Linnear 03 - White Ninja (6 page)

He wanted to continue dancing, to keep her in his arms, but she said, 'I'm hungry.'

The clams casino and the lobster had already come and gone. They picked over what was left: cold charcoal-broiled chicken, slightly limp salad, corn on which the butter had congealed.

Branding watched with fascination as Shisei ate like a little animal, hunched over her plate. Her long gold-lacquered fingernails speared into the flesh of chicken and corn. She ate quickly, economically and voraciously. She seemed to have forgotten his presence or the presence of anyone else, for that matter.

When she was done she sucked the fat and juices off each slender finger in turn, her full lips distended outwards. It seemed such a blatantly sexual gesture that Branding was taken aback, until the innocence and unself-consciousness of her expression reassured him. Shisei wiped her mouth on a paper napkin, and her eyes met his.

Branding reacted as if he were a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Then he reminded himself that she could not read his thoughts. He smiled that thoroughly synthetic smile politicians perfect that means nothing to them.

'When you do that,' Shisei said, tossing the crumpled napkin aside, 'you look as stupid as a puppet.'

For a moment, Branding was so stunned he could think of nothing to say. Then, angry, he flushed. He set his plate aside, and got up. 'You'll excuse me.'

She reached out, took his hand in hers. 'Are you so easily driven away? I would have thought that a senator of the United States would be open to the truth.'

Gently but firmly he unwound her fingers from his. 'Good night,' he said hi his frostiest tone.

Now, the morning after, as he strolled down the beach, his feet already numbed by the Atlantic, Branding tried - and failed - to turn his thoughts away from Shisei. He wondered if he would ever see her again. He thought he recognized something dangerous, perhaps even destructive in her. But there was something delicious in that knowledge as well, like standing at the edge of an abyss or playing chicken in a souped-up hotrod. Coming closer than anyone else to disaster and dancing away unharmed was, after all, the object, the trophy of excitement he -and other teenagers hike him - had tried to hold on to for as long as possible. Like Peter Pan desperately trying to hold on to his reckless youth.

Oh, Christ, Branding thought. What in God's name is happening to me?

But he already knew that it was nothing in God's name.

Justine, coming out on to the engawa, said, 'There's a letter for you. It's got a Marco Island, Florida, postmark. I think it's from Lew Croaker.'

Nicholas looked up from the patch of ground where

he had been watching the afternoon shadows creeping

along the ground. He took the letter from her without

any expression. v

'Nick?' Justine sat beside him on the Japanese porch. She did not touch him. 'What is it?' Her eyes changed colour, from hazel to green, as they often did in times of emotional stress. The red motes in her left iris were fired by the sunlight. Her long legs were crossed at the knees, the dark mane of her hair was swept back across her shoulders. Her skin was creamy, as lightly freckled as a teenager's. Her nose, slightly too wide, gave her character, her plump lips adding a note of sensuality. The years had been kind to her; she looked very much as she had on the day Nicholas had met her ten years ago on the beach at West Bay Bridge on the East End of Long Island, when she had been a lost little girl. Now she was a woman, a wife, briefly, a mother.

Nicholas passed the letter back to her, said, 'Read it,' with such a total lack of inflection that another flood of anxiety washed over her. Ever since he had come home from the operation at the hospital - nearly eight months now - he had seemed a different person. He did riot like the meals she prepared for him with what she knew were his favourite foods; his sleep patterns had changed. Always a sound sleeper, except after the baby had died, she often heard him up-and pacing the floor at three in the morning. Worst of all, he had not worked out, even minimally, since recovering from the operation. Instead, he came out on the engawa each day and sat, staring into the dust, or he drifted through the gardens with a blank expression on his face.

At one point, she was so concerned that she phoned his surgeon, Dr Hanami. Nicholas saw the doctor, who had removed the tumour, once every two weeks, and he assured her that there was nothing organically wrong. 'Your husband has sustained a major trauma, Mrs

Linnear,' Dr Hanami had said with the surety of God. 'Nothing permanent, I assure you. It is not caused by his anti-seizure medication. Whatever your husband is going through is temporary and purely psychological. His powers of recuperation are quite remarkable. Whatever this minor problem is it will pass in a matter of time.'

But Justine knew better. She knew how much psychological stress Nicholas could take since she had been with him through the time Saigo had stalked them both. She knew how well-prepared Nicholas had been for that stalking and assault, and how cleverly he had managed to outmanoeuvre Akiko, Saigo's former lover. An operation was hardly enough to cause this reaction in him.

Justine slit open the envelope, unfolded the typewritten letter. It was from Croaker, Nicholas's best friend. Lew Croaker had been a detective lieutenant in the NYPD when Justine met him. He had been assigned to the mysterious murders that Saigo had been committing. A year after Nicholas had killed Saigo, Croaker had come to Japan to help his best friend Nicholas in apprehending a Soviet agent who was after Tenchi, Tanzan Nangi's ultra-secret oil-drilling project with the Japanese government. In fierce combat with a particularly powerful agent, Croaker's left hand had been severed. Since that time, Nicholas had been racked by guilt, feeling that Croaker would never have been there except for him. Justine knew better, just as she knew that Croaker did not blame Nicholas for what had happened. Nicholas, so Eastern in so many ways was, in this instance, terribly Western.

' "Dear Nick and Justine," ' she read. ' "Greetings from Marco Island. I suppose you're wondering why we're not still in Key West. Well, the simple truth is that I got bored at the End of the Line. That's what the natives call Key West. It's a strange place, even for Florida, which is a goddamn weird state any way you slice

it. You've got to be a serious drunkard or a real dropout to stay there. So, we left.

' "Here on Marco Island, the fishing's fine and Alix is becoming an expert with marlin. I've bought a little boat, and we've been chartering it out. Making a living at it, too, though I doubt I'll ever get rich. On the other hand, I've busted so many boats out here trying to smuggle coke into the country, the Coast Guard's given me honorary commander status. Once a cop, always a cop, I guess.

' "I keep waiting for Alix to tell me she misses New York and the modeling scene, but she hasn't - at least up till now.

' "Nick, my new hand works! That doctor you set me up with at Todai Med Center in Tokyo was a wiz. I don't really know what it is on the end of my left wrist, but it's amazing! It works so well, in fact, that Alix has taken to calling me Captain Sumo.

' "The strength in this new hand is awesome! It took me nearly two months before I could control the power in it. Another four months and I got dexterity. It seems to be made of a composite of titanium, graphite and some kind of polycarbonate, all wrapped up in an airtight sheath. I'm only sorry you and Justine were away when I was in Tokyo getting it put on." '

Justine paused here, risking a glance at Nicholas. When they had got back from their trip to Bangkok, where several of the Sphynx components were being manufactured by a Sato International subsidiary, she was furious that they had missed Croaker's visit. Hadn't Nicholas known, she wondered, when his friend would arrive? After all, Nicholas had been the one to set Croaker up with the surgeon at Todai. Then she had wondered whether Nicholas had purposely taken them on the Bangkok trip at just that time. She had begun to suspect that he did not want to see his friend, and

certainly had no desire to look at some prosthetic that would remind him of his guilt.

' "Anyway, enough about me,"' Justine continued reading. ' "What's with you two? I trust you've gotten over your rough time." ' Justine stopped, unable for a moment to continue. She became aware that Nicholas was looking at her, and she made herself smile as naturally as she could.

She cleared her throat, dropped her gaze to the letter. ' "I can't believe it's been months since I last wrote. Can't believe that we haven't seen each other in years. Any chance you can take time out for a vacation? I know a great boat you can stay on, and Alix would love to see you. How about it? Best, Lew."

'You know,' she said tentatively, 'this sounds like a great idea.'

'What?'

'Taking Lew up cm his offer. I think it would be terrific to get back to the States for a little while.' She had said nothing to him about her own increasing desire to return to America. 'We could fish, swim, relax. Just laugh and have fun. And we'd be with good friends.' She poked at the letter with her finger. 'I don't know about you, but I'd like to see for myself why Alix is calling him Captain Sumo.'

It had been meant as a bit of levity, something to break his morbid mood, but she knew as soon as she said it that it was a mistake to refer to Croaker's new hand. Nicholas flinched as if she had struck him, and he got up and went into the house.

For a moment, Justine sat staring straight ahead at the shadows of the huge cryptomeria that had for so long entranced Nicholas, Then, very carefully, she folded Croaker's letter and slid it back into its envelope.

Inside the house, Nicholas stood in front of the open fusuma, the sliding doors leading to his workout room.

He was a formidable, almost intimidating figure: wide, powerful shoulders above the narrow hips of a dancer and the long sinewy-muscled legs of the serious athlete. His face was rugged, angular, handsome and magnetic without being in any way classically beautiful. His eyes were long and upswept, testament to his Oriental blood. His cheekbones were high, his chin was solid and as Western as his English father's had been. His thick black hair now had traces of silver through it which Justine loved. He had about him both a sense of quiet and of danger.

He almost passed by the doorway, then Lew Croaker's words came back to him. One-handed Lew. Stop it! he told himself irritably. You have more than enough on your mind without playing guilt games with yourself. In the back of his mind was the thought that this form of guilt was peculiarly Western, and he despised that in himself. He wondered whether his father, the Colonel, had ever felt this Western.

In a way, Justine was right. What had happened to Croaker was his karma. But she was also wrong. Because Nicholas knew that somehow he and Lew Croaker had been born under the same sign. Their karma were inextricably entwined. Like Siamese twins, what happened to the one seemed to affect the other. He did not think it a coincidence that Croaker's letter should arrive at just this moment.

Reluctantly, Nicholas went into the workout room, and put on his black cotton gi. It seemed a lifetime since he had had it on, and it felt oddly uncomfortable. As if that were some kind of omen, he shivered. What was the matter with him? Nothing felt right.

The workout room smelled of straw and slightly of stale sweat. Nicholas saw the padded pole, the hanging rings, the wooden floor-to-ceiling trellis he had made himself, bolted to one wall, and the rough-hewn crisscrossing

wooden beams above his head through which he used to climb, swing and hang by his crossed ankles.

He closed his eyes, trying to conjure up the numerous times he had been in here, practising the complicated exercises associated with his martial arts specialties, aikido and ninjutsu. He could quite clearly remember being hi here, working up a sweat, but he could not, could not for the life of him, recall what it was he had practised. Christ, he thought, abruptly exhausted, it's not possible. This cannot be happening. But it was, and a curious dread crept through him, a thief stealing his resolve.

His knees grew weak, and he had to sit down. Slumped against the padded pole, Nicholas remembered the last battle as one does a spectacular but long gone lover, with an awe tinged by the suspicion that memory had distorted its import, magnifying its significance.

He remembered the pain that Koten, the Japanese sumo, the Soviet agent who had cut off Lew Croaker's hand, had inflicted on him using the dai-katana, the Japanese longsword his father had given him on his thirteenth birthday.

Nicholas feinted right, then came in beneath Koten's guard. But the sumo let go of the dai-katana with his left hand, slamming the forearm into Nicholas's chest. Nicholas hit the floor hard.

Koten laughed. 7 didn't hear you scream that time, barbarian, but you will soon.' The dai-katana swooped down, its finely honed tip splintering the polished wooden boards at Nicholas's feet.

Koten laughed again as Nicholas came at him, a human mountain attacked by an insect who possibly could sting, but nothing more.

He countered Nicholas's oshi, using the hilt of the sword, instead of returning oshi for oshi as Nicholas had expected. He felt the crushing blow on the point of his shoulder, felt the resulting grinding of bone and

the audible pop of dislocation. Pain ran like fire down his arm, rendering his right side totally useless.