful to Reona, at any rate. ‘Nearly there,’ whispered Aika Rei. ‘If we look out carefully we’ll see some really hot cars. They do a lot of drifting down here in the docks.’
    â€˜Drifting?’ he asked, intrigued.
    â€˜Like in the movies,’ Aika Rei explained. ‘
Tokyo Drift
.’
    Which left him none the wiser.
    She had clearly ventured far further out of her ivory tower than the Greenbaum Professor had. A fact proved by her sexual technique as much as by her breadth of contacts – and her urban cultural knowledge.
    â€˜Do you know what to do?’ she demanded abruptly.
    â€˜Act casual,’ he answered uneasily. ‘Be vague. We’re honeymooners looking for a bit of an adventure . . .’
    In the four days since he realized the enormity of what had happened to him, it was the best that they could come up with. Though to be fair, in an attempt at maintaining normality in the face of the increasingly rabid media hunt for the owner of the winning lottery ticket – definitely worth $110 million according to the publicity – they had both worked their normal hours as usual and only really got to make plans during their brief sleeping time together. When, one way and another, not a lot of sleeping had been done. And, he thought in an angry panic now, as the taxi slowed, nowhere near enough planning either.
    The taxi coasted to a halt. ‘Here we are,’ whispered Aika Rei.
    Grimacing against the brief brightness of the taxi’s interior light, Reona handed