Linnear 01 - The Ninja (40 page)

‘Do nothing,” he said coldly, ‘unless I command it. Then be quite certain you do precisely as you are told. Is that clear?’ The girl nodded dumbly. These remarks seemed directed solely at her. ‘Let me see what you have.’

She opened her hand. In it he saw two brown tablets and, beside them, a chunk of a black substance. He picked this up first, sniffed it. He nodded. He placed it back in her hand, picked up the tablets. These he tasted with the tip of his tongue. Satisfied, he told her to grind them up.

This combination of opium and synthetic DMT was not new to him. He had acquired a taste for it from a fellow student years ago. The pressure at the ryu had been enormous. Safe, of course, was often used as a source of relaxation. But it was not for him; it was not enough.

He watched glassy-eyed as the girl, on her knees, ground the mixture in a stone mortar she had produced from within the armoire.

When she had finished and had filled a pipe for him, he told her to run the water for his bath.

‘I can do that,” Sparrow said.

‘Stay where you are,’ the Japanese barked. His gaze shifted to the girl. ‘Do as you are told.’

She bowed her head, half ran across the room. By the time he had the pipe lit, he heard the muted sound of running water.

The Japanese took three long drags at the pipe before he took it out of his mouth. ‘Come here, Sparrow. Now inhale. No, deeply. That’s right.’ He returned the pipe to his mouth, finished smoking. He could hear nothing but the distant water, tumbling. It sounded like a waterfall.

Every time he breathed in now, the air felt chill; on the exhalations, it seemed to burn the lining of his nostrils. He felt his heart pumping, the blood squirting through his veins and arteries. He felt hot.

Gravity pulled upon him as if he were under water. He felt its drag on his arms and legs, on his head and on his penis. His balls seemed to have grown within their sac.

‘Come,’ he commanded the boy and together they went into the bathroom. The tub was three-quarters full. The girl was on her knees testing the temperature.

‘Undress the boy,’ he told her. Every time he spoke, he could feel the rumbling vibrations in his chest. The words, gaining substance, seemed to roll around within the cavity, like ripples set in motion, eddying outwards. Some words were as small as insects, as bright and shining. Others were as large and ungainly as giraffes.

The Japanese watched avidly as the girl went to where Sparrow stood on the threshold. ‘Do it on your knees,’ he told her. He was gratified to see how well she took instructions. He must remember to compliment the old woman.

The boy stood naked, his thin body just beginning to form the musculature of adolescence. The Japanese stared, his pupils dilated. In and out. His breathing like the bellows in

a busy forge. The girl sat with her legs folded beneath her. Her head was bowed. Her long black hair hung, shining, down her back.

He bade her undress him next, his shirt first so that she could perform the rest on her knees in front of him. He did not watch her; he watched the boy.

He was hard by the time she had finished and the boy’s penis was no longer soft. Without looking at her, he grabbed the girl by the back of her head, pushed her face against his scrotal sac. Her mouth opened. The boy was hard and quivering.

He pushed the girl away from him, stepped into the hot tub. ‘Now,’ he said to her, ‘wash me.’

When this had been completed, he stepped out and instructed her to scrub the bathtub. Only when it was washed and rinsed did he step back in. She ran the water for him again.

Lying back, soaking contentedly, he stared up at the gleaming white ceiling just as if he were alone. He thought about the fall and what it meant. He smiled. He had meant to kill Tomkin within three days anyway. He had not been about to reveal that to his employers. The less they knew the better. Once you gave anyone information of any kind, you risked giving them an advantage. That was something the Japanese had never done. He was successful because it was he who held the advantage always. This he had been taught well.

He had to laugh. His body moved, sending wavelets bouncing off the porcelain of the tub. By not revealing his plans, he had just had his fee doubled. It had been high enough to begin with and rightly so others had tried to kill Raphael Tomkin; none had succeeded. The Japanese had no doubts about his success; none at all. It was, rather, the method that occupied his mind so fully. Yes, his first assessment had been the correct one. Tomkin was most vulnerable in his new office. It was high up, it was isolated, it was surrounded by a warren of tunnels and half-completed passageways into which he could disappear in an instant.

There were, of course, the long-range methods: the rifle, the bomb, and so forth. These were not in the Japanese’s repertoire of murder. They were the coward’s way; totally Western form of assassination. He did all his work first hand, with his own weapons. There was no honour in killing otherwise. Thus he had been taught. The ninja, too, had their code of honour. It was far from the laws of weak-minded bushido, he thought contemptuously, but it governed him none the less. A buy was simply not worth doing if one could not get within arm’s length of the objective. And that was all he needed.

So it would happen on the top floor of the office building, in the plush office - that would be superbly fitting. Not tonight and perhaps not the next; there were too many matters to tie up, too many things yet to be settled. The night after next, then. No need to rush it. He went over every phase of the buy again, feeling a tingling in his groin beginning. The only matter that now concerned him - because it was out of his control at the moment - was whether he had been too obvious. Perhaps he had miscalculated in killing Ito. Then he thought: No, it’s what I had planned to do from the start. It’s what he needs.

The tip of his erect penis breached the water. He stared at it, fascinated.

‘Time,’ he said and the girl opened the drain. He stood up. The hot water rolled down his flesh. His torso and limbs were hairless.

He stepped out of the tub, brushed aside the thick towel the girl had opened for him. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Lick the water off me.’ He watched the boy, who had not moved all this time, as the girl bent to her task.

Yes, he thought. There is plenty of time. Enough for me to return here tomorrow night. Release was instrumental to his functioning properly. Between his spread legs, the girl continued to lick at him.

In the bedroom, he smoked another pipeful, repeating his offer to Sparrow. The girl was the only one who was still dressed. She came and stood before him when he commanded, her eyes at her feet. With one blurred gesture he ripped the silk rob from her. She had small firm breasts, the nipples long and hard. Narrow waist and hips, thick pubic triangle. Her skin was raised in goose bumps. Still she would not look at him; he liked that.

He reached his left hand up. It was so big that his fingers were able to encircle her slender neck completely. Her skin was so soft there. With his other hand he touched her briefly where her flesh was raised, interested in the oddity.

Holding her thus, he drew his right hand away, slapped her breasts so that they shook. She grimaced but made no sound. The Japanese turned his head slightly so that he could see the boy’s reaction; he had not moved. The Japanese swung at the girl’s breasts again, this time from the opposite side. She gasped and immediately bit her lower lip. Sweat started but along her hairline; her flesh was damp beneath his fingers.

When he hit her a. third time, it was with considerably more force. She gave a short cry and her legs collapsed from under her.

The Japanese took her under the arms, threw her on the bed. There was a piece of silk tied to each of the bedposts. He took these and, one by one, tied them around her wrists and ankles until she was spread-eagled, unable to move. Her chest was heaving and it glistened with sweat. She moaned, half unconscious.

The Japanese crossed the room, took the ceramic bottle of sake back to the bed and fed it to her. She coughed twice. Her eyes flew open and she swallowed convulsively. He kept the lip of the bottle to her lips until all the liquor was gone. Then he got onto the bed, straddling her. He faced her crotch and spread legs; her breasts were beneath him.

‘Come here,” he said to Sparrow.’ The boy moved to the side of the bed, climbed up into the position the Japanese indicated. He crouched between the girl’s legs. His eyes went to her crotch. He fell over, dazed. The right side of his face was numb. Moments later, it began to sting. It was very red.

‘Don’t do that,’ the Japanese said. ‘Look only in the direction of this* He pointed to his rampant penis.

Now the Japanese settled over the girls face. He felt the heat of her breath, the soft tickle as her lips opened. Her tongue began to probe his anus.

‘Now,’ he commanded the boy. Sparrow leaned forward, opened his mouth.

Soon the Japanese closed his eyes. He began to talk in expletives. Neither Sparrow nor the girl understood his words; they were in Japanese. They could not, however, mistake his tone.

As his excitement mounted, so did the obscenities he uttered. He reached down without knowing it, grabbed painful handfuls of the girl’s inner thighs, leaving marks and red welts, and, as he exploded into Sparrow’s mouth, he hit her once between her thighs so hard that she fainted with the pain.

Seeing the look in the Japanese’s eyes, Sparrow backed away off the bed. It was his turn now.

Doc Deerforth was thinking about the war. He sat in his old wooden chair behind the desk in his office, a cup of steaming coffee half on the pale blue blotter in front of him. His head was turned slightly so that he could gaze out through the screen window, past the ancient oak, out along Main Street. This time of the morning there was little evidence of activity. It was not yet seven o’clock.

Without looking, Doc Deerforth reached for his cup of coffee, took a long sip. He scalded his tongue but he took no notice.

It was quite like malaria, he thought now. Once caught it could never be cured entirely but would return over and over in diminished attacks like an unpleasant reminder of the past. It might even be seasonal, he suspected, coming on most strongly during the hot days of July and August, the dog days when even out here in West Bay Bridge the sun was so withering, the atmosphere so sticky that the leaves on the trees seemed to wilt.

He never seemed to think of the war during the winter.

He picked up the phone, dialled Ray Florum’s number at the police station. He let it ring six times before cradling the phone. He had dialled Florum’s private line. No one would pick it up but Ray himself.

Where the hell was he? Doc Deerforth thought irritably. Then he glanced at his watch, saw how early it was. Ray didn’t come in until around eight. Still, Doc Deerforth wanted to know if there had been any progress towards capturing the

ninja. He felt an irrational anger which, he knew, stemmed from fear.

The front-door bell rang and he jumped. For a moment he considered ignoring it, but when it came again, he got up and went through the house.

‘Nicholas,’ he said, blinking into the light. ‘Come in.’ He closed the door. ‘What brings you here so early? Are you ill?’

‘I didn’t wake you up, did I?’

Doc Deerforth laughed. ‘Hell, no, son. Just sitting here dreaming.’ .He peered closely at Nicholas. ‘You don’t look at all well. I think you’d better come along with me.’

‘I haven’t slept, that’s all,’ Nicholas said, allowing himself to be led into the house. But instead of taking him into his office, Doc Deerforth led him to the kitchen.

‘A good breakfast will do you a world of good,’ he said. He opened the refrigerator, took out a carton of orange juice, handed it over. ‘Here, help yourself.” He looked up. ‘Bacon and eggs all right with you?’

‘Hey, you don’t have to -‘

Doc Deerforth waved away his words. ‘Course I don’t have to. I want to.’ He smiled, carrying eggs to the stove. ‘Besides, it’s been a while since I had a guest for breakfast. Do me good. I’ve been sitting around too much lately.’ He began to prepare the food. He got more coffee going, then put up the bacon. The sizzling of the meat gave .him a peculiarly warm feeling. He wondered about that until he recalled he used to cook breakfast for the girls. That seemed so long ago. ‘I s’pose you want to know what Florum’s been up to,” he said. Nicholas sat down at the table, poured himself some juice. He looked up expectantly. ‘Nothing,’ Doc Deerforth continued. ‘There’s not a damn thing for him to go on.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ Nicholas said. He told the other about what had taken place in the city.

‘Friends of yours, huh?’ Doc Deerforth said when he had finished. “That’s a bit of bad luck. I’m sorry.’ He turned the bacon. ‘You think he’s really after Raphael Tomkin?’

Nicholas nodded.

“Then why these other killings? None of the victims seem to have any connection with Tomkin.’

‘They don’t. At least, not as far as I can tell.’

‘Then what’s he up to? He could have been in and out half a dozen times by now.’

‘I’ve thought about that.’ Nicholas glanced down at his juice as if he might find answers there. ‘For one thing, it’s not so easy to get to Tomkin. That kind of penetration takes time.’

‘All the more reason for him to keep a low profile. They don’t like the limelight.’ He lifted out the bacon, started on the eggs.

‘Normally that’s true,’ Nicholas agreed. ‘But this man’s different. He’s shrewder than most. Look, he’s going up against a man who’s been a target three or four times before. There arc good reasons why Tomkin is still alive. The ninja figures a simple penetration won’t do it. Something a bit more complex is called for. You know how they are. He’ll have to go in himself. There’ll be no remote-control gadgets; he won’t use the long gun.’

‘I know.’ The kitchen was filled with the smell of the food. Doc Deerforth got out the bread, gave it to Nicholas to toast.

‘All right. The idea is to confuse the enemy. It’s an ancient form of strategy in kendo and on the battlefield. Use different forms of attacks; attack from different sides. While your enemy is wondering what you’re up to, you attack decisively and he’s defeated.”