Mona Lisa Overdrive

"Yes," Kumiko said, her heart still pounding, the panic continuing to rise. "He killed my mother," she blurted, then vomited chocolate on the café's gray marble floor.

Sally leading her past the columns of Saint Paul's, walking, not talking. Kumiko, in a disjointed trance of shame, registering random information: the white shearling that lined Sally's leather coat, the oily rainbow sheen of a pigeon's feathers as it waddled out of their way, red buses like a giant's toys in the Transport Museum, Sally warming her hands around a foam cup of steaming tea.

Cold, it would always be cold now. The freezing damp in the city's ancient bones, the cold waters of Sumida that had filled her mother's lungs, the chill flight of the neon cranes.

Her mother was fine-boned and dark, the thick spill of her hair grained with gold highlights, like some rare tropical hardwood. Her mother smelled of perfume and warm skin. Her mother told her stories, about elves and fairies and Copenhagen, which was a city far away. When Kumiko dreamed of the elves, they were like her father's secretaries, lithe and staid, with black suits and furled umbrellas. The elves did many curious things, in her mother's stories, and the stories were magic, because they changed with the telling, and you could never be certain how a tale might end on a given night. There were princesses in the stories as well, and ballerinas, and each of them, Kumiko had known, was in some way her mother.

The princess-ballerinas were beautiful but poor, dancing for love in the far city's heart, where they were courted by artists and student poets, handsome and pe

Sally took her to a robata bar in Earls Court and forced her to drink a glass of sake. A smoked fugu fin floated in the hot wine, turning it the color of whiskey. They ate robata from the smoky grill, and Kumiko felt the cold recede, but not the numbness. The decor of the bar induced a profound sense of cultural dislocation: it managed to simultaneously reflect traditional Japanese design and look as though it had been drawn up by Charles Re

She was very strange, Sally Shears, stranger than all of gaijin London. Now she told Kumiko stories, stories about people who lived in a Japan Kumiko had never known, stories that defined her father's role in the world. The oyabun, she called Kumiko's father. The world Sally's stories described seemed no more real than the world of her mother's fairy tales, but Kumiko began to understand the basis and extent of her father's power. "Kuromaku," Sally said. The word meant black curtain. "It's from Kabuki, but it means a fixer, someone who sells favors. Means behind-the-scenes, right? That's your father. That's Swain, too. But Swain's your old man's kobun, or anyway one of them. Oyabun-kobun, parent-child. That's partly where Roger gets his juice. That's why you're here now, because Roger owes it to the oyabun. Giri, understand?"

"He is a man of rank."

Sally shook her head. "Your old man, Kumi, he's it. If he's had to ship you out of town to keep you safe, means there's some serious changes on the way."

"Been down the drinker?" Petal asked, as they entered the room, his eyeglass edges winking Tiffany light from a bronze and stained-glass tree that grew on the sideboard. Kumiko wanted to look at the marble head that hid the Maas-Neotek unit, but forced herself to look out into the garden. The snow there had become the color of London sky.

"Where's Swain?" Sally asked.

"Guvnor's out," Petal told her.

Sally went to the sideboard and poured herself a glass of scotch from a heavy decanter. Kumiko saw Petal wince as the decanter came down hard on the polished wood. "Any messages?"

"No."

"Expect him back tonight?"

"Can't say, really. Do you want di

"No."

"I'd like a sandwich," Kumiko said.

Fifteen minutes later, with the untouched sandwich on the black marble bedside table, she sat in the middle of the huge bed, the Maas-Neotek unit between her bare feet. She'd left Sally drinking Swain's whiskey and staring out into the gray garden.

Now she took up the unit and Colin shuddered into focus at the foot of the bed.

"Nobody can hear my half of this," he said quickly, putting a finger to his lips, "and a good thing, too. Room's bugged."

Kumiko started to reply, then nodded.

"Good," he said. "Smart girl. Got two conversations for you. One's your host and his minder, other's your host and Sally. Got the former about fifteen minutes after you stashed me downstairs. Listen ... " Kumiko closed her eyes and heard the tinkle of ice in a whiskey glass.

"Where's our little Jap, then?" Swain asked.

"Tucked up for the night," Petal said. "Talks to herself, that one. One-sided conversation. Queer."

"What about?"

"Bloody little, actually. Some people do, y 'know ... "

"What?"

"Talk to themselves. Like to hear her?"

"Christ, no. Where's the delightful Miss Shears?"

"Out for her constitutional."

"Call Bernie 'round, next time, see what she's about on these little walks ... "

"Bernie," and Petal laughed, "he'd come back in a fucking box!"

Now Swain laughed. "Mightn't be a bad thing either way, Bernard off our hands and the famous razorgirl's thirst slaked ... Here, pour us another."

"None for me. Off to bed, unless you need me ... "

"No," Swain said.

"So," said Colin, as Kumiko opened her eyes to find him still seated on the bed, "there's a voice-activated bug here in your room; the minder reviewed the recording and heard you address me. Our second segment, now, is more interesting. Your host sits there with his second whiskey, in comes our Sally ... "

"Hullo," she heard Swain say, "been out taking the air?"

"Fuck off."

"You know," Swain said, "none of this was my idea. You might try keeping that in mind. You know they've got me by the balls as well."

"You know, Roger, sometimes I'm tempted to believe you."

"Try it. It would make things easier."

"Other times, I'm tempted to slit your fucking throat."

"Your problem, dear, is that you never learned to delegate; you still want to do everything personally."

"Listen, asshole, I know where you're from, and I know how you got here, and I don't care how far you've got your tongue up Kanaka's crack or anybody else's. Sarakin! " Kumiko had never heard the word before.

"I heard from them again," Swain said, his tone even, conversational. "She's still on the coast, but it looks as though she'll make a move soon. East, most likely. Back on your old manor. I think that's our best bet, really. The house is impossible. Enough private security along that stretch to stop a fair-sized army ... "

"You still trying to tell me this is just a snatch, Roger? Trying to tell me they're go

"No. Nothing's been said about selling her back."

"So why don't they just hire that army? No reason they'd have to stop at fair-sized, is there? Get the mercs, right? The corporate-extraction boys. She's not that hard a target, no more than some hotshit research man. Get the fucking pros in ... "

"For perhaps the hundredth time, that isn't what they want. They want you."

"Roger, what do they have on you, huh? I mean, do you really not know what it is they got on me?"

"No, I don't. But based on what they've got on me, I'll hazard a guess."

"Yeah?"

"Everything."

No reply.

"There's another angle," he said, "that came up today. They want it to look as though she's been taken out."