the left. A truck was coming toward him and it wasn't keeping to its side of the road. Yuiko hissed sharply; there couldn't have been more than an inch between the sports car and the truck. He apologized and she put her hand on his arm.
'You are driving very well,' she said. 'Isn't it difficult for you to drive on the left side?'
He muttered something in reply. He was getting used to accepting compliments. That morning he had been praised by the inn's two maids. Apparently he had good taste in shirts. They had felt the material and had admired the style of the collar. The innkeeper's wife had congratulated him because of his neatness and the artful way in which he had arranged his shaving gear on the bathroom shelf. It seemed to be compulsory for Japanese women to flatter males and to stress their own silliness and incapacity to deal with life. But it was obvious that they were perfectly able to take care of themselves and that the giggly surface of their little smiles and respectful and exaggerated bows and the shuffling gait designed to make them unobtrusive were no more than a veneer to cover a steel kernel. He glanced at the small shape next to him, the delicate little elf with the full breasts and soft smile and the long flowing hair tinted with a drop of red dye to give it a slight shine, and almost shuddered. A yakusa girl loyal to her gang of ruthless mates, a member of an organization that controlled hundreds of bars, brothels and other places of pleasure, that was probably the main supplier of hard drugs in an area which comprised at least three large cities of over a million inhabitants each, that fully or partly owned a string of legal businesses and ran several art galleries as a sideline. And the ambassador thought he could break this tight cluster of bats which had their fangs in the blood veins of a helpless and unaware society. He shrugged. Perhaps it could be done.
Dorin was part of another cluster of bats and he could make helicopters fly and drop loads of warriors. He wondered how legal Dorin's operation was. If he was prepared to act on the little evidence the commissaris had been able to produce so far… but he seemed to be, and there was no reason to doubt Dorin's ability.
He knew why the commissaris had approved of the Lake Biwa outing. They still didn't know the face and shape of the daimyo, the brain and commander of the troops on the other side of the fence. De Gier knew the commissaris well enough to follow some of his thoughts. The daimyo liked his little jokes and he liked to see for himself how they worked out. He had probably been around when the commissaris was trapped in the temple garden and when de Gier saw his own death on the stage of the little theater. If the daimyo had planned another joke he might be around again. And if he was around he could be seen, and if the daimyo was seen he could be described and eventually caught. Apprehended and taken to court. All he had to do now was spot the daimyo.
The road became a little better, and Yuiko began to tell him a story about her aunt who was a go-between for marriages. He wasn't paying much attention to her detailed account of how her aunt took care of other people's needs. But he grunted at the right times and she prattled on merrily. A flagman waved the car to a stop, and de Gier looked out of the window, preparing himself for a wait of several minutes at least. A convoy of trucks was coming from the other side and he could see more flagmen and laborers and bulldozers down the road. He was parked on the top of a low hill and had a good view. Several three-wheel trucks appeared, jogging along close to each other, driven by elderly stocky men with caps pulled over their eyes to protect them from the sun. The trucks were loaded with small wooden casks.
'Seaweed,' Yuiko said. 'They are bringing it in from the coast. Seaweed is very nutritious and also very tasty. Would you like me to make you some kelp soup some evening? I think I have all the ingredients, and if I haven't I can always borrow some from the lady upstairs. She is a famous cook and I often go to help her on my off days. Seafood is her specialty, and she sends out meals.'
'Yes,' de Gier said. 'Please. I like soup.'
He was looking at a dead cat, lying in a ditch close to the flagman's feet. Yuiko couldn't see the cat. The oncoming traffic missed the dead animal, although some of the trucks' wheels came close. The cat couldn't have been dead long, and the corpse wasn't mangled. It looked asleep but the mouth was slightly open and its small bright red tongue protruded slightly. The fur was still glossy and the thick tail, fluffy and showing faint dark gray stripes, curled across its legs.
The flagman waved and de Gier released the clutch, but the flagman corrected his command. Evidently he had mistaken the next flagman's movement for the O.K., but the man had only been scratching his neck. The sports car stopped again. De Gier couldn't see the cat anymore, but there was another corpse on the road now, a sparrow that was resting on its beak. Yuiko saw the bird too, and smiled.
'Pretty little thing, isn't he?' she said. 'It's a male, because he has got stripes on his head; the female is plain. The striped sparrows have an interesting song. They don't chirrup but they make a striking sound, a few short notes and then a long one. You must have heard it, there are lots of them in Kyoto.' She whistled the bird's song.
'Yes,' de Gier said. 'And they drop the last note an octave when they repeat themselves. But why would he be resting on his beak? His legs are well apart, he is in perfect balance. But he is dead.'
'I don't know,' she said. 'Perhaps he flew against a car and was thrown back and the posture happened that way. Oooh.'
The sports car had driven off at the flagman's order, and they had passed the dead bird. She had seen its other eye, and so had de Gier. The bird's head was smashed on one side, and the eye had come free from its socket and stared at them, for the split second it took in passing it, with a mixed expression of intense fear and surprise. The eye had, in some strange way, become very large and covered the entire side of the sparrow's head.
'A bad omen,' Yuiko said nervously. 'Perhaps we shouldn't go sailing today. I wouldn't mind turning back. We can go to a theater and have dinner later on in my room.'
'No, thanks,' de Gier said. 'I have been to a theater and they killed me on the stage. That wasn't a good omen either. It's a good day for sailing. Look at the tree-tops; there will be a stiff breeze on the lake.'
But there was more than a stiff breeze. The lake's surface was an endless play of whitecaps, up to the horizon. The other shore was invisible.
Yuiko gasped. 'A gale,' she said. 'I should have listened to the weather report. We must go back now. Lake Biwa is very big, you know. It's like an inland sea. It's easy to lose sight of the shore.'
De Gier stretched out his arm so that he could stroke her hair. 'It isn't that rough, it just looks bad, but once we're on the water you'll see that there's nothing to worry about. Maybe we can charter a proper yacht, but I've been out in worse weather in my little sloop, and I was only fourteen years old at the time, and since then I have sailed all sorts of boats.'
'All right,' she said. 'I have never sailed before, you see. I have only been in a rowboat and in a canoe.'
They took a wrong turn and got lost, and it was over an hour before they had found the harbor. An old man came to the gate, shaking his head.
'Too rough,' Yuiko translated. 'He advises us not to go. There is hardly anybody on the water today.'
De Gier pointed at a small fishing boat tacking away from the harbor. Another boat was visible near the horizon, a small low stripe. 'That must be a motor launch,' de Gier said. 'Tell him I'll pay any deposit he likes. I am an experienced sailor; he won't lose his boat.'
The man finally agreed and asked for the equivalent of a hundred dollars, and de Gier gave him the money, shoving the thick wad of notes across the table in the owner's small cramped office and refusing a receipt. 'Tell him that I consider it to be an honor to visit this great country and that I trust him completely,' he said. The man smiled and bowed.
There were several boats available. The man recommended a sturdy jib-headed sloop with a large cabin and a built-in engine, but de Gier preferred a twenty-foot cutter. The man didn't agree. 'He says the boat has an almost flat hull and too many sails. Three sails, one big one and two little ones in front. It will capsize easily.'
'Fine,' de Gier said, jumping aboard. 'I'll teach you and you can take care of the jibs.'
'He says there is no engine,' the girl said, hesitating on the jetty.
'There is wind, isn't there? Who needs an engine? Come aboard, Yuiko-san.'
The wind was blowing away from the harbor, and the man shuffled around anxiously while de Gier found the halyards. The man suggested that he should reef the mainsail, but de Gier shrugged. 'Tell him it's all right,' he said again to the girl. 'He'll get his boat back, and if there's any damage he can take it out of the deposit, can't he?'
He got the hamper with their picnic out of the car while he checked the sheets, the anchor and the center- board. He thought that it would be better not to irritate the man and only raised the mainsail and one jib. When Yuiko came back he was waiting on the small foredeck and pushed off, running back to grab the tiller. Yuiko had zipped herself into a yellow life jacket and had brought one for him too, but it looked clumsy and he propped it
