At The Edge

8

The eighteen-foot mahogany table was inlaid with redwood burl and cherry, exquisitely made with feet capped in heavy brass and with fine carvings down the legs. There was a distinctly Asian flavor to the design in keeping with the preferences of the man who sat at its head. The Amada regional headquarters, about fifteen minutes outside of Palmer and forty-five minutes from the redwood-forest research compound, was second only to the San Francisco offices in grandeur and opulence.

Kenji Yamada had married Micha Asaka Yamada, the third daughter of Yoshinari Asaka, one of the ten wealthiest men in Japan. The Asaka family's corporate holding company, Kuru, was heavily invested in the wood-fiber industry, manufacturers of fine paper, pencils, wooden blinds, wooden windows, medium-density fiberboard, and a host of other derivative products.

Kenji had been relegated to the U.S. subsidiary, Amada, which was not a Japanese name but sounded so to the Western ear and was very pronounceable to the Western tongue. Among Amada's chief assets was one million acres of timberland in the United States and Canada. About 250,000 of those acres were located on the north coast of California not far from the Oregon border. Since it was substantially north of San Francisco, not many even knew that this wild area existed.

Kenji devoted every waking moment to furthering Amada's business. At age forty-nine he worried that life was passing him by, and that if he didn't have some outstanding success in the near future his father-in-law would die not realizing that his third son-in-law brought him the most honor. Today he stood on the brink of greatness, thwarted only by some legal technicalities and a stubborn mystery that seemed to defy resolution.

Kenji sat in an ornate chair differing from the others both in the detail of its carvings and its mass. His face remained impassive as he listened to the other three men. Only occasionally did he let his fingers run lightly over his close-cropped jet-black hair-an expression of his annoyance at what he was being told. To his right sat Hans Groiter, his chief of security, a Caucasian man whose skin was deeply freckled and nearly hairless. To Groiter's left sat his bespectacled lawyer.

''I am disappointed Herschel would bring them into the compound without consulting us,'' Kenji said.

"Well, now they're about to leave," Groiter said. "We'll never know what they know or what they suspect unless we do something, and fast."

"You have this Dan Young's address?"

"If I get your drift, we can start planting bugs tonight."

Kenji merely nodded, dismissing him. The ride from the Amada office to Palmer was short. With luck Groiter would get his work done before Dan Young arrived home.

"Why are the damned bats going crazy?" Kenji asked Kim Lee. "In this country that kind of thing could attract more curious biologists."

"We know they are an undiscovered subspecies," his attorney answered. "And I think we're getting them all killed off."

"Oh yes, and to find that out, we had to kill a goddamned snoopy biologist who asked too many questions?"

"It was a heart attack."

Kenji didn't bother replying. It had been stupid to bring in a man they couldn't control. The second week on the job the man had wanted to bring in an army of his brethren. Another one of Herschel's mistakes.

"So when do we know something?"

"About the bats? About our problem in the mine?"

''How about the railroad?" Kenji asked, shifting his attention to a topic only slightly less vexing.

"They won't sell."

"Why not? For good money they should."

"If we go to them and hint at big money, what do you suppose they will think?" Kim Lee tried, and failed, not to sound condescending to his boss.

"They'll think we have found something of value. So how much should we offer?"

"Ten dollars per acre."

"And why should they take that?" Kenji asked.

"It's a place to start negotiating, but I don't hold out much hope. The railroad always keeps the mineral rights."

"Why we didn't buy everything when we bought this land is a mystery to me."

The exasperation showed on Kim Lee's face, but he remained silent.

"I know I don't have to remind you of the money that each of you will make if this project is a success."

Following a helicopter ride to the police station, Dan and Maria had arranged for the recovery of the ruined rental car and for the borrowed truck to be returned to their' 'benefactor." Then they were ticketed for a trespassing infraction and sent home. After a taxi ride back to the pub, they retrieved Dan's car and drove through Palmer past darkened houses made quiet for the night.

For the hundredth time Maria wondered aloud what secret the men at the compound could be guarding so carefully.

"No clue," Dan said, "but Hans, whoever he is, wanted some creative persuasion, and our buddy was pointing out they'd have to kill us if that happened."

"Maybe we should have told the cops."

"No. We've got nothing. Nothing that couldn't be explained away. This way we can talk to our clients, get clearance, find some experts, maybe make something of the bats or the equations. Then, if appropriate, convince the cops to go out with a search warrant without warning."

"I don't disagree."

They pulled up in the driveway of the Palmer Inn. Although Maria had not planned to stay the night, she had long since missed her flight and had now decided to attend an early-morning telephone conference with Patty McCafferty and Jeb Otran-a discussion she wanted to hear.

"Look," Dan said, "why don't you come to my house? You have no luggage. You don't even have a toothbrush. I have a guest bedroom. Pepacita, my housekeeper, is there. You wouldn't be the lone female."

"Hey, that's a leap across a giant gulf. In the morning you'd wake up and realize this is Maria the enviro under your roof-the enemy. Isn't that what you guys call us?"

"We call you worse than that. But this is an emergency."

He watched her brow furrow.

"You're going to feel strange walking into the lobby like that. What will you do in the morning?"

"Oh, and you've got a whole size-eight wardrobe?"

"I do."

"You-you didn't get rid of your wife's clothes?"

"No. Not all of them. Not yet. She was a generous and good person. She would have given you the clothes if she were alive, so why not when she's gone?"

"You've got clothes I could wear to a seven a.m. meeting?"

"Absolutely. Size eight. Tess weighed one hundred twenty-five pounds. She was five foot eight inches tall. Pepacita is a great cook. There'll be dinner whenever we get there."

"What if we get the clothes and I come back here."

"You can decide when you get to my place."

"I am famished."

"Good. We'll at least get you dinner and a wardrobe."

''You know, any day now we could be in court on opposite sides of a timber-harvest plan, clawing at each other until our fingernails are hanging from bloody stumps."

''What happened to the old saying: 'Let us strive mightily but eat and drink as friends.' "

"This is real life. This counts. If you cut down a grove of redwoods a thousand years old-well, they're gone forever."

He straightened his hat and looked at her as if he had an answer.

"You wanna say something dumb, like they'll grow back."

He laughed. "Let's go to my house before we start an all-night fight."

Hans Groiter liked dried pumpkin seeds. He liked the little ritual of cracking the salted shells between his teeth and sucking out the meat. The trick was that after removing the heart he ate the shell as well.

As he drilled through the sub-floor of Dan Young's house, he ground a shell to a pulp between his teeth. Peering around the edge of the Venetian blind, he had watched a heavy Mexican woman puttering in the family room. Figuring carefully the location of the large couch, he had entered the crawl space under the house and used a hand drill to create a 1/8-inch pilot hole. Although his spike mike had wood-boring threads, he wanted to make it easy and silent.

He worked by the light of a battery-powered lantern, keeping it turned away from the entrance to the crawl space and hoping that some stray beam of light would not penetrate the darkness outside the residence and give him away. With the predrilled hole he easily screwed the mike through the floor with his right hand while his left arm mindlessly brushed aside cobwebs. Around him the pillar and post foundation supported a crawl space that varied between twenty-four and thirty-six inches over uneven ground. Protruding through the plywood floor were the nails that held the sub-floor to the plywood. If he wasn't careful, they would bloody his knuckles.

By the time the mike was screwed through the plywood, the medium-density fiber (MDF) sub-flooring, and the carpet, he had a strong feeling that he better get the hell out before he was caught. He worked with a fierce sense of urgency. If they did come, his men would trigger a quiet beep on his walkie-talkie and alert him to listen. So far, the silence had been reassuring. Once the mike was in place, he inserted a tri-pronged plug to a wireless transmitter.

As quickly and as quietly as possible, he retreated to the small, hinged door in the side of the house, exited the crawl space, and walked the one block to a waiting van.

In the forest behind the house, buried in an azalea, stood a large, sensitive microphone aimed at the family-room window. Sound waves from inside that hit the window could be picked up by Groiter' s hidden paraphernalia and broadcast to the van. Any kitchen or family-room conversation that could not be detected by the spike mike under the couch could probably be heard through this giant ear. Also, Groiter's best surveillance man, a guy too expensive to be anything but an independent contractor, had done a phone tap at the pole, also using a transmitter with a feed to the van.

All they needed now was for Dan Young to come home and talk to someone.

In the van, Groiter pulled out a Clive Cussler novel and poured a pile of pumpkin seeds onto a paper towel. "Now we wait," he told the surveillance man.

In retirement Groiter imagined that he would sit on a South Seas beach with a mound of pumpkin seeds, a stack of thrillers, and some dark glasses that would make it easier to watch the girls go by. A bachelor, he had never felt the need to become attached to anyone or anything with the possible exception of his retirement account that he nursed with a mother's love and a father's devotion.

Over the years he had managed to develop a marvelous detachment where people were concerned. He did not laugh when they laughed, cry when they cried, nor did he ever mentally put himself in the place of another. For that reason he could, if required, strangle toddlers. But he maintained a scientific point of view. If there was no remorse, there was also no joy in wet work, and he employed as little violence as he deemed possible in order to ensure a satisfactory retirement.

He had served Kenji well, managing largely through creativity to avoid killing people even in the most difficult circumstances. His value lay in his availability to do whatever was needed, like a bizarre kind of insurance policy. And since he had absolutely no one to tell, his exploits went utterly unheralded.

Most of his killing had been done in liberated Iron Curtain countries where the Mafia got in the way of some business arrangements of the Petchenkoffs, an old-money European family. He had at least achieved a stalemate after knocking off four highly placed figures in organized crime. To get to the bosses, he had to kill at least a dozen underlings, two with a ten-inch awl, one with a knife, all up close and personal. The Petchenkoffs were allowed a graceful exit at a reasonable price, neither side wanting anything more to do with the other.

He met Kenji while working for the Petchenkoffs. Actually, the Asakas were more or less sideline participants, and Kenji had an inkling of Groiter's exploits. When Kenji hired him and imported him to the United States, things became much more refined. He hadn't killed a soul working for Kenji, although he'd helped Kenji clean up the mess with Catherine Swanson and the photographer.

Perhaps Hans's greatest asset was figuring people, their fear, their greed, their envy, and their lust. If somebody had a mind for mischief, Hans had a mind that could find a way between that miscreant and whatever thing of Kenji's they wanted.

At the moment he was having a bit of a struggle understanding exactly what Maria Fischer and Dan Young might want. The morons at the lab had handled the lawyers' intrusion in typically ridiculous fashion by bringing them inside the compound and locking them in a room without so much as a guard. Amazing that a brilliant scientist could be so mindless when it came to security and so fragile when it came to enforcing it.

Yoshinari Asaka III maintained a five-story, traditional Japanese castle on the outskirts of Kanazawa in the province of Hokuriku near the Sea of Japan. It was his preferred residence, though he had several. On this day he sat in his covered garden, by the koi pond, next to a burbling stream running beneath a small footbridge. Growing near the water at his feet was a calla lily bearing a deep purple, trumpet-shaped bloom. It was a gift from his daughter Micha in America, and he treasured it. He also treasured her: the texture of her voice, her scent, her smile, and her determined squint. These things gave him great pleasure.

But for the moment his thoughts included himself, his company, and all his family. When he was a young man, sixteen hours represented a normal day spent advancing the family wealth. Now he did a better job, and it consumed six hours on a busy day. There were days when he took only a single call. So astute was his handpicked management that the Asaka business conglomerate could be guided down the right path with tiny consistent taps from a small stick. If administered precisely, these taps moved the corporate giant to ever greater success. Yoshinari was a master, his tapping so subtle that it often went undetected to all but the most discerning ear.

As in all affairs in every culture, error was possible. In the Asaka businesses, departures from the path crept in most easily when the master tapper could not see where to apply the stick. And there was now a blurry fog over the business activities of the Amada subsidiary and Kenji Yamada, its chief executive, his son-in-law. It was a matter of possessing accurate information-a commodity in short supply at Amada. So he had sent a liaison, one Oki Satoru, whom he needed to call now.

A voice answered with a groggy-sounding greeting.

"I hope I did not awaken you."

"I fell asleep watching the TV. Sign of getting older."

"Ah, yes," Yoshinari said. "Are you making any progress?"

"I'm afraid Kenji is not happy to see me. I can learn only what Kenji wants me to learn, which is nothing. I am frankly worried that he tries too hard to keep secrets, especially about the forest compound. One wonders what he is worried about. He claims that if word of their Taxol research gets out, the woods will be full of hunters for the yew trees."

''What does that have to do with you and your need to know?"

"It is an excuse without a reason. I believe he has some other project in progress."

"And why do you think that?"

"He has hired chemical engineers at the research center."

"Is there a reason he doesn't share this with us?"

"I don't know. I'm trying to figure it out. But there is a matter I should speak with you about.''

"Yes." Yoshinari did not like Satoru's strained tone. He wondered what Kenji had done that even the ambitious Satoru didn't approve of.

"Your daughter has suspected Kenji of seeing other women. She actually told me this, sir. And I took action, sir. Over here the state senators have a knife at the throats of the timber producers. I thought a political connection could advance the interests of the Asaka family. So I promised a well-placed woman money to get next to Kenji. Like a geisha."

Asaka forced himself to show restraint. Like a geisha, indeed. "Go on."

''It didn't work out well. The woman communicated with Micha on the phone, made small talk. Said how much she appreciated Kenji giving her a ride home. That part, of course, was good. But after the call the woman was found dead in a photographer's van, apparently sexually assaulted by the photographer. I had hired the photographer. And he has disappeared. The police think he's running from the law."

"Tell me why you hired this woman?"

"It's a long story. As I said, her husband is a state senator with prospects. In the long run he could give us political favors. It's common in America like everywhere else. Especially California."

"It is against the law."

"The woman could pry information out of your son-in-law. That's not against the law. And Micha would have the answer to her question. If she knew he was tempted, she could confine his ways."

"You thought all this up by yourself?"

"I did."

"And why did you hire the photographer?"

"For evidence."

"You neglected to mention this scheme to me."

"I didn't want to burden you with it."

"Who do you think killed the woman?"

"I don't know. Perhaps the photographer. Perhaps Kenji."

''I want you to cease all this. I sent you to gather information, not to trap my son-in-law. He is capable enough of serious errors without you creating them for him."

"I understand."

''I want a full report of everything to do with this woman and this photographer. Put it in a computer file with a twenty-digit password. E-mail the encrypted file. Courier the password on a single piece of paper directly to me and show it to no one. I will show the report only to our attorneys. If I didn't need someone over there on an immediate basis, I would recall you. Do you understand?"

"Yes." It was the reply of a beaten man.

Yoshinari made few errors, but sending Satoru had been one of them. He instantly saw Satoru's foolish game-a transparent attempt to have Kenji removed so that he could be advanced. But Yoshinari also knew that his daughter might not disapprove of a plan designed to test her husband's fidelity.

As for Kenji's secret project, perhaps Kenji saw honor in surprise and in solitary accomplishment. It was the American way, not the Japanese way. For the Japanese, making many work as one was the highest honor, and the honor went to all.

As he wondered how hard he should search for Kenji's tapping spot, Yoshinari realized he had already made a decision. He knew people from all walks of life. He knew political leaders, he knew business leaders, and he had access to those who served them. But even with his great wealth, it was favors owed him by the emperor's family that would get him what his money could not buy. The emperor had access to the most trusted men of the shadows. These men could blend into a crowd, slip into a bank vault, disappear in the night, kill with a single blow. They were as wise as serpents and much more dangerous. They fought only to protect those who hired them or to save an innocent life.

But when they fought, they fought to win and they fought well.

Yoshinari not only needed such a man, but he required one. One who was schooled in the ways of the Americans and who spoke English.

Using all the political capital he had accumulated in a lifetime of fortune-making, he had his man within forty-eight hours. A day after that, the man Shohei was off to the United States. Although ' 'shohei'' meant' 'giant,'' his height was normal, his body highly conditioned and wiry. Someone needed to determine what mischief Kenji might yet have in mind.