Kanno inclined his head in a slight bow.

She smiled. “Perhaps I should be afraid of you.”

Kanno smiled. “What threat could I possibly present to you?”

“That is a question you will have to answer for yourself, ” she

said. “And you will try, won’t you? You will try very, very hard.”

He said nothing.

“Won’t you?” she repeated, her voice low.

“Of course, ” said Kanno.

Her eyes glittered. “Come here.”

He moved across to her couch and bent over her. Her arms went

around his neck and pulled his face down to hers. His hands slipped

inside her robe, slowly moving across the taut, silky contours of her

body as her tongue slipped into his mouth and she reached down for

him. The game was in the open now. They fully understood each

other. And as their bodies meshed upon the couch, Kanno wondered

which of them would win.

CHAPTER Six

The meeting was to be in the East Garden of the old Imperial

Palace, near the Nijubashi Bridge. Once the home of Japan’s

imperial family, the palace had been built on the site where Edo

Castle used to stand in the days of the shoguns. Dating back to the

1600s, Edo Castle had once been the largest castle in the world,

towering 168 feet above its foundations and having an outer

perimeter of ten miles. Now, all that was left of it were crumbled

fragments of the foundation. There was nothing left of the original

Imperial Palace, either. The first one, completed in 1888, had been

reduced to rubble during the air raids of World War II. The second,

rebuilt in 1968, was burned down during the riots of the Collapse.

The present palace was the third incarnation, a replica of the

original. It no longer housed the imperial family, as there was no

longer an imperial family. Now, it was merely a museum, visited by

tourists and by local Japanese who enjoyed a leisurely walk through

its gardens or a jog along the cherry tree-lined paths.