Within: Chapter 5

   "Saitoh," Kyrie said.  His voice was unusually nervous.  "I got a key in the mail today from Aoshi."

   Kyrie had called me at an ungodly hour in the early morning, completely forgetting the time difference, to tell me this.  It took me a few moments to register what he was telling me.

   "You got a what?"

   "A key," he said in a little louder voice.  "He wrote a note with it saying that I should keep the key until he contacts me with further instructions.  The note said it's a key to a safe in a London Hotel...Meridien.  Nothing more."

   "When was the letter dated?"

   "Um...on the sixth."

   "That's the day he disappeared."

   "So what does this mean?"

   "If things goes the way Aoshi planned it to be, you'll be coming to London soon."

     He lied on his side - his mind reeling slowly.  He pulled the pale blue blanket around him and rolled onto his back.  Briefly he stared out through the window. Rather, it was a small slit in the wall that was barely large enough for him to even put his hand through.  It was enough for him to count the days in his mind.  At least, the days he was conscious of.  He counted seven days.  It might have been more.  There were days he was uncertain, when he had spent in the windowless cell where Ushakov tortured him.  

   He ran his fingers along his chest - there were several burns from the cigarettes Ushakov rubbed out on his chest.  The shallow cuts they made on his legs and arms with his pocket knives.  His left wrist throbbed -  it was not broken but at least, badly sprained.     

   Then he heard him.  The same measured footsteps he always took.  Calculated.  Unlike the shuffles of steps that followed him. His guards with the jingles of their keys.  Aoshi let out a soft groan and pressed the back of his hand over his eyes.  He waited until he heard the footsteps pause in front of the door before he willed himself to sit up, wrapping the blanket around him as he did so.

   "Good morning," Ushakov said as soon as he stepped through the opened door.  The guards beside him gave Aoshi a once-over before bowing out, locking the door and leaving them alone.

      "I want a deal," Aoshi said.  His voice was raspy from the fever he had a day ago.

    Ushakov fetched a thin silver box from his breast pocket and tapped out a cigarette.

    "Really?"  He said and lit it with a green plastic lighter.  "Somehow, I find that you..."

    Ushakov gestured with the lit cigarette, looking up to the ceiling to think of the word.  Instead, he said it in Russian.  

    "I'm not broken, you sonvubitch," Aoshi said.  "I am just tired of this.  I don't want to be in this little cement box."

    Ushakov took in a long drag and held it for a few seconds before letting it out through his nose.

    "I've been locked inside a box all my life," Aoshi continued, drawing one knee up to his chest and held it.  "I don't want to exist in another one."

    "Just like that? You would bend your will because this cell frightened you?"

    "I've not bent my will," Aoshi said.  "There is something I need."

    The thick brow over Ushakov's eye arched downwards.

    "I would have come to the same conclusion - no matter if I had been here for two weeks or two months or two years."

    Ushakov laced his arms across his chest.

    "What do you have in mind?"

    "Everything I have," Aoshi said.  "For my freedom."

    A laugh bubbled back out from Ushakov's throat.  Aoshi waited patiently for Ushakov to finish before he continued.

    "I will sign over everything Kanryu owned and passed on to me," Aoshi said.

    "You risked your life to come here to kill me...for that servant of yours," Ushakov said.  "And after two weeks you expect me to believe you would walk away from all of this - not only forgo your revenge but to give me your fortunes?"

    "Ian died because of me," Aoshi said quietly.  "I've come to accept that now.  He had given up his life so I can be free from Kanryu.  But I've squandered that chance and his life.  Even killing you would not make that fact any less real for me.  The money... I have no need for that kind of money.  I came from the gutters.  Even my own mother didn't want me.  Kanryu fished me out of the filth but all he did was move me from one cage to another.  I killed him and every single person that had a trace of his blood to be free from it.  The dirty money that I inherited - if it can't even get me out of this damn place, then I am better off dead."

    Ushakov chewed on the end of his cigarette, not even noticing the long ashen end had broken off and smeared on his sleeve.  

    "How do you propose to do this?"

    "I will ask Kyrie to come with the papers for me to sign.  After the signing, we walk out of here."

    "You can have your lawyers send the papers here through a messenger," he said.  "No one else is to be involved."

    "Kyrie has to be here to sign the papers with me," Aoshi said.  "I've already given him the rights to forty percent of the estate.  Unless you wish to give up on that --"

    "What made you think he would be willing to come here and hand over his millions?"

    "He will do anything I tell him to do," Aoshi said.  "He trusts me with his life.  That money... he doesn't need it.  With or without it, he has a privileged life to return to."

    Ushakov discarded the cigarette on the floor and crushed it with his heels.  

    "This is the only deal I will make," Aoshi said.  "If I manage to die somehow, you lose everything."

    "So I do...." Ushakov said, a corner of his mouth twitched. Then he laughed again.  

    Two days after Kyrie received the key in the mail, he called me and woke me in the early morning again.  

    "Remind me to buy you one of these clocks that shows international time," I said to him.  

    "I'm sorry," his voice was small.  I barely could hear him.  "He called."

    "Where is he?"

    "I don't know," he said.  "Right now, Ishimaru's gathering the finance and transfer papers to send to me in a few hours.  I am to come to London and check into Le Meridien Waldorf and ask for Mr. Phillips.  He's one of the managers.  He would call Mr. Phillips and leave him detailed instructions to give me."

    "Finance and transfer papers?"

    "Yes.  And he said to make sure that you are not to be involved," he said.  "Absolutely no one is to be involved.  Ushakov will have someone meet with me from Heathrow Airport.  There will be more of his men planted randomly in the hotel and other places.  If there's any hint of outside involvement, police or not, they will send word to have Aoshi killed."

    "It's a trade..." I said.  "Aoshi's paying his own ransom with his fortunes."

    "I think so," he said.  "I am to take the key he'd sent with me.  He said to take the six a.m. flight on the Concord tomorrow.  There will be someone... I guess Ushakov's man, to meet with me there.  I suppose this man will be watching what I do and who I talk to."

    "You going to be okay?"

    "I guess," he said.  "I trust Aoshi knows what he's doing."

    "But he's not in control of the situation.  A lot of things can go wrong."

    "Or this could be all part of the plan Aoshi had intended.  I'm going through with it either way."

    "I know," I said.

    "Swear to me you won't interfere."

    "I promise," I said, although I wasn't certain how sincere I was.  I let him off the phone so he could make the flight arrangements.  I lied awake in bed for awhile before deciding that I should get up and pack.  I would need to check out of the hotel early in the morning and check into an impossibly expensive hotel called Le Meridien Waldorf before noon.

    "Somehow," Ushakov said as he sawed a corner off of the steak and speared it with the knife, ignoring the fork in his left hand.  "I find all of this a little too neat."

    Aoshi didn't touch the plate in front of him.  Instead, he sipped the wine.

    "You would rather have the situation to be complicated?"

    "No," Ushakov said and shoved the piece of nearly steak that still dripped blood into his mouth.  "Not what I meant, exactly.  I just feel apprehensive when things are too easy."

    "You've been in the military for too long," Aoshi said.  "Victory does not have to come with death or absolute defeat.  Sometimes, people are just too tired to fight."

    Ushakov took in a large gulp of the beer from the thick glass mug to chase down the piece of meat he was chewing.  He let out a satisfied sigh and picked up the steak knife to cut another piece.

    "How'd you know if I wouldn't fuck you over? Keep you and Spencer here after you signed the papers?"

    "Because I know you wouldn't," Aoshi said.  "I am no longer a threat to you - having no more money or resources.  You would be a fool to keep Spencer.  The British won't leave you alone.  It's an international incident, to keep a child of a British politician hostage.  I'm sure Spencer's father would somehow make the situation into something of an act of war, if you kept him too long."

    "Got all of this figured out, 'eh?" Ushakov said, stuffing another piece of the steak into his mouth.  

    "Nothing to figure out.  This is just the way it is."

    Ushakov gestured with his knife as he chewed.  As soon as he swallowed, he laughed.

    "You know, I wish we didn't have to end up like this.  I like you.  I really do.  I think you are steps up from your old man.  He was generous but he had too much personal agendas.  Have to look to see if he left a knife in my back all the time."

    Aoshi said nothing but took another sip from the wine glass.

    "One of my men's going to meet with Spencer at the airport.  They are married to each other from then until the papers are signed."

    Aoshi nodded.

    "And you are gonna call whatsisname at that hotel? Why?"

    "I know Mr. Phillips since I was a child.  I trust him implicitly.  I need someone to relay the last instructions to Kyrie at the last possible moment, in case the law enforcement is trailing Kyrie as well."

    "Like I said, we could have been something together."

    "I just want to be left alone," Aoshi said softly.  "I'm tired."

    After I checked in, I asked for Mr. Phillips.  The clerk said he would not be coming in until that night, for his shift.  Kyrie would not be in until tomorrow, if he left Japan at six a.m..  There was nothing much to do except to wait until the wheels start to turn.  I couldn't begin to understand Aoshi's plan or if there were just a semblance of one.  I went out and walked around Trafalgar Square, thinking out the details and trying to reason out Aoshi's next step.  I only succeeded into frustrating myself into a pub where I drank until I was reasonably happy enough to return to the hotel.  It was nearly five in the afternoon when I did.

    As I headed toward the elevator, a good looking blonde woman in a red and white suite ran toward me from the lobby and told me to wait for her in Japanese.  I did.  Her heels were loud against the smooth marble floor, drawing curious stares from the passerby. 

    "Saitoh-san?" She said in between her breath when she caught up.  The running had made a small mess of her once perfectly coiffed hair.

    "You are?"

    She pushed some of the stray strands of her curls from her forehead and gestured for me to step to the side.

    "Agent Hauser sent me to find you," she said and showed me her badge and card.  She was Interpol.  She told me her name was Ava.

    I followed her outside where the valet brought her car to her.  A small little two-seater car that looked like several clowns should be spilling out of it.  She gave me an apologetic look when I stuffed myself into the passenger seat.

    "What did Hauser want?" I said, trying not to think about my cramped legs.

    "We got Wilde," she beamed.  "He was trying to leave the country with a false passport.  One of the agents manning the airport cameras recognized him and grabbed him just before he boarded.  I think he was headed toward Canada."

    "How nice."

    She looked at me, puzzled.

    "Canada, I mean," I said and smiled.  

    "Why did you change the hotel? It took us hours to find you."

    "Change of scenery," I said.  "Ritz wasn't posh enough."

    "Must be wonderful," she said.  "To make the kind of money you make, sir."

    I gave her my most polished smile but it didn't work its usual magic on her.  She didn't pull the car over and threw herself on me.  Instead, she laughed.  

    "What did you find out about Wilde so far?"

    "I don't know," she smiled.  "Sometimes, when my colleagues interviews a criminal like that - I tend not to be involved.  I'd make a poor witness against my own people, you know."

    She turned and winked at me.  I didn't question her meaning and found out for myself when she walked me into the room that was on the other side of the one-way mirror where the supposedly interview took place.  She excused herself and left me alone to watch Hauser and three other agents in rolled up sleeves scream at Wilde.  Wilde was sporting a swollen left eye and a split lip that was still dripping blood onto his shirt.  I couldn't understand what was asked but the agents certainly put the fear in God in him.  At some point, the portly little man started to cry.  One of the agents hit him on the head with the aluminum clip board he was carrying.  Hauser pushed him back and told him and his partner to leave.  Wilde sat in his chair, crying and shaking.  Hauser let him then said something to the other agent and left.  

    Hauser and Ava joined me in the observation room a few minutes later.  On the other side, the remaining agent spoke to Wilde in a soothing tone.  In between sobs, Wilde answered his questions.

    "Primative," Hauser said through Ava.  "But still works."

    Hauser took a seat and threw his feet up on the worn table.

    "So...?"

    "The part about Aoshi," he said.  "He said Aoshi paid him to give him to Ushakov.  In this case, he double dipped and got money from both Aoshi and Ushakov.   He made enough from that job alone to retire - so he tried to leave town.  Already bought a little place in Toronto."

    "You believe him?"

    "I don't think he's lying.  The guy's all talk and no nerve.  He ..." Hauser's smile grew.  "Falls down and hit his head on the corner of the table a couple of times and he cries like a little girl.  But what he said didn't make sense."

    "It does," I said and told him about Aoshi's instructions to Kyrie.  One of his thick eyebrows dipped deeper and deeper into the recess of his forehead as he listened.

    "We can have Phillips wear a wire."

    "I doubt anyone will reveal Ushakov's hideout on the phone," I said.  "There's no point taking a risk wiring him or the place.  I'm sure Ushakov will have someone on Phillips already."

    "So what do you suppose we do? Sit on our ass?"

    "Yes."

    Then there were long moments of silence in the room.  Hauser rocked back and forth on the hind legs of the chair he sat on, teetering precariously on it as he stared at the table top. 

   "Spencer will fry my balls if he found out I let his little boy walk into death," he said finally.

   "This meeting never took place and you never talked to me," I suggested.

   "That easy, eh?"

   "It has to be," I said.  "You don't let him go through with this, then it's pretty much all over.  If Wilde is saying Aoshi paid him off - that could only mean that everything - including Kyrie walking into this, was planned."

   "Doesn't mean the plan will work."

   "If you don't let him go through with it then the plan will definitely not work."

   "I can't see how any of this could possibly work," he said.  "There is absolutely nothing in Shinomori's favor.  At least, we should have Spencer wear a trace."

    "And have them both killed.  Somehow, I think Ushakov's used to looking for things like those.  I told you this out of professional courtesy.  I don't expect you to act on it."

    He laughed.  "You are pushy, for someone who's out of his element with zero jurisdiction."

    I shrugged.  "I get told that, even back home."

    He strummed his fingers along the table top and looked past me, into the interview room again.  The agent there had offered Wilde a handkerchief to dab at the blood running down his chin.

    "Half way on this," he said.  "I want a tracer planted somewhere on his clothes."

    I frowned.

    "Our technology is not as poor as you think," he said.  "We have 'eyes' that are undetectable by human or mechanical eyes.  A transmitter, as thin as a thread - that can be worked into his clothes."

    I didn't say anything.

    "Look, friend..." Hauser said with a lowered voice.  "Chances are, Spencer and Shinomori are as good as dead as soon as they sign over their fortunes.  Ushakov wouldn't think to let the only two living beings that could challenge and void the contracts walk out of his compound alive.  It's a choice they made, going into this.  If somehow, they managed to succeed - then this is just an extra precaution.  If they fail...I want to be able to find that sonvubitch and put a couple of bullets into his nuts.  I am sure you will too, if you lose both of them."

    I turned my back on him and watched Wilde for a few minutes.  When I looked back to him again, I was as resigned as he was.

    "What would you like for me to do?" I said.

    I decided not to contact Phillips.  He probably would not have any information I needed and there would most likely be someone trailing him already.  I sat in the lobby with a clear view of the check-in counter and read newspapers and magazines for most of the day.  Kyrie came in about three in the afternoon - a tall brown-haired man with his hair cropped short walked closely behind him.  He looked striking, with his angular face and thick upper body.  Although he wore a blue three-piece suit with a formless black long coat, he gave me the impression that he was a body builder.  The kind that worked on his chest and arms for hours a day just so he can pose in front of the mirrors.

    If Kyrie saw me, he didn't show it.  As he waited for his keycard to be made, he made a sweeping glance over the lobby and waiting area.  I was too far away to hear what room Kyrie was checked into.  As he walked by the lobby, within my ear shot - Kyrie said to his baggage that he wanted to dine at the Hotel's top level restaurant after he freshen up at the room.  Muscle boy made a crude comment that I didn't understand but made Kyrie frown.  After they stepped into the elevator, I folded up my papers and made my way to the restaurant to wait for them.

    They came in about thirty minutes later.  I was already seated by one of Hauser's agents that he had worked in with the help of the owner.  I learned later that Kyrie'd been insisted by the check-in clerk to visit the restaurant as he was handed the keycard in a sleeve with Spencer family's crest, not the hotel's.  Muscle boy was too busy looking at himself in the mirrored wall behind the check-in counter to notice.

    Kyrie and muscle boy, now with his jacket off to show off all of his manly glory, sat at the table a few feet from me.  I was sipping coffee and studying the menu with Yuriko.  Hauser was pretty nice to slip me a lunch date that I didn't know I had.  She was a UN translator that Hauser dated years ago.  Something to take the attention away from me, if I had been a little obvious with stalking Kyrie.  It also allowed me to speak Japanese to Kyrie, through my date, without muscle boy knowing.  We could only hope that none of Ushakov's rats were in the room and understood Japanese.

  I caught the nervous look in Kyrie's eyes when he saw us but he quickly hid it.  He was seated with his back to me.  He studied the menu for a while then ordered a glass of white wine and some seafood dish.  Muscle boy ordered a steak.  Rare.  He'd probably gnawed on the leg of the undead cow if he thought that would make him even more manly.  I waited until their food came, something to keep muscle boy distracted and busy as I spoke to Kyrie.

    "I need for you to listen to me carefully," I said in Japanese.  Yuriko smiled and took my hand.  "I am not going to interfere with what you have to do.  I only want to be aware of what's going on so I can try to prevent...anything within my power."

    Yuriko giggled and leaned over to give me a kiss.  I forced a smile and kissed her back.  It was a confusing conversation.

    "I need for you to pick up whatever that's in the safe and leave it in the room.  Then go to the Prada flagstore - I am sure you know where that is, and buy whatever a saleswoman named Ava recommended."

    Yuriko fed me a piece of honey glazed ham she had cut and speared on the fork for me.  She was grinning when she remarked that muscle boy ate like a starving refugee.

    "Somehow, you need to leave me your key so I can go in and check out what you got from the safe while you are out."

    Kyrie said nothing.  I was certain that he was probably angry with me and had no intentions of doing anything I've asked.  For the rest of the dinner, Yuriko told me about the crappy weather Prague.  She was there last week for a job.  Kyrie and muscle boy said nothing to each other.

    Then Kyrie started to speak to his unwanted date in a dialect that Yuriko said was Russian.  

    "I want to go shopping this afternoon," Kyrie had told muscle boy.  Yuriko leaned over and translated it into my ear.

    "We don't have time," muscle boy said.  "We are leaving soon.  And you have clothes."

    "They are not the right kind," Kyrie said.

    "Wouldn't you rather stay in our room and rest instead?"

    "I would be in a considerably better mood if you allow me to go get new clothes."

    "You are not to leave the hotel."

    "Where the hell could I go?" Kyrie said, a little louder this time.  A few patrons turned to look at them.  "Wouldn't you be with me all the time?"

    "Well, perhaps I am tired."

    Kyrie shoved his linen napkin off his lap.  I heard something a little heavier drop on the floor but I made no move toward it.  Kyrie leaned over, his face close to muscle boy.

    "Maybe I'll get an outfit to wear, just for you.  Something that won't make you so tired."

    That was all muscle boy needed to hear to make him shove his unfinished steak away from him and waved for a waiter to come to their table with their check.

    "Aoshi asked me to pick up something from the safe to bring along," Kyrie said as he signed the check.  "I want to get that and lock it up in our room before we go.  The vault might be closed by the time we get back."

    Muscle boy didn't protest.  He knew about the safe.  After they left, I picked up Kyrie's dropped napkin along with whatever was beneath it and casually tossed it by my plate.  

    "Thank you for the lovely lunch," I said and gave Yuriko a genuine kiss this time.  She winked and told me good luck and left.  I waited for a few more minutes before I looked at what was beneath Kyrie's linen napkin.  

    "Good boy," I said softly as I pocketed the gold cardkey with his suite room etched on it.  

~Narcissus  23122003