The Nicholas Linnear Novels (234 page)

Senjin put his hand in his pocket, his fingers enclosing the carefully wrapped paper packet of emeralds. They were there, waiting, their power pulsing in his palm. They were six: a bad number, a dangerous, destabilizing number. He knew he was taking a chance carrying them around with him. Given time, they would create the Scorpion, one of the configurations of destruction. Only his own great mass of power made their danger manageable.

He needed to put all the emeralds together, to make the configuration of the nine. Only then would he fulfill his destiny. The last link with Eternity. Invincible, immortal, he would stride across the world, bending it to his whims.

Now, as Senjin studied the converted factory on Greene Street with the sea-green lacquered door, he knew that he must be close to the last of the mystic gems.

That was what he had come for, after all. That and to plunge Nicholas Linnear into a series of hells before he killed him.

But at this moment Senjin’s mind was only peripherally aware of Nicholas. He was concentrating on Justine. It was Justine, he was sure, who would unlock the whereabouts of the emeralds. He needed just ten minutes with her to pry the secret out of her brain. And then, when he was finished with her, he would pin her like an insect to a wall.

Obliterated by shadow, Senjin stood silent and unmoving. He saw the apartment’s owner, the squat, dangerous-looking Japanese, Conny Tanaka, emerge from the front door, turn right, walk up to Houston Street, where he hailed a cab, got in.

Not ten minutes later, Nicholas Linnear opened the sea-green door, went lightly down the steps, headed south on foot. Senjin was momentarily torn. He thought it would be helpful to know where Nicholas was headed, but the building and what it now housed were too tempting a target. Two days ago Senjin had seen Nicholas going into the front entrance to the Tomkin Industries tower, then later at the Tanaka
dojo.

Senjin knew of Nicholas’s ties to the martial arts school, as well as his other New York hangouts; the Tokyo Metropolitan Police computer was extremely efficient, and what it couldn’t provide, interservice intelligence could.

It was Tanaka who had led Senjin home to this block, to this co-op that Nicholas and Justine were using as a base. Is this where the last cache of emeralds was?

Now, three days after Nicholas and Justine had come to Manhattan from West Bay Bridge, Senjin was on his stakeout. He had taken a room in a midtown hotel but had never actually stayed there. It was the address he had given to Shisei when his plans had changed so suddenly. The fire had been lighted, the flames had burned hard and high. There was nothing left for Nicholas in West Bay Bridge. Nothing, too, for Senjin.

Senjin kept his eye on the sea-green door. Tanaka had come out and so had Linnear. Which meant Justine was still inside, because two hours before, Senjin had seen the three of them go into the building. There were no other exits or entrances; he had checked thoroughly.

Now, whether Justine was alone or guarded did not matter, Senjin knew that he could get to her—it was merely a matter of how much blood would be spilled.

He held his ground while Nicholas disappeared among the pedestrians. He looked at his watch. Where are you, Shisei? Why haven’t you come?

The street was not crowded—at least by Tokyo standards. A Con Edison van was parked midway down the block, the nearby manhole cordoned off with yellow and black strips printed with the words:
DANGER! LIVE WIRES! DO NOT CROSS!
The back doors were thrown open but the van was empty. Senjin had seen the three men follow one another down the manhole.

It was now nearly two in the afternoon. Senjin had had plenty of time to familiarize himself with all the buildings on the block, then to make a quick trip to the industrial hardware store on the next block.

He quit the shadows, crossed the street. He could hear the voices of the workers below as they drifted up through the open manhole.

Senjin climbed quickly into the van. He emerged a moment later, clad in a spare uniform. Then he walked purposefully to the building next to Tanaka’s, picked the lock. He could have rung any one of the half-dozen bells, announced himself as a Con Ed maintenance man, but he did not want to risk some paranoid tenant asking him for ID.

Inside he took an oversized freight elevator, laden with dust, to the top floor, got out. He went swiftly down the corridor to the metal fire door that was the exit to the roof. It was plastered with a red sign that said:
CAUTION, EMERGENCY DOOR ONLY. DO NO OPEN. DOOR IS ALARMED.

Senjin knelt down, located the wire where it entered the metal box on the bar across the door. He made a loop, attached alligator clips to two sections of the wire. Then he snipped the original wire, opened the door as far as his loop would allow. He slipped through, closed the door behind him. It would hide the loop from all but the most discerning eye.

It was broiling on the roof. The black tarmac was soft, almost sticky, and Senjin was careful to cleave to what shadows existed, treading upon tarmac not quite as spongy.

Where the roof of this building ended, the roof of Tanaka’s building began. Senjin examined that new field as if it were enemy territory in a war. His eyes took in every shape, color, texture; the length of every shadow, the look of the tarmac—it was different from the roof he was on; it was strewn with sharp-edged bluish gravel. In the center of the roof there was a large, raised skylight made up of small panes of glass surrounded by a painted wooden frame. He suspected that the antiburglar devices would be clustered in and around the skylight.

When he was as satisfied as he could be, he climbed over the brick and terra-cotta wall, into the red zone.

Immediately he froze. His eyes had picked up something in their periphery. He moved his head, bringing the flash into the center of his vision. Now it was gone. He went back to looking at it indirectly.

And he saw the flash again, like sunlight catching a strand of a spider’s web. This was similar.

Senjin knelt without in any other way moving. Not three inches in front of him a monofilament wire had been cleverly strung at calf height. It went all around the periphery of the roof. One step and Senjin knew he would have tripped an alarm inside the building.

The obvious answer to the problem was to step over the monofilament. But it was so obvious, Senjin hesitated. Out of the snare and into the real trap, he thought. His head turned this way and that, trying to find out what else was lying in wait for him.

Then he saw it. The electric eyes were cleverly hidden, but he found one, then another. They were at waist height, and anyone high-stepping over the monofilament would pass directly through their invisible beam. There was no way for him to disable the electric eyes. Their brain would be within the house, inaccessible to him.

Still in his kneeling position, he measured the height of the monofilament, then nodded to himself. He produced from his pocket a long, coiled length of rope. But it was like no other rope; it was, instead, made of women’s hair. It was tremendously tough and resilient, compact, almost weightless, and would not abrade against hard surfaces. Tied to one end was a metal hook.

Senjin produced a two-foot length of what looked like a simple wooden staff. There was nothing simple about it. He gave a quick twist of his wrist, and the staff telescoped out. As it did, its end popped open to form what looked like the talons of an eagle. This was a
shinobi kumade,
the climbing claw.

Senjin attached the hooked end of the special rope to the climbing claw, shoved both underneath the monofilament. The claw brought the hook to the far end of a utility vent where, as Senjin jerked the rope hard, the hook grabbed hold. Senjin lay down on his back, his arms over his head, gripping the rope. Then, hand over hand, he began to pull himself along the tarmac.

His head and shoulders passed beneath the monofilament. He slowed himself, saw that his chest was at the level of the wire. He exhaled, collapsing his lungs. His chest deflated, and he pulled himself all the way through.

He kept going like that, hand over hand, until he was certain he was past the electric-eye beam. Then he knelt, pulled the
shinobi kumade
toward him. He freed the hook from the vent, rolled the rope into a ball, put it away.

Then he went to take a closer look at the skylight.

It was rigged, all right. A pressure-sensitive device was hooked up to the skylight. Any weight on it above that of a pigeon alighting would set off the alarm.

The trigger mechanism was in plain sight. This was not good news. Senjin was not apt to take such situations at face value, especially not after discovering how the roof itself was set up against intruders. He wondered what trigger was lurking in the shadows where he could not see it.

He put that thought aside, went to work disarming the skylight trigger. He froze it with a tiny aerosol of freon, then quickly sprayed it with a fast-hardening foam sealant similar to the kind used by the marine industry.

He cut the wire at all four corners. Up here it was as quiet as a tomb. The sounds of the city floated up to him only intermittently: an ambulance’s siren, a dog’s bark, the brief blare of a horn, followed by the squeal of a car leaving rubber. He was a cloud, drifting about the jam-packed earth. Save that a cloud was never so deadly.

Senjin climbed upon the skylight, spread himself out like a starfish. He used his hands as well as his eyes and ears to seek out the old skylight’s weak points. In time he found one: right down the middle.

He took a long, thin blade, inserted it between the center joints. The dry wood gave way almost willingly, and he worked the blade up and down the length of the seam. The wood split, and Senjin rolled away from the weakened area. He used the blade on the two sides. The wood here was stronger, but not by much. The skylight should have been replaced years ago.

Senjin rolled completely off the skylight, lifted a section off just far enough for him to slip through. He fished the claw of the
shinobi kuntade
around the lip of the skylight housing, let himself down via the telescoped wooden pole.

He paused just within the neck of the skylight. His senses quested outward, encountered the heat-detecting plate. Any warm-blooded living creature would set it off. The extreme cold of the freon spray would set it off as well. He pulled out a strip of metallic tape, covered the plate. The metal was neutral in temperature but shielded the plate from registering his own body heat as he passed it.

Senjin completed his climb down.

He found himself in what appeared to be a seldom-used attic space. Once, no doubt, it had housed machinery, but now it appeared to be used strictly for storage.

Senjin found the stairway down. He listened at the closed door, heard no movement. He opened the door a crack, listened again. He took a look. Then he opened the door only as far as he needed to slip out. He closed it behind him.

He was inside the enemy stronghold. So much closer to Justine.

“I don’t know why I let you bring me here,” Nangi said.

They could hear the thunder crack and rumble through the canyons of Tokyo even here inside St. Theresa’s.

“I feel nothing when I am here. Nothing.”

Rain rattled like sleet against the stained-glass windows, so it appeared that the Virgin at the Crucifixion in the window’s center oriel was trembling in her agony.

“Shhh,” Umi whispered. “You’re disturbing the service.”

“What has the service to do with me?” Nangi said. “I am estranged, an orphan in the house of God.”

“You are not an orphan,” Umi said, close to him, warm against him. “You are merely blind.”

“What do you know of God?” he said. “You are a studier of myths, and God cannot well survive myths. Myths are for other religions, the substance of heathen gods.”

“Like Buddha?”

Nangi could see she was mocking him, but he did not care. She had a right to be cynical about his religious beliefs. He was not a good Catholic, he realized sadly, otherwise his belief would be unswerving even—especially—during times of doubt and uncertainty.

“Don’t mix metaphors,” Nangi said shortly. “Buddha is not a god. He’s an ideal.”

“Or a myth,” Umi said. “Like Jesus, the son of God.”

“And what of your Spider Woman, spinning her webs across the centuries of the Hopi Indians? Is she also a myth? You seem to believe in her.”

“I believe in what is real,” Umi said. “Not in what I can see with my eyes or can feel with my hands, but what my mind, expanding into the cosmos, can absorb. There are certain eternal truths, my love. There is a cosmic clock that measures not the passage of time—because time is merely a human illusion—but the ever shifting balance between order and chaos. In the end we must all make that one decision: which side will we fight to preserve?” Umi took his hand. “Once this decision is made, then we will be able to look into the eye of God. And, recognizing the reflection we see there, we will be able to understand the significance of our own existence.”

“Are you saying that we are only reflections of Him?” Nangi asked.

Umi squeezed his hand. “You miss the point. We are manifestations only of order or chaos; agents, in some very direct sense. All else is illusion to keep us from discerning the truth. If there is a God, darling, it is he who lives within us.”

Nangi recognized in her words quite an accurate description of the human condition. He rubbed his leg, which suffered in the wet weather. He felt calmer at his core, always Umi’s gift to him. At last he bowed his head and began to pray.

When he was finished, he said, “I wish I knew where Nicholas was at this moment. I would feel somehow calmer.”

“He and I spoke of where he must go,” Umi said. “He told me not to tell you. He said you would only worry.”

“I am worried now,” Nangi said, looking at her.

“He gave me a telephone number.” Umi recited it. “There is a man there who knows him as Tik-Tik.”

“Yes. Conny Tanaka.” Nangi nodded. “Nicholas has told me of him.”

Umi said, “I think you should say a prayer for Nicholas.”