Linnear 03 - White Ninja (8 page)

'Is it their perception, perhaps, that, despite the department's findings, I lack the talent to run this division, Sergeant?'

'No, sir, it isn't.'

Senjin nodded. 'Now we're getting somewhere.' He waited a moment. 'Well, speak your mind, Sergeant. There are only the two of us here.''

'What about listening devices?'

Senjin cocked his head and smiled to himself. Yes, he thought, she's not only smart, she's quick. He liked that. It was going to be a treat running her.

Senjin came around from behind his desk. He stood so close to her that he could hear her breathing, smell

the perfume of her skin. 'There are none in this cubicle.' He searched her eyes. 'Are there any on your person?'

'I'm clean, sir.'

'Well, then,' Senjin said, 'by all means proceed.'

Tomi took a deep breath, but the intake of oxygen seemed to do little good. His proximity had flustered her. She had suddenly become very aware of him as a human being - a male human being. She liked watching him from a distance. Up close, he had the effect of making her feel drunk. Her nostrils flared, filled with his musk. With an effort, she pulled herself together. 'Begging the commander's pardon, does he know the origin of his name, Omukae?'

Senjin grinned without warmth. 'Pretend I don't.'

Tomi nodded, 'An omukae is a messenger from another world. A kind of demon.'

'Or an angel.'

'Yes,' Tomi said, trying to get moisture into her mouth. 'Or an angel. But, either way, an omukae is not of this world.' By not of this world, Senjin knew she meant Japan. 'It is the opinion of some of the staff that the commander - ' She paused, mired in the rigid social structure that made it something of a sin to criticize one's superior.

'Yes, Sergeant,' Senjin said in a voice of steel. 'As I have said, you have my permission to speak your mind.'

'It is the opinion of some of the staff,' Tomi began again, 'that the commander sometimes performs his duty as if he were, indeed, an omukae. As if he cares more about himself than he does the division or the department itself.'

Tell me, Sergeant, is that your opinion as well?'

Tomi was disconcerted. This juxtaposition of formal conversation and close proximity, intimate eye contact, was leaving her breathless. Don't let him see - 'To give you a perfectly honest - '

'Wait,' Senjin said sharply, silencing her. 'That was an unfair question. I withdraw it. You see, Sergeant, you and I share something. We are, each in our own ways, outcasts in the department. The series of unfortunate and untimely deaths of division commanders combined with the rapid advancement of my career in the field to bring me into prominence in Homicide. Perhaps unwanted prominence, as far as some are concerned, hm?'

Tomi said nothing. She was immensely grateful that her commander had omitted discussing her own plight inside the department, knowing that they both understood its inherent nature. She was also thinking of the incident that, as Senjin had indicated, had brought him into prominence. For months, a clan of particularly homicidal Yakuza seemed to be operating right under the noses of the Tokyo police. All efforts to apprehend the members of this clan had been unsuccessful.

Until Senjin Omukae had gone clandestinely undercover. Clandestine, meaning unknown to the department. He had discovered an astonishing web of graft, extortion, cover-up and, ultimately, murder being perpetrated by certain officers of the Homicide division who were conspiring with the oyabun - the boss - of the Yakuza clan. Senjin had, virtually singlehandedly, brought them all down.

The department owed him an enormous debt. Because of his work, the affair was handled internally. The intrusive media never got wmd of the scandal and, thus, no further loss of face was incurred. As it was, Tomi knew, many resignations were tendered within the department.

Senjin broke away from their intimate orbit, went back behind his desk. Tomi felt a mixture of relief and loss, which further disturbed her.

Senjin thought a moment, pulling languidly on his cigarette, which was almost finished. 'Individualism in the pursuit of justice,' he said at length, 'is no longer a

social crime. That is my considered opinion, and you are free to repeat that to the staff.'

Senjin took a last puff, ground out the butt in an ashtray. 'But since you've brought up the subject, I might as well enlighten you. Our duties here are varied, but more or less our most vital function is to keep Tokyo as free as possible of terrorist incursion. Unless you were asleep through your orientation courses, you know that terrorists don't think like the rest of our citizenry. They act in a chaotic fashion; they are anarchic - which means that they think like individuals. My duty - our duty, Sergeant - is to apprehend these terrorists before they can do any damage. I have found that by far the best way to do this is to learn to think like one. And my record - and the record of this division since I joined it five years ago - bears out the wisdom of my strategy.' His gaze met Tomi's again. 'Have I made myself clear?'

'Perfectly, sir.'

'Good/ Senjin said. He swung away, stared out of the window again. 'Now that the Mariko case is closed, I have another assignment for you. Have you heard of a man named Nicholas Linnear?'

'Yes,' Tomi said. 'I think everyone in Tokyo has.'

'Not just in Tokyo,' Senjin said cryptically. He turned to look at her. 'Well, Linnear-san is your new assignment. Surveille him at close range. Protect him.'

'Sir?'

'Wipe that look of astonishment off your face, Sergeant,' Senjin said, approaching her again. 'This morning we intercepted a coded Red Army transmission. Twenty minutes ago, the code was broken. Here's the message.' He handed her a sheet of flimsy, and when Tomi reached for it, her fingers brushed his. Momentarily, their eyes met. Then, hurriedly, Tomi concentrated on reading the message typed on the paper. While she was doing that, Senjin went on. 'It seems as if Linnear-san is the target

of a Red Army termination directive. As you see, he is scheduled to be assassinated in one week's time.'

The Shakushi furo was in Roppongi, that glittering section of Tokyo where the foreigner could feel not quite so alien, and any Japanese over the age of eighteen was distinctly uncomfortable. The bathhouse was, at least by Tokyo standards, not far from Nangi's office, along a side street bristling with avant-garde cafes and discos which by midnight would become the throbbing heart of the city. On the corner, across the street, was an audio-video department store whose fifteen-foot windows were made up entirely of synched television screens on which a pair of talentos were posturing in the manner that these days passed-for a performance. Talentos were that peculiar form of modern-day Japanese media star who had many talents but were master of none. They were like fads in clothing and hairstyle; they came and went in the blink of an eye.

Inside the bathhouse, Nangi bought a numbered-key on an elastic band then, proceeding to the interior, began slowly to undress. This was not as easy for him as it was for most people. During the war, something had happened to the nerve synapses in his legs, making their movements jerky, seemingly semi-coordinated. Using his dragon-head cane, he carefully lowered his whippet-thin body on to the polished wooden bench that ran in front of the line of metal lockers.

As he undressed, he wondered how Kusunda Ikusa would react to his face. No doubt Ikusa had been fully briefed. He would know about Nangi's right eye, the lid forever frozen half-open over a useless orb, clouded a milky blue-white. He might even have been shown a photograph of Nangi's face. But it. would be that first moment when Nangi peered with his good eye into Kusunda Ikusa's face that Nangi would know what this

man was made of, and whether he could be bested in a psychological contest.

Nangj sat very still for a moment. He longed for a cigarette. But on the day Seiichi Sato had been buried, Nangi had given up smoking. Not as a penance, but as an eternal reminder - like a flame above a brave soldier's grave - of his friend's spirit. Every time he longed for a smoke, he remembered Seiichi all over again. It had been Seiichi's older brother who, during the war, had sacrificed himself to save Nangi. Now, with Seiichi dead, no one other than Nangi himself knew that, not even Nicholas.

Nangi remembered the Buddhist ceremony, hollow for him, said over Seiichi's grave, necessary in this land of Buddhists and Shinto spirits. He remembered saying a silent prayer in Latin as the joss sticks were lighted, and the priests began their singsong litany.

Afterwards, emptying his silver cigarette case into a nearby trash bin, Nangi had taken the train back into Tokyo, and had found himself at his church instead of at his office.

The war had changed Nangi in many ways: it had lost him an eye, the full use of his legs; it had cost him his best friend; but no outcome was more profound than his conversion to Catholicism. Drifting alone on a raft in the middle of the Pacific, with the sight of Gotaro's death still a fresh wound in his mind, he had cast about for solace, and had found his own spirit wanting. God was not a concept recognized by either Buddhist or Shintoist, but God was what Nangi had needed during that time, and it was to God he had prayed. After the war, the first item he had sought out was a Bible.

Years later, when Seiichi's funeral was over, Nangi had entered his church, sat in the confessional.

'Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned...'

He had felt calm then, composed. He had been sad, but God was with him, and he took solace in that

thought But, sometimes, as now in the steam-filled bathhouse, Nangi had his doubts. He did not know whether Catholicism had made him stronger or weaker. It was'true that in times of trial his faith in God had buoyed him. But, at other moments, as now, he had begun to be concerned by his reliance on the rote of Catholic litany, the adherence to the gospel according to Rome. These things, too, had taken on a hollow ring. On the one hand, he understood that part of his faith meant subservience to God's will, and to the dictates of the Church; on the other hand, he sometimes felt much as a self-aware addict does, faced with the ascendancy of the outside force of the drug, that his own will was slowly seeping away. This frightened him.

What was worse, he felt constrained from confessing his doubts to his priest. That alone, he knew, was a sin in itself. But he could not bring himself to admit to his failing, not with the doubt inside him that it was a failing at all. Did this mean that he had failed God, or that God had failed him?

He did not know and, often now, he wondered if there was any difference between the two possibilities. In his confusion, he found it impossible to take communion, and this further increased his sense of isolation, of an almost Roman foreboding, a perception of a moral twilight falling upon him and those around him.

Nangi's good eye refocused on the closed metal door in front of him. He brought his mind slowly back into the present. He centred, breathing deeply, knowing that he would need all his resources to face Kusunda Ikusa successfully.

Naked, Nangi turned the key in the locker, slipped the key around his wrist. He leaned more heavily on his cane than he might normally have done were he not in a public place. He had learned long ago that a clever man could derive indirect benefits from his physical disabilities.

The war hero was still a powerful image in Japan, and Nangi had put himself into the habit of exploiting every advantage he could.

His good eye, in its odd triangular setting, blazed as he set off down the humid, tile-lined corridor. The floor was composed of wooden slats beneath which drains set in concrete leached away the water. The sound of his cane striking the slats echoed in the hallway.

Inside a small chamber, a young woman took Nangi's cane and, as he sat beside a steaming tub, knelt to ladle water over him while another young woman soaped and scrubbed his body with an enormous natural sponge. He was sluiced with deliriously hot water.

Cleaned - purified, the Shintoists would say - Nangi was helped to his feet, given back his cane, and directed out the other side of the room.

Kusunda Ikusa was waiting for him.

Nangi was stunned. He had been unprepared for how young Ikusa was. Certainly under thirty, a mere baby by Nangi's standards. Could one so young truly represent Nami and, by extension, the Emperor of Japan?

Perhaps Ikusa had once been a sumo. His thickly-muscled legs were bowed beneath the weight of his wide frame. Great rolls of pale flesh cascaded in widening layers from beneath his arms to the tops of his thighs. But, for all that, he seemed as deadly and streamlined as a bullet.

His head was hairless, dark and stippled over the sections of scalp where hair would have been. He had tiny, feminine ears and the kind of bowed mouth one often found on simpering geisha or female impersonators. But the coal-black eyes set like gems in that wide, suety face seemed to generate beams of invisible light that probed the darkest recesses of the soul. He possessed great hara - great inner strength - and Nangi was instantly wary of him.

Tanzan Nangi, it is an honour to meet you,' Kusunda Ikusa said with a slight formal bow of his head. 'I bring the presence of Nami. When I speak it is with the voice of Nami, all as one.'

Hits ritual greeting was delivered in a deep, almost grating voice, oddly inflected with the singsong tempo of the Shinto priest.