“Don’t worry. Addison-san. I don’t think there will be any BTL investigations.” Even as he said it, Sam also knew that there should be. Jiro did have a history of chip abuse, but his hospital file contained no mention of it. Just as there should have been an investigation of Jiro’s accident. On the other hand, if Addison and his cronies were part of some cover-up, the decker wouldn’t be here nervously asking questions. Someone else was involved, hiding something behind the official lack of interest. Crenshaw was in security. Maybe she knew something. “We really do have to go.”
“Yeah, sure, man.” Addison stepped back, a nervous smile flickering over his face. “Well, thanks anyway, Warner. You’re an O.K. guy”
Sam hurried out the chapel door. Hanae, unquestioning, tried to keep pace, but after a few steps, she gave up. Sam raced ahead, anxious to catch Crenshaw. Scanning the park surrounding the chapel, he tried to spot her. Then she appeared from behind a hedge, walking along a path and almost out of sight. He ran after her.
At the sound of his footsteps, the woman looked back, but did not stop walking. Sam raised his hand and started to hail her, but she pivoted away and quickened her pace. She turned when the path branched at the statue of Chief Sealth and passed out of sight behind some trees.
Sam ran after her. His breath started to come hard. He was too fat, too out of shape for this. He skidded, trying to turn as he reached the intersection of the paths. Baffled by what he saw, he let momentum carry him into the statue. Leaning on the pedestal and puffing, he stared. The path Crenshaw had taken was empty.
There were no turnoffs that she could have reached in the time it took him to get this far. She must have left the path. She had deliberately eluded him. Why?
He wouldn’t find the answer today. He had no hope of tracking her through the park. Crenshaw surely knew more than enough tricks to evade his amateurish pursuit.
She had been there when Betty Tanaka died and shared captivity with him and Jiro. Crenshaw had felt enough what? affection? loyalty? curiosity? to come to Jiro’s funeral. She had seen Sam and must have known he wanted to talk with her. Why had she fled?
It didn’t make sense. There just weren’t enough hard facts. All he had were possibilities. He was beginning to suspect that maybe he didn’t want to know what was real and what was polite fiction or an outright lie. He had grown up believing that truth was important, but he was starting to suspect he wouldn’t like the true story.
Someone was hiding facts connected to Jiro’s death. Possibly someone within Renraku Corporation itself. Someone, perhaps an ambitious executive, was practicing deception for personal ends, twisting the corporation to suit his or her own plans for individual power.
Listen to me. I Sound like dupe of the week from Channel 23’s “Confessions of a Company Man.”
Sam wanted to laugh it off, but could not. He had seen too many signs of something rotten. How much of what he had taken for granted was deception? He was still mulling over the matter when Hanae came panting up, her face flushed. Sam could tell that it was simple exertion and not anger. Concern and worry wrinkled her brow.
“Why did you run away?”
“I didn’t. I saw Alice Crenshaw. I wanted to talk to her about Jiro. She knew him, too. I was trying to catch up to her, and she deliberately avoided me. She knew I wanted to talk to her, and she walked away. Just like the rest of the company, avoiding me.”
“I’m not avoiding you, Sam,” Hanae said softly.
It was true. She had been very good to him, always available with a soft shoulder. Why did he have doubts about his feelings for her? As always when he wanted to ease his discomfort, he embraced her. Hanae snuggled close, seeming well satisfied with the physical security of his arms. She hadn’t yet noticed that he did not relax the way she did. Or if she did, perhaps she put it down to the tensions affecting him for as long as they had known one another. He certainly had complained about it enough.
“My life is a dead end here,” he said, knowing it was an old line.
“Don’t talk like that, Sam.” Distress was evident in her voice. “Renraku is our home.”
“Some home. They pen me in. I never get good assignments. They’ve lowered my security rating. It’s a dead end.”
He felt her tense up within his arms. She always said she liked him best when he was happy, that she would do anything to make him that way all the time. He wanted to believe that. Even more, he wanted to believe she could do it.
When he felt the yearning for her comfort, he wanted to fulfill her expectations, to be the man she wanted him to be.
“I could accept all that, if they would just let me contact Janice. They know what happened to her. Why won’t they tell me?”
“They must have a good reason.”
Sam wasn’t so sure. Not anymore.
Hanae seemed not to notice his lack of response.
“When Sato-sama gets here, you’ll see that things will change. He’ll need you to get the project going, and he’ll surely help you. After all, he is Aneki-sama’s assistant and Aneki-sama was your mentor. Renraku takes care of its own. All your trials will have been for a good reason. Sato-sama will help you.”
Like he helped in Tokyo? “I don’t think so.”
“You must try, anyway.”
Sam forced a smile. “All right.”
6
Alice Crenshaw closed the door to the outer office, shutting off the protests of the security director’s receptionist. The little twit should be used to her barging in on the director by now.
The director’s aide, Jhoon Silla, stood halfway between the door and the director’s desk, eclipsing Crenshaw’s view of his master. Silla was dressed in his usual immaculate red jumpsuit, the gold Renraku logo and captain’s star gleaming on his collar. His white Sam Browne belt gleamed softly in the indirect lighting of the lushly appointed office. The intense young man was rigid, stretched to the edge of action; his hand was under his holster flap and resting on the butt of his pistol.
“Very protective,” she said as she advanced. “But slow. You should have been at the door before 1 closed it.”
Tadashi Marushige sat back as she stepped around Silla. The security director folded his hands on his desk and gazed at her expressionlessly. He, too, wore the company’s undress military uniform, the collar showing insignia of the exalted rank of general in the Renraku military forces. Crenshaw never knew Marushige to wear his undress uniform except to review the elite Red Samurai guards. When Marushige was in a military mood, he usually forsook his power suits for simple fatigues.
“You’re early,” Marushige observed as Crenshaw lowered herself into the armchair to the left of the desk.
“Useful habit.”
Marushige’s stare was suitably venomous.