Jubilee and Bakerloo, Circle and District. Kumiko peered at the little laminated map Petal had given her and shivered. The concrete platform seemed to radiate cold through the soles of her boots.
"Its so fucking old," Sally Shears said absently, her glasses reflecting a convex wall sheathed in white ceramic tile.
"I beg your pardon?"
"The tube." A new tartan scarf was knotted under Sallys chin, and her breath was white when she spoke. "You know what bothers me? Its how sometimes youll see em sticking new tile up in these stations, but they dont take down the old tile first. Or theyll punch a hole in the wall to get to some wiring and you can see all these different layers of tile . . ."
"Yes?"
"Because its getting narrower, right? Its like arterial plaque . . ."
"Yes," Kumiko said dubiously, "I see . . . Those boys, Sally, what is the meaning of their costume, please?"
"Jacks. What they call Jack Draculas."
The four Jack Draculas huddled like ravens on the opposite platform. They wore nondescript black raincoats and polished black combat boots laced to the knee. One turned to address another and Kumiko saw that his hair was drawn back into a plaited queue and bound with a small black bow.
"Hung him," Sally said, "after the war."
"Who?"
"Jack Dracula. They had public hangings for a while, after the war. Jacks, you wanna stay away from em. Hate anybody foreign . . ."
Kumiko would have liked to access Colin, but the Maas-Neotek unit was tucked behind a marble bust in the room where Petal served their meals, and then the train arrived, amazing her with the archaic thunder of wheels on steel rail.
Sally Shears against the patchwork backdrop of the citys architecture, her glasses reflecting the London jumble, each period culled by economics, by fire, by war.
Kumiko, already confused by three rapid and apparently random train changes, let herself be hauled through a sequence of taxi rides. Theyd jump out of one cab, march into the nearest large store, then take the first available exit to another street and another cab. "Harrods," Sally said at one point, as they cut briskly through an ornate, tile-walled hall pillared in marble. Kumiko blinked at thick red roasts and shanks displayed on tiered marble counters, assuming they were made of plastic. And then out again, Sally hailing the next cab. "Covent Garden," she said to the driver.
"Excuse me, Sally. What are we doing?"
"Getting lost."
Sally drank hot brandy in a tiny café beneath the snow-streaked glass roof of the piazza. Kumiko drank chocolate.
"Are we lost, Sally?"
"Yeah. Hope so, anyway." She looked older today, Kumiko thought; lines of tension or fatigue around her mouth.
"Sally, what is it that you do? Your friend asked if you were still retired . . ."
"Im a businesswoman."
"And my father is a businessman?"
"Your father is a businessman, honey. No, not like that. Im an indie. I make investments, mostly."
"In what do you invest?"
"In other Indies." She shrugged. "Feeling curious today?" She sipped her brandy.
"You advised me to be my own spy."
"Good advice. Takes a light touch, though."
"Do you live here, Sally, in London?"
"I travel."
"Is Swain another indie?"
"He thinks so. Hes into influence, nods in the right direction; you need that here, to do business, but it gets on my nerves." She tossed back the rest of the brandy and licked her lips.
Kumiko shivered.
"You dont have to be scared of Swain. Yanaka could have him for breakfast . . ."
"No. I thought of those boys in the subway. So thin . . ."
"The Draculas."
"A gang?"
"Bosozoku," Sally said, with fair pronunciation. " Running tribes? Anyway, like a tribe." It wasnt the right word, but Kumiko thought she saw the distinction. "Theyre thin because theyre poor." She gestured to the waiter for a second brandy.
"Sally," Kumiko said, "when we came here, the route we took, the trains and cabs, that was in order to make certain we were not followed?"
"Nothings ever certain."
"But when we went to meet Tick, you took no precautions. We could easily have been followed. You enlist Tick to spy on Swain, yet you take no precautions. You bring me here, you take many precautions. Why?"
The waiter put a steaming glass down in front of her. "Youre a sharp little honey, arent you?" She leaned forward and inhaled the fumes of brandy. "Its like this, okay? With Tick, maybe Im just trying to shake some action."
"But Tick is concerned that Swain not discover him."
"Swain wont touch him, not if he knows hes working for me."
"Why?"
"Because he knows I might kill him." She raised the glass, looking suddenly happier.
"Kill Swain?"
"Thats right." She drank.
"Then why were you so cautious today?"
"Because sometimes it feels good to shake it all off, get out from under. Chances are, we havent. But maybe we have. Maybe nobody, nobody at all, knows where we are. Nice feeling, huh? You could be kinked, you ever think of that? Maybe your dad, the Yak warlord, hes got a little bug planted in you so he can keep track of his daughter. You got those pretty little teeth, maybe Daddys dentist tucked a little hardware in there one time when you were into a stim. You go to the dentist?"
"Yes."
"You stim while he works?"
"Yes . . ."
"There you go. Maybe hes listening to us right now . . ."
Kumiko nearly overturned what was left of her chocolate.
"Hey." The polished nails tapped Kumikos wrist. "Dont worry about it. He wouldntve sent you here like that, with a bug. Make you too easy for his enemies to track. But you see what I mean? Its good to get out from under, or anyway try. On our own, right?"
"Yes," Kumiko said, her heart still pounding, the panic continuing to rise. "He killed my mother," she blurted, then vomited chocolate on the cafés gray marble floor.
Sally leading her past the columns of Saint Pauls, walking, not talking. Kumiko, in a disjointed trance of shame, registering random information: the white shearling that lined Sallys leather coat, the oily rainbow sheen of a pigeons feathers as it waddled out of their way, red buses like a giants toys in the Transport Museum, Sally warming her hands around a foam cup of steaming tea.
Cold, it would always be cold now. The freezing damp in the citys ancient bones, the cold waters of Sumida that had filled her mothers lungs, the chill flight of the neon cranes.
Her mother was fine-boned and dark, the thick spill of her hair grained with gold highlights, like some rare tropical hardwood. Her mother smelled of perfume and warm skin. Her mother told her stories, about elves and fairies and Copenhagen, which was a city far away. When Kumiko dreamed of the elves, they were like her fathers secretaries, lithe and staid, with black suits and furled umbrellas. The elves did many curious things, in her mothers stories, and the stories were magic, because they changed with the telling, and you could never be certain how a tale might end on a given night. There were princesses in the stories as well, and ballerinas, and each of them, Kumiko had known, was in some way her mother.
The princess-ballerinas were beautiful but poor, dancing for love in the far citys heart, where they were courted by artists and student poets, handsome and penniless. In order to support an aged parent, or purchase an organ for an ailing brother, a princess-ballerina was sometimes obliged to voyage very far indeed, perhaps as far as Tokyo, to dance for money. Dancing for money, the tales implied, was not a happy thing.
Sally took her to a robata bar in Earls Court and forced her to drink a glass of sake. A smoked fugu fin floated in the hot wine, turning it the color of whiskey. They ate robata from the smoky grill, and Kumiko felt the cold recede, but not the numbness. The decor of the bar induced a profound sense of cultural dislocation: it managed to simultaneously reflect traditional Japanese design and look as though it had been drawn up by Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
She was very strange, Sally Shears, stranger than all of gaijin London. Now she told Kumiko stories, stories about people who lived in a Japan Kumiko had never known, stories that defined her fathers role in the world. The oyabun, she called Kumikos father. The world Sallys stories described seemed no more real than the world of her mothers fairy tales, but Kumiko began to understand the basis and extent of her fathers power. "Kuromaku," Sally said. The word meant black curtain. "Its from Kabuki, but it means a fixer, someone who sells favors. Means behind-the-scenes, right? Thats your father. Thats Swain, too. But Swains your old mans kobun, or anyway one of them. Oyabun-kobun, parent-child. Thats partly where Roger gets his juice. Thats why youre here now, because Roger owes it to the oyabun. Giri, understand?"
"He is a man of rank."
Sally shook her head. "Your old man, Kumi, hes it. If hes had to ship you out of town to keep you safe, means theres some serious changes on the way."
"Been down the drinker?" Petal asked, as they entered the room, his eyeglass edges winking Tiffany light from a bronze and stained-glass tree that grew on the sideboard. Kumiko wanted to look at the marble head that hid the Maas-Neotek unit, but forced herself to look out into the garden. The snow there had become the color of London sky.
"Wheres Swain?" Sally asked.
"Guvnors out," Petal told her.
Sally went to the sideboard and poured herself a glass of scotch from a heavy decanter. Kumiko saw Petal wince as the decanter came down hard on the polished wood. "Any messages?"
"No."
"Expect him back tonight?"
"Cant say, really. Do you want dinner?"
"No."
"Id like a sandwich," Kumiko said.
Fifteen minutes later, with the untouched sandwich on the black marble bedside table, she sat in the middle of the huge bed, the Maas-Neotek unit between her bare feet. Shed left Sally drinking Swains whiskey and staring out into the gray garden.
Now she took up the unit and Colin shuddered into focus at the foot of the bed.
"Nobody can hear my half of this," he said quickly, putting a finger to his lips, "and a good thing, too. Rooms bugged."
Kumiko started to reply, then nodded.
"Good," he said. "Smart girl. Got two conversations for you. Ones your host and his minder, others your host and Sally. Got the former about fifteen minutes after you stashed me downstairs. Listen . . ." Kumiko closed her eyes and heard the tinkle of ice in a whiskey glass.
"Wheres our little Jap, then?" Swain asked.
"Tucked up for the night," Petal said. "Talks to herself, that one. One-sided conversation. Queer."
"What about?"
"Bloody little, actually. Some people do, y know . . ."
"What?"
"Talk to themselves. Like to hear her?"
"Christ, no. Wheres the delightful Miss Shears?"
"Out for her constitutional."
"Call Bernie round, next time, see what shes about on these little walks . . ."
"Bernie," and Petal laughed, "hed come back in a fucking box!"
Now Swain laughed. "Mightnt be a bad thing either way, Bernard off our hands and the famous razorgirls thirst slaked . . . Here, pour us another."
"None for me. Off to bed, unless you need me . . ."
"No," Swain said.
"So," said Colin, as Kumiko opened her eyes to find him still seated on the bed, "theres a voice-activated bug here in your room; the minder reviewed the recording and heard you address me. Our second segment, now, is more interesting. Your host sits there with his second whiskey, in comes our Sally . . ."
"Hullo," she heard Swain say, "been out taking the air?"
"Fuck off."
"You know," Swain said, "none of this was my idea. You might try keeping that in mind. You know theyve got me by the balls as well."
"You know, Roger, sometimes Im tempted to believe you."
"Try it. It would make things easier."
"Other times, Im tempted to slit your fucking throat."
"Your problem, dear, is that you never learned to delegate; you still want to do everything personally."
"Listen, asshole, I know where youre from, and I know how you got here, and I dont care how far youve got your tongue up Kanakas crack or anybody elses. Sarakin! " Kumiko had never heard the word before.
"I heard from them again," Swain said, his tone even, conversational. "Shes still on the coast, but it looks as though shell make a move soon. East, most likely. Back on your old manor. I think thats our best bet, really. The house is impossible. Enough private security along that stretch to stop a fair-sized army . . ."
"You still trying to tell me this is just a snatch, Roger? Trying to tell me theyre gonna hold her for ransom?"
"No. Nothings been said about selling her back."
"So why dont they just hire that army? No reason theyd have to stop at fair-sized, is there? Get the mercs, right? The corporate-extraction boys. Shes not that hard a target, no more than some hotshit research man. Get the fucking pros in . . ."
"For perhaps the hundredth time, that isnt what they want. They want you."
"Roger, what do they have on you, huh? I mean, do you really not know what it is they got on me?"
"No, I dont. But based on what theyve got on me, Ill hazard a guess."
"Yeah?"
"Everything."
No reply.
"Theres another angle," he said, "that came up today. They want it to look as though shes been taken out."
"What?"
"They want it to look as though weve killed her."
"And how are we supposed to manage that?"
"Theyll provide a body."
"I assume," Colin said, "that she left the room without comment. It ends there."