Enzan: The Far Mountain (22 page)

Chapter 22

The roshi’s place was technically called a zendo and it was part monastery and part Zen education center. At any given time, there were transient visitors mixing with the residents, people coming for a day or a weekend or longer, for the purposes of exploring Zen meditation. The roshi welcomed them all with open arms and without judgment. Yet his compassion had many permutations and, while his smile was genuine, I knew now that he saved his most troubling insights for those he thought capable of withstanding them.

Not that this little realization made me feel any better. I was mostly focused on the situation at hand and how I would deal with it. I wondered who among the strangers in the zendo tonight might have been watching for my arrival with Chie Miyazaki. You’d think someone like that would stick out, but I wasn’t so sure. The visitors were a real mix. Some were jittery and ill at ease, victims of too much caffeine and too much career, who were trying to slow down their lives but were really uncomfortable with the simple experience of silence. Others were painfully sincere—people long on enthusiasm but short on discipline. They came looking for refuge or for instruction or enlightenment. Most found the work too hard, the challenge too great, the task too daunting. They came for a time and left. It occurred to me that they weren’t so different from most of the people who drifted into a martial arts dojo—we just tended to have thicker necks. But I had learned from years of trying to predict who would stay and who would go that it was an imprecise science at best. The zendo was no different, and if I were to spot a mole, I would need to watch everyone at the monastery carefully.

The monks, regulars, and other hard-core types were a generally quiet bunch—maybe because they were introspective, maybe because the morning bell would summon them for dawn services while the sky was still dark. I thought right now, this late in the evening, I would have the chance to meet some of the newcomers to try to get a read on them: there were occasional late lectures and social hours for visitors. But tonight the place was buttoned up, as if everyone were like Mickey had described: in bed with the covers pulled over their heads, listening to the blizzard batter the landscape.

The hallways were dim, with nightlights softly glowing at long intervals along the walls. I poked my head out of the bedroom, thinking I had heard the whisper of feet along the floor, but the corridor was empty. I was weary, but at the same time I was so wired I couldn’t rest. I kept reliving different conversations I had been part of during the day: those with Chie, with Yamashita, with the roshi, and with Mickey. I played them and replayed them in my head like some audiophile stuck with a record collection he didn’t particularly like, but felt compelled to listen to anyway.

I shambled down the corridor in my socks. The floor was cold. I felt stiff and off-balance and old. I knew it wasn’t permanent—just a result of the beating—but I didn’t like it. It made me think of Yamashita and how he struggled against the onset of old age. It reminded me of how the years were passing for all of us. More significantly, Mickey’s warning had made its impression on me. I needed to be as sharp as possible. So I thought I would wander downstairs and maybe spot a suspicious character or two. More realistically, I thought I would drift by the kitchen and see if I could get a banana—potassium for the muscles. Then, having exhausted my plans, I would sit for a time in the
hondo
, the main meditation hall, and wait for an idea, confident that nature abhors a vacuum.

The hondo was a cave, a bunker, a cathedral. The walls were grey worked stone, and at night the clerestory windows were blind eyes, the thick stained glass covering them like dark cataracts. The hall’s ceiling vaulted up into the darkness, where broad old wooden beams crisscrossed space—solid, silent guardians watching from on high. Candles flickered in that room and a tapestry with the Buddha on it hung against the stone wall. In the comfort of that space, I was hoping I could see my way clear of this mess.

It was a tall order. The whole string of events had never been particularly straightforward to begin with. I knew that. There was something wrong about the Miyazaki and their odd proposal, something wrong about the way Ito rode herd on the whole project, but never really provided much help. He had given me an envelope with some electronic files, some money, and a warning. It occurred to me that everything else he had done was designed to allow me to blunder around while he got to keep his hands clean.

Did he know about Lim and his connections to the Koreans? Had an attempt already been made to make Chie’s father provide Lim with classified information? Or did the Miyazaki plan on short-circuiting that scheme by having me do their dirty work and get rid of Lim?

I could believe that last idea. The family was an ambitious one, jealous of its prominence in business and diplomatic circles. But there had to be more to the whole arrangement. Mori’s journal laid bare a secret he had kept for decades, a scandalous situation where the son of a powerful and connected Japanese family was revealed as the offspring of a youthful tryst between my teacher and Miyazaki’s young wife. How had that horrible old man dealt with the news? Was he sitting somewhere in his wheelchair, seething at the discovery of a long-hidden betrayal by his dead wife? Had his original plan been to get Yamashita involved in the attempt to kidnap Chie and then somehow betray him to the authorities? If so, then why rope me in? It would seem a petty type of revenge to frame me for kidnapping: too indirect and besides, I believed they sincerely wanted Chie out of Lim’s clutches.

It was very likely there were at least two and maybe three parallel schemes at play. The fact that the Miyazaki wanted to control Chie to protect her father’s career didn’t mean the old man wasn’t also trying to rig something that would blow up in Yamashita’s face. That I could deal with. What really worried me was the additional dimension Mickey had surmised. By ruining the Korean blackmail scheme against Chie’s father, I had also inadvertently ripped the cover off it. And that set alarm bells ringing. I thought back to the men who had snatched me off the street and their interrogation. I shivered in the darkness of the monastery, blaming it on a nonexistent draft, or on exhaustion, blaming it on everything but the memory of the experience on the waterboard that even the Buddha’s calm couldn’t tame. I shrugged to myself:
Life is suffering
. The roshi preaches what are known as the Noble Truths. He never said they were easy to deal with.

So … the Koreans. I had ruined their plans and now they were scrambling for cover like bugs. And the bigger and nastier of them were wondering whether they couldn’t pull the rock back on top of the plot—they’d be back in the dark and hopefully Chie and I would get crushed in the process.

The kitchen was empty and still. The condenser in the big industrial refrigerator clicked on, but it only made the room seem more deserted. I filched a banana from a bowl of fruit that had been left on the table, and peeled it slowly, sitting on a stool, lost in recrimination. I had thought I was being so clever. Keeping Miyazaki, Goro, and Ito away from my sensei, trying to shelter him from being used. And I had been so proud that I had endured, that I had tracked Chie down and gotten her away from Lim. It seemed so straightforward in that sense, so right.

But the roshi had let me know life is more complex than that. I had been looking at things from only one perspective, and I had let my own sense of honor and duty and the need to do what I thought was good lead me to a series of actions that spawned unanticipated consequences. I thought of Yamashita sitting there with his calligraphy.
Enzan no metsuke
warned us against concentrating on one perspective and losing the bigger picture.

By this time my thoughts had made me lose my appetite. I ate the banana anyway. I wasn’t really tasting it, but it was still fuel for the machine.

Nobody was going to thank me for this one, I realized ruefully. Chie was pretty clear on that subject. I had no right to force her to live a different life than the one she wanted. And, strangely, the roshi agreed with her. From his perspective my actions were fueled by ego, pure and simple, clouded with foolish ideas about right and wrong, damsels in distress, and the warrior’s path. He hadn’t lectured me, but I knew the Eightfold Path of Buddhism started with Right View, the need to understand and see things as they really are. In the roshi’s eyes, no matter the sincerity of my intentions, I was fundamentally deluded.

I sat up with a start, my ribs sparking with pain, as I realized this was what Yamashita had been telling me as well. It was a subtle message. The calligraphy
enzan no metsuke
was both a rebuke and a lesson, and both actions were themselves wrapped up in a test. He was waiting to see whether I would be self-aware enough to realize what he was trying to tell me. It was the typical, maddeningly elliptical way the Japanese went about things. It was also a compliment, I realized.

In the old days, when I was new to his dojo, Yamashita was all thunder and direct instruction, a teacher as hard as the oak training sword he carried like an extension of himself. If I did something wrong, he would come straight at me and give me a lesson by stripping the sword from my hands, or by dumping me on the floor and humiliating me in front of everyone. Silent, yet oh so effective. But over the years the lessons grew more complex and the corrections more intricate and subtle. Lessons were learned in different ways, not all of them overt.

And how had my actions impacted my teacher? I brought his granddaughter into his life, but did Yamashita even want this? Was the revelation contained in Mori’s journal too painful to confront this late in my sensei’s life?

I eased myself off the stool and out of the kitchen, my ribs complaining. I was concentrating so much on moving carefully, watching each step, that I didn’t even notice someone paused at the foot of the staircase leading up to the sleeping area.

“You are one hurting puppy,” he said. My friend from the Tenth Mountain Division. I smiled, but in the back of my mind I heard my brother commenting on the likelihood that the Koreans had an informant at the monastery:
If it was me, I’d a had someone there
.

“I’ll be OK,” I said and started to move around him.

But he seemed like he wanted to talk. “Crazy storm, huh?”

“Storm of the century,” I agreed, parroting something I had heard.

“I’ve been out with a few folks trying to keep the parking lot clear and the paths open. But it’s too much. Better to let the storm blow out …”

“Any sense of how long that will take?”

He shrugged. “They say at least another day. Maybe tomorrow night or early the next morning.”

“That long?”

“Yeah,” he said. “None of us are going anywhere for a while.” In the dim light his face was covered in shadows and I couldn’t tell whether his expression was carrying some more sinister meaning or whether I was imagining it. I smiled noncommittally and shuffled away toward the hondo.

The empty room was vast, dark, and chilly. I could feel the rumble of the heaters in the basement struggling against the blizzard. I sank down wearily and focused on my breathing, hoping the discipline of stillness would lead me to some insight. I closed my eyes.

The training tells you to let your mind “bubble off.” Don’t fight the busy thoughts, but rather let them come, and let them go. Acknowledge them as they pass, but try not to hold on to them. You let the rhythm of breath calm the beast, let stillness seep into the muscles, until you sink to a place where the distractions of the rushing world are distant and you are simply present.

Burke
. The summons once again, clear and immediate, my master’s voice coming as if he were standing before me.
Burke
, it came again.

I opened my eyes and he
was
standing before me. Chie was at his side, looking pale and as worn out as I felt. I got to my feet, my body grinding and complaining like a rusty machine. Yamashita watched me, his face revealing nothing, his eyes taking silent inventory of my condition.

“We should plan, Burke,” he said. I nodded in silent agreement, sagging, feeling momentarily deflated. Then I took a breath and straightened up. I looked at Chie.

“I meant the best,” I told her, “but I was wrong to take you.” She just stood there. A sudden storm gust rocked the world outside; I could feel the shift in air pressure even behind those stone walls. Chie just watched me, and it seemed as if her silence, her calm, had within it a disgust so deep it robbed her of words.

I nodded as if hearing her silent rebuke. “As soon as the storm blows itself out, I’ll take you back to the city.”

That got a small rise out of her. “To my family?”

“No,” I said, “back to school. Back to … your life.”

Yamashita’s eyes narrowed. “It is not as simple as that, is it, Burke?” He smiled grimly. “Chie and I have been talking, as you may imagine.” He sighed. “I do not have all the pieces of this puzzle put together, but I think this is more complicated than you may have originally thought.”

“It is,” I agreed. I looked directly at Chie and held up my hand. “Whatever you may think, the information I have is the people Lim was working for are angry …”

“You’ve contacted your brother?” Yamashita asked, and he grunted in satisfaction when I nodded yes.

“. . .they’re angry because I’ve made enough noise to alert people to what they were trying to do to your father.”

“So,” she said, shrugging. “That’s their problem, isn’t it?”

I squinted in thought. “Yes and no.” She folded her arms impatiently and I rushed on. “These are the kind of people who work in the shadows, Chie. If they’re known, their usefulness is at an end. And when that happens …” I looked at my teacher for support.

He nodded. “Their masters will not be pleased.” Yamashita pursed his lips, considering. “Standard procedure with issues like this is to try to cover them up. It usually involves the elimination of witnesses.”