The Nicholas Linnear Novels (160 page)

She luxuriated in this pureness, but still there was so much about her that had changed, and she wanted to share it with him.

“Have you been successful so far?” she asked.

“How do you mean?”

“With Tomkin Industries, of course.”

He seemed skeptical. “You mean you really care one way or the other?”

“It’s my father’s company, isn’t it? My future husband’s running it, isn’t he? I think I have a bit of a stake in its success or failure!”

He smiled, surprised at how enormously pleased he was. “Nangi has just agreed to the merger of Sphynx Silicon and Sato’s Nippon Memory Chip
kobun.
But there’s much more. I think that within eighteen months, two years at the outside, more than just the two divisions will be merged.”

“Nick!” she exclaimed. “That’s fantastic!” She hugged him. “My father would have been so proud of you.”

“I see that’s changed, too,” he said, grinning.

She nodded. “I’ve done a lot of thinking about him since the funeral…About me. All the hate’s gone. I think I’m able to see him more objectively now; as he really was. I can see the bad
and
the good. I’m just sorry that it took his death to allow me to understand all of it. I’d dearly like to tell him all about it; to see his face when I told him.”

He stroked her arm. “Your father was an exceedingly strong personality, Justine. He was too much for many adults. It’s not particularly surprising that he should have overpowered his children. The important thing is that you realize that he did not dominate you and Gelda deliberately. He didn’t know any other way to live.”

She nodded and held on to him. “That’s another reason I love you so, Nick. You understand me. You understood him.”

They kissed again, sliding into it as if they could never get enough of one another. Nicholas, because it was his way, probed inside her with
haragei.
He found to his utter astonishment the flame of
wa
—perfect harmony—ablaze inside her where before had only been darkness and chaos.

He sighed into her mouth and Justine groaned, melting against him. This state was what he perhaps had seen a spark of when first they had met, running into each other on the beach at West Bay Bridge. For both of us now, he thought, the long journey’s ended. And it’s just begun.

“Dinner tonight,” he said softly, after a long time in her arms.

Justine’s eyes were hazy with mingled love and lust. “And until then?”

“Go shopping,” he said. “Buy a Matsuda dress. Spend a fortune on tonight.”

“Yeah? What’s the occasion?”

“Can’t tell you,” he laughed. “It’s a surprise.”

“Oh, come on, Nick.” She had caught his mood, was laughing too. “Tell me.”

“Oh, no,” he said. “All I can say is that while you’re out making yourself even more beautiful, I’ll be working out with a friend. It seems he’s anxious to learn
aikido
and I’ve promised to go with him. There’s a
dōjō
I’ve been to quite near the Okura, where we’re all staying. I sent him there this afternoon to make an appointment. We’ll meet you back at the hotel at about seven.”

“Wait a minute. You mean this friend’s the surprise?”

Nicholas shrugged, laughing still. “Don’t know. Could be.”

“Oh, who is he, Nick? This isn’t fair!”

“I’ll give you a hint. He’s an American. Someone you haven’t seen in a long time. Someone you thought you’d never see again.”

Justine screwed up her face. “I can’t think of who it could be.”

“You’ll meet him soon enough.” ,

“Oh, no!” she cried. “That’s all I’ll be thinking about all afternoon. I won’t be able to concentrate on anything, shopping included.”

Nicholas decided to tell her. His face was alight. “Justine, Lew Croaker’s alive and well and staying right here in Tokyo!”

“What? You’re kidding!” She watched his face. “But the paper…”

“The news story was wrong. It’s a long involved story, but the gist of it is someone tried to kill him and missed. Lew stayed ‘dead’ in order to do what he had to.”

“Oh, my God!” She gripped him. “But that’s wonderful! How fabulous! Oh, I’ve got to give him a kiss for not getting himself killed!”

Nicholas laughed, delighted that her reaction mirrored his. “At seven,” he said, “you can do whatever you want with him—within reason, that is!”

They both laughed at that. Relief and a cessation of tension dissolved them into fits of giggles that did not stop for a long time. Their sides ached with the laughter, but still they did not stop. It felt far too good.

Nicholas met Croaker in the tiny exquisite park in Toranomon-chō’s
san-chōme.
They went up the steps to the building on the thirteenth block that overlooked the small temple and Atago Hill.

How long ago it seemed since he had first entered these doors, Nicholas thought. Like another lifetime. He and Justine were both so different now. And Croaker was there beside him.

In the locker room they changed out of their street clothes, Nicholas climbing into his
gi
, Croaker into the simple loose-fitting white cotton trousers and blouse he found neatly folded in the locker he opened.

It was very quiet in the
dōjō.
Classes had been over for some hours. There was no one about, and so they went in search of Kenzo, the
sensei
who had almost defeated Nicholas the first time he was here.

He was telling this to Croaker, who was saying how nervous and naked he felt without his gun. “You know us cops, Nick,” he said, “we even take a shower with our piece strapped under our armpits.”

They had come through the
dōjō
proper and were now in the
sensei
’s quarters, a series of small,
tatami
ed rooms separated by rice-paper
shoji.

“I’ve been thinking I’m getting too old for this. I’m tired of caring more for my piece than I do for the woman beside me. They pound that into you at the Academy, at least they did in my day. Your piece’s the only thing between you and a hole in your chest. Can’t say the same about your woman.” He tried to smile but could not make it work.

“Does that include Gelda?” Nicholas asked.

“Gelda. I don’t know. But it seems to me that if she can’t make it on her own we won’t make it together. I’m just no good as a crutch. It won’t be long before I come to hate her.” At that moment he had a piercing image of Alix in the safe house, Matty the Mouth’s apartment. She was sitting with her hands clasped between her knees, staring into the darkness. Traffic hissed by outside, uncaring. Was it a true image? he wondered. Was she really waiting there for him to come back? Or was she gone from his life, a puff of smoke he had once felt beside him and nothing more? On the covers of
Vogue
and
Bazaar
she bore an unattainable demeanor. But he had felt her head on his chest, had seen the despair opaquing her caged eyes. He had taken her hand and in its trembling had been privy to her vulnerability. He was astounded by the depth of his hope that she had not fled Matty’s into the endless night. Away from him.

“Then you’re through being a cop.”

“If only I knew what that meant,” Croaker said. “But I don’t.”

“You knew it well enough with Tanya,” Nicholas observed.

“Yah,” Croaker said, “I did at that.”

There was a shadow beyond the last
shōji.
It could have been a human figure.

“Sensei?”
Nicholas called. There was no answer. He reached out and slid aside the
shōji.

“Oh, Jesus Christ!” Croaker said, staring.

Kenzo, the
sensei
of this
dōjō,
was strung up from the ceiling, a length of nylon cord lashed around his ankles. His legs were white as bone, his face the color of a ruddy sunset. His blackened tongue protruded from between his engorged lips.

Nicholas saw the slash through Kenzo’s heart, neat as an incision, and knew instantly what weapon had been used to kill him.

“Goddamn!” Croaker cried. “I told you I felt naked without my piece!” He turned, running back through the path of the open
shōji
toward the staircase and the locker room where his gun was locked up, thinking, A cop’s what I am; it’s what I’ll always be. The beat of my heart.

“No!” Nicholas cried, spinning. “Lew, stop!” Running after his friend.

But Croaker did not hear him. He was in a foreign land and he felt terribly vulnerable without his gun. He was in the second room. Nicholas increased his speed, lunging forward just as Croaker sprinted through into the first room.

Grabbed at his cotton blouse, pulling backward and down.

But there was already a whirring in the air, a dazzling blur, the brief wind of an insect passing close by.

“Ah, God!” It was Croaker’s voice, full of surprise and pain.

There was blood and a flurry of bodies rolling. Nicholas was up in a crouch. Only an expertly wielded
katana
could have made that lethal cut in Kenzo, and that was what he had feared. The strike he was trying to protect Croaker from had been meant for him.

He saw his friend kneeling on the
tatami
, his right hand gripping his left. Blood poured out of the wound at the open wrist that had abruptly become a stump. Fearful shades of steel had sliced through flesh and bone alike.

That peculiar silvery tone was in the air, a lethal shimmer, an oncoming rush of wind that would slice him open if he let it. Used
tobi ashi
, the flying step, launching himself upward and over the oncoming strike.

Koten laughed harshly. “All your ninja acrobatics will avail you nothing. I have the
dai-katana.
”

And indeed it was as Nicholas had feared the moment he saw the expert incision through Kenzo’s heart. Koten was wielding Nicholas’ own sword,
Iss-Hōgai.
Fleetingly, Nicholas found himself wondering how a
yokozuna
—a
sumō
grand champion—such as Koten had had time to learn
kenjutsu.

He was wearing
montsuki
and
hakama
just as if he were about to step into the
dohyo
to begin a match. His gleaming black hair was immaculately coiffed in
ichomage.
Even the
dai-katana
with its thirty-inch blade appeared thin and puny so near his great girth. He was an enormously powerful man, and Nicholas had to be constantly aware of the discipline in which he was
sensei.

Sumō
was a bit more limited in range than many other martial arts. Perhaps just over two hundred combinations were possible, stemming from thirty-two key techniques based on pushing with the hands—
tsuki
; with the entire body—
oshi
; and clinching—
yori.

But Koten was also a
sumai sensei.
All contact with such a
sumō
could be instantaneously dangerous since their size combined with their huge
hara
gave them leverage normally unheard of for a human being unaided by mechanical means. Unarmed, Koten was decidedly lethal.

Koten extended the blade and moved forward in quick crablike steps. He was close to the ground—almost squatting—where he was most comfortable and the strongest.

Nicholas burst backward through the last of the
shōji,
found himself in the
dōjō
proper. He looked for the
katana,
but their ceremonial spot was empty.

Koten slashed downward in an oblique strike, the
dai-katana
piercing wood and rice paper, ripping up the
shōji
only centimeters from Nicholas’ retreating leg.

“I’ll cut into your ankles first,” Koten said, “and make you scream.” He came crashing through the rent
shōji
like a wild boar. “I made
sumō
scream, too. In the
dohyo.
”
Iss-Hogai
swept through the air left to right, then abruptly reversing course, swiping at Nicholas’ feet. “You thought
ozeki
made no noise during a match. The audience figures they grunt like territorial animals.” Blur of blade again. “That is the secret of
sumō
’s popularity. Beneath the formal rituals, the veneer of dignity and civilization, the audience is excited by what they believe they are seeing. Antlered stag going at it with instantaneous savagery.”

Koten’s bead eyes were bright as his massive legs powered him forward, as his bare soles beat the floor in a thunderous tattoo. “But within that space of time—thirty seconds, no more—I learned to make my opponents scream. The thunder of the crowd was such that only I heard, locked against his sweating body.”

Nicholas feinted right, then came in beneath Koten’s guard. But the
sumō
let go of the blade with his left hand, slamming the forearm into Nicholas’ chest. Nicholas hit the floor hard.

Koten laughed again. “I didn’t hear you scream that time, barbarian, but you will soon.” The
dai-katana
swooped down, its finely honed tip splintering the polished wooden boards at Nicholas’ feet.

Nicholas knew what all this bantering was in aid of. It was Koten’s aim to make Nicholas come against him, to make Nicholas use whatever he might know of
oshi
, drawing Nicholas into his own strength.

I might as well give him what he wants, Nicholas thought. It is time To Pass On to Koten that which he wants most.

Koten laughed as Nicholas came at him, a human mountain attacked by an insect who possibly could sting, but nothing more.

He countered Nicholas’
oshi
, using the hilt of the sword instead of, as Nicholas had expected, returning
oshi
for
oshi.
Nicholas felt the crushing blow on the point of his shoulder, felt the resulting grinding of bone and the audible pop of dislocation. Pain ran like fire down his arm, rendering his right side totally useless.

“This is what Musashi called Injuring the Corners, barbarian,” Koten gloated. “I’ll beat you down in small strokes. I’ll make you scream yet.”

He ran at Nicholas, feinting with the long sword, employing
oshi
now to throw Nicholas hard onto the floor. He knelt over him on one knee. The blade sizzled downward, cutting a vicious arc through the air.

Desperately Nicholas twisted, raising his left arm upward so that it broke inside Koten’s upraised arm, deflected the blow out and away from him. But because of the injuries to shoulder and fingers he was unable to complete the
suwari waza
move as he would have wanted to.