Clive Cussler - Dragon

The first unit of Japan’s new underground frontier, Edo, City was designed and built by Suma as a scientific research and think-tank community that supported 60,000 people. Shaped like a great cylinder around the atrium, the twenty-story circular complex contained living quarters for the scientific community, offices, public baths, convention halls, restaurants, a shopping mall, library, and its own thousand-man security force.

Smaller underground cylinders connected by tunnels to the main core held the communications equipment, heating and cooling systems, temperature and humidity controls, electrical power plants, and waste processing machinery. The elaborate structures were constructed of ceramic concrete and reached 1500 meters deep in the volcanic rock.

Soma funded the project himself without any government involvement. Any laws or restrictions that hindered construction were quickly resolved by the enormous power wielded by Soma’s corporate and underworld tentacles.

He and Kamatori boarded a concealed elevator that took them to a suite of his corporate offices covering the entire fourth floor of the outer cylinder. His secretary, Toshie Kudo, stood waiting as the doors opened to his heavily guarded private office and apartment. The spacious three-tiered rooms were decorated with delicately painted screens and murals and showcases of beautiful ceramics and sixteenth-century robes of ornately woven brocades, satins, and crepe. Paintings of land and seascapes covered most of the walls, some depicting dragons, leopards, tigers, and hawks that represented the martial prowess of the warrior class.

“Mr. Ashikaga Enshu is waiting,” announced Toshie.

“I don’t recall the name.”

“Mr. Enshu is an investigator who specializes in hunting down rare art and negotiating its sale for his clients,” explained Toshie. “He called and said he’d discovered a painting that fits your collection. I took the liberty of setting an appointment for him to display it for your approval.”

“I have little time,” said Suma, glancing at his watch.

Kamatori shrugged. “Won’t hurt to see what he’s brought you, Hideki. Maybe he’s found the painting you’ve been looking for.”

He nodded at Toshie. “All right, please send him in.”

Soma bowed as the art dealer stepped into the room. “You have a new acquisition for my collection, Mr. Enshu?”

“Yes, I hope so, one that I believe you will be most happy I was able to find for you.” Ashikaga smiled warmly beneath a perfect mane of silver hair, heavy eyebrows, and full mustache.

“Please set it on the stand in the light,” said Suma, pointing at an easel in front of a large window.

“May I draw the blinds open a little more’?”

“Please do so.”

Enshu pulled the draw lines to the slatted blinds. Then he set the painting on the easel but kept it covered by a silk cloth. “From the sixteenth-century Kano school, a Masaki Shimzu.”

“The revered seascape artist,” said Kamatori, displaying a rare hint of excitement. “One of your favorites, Hideki.”

“You know I am a devotee of Shimzu?” Suma asked Enshu.

“A well-known fact in art circles that you collect his work, especially the paintings he made of our surrounding islands.”

Suma turned to Toshie. “How many of his pieces do I have in my collection?”

“You presently own eleven out of the thirteen island seascapes and four of his landscape paintings of the Hida Mountains.”

“And this new one would make twelve in the island set.”

“Yes.”

“What Shimzu island painting have you brought me?” Suma asked Enshu expectantly. “Ajima?”

“No, Kechi.”

Suma looked visibly disappointed. “I had hoped it might be Ajima.”

“I’m sorry.” Enshu held out his hands in a defeatist gesture. “The Ajima was sadly lost during the fall of Germany. It was last seen hanging in the office of the ambassador in our Berlin embassy in May of nineteen forty-five.”

“I will gladly pay you to keep up the search.”

“Thank you,” said Enshu, bowing. “I already have investigators in Europe and the United States trying to locate it.”

“Good, now let’s have the unveiling of Kechi Island.”

With a practiced flourish, Enshu undraped a lavish painting of a bird’s-eye view of an island in monochrome ink with an abundant use of brilliant colors and gold leaf.

“Breathtaking,” murmured Toshie in awe.

Enshu nodded in agreement. “The finest example of Shimzu’s work I’ve ever seen.”

“What do you think, Hideki?” asked Kamatori.

“A masterwork,” answered Suma, moved by the genius of the artist. “Incredible that he could paint an overhead view with such vivid detail in the early sixteen-hundreds. It’s almost as if he did it from a tethered balloon.”

“Legend says he painted from a kite,” said Toshie.

“Sketched from a kite is more probable,” corrected Enshu. “And painted the scene on the ground.”

“And why not?” Suma’s eyes never left the painting. “Our people were building and flying kites over a thousand years ago.” He turned finally and faced Enshu. “You have done well, Mr. Enshu. Where did you find it?”

“In a banker’s home in Hong Kong,” Enshu replied. “He was selling his assets and moving his operations to Malaysia before the Chinese take over. It took me nearly a year, but I finally persuaded him to sell over the telephone. I wasted no time and flew to Hong Kong to settle the transaction and return here with the painting. I came directly to your office from the airport.”

“How much?”

“A hundred and forty-five million yen.”

Suma rubbed his hands in satisfaction. “A very good price. Consider it sold.”

“Thank you, Mr. Suma. You are most gracious. I shall keep looking for the Ajima painting.”

They exchanged bows, and then Toshie escorted Enshu from the office.

Suma’s eyes returned to the painting. The shores were littered with black rock, and there was a small village with fishing boats at one end. The perspective was as precise as an aerial photo.

“How strange,” he said quietly. “The only painting of the island collection I don’t possess is the one I desire the most.”

“If it still exists, Enshu will find it,” Kamatori consoled him. “He strikes me as being tenacious.”

“I’ll pay him ten times the Kechi price for the Ajima.”

Kamatori sat in a chair and stretched out his legs. “Little did Shimzu know when he painted Ajima what the island would come to represent.”

Toshie returned and reminded Suma, “You have a meeting with Mr. Yoshishu in ten minutes.”

“The grand old thief and leader of the Gold Dragons.” Kamatori smiled mockingly. “Come to audit his share of your financial empire.”

Suma pointed through the huge curved windows overlooking the atrium. “None of this would have been possible without the organization Korori Yoshishu and my father built during and after the war.”

“The Gold Dragons and the other secret societies have no place in the future Nippon,” said Kamatori, using the traditional word, meaning “source of the sun.”

“They may seem quaint alongside our modern technology,” Suma admitted, “but they still share an important niche in our culture. My association with them through the years has proven most valuable to me.”

“Your power goes beyond the need for fanatical factions or personality cults or underworld syndicates,” Kamatori said earnestly. “You have the power to pull the strings of a government run by your personal puppets, and yet you are chained to corrupt underworld figures. If it ever leaked out that you are the number two dragon it will cost you dearly.”