The Nicholas Linnear Novels (174 page)

And yet…Tomi was racked with guilt. Commander Omukae was her champion in the police department, which certainly did not appreciate a female moving through the ranks of its detectives. Were she a man, Tomi knew, she would already have made the rank of lieutenant, would already have been leading her own squad. This was part of what Commander Omukae had meant when he had said,
We are, each in our own ways, outcasts.

The fact she was on important assignments at all was due entirely to Commander Omukae. He, of all the officers of superior rank that she had encountered, treated her as an intelligent human being. He had even praised her work once or twice, the last time not more than a month ago, when her diligent surveillance had at last paid off and they had taken down a major importer of MAC-10 submachine pistols for the Red Army.

Before that there had been the female terrorist who was about to board a Korean Air flight at Narita Airport armed with plastique explosive. Tomi had taken her into custody in the ladies’ room at the very last minute. The knife wound Tomi had received during that fracas had been superficial; nevertheless, Commander Omukae had put her in for a valorous commendation. No matter that his recommendation had been turned down, Tomi thought, as she walked thoughtfully back to her desk.

Commander Omukae was her champion in the department, the only male she thought knew her worth. And yet, Tomi was deathly afraid of him. Why? For one thing, he was not like anyone else, and that, to a Japanese, was a concept filled with suspicion. In Japan everyone strove to be anonymous, to be a part of the crowd. Everyone wore the same colors, black, shades of gray, shades of white or cream. Only when one dressed on formal or religious occasions in traditional Japanese attire was any hint of color permitted. Everyone strove to do his best for his country, for his company. This was not, as Tomi once heard a Westerner describe it, self-sacrifice, but rather, duty. Every Japanese understood the nature of duty, that without duty life would be chaotic and, therefore, meaningless.

Every Japanese save Senjin Omukae. And the Red Army terrorists, of course. As she blindly shuffled her paperwork back and forth over her desk, Tomi contemplated the link Commander Omukae had made between his thinking and that of the Red Army. It was interesting—intriguing, even. But Tomi suspected that there was more to the way he saw life than merely putting himself in his enemies’ shoes.

That was also part of what he meant by,
We are, each in our own ways, outcasts.

She recalled her early life, the rigorous training her mother had put her through. For as far back as she could remember, Tomi had been in charge of washing the rice. The first few times, when she had allowed several grains to escape her control and slide down the drain, her mother, watching her like a hawk, had pulled her roughly from the sink and spanked her.

When she was older she was always the last to eat. Her father, silent and inattentive at the table, and her older brother, arrogant and aloof, would invariably receive the major portion of food. Afterward, her mother and she would finish whatever remained. There was rarely enough to satisfy the two of them.

Once when she was especially hungry after dinner, Tomi had asked her mother why they must eat this way. Her mother said,
Be content with what you have. Your father and brother work hard all day. It is our duty to see that they are strong and fit for their work. We women do nothing but sit at home all day. What need do we have for much food?

Tomi remembered one evening when she had suggested to her mother that her brother help them out in their kitchen chores, which were so numerous, Tomi often found herself overwhelmed. Her mother was horrified at the thought.
Goodness,
she had cried,
what puts such thoughts into your head? If we allowed such a thing, the neighbors would assume that our habits were so poor and slovenly that we needed male help.

The male presence in Tomi’s farmland household was massive, hovering over every hour of the day, occluding even days shining with a sparkling sun.

When Tomi was
tekireiki—
of marriageable age—she was in Tokyo, at school. One evening, as she was preparing for her final exams, she received a call from her brother. Tomi’s father had died some years before, and her brother was now the head of the family. In many ways he was far worse than Tomi’s father had ever been. Whereas the father was merely content to keep the family together and running efficiently, the brother was interested in exerting control. Tomi had taken the call with a sinking heart. Her brother informed her that he had selected a suitable husband for her and that she was expected home as soon as possible in order that the particulars of arranging the wedding could be properly and formally effected.

Tomi knew that she had come to a nexus point in her life. She understood that what she said to her brother would change her life forever. She struggled with her inner demons. As if it had a will of its own, her mind scrolled back over the strict training her mother had given her, and she felt her resolve weakening, the desire to give in to the authority figure, to submit to the structure of life, almost overwhelming her with its brute force.

Then she saw the face of her mother, time-worn and pale, rarely smiling, certainly never laughing. And Tomi knew that her mother had never really lived. Rather, she had expended her life in the service of her family, a slave to the unending demands of her husband and her son, hemmed in by the constant criticisms of her neighbors and relatives. Tomi saw that she would rather slit her wrists than carry on that tradition.

So she said into the phone, “I am not coming home.” She had dropped the receiver into its cradle and run for the bathroom, making it just in time as her dinner came spewing out of her mouth.

Later, after cleaning herself up, she had crawled weakly into bed and had sat for the rest of the night with the covers drawn up to her chin, the lights on in her room, shivering uncontrollably, as if she had the flu.

It was this irrevocable break with her family—with her
life
—as traumatic for a Japanese as the loss of a leg or an arm, that had come to mind when she was summoned to the crime scene at The Silk Road. Seeing poor, pathetic Mariko and what had been done to her by an unknown hand had touched Tomi in her innermost depths. During the ensuing months of meticulous investigation, Tomi came in some curious way to see her as a kindred spirit, less lucky by far than she, yet so similar that Tomi was driven to find her murderer.

She opened Mariko’s file, went through it for what seemed the thousandth time. Who had done such a terrible thing to the poor girl? What kind of mind was capable of such bestiality?

Tomi tried in the manner of Commander Omukae to put herself in the mind of the murderer, but she found herself incapable of conceiving such a warped mind-set.

She continued to turn the pages of despair, Mariko’s despair. So many mysteries here, and she had no solutions for any of them. Who killed Mariko? Why? What did the bloody note,
THIS COULD BE YOUR WIFE,
mean? Who was it meant for? The police? Who else was expected to find her? Was there any significance to the forensic report of tiny flakes of rust found in the wounds of the girl’s thorax? Did Mariko have a current boyfriend, and if so, who was he?

Now her commander had ordered her to end her investigation, to label the case:
DEAD, UNSOLVED.
Tomi did not think that she could do that. Mariko’s untouched face stared accusingly up at her from the grisly forensic photos. Was this inhuman mutilation all that would be left of Mariko? It wasn’t fair or right.

Duty, Tomi thought grimly as, wiping away an errant tear, she closed the file. She entered Nicholas Linnear’s name into her computer terminal, and in a moment the pertinent data appeared on her screen. She tapped out a request for a hard copy, and the printer went to work. She hardly glanced at the sheets as they emerged, merely folded them and put them into her handbag.

Tomi knew that she had to come to grips with her turbulent feelings for Commander Omukae. She saw his face, saw again the interview in his office, and knew what a botch she had made of it. If only she had said something intelligent to him. Something…

Tomi put her head in her hands. She had been fighting the realization ever since she had first seen Senjin Omukae, but now she could not deny the attraction she had felt for him from the beginning. And hadn’t he revealed something of himself to her?
We are, each in our own ways, outcasts.
That, she knew, was a singular occurrence. What did it portend?

She felt again his presence close and quick in front of her, smelled again his male musk. Those eyes upon her, raking at the core of her, stirring her depths. He had, in one breathless moment, ripped through the fabric of her life, to gaze upon her secret and vulnerable underside. A shiver raced down her spine.

Tomi knew that she was in love with Commander Omukae. Which was too bad for her, because she knew that within the code of the department there was nothing either of them could do about it. Having once been trapped by life, she had thought that she had been clever enough to escape. Now Tomi found herself trapped again.

For a long time after Justine stumbled out of the workout room, Nicholas did nothing. He closed his eyes, slept, dreamt. Nightmares stalked his uneasy, sweaty sleep. Helpless, chained to a rock, gimlet-eyed cormorants wheeling and crying above his head alerted him to imminent danger. Then he could dimly see the outline of his death as it approached like a sleek ship over the shining sea.

At last, toward dawn, he rose and, unable even to bring himself to speak to Justine, confronted his nemesis, the padded pole. He eyed it as if it were his most implacable enemy, and indeed, for this moment it was.

The face of Akutagawa-san swam into his mind.
The moment you begin to hate,
the
sensei
had told Nicholas,
is the moment you will lose
Getsumei no michi.

He was on a hillside shrouded in mist so thick that day had become night. Somewhere ahead of this young Nicholas was a steep precipice tumbling down a rocky scree to the valley floor. It had taken them six hours of arduous climbing to reach this spot. One false step and Nicholas knew that he would fall head over heels until either his head or his back broke upon the spine of the rocks far below.

I can’t see, this young Nicholas thought, and yet Akutagawa-san has told me that I must walk this ridge.
Find
Getsumei no michi, the
sensei
said.
Find the path and you will not stumble or fall.

So, with terror in his heart, the young Nicholas had set out, carefully putting one foot in front of another. There was a metallic taste in his mouth, and his heart was pounding with such force that for a moment he could hear nothing else.

Then, gradually, he began to hear other sounds: the rushing of the wind, the sighing of the tree branches above and behind him. The caw of a kite, circling the sky, riding the currents.

And, abruptly, he could see the bird through the mist, through the opacity; not the creature itself, really, but something akin to its shadow against an unseen sun. His head lifted as
Getsumei no michi
allowed him to “watch” it soar.

And now he could feel the currents and eddies of the wind just as if they were an ocean’s tide. And learning this sculptured landscape, he discerned just where the edge of the ridge rippled and curled, where gnarled tree roots thrust up from the eroded cliffside to trip an unwary traveler, where a stoat crouched, caught trembling between the rim and the two humans.

Clouds were coming, and he turned his head, aware that rain was not more than fifteen minutes away. He walked along the snaking ridge, more sure of his footing than if it had been a crystal-clear day. And he told Akutagawa-san everything he saw and sensed and heard. He had felt like a god, but this he had kept from his
sensei,
because it smacked of ego, and the essence of all martial arts involved an egoless state.

Getsumei no michi.

I can remember this, Nicholas thought now. Why can’t I remember what to do? Don’t think, he told himself. Don’t ask questions that you can’t answer. Clear your mind of all extraneous thought. Now let go of the hatred of your memory loss. Let
haragei
show you
michi,
the path, the Way to
Getsumei no michi.

He again took up the ready position, this time painfully aware that he did not understand what he was doing, that his mind, cluttered and uncentered, was merely following the lead of his body.

He raised his hands, aligning his fingers into position, and struck out. Again and again he hit the padded pole, his mind afire with a mounting despair, knowing that he had no idea what he was doing. He stopped and, panting, stood staring at the space in front of him as if it, too, had turned against him.

He heard his mother, Cheong, saying to him,
You must learn to allow things to seep in, to come into your bones in their own time. Patience, Nicholas. This is perhaps difficult for you. Your father makes it so. He is patient and impatient. Very inconsistent, yes. This is strange to me.

Patience. Yes. Be consistent.

Once more he set himself, and without giving himself time for second thoughts or doubts, he struck the padded pole. Pain flared, emanating from his hands all the way up his arms, but he continued to strike out, harder and harder, with a kind of desperation as he felt his strength waning, forgetting even his mother’s wise counsel, until he was doing nothing more than flailing ineffectually at his own inner demons.

Gasping for air, the sweat running off him in streams, he at last collapsed upon the tatami mats and, hugging the padded pole to him, began to weep.

When Nangi returned to his office the morning after his meeting with Kusunda Ikusa, he listened to their conversation all over again. Settling down behind his desk, the skyline of downtown Tokyo glowing like a lambent forest in the early summer sunlight, he unscrewed the top of his cane. The carved dragon’s head came off, revealing the workings of a minirecorder.