Deshi (28 page)

“Like in Stark,” I suggested.

He ignored the comment. “Pride can blind us to the truth,” Yamashita told me. “Or make us unwilling to admit it. Emotion is like the darkness that makes a path hard to follow.”

I made a misstep and a small rock clattered against another. Yamashita stopped and waited for me, a ghostly form in the gray light that was thickening into black.

“There may be more here than we understand,” my teacher continued. “It seems as if violence follows those who have read the inka, but surely this journalist who was killed…”

“Kim,” I supplied.

“… Kim was working on more than just this?”

Maybe it was the illusion of anonymity in the darkness, but it made it easier to talk with him. “There’s the Chinese angle as well. What’s Han up to with them?”

“Ah,” he said significantly. “The Chinese. Do you know that a group of
Wu-shu
artists were invited to perform here at the last minute?”

Wu-shu is the modern, highly acrobatic martial performance art of mainland China. It’s heavily subsidized by the central government. But I didn’t see how it was relevant.

My teacher sighed in the darkness. “It seems to me that there are… minders… with these artists. People who do not seem particularly interested in the training here.”

“This gets more tangled by the minute,” I admitted. Then I realized something. “So here we are and all the loose ends are coming together. Kita, the Rinpoche, the Chinese. All that’s missing is Han.” In the gloom, I thought I could see a small smile crease his face. “You knew there was a connection somehow. That’s why you came. To finally figure it out.” I felt equal parts relief and exasperation. Yamashita sensed the danger, but was no clearer as to its ultimate source than I was. “You should have told me before you left,” I said.

Yamashita hulked before me, almost indistinguishable in the gloom. “Burke, coming here was dangerous. It may even be a type of trap. I sensed it vaguely, but was unsure. Even the Rinpoche did not see the full extent of what we face…”

“Does he have any ideas about what’s going on?”

“He arrived yesterday and has kept himself in isolation. I have been unable to see him.”

I briefly wondered whether Changpa was hiding or whether Kita’s people didn’t want him communicating with Yamashita. But I couldn’t let go of Yamashita’s reluctance to tell me things.

“You should have told me,” I said again. “I’ve earned your trust.” It wasn’t the first time I’d had to remind him, and we both knew it.

My teacher’s voice was tight and hard. The words punched out at me through the darkness, their impact heightened by the night and the silence around us.

“Burke, I do what I do for good reasons. It is not your place to question me.” The rebuke heightened the tension in the dark air. “I am your sensei. All these years you struggle. But with this above all things.” And his tone was one that made me feel like I was a fool.

My ears burned. I started to say something, but he fore-stalled me. “Think! See! There is more to things than what is on the surface.”

Then I heard him make a small sigh. “If I had told you what I suspected,” he said, and his voice was gentler, more intimate, “you would have come with me without a second thought. Yes?”

“Yes, Sensei,” I answered tightly.

“You would have had danger thrust upon you,” he said quietly. “I know the toll that such things take on people… I know what it has done to you in the past,” he added quietly. “It is not something undertaken lightly.”

“But I’m here,” I said to him, demanding recognition of the fact.

“Ye-e-s” he said slowly, letting out a long breath. “But you have chosen to do this of your own free will. I did not force it on you. You have chosen the path for yourself. It is as it should be. As a student, your choices are made for you. As a warrior, you must learn to make them on your own.” He sighed, a soft sound in the darkness. “It is a difficult thing…”

I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. My stomach churned and I felt off-balance. My teacher has that knack: every time you think you’ve got him figured out, or that he’s shown you all there is to show, he surprises you. And it forces you to look at things again, with new eyes. Even in the darkness.

I breathed slowly and listened to the sounds of the night. You could hear branches creaking in the faint evening breeze. Leaves fluttered high overhead in the canopy. A mosquito buzzed around my head. Somewhere farther up the slope, something hard struck a rock, making a deep thump. My heart, which had slowed down, leapt in alarm, echoing the noise from deep in the woods.

“The deer are on the move,” my master said. “They hide from danger during the day and move when they think it is safe.”

“It is not safe for us, Sensei,” I ventured, with a certainty that surprised me.

“No. It is not. But we must wait and watch. Kita himself will not arrive until tomorrow. Nor has this man the Mongol appeared, as far as I can tell. You saw what I did this afternoon during the tachi dori lesson?”

“Part of
rippon-me
of the
kendo-no-kata
,” I said. It was a basic lesson.

“Hai.
I waited and used seme, pressure, to force his hand. We will do the same.” I felt him brush against me as he moved back down the path.

We
. I walked in his footsteps, heading out of the woods toward the faint distant lights of the Yamaji, which shone like a false hope through the trees.

Morning is a long time coming in the hills. The day seeps in with a wash of light and it is hours before sunlight pops over the rim of ridge tops and warms things up. In the woods, the green forest breathes cool vapor at night, and dew is everywhere. It’s as if there’s a reluctance to let go of the cover of darkness. Or maybe it was just me. I had a feeling that the day would bring hard revelations.

But you do what you have to, not what you always want.

Yamashita was right: the coffee was terrible. I’d wandered over to the cafeteria in the faint light before things got started. I ended up tossing the dregs of my cup into a bush. It wasn’t a judgment call; it was time to run.

The gasshuku featured a dawn run every morning. Folks met at the conference center, straggling in by the twos and threes, jerking and bobbing around in an attempt to warm up. You could see that some people were a bit stiff from all the activity of the last few days. I saw more than one person gulp down a few Tylenol with their breakfast.

In keeping with the martial theme of the whole seminar, most folks wore some part of their training uniforms. Gi pants seemed popular, along with t-shirts with dojo logos. I opted for my running shorts, even though the air was still cool. I also wore a shirt that Micky had given me years ago. There was a big picture of a pint of dark, creamy stout on the back. And under it, the words, “it’s not just for breakfast anymore.” We all have statements of some sort to make, I suppose.

There were trails threading through the woods all over the mountain that the Yamaji stood on. The Appalachian Trail ran by here and the woods were also crisscrossed with old logging roads. We ran along some of them. After the first quarter mile I had warmed up and my breath matched my movements in an old, familiar rhythm. It let me think about what had happened and all the elements in play.

After the run, when people went off to their different classes, I wandered around. I noted the location for the wu-shu people and drifted by. They were wiry and compact, exploding across the performance space in single and paired forms. Some used swords. Others spears. They were tremendously flexible, and leapt and tumbled in actions that were as much shaped by the entertainment traditions of Chinese opera as they were by fighting arts. There were coaches around, older men in tracksuits, watching the performance with a stoic expression. But not all the watchers were focused on the action. I saw one man notice me as I came into view. I couldn’t see him clearly, but I thought it better not to be too conspicuous. So I pretended not to be interested and wandered off in another direction.

I went hunting for the lama. It wasn’t difficult: the Rinpoche traveled with a few other monks and their robes made them easy to find. I lurked around some of the meditation sessions and followed one of them back to where they were staying.

The Tibetans occupied a whole cabin complex of apartments, nestled in a cul-de-sac. I drifted by, watching from a distance, and saw a few Yamaji employees posted at strategic spots on the path leading to the cabin. From what I had seen, there were two broad classes of Yamaji people in the organization: attractive and fit-looking young women who handled the public relations aspects of things, and the other guys. Men tended to dominate the technical aspects of the operation. Some looked Asian, but many were Westerners. And they weren’t particularly pert. I much preferred the women.

It was the non-pert segment that lurked near the Tibetans, however. They were big and brawny and were obviously not hanging around in the hopes of learning more about the wheel of karma. I knew muscle when I saw it.

So I slipped into the woods and made my way around back. There was a private patio that led off the largest of the cabin apartments. Sliding glass doors opened onto a wooden deck. A neatly kept lawn led off for another thirty feet before the trees took over. It made for a splash of warm light in the morning cool of the woods. I moved quietly through the trees, grateful for the muffling effect of pine needles, and waited. Changpa’s gift of sight was something that made him peer into the darkness a lot. But I was betting that even he yearned for the sun at times.

I thought of Yamashita’s admonition to wait, and I stood quietly, leaning against a pine tree. Birds called in the distance. I could smell the pine resin in the air. The sun rose and insects danced in the bright light that washed over the grassy clearing.

The glass doors to the cabin slid open and the Rinpoche emerged. He was dressed in his robes, yellow and red that exploded into more vibrant color as he moved out from the shadows. He held a cup and saucer in his hands and walked slowly around the deck. It seemed that he was alone.

He moved to the edge of the wooden platform. His face, which had clearly reflected a man thinking hard about something, gradually grew slack. He set the cup down on a table and, removing his glasses, stared off into the distance, motionless.

I stepped out of the woods and stood there watching him. I didn’t say anything, just waited for him to notice me. His eyes looked unfocused and he gave a sort of sigh. The eyes began to roll up into his head. Then he closed his lids for a moment, and when he opened them, I had moved across the grass to stand in front of him.

He focused on me slowly, like someone whose attention was coming back from a great distance.

“It is really you,” he said. He almost sounded frightened.

“In the flesh,” I answered.

Changpa threw a hurried glance around and beckoned me into his apartment. He locked the door and listened carefully for a moment.

“Dr. Burke,” he began, then seemed at a loss as to what to say.

“You’re in danger, Rinpoche,” I told him.

I explained about the material Kim was collecting: a history of persecuted monks. A profile on Kita Takenobu. The fabricated inka. “I don’t have all the pieces put together,” I said, “but the links are clear. There are secrets here that Kita wants hidden. And someone is doing the dirty work for him.” I told him what I knew about Han. I went on, and asked him whether he thought Stark could be involved.

Changpa winced. “He is a troubled young man, Dr. Burke. And yet, even so, I cannot believe this of him…”

“You might have to believe it,” I said. “Think about things… he arrives and starts sticking his nose into security issues with you. Works to screen access to you?” The lama nodded in affirmation. “Tries to keep people from bothering you?”

The monk sat down in a chair, wearily. “Dr. Burke… I sense… turmoil within him. Nothing more. I still have hopes that he will come to a type of clarity.”

Clarity would be very nice
, I thought. And something in the lama’s voice gave me the sense he had something else to tell me.

“Rinpoche,” I pleaded, trying to figure out a way to make him tell me things, “the darkness you saw… the valley. We are being drawn into it. And you saw that Stark was there, too.”

He smiled sadly at me. “My visions. There are many ways of knowing, Burke. I am convinced that someone, perhaps the Chinese government, wants me silenced. And someone has silenced the poor men who were murdered. But are these things related? I cannot see how. If they are, why am I not dead as well?”

I shook my head in an inability to respond.

“I have no real links to this man Kita. Why should he be interested in me? It makes no sense.”

I sat forward, eager to make a point. “But you have said there are other ways of knowing. I’m coming to understand that.” He looked at me fondly, as you would at an apt pupil.

“There’s something brewing here, Rinpoche,” I told him with urgency. “Surely you must sense it? What does your inner eye tell you?”

He sighed. “I do not see everything, Dr. Burke. There is danger, yes. But there is always danger. I was drawn to seek help from an old friend and his student, but in my visions I never saw the roles you would play.” He stopped for a second and looked out into the bright clearing, a splash of light at the end of a dark room. “Even now it is occluded.”

“What do you see?” I asked in a small voice, still hopeful.

He squeezed his eyes tightly shut. Whether it was an attempt to see better or to block the vision out, I couldn’t be sure. He sat heavily in a chair, his big hands in his lap. He said nothing.

“You should leave,” I told him.

He shook his head. “If I may. They watch me, you know.” Then he seemed to summon himself and sat up straighter. “No. I will not leave. I still hope for Stark…” He looked up at me and smiled sadly. “The Lord Buddha knows our understanding is feeble, but he wishes our compassion to be as boundless as the ocean.”

What do you say to something like that? I left him, slipping out the glass doors and into the woods. The lama sat very still in his chair, focused on things only he could see.