The Nicholas Linnear Novels (223 page)

But now consider what he was doing: looking over his shoulder in constant fear that someone was watching him, rather than getting on with his work. He thought about films he had seen, then decided on a course of action.

He spent the next hour and a half doubling back on his own trail, ducking in and out of stores, hurrying down narrow alleys where he had a view of anyone in front or behind him. He used the subways and the buses as well, getting on them and off at the last possible instant.

In the end he was certain that no one was following him, assuming anyone ever had been. Then he headed for Killan’s.

Nicholas asked that Nangi go with him to the airport. When Tomi offered to drive them, Nicholas said only, “You’re needed here, Detective. You know your duty.”

Nicholas had brought up the question of Tomi contacting the New York City police, getting them to detain Senjin at Kennedy Airport, and Tomi had done this. On the basis of the testimony of The Silk Road’s owner, there was enough hard evidence to indict him. She gave Nicholas the name and number of the homicide detective she had contacted in New York.

Umi came into the bedroom while Nicholas was hurriedly throwing clothes, passport, money, and other paraphernalia into a carryon suitcase. She said to him, “There are many matters Nangi would discuss with you, but because of matters of propriety, will not. He is of the old school, while I am…Well, I understand the old school well, and I respect it. But I see beyond its confines. I see more, but I am less. Do you understand?”

Nicholas paused, several shirts in his hand. “I listen whenever you speak, Umi,” he said. “Hasn’t this always been so?”

Umi came close to him then, and with her hand on his chin, turned his head to the left, then to the right. “What do I see there, Nicholas? You are different.”

“I am tanjian,” Nicholas said.

“This has not made you different,” Umi assured him. “You were born tanjian, inheriting this from your mother.”

Nicholas was startled. “You knew this?” She nodded. “And Nangi?”

“Nangi as well knew.”

“And neither of you told me?”

She smiled. “You would not have believed us,” she said with conviction. “It was not our place.”

Nicholas threw the shirts into his luggage. “Sometimes,” he said, “I still don’t believe it.”

“Being tanjian,” Umi reiterated, “is not what has made you different.” She was looking into his face in the same way she studied her texts on cultural mythology, with an eerie intentness, as if she were devouring it whole.

“I am stronger now, Umi. Stronger than I’ve ever been as a mere ninja.”

Umi’s eyes regarded him directly. “The
dorokusai
is close,” she said. “Closer than you believe or can imagine.”

“He’s already half a world away,” Nicholas said, resuming his packing. “I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

“Beware. Your new power may at first blind you, until you understand that such power can be a weakness as well. You still have much to learn, Nicholas.” Umi watched him at his work, never taking her eyes off his face. “It is useless to speak of distance or of time when one speaks of a
dorokusai,
because one must focus on the power of the mind. And of illusion. Both are trademarks of the
dorokusai
.”

“So I have been warned.” He was finished. He zipped up the bag, hefted it.

“Do not take lightly this threat to your joint venture,” Umi said.

Nicholas smiled for the first time. “Believe me, I’m not. That’s why I’ve asked Nangi-san to accompany me to the airport. I have an idea, but it’s very dangerous—not only for me, but for Nangi as well. I want you to know this now. Before I tell Nangi-san.”

“I trust you, Nicholas,” Umi said. “As does Nangi.” That was all she needed to say, and Nicholas was grateful for her support.

“There is something for you to do, Umi,” he said. “I may need some help in New York. After I leave for the airport, I want you to make a call for me. Don’t use this phone, or yours, for that matter. Find a pay phone and use that. I want you to memorize this.” He gave her the Manhattan phone number. “Let it ring for as long as you have to. Whatever you do, don’t hang up. Someone will pick up eventually. If you hear a man’s voice, tell him, ‘Be ready tomorrow.’ Exactly that. If a woman answers, say you’re a friend of Tik-Tik’s. Ask when the man will be in. Get a definite time, and remember to translate it to Japan time. Say you’ll call back, and hang up. When you hear his voice, say, ‘Be ready tomorrow.’ Will you do that?”

Umi nodded.
“Hai.”

Nicholas was grateful again for his network of friends. He turned as he was about to leave. “And, Umi? Don’t tell Nangi-san. He’ll only worry.”

Umi watched him with her intelligent black eyes. He thought she was about to say something, then appeared to change her mind. She bowed, her hands together. “Goodbye, Nicholas-san,” she said, using the formal construction, the respectful inflectives.

Nicholas bowed in return.
“Domo arigato,
Umi-san.” Thank you.

Justine sat in the third window seat in the giant 747-SP. She stared out the window at billowing clouds, but her vision was turned inward, backward.

What did she remember of her encounter with Senjin Omukae? It might be more accurate to ask what she was allowed to remember. The Tau-tau that Senjin had worked on her still drifted through her mind, keeping her conscious thoughts away from him, from what she had been made to do at his behest.

Instead she thought of her coming to Japan. She felt now as if her time there had been compressed, so intense that she felt as if she had lived a lifetime there, although it was just under four years. She had read, once, an account of a grunt’s—an infantry soldier’s—time in-country during the Vietnam war, and it seemed to her now that the experience curiously, eerily, resembled her own. In the end both she and the grunt had felt that disorienting compression of time, a lack of community, an acute sense of being overwhelmed by the wholly alien culture—in short, an insidious destabilization of day-to-day life that could, and too often did, lead to the breakdown of reality.

This, Justine assured herself, was what had happened to her. It was why she was flying home now, wasn’t it?

All of a sudden her head hurt, and she dug a couple of aspirin out of her pocketbook, stumbled down the aisle to wash them down with the plane’s tepid, stale-tasting water.

She returned to her seat, stepping past the child in the seat next to her, settled back down. She closed her eyes and was soon asleep.

She dreamed of Senjin. He was a white tiger stalking her through a sun-streaked jungle.

As a child Justine had always loved the tigers best at the zoos she had been taken to. Despite that, she had never seen a white tiger except in photographs. Thereafter, she had attached a special significance to their splendid coloring: at once more powerful—stark and somehow sad—and less beautiful than their tawny brethren. It seemed to her as if the albino tigers had to give up one thing to gain the other. She thought that was how it was for people, too.

Senjin, the white tiger, came for her. He bounded through the thick tangles of growth that were impeding her flight. He quickly closed the distance between them. When he was close enough to leap upon her, he opened his enormous jaws.

But instead of biting her, he spoke to her. When he did so (did white tigers talk?), it was with Honi’s voice.
I will have no family of my own. I am alone. I have chosen to be alone,
the white tiger with the therapist’s voice said. The white tiger, its lambent eyes upon her, crouched, breathing, waiting, patient as a god.

And Justine felt only pity in her heart for this great beast, so stark, so sad.
You’re so terribly alone,
she said.
Drifting like a cloud above the jam-packed earth. How do you stand it?

The white tiger’s tail went thum-thum, thum-thum, like a heart against the black earth.
When I was a child I was always lonely. I cried often, and was ashamed of my weakness. In time I overcame that.

A weakness? Oh, no!
Justine said.
The pain behind your eyes is a scar upon your soul.
And she wanted to reach out to touch, comfort the beast.

It smiled at her.
My spirit is pure,
the white tiger said.
It is without emotion, therefore it requires no solace.

But Justine saw through this deception, and she swallowed her fear, went to put her arms around the great beast.

At that moment the white tiger began to come apart. Beneath the mask of the beast stood Honi. She began to say something to Justine, and Justine knew that it was important. She strained to hear. But fissure lines were already forming in Honi’s face, and it, too, burst apart to reveal the face of Senjin Omukae. Even in the midst of her dream Justine asked herself, Do I know this man? Have I seen him before?

But before she had a chance to come to a conclusion, the mask of Senjin Omukae began to melt as if it were made of wax, had been held too near the flame of her scrutiny.

And now she could see this creature’s true identity, one that it had by deviousness and trickery sought to conceal from her. All else, she knew, had been illusion but this.

She beheld the countenance of her pursuer, and her heart froze in her chest. She felt a scream beginning to form; her throat ached from the effort. She tried to back away but could not move. She knew that she was going to die unless she could move, but there was nowhere to go.

And impaled upon the symbolism of her dream, she started awake. “Huhh!” A great exhalation, an equally great shuddering breath.

“Are you all right?”

“What?”

“You’re shaking.” A little voice, the girl in the seat next to her, the one who had been reading a book from the moment they had taken off. “Are you sick?”

“No,” Justine said, doing her best to smile. She put her head back against the seat. “It was just a dream.”

“My mother says not to be afraid of anything you dream,” the little girl said. “Is that why you’re afraid?”

“Yes,” Justine said, her smile a bit brighter. “I suppose so.”

The girl rummaged in her backpack, pulled out a candy bar. “Have a Snickers,” she said. “They always make me feel better.”

Justine had to laugh. “Thanks.” She took the candy bar, began to unwrap it. “You know, this looks awfully big for one person. How about we share it?”

“Great!” The little girl squirmed with delight.

Justine, watching the tiny mouth devour the sweet with such unalloyed enjoyment, found that this gave her more pleasure than eating her half. “What’s your name?”

“Martha.”

“Mine’s Justine.” She smiled. “I’m glad we met.”

“Me, too!” Martha said, licking her lips of the last of the candy bar’s chocolate coating.

“You’re traveling alone?”

Martha made a face. “My mom’s in New York and my daddy’s in Tokyo.”

“That’s a long distance to be separated,” Justine observed.

Martha’s face fell. “They were separated before Daddy ever moved.”

“Oh,” Justine said, feeling as if she had stumbled into someone’s very private room. “Well, at least you get to see them both. And Japan, to boot.”

“Yeah!” Martha brightened. “I like Japan. I’ve made some friends there. I’m always sorry to leave.” But her face told Justine that it wasn’t her new friends she was sorry to leave.

“I want to show you something,” Martha said, rummaging again in her backpack. She extracted a sheet of heavy paper, rolled and kept with a colored cord tied in a bow.

Martha slipped the cord off, unrolled the paper, handed it shyly to Justine. “I made it myself.”

“Why, it’s beautiful!” Justine exclaimed. And it was: a painting of the Japanese countryside, primitive and lovely in the candor of its bold, uncomplicated strokes. It captured something about the culture Justine had never been able to put into words. She thought of it as a kind of austerity, but translated through the child’s eyes, it became a purity that was, perhaps, closer to the truth.

“I made one like this for my daddy,” Martha said. “He was so proud, he put it up right away in his office. This one’s for my mom.”

“He
should
be proud of you,” Justine said, handing it back. She helped the child slip the cord back over the cylinder of paper. “You’re very talented.”

“Thank you,” Martha said. “But I didn’t work so hard on it or anything.”

“Sometimes very hard things come easily to people,” Justine said, thinking of Nicholas, and of how proud she would be of Martha if she were her mother and were presented with this painting. “I think it’s wonderful.”

Martha squirmed in her seat again as she returned the painting to her backpack.

Justine, wanting to keep her attention, said, “What are you reading? It must be interesting. You’ve had your head stuck in it all the time we’ve been flying.”

“Oh, it’s a book about two girls,” Martha said. “One has no friends.”

“That’s terribly sad,” Justine said, meaning it.

“Yes, but it’s sadder for the other girl,” Martha said. “She has no family. I think that’s the saddest thing of all, don’t you?”

Justine looked at this little girl, at her freckled face, her innocent eyes, the tiny blue and white outfit she wore—blouse, skirt, shoes and socks—so accurately mimicking an adult’s ensemble, and her heart melted. For the first time in many months she touched her belly without any sense of loss, guilt, or anxiety.

One of you is in here, she thought. Growing inside me, being nourished by me. When it comes out it will be tiny and helpless and in need of love. Martha’s words,
I think that’s the saddest thing of all, don’t you?
echoed in her mind.

“Yes,” Justine said, meaning it, “you can always make friends—like your friends in Japan; like us. But not having a family is the saddest thing of all.”

The Scoundrel listened to what was on the microrecorder while he waited for Killan Oroshi to come home. He had let himself into her apartment, which wasn’t difficult for him since he had designed the computer-generated digital locking mechanism that served in lieu of the conventional key and tumbler lock system. “You never have to worry about walking out without your keys,” he had told Killan when he installed the new system. “Besides, it’s far more secure.” Except for him.