The Nicholas Linnear Novels (16 page)

Justine did not really care about that now. She went down the straw-strewn center aisle until she found King Said’s stall. She called to him and apparently he heard, for there came to her his slight snorting and stamping; he was eager for a canter. He poked his head out; it bobbed up and down. His powerful neck thrust far above her; his coat shone. She wished that she could reach up and stroke him but she was far too short.

That’s when she thought about opening the stall door. She was just lifting the iron latch when Clifford caught up with her.

“Oh, Miss Justine, you must never, never do that—”

But she had already whirled into his arms, clinging to him, crying inconsolably.

The return to New York had presaged a low point in her life. Filled with an anxiety she could not control, she turned in desperation to analysis. At first it appeared to be no help at all. But that was an unfair assessment. It was, after all, a highly subjective one and she was perhaps so low that she could then perceive no change, however minute. It was like lying sleepless in her bed, staring out the window at the east, night still clinging tenaciously, looking at her watch, knowing dawn was not far off but seeing no band of light. Not yet.

It was, in retrospect, really a time of retrenchment. She had no job, could not face that, but she began to sketch, returning to the craft she had once loved. Slowly she built up a current portfolio and, at length, she was ready to go out.

It was not nearly so bad as she had imagined—she had not slept for two nights before the interviews, terrified—and she had gotten a job at the second agency she went to. But doing a job that she liked, she soon found, was not nearly enough (did she know, then, that she was well again?). Of course she knew why. But the thought of becoming involved again was intolerable to her.

Thus it was that she discovered dance. She went to a class one night with a friend from the office and fell instantly in love. Now she channeled her excess energy into her body, adoring the concept of controlled rhythm, the duality of tension and relaxedness that dance afforded her.

Yet it was not only the dance but also its prelude which fascinated her. Her instructor believed in the discipline of t’ai chi as a warmup exercise. With this fundamental core assimilated, Justine found to her delight that she could move into virtually any area of dance she chose, from modern to ballet.

She had been at it for just over a year when her instructor said to her, “You know, Justine, if you had begun the dance when you were a child, you’d be a great dancer today. I say this to you only to give you an accurate idea of where you stand now. You are one of my best pupils because not only is your body responsive but your spirit is within the dance. The greatness is there, Justine, but one unfortunately cannot overcome the advance of time.”

She was filled with pride and happiness. But just as important, she knew why. For the first time in her life she felt that she had control of herself as a person; she no longer felt tossed to and fro by the whims of the world. Here, at last, was a control that she could feel directly, that had real meaning for her.

Within the month she had left her full-time job at the agency and had gone into business for herself. The agency still wanted her and she accommodated it. But she was free now to pick and choose the jobs she wanted. She found that within six months of setting up shop she was pulling down triple her old salary in independent billings.

And then she had decided on this house in West Bay Bridge.

And had met Nicholas.

I can’t do it. I can’t.

She stood up and reeled drunkenly out of the bathroom, down the hallway, using her hands, palms outstretched like a blind person, to guide herself through the house. In the living room she bumped into the bubbling fish tank. All the bright denizens of the deep swam there, tranquil as if anesthetized—blind, deaf and dumb—as beautiful and as unthinking as the vegetation reaching toward the winking surface. She felt another wave of nausea hit her and she turned away, heading for the front door.

I can’t make the commitment. I can’t trust him. Oh, my God! Oh, my God!

She stumbled out into the rain, tripping down the wooden steps, falling to her knees in the wet sand. It felt like dough, clinging to her jealously.

She crawled a few feet, then, regaining her balance, ran all the way home.

Not long afterward, Nicholas returned from the beach area where they had found the second body. This time they had waited for him.

It was one cut. Do you understand?
Vincent had said over the phone. He did indeed understand what that meant. The cut of a
katana.

The white-skinned corpse was slit from right shoulder, obliquely down to just above the left hipbone. One swing, one cut from the finest blade ever known to man. It could easily slash through armor; flesh and bone were as paper to a
katana
wielded by a master swordsman. Ancient blades had been preserved for a thousand years by succeeding generations of warriors, losing not a bit of their original sharpness or effectiveness; and even today no arsenal in the world could claim such a magnificent weapon as the Japanese
katana.

This was how the second man had died. He lay, as he had been found, cradled by the soft surf and sand. He had not been in the water very long. There was absolutely no question of his being drowned.

But now they had to revise their conclusions radically. Barry Braughm had obviously not been the ninja’s only target. But there seemed, on the surface, nothing to connect the two victims. This man was a worker for Lilco—the Long Island power company—blue-collar, lower-middle-class background. Nothing in common, nothing at all.

Yet the ninja was abroad, still killing.

Inside, Nicholas threw off the lightweight khaki slicker. His sneakers and his jeans up to the knees were soaked. But this was of only peripheral interest to him. He was thinking of Justine and the thing that had crashed through her kitchen window in the night. He did not dare to think of what it might be. Besides, it made no sense. Still, he had asked her to stay inside in his house and not return home.

She was not there.

He cursed softly and, returning through the living room, scooped up his slicker and headed out the door.

No one answered his knock but, coming down the beach, he had seen the lights burning at the back of the house through the bedroom windows.

He knocked again and, fearful now, tried the doorknob. It gave and he twisted it, went through into the house.

He stopped still as a statue just over the sill, listening and watching the shadows. Someone was home; there was no intruder. These things he ascertained immediately and simultaneously; his training needed no conscious cuing.

He called her name: “Justine.”

It was not just the one cut that worried him. Both Doc Deerforth and Vincent had missed the other thing. At least, they had not recognized it for what it was. In leaning over the body, he had chanced to see the top of the left shoulder. The bruise had just begun to darken. He touched it. Below the flesh the clavicle was fractured. Instantly, he was on guard; he had not wanted to alarm the others, even Vincent. If what he believed now was, in fact, the case…

There had been a man. Miyamoto Musashi. Perhaps Japan’s greatest warrior. Among other things, he founded the Niten or Two Heavens school—or
ryu
—of kenjutsu. It taught the art of wielding two swords at once. Another aspect of musashi, known as
Kensei
, the Sword Saint, was that he used
bokken
—wooden swords—in actual combat—claiming that he did so because they were invincible.

What all this musing was leading up to was this: the man had been struck
two
blows, not one as Vincent believed. One had been the cut of the steel
katana
, ripping him open, the second had simultaneously crushed his collarbone; this had come from a
bokken.

“Justine, it’s Nick.” There was some movement now from the back of the house.

He was beginning to feel as if, having once been surrounded by confetti floating through the air, he was being confronted by a slowly emerging pattern as the shreds fell to the ground.

And what he saw shook him to his core.

Justine became visible, limned in the light from behind her, sweeping through the half-open bedroom door.

“What are you doing here?”

“Justine?” He knew it was her, just did not believe her tone of voice.

“Why did you come?”

“I told you to stay at my house, away from here.” He tried not to think of the black furry thing full of blood on her kitchen floor. Tried to calm himself, to ignore the fact, as coincidence, that it was an animal used by ninja as a ritual warning. It did not work.

“I got claustrophobic, all right? I told you I get that way every once in a while.”

“It’s not safe here.”

“What are you talking about? I’m comfortable here. This is my house.
My
house, Nick.” With the light bursting through all around her like an aurora, he could not see her gestures. He did not need to.

“I don’t think you understand.”

“No,” she said sadly. “I’m afraid it’s you who don’t understand.” She took a step forward. “Why don’t you leave. Please.”

“What’s happened?”

“There’s—just nothing to say.”

“There has to be.”

“I don’t want to talk about it, that’s all.”

“You’re not the only one who’s involved here now.”

“Nick—nobody’s involved.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I do. That’s why I’m saying this. I’m—just not ready for anything like this.”

“Like what?”

“Don’t force me to spell it out.”

“I just want to know what the hell’s gotten into you.”

“It’s just—you don’t know me at all. I’m like this. Changeable. Erratic.” She sighed. “Please go, Nick. Don’t make a scene.”

He raised his hands, palms outward. “No scene.” He walked toward her. “I just want some answers.”

“You won’t find any here. Not today, anyway.” She began to turn away from him, back into the light.

“Justine, wait!” He reached out, touched her arm.

“Get away from me!” she cried, hands pushing at him. And then calmly whispered, “Get away from me. I mean it, Nick.”

He turned and left her standing there, a silhouette.

Click. Click-click. Pause. Click-clack-click.
Hai!

As they moved back and forth along the thin line, the diameter of a predetermined circle, Terry felt the fear of an opponent for the first time in his life.

As a master, a
sensei
, fear in kenjutsu was an unknown thing to him. Until now.

It was not so much the fear of defeat—even he had, once or twice, been defeated—though he knew from the opening moments that this man could quite probably take him. No, it was something more subtle than that. It was the manner in which this man—this Hideoshi—fought. Style was imperative in kenjutsu; one could tell much about an opponent by the way he fought. Not only where he had studied and with whom but, on a wider scope, just what kind of man he was. For style was also philosophy and, yes, religion. What one respected and what one held in contempt.

Terry was concerned now because he saw in the other’s martial philosophy a lack of regard for human life. Ei had been right on target when she had suggested that the man had the eyes of the dead. They were lusterless and as shallow as glass. Nothing, it appeared, resided behind them. Certainly no feeling. And this worried Terry. He had heard of and had read accounts of samurai in feudal Japan—during the 1600s, just after Ieyasu Tokugawa unified the warring
daimyo
by founding the Tokugawa shōgunate, which would last two hundred years—who cared little or nothing for human life. They were killing machines, sent out to do their lord’s bidding, loyal to him and to
bushido
only. Yet the code of
bushido
had within it the core of compassion, rigid and unassailable though it was. A core these men chose to ignore. He had often wondered what it was that had so corrupted them.

It seemed oddly fitting that, now, he should be confronted by just such a man. It was as if he had stepped out of another age. Karma, Terry thought.

He moved to his left, attacking, but was at once balked. Now their
bokken
whistled through the air, moving so swiftly that, to the untrained eye, it might appear as if the two combatants were wielding enormous fans, so blurred were the weapons’ movements.

Terry moved to one knee, sweeping his
bokken
horizontally, but the other used a vertical block. A less experienced swordsman might then have gone for the kill, using the two-handed vertical sky-to-ground sweep. This would have brought instant disaster, for Terry need only have lunged forward several inches, the point of his weapon piercing the attacker’s stomach, to vitiate that lethal blow.

Instead, the other stepped back, forcing Terry to regain his feet to continue the match. There had already been two draws and, as the hour was drawing to a close, this would be the last match. Yet, as he blocked several lightning thrusts, Terry had the uncomfortable feeling that he had not seen this man’s complete repertoire of strategy. Truth to tell, he felt as if the other had been toying with him for all of the forty minutes they had been at it.

Annoyed, he struck and struck again. But instead of directly countering, the other’s
bokken
cleaved to his as closely as a shadow, moving in concert, always touching. Then they were close together and Terry had his first good look at the other’s face. It was just the flicker of an instant, perhaps a tenth of a second when his concentration, his
zanshin
—that is, physical form combined with mental concentration and alertness—wavered. Almost contemptuously, the other flicked at Terry’s
bokken
with his own weapon. There was not enough time to react fully and, with the other’s
bokken
at his throat, Terry was defeated.

When Justine came out of the bedroom to make herself a drink, it was near sunset. However, looking out the windows at the front of the house, she saw only thick banks of gray clouds, trailing like streamers left over from a wild party, tattered, shredding in the winds aloft. The wan light bleached out all the color from the land. The sand looked solid and lumpy like cooling lead.