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.What does it matter if a few rules get bent in the process?"The dark oval of the Shadowed One's face lingered on the pinstriped man for a long moment."See that your personal ambition does not endanger our plan."The man in pinstripes bowed over clasped hands."My life for the Dragon and Kokuryu-kai.""Precisely.""And your own preparations?" the pinstriped man asked, half challengingly.The Shadowed One refused to be drawn."They proceed according to schedule," that flavorless voice said."Our replacement part is being imported into the system, and will in due course arrive in orbit.The final stages in its polishing and fitting process are being carried out in transit.In the meantime, the other phases of our plan to fix blame, when the time comes, on the foreign money-troopers proceeds deliberately but efficiently."A smaller man sat with his retainers across from the man in pinstripes and his retinue.Although he had come to the secret meeting covered in a long slate-gray coat with fur collar and a Homburg hat, he had shed these in favor of a blood-red silk kimono embroidered on the right breast with the Kurita dragon, and on the left with the emblem of Kokuryu-kai.He seemed to have started slight and shrunk from there, like a dried-up twig.His face seemed assembled of knobs and hollows, tied together with taut lines of bitterness.It was wasted, stark, elemental, like the landscape of some dry, lifeless planet that had been scooped and scoured and ground by wind erosion until only the hardest essence, the underlying bone, remained.His eyes were like slits cut in the lid of a pot containing all the world's grief and pain and anger condensed."What of the traitor Migaki?" he asked in a voice like acid etching steel."He works in lies like a master calligrapher in ink and rice-paper, and he controls all media.And all we hear is what heroes these murdering gaijin are, ever and again." He didn't raise his voice, but by the time he finished, spittle was flying from his mouth and his thin limbs were shaking so violently his aides began to stroke his arms as if trying to gentle a frightened horse.For once the Shadowed One showed reaction: a sort of head jerk, like a horse trying to shed a fly."Migaki is soft, inconsequential," the altered voice said."He cannot control what's said in the streets of Imperial City.""Why do we squander time and effort on street gossip?" asked a man with eyebrows almost comically thick and high on his forehead, like those painted on a traditional geisha.He was a local industrialist.To avoid having to concern himself with the opinions of the rabble was a primary reason for him becoming a primary guiding light—not to mention financial supporter—of the Black Dragon Society."By the time we act," the Shadowed One said, "everyone from high to low will have heard enough to believe that the yohei are guilty.Our actions will be perceived as those of rescuers of the Dragon and his people—as indeed they are.And after the fact, we will control the media as thoroughly as Migaki does now.But seeds seldom take root in un-plowed soil.""What has the ISF to say about all this?" the desiccated man asked."Not everyone in ISF is a traitor," the Shadowed One said."But the Smiling One is, and so is his whelp Kerai.Which is why we must be careful to exercise the fullest caution." As the figure spoke, it turned its hidden face directly toward the man in the pinstriped suit."We shall be cautious as cats walking a fence," the pinstriped man said piously.* * *His wingtip shoes crunching the gravel of the circular drive that ran before the mansion's white-pillared portico, Benjamin Inagawa stopped to let an aide drape a caped trenchcoat over the broad shoulders of his pin-striped suit.Then he turned to look off over the high wall at the wooded ridge across the road."Undoubtedly our Internal Security Force friend has snipers placed up there, watching us through powerful scopes at this very minute," he said."Undoubtedly they can read your lips as well, oyabun," said the aide, a young man much too harried to put on weight.Inagawa laughed."Of course they can." He put a cigarette between his lips.Another aide materialized to light it.The harried aide kept casting apprehensive glances at the ridge."How can you be so sure the Shadowed One is ISF, Inagawa-Mwrea?""Not just ISF, but a highly placed official.He made it clear at the very outset," Benjamin Inagawa didn't doubt for an instant that the Shadowed One was male.Women were too inconsequential.Returning them firmly to their places was one reason he was in Kokuryu-kai."Indeed, that's the only reason to put up with the way he talks to us, as if we are his underlings."The nervous aide opened the rear door of the long, low black Shodan limo."Surely it will please the oyabun to sit and rest his legs."Inagawa laughed at his assistant's transparent discomfort.He threw the cigarette down, and leaving its ember aglow in the gravel, got into the car.The aide slid in across from him [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]