He felt a weight against his neck, saw that Michiko was holding a katana, a j.a.panese longsword, with its wicked edge at his flesh.

"Michiko will not hesitate to use it, Mr. Doss," Zen G.o.do said. "She is a sensei, a master, of kenjutsu. Are you familiar with this word?"

"Yes," Philip said. He was staring at the shining length of the steel blade, at Michiko's unwavering gaze. "Kenjutsu is the art of swordsmanship." He had no doubt that Zen G.o.do was telling the truth about Michiko's skill.

"Believe me, I wish you no harm," Zen G.o.do went on. "But please keep in mind that Michiko will not hesitate to protect me from harm."

Philip sat back down. He did not see that he had any choice. "You say that I killed your friends and business a.s.sociates, yet you want me to believe that you wish me no harm. I don't think I can believe that."

"As an answer, allow me to relate a story from the past, since all we learn in life emanates from there." Zen G.o.do was wearing a formal kimono. It was of black silk, with a glossy black wave pattern woven throughout. An embroidered snowy egret flew over each breast. Their eyes and the tips of their beaks were a bright crimson. "My father taught me that I must destroy my enemies before they destroy me," Zen G.o.do began. "He was an utterly ruthless man. He was honorable in every way. But he never failed to use the advantage of circ.u.mstance to his own ends. And there came a time when my father's ruthlessness caught up with him. Through his endless dealings, he had made many enemies, and now they were too numerous for him to destroy them all.

"My father was a devout Shintoist. He believed fervently in animism. He used to point out trees, sections of brooks and lakes, escarpments of wooded hillsides shimmering in the dusk, and swear to me that spirits dwelled in those places. Now it happened that there was a spirit who my father said lived within the shadows of the rafters of our house. This spirit was possessed of a remarkably evil temper save where it came to my father. It was my father who gave this spirit succor when no one else would-or so my fattier said.

"It was to this spirit that my father went. 'My enemies surround me,' he told it. 'You counseled me to destroy my enemies before they destroy me. I cannot now. What am I to do?'

"The shadows above his head stirred as if a gentle wind was blowing. In a moment, a gruff voice said, 'You must find an ally who can aid you.'

" 'I have tried,' my father said. 'But none have the fort.i.tude to stand with me.'

" 'Then you must look elsewhere,' the spirit said.

" 'I have searched everywhere.'

" 'Not everywhere,' the spirit said. Tor allies may some-times be found in the most unexpected places.'

" 'But I have no allies left with stomach for such a battle as this. I have only enemies.'

" 'Then,' the spirit said, 'it is among your enemies that you must discover an ally.' "

Zen G.o.do smiled. "My current circ.u.mstances, Mr. Doss, mirror those of my father in a most uncomfortable manner. I too am surrounded by enemies who wish to see me destroyed. They are numerous, exceptionally well organized. And they are quite powerful."

"Why should I believe any of this?" Philip asked reasonably. "You are a persuasive speaker, but after all, these are words only. And I have a sword at my throat."

Zen G.o.do gave an almost imperceptible nod, and Philip felt the pressure lifted from his neck. In a moment, Michiko had reversed the katana. She placed the hilt in his hands.

Then, to his astonishment, Philip saw Zen G.o.do bend all the way forward until his face touched the reed mat at his feet.

"Here is your chance, Doss-san," Zen G.o.do said from this position. "One swing of the katana on the back of my neck will sever the spinal cord completely.

Your task will be accomplished, and you will not have had to think on yourown. You will merely have had to follow orders."

Philip glanced at Michiko. She stood unmoving. Her face was white and rigid.

She glared at him from out of eyes filled with ice and fire.

But he needed to know what they both meant by this, and he rose on one knee so that he was above the prostrate man. He lifted the katana so that the blade was directly over Zen G.o.do's exposed neck. He took a deep breath, brought the blade swiftly down.

Zen G.o.do did not move, and neither did Michiko.

Philip stopped the blade inches short of the flesh. He exhaled deeply, took several breaths before resuming his former position opposite Zen G.o.do on the mats.

There was a profound silence. Philip imagined that he could hear motes of dust falling. In time, Zen G.o.do brought his head off the floor. He stared at Philip. There was no expression on his face.

Philip saw his opportunity and seized it. "These enemies you are talking about," he said. "Are they known as the Jiban?' Now was the time to see whether he was right, whether he and Jonas were being duped into terminating the wrong people.

Zen G.o.do watched him with glossy ebon eyes. "Yes. But I would be most pleased if you were to tell me how you came to know that name."

"Only if you tell me who, or what, the Jiban is," Philip said.

Zen G.o.do nodded. "An equitable exchange of information. My father always told me that that was an excellent method of beginning a relationship built on mutual trust."

Philip handed over the letter he had taken from Shigeo Nakajima's corpse. Zen G.o.do read it through, then pa.s.sed it on to Michiko. He looked up. "What does this letter tell you, Mr. Doss?"

Philip shook his head. "First tell me about the Jiban."

"Jiban, as you might already know, means a local political machine," Zen G.o.do said. "That was meant as a rather ironic comment. The Jiban is a closely knit clique of high-level bureaucratic ministers who have banded together under the leadership of a man named Kozo Shiina. Shiina is a particularly odious individual. He was a ma.s.s murderer during the war. Oh yes, there were many of them, I suppose. But Shiina was by far the most hideous of the lot. He enjoyed his work- the business of war seduced him, then enslaved him.

"It was Shiina who first pushed for j.a.pan's military expansion into Manchuria.

It was Shiina who helped whip up popular support for the aggressive stance needed for imperialism. He had-and still has-a great deal of influence within both the political and the industrial spheres.

"Since the war's end, Shiina has seen to it that he and his cronies have clean slates. The Americans cannot touch him. He has so cleverly rewritten the dossiers, they aren't even aware of his role in the war. Now, ironically, he and his ministers are advisers to the Americans. Ha! He gulls the Americans into confiding their policies to him. He agrees to help implement these policies, and then he and his ministers go about secretively undermining those very directives."

"What does this Shiina have against you?" Philip asked.

"Yamamoto-san, Nakajima-san and I were against the war from the very beginning. I joined Tokko in order to fight communism, which I cannot abide.

We fought against Shiina, and he has never forgiven us. Now, after the war ended as we predicted it would, we see the opportunity America's help can afford us. We believe that j.a.pan can emerge stronger, more self-reliant, from this disaster if we provide it with the right direction and momentum. Shiina and his Jiban want something else entirely."

"Which is?"

Zen G.o.do's eyes were dark, depthless, like a still lake at evening. "Shiina wishes to return j.a.pan to its prewar militaristic state. He wants the Manchuria j.a.pan never had. He wants more. He wants the mainland of China. He wants to expand our country. It is j.a.pan's destiny, he says. It is pur karma.

j.a.pan can never be great, he believes, until it is a nation of a physical sizecomparable to that of America or Russia."

G.o.d in heaven, Philip thought. What have I stumbled into? I was right. We have been fed tainted intelligence. It was now clear to Philip that David Turner must be a conduit between the Jiban and Silvers. Still, the question remained: Whose side was Silvers on? A terrifying image was beginning to form in Philip's mind, but he needed confirmation.

Philip told Zen G.o.do how Nakajima's letter had planted grave doubts in his mind about his directive. He told him about his meeting with General Hadley, and what Hadley had found out-that Silvers's intelligence source for the directives to terminate Yamamoto, Nakajima and G.o.do was through Silvers's adjutant, David Turner.

Zen G.o.do absorbed this information impa.s.sively. At length, he said, "After she met you for the first time, Michiko described you to me as 'the special American.' This interested me intensely because it indicated that you understood many of the basic underlying precepts of the j.a.panese Way. I should tell you that Michiko is married to n.o.buo Yamamoto. He is the eldest son of Arisawa Yamamoto. When she discovered that you were responsible for the death of her father-in-law, she was understandably distraught." Philip imagined Michiko wielding her longsword against him, and shuddered.

"In fact, I believed she harbored a desire to see you dead, Mr. Doss," Zen G.o.do continued. "But this was all before she met you. Then you became 'the special American,' and everything changed. That is why I had her bring you to me." He touched the edge of his moustache. "It was you who put me in mind of the spirit's advice. It saved my father's business. Now I pray that it will save mine." He held out his hands palms up. "To be fair, it is time I tell you why you are here." He laughed. "I want you to kill me."

Now it became imperative that Philip discover just what was going on inside CIG headquarters. The information Zen G.o.do had provided him dictated that.

Once he knew that the Jiban was deliberately feeding tainted intelligence into Silvers's CIG files, everything else followed in logical progression. If, further, he supposed that Silvers knew about the nature of the intelligence and was not merely being duped by an unrelentingly clever foe, a number of otherwise inexplicable elements fell into place. For instance, why Silvers was so secretive concerning his source. For another, why he was using David Turner, an office hand, to carry out delicate field work in the first place.

On the surface it made no sense to entrust such hazardous duty to a monkey like Turner. But viewed in this new and different light, it just might. Philip considered: As Silvers's administrative adjutant, Turner was tied to his CO in very direct ways. Silvers-if he was working for the Jiban-could both control the flow of tainted information (thus, making it security-proof) and have a perfect scapegoat-Turner-if the quality of the intelligence was ever called into question.

The more Philip thought about it, the more it seemed that Silvers was not what he appeared to be. What his motive might be was another story entirely.

Frankly, Philip did not much care. As far as he was concerned, a traitor was a traitor. Whether he betrayed his country for money, blackmail or ideological reasons made no difference. Pragmatically, the result was the same, and that was all that mattered.

Accordingly, Philip made plans. Methodical as he was, he stole into the CIG headquarters first. He did not believe that Silvers would be foolish enough to leave implicating files in the office. But he would be foolish himself if he did not check out the possibility.

As he suspected, he found nothing of an incriminating nature. Then it was time to infiltrate Silvers's personal quarters. The head of CIG lived in a small, neat house near the Imperial Palace. It was not difficult to get into. Not for a specialist such as Philip.

The place was paneled in dark woods. Oriental carpets lay on the floor, m.u.f.fling all sound. Philip had chosen a night when Silvers was attending a formal banquet at MacArthur's residence. Such affairs of state inevitably proved lengthy, since the general was fond of using these occasions to treatthose in attendance to a substantial helping of his famous bombast.

Philip had been to meetings here twice before. His memory was virtually photographic concerning such things. Consequently, he required no illumination to make his way through the place.

He began with Silvers's study. There was an old rolltop desk, a wooden swivel chair, a leather settee, a couple of matching wing chairs scattered around in front of walnut bookcases. In short, a quintessentially Western room.

The contents of one drawer after another came under Philip's scrutiny. As he drew the beam of his flashlight over the papers, he prayed that he would be able to find something substantive, something conclusive. Philip was certain that with proof, his father-in-law would move against Silvers.

And then he had it! Hidden beneath a false bottom in a lower drawer was a slim, black-bound notebook. He could scarcely believe his luck. The evidence confirmed his every suspicion. Excitement mounting, he read over the pages of the notebook again. Yes. It was all here: times and dates of meetings with Jiban ministers whose names Philip recognized, accountings of payments made, records of where those payments had been deposited, along with the bank account number. Everything Philip needed to nail Silvers as a traitor in the employ of the Jiban.

The next morning, Philip presented himself at a downtown bank. Using his CIG credentials to get in to see the vice-president, he requested all pertinent information on account number 647338A. The depositor's name was not Harold Morten Silvers. But of course Philip had not expected that. Instead, he brought out a photostat of orders signed by Silvers. He compared the handwriting with that of the account's depositor's. It was the same.

The blueprints of Zen G.o.do's house arrived right on time. David Turner delivered the packet to Philip's apartment. It was the moment Philip had been dreading: It meant that Jonas had solved the question of how to make the termination seem like an accident without Philip's needlessly putting the CIG at risk. This was not an easy puzzle to solve, since Zen G.o.do possessed a high degree of visibility.

Because Jonas-ever security conscious-did not want Lillian around while they talked, Philip suggested that Turner take her to see Across the Pacific, a film she had been wanting to see. He knew that she had failed to make any friends, either among the army wives or among the locals. Lillian and Turner departed without a word, and Philip and Jonas got on with their plans.

Philip and Jonas pored over the blueprints, went over once more the intelligence each had memorized about Zen G.o.do. Losing himself in the minutiae of facts and figures, Philip was able to hold in abeyance the cramps lurking in the pit of his stomach. But when Jonas began to outline the nature of the scheme, the reality of the situation once more flooded over him.

He knew that he had reached a staging area. Now, like seeing the first sliver of the sun emerging from the darkness of night, he began to glimpse the full nature of what lay before him. It terrified him.

"Jonas," he said, glancing at his watch, "let's take G.o.do out tonight."

"Tonight?"

"Sure," Philip said, keeping his voice level. "Why not? We have all the materials." He had already turned the evidence he had discovered in Silvers's desk over to General Hadley. Tomorrow, Hadley would present his evidence to Mac-Arthur. Then the s.h.i.t would really hit the fan. All this had to be over with by then. Philip forced himself to grin. "Sure." We need a witness to my complete demise, Zen G.o.do had said. Who more perfect than your partner?

"We can do this one together," Philip said.

"You must be joking," Jonas said.

"Isn't it time the spider emerged from his web?" Philip poured them both drinks. Jonas, at least, was going to need fortification before this night was through.

Jonas shook his head. "I don't know."

"But this plan is your crowning achievement," Philip said. "I, for one, think you should partic.i.p.ate in it." He watched Jonas take a gulp of his scotch."Besides," he continued, "remember that hazing you once told me about?"

"At Pickett?" Pickett was the military academy Jonas had attended in Kentucky before he went to West Point.

"Yeah," Philip said, warming to his topic. "At Pickett. You all used your swords. Your ceremonial swords. It was a kind of brand you inflicted on the candidates, right? Hurt like h.e.l.l. Those blades were sharper than rat's teeth.

Isn't that what you said? Sharper than rat's teeth?"

"Yeah." Jonas remembered it as if it were yesterday.

"If you cried out, if you made any sound at all, that was the end of it. You didn't make the hazing. Right?"

"Right." Jonas downed the rest of his drink, and Philip replenished it.

"Sure, Jonas. That hazing was your favorite time. In the night. Under a full moon. Hoods and black robes. Incantations to the spirit of General Pickett himself. All that adolescent claptrap." Philip watched as Jonas finished off the liquor. "Now you can live it all over again. What do you say?"

In the night.

Rain dripping dolefully from the wooden eaves. Philip and Jonas standing between rain-slicked cedar pillars.

"This is his bedroom," Jonas whispered.

A whippoorwill sang from its dry perch within the thick cryptomeria.

"Put your mask on," Philip said, positioning the black cloth over his head.

They were dressed all in matte black.

There were no other sounds in the night now but the rain. Even the whippoorwill was quiet.

"You're certain there's no one in the house with him," Jonas said. Out of his element, he was nervous. "The files said that once a week, G.o.do allows his people to visit their families overnight. That's not for two days."

"This is February eighth, a holiday," Philip said. "Hari-kuyo. It's the needle ma.s.s, in Buddhist religion, the day when songs are sung for all the needles broken during the past year. You're smiling, but after all, nothing would get sewn or mended without the needle. Besides, think of the damage a broken needle could cause sticking up from a tatami mat. Don't worry. No one but G.o.do will be here."

"Speaking of needles," Jonas said, "do you have yours?"

"Right here," Philip said, patting his pocket. "Stop worrying. This'll be a milk run."

He led the way up onto the wooden porch. They stood very still, listening.

Drip, drip, drip. Nothing more.

Crossing to the shoji, Philip knelt. He slipped a narrow metal blade between the rice-paper screens' wooden frames. Moved it upward, freeing the catch. He turned, nodded to Jonas.

Cautiously, they slid back the screen. The room within was very dark. Zen G.o.do was asleep on his futon.

Philip left his shoes on the porch, crept across the tatami. He was acutely aware of Jonas right behind him.

He was very close to the sleeping form now. He took out a box. Nestled inside it was a gla.s.s syringe filled with a chemical Jonas had obtained that would simulate a coronary embolism. Philip took the syringe out, pushed the plunger to free the needle of air. And inadvertantly hit a porcelain sake cup that had been left on the edge of a low table.

"s.h.i.t!" Philip said, making more noise than the cup falling onto the resilient tatami mat.

Zen G.o.do stirred, rising up.

Philip jabbed out with the syringe, but G.o.do slapped it away.

"G.o.dd.a.m.nit!" Jonas said. "Do it!"