Linnear 01 - The Ninja (23 page)

“Then the Americans deliberately disregarded their own Constitution for Japan, restoring the reactionary zaibatsu, guiding us in a right-wing direction.”

The Colonel nodded but said nothing. He felt now as if he might never make it to the park gate, as if it were the end of a treacherous overland journey that he no longer had sufficient strength to make. ‘Let’s sit here a minute,’ he said softly. They went carefully over the low railing, sat on a patch of grass filled with sunlight. Still, it seemed chill to the Colonel and he hunched his shoulders against the wind. Sheets of thinly layered cloud passed, now and again, across the face of the sun, causing brief shadows to dance like ghosts across the wide lawn. The cherry blossoms rustled; the cicadas wailed like brass being beaten; a brown and white butterfly darted erratically along the top of the grass, a blithe dancer without a partner. The day seemed like a haiku to the Colonel, perfect and sad, bringing tears to the eyes. Why were so many haiku sorrowful? he wondered.

The Colonel had witnessed many deaths in his day: the deaths of men he knew and those he did not. One develops over time a kind of shell against which these personal disasters must bounce away; either that or one goes mad. Until death takes on the unreality of a mime show and one no longer contemplates it.

This death in the park, on this sunny spring day, among the children, the inheritors of Japan, was different. The Colonel felt deflated, like Caesar returning home to Rome from the arms of Cleopatra, from eternal summer to the chill of March. He thought of the eagle circling Caesar’s statue in the square; the augury. And it seemed to him that this important death, which he had witnessed, was also an augury of sorts. But what it portended he could not say.

‘Are you all right?’ Nicholas asked. He put a hand on his father’s arm.

‘What?’ For a moment, the Colonel’s eyes were far away. ‘Oh, yes. Quite all right, Nicholas. Not to worry. I was just thinking of how to break the news of Hanshichiro’s death to your mother. She will be most upset.’

He was silent for a time, contemplating the pink-white blossoms all around. After a time he felt calmer.

‘Father, I want to ask you something.’

It might have been a moment that the Colonel had dreaded, but Nicholas’s tone of voice was such that his father knew that he had spent much time thinking about the question. ‘What is it?’

‘Does Satsugai belong to the Genyosha?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘It seems a logical question. Satsugai is the head of one of the zaibatsu, he is virulently reactionary in his philosophy and he was born in Fukuoka.’ Nicholas turned to his father. ‘Frankly, I’d be surprised if he wasn’t a member. Wasn’t it that which allowed him to be restored to power after the 1947 purge?’

‘Ah,’ the Colonel said judiciously. ‘Ah. Very logical assumption, Nicholas. You’re quite observant.’ The Colonel thought for a moment. To their left several grey plovers broke from the treetops in a flurry and, circling once, headed west into the sun. Farther away, the dragon box kite was being slowly lowered by invisible hands; the day was almost done. ‘The Genyosha,’ the Colonel said carefully, “was founded by Hiraoka Kotaro. His most trusted lieutenant was Munisai Shokan. Satsugai is his son.’

Nicholas waited for a time before saying, ‘Is that a yes?’

The Colonel nodded, thinking of something else. ‘Do you know why Satsugai named his only son Saigo?’

‘No.’

‘Remember I told you that, in the beginning, the Genyosha decided to work within the political framework of the country?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, they came to that conclusion the hard way. The Military Conscription Act split the Meiji oligarchy into three factions. One of these was led by a man named Saigo. He was the leader of the ultra-conservative samurai. In 1877 Saigo led thirty thousand of his samurai into the field of battle against a modern conscription army put together by the Meiji government. Armed with rifles and guns, they easily defeated the samurai.’

‘Of course!’ Nicholas exclaimed. ‘The Satsuma Rebellion. I never connected the names before.’ He broke off a blade of grass. ‘That was the last samurai uprising, wasn’t it?’

‘The last, yes.’ The Colonel got up, feeling at last as if he were ready to face the outside world, Cheong’s saddened face.

He could not bear it when she was sad.

They crossed the remainder of the park, passed beneath the high gate. Behind them the sky was clear, of dragons, the sun lost within the thickening haze that reddened the sky like a drop of blood on a blotter.

That night they both dreamed of the death of Hanshichiro, each in his own separate way.

Third Ring

THE WATER BOOK

I

New York City/West Bay Bridge, Summer Present

The grey concrete blocks of Manhattan shimmered under the late July sun. It was sticky. Nicholas could feel the heat penetrating the thin soles of his summer loafers, making even walking uncomfortable.

He stood near the kerb at Seventh Avenue just outside the modernistic marquee of the new Madison Square Garden and Penn Station complex. He glanced up at it, thinking how quickly it had gone out of style. Across from him was the Scatter Hilton Hotel and, a block up, the hideous plastic and glass frontage of a McDonald’s.

Distractedly, he watched the traffic shooting the lights, weaving lanes; waves of steel. He was thinking of the call that had come in late last night. Vincent’s voice had been a terrific blow. Terry and Eileen, murdered. It seemed impossible to imagine. No prowler could possibly have gained entrance to Terry’s apartment without his knowing it; he could not have been surprised in that way. How then? Vincent had been peculiarly unforthcoming; his voice had sounded lifeless and, when Nicholas began to press him, he had merely repeated the instructions to be at the Seventh Avenue entrance to Penn Station after taking the first morning train into the city.

The sun burned the streets out of a cloudless sky. Nicholas’s shirt stuck to his skin. He ran his fingers through his hair, wishing now that he had had it cut shorter in deference to -the heat. The lights were red along the avenue and the heavy air hung like brocaded curtains, stagnant, feeling almost solid with the heat.

It was not Vincent who would be meeting him but, he had been told, a Detective Lieutenant Croaker. Lew Croaker. Nicholas thought he remembered the name. Free time had made The New York Times that much more important. A case earlier in the year. Didion. The papers, even the normally staid Times, had turned it into a spectacular event, perhaps because it had occurred in the Actium House, the most exclusive new residence building on Fifth Avenue. Croaker had been brought in. He was someone’s blue-eyed boy; he got a ton of press, especially on the six o’clock news on TV.

The lights on Seventh changed to green and the traffic resumed its herky-jerky flow, dominated by yellow taxis. Out of this mass of dodging confusion a sleek black limo abruptly appeared. Its tinted glass made it difficult to see inside. It slid to a quiet stop in front of him. The back door on the kerb side opened and Nicholas saw movement on the far side of the seat. A figure leaned forward, beckoned .to him. ‘Please get in, Mr Linnear,’ a vibrant voice said from out of the depths.

As he hesitated, the front door swung silently open and a brawny man in a dark blue business suit with short-cropped brown hair moved forward and guided him into the limo. Both doors swung to with a comfortable thunk that bespoke monied engineering and the limo accelerated into the traffic flow.

There was a spaciousness inside not usually an attribute of automobiles and a silence that was truly remarkable. Outside, the city glided by as if pulled on velvet runners. They might have been stationary, a backdrop being rolled by them, save for the slight discomfitures of acceleration and deceleration.

The interior was done all in dove-grey velvet and it was, quite obviously, a custom job; nothing was as one might see it on the showroom floor. It was cool and dim, like the ulterior of an expensive bar. Even the vibration from the massive V-8 engine was kept to a minimum.

There were three men in the car: a driver, the man in the dark blue business suit who sat on the passenger’s side in front and the figure in the back, on the opposite side of the velvet bench seat. This last regarded him now. He was tall and somewhat stocky. He wore a conservative yet impeccable lightweight linen suit. Beneath this, Nicholas could see that there was no fat on him; his bulk was muscle and bone. He had a large head with a somewhat thrusting jaw which, overall, gave him a rather aggressive appearance. This was enhanced by his slanting forehead and short gunmetal-grey hair. His lean cheeks were pockmarked and his deep-set blue eyes, like marble chips,

were guarded by black bushy eyebrows. Altogether, Nicholas decided, it was a face that had borne the brunt of many a tough decision and won them all. Nicholas would have cast him as a general and no lower than a five-star.

‘Would you care for a drink?’ The man beside him had spoken in his commanding voice but it was blue-business-suit who moved, turning his body part-way around on the front seat so that his left arm lay along the velvet top like an implied threat. Nicholas found himself wondering what had happened to delay Lieutenant Croaker.

‘Bacardi and bitter lemon, if you have it.’ Immediately the blue business suit opened a small door in the centre of the front seat. Nicholas heard the clink of ice against glass. He remained calm, though he still had no idea who these people were. He wanted to keep the man talking. The longer he did that, the sooner he would know who he was.

‘You don’t look much like your photographs,’ the man said almost disgustedly.

As blue-suit stretched to pour the rum, Nicholas caught a glimpse of the butt of a revolver slung with a chamois holster under the man’s right armpit. He turned his gaze away, to the city outside. It seemed a thousand miles away. ‘That’s perfectly understandable,’ he said. ‘I’ve never taken a good picture; not to my knowledge, anyway.’

‘Your drink,’ the man in the dark blue suit said.

Nicholas reached forward through the open partition and, as he did so, he saw from certain minute changes in the other precisely what was coming. Curious, he allowed it to happen. As soon as his hand was through the partition, the man lifted the drink away and grabbed at Nicholas’s wrist with his other hand. It was a very swift motion yet, from Nicholas’s point of view, slow and clumsy. He could have counteracted it in any number of different ways. Instead, he watched passively as the other gripped his wrist, exerting pressure to turn the hand over. The man peered closely at the edge of Nicholas’s hand, which was as hard and calloused as horn. The man lifted his gaze, nodded to the man beside Nicholas, then handed Nicholas his drink.

Nicholas sipped at the Bacardi and bitter lemon, found it quite good. Swallowing, he said, ‘Are you satisfied?’

‘As to your identity,” said the man beside him, ‘yes.’

‘You know more about me than I do about you,’ Nicholas observed.

The man shrugged. “That is as it should be.’

‘By your standards perhaps.’ No one wore sunglasses or any kind of glasses, for that matter; no one smoked.

‘Those are the only standards that count, Mr Linnear.”

‘Mind if I light up?’ Nicholas’s right hand moved towards his trouser pocket and, at the same time, blue-suit’s left arm stiffened, moving. He shook his head from side to side.

‘You don’t want to do that, Mr Linnear,’ said the man beside him. ‘You gave up smoking more than six months ago.’ He grunted. ‘Just as well. Those black-tobaccoed cigarettes are certain killers.’

Nicholas was impressed by the depth of their information on him. Whoever this man was, he was not an amateur.

‘Did you know, Mr Linnear, that an accumulation of high-nicotine smoke can destroy the taste buds?’ He nodded as if this statement needed physical confirmation. ‘It’s quite true. A group at the University of North Carolina completed the study.’ He smiled. ‘Ironic, isn’t it? The campus is virtually surrounded by tobacco fields.’

‘I’ve never heard of that study,’ Nicholas said.

‘Well, of course you haven’t. The results are quite secret at the moment. They’re being timed for release during the annual tobacco growers’ convention in Dallas next October.”

‘You seem to know a great deal about this study.’

‘I should,” the man said, laughing. ‘It was funded with my money.” He turned his head away, letting that sink in for several moments.

‘How much do you really know about me?’ Nicholas prompted. He was almost certain now; the face remained vaguely familiar, at least parts of it.

The man swung around, impaling him on an icy stare. ‘Enough to want to talk to you face to face.’

It was the piece he needed. ‘I didn’t recognize you at first,’ Nicholas said. Td never seen you without the beard.”

The man smiled, rubbed at his clean-shaven chin. ‘It does make quite a difference, I’ll admit.’ Then his face lost all its warmth and it seemed as if the flesh were carved out of granite; the difference was appalling. ‘What do you want with my daughter, Mr Linnear?’ His voice was like the crack of a whip. Nicholas wondered what it would be like growing up under that fierce domination; he did not envy Justine.

‘What does any man want with a woman?’ he said. ‘Only that, Mr Tomkin. Nothing more.’

Out of the corner of his eye he felt the movement of blue-suit even before it came into his line of vision. He relaxed; now was not the time. The big beefy hands were at his shirtfront. Some of the drink slopped over the side of the glass, ran down his trouser leg, Nicholas supposed that this man would have little trouble in picking up his side of a grand piano. While the man held him from in front, Tomkin leaned over. That’s not very smart,’ he said. His tone had changed again, as quickly and completely as a chameleon switches colour. It was now steel covered thinly by velvet. ‘In any event, Justine is no ordinary woman. She’s my daughter.’

‘Is this how you handled Chris in San Francisco?’ Nicholas said.

Tomkin was quite still for a moment; it was a breathless time. Then, without turning his head from Nicholas, he made a small gesture and blue-suit let go his grip. Without a backward glance he pulled himself into the front of the limo and closed the partition. He turned to look through the windshield.