Linnear 01 - The Ninja (57 page)

‘A ninjutsu ryu? Young man, are you certain this isn’t some sort of prank? - a college hazing, that sort of thing. Because if it is, I under -‘

‘No,’ Nicholas said. ‘It’s nothing like that.’

‘But surely,’ the young sergeant said, stroking his moustache lovingly with one forefinger, ‘you know that the ninja no longer exist. They died out, oh, almost a century ago.”

‘Do you have any proof of that?’

‘Now see here -‘

‘Please, Sergeant. All I am asking is that you send some men round to the warehouse and check.’

The sergeant took his hand reluctantly from his upper lip, held it out palm first. ‘All right, Mr Linnear. All right. Just leave it to me. You go back to your hotel and wait for my call.”

It wasn’t until after three.

‘Yes?’

‘Mr Linnear.’ The sergeant’s voice sounded weary.

‘Did you go to the warehouse?’

‘Yes. I went myself. With two patrolmen. It is owned by Pacific Imports.’

‘Did you see the sign on the door?’

‘There was no sign. Just a plain door.’

‘But there must be -‘

‘The warehouse was closed today but we were able to scare up the watchman. He was good enough to take us through. It’s a warehouse. Nothing more sinister.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Mr Linnear, perhaps I should send a man over to take a look at your girl friend’s luggage. Perhaps we might find some clue to her present whereabouts.”

‘Luggage?’ Nicholas said, somewhat bewildered. ‘Her luggage is gone, Sergeant. I told you.’

The voice at the other end of the line seemed to contract, become somewhat colder. ‘No,’ the sergeant said, ‘you didn’t. Mr Linnear, did you and your girl friend perhaps have a row last night? Did she walk out on you?’

‘Now listen -‘

‘Young man, perhaps I should call your parents. Where did you say you were from?’

He waited until long after dark before setting out. It was colder, with a dankness that hung in the air like a steel curtain. What people remained on the streets at this late hour hurried past him, eager to reach the warmth of their destinations.

He went round the block once just to make certain. He saw no one more than once. He stood in a doorway, starting at the front door, shivering slightly as the wind picked up. A bit of newspaper fluttered across the gutter, lifted, then fell, like a mammoth moth searching for a flame.

It took him four minutes to get inside. He was extremely careful. For what seemed a long time he stood with his back against the door, listening for sounds. He needed to pick up and memorize the aural pattern of the place so that, when he began to work, his mind would be attuned to any deviation from the pattern. That kind of thing could mean the difference between making it back out and being trapped in here, the subject of a manhunt. He gave himself ten minutes to-be certain; the pattern contained outside traffic sounds and these took the most time to assimilate principally because they were intermittent. Then he went silently up the stairs.

The place appeared deserted but he discounted that, assumed that he was on enemy territory. The sergeant, at the very least, would not be pleased if he was caught trespassing, and he had no desire to involve his father’s name in these precincts; the less the Colonel knew of his activities in Kumamoto, the better. Windowless, the warehouse was just as lightless during the day as it was at night. Time had no meaning here. On the third-floor landing, he reached out a pocket torch, played it on the door.

He stood perfectly still for some moments. Wood creaked somewhere downstairs, a settling rather than from a footstep. Outside, in an alley perhaps, judging by the hollowness of the sound, a dog barked twice and was still. The brief rumble of a truck.

The sergeant had not lied. The door was completely free of any sign.

He went across the landing for a closer look. Rubbed his fingertips over the surface in the light of the torch. Nothing. Had it ever been there? He sprung the padlock.

Fifteen minutes later he was away, walking stiff-legged from the pain down the street. A warehouse. Only a warehouse. And not a sign that it had even been a ryu. Don’t bother coming after. Because we won’t be there?

In the railroad car, the radio played a pop song he did not know. Its tempo was fast, its tone optimistic. The passing landscape was blurry with mist and, out of it, the hail, raiding and jumping like ping-pong balls.

Nicholas leaned his head against the perspex, glad’ of the chill it afforded. He tried to make a sense of it all. What a superb actress Yukio had been. And what a naive little boy he had proved to be. It was almost amusing. He working so hard to gain her trust when it was she for whom trust was a meaningless word. No, it was far too dispiriting to be in the least amusing.

But ironic, yes. So ironic.

There was a kind of numbness inside him as if Saigo’s cruel intrusion had somehow anaesthetized him, shorting out some spark of current. He thought of Yukio’s remark at seeing the bombed-out observatory in Hiroshima. That is what I am like inside. Another part of her lie, but it was all too true now of him.

It began to snow, the sky turning white. The silence seemed appalling and absolute after the long siege of the hail. The radio had been switched off at last.

It was the reverse of the story she had told him, he thought, his head pounding. Except he was the lady waiting in vain for the broken, promises of her lover to come true. Would Yukio, returning to find him gone, become a nun? For the first time, he began to think of America as more than just a country on the other side of the world. Forsake his beloved Japan? Yes, he thought. Yes! But first…

With a raucous burst, the radio broke into renewed life… I’ll pretend that I’m pissing the lips I am missing/And hope that my dreams will come true/And then while I’m away/I’ll write home every day I And I’ll send all my loving to you … It hardly seemed surprising that Nicholas did not go straight’ home from the station.

He threw his bags in the back of a taxi and, climbing in after them, gave the address of Kansatsu’s ryu.

Apparently the snow had been falling in Tokyo for some time. There was already more than an inch on the ground and traffic was snarled. This first snow had come so late in the year that everyone had given up on it and so had been taken by surprise. -

The heavily laden windshield wipers gave off a hypnotic hiss-thunk, hiss-thunk as they crept through the city in maddening herky-jerky fashion. But once on the highway at the outskirts they made better time; the sanding crews had done their job.

He sat slumped in one corner of the back seat and did not open his eyes until they came to a stop outside the ryu. The driver called to him and he asked the man to wait until he was certain someone was still there.

The taxi seemed to sit there in the snow, panting, its exhaust expelled in tiny white bursts. He returned in a moment, paid the driver and hauled out his bags.

Kansatsu served him green tea in one of the ryu’s back rooms. The dojo, itself, was deserted. There was no one here save the sensei and himself.

‘You have had a most difficult trip,’ Kansatsu said. Through an open shoji, Nicholas could see the snow silently falling, muffling all sound. In the twilight it seemed more blue than white. Fuji was invisible now, in the weather. ‘I can see it on your face.’ So Nicholas told him.

There was a great silence after he had finished, or so it seemed to Nicholas.

‘Kansatsu -‘ _But the sensei stopped him. ‘Drink your tea, Nicholas.’

Nicholas threw the grey porcelain cup away from him; tea spilled across the tatami. ‘I am tired of being treated like a child! I know what I want to do now - what I must do.’

‘I think,’ said Kansatsu, unperturbed by the outburst, ‘that you should go home now.’

Nicholas stood up, his face red with rage. ‘Don’t you understand what has happened? Have you been listening to what I’ve been telling you?’

‘I have heard every word.’ Kansatsu’s tone was calm, soothing.’ ‘I sympathize with you. You have confirmed what I have suspected for some time. But no decision can be made in haste. You may think that you know what it is you want to do now but I doubt if you do. Please take my advice and return home. Take some time to think -‘

‘There are some answers I want from you,’ Nicholas said harshly. ‘You set me up for this. You knew -‘

‘I knew nothing. As I said. Now I know, as do you. That is better, you will admit, than being unsure. No decisions can be accurately made, no course of action taken, in such circumstances. That is basic. You understand that.’ There was a slight interrogative at the end.

‘Yes.’

‘All right.’ Kansatsu sighed and stood up. They faced each other across the low, lacquered table. ‘Let me tell you that which I withheld from you was for your own benefit-‘

‘My own benefit’

Kansatsu held up one hand. ‘Please allow me to finish my thought. I had, at the time, only conjecture to go on as regards Saigo.’ His tone of voice changed, softening somewhat. ‘As for yourself, I told you what was in my mind. Working here will no longer well serve either of us. That you have survived your journey to Kumamoto is proof enough of that - if you might be inclined to mistrust my word.’

‘I would never -‘

‘No. I know. You would not.’ Kansatsu came round the table, touched Nicholas on the biceps. It was the first such gesture he had ever made towards Nicholas. ‘You have been my finest pupil. But the time has come for us to part ways. You must grow along your own path, Nicholas. Too long in this ryu, any ryu, can be detrimental to that growth. But’ - he raised a long forefinger - ‘before you decide on where to go, your mind must be clear. And you will admit that you cannot claim such clarity now, hm?’

Nicholas was silent, thinking.

‘Take several days, as long as you need, in fact. Then, when you feel you are ready, come to me. I will be here. I shall answer all your questions as best I can. And, together, we will decide on your future.’

‘There is something,’ Nicholas said at last, ‘that cannot be ignored.’

‘And what is that.’

‘I have an enemy now.’ Don’t bother coming after. ‘I invaded their territory 1 Ignored their warning. When they come, I must be prepared.’

Beside him, Kansatsu had never seemed so old and frail as he stared out at the falling snow.

‘I am afraid there’s been some bad news.’

He stood with his bags in the doorway of his house. Immediately he thought of Cheong. ‘Where’s Mother?’

‘At your aunt’s. Come inside, Nicholas.’ The Colonel seemed pale and drawn.

The house seemed subtly different. Emptier. ‘What’s happened?’

‘It’s Satsugai,’ the Colonel said evenly. He had his pipe in one hand, unlit. ‘We tried to reach you in Kumamoto. I finally got hold of Saigo this afternoon. Itami was surprised to learn Yukio decided to stay with him.’

Nicholas felt a knife twisting inside him. All my loving darling, I will send to you. There was a silence. He could hear the clock on the mantel in the Colonel’s study. All the way in here. Nothing moved outside. It was as if the world had frozen over in a new ice age.

The Colonel cleared his throat. ‘Satsugai’s been killed. I’m sorry, it’s a hell of a homecoming. I can see you didn’t have the best of trips.’

Was it so indelibly etched across his face; skywriting that he refused to face?

‘How did it happen?’

-The Colonel put the pipe stem to his lips, blew sharply outwards to unclog it. He looked at the bowl. ‘Robbery, the police think. Satsugai must have surprised the thief.’

‘No one else heard him?’

The Colonel shrugged. ‘No one else was in the house at the time. Itami was at her sister’s.”

‘Which one? Ikura?’

‘No Teoke.’

Nicholas disliked Teoke.

‘Well.’ He went to take his bags into his room. The Colonel stooped to help him and together they, went through the house.

‘It’s so quiet,’ Nicholas said. ‘Nothing seems right.’

‘No,’ the Colonel agreed, something far off in his eyes. ‘It’s never the same.’ He sat on the futon, pressed his thumb and forefinger against his eyelids. ‘The servants have gone with your mother and Ataki won’t come today.’

Nicholas began to unpack, separating the soiled clothes from the unworn ones. ‘Dad,’ he said after a time, ‘what do you know of the ninja?’

‘Oh, not very much. Why?’

He shrugged, looking down at the shirt he was holding.

‘Kansatsu’s been talking about them. Did you know that when firearms were first introduced here in 1543 by the Portuguese they were immediately incorporated into ninjutsu techniques? No? And because of that, firearms were shunned by the majority of the other classes - most especially the samurai - until the Meiji Restoration.’

The Colonel got up, went across the room to stand beside his son. ‘Nicholas,’ he said gently, ‘what happened between you and Yukio?’ When Nicholas said nothing, he put his hand on his son’s shoulder, said, ‘Are you afraid to tell me?’

Nicholas turned round to face him. ‘Afraid? No. I - It’s just that I know how you felt about her. You disliked her from the beginning.’

‘So now you won’t tell me -‘

‘I love her,’ Nicholas said in anguish. ‘And she told me she loved me. And then. And then, it all fell apart just as if it had never existed.’ The Colonel’s heart ached at the look he saw on Nicholas’s face. ‘How could she go off with Saigo? How could she do it?’ Tears stood in the corners of his eyes. ‘I don’t understand any of it.’

When he had seen Nicholas standing there in the doorway, the Colonel had felt an enormous urge to tell him everything; to confess. Now he knew that he would never do that; it would be far too selfish. It was a burden designed for him alone. How unfair to make Nicholas carry it for the rest of his life. But he wanted desperately to say something comforting to his son. He was dumbfounded now by his inarticulateness. Is this how I have been with him all his life? he wondered. I don’t know what to say; what would calm him. He wished that Cheong were here now and was instantly ashamed of the thought. My God, he thought, am I that estranged from my own son? Is this what my work has done to me? It seemed to the Colonel to be the final irony. And now he realized how he had envied Satsugai’s close relationship with Saigo. It was something he could never have with Nicholas. The fault, he saw, lay within himself.