The Nicholas Linnear Novels (84 page)

For now she had traced the loosening of her sexual emotions to the moment when she had been circling Nicholas Linnear like a hungry jackal. Summoning up the image of him within the confines of exotic Jan Jan, she experienced again the triphammer beat of her heart, the tiny trembling of her inner thigh muscles, and the powerful compulsion to approach him.

Again, as they had at the nightclub, her fingers rose up to touch the flushed flesh of her cheek as if to assure herself that it was still there. It had not been that long. She must always keep that in mind. A stranger to herself, she must learn to become her own best friend. She had never been able to do that…before. On the advent of her rebirth she had vowed to herself that she would try. But first, unfinished business. And that involved Nicholas Linnear. Oh, yes. Most surely it did!

Akiko’s eyes opened wide. Sato and Yōki were entangled on the
futon.
The folds of their kimonos rippled about the edges of their working flesh like the sea’s waves upon the shore, concealing and revealing at once.

The panting bellows of their breaths rose toward her like a flock of gulls, pulling her onward as a third member as it fueled the furnace of their passion.

She saw Sato’s erection, large and reddish from the stroking ministrations of his partner. Yōki’s eyes were fluttered closed in pleasure and her soft breasts heaved into Sato’s calloused palms as his head slid down and down until his open mouth touched the insides of her heated thighs.

Unconsciously Akiko strained forward, and when she saw his tongue flick out to caress the flesh there, she gasped silently. A line of warm sweat trickled like a serpent’s tail down the deep indentation of her spine, staining her kimono, marking it with her lust. Her palms traced a circular pattern inward across her own spread-apart thighs until, lifting the material of her kimono, she encountered bare flesh.

Now, instead of her own fingertips, she felt Sato’s flickering tongue in maddening repetition as it moved across Yōki’s damp thighs, his hands behind her knees for an instant, lifting her legs.

Yōki’s thighs, Akiko’s thighs. There was no difference there to the touch. What had been done to her had not marred the silkiness of the flesh. But, she knew, should Sato see what lay along the inside, hidden skin there he might call off the wedding and that she could not afford. Afterward…well, then he would have no choice but to accept her.

Sato’s mouth moved upward, covering the curling black hair covering Yōki’s high mound. Akiko could see the other girl’s hips trembling with excitement and the building of her orgasm. Sato’s head burrowed down into the heat and the wet and Yōki threw her head back, the thin cords at the side of her neck standing out, her lips open, her teeth bared. Her thighs trembled uncontrollably.

And all the while, Akiko’s deft fingers were opening up her own petals, making gentle circular sweeps in concert with the movements of Sato’s head. She felt him but it was not enough; she needed more. The sensations touched her, beading like rain. But what she craved was a torrent, a tidal wave to lift her off her feet and tumble her helter-skelter into the arms of ecstasy.

It would not come, and she increased the pressure of her fingers, beginning to dig into the soft folds, pulling them apart, pressing harder against her clitoris.

Sato’s head came up. His chest was heaving like a bull’s. His great male form arched itself above Yōki’s supple female one, shadowing her from the diffuse light, streaking her face so that she appeared to be wearing some bizarre makeup.

And now she drew him upward, rubbing him against her until she had no other choice but to arch up and impale herself on him, thrusting her hips wildly off the
futon,
the breath whooshing out of her with an audible rush, the mounds of her breasts quivering with the strength of the sensations running rampant through her.

How Akiko longed to feel what she was feeling: the tide gathering, calling, running inward from the vast depths of the sea toward her like a blanket of night, blotting out all thought, all pain, all memories in the shooting inundation of vibrating pleasure.

Sato was stroking down to meet Yōki’s frantic thrusting, their hips hot in contact, the warm salty sweat dripping down from Sato’s bulging muscles, beading along the girl’s rippling skin.

She began to cry out, her arms enfolding him, drawing him all the way down on her, so that to Akiko it seemed as if he was burying her with his mass. The rhythmic grunting picked up in tempo and the motion of their hips became ragged and indistinct.

Yōki was sighing out her passion in great long jets, her face unlined and taut. The heels of her hands jammed against Sato’s powerful muscular buttocks, urging him to thrust himself even deeper into her.

“Going, going going…” Yōki’s voice held the edge of hysteria and something more. Whatever it was, Akiko longed for it just as she longed for the release from the bunched tension ribboning her thighs and stomach. Her muscles were knotted and the pain came roaring at her just as it always did at these sessions. She bit her lower lip in an effort not to cry out. Her heart hammered, threatening to burst its cage of bone and slippery membrane to explode like a sad sun in her constricted throat.

Please, she moaned to herself. Please, please, please. Though initially she had felt more than she ever had before, though she thought she might experience the blessed relief of the clouds and rain, this night was no different from all the rest. She heard Sato’s animal grunting as he shot in rapid fire into Yōki’s spasming depths.

It was too much for Akiko to bear and she fell back, slamming her shoulder against the floor beneath the
tatami.
Her eyes rolled up in their sockets, she heard the rushing of a sharp wind so briefly she was uncertain of its existence. Pain and a terrible longing transported her to a black plain. She heard Sun Hsiung saying, “There is a way—and if you are patient I will teach it to you—to scrutinize the enemy’s external appearance so that you may be able to discern his inner mind.”

Then unconsciousness took her.

Nicholas rose promptly just before six
a.m.
, awakened by his own inner clock. He took a quick shower, turning the water on first scaldingly hot, then needle cold. Emerging from the bathroom, his skin glowing from the tough toweling, he folded down into the lotus position, facing the window and Tokyo. He took three long, deep breaths. Then he dissolved into himself. And expanded outward, until his being filled the universe and he was wholly a part of everything.

The discreet knock on the door brought him out of his deep meditation; he had been waiting for it. His eyes focused on the spires of the city and, breathing normally again, he rose. He ate his breakfast of green tea and rice cakes silently. Then, dressed lightly, a small black bag slung over one shoulder, he went out of the hotel. It was just after ten o’clock.

He walked two blocks, east then south, and found himself in Toranomonchō. Past the small, immaculately tended park, on the far side of Sakuradōri he came to
sanchōme,
the third area designation in Toranomon. There were no exact street addresses in Tokyo, a peculiarity that nonplussed all foreign visitors. Rather, the vast city was divided up into, first,
ku
or wards; then zones such as the Ginza; finally, into
chō.
Within
chō
were numbered
chōme
and block designations.

On the odd-shaped thirteenth block, Nicholas found what he was searching for. The building overlooked a small ancient temple and, just beyond, Atago Hill.

Inside, he changed out of his street clothes. Reaching into the black bag he toted, he withdrew a pair of white cotton wide-legged pants. These were kept up by a drawstring. Over this he drew on a loose-fitting jacket of the same color and material. This closed by means of a separate belt of black cotton tied low on the hips. Finally, he stepped into the
hakama
, the traditional black divided skirt worn now only by those who had mastered
kendo, kyudo, sumō
or held
dan
—black belt—ranking in
aikido.
This, too, was tied low on the hips to give a further feeling of centralization, handed down from the time of the
samurai.

Thus dressed in his
gi
, Nicholas went up a flight of perfectly polished wooden stairs. In his mind he heard the click, clack-click of wooden
bokken
clashing against each other. And it was suddenly last summer. He and Lew Croaker were in a New York
dōjō
and he was watching the look in his friend’s eyes as for the first time Croaker saw the flash of
kenjutsu.

Nicholas had always been slow to find friendship, principally because that concept in its Eastern form meant a great deal more than it did in the West. For him, as for all Orientals, friendship meant duty, the upholding of a friend’s honor, bonds of iron no Westerner could fathom. But Lew Croaker, within Nicholas’ orbit, had learned those definitions and had chosen to be Nicholas’ friend.

They had promised each other that after Croaker returned from Key West and finally wrapped up the Angela Didion murder, they would go fishing for blues or shark off Montauk. Now that would never happen. Croaker was dead, and Nicholas missed him with a fierceness that was almost physical pain.

He knew that he should clear his mind in preparation for what was waiting for him at the top of the stairs but he could not get the memory of his friend out of his mind. What turned out to be their final good-bye was a poignant moment full of the kind of hushed feeling two Japanese friends might express.

They had been at Michita, the Japanese restaurant in midtown Nicholas frequented. Their shoes were just outside the
tatami
room’s wooden lintel, Croaker’s heavy Western work shoes lined up next to Nicholas’ featherlight loafers. They knelt opposite one another. There was steaming tea and hot sakē in tiny earthen cups between them.
Sushi
and
tonkatsu
were coming.

“What time are you leaving?” Nicholas said.

“I’m taking the midnight plane.” Croaker grinned lopsidedly. “It’s the cheapest flight.”

But they both knew that he had wanted to get into Key West under cover of darkness.

The subdued clatter of the restaurant went on around them as if for once it had no power to touch them. They were an island of silence, inviolable.

Abruptly Croaker had looked up. “Nick—”

The food came and he waited until they were alone again. “There isn’t much but I’ve got some stocks, bonds, and such in a safety deposit box.” He slid a small key in a brown plastic case across the low table. “You’ll take care of things if…” He picked up his chopsticks, pushed raw tuna around with the blunt ends as white as bones. “Well, if it all doesn’t work out for me down there.”

Nicholas took the key; he felt honored. They fell to eating and the atmosphere seemed to clear. When they were through and had ordered more sakē, Nicholas said, “Promise me one thing, Lew. I know how you feel about Tomkin. I think it’s a blind spot—”

“I know what I know, Nick. He’s a goddamned shark, eating up everything in his path. I mean to stop him and this lead’s my only way.”

“All I mean is don’t let this…passion of yours lead you around by the nose. Once you get down there take your time, look around, size up the situation.”

“You telling me how to do my job now?”

“Don’t be so touchy. I just mean that life’s more often shades of gray than it is all black and white. Tomkin’s not the Prince of Evil; that’s the role you’ve assigned him. It’s just possible that he
didn’t
have Angela Didion murdered.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I don’t think it matters what
I
believe.”

Now Nicholas did not know whether that was true, because he had become involved. He had accepted Croaker’s abrupt death so far away in Key West; he was here now in Japan because of it.
Giri.

“So long, Nick.” Croaker had grinned in the multicolored street lights just outside the restaurant. He had half stuck out his hand, then, thinking better of it, had bowed instead. Nicholas returned the gesture and they had both laughed into the night, as if warding off any kind of trepidation.

Their last moments together had been so casual, in the manner of most men parting for a short time. Despite what Croaker had given Nicholas, neither man believed anything would happen to the cop in Florida. And now it seemed to Nicholas that there had been so little time to savor what they had. For one such as Nicholas, so guarded, so hidden within himself, such occurrences were rare indeed. He found now that he liked to remember their times together, running scenes back in his mind’s eye as if they were clips from a favorite film.

He shook his head now as he reached the head of the stairs, more certain than ever that the path he had chosen for himself was the right one. He could not allow the murder of his friend to go unavenged.
Giri
bound him; it was, as all who had come before him had discovered, stronger even than life itself.

The
sensei
of this
dōjō
was sitting at the
kamiza
—the upper seat—of the
aikido
that which was made up of a series of
tatami
of uncovered rice straw padding. He was a man of indeterminate middle years with a dour countenance, a wide slash of a mouth, and cat’s eyes. He had burly shoulders and narrow waist and hips. He appeared almost hairless.

His name was Kenzo. This bit of information had been given to Nicholas—along with a letter of introduction—by Fukashigi, Nicholas’
sensei
in New York. “He is a hard one,” Fukashigi had said, “but I can think of no other to suit your array of, er, unconventional
bujutsu.
” He knew that Nicholas was a ninja just as he knew that there was a whole range of subdisciplines in which Nicholas could be his
sensei.
“Kenzo will not know what you are, Nicholas, but he will understand the scope of your knowledge and he will work with you.”

Behind Kenzo, Nicholas saw a raised dais flanked by a pair of seventeenth-century
dai-katana
—the longest and most lethal of the
samurai
swords—a traditional ceremonial drum, and, hanging on the wall between them, a rice-paper scroll that read,
“All things appear but we cannot see the gate from which they come. All men value the knowledge of what they know, but really do not know. Only those who fall back upon what knowledge cannot know really know.”
Nicholas recognized the words of Laotse.