Linnear 03 - White Ninja (18 page)

'I don't care for spiders,' Branding went on. 'I don't know anyone who does.' He slowed his pace, understanding that he needed to feel his way in the face of this unknown, for his sake as well as for hers. 'But, on the other hand, it's a tattoo, a work of art.' He saw her shudder. 'And, because it's on your body, I admit I'm intrigued. Will you tell me how it came to be done? It must have been a project, tattooed over a period of time.'

Two years,' Shisei said, as if this were a fact to be proud of, as if this were the only aspect of the existence of the spider to which she could point with pride.

'A long time.'

He had meant it as an assurance. But, hearing his words, she put the snifter to her lips, drained all the brandy at once. She swallowed convulsively, almost choking on the fiery liquor. Her eyes watered, and she wiped them with the heel of her hand. 'Oh, God, Cook, you don't know how long.'

'Was it painful?'

'My soul hurt, for years afterwards,' Shisei said. "The other pain was nothing. It disappeared like mist in sunlight.'

'I want to know what happened,' Branding said.

'We have already established that many topics are taboo.' Shisei poured herself more brandy, drank more slowly this time. Then she said, 'Cook, what did you do after your wife died, when you hurt so much you thought you'd never recover? Didn't the emptiness make the days endless? Didn't you wait in the night for death to come; didn't you hear it breathing close beside you, see its red eyes like lamps hanging in the blackness? And didn't, oh, once, twice, didn't you long to tumble into the oblivion death held in its hand like a prize?'

Branding was taken aback by the extremes of her emotions. He knew that she was describing herself, not him. He had never felt such utter despair as she described, even after the initial shock of Mary's death had worn off. And now he supposed that, at least in part, this is what had triggered his guilt. But he knew that how he answered Shisei was very important. She appeared on the verge of opening up, and he knew that he possessed the power to push her one way or the other.

'The human condition is such that life goes on, no matter the depths of despair into which one is plunged,' Branding said. 'I did... To be perfectly frank, I'm not sure what I saw or heard after Mary died. I only know that I see the car, upside down and still smouldering; I see her body on a stretcher, a blanket over her head. I hear a TV commentator speaking about her death in the same clipped, detached phrases he spoke of Vietnam casualties and the death of American Marines hi Beirut. I keep thinking that death should not be degraded by being made impersonal or reduced to its lowest common denominator.'

Shisei sighed, and it was as if the last hour had not

occurred. 'You will not forsake me, Cook, the way the others have,' she said. 'I know that now.' She put her head against the sofa back, and she seemed once more so much the little girl that Branding felt his heart pounding. He wanted to take her in his arms, to protect her, to tell her everything would be all right.

But he knew that he would do nothing of the kind.

He could sense that the two of them had reached a kind

of shared nadir and, tike two motes suspended in fluid,

the next moment would tell in which direction they would

spin.

'You can't know what that means to me, Cook.' Her fingers were lost in her hair, pulling it hard, as if the pain were also part of her penance. 'I have been... treated poorly; I have been abused. I have loved, and have been punished for that love.'

Branding stared at her as if seeing her for the first time. She was like an iceberg. He was wondering just how much of her was hidden below the surface of a dark and stormy sea.

'You've survived, Shisei,' he said. 'In the end, isn't that what's important?'

'Have you ever been imprisoned?' Shisei said, as if to tell him that he knew nothing about the condition of her life. 'I have.' She lifted her arm over her head, pointing to the creature that had become a part of her. "This spider is my penance - and my reward.'

Branding was once more trying to fathom the nuances, the facets of her personality he could from time to time glimpse tike the heat lightning they had seen tonight. 'Shisei,' he said, 'I don't understand.'

But she was already bent over, weeping into her hands. And when at last he heard her voice, it caused a shiver to run down his spine.

'Cook,'she whispered,'I pray to God that you neverwill.'

Tanzan Nangi lived in an uncommonly spacious wooden house that dated back to the turn of the century. It had been built for the most famous Kabuki actor of his time, and only because the actor's son had fallen into disrepute had it come into Nangj's hands.

His impressive, wide-eaved structure sat amidst an extravagant garden of ornamental cherry, dwarf maple and cryptomeria trees. Flat stones, some great, some small, were set into the earth between fern, sheared azalea and purple gem rhododendrons, creating a serene environment. Inside, the main passageways between rooms were glassed-in so that one could feel even in the most inclement weather that one was in the midst of the garden.

Nangi sat alone, staring through the glass at a gibbous moon that plunged in and out of indigo clouds.

Hie house was silent all around him; it smelled of cedar and lemon oil. Nangi, sipping green tea that he had brewed himself, was sunk deep in thought. He was rerunning his extremely disturbing conversation with Justine Linnear. He had to admit that he was grateful to her. In brashly coming to see him, she had forced him to face what he was coming to conclude was a baffling and thoroughly terrifying situation.

If Nicholas was, indeed, Shiro Ninja, it meant that he was under attack. By whom, and for what reason? Nangi had told Justine that even a Black Ninja sensei lacked the ability to create Shiro Ninja in an adept such as Nicholas. Now Nangi shuddered at the thought of what concentrated evil might be out there in the night, crouching, readying itself for the kill. If, as he was beginning to suspect, that kind of elemental power were arrayed against them, then only Nicholas could save them. Yet, according to Justine, Nicholas was without his powers.

Instinct told Nangi to retreat. A general who finds himself facing an army of superior strength retires from

the field of battle because the safety of his forces is paramount. He must either retreat or discover another, unconventional path to victory because a frontal assault will clearly end in disaster.

Nangi heard a small sound behind him, but he did not turn around. The faint scent of night-blooming jasmine infused the room, and he filled another celadon cup with tea.

With a rustle of silk, Umi crossed the tatami mats. Now, without a sound, she knelt beside him, accepting the offering of the green tea. Nangi was aware of her huge dark eyes watching him even as she sipped.

Umi said, 'It was cold in bed without you beside me. I dreamt that the house was inhabited by a storm, and I opened my eyes to find that I was alone.'

In the almost-dark, Nangi smiled. He was used to the poetic way in which Umi spoke. She was a dancer, and whichever medium she chose to express herself was bound to be rife with layers of meaning.

'I had not meant to wake you,' he said. He understood by her use of the word 'storm' that she had felt the agitation of his spirit.

She put her hand on him. Umi, whose name meant the sea, thus calmed him, bringing him back to that low place inhabited by water, where one can think, one can gain power in the shadows and the silence.

Nangi said, 'Music heard so deeply that it is not heard at all, but you are the music while the music lasts.'

Umi, very close to him, said, 'When I was fifteen you gave me a book by T. S. Eliot. I had never before encountered a Western mind that intrigued me or was filled with such light. I remember that quote from the book you gave me.'

That was typical of Umi. She learned everything; she forgot nothing. Though she was only twenty-four, she was far wiser than women three times her age. She was

a student who, without being aware of it, had become a master. That was also typical of Umi. She was egoless, could therefore absorb philosophy on the deepest level, incorporating it into her spirit, widening the breadth of her power: the width of a circle. Umi was a sensei of myth, the mystical and the Tao. The life-force of the universe was in her heart.

Umi took his hands in her own, placing them palms down. Nangi felt the warmth seeping out of her like the crack of light from a window in a solitary house encountered by a winter wayfarer when night comes down.

She was so beautiful - not only her face, but her body as well: slender, graceful, sinuous and strong like a young tree that had survived winds, rain and snow.

'There is darkness here,' Umi said, 'beyond the night.' Gripping each of his fingers in turn, she said, 'Emptiness and chaos. The stability of the world is threatened. The Spider Woman calls, and the axis wobbles. Ice comes.'

Nangi knew that she was speaking of part of the Amerindian Hopi myth of creation: the death of the Second World, before the creation of this one, doomed to an eternal ice age by the Spider Woman, who sings the Song of Creation, because of the unremitting evil of its inhabitants.

If the Spider Woman called it was because of the existence of inordinate evil. This was what Umi meant. Nangi's skin began to crawl. It was true, then, an enemy of extraordinary malevolence had targeted Nicholas. Fear burst full blown like a bomb blast upon his consciousness. He wanted to pray to God, but he could not. He was cut off by his own sins, incapable of finding exculpation. He realized, with a start, that he had been rendered as powerless as Nicholas. The loss of his faith was a devastating blow that he had pushed into the background because of the current crisis. But now he realized that it was part of the crisis.

Dear God, he thought, we are lost.

And, as if hearing his silent voice, Umi said, 'Though the Way is known, the many sin, living as though they had a different wisdom of their own.'

The Way meaning the Tao. Hearing echoes of Heraclitus in Umi's words calmed Nangi, reminding him that the knowledge of the ancients was available to him. Thinking of Heraclitus, he thought too of Sun Tzu, The Art of War; Yagyu Munenori, the synthesis of the sword and the mind, ichiri, the One Principle, the mind-set one must use when one cannot retreat in the face of an attack; the synthesis of the universe: the Tao.

In this manner, he conquered the chaos in his mind that the fear had engendered, brought himself back into focus. It was not only Shiro Ninja with which he had to contend, Nangi thought. His entire business partnership with Nicholas was threatened by Kusunda Ikusa and Nami. Now he wondered whether the two attacks were separate and distinct or whether they were a clever, concerted assault from two different directions.

Paranoia or truth? Nangi, spangled in silver moonlight, sitting close to the sea, knew that he would have to find out.

The next day, Nicholas went to see his surgeon. He took the train south-east into Tokyo, because he did not trust himself to drive, and he certainly did not want Justine to drive him, although part of him, perhaps, longed for just that.

He had spoken briefly to Nangi, explaining that he had made an appointment with the surgeon for later that morning and, depending on how he felt afterwards, he would either come into the office or not. Nangi's extreme solicitousness had set Nicholas's teeth on edge, another bad sign of his deteriorating emotional state.

The early morning mist rolled in heavy, oily undulations, inundating the green mountainsides. The landscape was, otherwise, a blur, the result of the train's speed and Nicholas's fatigue.

The gentle vibrations lulled him, the far-off train whistle a melancholy reminder of his youth in a Japan struggling to overcome its shame at having lost the war, and in being remade in the image of the United States.

The soft song of the rails reminded him of the lullabies his mother used to sing him when she took him on trips by rail to visit his aunt Itami. Cheong considered Itami her sister, even though Itami was, in fact, the sister of Cheong's first husband, a Japanese officer killed in Singapore during the war. That was how Cheong and Colonel Denis Linnear had met: during the war • in Singapore. The Colonel had saved Cheong's life, and had fallen in love with her.

A time of danger, long ago and far away. But Nicholas held that spoken-of time close to him as if it were a magical talisman with which he could ward off the despair rising inside him.

But it was no use. His anger and his anxiety overflowed the inadequate vessel into which he placed it. He had misjudged its size as well as its strength. He wanted to be calm for this interview, to use patience, his mother's gift to him, in order to learn what he could about his loss of memory. He did not want to jump to conclusions but, sitting in the chill, air-conditioned train, shivering with the onset of anger adrenalin, he was afraid that he already had.

Tokyo was silver and grey. Fog enshrouded the vast neon corporate logos and advertisements in Shinjuku until their man-made reds, greens and blues were the colour of ash. The skyrises seemed cut off at the knees, as stubby and discoloured as an old man's decaying teeth.

Dr Hanami's office was on the twentieth floor of an

enormous skyrise complex complete with Plexiglas walkways and indoor gardens. Opposite his brushed bronze door, in fact, three black and white rocks rose from the sea of a small pebble garden.