"Joyce, I need you to be straight with me," he'd said. "Has he ever pulled a vanishing act before? Done anything like this at all?"
"No, sir," she answered without hesitation. "That's why I'm so confused. I honestly thought he'd be in touch at some point yesterday."
Nimec paused, thinking.
"The woman he's been dating in Singapore," he said after a moment. "Do you know how to contact her?"
"Well, yes, I'm pretty sure I have Kirsten's home and office numbers on file," Joyce said. "Max left both with me in case I—"
"I need you to do some checking," Nimec broke in. "Call this… Kirsten, is that what you said her name is?"
"Yes, Kirsten Chu—"
"Buzz her at work first, see if she can tell you what's happening. If you don't reach her, try her where she lives. And keep trying till you catch her. Let me know soon as you speak to her, okay? Doesn't matter how late it is here in the States, I'm a night owl anyway. You can take my home number."
"Yes, certainly…"
In the six hours following that conversation, Nimec had attended to countless items of business, gone home, pushed himself through a strenuous shukokai karate workout in his dojo, showered, had a bite to eat, and then settled down in his den to read his E-mail — acutely conscious the entire while that hadn't heard from Joyce. She'd finally called back ten minutes ago, midnight PST, four in the afternoon Johor time.
"Any luck?" he'd said, recognizing her voice the second he picked up.
"I'm sorry, no," Joyce replied. "After we spoke I left several messages for her at Monolith… that's where she's employed, you know—"
Yeah, I know, all too goddamned well, he'd thought.
"— but she didn't return them. It was the same story when I tried her residence."
Nimec waited. He could tell there was more, and didn't think it would be good.
"Sir, I noticed a long pause between Kirsten's outgoing announcement and the tone on her home machine," she'd said at last. "It was the sort you'd get when there are already quite a few messages waiting…."
"As if she hadn't been there to retrieve them for some time," he said, completing the sentence for her.
Another pause. He imagined Joyce nodding at her end of the line.
' 'Just before calling you, I took the liberty of phoning Kirsten's departmental receptionist," she went on. "I said that I was a personal friend, and had been trying to get in touch with her, and was wondering if it was possible that she wasn't checking her voice mail."
"Yes? Go on."
She breathed. "Kirsten wasn't there. She's been gone since Friday and nothing's been heard from her. Everyone at her office is becoming very concerned. They say this is completely unlike her."
Unlike her, unlike Max, unlike both of them. So where are they?
His head starting to ache, he'd thanked Joyce for her trouble, assuring her he'd be in touch, listening to her nervous assurances that she'd do the same the instant she had any news, and signing off.
Now, ten minutes later, Nimec's headache had exponentially worsened, becoming the type nothing but a good night's sleep would relieve. Except he was too wired to sleep, and therefore would have to suffer. Max was one of his most trusted and responsible men, and it was no use telling himself he was merely extending a weekend barn dance with his girlfriend. All signs were that he'd bitten off more than he could chew investigating Monolith… and God only knew what had gone wrong.
Nimec frowned as he stared at the wall opposite his desk, regretting his willingness to let Max go ahead with this thing in the first place. Yes, it had gone bad, he was becoming more convinced of it by the second. Exactly what to do about it would take a little thinking, but do something he would….
And every one of his instincts told him it would have to be soon.
"I'm going to ask you a favor on a rather sticky affair," Nga was saying. "Understand I would not trouble you if there were any other way."
"It is ever my pleasure to be of help to you/' Kinzo lied, though his true pleasure would have been to stay as far from Nga Canbera as possible. But face and money compelled one to do much that was disagreeable.
They were regarding each other across Nga's desk in his office at the Bank of Kalimantan, a sleek, bright space on the building's thirty-third floor that had a breathtaking ocean view, and was decorated in a modernist Oriental style: sparse furnishings, neutral woods, its walls unadorned except for a 17th-century Chinese screen depicting an idealized winter landscape.
"Perhaps you'll want to hold your decision until you hear what needs to be done," Nga said.
Kinzo waited in silence. Thin and small-eyed, with a face like a tight fist, he was vice president of Omitsu Industrial, an electronic components manufacturer in Banjarmasin that had originated as an equal Japanese-Indonesian partnership during the years of the tiger economy, and fallen under majority Japanese control after the tiger leaped too far for its own good and went crashing into a ditch.
This had been the typical story for Southeast Asian businesses in need of financial rescue at the end of the previous decade. While many Western analysts had been gleefully forecasting economic Ragnarok for the Japanese, they had done what they had excelled at doing throughout history — learning from their mistakes, adapting to changed circumstances, and ultimately turning misfortune into advantage. Their rebound strategy had been twofold. First, they had propped up joint ventures with companies in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Phillipines by offering infusions of operating capital in exchange for bigger pieces of the action: i. E., controlling shares. Second, they had reprioritized, shifting away from a dwindling Asian market and focusing on export to cash-rich American buyers.
Japan's shrewd exploitation of opportunity had not only yielded heaping economic dividends to legitimate businessmen, but also kept the sake flasks of yakuza criminal syndicates overflowing, bringing particular rewards to the influential Inagawa-kai, which was entrenched in the Asian banking community, which had itself capitalized a large percentage of the corporate buyouts. Indeed, a graphic analysis of these financial interrelationships might aptly portray a long line of smiling, satisfied men, each with his hand deep in the pocket of the fellow in front of him.
In the case of the Omitsu Industrial resuscitation, the Canbera family had both brokered the deal and provided lending capital to the Japanese investors under exceptionally generous terms of repayment. That the Canberas had myriad ties to the yakuza was something the borrowers knew and accepted from the outset. That they might be called upon to provide a host of illicit favors to their "black mist" creditors was likewise considered a distasteful but acceptable part of their payback agreement.
As the old saying went, Kinzo thought, it was necessary to cross many fjords in passing through the world.
"Let me tell you my predicament," Nga said, cursing Khao Luan and his barbarians for the onerous position in which they had placed him. "There was an accident yesterday involving a foreigner. A white man." He gave Kinzo a meaningful glance. "It was fatal, you see."
Kinzo sat there looking at him.
"I want to make it clear that I had nothing to do with what happened, and would personally choose to report his death to the police," Nga said. "But the circumstances— and the parties involved — are such that I would have a difficult time proving it was unintentional."
Kinzo remailed silent.
Nga folded his hands on his desk, considering his next words. This was the delicate part.
"There's a problem with the body," he said. And met Kinzo's gaze with his own. "With disposal of the body."
Kinzo took a breath, released it, waited another moment. Then he slowly nodded, wondering what sort of infernal madness Nga was flirting with… and dragging him into as a reluctant participant.