The Nicholas Linnear Novels (40 page)

They burst in, throwing Ah Ma against a wall so that her head banged into the edge of a cupboard. They dragged him out of bed, stripped him, beat him with their heavy sticks, the butts of their rifles. The red star embroidered on their peaked caps, the epaulets of their stinking uniforms. They had dragged Ah Ma’s husband, unconscious and bleeding, from the house. It was the last time she ever saw him. To this day she could not be certain whether he was alive or dead. But she hoped for his sake that he had died quickly. Perhaps he had found a bit of wire or a length of bedsheet. She did not want to think of what they might have done to his mind.

That was a long time ago but sometimes, on the dismal gray days, when rain lashed the windows and even the street below was obscured, Ah Ma thought that the wound had never quite healed.

She brought her thoughts back to the present, smiled into Penny’s eyes. She was so beautiful. Perfect and beautiful. “It is good you feel that way, my precious,” she said. “As a rule you know I don’t allow drugs of any nature in here. This man is an exception.” He fights the communists in China, in his own way, Ah Ma thought. He believes that his security is total but I know. Of course I know. I would not be who I am otherwise. I know all about everyone who comes here. Without exception. This one merely took more time, more
baht.
But there are always palms willing to be greased; there is a price on all such matters.

“May I know the reason?” Penny asked softly.

Ah Ma patted her shoulder. “It does not concern you.” She smiled. “Now go help Willow. It’s almost time.”

Penny bobbed her head, her eyes on the floor in front of her. “Yes, Mother. Right away.”

Ah Ma watched her silently pad out of the room, wondering what the world was coming to.

As for the Japanese, he was, at this time, exiting the movie theater via its side entrance. He immediately crossed Forty-ninth Street and ran the last several steps to catch a downtown bus. It was fairly crowded but thinned out not long after they passed Thirty-fourth Street.

He swung off one stop from the terminus, walked the rest of the way into the Village. On Eighth Street he turned east until he came to Cooper Square with its black metal cube sculpture balanced on one point. Along one face someone had spray-painted in white “Zombie loves Karen R.” It seemed to fit.

He caught the City Hall bus on the corner of Eighth and Third Avenue, traced the Bowery as far as Canal Street. There he found the first phone booth. He stared up at the chunky old-fashioned clock above the jewelry store on the corner. Immense semis, spewing diesel fumes, rumbled westward and across the avenue the mock-Roman columns of the Manhattan Bridge rose.

He dialed a number, got the correct time. He hung up and waited precisely one minute and fifty seconds. Then he dialed a local New York number. He detested this procedure but it was a built-in factor and a logical one; he did not fight logic.

At the other end the receiver was picked up. The Japanese read off the seven digits of the number from which he was making the call, then immediately replaced the receiver. He held down the bar while lifting the receiver, placing it against his ear. A woman who had been looking at him turned around disgustedly, searching for another phone.

Four and a half minutes later the phone rang. The Japanese lifted his finger from the bar. The conversation was in Japanese.

“Yes.” He could hear the hollow sound of the overseas line.

“Status.”

“We’re running.”

“Tell me more. What results have you?”

“Results?” He seemed somewhat taken aback. “I’m in place. The buy is running.”
Buy
was his own word for mission.

“I see.” There was a pause during which it was just possible to hear the sibilants of another call far in the open background. “The line is secure?”

“From this end, absolutely.”

The voice at the other end appeared to disregard the discourtesy. “We wish a rapid denouement.”

“That was made clear to me in the beginning.” Every fifteen seconds he checked his immediate area. Not that he expected to find anything; one should never forget security. It was all one ever had.

“Precisely.”

“These things can’t be rushed. You know that. I work a certain way. This was agreed upon or I never would have taken on the buy.”

“Oh yes. We are well aware of that. But life is ever changing and recent events—events which have taken place while you were out of the country—necessitate a more precipitate closure.”

“I never do things that way. I—”

“You will now.” The voice was as soft as silk, the tone even. There was no haste to the words, no heavy-handed menace. “It is imperative you close the buy within the next seventy-two hours.”

“I do not think that—”

“Your fee is doubled.”

The line was dead in his hand.

“Good evening,” Ah Ma said. She stitched a smile on her face, extended an arm. “You honor this house w—”

“Is it all ready?”

Ah Ma kept her annoyance at this serious breach of ritual courtesy out of her voice. She was an extremely orderly woman; she did not take well to disruptions. Or to rudeness. She thought briefly of throwing the Japanese out. Certainly she did not need his money. But he had killed communists in China. Three high officials that she knew of; that surely meant the true figure was higher. She hated the communists far more than the Japanese. Besides, the arrangements had already been made. It would have been a cruel waste of time for her people had she sent him away now.

Ah Ma gave the Japanese her warmest smile. “All is in readiness, as we discussed.” Covertly, her wide-apart black eyes, as alert as a bird’s, studied him. His mood was different, she thought. He seems less relaxed, almost on edge. Perhaps he goes from here to kill another communist. She shrugged inwardly. It was none of her concern.

“Would you care for some tea first?”

“No.”

“Dumplings are just now being prepared.”

He shook his head.

Ah Ma lifted her shoulders. “As you wish.” Barbarian! she thought. The amenities mean nothing to him. Time rushes him as if he were a Westerner. Ah well! The Japanese are much like the Westerners now; they are great mimics. “Willow,” she called softly.

A woman glided up. She was tall and slender, her face bony. This set off her long eyes and full wide lips. She was most striking. Yet she possessed a remarkable icy detachment. No one could mistake her for one of Ah Ma’s girls; one knew immediately, almost instinctively, that she was far more. One had no idea what that might be.

Willow looked at Ah Ma and at no one else.

“Take the gentleman,” Ah Ma said softly, “to the Gold Suite.” All of the rooms used for professional purposes were designated by color.

Willow bowed and led the man down a dimly lighted hallway. The walls, save for the decorative molding at floor and ceiling, were papered in a blue-green Shantung silk. The carpet was a deep beige, as were the molding and the closed doors they passed.

They came to the last door on the left and Willow halted. Her hand reached out for the knob.

“Wait a minute.” The man’s fingers encircled her slender wrist. He pulled her around to face him. “Are you going to—” He was speaking in Cantonese, saw the blank look on her face, switched to Mandarin. It was too much to expect that they’d know Japanese. “Has the old woman fixed you up with me? I told her I didn’t want anyone tall.” Willow stared at him mutely. “Listen, I don’t want you. Understand? There’s been some mistake.”

Willow dropped her gaze to his fingers holding her.

“Tell the old lady there’s been a mistake. For the money I’m—” He stopped, puzzled. She had made no move to break away from him. He had wanted her to struggle, even to whimper. He increased the pressure of his fingers but there was no response. He let go her wrist.

Willow turned and silently opened the door. She did not step over the sill.

The Japanese went inside and turned around to look at her but the door was already closing behind him.

The room was large. Green carpet covered the floor. The walls were gold; the ceiling, an eggshell white. The room contained a large double bed, a wide sofa and a trio of matching chairs, all done in gold cotton. An open door in the right wall led to a rather large and, upon closer inspection, ornate bath. A highly polished oak armoire stood along the left wall next to a large window.

He crossed to this, looked out on Pell Street. There was a conventional black iron fire escape running up the side of the building; there was no window in the bath. Normal security precautions. He turned around.

He saw a young boy and, behind him, a young woman.

“What is your name?” he said to the boy. He did not ask for the woman’s name.

“Sparrow.”

“Do you have it?”

The boy nodded, took a step toward the Japanese.

“Stop,” he commanded. “Give it to the girl.”

The boy turned and handed her something.

“Bring it to me.”

The girl bowed. On her way to him, she stopped to pour a cup of hot sake. She handed it to him.

He stared at her, his eyes boring into hers. His hand flipped out in a blur, knocking the cup from her outstretched hand. She stifled a cry at the blow. Her fingers stung terribly.

“Do nothing,” he said coldly, “unless I command it. Then be quite certain you do precisely as you are told. Is that clear?” The girl nodded dumbly. These remarks seemed directed solely at her. “Let me see what you have.”

She opened her hand. In it he saw two brown tablets and, beside them, a chunk of a black substance. He picked this up first, sniffed it. He nodded. He placed it back in her hand, picked up the tablets. These he tasted with the tip of his tongue. Satisfied, he told her to grind them up.

This combination of opium and synthetic DMT was not new to him. He had acquired a taste for it from a fellow student years ago. The pressure at the
ryu
had been enormous. Sake, of course, was often used as a source of relaxation. But it was not for him; it was not enough.

He watched glassy-eyed as the girl, on her knees, ground the mixture in a stone mortar she had produced from within the armoire.

When she had finished and had filled a pipe for him, he told her to run the water for his bath.

“I can do that,” Sparrow said.

“Stay where you are,” the Japanese barked. His gaze shifted to the girl. “Do as you are told.”

She bowed her head, half ran across the room. By the time he had the pipe lit, he heard the muted sound of running water.

The Japanese took three long drags at the pipe before he took it out of his mouth. “Come here, Sparrow. Now inhale. No, deeply. That’s right.” He returned the pipe to his mouth, finished smoking. He could hear nothing but the distant water, tumbling. It sounded like a falls.

Every time he breathed in now, the air felt chill; on the exhalations, it seemed to burn the lining of his nostrils. He felt his heart pumping, the blood squirting through his veins and arteries. He felt hot.

Gravity pulled upon him as if he were underwater. He felt its drag on his arms and legs, on his head and on his penis. His balls seemed to have grown within their sac.

“Come,” he commanded the boy and together they went into the bath. The tub was three-quarters full. The girl was on her knees testing the temperature.

“Undress the boy,” he told her. Every time he spoke, he could feel the rumbling vibrations in his chest. The words, gaining substance, seemed to roll around within the cavity, like ripples set in motion, eddying outward. Some words were as small as insects, as bright and shining. Others were as large and ungainly as giraffes.

The Japanese watched avidly as the girl went to where Sparrow stood on the doorsill. “Do it on your knees,” he told her. He was gratified to see how well she took instructions. He must remember to compliment the old woman.

The boy stood naked, his thin body just beginning to form the musculature of adolescence. The Japanese stared, his pupils dilated. In and out. His breathing like the bellows in a busy forge. The girl sat with her legs folded beneath her. Her head was bowed. Her long black hair hung, shining, down her back.

He bade her undress him next, his shirt first so that she could perform the rest on her knees in front of him. He did not watch her; he watched the boy.

He was hard by the time she had finished and the boy’s penis was no longer soft. Without looking at her, he grabbed the girl by the back of her head, pushed her face against his scrotal sac. Her mouth opened. The boy was hard and quivering.

He pushed the girl away from him, stepped into the hot tub. “Now,” he said to her, “wash me.”

When this had been completed, he stepped out and instructed her to scrub the bathtub. Only when it was washed and rinsed did he step back in. She ran the water for him again.

Lying back, soaking contentedly, he stared up at the gleaming white ceiling just as if he were alone. He thought about the call and what it meant. He smiled. He had meant to kill Tomkin within three days anyway. He had not been about to reveal that to his employers. The less they knew the better. Once you gave anyone information of any kind, you risked giving them an advantage. That was something the Japanese had never done. He was successful because it was he who held the advantage always. This he had been taught well.

He had to laugh. His body moved, sending wavelets bouncing off the porcelain of the tub. By not revealing his plans, he had just had his fee doubled. It had been high enough to begin with and rightly so. Others had tried to kill Raphael Tomkin; none had succeeded. The Japanese had no doubts about his success; none at all. It was, rather, the method that occupied his mind so fully. Yes, his first assessment had been the correct one. Tomkin was most vulnerable in his new office. It was high up, it was isolated, it was surrounded by a warren of tunnels and half-completed passageways into which he could disappear in an instant.

There were, of course, the long-range methods: the rifle, the bomb, and so forth. These were not in the Japanese’s repertoire of murder. They were the coward’s way; totally Western forms of assassination. He did all his work firsthand, with his own weapons. There was no honor in killing otherwise. Thus he had been taught. The ninja, too, had their code of honor. It was far from the laws of weak-minded
bushido
, he thought contemptuously, but it governed him nonetheless. A buy was simply not worth doing if one could not get to within an arm’s length of the objective. And that was all he needed.