The Nicholas Linnear Novels (113 page)

Against all logic, it moved toward him. Not swiftly as it had when it had sensed him, but cautiously. After all, this was not a creature in distress, its senses informed it. Yet there was distress and blood in the immediate vicinity and the shark wanted to feed unmolested.

Though Bristol was carrying two sticks of shark repellent he had little faith in the chemicals. Still, he inched his right hand down toward his belt. Fleetingly he thought of the speargun but quickly rejected that course of action. He had seen too many shots of sharks with spears through their brains still alive and attacking and he wanted no part of that. He only had one spear.

The tiger was very close now and Bristol could see the wicked sickle-shaped mouth below the wide apart pig eyes. Pink plankton clung to its bottle-shaped snout and three ramoras, two above and one below, mimicked its every twist and turn.

It was still coming on and Bristol gripped one of the sticks with a gloved hand and gently drew it out. He was sweating. Christ, he thought, this bastard’s gonna come all the way in.

Bristol rode with the tidal surge four fathoms down and gripped the stick with a viselike grip. Come on, old buddy, he whispered inside his head. Have I got a surprise for you.

The tiger’s ugly snout nosed in and Bristol abruptly came to life, lifting the stick and slamming it as hard as he could against the shark’s snout.

The creature bucked hard, almost standing vertically on its tail. Then it twisted so quickly it left two of the ramoras temporarily behind and fled into the green depths with a great double wave of its long powerful tail.

For a time, Bristol just hung as he had, feeling the cold sweat drying on his skin beneath his rubber cocoon. Then, replacing the shark repellent in his belt, he got a fix on the boat and moved off toward it.

Twenty-four feet above where Bristol swam and perhaps seventy-five yards distant, Jack Kenneally was having the devil’s own time landing his catch. The Red Monster was no professional fisherman but he originally came from Florida and he had done a lot of deep-sea stuff as a teenager. Now his job was to go after bigger game, and he bitterly resented this half-assed babysitting assignment.

Kenneally spat over the side with disgust. He had saved her tan ass once from oblivion and he wondered just how many times he would have to repeat the feat before this shithouse assignment would end. Privately he wondered whose instep he had trod on to be handed this one. He was top echelon and he chafed to be out and setting prey in the sights of the long gun and not at the end of a fishing line.

He glanced over at Alix Logan stretched out in the skimpiest of bikinis, her burnished skin shining with oil, and cursed softly. Who the hell was she anyway, he asked himself, that I gotta risk my neck to keep her alive and separated from the rest of the world?

Kenneally never did get an answer to that question for, at that moment, light danced off a surfacing faceplate and, in the midst of reeling in his catch, the Red Monster said, “What the fuck—!” and reached for his .357 Magnum, got off a shot just before he heard the plangent
twang!
, the bright rush of wind, the ballooning black object, and then the burning pain in the center of his chest.

“Aggh!” he cried as he staggered back under the shock of force, the rod spinning out of his hands and disappearing beneath the waves. He clutched at the fire burning inside him, trying to rip the flechette from his flesh, but that only caused the curved barbs to bite deeper into him.

His chest was expanding and from his vantage point on the deck he looked up into the burning sun. The slim silhouette of Alix Logan stood over him, her hand to her mouth covering the great O her lips were making. Her beautiful eyes were open wide and Kenneally was suddenly struck by how much those eyes reminded him of his daughter’s. Now why hadn’t he seen that before?

Fingers like swollen sausages and a terrible paralysis beginning to suffuse him, stiffening his limbs, fevering his mind, Kenneally saw the great shade looming up over the side of the boat, flicking sea water from its slick blue skin.

Then his eyes were bulging outward unnaturally and blood ran from his nose, mouth, and ears in bright crimson trickles and his body convulsed twice as the autonomic system shut down for good.

Climbing over the side of the boat, Bristol ripped off his heavy fins, pushed his mask up onto the top of his head, and said, “Alix Logan, I’m Detective Lewis Jeffrey Croaker of the New York City Police Department and to tell you the truth I’ve had the goddamndest time getting to see you.”

Then he vomited all over the running deck.

Justine was numb. The funeral progressed around her like some vast charade which she was fated to witness yet not participate in. The hordes of people from her father’s firm flown in from all parts of the world bewildered her. Their assumedly sincere murmurs of condolence slid off her like rainwater. At times she had no idea what they were talking about.

Her mind was otherwise occupied, but when the clouds lifted far enough for her to think of her father’s passing, it was only with a sense of profound relief.

At some point she became aware that a male presence was close beside her. Looking up, her heart beating fast, thinking that it might, despite what she herself had said, have been Nicholas, she was surprised to see Rick Millar. He smiled and took her hand. Justine might have asked him where Mary Kate was, but if he replied she did not hear him.

She seemed dead to the world. Not even the beautiful setting beside the great beach house on Gin Lane just east of Southampton where she and Gelda had grown up seemed to affect her. She was as anesthetized in her own way as her older sister was in hers, lying almost insensate in her Sutton Place apartment, having consumed God only knew how many quarts of vodka this last year following the death of Lew Croaker. He had been the only man able to get through her tough exterior, leaving her so very vulnerable. Now that he was gone, Justine had just about given up on her sister. Only a miracle could save her, and Justine had none up her sleeve. She couldn’t even manage her own life, let alone Gelda’s.

Oh, but how she felt betrayed! As if the solid-seeming earth beneath her feet had abruptly split apart, hurling her downward into a pit of nothingness. Now that Nicholas had done this to her, now that he had become another in the long line of men who ultimately betrayed her, she felt only despair. Even rage was denied her. It was as if some vital spark had gone out within her. Her head came down, her mane of hair falling over her face. Those assembled studiously looked away from her grief, not understanding its source at all.

Nicholas felt a longing to return to Japan that was so intense even had he not received Sato’s disturbing telegram he would in any case have been on the next flight out following Raphael Tomkin’s funeral.

He put one hand in his trousers pocket and felt again the flimsy sheet of yellow paper. He did not need to bring it out in order to recall its contents: LINNEAR-SAN. V.P. OF OPERATIONS, MASUTO ISHII, THIRD VICTIM OF WU-SHING. FEET SEVERED. CHEEK TATTOOED WITH IDEOGRAM: YUEH. KO-BUN IN GRAVE JEOPARDY. WE SEEK YOUR AID. SATO.

Yes, Nicholas thought now, there was no doubt.
Yueh
was the third of the
Wu-Shing
punishments. Only two remained. And Nicholas feared that he knew who the next two victims would be.

Now it was more imperative than ever for him to return to Tokyo. Tomkin’s last wish was to have the Sphynx merger consummated—and as quickly as possible. That Nicholas knew he would accomplish. But first he had to deal with the creature enacting this deadly ritual, for he saw that there would be no merger without the cessation of this danger. He had his duty to Tomkin to perform and he saw now what must have been inevitable since the advent of the
Wu-Shing.
That he must stand against it.

The black day had come that Akutagawa-san had both feared and foreseen when he had begun Nicholas’ training in the dark side of
ninjutsu.
And he knew instinctively that he would need to use everything he had learned over the years just to survive.

He spent almost all the time before the ceremony meeting the assembled executives from Tomkin Industries’ far-flung offices. Bill Greydon had taken care of those Telexes so they had been prepared and were ready to meet their new president.

Only once did Nicholas think of Justine and that was when he caught a glimpse of her with a handsome, blond-haired man who seemed to have stepped off a fashion layout page. That would be Rick Millar, her new boss. Nicholas made this observation with an odd kind of detachment. He knew that he was now so caught up in the people and events on the other side of the world that he had, in a very real sense, cut himself off from Justine. His feelings toward her were like fish in a tank; he watched them with cool curiosity, removed from their heat.

There had been no question of him dropping Tomkin Industries. He could do that for no one person. His mother, Cheong, would certainly have understood that. And so would the Colonel. There was always
giri
to perform in life. And the debt of honor outweighed all other considerations…even one’s own life.

It did not seem at all odd to him that only six months ago he had wished to wreak vengeance on the man for whom he now felt
giri.
The forces of life were constantly in flux, and woe unto the man who stood fixed and unyielding in his attitudes.

Tomkin had been responsible for Croaker’s death…and he hadn’t. What did that mean? Nicholas had no idea as yet, but one thing was clear to him now. Whatever Tomkin had done in that regard did not have the mark of a personal vendetta. At least in that Croaker had been mistaken. But where was the truth in this whirlpool?

Executives from Silicon Valley, San Diego, Montana, Pennsylvania, upstate New York, Connecticut, Manila, Amsterdam, Singapore, Berne—there was even one diminutive silver-haired gentleman from Burma, where the company was involved in hardwood foresting—spoke with him in seemingly endless array. All were friendly, all were unknown to him.

Until Craig Allonge, the chief financial operations officer in New York, came up to him.

“Thank God for a friendly face,” Nicholas said. “Stay here and don’t move. I’ve got a job for you when this is all over.”

In the limo returning to Manhattan Nicholas dialed the Washington number Greydon had given him. He spoke for several moments, then replaced the receiver. He turned to Allonge. “First stop is the office,” he said. “Give me a quick course in how to pull information out of the computer, then leave me alone. Get your passport—I assume your Japanese visa’s up to date? Good. Pack a small bag. I need you to go over the last five years of this company’s life with me so don’t plan to sleep on the plane.”

But Nicholas was quicker by far than Allonge was, and while the lanky Texan frantically sorted through his files as they began their takeoff four hours later, he sank into
getsumei no michi
, his eyes closed to exclude all distractions.

In the middle level of consciousness that was fully as much feeling as it was cerebration, intuitive expansion was paramount.

He bypassed the enormous inflow of cataclysmic events during the past several days. Deep within the moonlit path he began to explore the center of his dilemma. His Eastern side, so much more dominant these days, had conveniently broken it off from the mainstream of his thoughts, carefully surrounding it with opaque walls so that no feelings could seep out from it…or seep in. Thus could he continue with the multitudinous decisions of daily life without his judgment being affected or colored by unwanted emotion.

And finally on the horizon of his imagination he came to the citadel of the unnameable emotion that had been haunting him from the moment Akiko Ofuda Sato slipped her fan away from her face and revealed herself to him. True consciousness had not been able to bring him here, nor could his dreams. It was only
getsumei no michi
, the riverbed of all emotions, that had fetched him up on this far shore.

He felt fully the trepidation he had put away and, yes, the fear like a great funnel of forces trying to wrest control from him. For just an instant he was quite certain that, like staring at Medusa’s face, he would be paralyzed if he allowed himself to recognize what was within the citadel.

Then, recalling one of his most basic lessons in the mists of Yoshino, he penetrated that fear. He went completely through it.

And on the other side discovered that his love for Yukio had never really died at all.

Just before sunset, Sato was sitting cross-legged in his study. The
fusuma
were pulled back, revealing a small moss garden that was carefully nurtured through the seasons. There existed more than a hundred varieties of moss; here were represented a score.

Pale light, golden and flickering as the sun descended through the broad-boughed trees, touched the mossed rocks here and there, giving the garden a soft-spectral quality.

He heard movement behind him but he did not stir.

“Sir?”

It was Koten’s oddly high-pitched voice. There was no one else in the house. Akiko had gone south to visit her ailing aunt, who had not been able to make the trek north for the wedding, and Nangi was home preparing for his Hong Kong trip. Both he and Nangi had been filled with foreboding at the discovered death of Ishii-san just hours after Nicholas Linnear had taken off for America. As if the gods had been made angry at his departure.

Sato had tried to bring himself to articulate to his long-time friend some of the fears that had overwhelmed him at the shrine, but Nangi was Sato’s
sempai
just as Makita-san had been Nangi’s, and there were some matters one did not bring up with elders.

“Sir?”

“Ah, yes, Koten-san,” he said shortly. “What is it?”

“A phone call, sir.”

“I don’t want to be disturbed.”

“Excuse me, sir, but the gentleman said it was urgent.”

Sato thought a moment. Perhaps it was that young Chinese he had hired in Hong Kong to “oversee” Nangi-san’s movements. Since Nangi-san was determined not to speak of the situation, Sato had found it prudent to take his own measures to discover what had gone wrong in the Crown Colony.