The Nicholas Linnear Novels (117 page)

Now as he craned his neck he could see that the porcelain vase was at the very center of what could only be a secret door. He jammed the flowers into the vase and carefully lifted it away, putting it to one side.

He produced a blade so thin it appeared no wider than a filament of wire. The point of this he slowly lowered to the hairline shadow, probing with the utmost caution for should he slip or in any way mark this polished, smooth surface, he would be undone. Already his brother in arms had been discovered, by what method he could not guess, and destroyed. There must not be the slightest hint that another traitor existed within the
dōjō.

His ears attuned for the slightest alteration in the quiet background sounds from within the buildings, he worked his blade surely and methodically, rejoicing at the slightest movement of the wood panel, content to be patient.

And at last he was rewarded. There was no hinge; the piece just lifted out. Tengu nodded to himself. Considering the nature of the hiding place it was a far securer system, for the
sensei
was sure to see any signs of tampering with such a tight fit.

Beneath the panel was a drop of perhaps three inches, then a horizontal metal door with a spring lock. Again, using his multipurpose knife, the man popped the lock. Inside he found papers. It was these he had come here to search for. Quickly now, he stuffed the wad of rice paper into his loose cotton jacket. He could feel their frail fluttering like a trapped bird against his bare skin. Then he set about returning the double-lidded safe to its original position.

Concentrating fiercely, he spent an extra few minutes arranging the day lilies in the simplest yet most sublime arrangement. His
ikebana sensei
would have approved.

Now, in the failing light, he finished packing up his meager belongings in a cotton roll sack that fitted across his shoulders and, touching the packet of papers held fast by his belt against one side of his lower belly, he emerged from his room into the empty corridor.

Swiftly, yet with no hurrying of his spirit, he went through the maze of the
dōjō
, passing without incident through the ancient stone gates. He skirted the red lacquer
torii
which stood guard over the grounds and took the high, winding path that would lead him through the foothills of the thickly wooded slopes of the Yoshino mountains. Rising stands of cypress, cedar, and fir, rendering the air heady with their scents, swept away almost to the apex of the vault of the heavens, standing black and impenetrable against the last fiery glow of sunset.

Already, to the east, a few first-magnitude stars could be seen dimpling the oncoming bowl of night. Swallows and gray plovers darted through the rustling edges of the fields below him, on their way home before the keen-eyed predators of the dark roused themselves and took wing.

Behind him, lights were already lit within the walled fortress of the
dōjō
, wavering and hazy. He was well quit of them. It took all of his concentration to keep his thoughts utterly disciplined every moment he was there. It was an exhausting business even for one such as he, for he knew by observing carefully that this particular
dōjō
specialized not only in a myriad of arcane
bujutsu
subdisciplines involving the body but a number involving the mind as well.

As he pushed onward up the twisting woody slope, Tengu contemplated this. He was somewhat acquainted with the dark side of
ninjutsu.
But here in Yoshino he had begun to enter into areas in which even he did not feel entirely comfortable.

Rounding a long, sweeping bend, he lost sight at last of the bastion which had been his home for so long. He felt as if some obscure weight which had been crushing his heart had been lifted from him. And, like the horned owl, who, bloody clawed and bloody beaked, lifts it prey up into the night, he felt a kind of eerie elation that seemed to fizz the blood in his veins.

And with it came a curiosity he could not control. Searching for a slight break in the underbrush on the upward slope to his left, he struck off from the path in an oblique angle. Now, hidden within the sheltering cedars, he sat cross-legged on a moss-encrusted rock. He chose it because it had the appearance of Tokubei, the great mythic fire-breathing toad.

Mounting it made him feel more keenly the hero that he was. He reached into the crossed opening of his jacket.

He looked up and outward past the barely discernable mountain path to the wide valley beyond, dotted here and there by glowing lights from small houses and farms. He caught the pungent scent of a fire and he thought of the hearth, a steaming bowl of miso soup piled high with noodles. Then he shook himself and, producing a plastic-sheathed pencil flash, unfolded the sheets of rice paper he had stolen from Kusunoki’s safe.

With a curt nod he set himself to reading the vertical lines of ideograms. Why not? He had certainly earned the privilege. For fully half an hour he pored over the text, substituting
kanji
for the
ryu
’s complex ciphers, and as he did so his heart began to pound within his chest, his pulse rate shot up, and he found he had to fight to control his breathing. Buddha! he thought. What have I stumbled onto? His fingers trembled when he thought of the overriding implications for Japan.

And so engrossed was he in his reading that he did not notice until it was very close a small bobbing light flitting like a will-o’-the-wisp through the trunks of the cedars. Immediately, he doused the pencil flash, but it was already too late. The light had stopped its rhythmic movement and now shone still and fierce at a spot on the path directly below where he sat.

Cursing the excitement that had narrowed his normally keen senses, he refolded the papers, stuffing them back into his jacket. He hid the flash and, climbing down off the rock, moved slowly off the slope. Far better, he felt, to emerge himself from the forest than to have the source of the light come up to find him. Especially if it was one of the
sensei
from the
dōjō.
Tengu girded himself for such an eventuality, bringing his
ki
up to a sufficient level so that he could call upon its power at a split second’s notice.

But as he emerged onto the serpentine pathway he saw that it was no
sensei
who had inadvertently seen his light but merely a young girl.

She was dressed in a gray and green kimono, rope
geta
on her otherwise bare feet. She carried a small kerosene lantern in one hand, a
janomegasa,
a brightly colored rice-paper parasol, in the other.

Moisture beaded his face and he became aware of the soft pattering of the rain. He had not felt it at all within the sheltering arbor of the forest. He saw the rain in beads, sliding down the oiled rice-paper
janomegasa
, dripping dolefully into the earth.

“Pardon me, madam,” he said, bowing mainly to hide the flood of relief in his eyes. “I hope my light did not frighten you. I was out collecting wild mushrooms when I—eh—?”

She had taken a quick step toward him, raising the level of the lantern so that its compact glow spread upward across her face.

With a quick painful lurch of his heart he recognized her. It was Suijin, the female student from the
dōjō.
What was she doing here? he wondered even as his small blade snickered out into his right palm.

But the lantern was already falling, Suijih’s now free hand gripping the bottom of the
janomegasa’
s lacquered bamboo haft, pulling it down and away from the spread top in a blurry glitter.

His eyes only had time enough to register the transformation from harmless bamboo to thousand-layered steel edge before the foot-long blade pierced his chest and, slashing downward, rent his heart in two.

Suijin watched only his face as component by component it fell apart and his hot, pumping blood spilled. His eyes showed bewilderment, rage, shame; then they crossed and all human emotion was wiped from the slate of his face. Like the small and defenseless warrior she had as a child once made out of mud, twigs, and lichen, he flopped this way and that, without coordination, without the divine spark. Now, as then, she placed the flat of her hand across the tautness of her lower belly, wondering what magic lay within her womb, the anvil of creation.

Now there was only a twisted mass at her feet, a waxy parody of what had once been alive. She stuck the point of the blade into the wet earth to free her hands as well as to clean the gleaming surface, black with blood.

Raindrops pattered all about her as she dropped down. Her nostrils dilated as she caught the freshening scent of the wood, the spoor of animal life. The rain fell heavier, turning the traitor’s cheeks to putty.

She had suspected that there might be another one, even at the moment of Tsutsumu’s death. Strictly speaking, it should have been none of her business at that point. Her mastery over her
sensei
, Masashigi Kusunoki, had been her graduation from the
dōjō
, and if experience had taught her anything, it was never to look back. Accomplishments were strictly the province of the present. Those who sat back to gloat over their achievements often died with those thoughts.

And yet despite this knowledge, she had returned. Studying the contents of the traitor’s pockets and experiencing again the feeling of outrage that had fired through her breast when she had observed him this morning rifling the
sensei
’s most closely guarded secrets, she knew that somehow Kusunoki had been different. He had gotten to her in some way she was at a loss to explain. She felt keenly his loss, and all at once in the midst of this vast mountainous forest he had loved so dearly, with only the gusting wind and the swirling rain for companions, she was weeping silent tears, her chest constricted and her heart full of an unnameable anguish, a burden abruptly too terrible to bear.

When the spasm subsided—for that was how she thought of it the next day—she completed her meticulous search of the corpse. She found the sheaf of papers half stuck to the traitor’s hip and she had to be extremely careful in peeling the top sheet away from the damp skin.

Quickly now, protecting the papers from the wet, she refolded them, put them away in a dry place within her kimono. Kusunoki’s violation had become her own. She did not look at the papers; she had no interest in them. They were the property of her
sensei,
and whether he was dead or alive their place was still where he had put them.

She stood and pulled her blade from the earth. It was clean and shining again. She reattached it to the top of the
janomegasa
and with it disappeared into the wood above to change into her student’s
gi
for the last time. The glowing lights of the
dōjō
beckoned her; or was it Kusunoki’s
kami
? She did not know. The papers were safe with her, and soon they would be back in their rightful place.

Justine had a surprise waiting for her at Millar, Soames & Robberts when she returned there the morning after the funeral. Mary Kate Sims was no longer in her large corner office. In fact, Mary Kate Sims was no longer a vice president at the advertising firm.

She was about to go and see Rick Millar to get an explanation—neither Min nor anyone else she knew at all seemed to be around—when he strode into her bare office.

“I’d heard you just came in,” he said, a concerned look on his face. “I thought I told you to take a couple of days off. There’s no need for you to—”

“Work’s the best tonic for me right now,” she cut in. “I hate hanging around the house staring at shadows. I’m always afraid I’ll turn into a cat.”

Rick nodded his head deferentially. “Okay. It’s just as well you’re here anyway. I’ve got something to show you.” He began to propel her out the door.

“Just a minute,” she began, “there’s something—”

“Later,” he said, taking her down the hall toward the elevators. “This’s more important.”

A floor above, he led the way around a turning. “Here it is. What d’you think?”

Oh, holy Jesus, Justine thought. It can’t be. “What the hell is my name doing on Mary Kate’s door?”

“Your office now, Justine. That spare office downstairs was just temporary. Surely you knew that.”

She turned on him, flaring. “Temporary until you got rid of Mary Kate.”

“Absolutely not. She left of her own accord. She tendered her resignation at closing yesterday.”

“I don’t believe you,” Justine said hotly. “If she were thinking of leaving she’d’ve told me. We’re friends, remember?”

“Let’s go into the office, shall we?” Rick prompted. He closed the door after them.

“You’ll damn well tell me the truth or I’ll walk out of here right now!” Justine shouted. On top of what had happened to her father, what had happened with Nicholas, this was just too much to take. It was all piling up like the weight of the world. Her head was spinning and she found herself holding onto the edge of the knurled wooden desk with white knuckles.

“The truth is Mary Kate wasn’t, er, well, working out. She had gotten into a number of scraps with the senior executives. I had spoken to her, of course…more than once. But”—he shrugged—“Well, you know Mary Kate.”

“I know she wouldn’t take too much of your bullshit, Rick.” Justine shook her head. “I don’t believe this. What you’re telling me is that you had every intention of firing her when we had lunch together. You were interviewing me for her job!”

Rick shrugged again. “It happens all the time, Justine. And, anyway, what’re you so steamed about? The better girl won. You can run rings around Mary Kate. You should be—”

“What a bastard you are to do that to me!” She stepped up to him and slapped him across the face. “To us!” She gathered up her things. “You’d better find someone else to do this kind of shit, because it’s not going to be me!”

“Nice touch,” Rick said, smiling. “If you’re angling for more money, I’ll go along with it. I’ll have to twist some arms but there won’t be any—”

“Are you out of your mind?” Justine backed away from him, heading toward the door. “I don’t want one dollar from your firm. Get the hell out of my life!”