The Nicholas Linnear Novels (99 page)

Protorov’s mind raced back to the first time he had felt the cold. “To feel the cold” was the KGB wet—meaning active in the field—directorates’ phrase for the kill. The first time for Protorov was indelibly etched into a corner of his mind. He had been a raw lieutenant then, well trained from the KGB complex outside Sevastopol. He thought he was a crackerjack, a world-beater. He had not reckoned on the field, which cut all men down to size.

They had sent him to Siberia. A top-secret series of experiments attempting to tap the perpetual gale-force winds in the north had been infiltrated by the Americans.

In Verkhoyansk, the coldest place in the world, he had ferreted out the infiltrator, made him bolt from his hole, and one after the other they had raced across the frozen tundra onto the ice fields. Two utter madmen.

Only the cold could win in Verkhoyansk. Man was nothing, a tiny mote in nature’s vast well of snow and ice. The snow. The snow. Always and forever the snow. It was blinding, chilling, numbing. It was death.

But all Protorov could think of was his first assignment. Oh, but he did not understand the meaning. Not at all. Singlemindedly he pursued his quarry, seeking to feel the cold.

Together they tumbled to the ice, skidding and sliding, froths of loose snow fountaining upward as they collided. Stupidly Protorov had decided on a gun with a silencer. But long since the elements, laughing, had frozen all the carefully oiled working parts. Similarly, his knife would not unfold. There was nothing left but his hands.

For almost half an hour they grappled indecisively in the ice and snow. The bulky clothes made hand-to-hand combat clumsy and difficult. Meanwhile the frost was sapping their energies and, later, Protorov would come to understand that it was only his stamina that had allowed him to prevail. He had not been smarter or stronger or quicker, all the things he had been taught to believe he was. Those were lies. He had just outlasted the American.

What little satisfaction he had found in grinding the dark, foreign head into the blood-pink snow while the breath slowed and, at last, stilled, stemmed from the knowledge that he, Protorov, was still alive, chest heaving, mouth dry, pulse thundering, and the bile rushing upward into his throat, bitter and searingly acidic.

All at once his extremities began to shake uncontrollably and all warmth left him. He stared down at the humped thing he straddled and thought, wonderingly, This was once a human being. An enemy of the State, they had told him. Yes, he reiterated, an enemy. An enemy.

“…time that’s left.”

With a start that no one could see, Protorov came out of his memories. “What’s that?” His voice was sharp, making certain the doctor understood that it was his fault Protorov had not heard what he had said.

“We’ve used up all the time that’s left, Comrade.”

“Do we have anything?” Protorov wanted to know. “Anything at all?”

“The tape machines have every word,” the doctor said and Protorov thought, I have your number, Comrade.

“There is one positive element.”

Protorov turned his attention to the young lieutenant, seeing something of himself in the younger man.

“We now know that the Americans are no closer to
Tenchi
than we are. In fact, I would venture a guess that we have more penetration at this moment.”

Protorov considered this. The lieutenant was, of course, correct. But Protorov also knew that there was a second positive element to this, and that was the subject himself. Or, more accurately, who the subject belonged to.

“All right,” Protorov said in his dismissive tone, “wrap up the corpse and deliver him back to his kennel on Honshu. I want the Americans made aware of their error immediately.”

When he was again alone in the odd windowless room, he turned on the powerful fans to rid the space of the cloying after-scents of drugs and death. Then he lit up.

Switching on his lamp, he once more pored over the readouts from Sakhov IV. He was closer to
Tenchi
now than he ever had been. He could feel it. His eyes roved the folded sheets. Was it already here? Why couldn’t he see it then?

With a deep growl of disgust, he swept the useless sheaf into the hopper beside his desk and turned the shredder to autofeed. The deep whine of scissoring steel teeth filled the air.

Thoughts of feeling the cold and the grisly package that would soon be delivered to the enemy’s doorstep led to his concern over Sakhov IV. Even with all its ultrasophisticated equipment, he had found it to be a dismal failure. But then again, it was only a machine; it could only do what men had programmed it to do. Nothing more. Or perhaps mere had been a malfunction somewhere within the miles of multimillion-dollar circuitry.

No matter. Protorov had his own human satellite, and it was still functioning perfectly.

“Now,” Akutagawa-san said from out of the mist, from out of Nicholas’ memory, “we will begin.”

“But how,” Nicholas said. “I can see nothing.”

“Did you never in Kansatsu’s
ryu
train with the blindfold?”

“Of course. But that was within the boundaries of the
dōjō.
The space was precise and uncluttered with trees, stones, and underbrush the configurations of which I am unfamiliar with.”

“This vapor,” Akutagawa-san continued as if Nicholas had not spoken, “is like the darkness but far more difficult to negotiate. In the darkness you may be guided by albescence, a sliver of moon, the patch of a household lantern, even the glitter of the stars. But here there is nothing but the mist.”

“I cannot even see you.”

“But you can hear me.”

“Yes. Quite well. You sound as if you are in my left ear but I shall discount the peculiar acoustics.”

“Never discount acoustics,” Akutagawa-san said. “Rather strive to understand them so that they will become another weapon in your arsenal.”

Nicholas said nothing, but tried to concentrate on gaining his bearings in the valley in Yoshino. Finally he decided that were it not for the
jonin
’s comforting presence he would be totally lost.

“You have heard, I imagine, that much of the
Kuji-kiri
derives its power from
jahō,
magic. Tell me, Nicholas, do you believe in ‘magic’?”

“I believe in what is,
sensei
, and discount what is not.”

For a time there was silence. “That is a very wise answer from such a young man. Now I want you to listen to me closely. There is, in all people, a layer—a middle layer of being—that lies between the conscious and the subconscious. It is a land where the imagination reigns. It is where daydreams originate, where quick, overblown fears are created. It is where day-to-day anxiety is manufactured.

“It is not magic, nor is it an extrasensory layer. Rather, its origins are quite primitive. Our early ancestors required the active assistance of this layer to heighten their perceptions in order for them to survive: against wild animals, marauding bands of other primitive men who sought their women or the shelter of their home caves.

“Oh, yes, caves. That is how far back in time I speak of now. But with the coming of so-called civilization this middle layer’s reason for existence slowly atrophied. With houses and apartments locked and bolted, with man’s utter dominance over all other life forms on the planet, what use was this layer?

“And yet it refused to die out. Instead it became the creator of small fears: anxieties at work, fear of dismissal, fear of rejection in love, petty jealousies regarding other workers, all blown up out of proportion, meant to keep the organism alert and functioning at peak efficiency for its survival. And yet survival is no longer the issue from day to day. Rather it is betterment. And so the supposed sharpness turns to anxiety, the modern ailment.

“Now I reiterate to you, Nicholas-san, that there is nothing mystic about this layer. It is not meditation. We are not now speaking of the province of the holy man, for you and I are certainly not that. We are both men of the world and have not the time nor the inclination to give up the plethora of worldly appetites the holy man must divest himself of in order to reach these exalted states.

“
Getsumei no michi
, the moonlit path, is open to you now, Nicholas. You must find it and learn to sink into it. I cannot help you in this other than by alerting you to its existence, but it may be of some help to daydream and then follow that daydream home.”

“How will I know
getsumei no michi, sensei
?”

“By two things. One is that you will feel all sensation gained in weight and resonance.”

“Do you mean that I will hear better?”

“Yes, but only in a certain way. Do not confuse weight with amplification. You will not, as you say, hear any better. You will hear
differently.
The second sensation will be the awareness of light even when there is none in your immediate surroundings.”

“Forgive me,
sensei,
but I do not understand that.”

“It is not necessary to understand, Nicholas. Merely to remember.”

At the last Akutagawa-san’s voice had begun to fade, and now Nicholas feared that he was all alone on the lower slope of the hillside. He was a long way from the
ryu
and the mist had damped his usually reliable directional facilities.

He felt the first hard pangs of panic welling up in his chest. He found he had an overpowering urge to cry out to Akutagawa-san but the acute loss of face involved not only for him but, even more importantly, for Kansatsu, his former
sensei
who had guided him here, made him bite his lip instead.

Through the fluttering of his heart he recalled Akutagawa-san’s one bit of advice: to take a daydream and ride it home. He sat down on the damp ground in the lotus position and closed his eyes. He struggled to control his breathing, the intense pounding of his blood in his veins. His hands lay open, palms up on his bent knees.

He opened his mind to the first image that swam to the surface. Yukio. Instinctively he clamped down on the image and he thought, No, it’s still too painful, I don’t want to think about her loss, try something else.

But nothing else would come. Yukio was who he wanted to daydream about, and with a great effort he willed himself to relax and think about her.

Cascade of night-black hair, those heavy-lidded eyes so full of sexual promise. He recalled their first meeting at the military dance, her firm, warm thigh pressed against his leg and then, astoundingly, the erotic feel of her mound rubbing against his crotch, her eyes sparkling with mischief as they danced amid the spinning couples.

He remembered the shower he had taken, the sinewy shadow appearing beyond the glass door, its abrupt opening and Yukio standing beside him, nude. Droplets of water beading along her cool flank, the jut of one dark-nippled breast. His startled sound as she moved against him. The warm friction, the silken embrace, the peach taste of her mouth, the hot swipe of her tongue. And the heated, liquid union, the long ecstatic slide, the engulfment while the silvery sheen of the water spattered their shoulders and necks in a cascade of…

Light!

His head came up and his eyes opened. And abruptly he saw Akutagawa-san standing to the side of him, silent, observing. Nicholas felt a peculiar heaviness in his chest, an oddly sexual feeling. He felt as if he had descended into a depression from which he had the perfect vantage point on the world. He was aware of more even while he saw less in the conventional sense.

He moved his head. Was he actually
seeing
Akutagawa-san or sensing him? He opened his mouth and voiced the question.

“I have no answer to that, Nicholas, save to say that it does not matter.
Getsumei no michi
is there and we use it. But I will tell you this quite important aspect of it. It is body sense rather than ego. It is only your non-Oriental side that seeks an understanding. Your Oriental side allowed you to let go of your ego, something no Westerner could ever do because he is too afraid. He fears a letting go because in the primitive mind it is eternally linked to death. Westerners, as we are aware, seek to understand death because they fear it so. They cannot accept as we do; they have no concept of
karma
, nor can they see what is most apparent to us, that death is part of life.”

Akutagawa-san began to move, and as he did so it was Nicholas’ impression that his
geta
’d feet did not touch the earth. “Now that you have found the moonlit path, it is time to use the energy there to conjure up the first superficial stages of the
Kuji-kiri.
This alone will take many months and at first it will be bad for you, for here we will manufacture pure terror and before you can inure yourself to its manifestations you must succumb. Nightmares will haunt your sleep as they will your waking hours. You will become sunken-eyed and even at the lowest ebb may wish to commit
seppuku.
”

“You do not frighten me,
sensei.
”

Akutagawa-san’s grim visage did not lighten. “That is good. Now remember well what you have said as we begin our descent into the maelstrom of hell.”

The dawning of a dank, drizzly Monday brought everyone back to reality. A smog alert was in effect, and immediately Nicholas stepped out of the hotel entrance he could see why. The air above the slick streets was brownish gray and, as it rose upward, so solid seeming it completely obscured any structure above the twelfth floor. No hope of seeing the crest of Fuji-yama from Sato’s office this day.

Tomkin, joining him in the limo for the stop-and-start trip across town to Shinjuku, seemed better, though he was still pale and drawn from his ordeal and he said the smog was giving him a pounding headache.

As they left the limo outside Sato’s building, Tomkin caught him by the arm and said in a low, gritty voice, “Remember, Nick. This week’s our deadline. You’ve got to make the merger happen now.” His eyes still contained a tinge of fever brightness and his breath was as foul as ever.

Miss Yoshida met them at the elevator’s summit and ushered them into Sato’s enormous office. This high up the windows overlooked darkness; it could have been the middle of the night. All the lights were on as if to dispel this cloud of gloom.