Linnear 03 - White Ninja (34 page)

At this crucial junction, Nangi fell silent. A pair of businessmen, as identical as ravens, hurried by, perhaps ruing their decision to take a short-cut through the park.

'What kind of numbers are we talking about?' Kusunda

Ikusa asked, a sleek-skinned shark, rising out of the depths to take the bait.

Rain poured off the perimeter of their umbrellas, bouncing against the hard concrete of the path they had chosen. Nangi gave him the number upon which he had previously decided.

Ikusa blew air out of his thick pursed lips. 'It would be against sound business principles to close down such a profitable enterprise.'

'That thought occurred to me,' Nangi said humbly. 'But what am I to do? Nicholas Linnear's people have all the expertise. You tell me that I must do without them.' He shrugged. 'I have my duty to perform, no matter how odious I might find it.'

Ikusa's mouth curled into a sneer. 'Your confusions of feeling are of no concern to me. But profits are. It would be foolish to terminate the Sphynx koban.'

'How then am I to proceed?' Nangi asked.

The big man considered the problem for a moment. Nangi could feel the rumbling of his spirit as it sought a solution. He remained quiet, seeking the low ground where he waited as still and patient as a fox who has sighted its prey.

'This is what I propose,' Kusunda Ikusa said. 'Wait until you have hired Tomkin Industries' key people away from Linnear, then sever the merger. That way you will be able to continue to manufacture this extraordinary chip on your own.'

Nangi arranged his expression to indicate that he was giving this ludicrous idea serious thought. He would no more entertain the idea of betraying his friend than he would of foisting on him the termination of their merger.

'There is merit in what you have suggested,' Nangi said, 'but with your permission, I would like to provide an alternative.' He took the other man's silence as an affirmative. He said, 'Leave Linnear and his people in

place - for the time being. This alleviates the possibility of bad blood and reprisals in the courts which could tie up profits from the Sphynx kobun for many years.' He let Ikusa digest that before continuing. 'Instead, I propose another merger: Sphynx with a kobun outside my own keiretsu, a company that has the management expertise in chip manufacture. That way their trained personnel can gradually learn the ropes of the t-pram process without arousing suspicion.'

'What about Linnear? He can't possibly let this go by without comment or some kind of protest.'

'When he questions the merger I will simply tell him that with the increased revenue and demand, we've got to expand immediately. As long as I assure him that his profit percentage won't be diluted, he won't care.'

'I don't like the idea of Linnear staying on.' Ikusa's tone was so firm, so belligerent that, for a moment, Nangi suspected he had failed. Then Ikusa said, 'In order for your proposal to be acceptable, Nami would have to pick the electronics firm. That way. we could be certain of the loyalty of those being introduced to its design and manufacture.'

'Here I have anticipated you,' Nangi said. He produced from his jacket pocket a folded sheet of paper. He handed it to Ikusa. 'I have taken the liberty of drawing up a short list of firms I thought would be appropriate.'

'I don't think Nami would approve of your dictating the parameters of such a search,' Ikusa said.

Nangi shrugged. 'I understand. Perhaps, though, you could look at the list and tell me where I have made a mistake in judgement.'

This appealed to Ikusa's ego. He dropped his gaze to the list. He went through it three times before he said, with some apparent surprise, 'As it happens, there is a firm here that Nami would find acceptable. Nakano Industries is on Nami's own list of clean keiretsu. If you

can convince the chairman of the merits of the merger, Nami would not oppose such a venture.'

Thinking, I'vejvon, Nangi said, 'Perhaps, Ikusa-san, it would not be inappropriate for you to have a word with Nakano Industries' chairman.'

'As it happens, Ken Oroshi is an acquaintance of mine,' Ikusa said. 'We play golf together several times a year.' He nodded thoughtfully. 'I'll see what I can do.'

They were approaching'the far side of the park. Nangi could see a black Mercedes glistening in the wet, waiting for Ikusa. The big man turned to Nangi, said, 'I may have misjudged you, Nangi-san. Your proposal was well thought out. It pleases me. Nami approves of your actions. It is grateful for your loyalty.'

With that Ikusa moved swiftly away. It was not until he had climbed into the Mercedes, and the car had disappeared into traffic that Nangi, breathing an inner sigh of relief, allowed himself to feel the elation of a difficult victory painstakingly won.

Justine lay on her back staring at the pattern the shadows of the trees made on the beamed ceiling. There seemed at this time of night, the first lonely beachhead of morning, an entire world alive in the hills and valleys above her head. In the old days of the Tokugawa shogunate, Nicholas had once told her, ninja, hired by the shogun himself to enforce his will - even if it went counter to the tenets of bushido, the Way of the samurai - hung in the rafters very much like these, waiting for their victims to fall asleep. Then, like silent bats, they would drop to the tatami mats, draw a silken cord around their victims' necks or, rendering them unconscious, would sling them across their backs, making off with them.

That was seventeenth-century Japan. But some things, Justine was learning, did not change here. That was

the essential difference between Japan and America. In America everything changed constantly.

Here ninja still existed. Justine ought to know. She was married to one.

Nicholas.

That name was enough to set her crying. Wiping the tears from her cheeks, she sat up and, pulling the covers around her chin, cursed herself for her essential weakness. Her father had wanted sons. Instead his wife had borne him two daughters. If I had been born male, Justine thought, perhaps I would not be so weak. But that, in itself, was a weak thought. Even Nangi, a Japanese, had told her as much.

She had come to cherish their twice-weekly lessons on the society of Japan. It was Nangi who described to her how Japanese women held the purse strings in the family, even doling out weekly spending money for their husbands; how it was the mother-in-law who dominated family life, lording it over her husband's wife and children; how it was the geisha who afforded many of Japan's most powerful and influential men their only opportunity to get drunk, turn maudlin and irrational, to weep upon a female breast as they once had when they were infants. It was the geisha, too, Nangi informed her, who listened with complete objectivity to knotty problems inherent in momentous state and industrial deals, and who offered clever advice to the same clients who cooed at their breasts.

Slowly, she was coming to understand Japan and, with it, the people who inhabited the islands. She was both grateful to Nangi and amazed at his sensitivity to her insecurity. Even if he was playing Professor Higgins to her Pygmalion simply because she was Nicholas's wife and he had a duty to make her comfortable, she knew that could not be all that motivated him. Seeing him praying in church, she had realized how she had underestimated

Tanzan Nangi. He was-filled with the kind of Christian charity that was all too rare even in America. To find it here in this alien landscape was a godsend.

She knew that Nangi and his cherished lessons were all that was keeping her here now. Nicholas was gone -God only knew where or for what reason. He had tried to explain it to her, but she could not understand what he was saying, as if she had lost the ability to decipher English. She knew only this: there had been an attack on him, and it would not be the last - but by whom?

A tanjian.

The word sent slivers of dread down her spine. Nicholas and Nangi had said that Akiko had been a kind of tanjian, but that this one, this dorokusai, was far more powerful.

'Oh, Nicky,' she whispered, 'how I pray that God will watch over you and keep you safe.'

She went to church now because suddenly even Nangi and his lessons were not enough to make her feel safe. Something had happened.

Often she would see Nangi there, for she had chosen to attend services at St-Theresa's, though there were certainly other churches that were nearer. Mass was a kind of return for her to the days when, as a small child, her mother would take her. She had never felt anything then but a kind of protective warmth, and later she understood why. Her mother had taken her and her sister Gelda out of a sense of hollow duty, rite by rote, because this was how her mother had brought her up. Justine's mother had felt nothing for the Mass or for the presence of God, and her children had eventually followed in her footsteps.

Now, in this ultimate crisis, Justine had returned in order to find some solace in the rituals that God decreed His children should follow. But she had found none. Church was as closed, as cold and incomprehensible to her as it had been when she was a child.

Often she found herself inattentive to the service; she

wanted only to slip into the pew beside Nangi and whisper in his ear. She desperately needed to talk to someone, but she could not bring herself to talk to him.

Here in Japan, with the darkness holding the light at bay, with Nicholas in the gravest danger, alone with her private fears, Justine had nothing to hold on to.

Fear and her memories Of Nicholas before he had gone off into the Alps. After Nicholas had described how he must find the sensei who had trained Akiko, whom he now believed to be tanjian, after Nangi had gone, there were just the two of them alone in the old wooden house.

Nicholas and Justine. And the tension between them, rising like a phantom or an animus in the gathering dusk.

They had looked at each other.

'Are you hungry?' Justine asked.

He shook his head. 'How do I look?'

'The truth?' When he nodded she had sat on the edge of the bed. 'You look like hell, but you also look beautiful.'

He had closed his eyes then, as if her words had a physical presence. 'We have some unfinished business, don't we?'

'I don't think that's important now. What you've just - '

'No.' It was his hand on her arm as much as his exclamation that stopped her. 'It is important. Justine, ever since I suspected that something was the matter with me - that I might be Shiro Ninja - I've been so frightened, so obsessed by the fear, so terrified that by being close to me you would become in some way contaminated by it, that all I could think of was pushing you away, of keeping you clear of the disaster zone.'

'Oh, Nicky,' she had said, her heart breaking, 'it was what you did, distancing yourself from me, that frightened me most. All this other stuff - the magic, the tanjian, the Shiro Ninja - I can take.' She had

rushed on, not wanting to give herself time to consider whether or not she was telling the whole truth because if, as she suspected, she was as terrified as he was over this attack, it would do him no good to know it, it would only reinforce his intuition to keep her apart. Arid that, she knew, she could not tolerate. 'All that matters is the two of us. Whatever happens, we have each other. You're enough for me, darling, you always have been, you always will be.'

He had kissed her then, and she had been so grateful to feel his arms once again around her that she had wept. They had not broken the kiss even when Nicholas had drawn her fully on to the bed, even when his nimble fingers had unbuttoned her blouse, unzipped her jeans.

She had spread her legs on either side of his hips and, feeling his hands come up to cup her breasts, had settled over him. He had groaned deep into her throat.

Their lovemaking was long, slow, ecstatic. Justine kept delaying her orgasm, not wanting the pleasure to end. Nicholas had ended it for her. His release had triggered her own, and she had gasped, her eyes squeezed shut, feeling only him inside her, around her, below her, knowing that for this moment all she wanted to feel was him, only him.

And how she missed him now. Justine, in'their bed, rested her cheek on her upraised knees, rocking herself back and forth, in that grey, vulnerable time of night when one is ultimately, inescapably alon&.

But she wasn't alone, and this frightened her. She was terrified of her fright and what it might portend.

She could feel the seed stirring inside her, or imagined that she did. Dutifully, stoically, she got up, administered the self-pregnancy test she had given herself several days before. Five minutes later, she had the results, the same as the first test she had given herself when she had returned from her doctor's visit and he had told her the news.

She stared sightlessly at the slip of paper: positive. She was pregnant. When in God's name had it happened? Of course she knew. She and Nicholas had made love so infrequently since his operation she could count the number of times. Her doctor, an-American, part of her ever-so-tenuous lifeline in Japan, had laughed at her shock. 'It only takes one time, Justine,' he had said jocularly. 'I thought you learned that long ago.'

If only Nick were here now, Justine thought in anguish. I could talk to him, explain my terror away. She shivered as if freezing, because she knew that part of her almost desperate longing for him now was the fear that Nicholas would not return from the Alps, that this tiny life would be all she would have of him. And the terror came again, almost overwhelming her this time.