It was dark when Fitzduane awoke, and then he realized that he must have slept right through.
It was not surprising. The Namaka Steel business had been exhausting enough, but Chifune had been a marathon of exquisitely sensual endurance.
He fumbled for his watch and then tried opening his eyes. It mad the process a whole lot easier. He noticed the candles were fresh and Chifune was leaning over him. She bent down and kissed him. Her hair was still damp from the shower, and she was wearing a toweling robe.
'Fourteen hours,' she said. 'More or less.'
'So much for the sex,' he said sleepily. 'How long did we rest for?'
Chifune laughed. 'There is a razor in the bathroom,' she said. 'I'll have some food ready in fifteen minutes. Are you hungry?'
Fitzduane undid her robe.
'Pillow speak,' she said.
She was naked and lying with her back to him, staring unfocused at the candles, enjoying the constant pattern as the flames flickered in the night breeze off the sea.
Fitzduane smiled, but did not correct her. Chifune had excellent English, but just occasionally would make a slip. He drank some more champagne. He was not quite sure whether it was breakfast, lunch, or dinner, but it tasted good anyway.
He felt recharged after the long sleep and the lovemaking and a shower and a shave and food and more lovemaking, and now that he thought of it, there were few things more pleasant in the world than lying in bed in a postcoital glow talking to a beautiful woman – unless it was doing exactly that with a bottle of decent wine to hand. Fitzduane liked the company of women. Women had good minds; a much-neglected resource in his opinion. And based on what he had seen and heard, a particularly neglected resource in Japan.
Chifune turned to look at him. 'Pillow speak?' she said. 'I could hear you smiling, gaijin.'
Fitzduane laughed. 'Pillow talk,' he said.
Chifune pulled back the covers and kissed his dormant penis quickly and then covered him up again. 'Thank you,' she said. 'English is such a quirky language.'
Fitzduane did not want to spoil the mood, but there were matters he was curious about and Chifune seemed to want to speak. 'What about this pillow business?' he said quietly.
Chifune smiled without looking at him. ‘To pillow’ was a euphemism for lovemaking in Japanese.
'You don't say anything explicitly, Hugo,' she said, 'but you're a man who invites confidences, an easy person to talk to. I think it is because you have values and you care. So many people go through the motions, but they don't really care and in their hearts there is nothing. They take up space but they do not contribute. To contribute, you have to care. And caring is about risk. You have something to lose. It exposes you. It makes you vulnerable. It is dangerous.'
Fitzduane put down his wineglass and turned toward her. Her back was still to him, but he put his left arm around her and drew her to him. She snuggled up to him and pressed his hand against her breasts.
'Don't speak, Chifune,' he said, 'unless you must. It is not necessary.'
'‘Don't say anything you'll regret afterwards,’' she quoted. 'Relax, Hugo. I know the disciplines, the way it should be done in Koancho. I've been well-trained for this game, and I live it. But sometimes I need to breathe, to talk freely, as if I were not part of a world of paranoia, corruption, and deception. Security may be necessary, but it's stifling. Sometimes I wish I could live a normal life and have children and become an education mother and be married to a sarariman. And then complain because he is never at home – always out working or drinking with his colleagues or stuck on some commuter train.'
'Who are you, Chifune?' said Fitzduane. 'What's your background? How did you get into this business?'
Chifune was silent, and at first Fitzduane thought she was not going to answer, but then she spoke. 'My father was a politician and the son of a politician. This makes a joke of democracy, but it is not so unusual. More and more political posts are handed down father to son, like some aristocratic birthright, and that happened in this case even though my father was estranged from my grandfather. Some alliances endure regardless. Like my grandfather, my father was a member of the Hodama faction, but something of a maverick nonetheless. He had been brought up in a world of money politics and at first regarded this as normal, but then started to think for himself. He had ideas, there were policies he wanted to pursue, but everywhere he turned he was frustrated by the system. Special interests ruled the day, and the amount of money going through the political system was such that they were not going to allow anyone to stand in their way. I'm talking about billions of yen here, millions of dollars. The bribe paid to one provincial governor, for example, to win construction contracts came to nearly twenty million dollars.'
'Just one bribe?' said Fitzduane.
'Just one single backhander,' said Chifune. 'Politicians, certain senior civil servants, key businessmen, and the yakuza – the four pillars of power and corruption in Japan. Not everyone is corrupt, by any stretch of the imagination, but enough at the center of power is rotten for the tentacles of corruption to stretch far and wide.'
'So what happened?' said Fitzduane.
'My father tried to change things. He and some younger faction members got together and set up a study group, and for a while they made some progress, but then the group started to fall apart. Some were simply bought, others were arrested on trumped-up corruption charges, and a few were simply scared away. It was an orchestrated campaign of intimidation conducted with ruthless brilliance, and the man behind it was my grandfather. He had power and he was not going to relinquish it to anyone – even his own blood – except on his own terms and in his own good time. And that was not yet, if ever. He was a kuromaku of genius and an evil corrupt old man, but no one was better at the power game than he, and no one was going to oust him.'
Fitzduane gave a start as the full significance of her words hit home. 'Hodama?' he said. 'Your grandfather was Hodama?'
Chifune turned toward him. 'There are other kuromakus,' she said. She was leaning on one arm facing him, only inches from him. He could feel her breath as she spoke. The candles were behind her, so her face was in shadow. He could see her breasts and the dark outline of her nipples and the taut flesh of her stomach and the curve of her hip. He had to remind himself that this was a woman who was trained to kill and who could put that training into action with ease. This was a woman who had risked her life for him and whose body he had shared. This was a woman with blood on her hands. As he had. Theirs was a shared world.
'You're Hodama's granddaughter,' said Fitzduane, ignoring her denial. 'My God, who else knows this? What are you doing on this case? Doesn't conflict of interest mean anything around here, or is that just another difference between Japan and us gaijins.'
Chifune leaned across and kissed him hard on the lips. 'That evil old man killed his own son,' she said. 'He killed my father to preserve his rotten regime. When almost all his group had been destroyed or dispersed, my father was found in his office with his throat cut and a razor in his hand. Money and other incriminating material was subsequently found in his safe. The suicide verdict was automatic. A disgraced politician kills himself. It's not so uncommon.'
'How do you know it wasn't suicide?' said Fitzduane. 'How do you know all this?'
Chifune smiled sadly. 'Believe me, I know,' she said. 'My father and I were very close. I did secretarial work for his group and worked with him on the reforms they planned. I kept his records and knew what was in his safe and what was in his mind on the day he died. It was a setup and it was murder. Of that, I have no doubt. I confronted my grandfather with this and he virtually admitted it, and then he laughed at me. He despised women. We were instruments in his eyes, not people. We were there to serve and to be used.'
'And so you worked the system,' said Fitzduane. 'You used your connections to get into Koancho and worked there under a false name. The security service was the best place to get to know the dirt on the people you hated. And sooner or later an opportunity would come up for you to strike back.'
Chifune nodded. 'My father had made the initial contact with Koancho. They were the people who fully understood the extent of the corruption, and the Director-General was a friend of his. If he had lived, the security
