The Fukai shuttle helicopter touched down on the rooftop landing pad of the headquarters building around midnight. As the rotors began to slow down, a crewman opened the hatch, fitted the aluminum steps over the edge and helped Liese Egk climb down. He’d stared up her short skirt all the way down from Tokyo’s Narita Airport, and his hand shook when he touched the bare flesh of her arm.
She smiled back up at him when he passed down her single bag. “Domo arigato,” she said.
“Do itashimashite,” the young man said breathlessly.
“Your charms are still intact, I see,” someone said, coming from the elevator alcove.
Liese turned as Endo, still dressed in a crisp suit and tie, came across the pad.
He said something in Japanese in a very sharp tone to the crewman, who immediately answered,
“Hai,” and closed the hatch.
“I assume all of our shipments arrived on time and intact,” she said, coldly.
“Yes, we are most pleased. Now, I imagine, you have come here to arrange for payment.
Your situation must be very difficult after Santorini.”
“We are reorganizing. Within the month we will be ready to accept new assignments.”
“What about Ernst? How is he faring?”
“I killed him.”
“I see,” Endo replied, smiling faintly. “It must leave you short-handed.”
“Besides my couriers who made deliveries…?
“They have been eliminated,” Endo interrupted, but instead of reacting the way he thought she might, Liese continued smoothly.
“Besides the couriers, I have twenty frontline officers, plus the usual network.
We lost some very good people in this operation, but of course we expected as much.
It is one of the reasons, as you may recall, that you agreed to pay so dearly.”
Endo had to admire the woman’s coolness. It was almost a pity, he thought, that she would have to die tonight.
He took her bag, and pointed the way toward the elevator, but she stepped back a half pace.
“You first,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to get lost.”
Endo stared at her for several long seconds. He could take out his pistol and kill her, here and now. Fukai- san understood the danger she presented. But she reached inside her shoulder bag, as if for a compact or a handkerchief… or a gun… and he forced a smile.
“No, we wouldn’t want anything to happen to you,” he said, and he led the way across the landing pad to the elevator and held the door for her.
“I’ll stay the night,” Liese said on the way down. She took a handkerchief out of her purse and dabbed her nose. “We can conclude our business in the morning and I will be out of Japan by noon.”
“You may stay the evening, of course, but we’ll have to make our business arrangements immediately. Unfortunately Mr. Fukai leaves for Paris first thing in the morning.”
“That’s just as well. Your shuttle can take me back to Narita.”
“Yes, of course.”
The elevator opened to a broad empty corridor of very low ceilings, scrubbed wooden floors and rice paper sliding doors. Traditional Japanese music played softly from hidden speakers, and from somewhere they could hear the sound of water gently splashing as if on rocks at the bottom of a small waterfall. The fragrant odor of incense was on the pleasantly warm, moist air.
Near the far end of the corridor, Endo slid open a rice paper door and went in. The room was sparsely furnished as a tea place or as a waiting area in a traditional Japanese home. Putting her bag down, Endo went to the sliding doors along the opposite wall and opened them onto a broad rock garden, beneath a fake sky that was made to look like dusk, just after sunset or just before dawn. Water tumbled down a pile of rocks that rose at least thirty feet into the sky, falling into a pool in which a dozen large golden carp lazily swam. The sandy areas had been carefully raked, and a cedar tub filled with steaming water was ready on the broad, low veranda. Even birds were singing.
“You may refresh yourself, Ms. Egk. Mr. Fukai will see you in one hour. If you have any needs in the meantime, just speak out loud, and you will be attended to.”
Liese had been here to Nagasaki before, but she had never seen this place. “It’s beautiful,” she said.
Endo smiled. “It is restful,” he replied, and he bowed and left.
For a full minute Liese remained standing in the middle of the room, drinking it all in; the sights, the smells, the sounds, all carefully engineered to seem authentic, and all designed to promote a feeling of peace and security. Nothing bad could ever happen here.
This place had obviously cost Fukai a great deal of money. But as a business tool it had to have paid for itself dozens of times over each year by disarming those who came here seeking to do hard, fast business.
She crossed the room and stepped out onto the veranda. A very gentle breeze was blowing from the left, and it smelled faintly of the sea.
The evening (she decided the atmosphere was meant to be sunset) was balmy. Perfect.
She stepped out of her sandals as she unbuttoned her blouse and padded down the veranda to the shower head just beyond the tub. She wore no bra, and already her nipples were erect in response to the sensuous surroundings. She took off her skirt and panties, and layed them over the low wooden rack provided for just that purpose, and stepped under the shower head, the weight of her body on some hidden control beneath the floor boards turning on the water.
The spray was perfect in strength and temperature, and she turned slowly beneath it as she lathered her well-tanned, almost athletic body.
Endo stood just within an alcove at the far end of the veranda watching Liese take her shower, and he felt aroused. She was a beautiful creature, he decided. Mores the pity that he would have to kill her tonight.
Ernst Spranger had hinted that the woman was a lesbian, but watching her lather herself, he found that hard to believe. And, recalling the occasions she’d spent with Fukai-san, Endo felt that Spranger had hoped to gain something by such a lie. Now that he was dead, it had become a moot point.
When she was finished under the shower, clean and well rinsed as was the Japanese tradition, she moved gracefully, like a cat or some night animal, off the veranda, and across the stepping stones to the pool. She hunched down and dabbled her fingers in the water.
From where he stood, Endo had a perfect view of the curve of her haunches, and the delicate line of her backbone merging with the crease of her buttocks. He fought an almost overwhelming desire to go out there and touch her.
“She is a lovely animal, isn’t she,” Fukai said from within the alcove’s entrance hall.
Endo turned to face his master. Fukai was nearing eighty, but his hair was still jet black, his eyes still dark and clear, and his lean, compact body still well muscled because of the workouts he did every day of his life. But there was a cruel streak to his face; the set of his mouth, the expression in his eyes. Each time Endo looked at Fukai, he felt like a prize butterfly in the presence of a ruthless master collector.
“Yes, indeed she is,” Endo said. “Do you wish for me to kill her now, or would you like to watch her for a while?”
“Perhaps it won’t be necessary for us to kill her this evening,” Fukai said. “We shall see.” He was dressed in a spotlessly white kimono, wooden block sandals on his feet.
“Ernst Spranger is dead.”
“It is of no consequence.”
“Possibly…? Endo said, but Fukai silenced him with a glance.
Liese straightened up, watched the fish swim beneath the waterfall for a long time, then turned and lanquidly went back up to the veranda where she slowly lowered herself into the scented, very hot water.
Fukai stepped around Endo onto the veranda. “You look like a fawn at peace in the forest.”
Liese turned. “Kiyoshi-san,” she said, apparently with pleasure.
Endo backed out of the alcove and left, certain that Fukai was making a mistake with the woman that might cost him his life.
