“Who would do the selling?” repeated Nick, speaking more to himself now than to the don. “Not Nuevo Mexico, although their military forces and new colonists here will be in the way.”
“No, not really,” said Noukhaev. “No more in the way than, say, the native populations and so-called armies of Belgium, Norway, Denmark, and European Russia. The new Islamic owners of all those former nations have gained much experience in efficient expansion in the past three decades.”
“But still…,” muttered Nick, his nerve ends twitching and misfiring from the tasering. “Who would do the real selling? Who would get the billions of old dollars involved in such a…”
Nick looked up and met Noukhaev’s dark-eyed gaze. “Japan,” he said softly.
Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev opened his callused palms.
“Not the country of Japan,” Nick said. “But the keiretsu and the daimyo who has most control here in the States when the time comes to make the deal with the mullahs in Tehran and Mecca. The new Shogun.”
Noukhaev was no longer smiling, merely staring. The gaze burned into Nick. He could feel it like a finger of fire against his face.
“A sort of second Louisiana Purchase,” murmured Nick. “But millions of Islamic colonists in former U.S. states? America would… never stand for it.”
Nick’s voice had been dropping from lack of conviction even before he finished the sentence. America had stood for a lot in recent decades. More to the point—what could it do to stop an organized and Caliphate-backed colonization of these desert states? America hadn’t been able to keep the territory out of the hands of the Mexican cartels in the first place.
Will they bring their own camels? wondered Nick. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. He suddenly had one hell of a headache.
“I have been a poor host,” said Noukhaev. “Are you thirsty, Nick Bottom? Shall I call for some wine?”
“Not wine,” said Nick. “Just some water.”
Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev seemed to be talking to the desktop when he spoke in low, conversational tones. “Please bring some water for my guest and myself.”
A minute later, the side door opened and a guayabera-wearing man came in carrying a silver tray upon which were a crystal carafe of water, so filled with ice that it fogged the crystal with its cold, and two crystal glasses.
Noukhaev poured for both of them.
“Please,” said the don, gesturing. Nick waited, holding the cold glass. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d been this thirsty or when his head had hurt quite this much. Both, he imagined, were byproducts of the tasering.
But he didn’t drink.
Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev laughed easily and drained his entire glass of ice water. He poured more for himself.
Nick sipped. No taste, chemical or otherwise. It was water.
“Can I ask some questions now?” asked Nick. “That was supposed to be the purpose of this meeting.”
“By all means, Nick Bottom. You, after all, are the investigator. This is what Mr. Hiroshi Nakamura has said, and Mr. Hiroshi Nakamura is seldom wrong. Please, please, ask your questions.”
Noukhaev extracted a second cigar, prepared it, lit it, and sat back in his chair smoking it.
“Do you know who killed Keigo Nakamura?” asked Nick, his voice flat and hard. But the effort of speaking drove white-hot spikes of pain into his aching head.
“I believe I do,” said Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev.
“Will you tell me?”
“I would prefer not to,” said Noukhaev with a small smile.
Bartleby, thought Nick. Dara had introduced him to the wicked and memorable Melville story with that sad and memorable repeated line. He thought that the full title had been Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street. Either way, right now Nick envied the little scrivener who could just roll over on his cot and turn his face to the wall of his prison. And die, remembered Nick.
“Why not?” he asked, voice still hard. “Just tell me what you know or what you think you know. It’d make everyone’s life a hell of a lot easier. Especially mine.”
“Yes, but you are the investigator, Nick Bottom,” the don said again, this time through the haze of blue smoke. “In the first place, I might be wrong. In the second place, I would never deny you the triumph of identifying the murderer or murderers yourself.”
Nick shook his head to clear it. “We know that Keigo Nakamura came down with his little video documentary team five days before he was murdered. His assistants said Keigo interviewed you on camera. Is that true?”
“Yes.”
Why would you allow such a thing? Nick thought, squinting at the older man. Why would a gunrunner, drugrunner, information seller, and international expediter of all things illegal allow himself to be interviewed, on camera, by the son of one of his greatest enemies—perhaps a deadly enemy—for a stupid documentary on Americans and their flashback addiction?
Nick struggled to put the question into a few clear words and then gave it up. His head hurt too much for such efficiency. Instead, he said, “Did Keigo say something—or ask you something—while he was here that made you want to kill him? That required he die?”
“No to your first question, Nick Bottom. A sad but total yes to the second question.”
Nick rubbed his brow as he worked that out. “So Keigo said something here that caused someone to have to kill him. That’s what you’re saying?”
Noukhaev inhaled cigar smoke, enjoyed it, expelled it. He said nothing.
“That something was on the memory chip of his camera?” Nick asked.
“Oh, yes,” said the don. “But that is not why Keigo Nakamura had to die the way he did, when he did.”
“What is the reason, Don Noukhaev?”
The don smiled, shook his head sadly, and flicked ashes into the makeshift ashtray.
“Someday,” Noukhaev said at last, “you must look into the kind of documentary the young Nakamura was really making. Why would the scion of a modern zaibatsu clan almost sure to produce the next Shogun come to America to waste his time documenting useless flashback addicts… no insult intended, Nick Bottom.”
“None taken,” said Nick. “You tell me what Keigo was doing with his little documentary, if it wasn’t to document American flashback use. I’ve seen hours and hours of the unedited rough footage. It’s all about how people use flashback.”
“All about that?” said the don.
“That and how the dealers get it… how the drug itself is transported into the country and sold. That sort of stuff. But all related to flashback and Americans using it. Are you suggesting that there’s a hidden film in his footage… a movie within the movie or something? Something telling us to expect this F-two you mentioned? Are you suggesting something like that?”
“I suggest nothing,” said Noukhaev. “Except that, regrettably, our time together is growing short.”
Nick sighed.
“But you think the one who gave the order to kill Keigo is one of the seven family daimyos competing with Nakamura for the Shogunate?”
“I did not say that.” Noukhaev turned his cigar around and blew the ash into flame.
“If I guess and give my reasons, will you confirm or deny the names?”
Noukhaev laughed his broad, aggravating laugh. Nick had had just about enough of it.
“Investigators do not guess, Nick Bottom. They deduce. They eliminate the impossible and improbable until only the inevitable remains.”
“Bullshit,” said Nick.
“Yes,” grinned the large-knuckled don.
“But you invited me to this meeting,” said Nick, more thinking aloud than communicating now. “If you’re not going to help me with the investigation, then you must have brought me here—and put yourself in some danger from Nakamura’s gee-bears—because you want to send him, Nakamura, a message.”
Noukhaev smoked his cigar.
Nick sipped more water. “Or maybe a message to Sato,” he said at last.
“Were you serious about Sato being his own important daimyo in Japan? Colonel Death and all that? Ten thousand ninjas or samurai or whatever at his command?”
Nick hadn’t expected an answer but the don said, “Yes.”
“So, you’re saying, Sato’s also a player in all this. That he might have his own motives and not just be a mindless Nakamura vassal… someone who will commit seppuku at Mr. Nakamura’s order.”
“Oh, Hideki Sato will commit seppuku at once upon his liege lord’s command,” said Noukhaev. No smile. “He has already done worse than that.”
Nick wondered what could possibly be worse than being ordered to disembowel oneself. Much later, he realized that if he’d asked that question of Noukhaev then, the entire mystery would have been solved. Instead, he said, “And Sato’s really an assassin?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Why would Nakamura assign one of the world’s top assassins to spend so much time with me? To risk such a valuable man’s life by sending him down here through enemy-held territory, with me, so that I could see you, Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev? Sato was almost killed when we were attacked, you know.”
Again, Nick was sure that there would be no answer to this ill-shaped, amorphous question, so he was deeply surprised when the don replied so earnestly.
“When you solve this murder, Nick Bottom—if you solve this murder—for the short period of time they will allow you to remain alive, perhaps just hours, more probably mere minutes, you will be the most dangerous man on earth.”
Nick set down his water glass. “Dangerous to whom, Don Noukhaev? To just the murderer and his keiretsu? Or zaibatsu or whatever the hell it’s called today?”
“Much more dangerous than that,” Noukhaev said softly. “And to many more people. To millions of people. Which is why they cannot allow you to live once you solve this crime.”
Me, dangerous to millions of people? That made no sense, no matter which way Nick turned it. He was totally at sea. Nothing explained anything to him and everything he heard made his head hurt more and his insides feel more queasy.
“Then I’d better not solve the fucking crime,” Nick said at last. His voice came out slightly slurred, as if he’d been drinking vodka rather than water.
“But you must solve this crime, Nick Bottom.” The don didn’t seem to be bantering or waxing sarcastic. His voice was as low and as serious as Nick had heard it.
“Why must I solve this crime?” Nick had gone for a sarcastic tone, but it had come out merely tired-slurred.
“Because she would have wanted you to,” said Noukhaev.
Nick sat up straight in his uncomfortable metal chair. She would have wanted him to?
“Who’s ‘she,’ Noukhaev?”
“Your wife, Nick Bottom,” said the don, flicking ashes with a relaxed move of his hairy wrist. “The lovely lady named Dara.”
Nick was on his feet, his hands balled into his fists. On his feet but swaying slightly. “How do you know my wife’s name?” Stupid thing to say, Nick realized at once. Noukhaev must have multiple dossiers on him, compiled as soon as Nakamura had hired him. He shook his head and tried again.
“What’s my wife got to do with anything? Why bring her into this?” Nick put a fist onto the desktop to help steady himself. The don had remained seated.
“Your wife, Dara Fox Bottom, was a beautiful woman,” Noukhaev said in low tones. “She sat right there… in the same chair that you just vacated…”
Nick swiveled awkwardly to look down at his empty chair. When he turned back to Noukhaev, he had to set both fists, knuckles first, onto the don’s desk to keep from falling.
“Dara here? Why? When?”
“The day after Keigo Nakamura interviewed me,” said Noukhaev. “Four days before the young Mr. Nakamura was murdered in Denver. He and his retinue had already flown home by the time your wife met with me.”
“Met with you… why?” managed Nick.
The room was spinning now. The water, thought Nick. No, not the water. Noukhaev had drunk the water. Something in the glass that interacted with the water. Something slower-acting than the fucking taser, but just as sure.
“The man she came to Santa Fe with and stayed with at the Inn of the Anasazi while they were here,” Noukhaev was saying from a thousand miles away, his voice rattling and echoing down the quickly closing tunnel. “That assistant district attorney Harvey Cohen. He was a man of little or no imagination. But your lovely wife, Nick Bottom… your lovely wife, Dara, she was…”
Whatever his lovely wife Dara was, had been, Nick never heard it from Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev.
Nick had already begun the long slide down the dark tunnel into blackness.
1.14
Denver and Las Vegas, Nevada: Friday, Sept. 17—Sunday, Sept. 19
DENVER WAS STILL STANDING when Nick got back on Friday evening. Most of Denver, at least. Some group had blown up the Denver branch of the U.S. Mint on West Colfax, near Civic Center Park.
Why the U.S. still had a mint, Nick had no idea. No one used coins any longer. So the destruction of that particular ancient landmark had been of interest only to the terrorists who built the bombs and to the five bored guards who’d been blown apart in the middle-of-the-night blasts. It was the sort of information that Nick and a million other Denverites had learned to file under Ignore and Forget.
What did get Nick’s attention immediately upon stepping naked out of the shower was a ten-minute-old text message from Detective First Grade, Lieutenant K. T. Lincoln: “Nick—Everything checked out okay. No worries. No need to see each other. Mami.”
The “Mami” was their old cop-partner code for “Must Arrange Meeting Immediately!” and also signified that all preceding sentences in the message meant the opposite of what they said. It was an I’m-under-some-duress code.
Something was very wrong.
Nick phoned her cell and got her message voice telling callers that she was on duty, so leave a message and she’d get back to them.
“Just back in town and checking in,” Nick said, working on the closest he could get to a bored tone of voice. “Glad everything’s okay. Call me when you get a chance. Oh, I broke my old phone and have a new number.” He gave her the number of the onetime phone he’d dug out of a duffel hidden behind the wallboards. After her return call, he’d pitch the thing.
Fifteen minutes later, K.T. phoned. “I’m supervising a stakeout and ESU thing over here on East Colfax. But it’s gotta be over before eleven-thirty because the ESU guys have to get their van back. I’ll meet you at midnight at that place where that guy did that thing that time.” She broke the connection. Nick was sure that she’d used a onetime as well.
Getting dressed, Nick checked the clock on his cubie’s TV. Just after 9 p.m. He had almost three hours to kill. He’d use some of that time speculating about just what the hell K.T. could have turned up that would call for such an urgent get-together.
NICK HAD BEEN CONSCIOUS by the time Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev’s people had dropped him off in front of the cathedral. Legs shaky, his insides quaking with anger, Nick had walked the short block to the Japanese consulate.
He’d assumed that Sato and the other Japs at the consulate would be so eager to hear what the don had said to him that the interrogation would go on all that afternoon and night, moving to sodium pentothal and other so-called truth drugs if Nick didn’t give them everything they wanted. But there was no interrogation.
Sato, his right arm looking slick-wet in the active sling, had come to Nick’s room, knocked, walked in, and said, “Did you learn anything important from Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev? Anything that could help our investigation?”
Biting the inside of his cheek, Nick had looked up at Sato and said, “I don’t think so.” That was a lie, but how much of a lie wasn’t quite clear yet.
Sato had just nodded and said, “It was worth a try.”
A few hours later, when Nick awoke from his nap but was still feeling drained and stupid, Sato invited
him to dinner at Geronimo, a famous upscale restaurant that he and Dara had loved (and saved up to enjoy during their annual visits to Santa Fe). Without pondering why Hideki Sato would take him out to dinner at such an expensive spot, Nick accepted. He was hungry.
Geronimo was as Nick had remembered it—a small adobe building that had been a private home in 1750, its entrance area dominated by a large central fireplace with a mantel topped by both a huge floral display and a giant pair of moose antlers—but the restaurant itself was small. Since it was cool and raining out that evening and the porch dining area closed, the small interior seemed crowded. Luckily, given Sato’s girth, they were seated in a corner banquette all to themselves. The two men said little. Nick was finished with his first course—Fujisaki Asian pear salad with sweet cashews and cider honey vinaigrette—and was halfway through his main course of filet mignon “frites,” the hand-cut russet potato fries alone worth killing for, when the memory of his last time here with Dara struck him.
He felt his chest ache and his throat tighten and, like a fool, he had to set down his fork and sip water—Sato had ordered a bottle of Lokoya ’25 Mount Veeder Cabernet Sauvignon for the two of them at a price just slightly less than Nick’s last full year’s salary as a police detective—and pretend he’d bitten into something too spicy to hide his tears and flushed face. Nick’s strongest wish at that moment was that he could immediately go back to his room at the consulate and use one of the last one-hour vials of flashback he’d brought along to call back his dinner at this restaurant with Dara nine years ago. The ache and need was more than mere flashback withdrawal, it was an existential matter: he didn’t belong here and now, eating this fine food with this huge hulk of a Japanese assassin, he needed to be there, then, with his wife, sharing a wonderful meal with her while both of them looked forward to going back to their room at La Posada.
Nick sipped water and looked away until he’d blinked away the idiotic tears.
“Bottom-san,” Sato had said when both were eating again, “have you considered going to Texas?”