Gouffre Field/Col. Pierre St. Martin

In addition to being exasperated and physically worn, Diamond was stung with the feeling that he looked foolish, stumbling through this blinding fog, clinging obediently to a length of rope tied to the waist of his guide whose ghostly figure he could only occasionally make out, not ten feet ahead. A rope around Diamond’s waist strung back into the brilliant mist, where its knotted end was grasped by Starr; and the Texan in turn was linked to the PLO trainee Haman, who complained each time they rested for a moment, sitting on the damp boulders of the high col. The Arab was not used to hours of heavy exercise; his new climbing boots were chafing his ankles, and the muscles of his forearm were throbbing with the strain of his white-knuckled grip on the line that linked him to the others, terrified of losing contact and being alone and blind in this barren terrain. This was not at all what he had had in mind when he had postured before the mirror of his room in O

As annoying as any physical discomfort to Diamond was the wiry old guide’s constant humming and singing as he led them slowly along, skirting the rims of countless deep pits filled with dense vapor, the danger of which the guide had made evident through extravagant mime not untouched with gallows humor as he opened his mouth and eyes wide and nailed his arms about in imitation of a man falling to his death, then pressed his palms together in prayer and rolled his impish eyes upward. Not only did the nasal whine of the Basque songs erode Diamond’s patience, but the voice seemed to come from everywhere at once, because of the peculiar underwater effect of a whiteout.

Diamond had tried to ask the guide how much longer they would be groping through this soup, how much farther it was to where the Gnome was hiding out. But the only response was a grin and a nod. When they were turned over to the guide in the mountains by a Spanish Basque who had contacted them in the village, Diamond had asked if he could speak English, and the little old man had grinned and said, “A lee-tle bit.” When, some time later, Diamond had asked how long it would be before they arrived at their destination, the guide had answered, “A lee-tle bit.” That was an odd-enough response to cause Diamond to ask the guide his name. “A lee-tle bit.”

Oh, fine! Just wonderful!

Diamond understood why the Chairman had sent him to deal with this matter personally. Trusting him with information so inflammable as this was a mark of special confidence, and particularly welcome after a certain coolness in Ma’s communications after those Septembrists had died in that midair explosion. But they had been two days in the mountains now, linked up like children playing blind man’s bluff, bungling forward through this blinding whiteout that filled their eyes with stinging light. They had passed a cold and uncomfortable night sleeping on the stony ground after a supper of hard bread, a greasy sausage that burned the mouth, and harsh wine from some kind of squirt bag that Diamond could not manage. How much longer could it be before they got to the Gnome’s hiding place? If only this stupid peasant would stop his chanting!

At that moment, he did. Diamond almost bumped into the grinning guide, who had stopped in the middle of a rock-strewn little plateau through which they had been picking their way, avoiding the dangerous gouffres on all sides.

When Starr and Haman joined them, the guide mimed that they must stay there, while he went ahead for some purpose or other.

“How long will you be gone?” Diamond asked, accenting each word slowly, as though that would help.

“A lee-tle bit,” the guide answered, and he disappeared into the thick cloud. A moment later, the guide’s voice seemed to come from all directions at once. “Just make yourselves comfortable, my friends.”

“That shithead speaks American after all,” Starr said.

“What the hell’s going on?”

Diamond shook his head, uneasy with the total silence around them.

Minutes passed, and the sense of abandonment and danger was strong enough to hush even the complaining Arab. Starr took out his revolver and cocked it.

Seeming to come from both near and far, Nicholai Hel’s voice was characteristically soft. “Have you figured it out yet, Diamond?”

They strained to peer through the dazzling light.

Nothing.

“Jesus H. Christ!” Starr whispered.

Haman began to whimper.

Not ten meters from them, Hel stood invisible in the brilliant whiteout. His head was cocked to the side as he concentrated to distinguish the three quite different energy patterns emanating from them. His proximity sense read panic in all three, but of varying qualities. The Arab was falling apart. Starr was on the verge of firing wildly into the blinding vapor. Diamond was struggling for self-control.

“Spread out,” Starr whispered. He was the professional.

Hel felt Starr moving around to the left, as the Arab went to his hands and knees and crawled toward the right, feeling before him for the rim of a deep gouffre he could not see. Diamond stood riveted.

Hel cocked back the double hammers of each of the shotgun pistols the Dutch industrialist had given him years before. Starr’s projecting aura was closing in from the left. Hel gripped the handle as tightly as he could, aimed for the center of the Texan’s aura, and squeezed the trigger.

The roar of two shotgun shells firing at once was deafening. The blast pattern of eighteen ball bearings blew a puffing hole through the mist, and for an instant Hel saw Starr flying backward, his arms wide, his feet off the ground, his chest and face splattered. Immediately, the whiteout closed in and healed the hole in the mist.

Hel let the pistol drop from his stunned hand. The pain of the wrenching kick throbbed to his elbow.

His ears ringing with the blast, the Arab began to whimper. Every fiber of him yearned to flee, but in which direction? He knelt, frozen on his hands and knees as a dark-brown stain grew at the crotch of his khaki trousers. Keeping as low to the ground as he could, he inched forward, straining to see through the dazzling fog. A boulder took form before him, its gray ghost shape becoming solid only a foot before he touched it He hugged the rock for comfort, sobbing silently.

Hel’s voice was soft and close. “Run, goatherd.”

The Arab gasped and leaped away. His last scream was a prolonged, fading one, as he stumbled into the mouth of a deep gouffre and landed with a liquid crunch far below.

As the echoing rattle of dislodged stones faded away, Hel leaned back against the boulder and drew a slow deep breath, the second shotgun pistol dangling from his hand. He directed his concentration toward Diamond, still crouching motionless out there in the mist, ahead of him and slightly to the left.

After the Arab’s sudden scream, silence rang in Diamond’s ears. He breathed shallowly through his mouth, so as to make no sound, his eyes darting back and forth over the curtain of blinding cloud, his skin tingling with anticipation of pain.

A ten-second eternity passed, then he heard Hel’s prison-hushed voice. “Well? Isn’t this what you had in mind, Diamond? You’re living out the machismo fantasies of the corporation man. The cowboy face to face with the yojimbo. Is it fun?”

Diamond turned his head from side to side, trying desperately to identify the direction from which the voice came. No good! All directions seemed right.

“Let me help you, Diamond. You are now approximately eight meters from me.”

Which direction? Which direction?

“You might as well get a shot off, Diamond. You might be lucky.”

Mustn’t speak! He’ll fire at my voice!

Diamond held his heavy Magnum in both fists and fired into the fog. Again to the left, then to the right, then farther to the left. “You son of a bitch!” he cried, still firing. “You son of a bitch!”

Twice the hammer clicked on spent brass.

“Son of a bitch.” With effort, Diamond lowered his pistol while his whole upper body shook with emotion and desperation.

Hel touched his earlobe with the tip of his finger. It was sticky and it stung. A chip of rock from a near stray had nicked it. He raised his second shotgun pistol and leveled it at the place in the whiteout from which the rapid pulses of panicked aura emanated.

Then he paused and lowered the gun. Why bother?

This unexpected whiteout had converted the catharsis of revenge he had planned into a mechanical slaughter of stymied beasts. There was no satisfaction in this, no measurement in terms of skill and courage. Knowing they would be three, and well armed, Hel had brought only the two pistols with him, limiting himself to only two shots. He had hoped this might make a contest of it.

But this? And that emotionally shattered merchant out there in the fog? He was too loathsome for even punishment.

Hel started to move away from his boulder noiselessly, leaving Diamond to shudder, alone and frightened in the whiteout, expecting death to roar through him at any instant.

Then Hel stopped. He remembered that Diamond was a servant of the Mother Company, a corporate lackey. Hel thought of offshore oil rigs contaminating the sea, of strip-mining over virgin land, of oil pipelines through tundra, of atomic-energy plants built over the protests of those who would ultimately suffer contamination. He recalled the adage: Who must do the hard things? He who can. With a deep sigh, and with disgust souring the back of his throat, he turned and raised his arm.

Diamond’s maniac scream was sandwiched between the gun’s roar and its echo. Through a billowing hole in the fog, Hel glimpsed the spattered body twisting in the air as it was blown back into the wall of vapor.

Ch

Hana’s posture was maximally submissive; her only weapons in the game were voluptuous sounds and the rippling vaginal contractions at which she was so expert. Hel had the advantage of distraction, his endurance aided by the task of controlling movement very strictly, as their position was complicated and arcane, and a slight error could do them physical hurt. Despite the advantage, it was he who was driven to muttering.

“You devil!” between clenched teeth.

Instantly she was sure he had broken, she pressed outward and joined him in climax, her joy expressed aloud and enthusiastically.

After some minutes of grateful nestling, he smiled and shook his head. “It would appear I lose again.”

“So it would appear.” She laughed impishly.

Hana sat at the doorway of the tatami ’d room, facing the charred ruin of the garden, her kimono puddled about her hips, bare above the waist to receive the kneading and stroking that had been set as the prize in this game. Hel knelt behind her, dragging his fingertips up her spine and scurrying waves of tingle up the nape of her neck, into the roots of her hair.

His eyes defocused, all muscles of his face relaxed, he permitted his mind to wander in melancholy joy and autumnal peace. He had made a final decision the night before, and he had been rewarded for it.

He had passed hours kneeling alone in the gun room, reviewing the lay of the stones on the board. It was inevitable that, sooner or later, the Mother Company would rupture his gossamer armor. Either their relentless investigations would reveal de Lhandes to be dead, or the facts concerning Kennedy’s death would eventually come out. And then they would come after him.

He could struggle, cut off many arms of the faceless corporate hydra, but ultimately they would get him. And probably with something as impersonal as a bomb, or as ironic as a stray slug. Where was the dignity in that? The shibumi?

At last, the cranes were confined to their nest. He would live in peace and affection with Hana until they came after him. Then he would withdraw from the game. Voluntarily. By his own hand.

Almost immediately after coming to this understanding of the state of the game and the sole path to dignity, Hel felt years of accumulated disgust and hate melt from him. Once severed from the future, the past becomes an insignificant parade of trivial events, no longer organic, no longer potent or painful.

He had an impulse to account for his life, to examine the fragments he had carried along with him. Late into the night, with the warm Southwind moaning in the eaves, he knelt before the lacquered table on which were two things: the G

Through all the years he had wandered adrift in the West, he had carried with him three spiritual sea anchors: the G

His newly liberated mind drifted from wisp of idea to wisp of memory, and soon—quite naturally—he found himself in the triangular meadow, one with the yellow sunlight and the grass.

Home… after so many years of wandering.

“Nikko?”

“Hm-m-m?”

She snuggled her back against his bare chest. He pressed her to him and kissed her hair. “Nikko, are you sure you didn’t let me win?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you’re a very strange person. And rather nice.”

“I did not let you win. And to prove it to you, next time we’ll wager the maximum penalty.”

She laughed softly. “I thought of a pun—a pun in English.”

“Oh?”

“I should have said: You’re on.”

“Oh, that is terrible.” He hugged her from behind, cupping her breasts in his hands.

“The one good thing about all of this is your garden, Nikko. I am glad they spared it. After the years of love and work you invested, it would have broken my heart if they had harmed your garden.”

“I know.”

There was no point in telling her the garden was gone.

It was time now to take the tea he had prepared for them.