The Nicholas Linnear Novels (152 page)

Minck ground his teeth together. He was having trouble breathing. How the Wolf must have laughed at his idea to send her in to back up Linnear; and how she must have panicked on learning that he had sent Linnear in against her master.

He could see her face clearly at the moment she had learned what he had done, how he had so cleverly improvised. How he had misread her concern! What perspectives the truth lent reality.

He paced the room, Moscow all around him cloaked in winter’s dank and frosty grip. He did not want to see the changing of the seasons there; like his burning hatred, he wished only to see the city’s immutability.

What to do now? he wondered. How in God’s name could he salvage the operation? He had not heard from Linnear. Certainly he could send no other agent in after her; she would be instantly alerted; a call from him, an order home would have the same effect. She knew there was nothing on the boards—there could not be—as important as
Tenchi
and Protorov.

Like a parent at the moment of parting with his child, he felt utterly betrayed. Yet he could not bring himself to hate her. Nothing she could do to him could destroy his love.

There must be an answer, he thought furiously. I have pulled victory from the edge of defeat many times before. Why should this be any different. But he knew the answer to that. Never had he been faced with a disaster of this magnitude.

To have a Dig Dug within his own Red Sector was, for him, intolerable. It was to him other agencies came to ferret out just such dangers within their own hierarchies.

No answer came to him. Tanya, by her very position within Red Section, knew all of its personnel. Individuals from agencies allied with the Family would never get to her. And besides alerting her, there was another danger in going outside his own organization. He’d never live the infiltration down. No one must know of Tanya Vladimova’s heinous betrayal.

He was becoming frantic, his mind racing from one possibility to another, discarding each one almost as soon as he had thought of it. Why hadn’t Linnear used the access number?

His intercom buzzed. He ignored it but the sound would not go away. He wanted no interruptions now and reached out for the disconnect button. He hit the on switch instead and the floor receptionist’s voice rang in the room.

“Someone here to see you, sir.”

“I want to see no one, is that clear?”

“Yes, sir. But the gentleman will not leave. He insists on—”

Oh, for Christ’s sake! Minck thought. “Does this ‘gentleman’ have a name?”

“Yes, sir. He says you know him. His name is Detective Lieutenant Lewis Croaker.”

His body was a mass of bruises where Protorov and Koten had beaten him. The first three fingers of his right hand were broken and badly swollen. The pain, however, was no problem; he knew how to control that.

He walked gingerly over to Protorov’s desk, turned on the paper shredder, and fed the coded sheets into it. Now the information existed only in his head.

He crawled back to where Protorov lay and continued his deep breathing. He stared down at his bloated fingers and knew there was no help for it; he could not leave them in this condition.

At the Tenshin Shoden Katori he had learned
koppo
, the sub-specialization of
ninjutsu
which dealt in the breaking of bones. In fact he had applied some of those techniques when he had gripped Protorov. Now he needed to reverse the process on himself.

Using only thumb and forefinger, he gripped one finger at a time and began to explore. Just as a safe’s tumblers will somehow convey to the trained ear when they are about to fall into place, so Nicholas reached a moment in each exploration when his body told him the spot had been found. More investigation revealed to him the precise angle he would need.

A Westerner would grit his teeth, tense his muscles against what his mind told him was coming, thus increasing the pain. Nicholas relaxed his body and mind, decreasing the pain. He floated in
getsumei no michi
as his body healed itself.

When his eyes returned from middle distance he saw that his fingers were set. Ripping off a length of cloth from Protorov’s dress blouse, he wound the coarse, heavy material around and around the line of breaks until it was thick enough to act as a temporary splint. He used his teeth to tie it off, mindful of not cutting off local circulation.

Then he took stock. It was not good. He was in a strictly shut-ended situation. He had been lucky up until now that no one had entered to see what Protorov was up to. That could not last much longer, he knew. He was in the center of a veritable fortress, in a room with one doorway, thick as a bank’s vault. He glanced upward. This room, by its very isolated nature, had an oversized ventilation system. It would have been entirely possible for him to get up to one of the vent ports high up near the room’s ceiling and exit that way had it not been for his broken fingers and the residue of the drug.

He needed help but he had no allies for many miles around. Therefore he would have to create one.

Using
ichi
, he gave as accurate an approximation of Viktor Protorov’s voice as he could summon up, calling out for Russilov. When the lieutenant appeared through the doorway, he heaved Protorov’s limp form at him face first.

Russilov’s reaction was predictable. The first autonomic reaction of throwing his hands up to protect the body was quickly followed by a stunned cry as he recognized the identity of the corpse.

The combination was enough to paralyze him for the amount of time Nicholas needed to rush him and make him prisoner. He touched Russilov’s chest and the Russian felt his heart stutter. He sagged a bit, feeling abruptly faint and unable to breathe. He might just as well have ingested a toxic substance. All color dropped out of his face, and cold sweat appeared on his upper lip and at his hairline.

Still his head whipped around to get another look. “Impossible!” he cried. “You’re dead!”

“Then we have just proved that there is life beyond the grave!” Nicholas hissed in his ear.

There was blood on Russilov and, fastidiously, stupidly, he tried to brush it off.

Nicholas took his sidearm, searched him thoroughly for other weapons. He found a knife on the inside of the Russian’s left calf. “Now you’re going to get me out of here.”

“Impossible as well,” Russilov said and, when Nicholas tightened his grip, said hurriedly, “No, it is the truth! There is an electronic scanner. Prisoners are stamped with an invisible mark that is renewed every week. If we were to walk or drive out through any gate you would be fried—I along with you if we were in the same vehicle.”

“There must be some way to get it off prematurely,” Nicholas said.

“There is,” Russilov nodded. “Protorov knew how. Only Protorov. You’ll never get out of here, with me or without me.”

Nicholas did not despair. He had been taught to infiltrate and he knew that there was a way out of every manmade structure, just as there was a way in.

“Quickly,” he said, “tell me about this place.”

Russilov complied. The building that Protorov had chosen as his base had originally been a barn complex which he had converted to his own uses. There were two exits and, as Russilov had said, they were useless to Nicholas. Stone walls had been erected inside the wooden ones, one extra story had been built, which was where they currently were.

Russilov laughed low in his throat. “There’s nowhere for you to go but up, to the parapets. From there you may leap into the dense woods, my friend. Perhaps you will not die; perhaps you will be lucky and the fall will only break your legs!”

Nicholas’ mind was racing. It was conceivable that Russilov had described his way out.

“Out now!” he commanded. “And whoever we run across must not become suspicious, is that clear? If you raise your voice, you die; if you make an unaccounted-for move, you die. Clear?”

The lieutenant nodded.

Outside in the hallway, they saw no one. The two lieutenants had taken the doctor downstairs to a detention cell. Russilov led him toward the stairs up to the roof. On the way, they passed a number of bamboo and aluminum poles perhaps fifteen meters in length.

Nicholas stopped him. “What are these for?”

“Bamboo groves all around here,” Russilov said sullenly. “Farmers used to store and age these here. The aluminum ones were for anchoring fledgling stands against the winter winds.”

“Take two,” Nicholas ordered. And when Russilov did so, said, “No, the bamboo poles.”

On the roof Nicholas commanded the Russian to strip, ordering him to spread out each item on the stones. In the meantime, employing Russilov’s knife, he cut the bamboo poles in half. Then he set about cutting off the arms of the lieutenant’s blouse and jacket. He cut his trousers in two, took the laces from the boots.

“What are you doing?” Russilov asked, huddled naked in a corner.

Nicholas said nothing. He sliced the Russian’s heavy leather belt into four long strips. Using these and the boot laces, he set to work constructing his scaffolding. Then he attached the pieces of cloth. He worked with the loving concentration of a father constructing his child’s first kite.

What in fact he had made was a
hito washi
, what some ninja called “the human eagle.” It was a makeshift glider.

When he was finished he walked back to where Russilov knelt. Stripped of his uniform, his rank, he seemed to have shrunk in size. Like many military men, he very nearly had ceased to exist without the armor of his command.

“Good-bye, Russilov,” Nicholas said, bending down and touching the
juka
, one of the
kyukon
, the nine organ meridians. This one was just beneath the ears. Russilov immediately collapsed, unconscious.

Then Nicholas mounted the
hito washi.
There was a fair wind blowing from the southwest, gusty and unpredictable. He shrugged mentally.
Karma.
He was enormously tired and he wanted to sleep badly. Soon, he thought. Be careful now.

He mounted the stone parapet. There was no moon and his chronometer had been taken from him. It was deep into the night, the early hours of morning. It was not yet that peculiar time of predawn when a special tinge of nameless color comes into the world, but he did not know how long dawn would be in arriving.

Two good gusts came while he was still working out the vectors. Then, as he set himself, the wind died to a tickle on his face. Come on, he thought. Come on!

His hair began to ruffle, he felt the temperature drop on his bruised and purpled skin. Strengthening. Such an ephemeral thing, you could not even see it. He closed his eyes and felt it.

And when his body told him it was time, he used the powerful muscles in his legs to launch himself into the dark, dark void. Spinning for a moment, plummeting. Then he corrected and caught a substantial updraft.

Soared into the night like a bat.

Akiko picked Koten up at the
rotenburo
and followed him out of there. He had arrived emptyhanded and he left with a long, polished wood case. To Akiko, whose eyes were trained for such things, it appeared to be a weapon’s case. Judging by its length it could contain nothing but a
dai-katana,
the longest of all the
samurai
swords.

Deep in the shadows, she stiffened. Koten had passed through a squat ellipse of lantern light and she had gotten a good look at the case. It was the same one she had seen open in the garden between Nicholas and her husband. Koten had Nicholas’ sword!

Car followed car. But because there was little traffic this late at night Akiko was forced to douse her headlights, using peripheral illumination, as well as the twin ruby taillights of Koten’s car, to aid her. Once or twice, when the road wound up a hillside, she thought she had lost him. But each time as she crested, the lights reappeared.

This was farm country—very rural—and she had to be careful not to be spotted. But the sky’s darkness that hindered her also aided her for it made Koten’s vision behind him that much more difficult.

Not more than thirty minutes after they left the
rotenburo
, Koten’s car abruptly slowed, turning left onto a hardpacked dirt lane that immediately disappeared in underbrush.

Akiko quickly pulled onto the side of the road and got out, following on foot; she could not chance taking her own car in there—the noise alone could alert her quarry.

Because of the narrow twisting nature of the path she had no difficulty in keeping Koten in sight. In a small clearing bordered by great stands of whispering bamboo, he drew up. Men were all about and she was close enough to hear what they were saying. Nicholas had escaped!

But what of Sato? She had not been at the
rotenburo
for long enough to find out anything of substance other than that a man—apparently a patron—had been killed in a mysterious auto explosion. Who?

She did not know. Koten had come, distracting her; but even so she would not have been able to ask questions without arousing suspicion. Japanese society was extremely clannish. There was a fierce community spirit. She did not belong here; a stranger asking questions about what might easily be a murder—what was in any case an unexplained death—would be noted and the local police notified. Akiko could not afford such scrutiny.

But now she had to wonder. They had spoken only of Nicholas. Not one word was spoken of Sato; his name simply never came up.

To Akiko this led to one inescapable conclusion: Sato was dead. Perhaps it had been he who had died in the car explosion; or again perhaps he had died here at this forested place. It did not matter; part of her revenge had been taken care of for her. That did not make her particularly happy—she would have preferred to exact her own vengeance—but she resigned herself to the reality of the situation.

Nicholas was now her target. She turned away from the edge of the clearing, beginning to quarter the area immediately surrounding the clearing and its central building which looked so much like a barn but which she was certain was not.

At length, to the southwest, she found the remnants of the
hito washi.
She hunkered down, fingering it, admiring the workmanship. She laughed low in her throat. Then she set off after him.