"That isn't what I asked," Masashi said.

"I don't have an answer," Ude said. "What do you want me to do with Michael Doss?"

"Michael Doss is only relevant as he pertains to the Katei doc.u.ment," Masashi said. "I want him to get the red cord. To show us its importance. It seems clear that Michael Doss is our only lead to the Katei doc.u.ment."

"I think this is a waste of time," Ude said. "I think the Katei doc.u.ment burned with Philip Doss in the car crash."

"I don't pay you to think," Masashi snapped. "Just do as you're told."

"The Katei doc.u.ment has become everything, hasn't it?" Ude said. "I can hear the urgency in your voice. But it is not your urgency, it is Kozo Shiina's urgency. The Katei doc.u.ment is the Jiban's sacred object, not yours. It seems to me that Kozo Shiina is already the new oyabun of the Taki-gumi."

"Silence!" Masashi cried. "You have been eating your mushrooms again. You think that you're eighteen feet tall."

"No," Ude said a bit sadly, for he now saw that he had only one course to take. "But I am seeing more clearly than either you or Kozo Shiina. I can forget the Katei doc.u.ment, I can understand that it is gone forever. I can see that the real threat to you and the Taki-gumi is Michael Doss. He is following in his father's footsteps. Philip Doss succeeded in keeping you out of power while your father was still alive. He would have destroyed you had he lived long enough."

"Or I him."

"Don't you think Michael Doss will try to finish off what his father began?"

"The Tao," Masashi said, "tells us that the wise man places himself behind all others and, in so doing, discovers that he is in the preeminent position."

"What does the Tao have to do with me?" Ude said with undisguised scorn. "The Tao is for old men, blind and deaf to the life around them."

"The Tao is universal law," Masashi reminded him.

"The Tao is dead."

No, Masashi thought. It is your mind that is dead. "You are still a member of my clan," he said angrily. "You will obey your oyabun."

The question is, Ude thought as he replaced the receiver, who is my oyabun?

Now the way became truly steep. Michael, aware of the vast s.p.a.ce at his back, moved with great care. They were surrounded by trees so thick in spots that he could not see more than a foot in any direction. Still, Eliane moved quickly and surely. She had been quite correct: It was a long climb, and Michael began to regret that they had come. His restlessness had evaporated; he was tired and his muscles ached.

At length, Eliane stopped. She turned to him and pointed. Up ahead, he saw a narrow defile, as if a great knife had slashed into the rock face of the mountain. The pa.s.s was guarded by a pair of gigantic boulders. They were of the same coruscated igneous rock that had pushed up from the ocean's floor so many centuries ago: twisted and ridged forever by the cataclysm of its birth.

Michael started as the shapes of the boulders registered: Were these really a pair of crouching warriors, as they appeared? He went closer to see if the rock had been carved, but he saw that it had not. The stones' natural formation- abetted by erosion by the elements-had caused them to resemble human figures.

"The pa.s.sage of the G.o.ds," Eliane whispered. But when he moved to enter the defile, she held him back. "Wait," she said, and went through the surroundingtrees some distance. When she returned, she was carrying what appeared to be garlands. She draped one about his neck, put the other around hers. "Ti leaves," she said. "The plant is sacred to the Ha-waiians because it was much loved by the ancient G.o.ds. This is what the kahunas wear when they come here.

The ti leaves will protect us."

"From what?" Michael asked.

But Eliane was already moving past the strange rock guardians. Into the pa.s.sage of the G.o.ds.

"I believe the most important element in the conversation," Ude said into the phone, "is what was most hidden. What is Eliane Yamamoto doing on Maui, and with Michael Doss?"

Kozo Shiina was silent, thinking. The fact was, Eliane was Michiko's daughter, and he could not imagine what Michiko's daughter was doing at Michael Doss's side. Shiina did not like the idea that something was happening on Maui without his knowledge. "What is your a.s.sessment of the situation?" he asked now.

"I don't trust Masashi," Ude said immediately. And Shiina did not know whether to trust the response, wondering how much of it was fueled by emotion rather than reasoning. Shiina did not trust emotion. It colored everything around it, like a filter over a camera lens. "When I told Masashi of Eliane's presence, his response was odd," Ude went on. "It was very offhand, as if he could not wait to get off the subject. As if he already knew she was here."

Masashi, Kozo Shiina thought now, what are you up to?

"Did you find out who killed Philip Doss?" Shiina asked.

"Not yet."

"Keep at it," Shiina said. "As for Michael Doss, do as Masashi tells you. Let Michael Doss have the red cord. I think Masashi is right-the iteki will lead us to the Katei doc.u.ment."

So, Ude thought, Shiina does not perceive the threat that Michael Doss presents, either. But then, he reminded himself, neither Shiina nor Masashi has seen Michael Doss in action. To them he is still only the iteki, the foreigner.

But Ude knew what to do in this case. Michael Doss was far too dangerous to keep safely on a leash. He was smart and unpredictable. He knew the meaning of shimpo, the strategy of deception.

Ude came to a decision. He would obey neither Kozo Shiina nor Masashi. Out here in the field, one had to make one's own decisions. They were life-and-death decisions, and Ude had made his regarding Michael Doss.

He would have to kill him.

They emerged from absolute darkness into the flash of starlight. Everything was stark, two-dimensional, knife-edged, with a supraclarity that was breathtaking.

A night bird clattered in a tree overhead, sweeping away from their presence on powerful wings. Michael caught a glimpse of a horned head, incandescent eyes: an owl?

"Be careful," Eliane said, "not to wander off." She pointed to a bald spot on the cliff face, etched and rutted so that a series of grooves were cut into the rock. "In wet weather, that's a waterfall. In dry times, as now, the spot becomes treacherous because the rock is so smooth."

Michael crouched down, ran his hand over the bare rock. "What happened here?"

he asked.

"It depends on what you want to believe," Eliane said. "The Hawaiians say that there was a great battle fought here. At the end of it, the victors threw their enemies over this cliff."

Michael strained his neck, looking as far down as he could. Then he moved back from the dry bed of the waterfall.

"In that time," Eliane said, "the Hawaiians say that the waterfall began, red with the blood of the warriors."

"Is that what you believe?" Michael asked."I don't know. This isn't my country. But I feel the power here. Everyone does. It's undeniable."

Starlight threw shadows across her face. They curved like fingers, extending across her cheek and down her neck. That same cool light sparked her black eyes, making them appear startlingly large. The wind caught at her long hair, making of it a raven's wing, never still.

Michael, watching her, seemed not to have really seen her at all until this moment. It was as if he had come upon an image of her, or a painting, and now this night filled with stars, this place of power, was revealing the true Eliane to him.

He touched her and felt her heart beating. It was as if her pulse were his pulse, as if a cascade were linking them, as if they were melting into one another. Michael felt his heart open, felt the sh.e.l.l of bitterness that had surrounded him slough away like a reptile's dead skin.

"Eliane," he said, but she broke their connection, taking her hand from his, moving away from him.

"No," she whispered. "You don't want me. Not really." The shadows of an overhanging rock enveloped her in a darkness so complete it created utter stillness.

"How can you say what I want?"

He sensed rather than saw her ironic smile. "Believe me when I tell you, Michael. You don't want me-or wouldn't very soon afterward. No one would."

"Why not? What is so terrible about you?"

She stirred. "I am ugly."

"No. You're beautiful."

The stillness within which she stood seemed overpowering.

"I remember the day," she said, "when I became aware that my mother and father never spoke kindly to one another. And I remember the night when I discovered that they never made love. It wasn't long after that that I understood that they did not love each other. I wondered if they could love me."

She sighed. "I decided that they could not; that neither of them was capable of feeling love. I realized then that it was all up to me. That whatever my family was going to be would be a function of only me. Remember what I told you before about responsibility? I did whatever I had to do to keep my family together. There was so little regard for one another between my parents, I remember being constantly terrified that one of them would leave, that the family would break up. What would happen to me then? I could not imagine. When I did imagine such a thing, in my nightmares, it was with the most profound feeling of dread.

"So I grew up living my life to control the family, to keep it together. I became a control freak. I had no other choice.

I was bulemic for years. Do you know what bulemia is? I was anorectic. It was a kind of madness. But it was a madness I needed in order to stay alive. The ultimate control was mine- and as long as it was, I knew that everything would be all right. My father wouldn't leave us, my mother wouldn't take me away.

Everything would be fine." She gave an ironic laugh that chilled Michael. "Was everything fine? Yes and no. I survived; the family remained intact. But I was quite mad."

"And now?" Michael finally found his voice. "Isn't that all over with?"

"Yes," she said. "It's all over with. I'm not mad anymore."

"Nothing you've said has made me change my mind about you," he said.

"I am dead inside."

"I don't understand."

"The things I have done-don't come any closer, Michael-what I have done has created a plague inside me. Whatever was there-is no longer. I am empty, hollow. I look inside myself and see only a gaping hole."

"Whatever you did, you did in order to protect yourself. No one can blame you for that."

"I have killed people!"

Her shout echoed off the rock faces."My father killed people," he said. "I've seen what you are capable of when you have to defend yourself."

"I have been sent to kill people. People I never knew, who never hurt me."

"If you feel guilt, if you feel remorse for what you've done, you cannot be dead inside."

"I am a leper," she continued in a more normal tone of voice. Even so, Michael could hear the shiver in her words. "I have become something other than human.

A mechanical thing. A terrible sword. A cipher."

"But still you wish," he said softly. "You must dream."

"I am too strong now to do either," she said with infinite sadness in her voice. "Or too hard. I have forgotten how, although sometimes I think that I never knew."

"Eliane." Michael could not see into the dense blackness beneath the overhang, but he knew that he wanted to be there. He moved into the shadows.

"Michael, please don't."

"Stop me, if you want."

He was only a hand's breadth away from her.

"Oh please. I beg of you." She was weeping.

"Tell me to stop." Very close to her. He could feel her heat, as well as her trembling. "You have only to push me away."

Instead, her lips opened beneath his. Her tongue twined with his. He felt her moan into his mouth.

"Michael." Her body clung to his as if they were fastened from shoulder to foot. He felt her weight, the sinuous twining, the power of her muscles. He felt more; he felt the force of her hara, that inner energy which resides in the lower belly, that defines the spirit. "I'm burning for you."

Eliane's hara reached out and encompa.s.sed him. And it was as she had said: tough as leather, hard as stone, sere as a desert. But he was also aware of that which she was not: that bright core, encysted beneath the crust she had created, a molten river flowing with need.

She was outside what she was inside. Her mouth possessed him aggressively, her arms held him fast. Then her legs opened and she was drawing them up the outside of his thighs. Her motions were unmistakable; what her body was demanding of him was aggression and more aggression.

But desire and need were at opposite poles. That the human psyche often confused the two led to more misunderstandings between the s.e.xes than anything else.

Michael felt-no, knew-that what she desired was not what she needed. Eliane did not herself understand what it was she needed, because there are times when the need is too great to bear and is therefore tucked away in some dark corner of the spirit.

Michael knew that if he responded as she was urging him to-as he himself desired-he would lose her forever.

Gently, he thought. Gently. And unwrapping her arms from around him, he slipped to his knees.

He was acutely aware of the night around him. He felt its breath, heard the nocturnal birds in the trees tending to their sleeping chicks, the hidden predators feasting on their prey. He felt the rustle of the wind against his cheeks, aware of Eliane's long, unbound hair floating across his shoulder.

Then, with her jeans around her hips, he smelled the fragrance of her flesh and plunged his face between her thighs.

Gently, he thought. Gently. Even though the desire she had aroused in him was dangerously high. Even though he longed to possess her in just the manner she craved.

His hands stroked her gently, his tongue laved her gently.

Because in the end, he longed to possess her in every conceivable manner. He wanted her.

Having been bathed in starlight, they had returned to absolute darkness.

Michael pressed inward toward the core of Eliane's being, while she was bent over him, her hard b.r.e.a.s.t.s crushed against the bunched muscles of hisshoulders. By the scoring of her nails over the skin of his back she told him how much she loved his ministrations. By the trembling of her thighs she expressed her delight.

She gasped as he licked up and down the length of her. It seemed to her that she was filled with an indescribable heat, as if she were immersed in warm oil. She experienced a tingling all the way to her fingertips. Her hips ground up against his face so that the stubble of his beard sc.r.a.ped the tender flesh on the insides of her thighs. She shivered and bucked upward again and again while the heat opened up inside her, and she lost all coherent thought.

She opened her eyes, felt the scent of his breath on her face, saw his eyes, shining above her.

She imagined the two of them to be a pair of mating wolves, coming upon one another in the wilderness, he in heat, she giving off thick musk.

She was beside herself with pa.s.sion, reaching down to encompa.s.s him, finding that was not enough, and sliding down his naked body, taking him into her mouth, moaning at his taste, feeling herself becoming excited again, touching herself between her thighs in wonder and delight, discovering that she was on the verge of another o.r.g.a.s.m.

She felt him expanding inside her mouth and slid upward, placing the tip of him at her entrance. For one long, exquisite moment she did not move. With her hand she held him. They were touching there, but nothing more. For that moment it was enough-more than enough: It was perfect, exciting because of the feeling, exhilarating because of the antic.i.p.ation of what was to come.