Linnear 03 - White Ninja (22 page)

'Shit,' she said under her breath and, trying a bluff, shouted, 'Get off him or I'll shoot!'

The figure turned so that Nicholas's head and upper torso were between him and Tomi. 'Go ahead.' It was a rasp of a voice, a chilling sound much like fingernails being scratched down a blackboard. 'Shoot me. Or will it be him?'

Tomi got a sudden intuition that made the short hairs at the back of her neck stand up. She knew the figure was laughing at her behind his mask.

Then she saw the glint of a tiny blade at Nicholas's throat. 'Put down the weapon,' the raspy voice said, 'or I'll kill him now.' As a demonstration of his determination he drew blood.

Tomi put down her gun.

'Kick it away from you,' the voice instructed.

She did as she was told, and was instantly sorry. She saw as if in slow motion the figure release Nicholas. It rose up eerily, spectrally, just as it had from beyond the window. Without appearing to have moved at all, its shape ballooned out.

Tomi realized that it crossed the space between them in some manner totally unknown to her. She felt herself drawn up by a power beyond her comprehension. Then the top of her head was jammed against the wall. Her cry of astonishment and pain was swiftly cut off as she lost consciousness.

The figure dropped her in a heap, and turned. Nicholas was crawling towards where Tomi had kicked her gun. It was a measure of his extreme despair that he had forsaken the arsenal of weapons within himself, in an effort to lunge at a mechanical one.

In one fluid motion, the figure lifted Nicholas as easily as an instant before it had lifted Tomi, and threw him headlong across the room. Nicholas crashed into the desk top, sliding across its surface, his near-paralysed body collapsing on to the floor between the desk and the ruined window.

The figure came around the desk, moving easily, deliberately, but without hurry. It picked Nicholas up and headed with him towards the window.

Nicholas divined his intent, and did the only thing he could. He spreadeagled his body in order to stop the figure from manoeuvring him through the opening of the window.

He could hear the figure laughing. It was an awful sound, like a mass of pinpricks on the skin. 'Do you think that will save you?'

Nicholas gave a low groan as a high-percussion blow landed on his right shoulder. His arm went numb, dropped to his side. With the next blow to his left shoulder, Nicholas bit his lower lip to stop himself from crying out with the pain. His right leg was next, then his left leg. He was going through the window.

Still, he struggled, as the organism must when it senses the end of its existence being thrust rudely upon it. Numbed as he was, Nicholas flailed and thrashed, struggling inch by inch to hold on to the window frame.

Using his shoulders and buttocks, he wedged himself in, defying the figure to push him through the last part of the opening. Heavy strikes landed on his upper arms, his thighs. He ignored them, set his mind on remaining immobile.

Then he was struck on the side of his head, close to the spot that was still healing. It was too much. His body, stretched beyond its tolerance, slumped in the aperture, and he was pushed all the way through.

The skyrises of Tokyo, smoky and somehow unreal, were tilting, coming up to meet him. Nicholas could feel his heart thumping heavily in his chest. The roar of his pulse was like the sighing of the wind in his ears.

For what seemed an endless moment he hung suspended twenty storeys above the street. He could imagine the next instant: the plunge through the air, tumbling slowly

head over heels, the pavement rushing up to meet him. He would be inside his recurring dream, falling through the vapour, endlessly falling. Only this time, he would not wake up.

Staring down into the heart of Shinjuku, Nicholas heard the last pitiful cry of his daughter. He prepared himself to die.

Then, almost before he knew it, he was pulled back inside the building. The figure's hooded face was very close to his. 'If you die now, if you die too easily,' the figure said, 'you will never understand. And with comprehension will come the certainty of despair. That will crush you far more thoroughly than defeat ever will.'

The figure delivered a blow, short, concise and accurate, to the side of Nicholas's neck.

Vapour curling like an adder's tongue, hiding in its midst secrets too horrifying to endure.

Blackness.

After a brief stay at the hospital, after giving as complete a statement to the police as he could muster, after Justine had arrived with Nangi, she white-faced but with her panic, thankfully, under control, after spending a restless, pain-laced night in the hospital, after deflecting for the moment Justine and Nangi's queries, Nicholas, came home.

He had seen Tomi in the hospital, discovered that she was just badly shaken up, that the cat scan had shown no sign of concussion in her as it had done in him.

Because of the mild concussion, the hospital had insisted that he stay a week to receive a battery of further tests and to be monitored. Nicholas insisted on leaving right away. They compromised with an overnight stay, during which he was given a second cat scan. Apparently, that had shown no further complications, because

Nicholas found himself home by noon the following day.

Justine said that Tomi had already been in to see him twice while he had been asleep. She had told Justine to call her when she got Nicholas home, and that she would come out to see him.

At home, he went straight into his workout room. With an effort that set his head pounding, he pushed aside the padded post. Beneath it, he took up a tatami mat, used his fingernails to remove a small door set flush with the underfloor boards.

Beneath was a small steel-reinforced chamber that Nicholas had built himself just after he and Justine had moved in. Now he lifted out a copper box. On it was lacquered the brothers dragon and tiger, the gift that his grandfather, So-Peng, had given to Colonel Denis Linnear and which now belonged to Nicholas.

With trembling fingers, Nicholas opened the box. Inside were sixteen indentations in the dark blue velvet, one for each mystic emerald. One emerald had been used by the Colonel to buy his house in Japan.

Remember, Nicholas, he heard his mother say to him, there must never be less than nine emeralds in here.

'Ahh...'

There was such relief in Nicholas's voice that Justine came running. 'Nick, what is it?' she asked. 'What's happened?'

'The fifteen emeralds are still here,' Nicholas breathed. Then he looked up at her, as he locked the box away. 'Justine, you must never tell anyone - not even Nangi

- what you have just seen. These emeralds are special

- mystical. They are a legacy from my grandfather, So-Peng, and must never be used or spoken of.' He pushed the tatami back into place, drew the post over them. 'Promise me, Justine!'

'I promise.'

Nicholas rose, a bit unsteadily, the words of his attacker

echoing inside him. If you die now, if you die too easily, you will never understand.

Why didn't he kill me when he had the chance? Nicholas asked himself. What fate has he saved me for?

SUMMER, 1889 Singapore/Peninsular Malaysia

So-Peng, Nicholas Linnear's grandfather, was born into a family of undistinguished Chinese merchants, hardworking men who nevertheless toiled their entire lives beneath the frustrating weight of ill fortune.

His mother was something else altogether.

So-Peng's family had been in Peninsular Malaysia, it was said, since the 1400s, trading variously in silk, tortoiseshell and ivory. Early in the 1800s, they had moved to Kuala Lumpur, on the peninsula's west coast, attracted by the breathtakingly quick fortunes to be made in the newly opened tin mines. The vast sums of money they made were soon gone, as they gambled, made incautious investments or were swindled outright.

Still, they persevered, a virtue that must have been in their genes because it was passed down to So-Peng.

So-Peng had spent the first ten years of his life near Pahang, on the east coast, where his father was then involved in importing silks and black teas from China. So-Peng, however, had little interest in being a merchant, and none at all hi being burdened by ill fortune. He was far more clever than his father and his uncles, almost as quick-witted at nineteen as his mother was at thirty-four.

So-Peng was so like his mother, Liang. She had been a child bride, had borne him when she was but fifteen. No one knew her origins - whether she was Hokkien like So-Peng's father, whether she was Chinese at all, fully Chinese, or, as was sometimes said, Sumatran. She never spoke of her origins and, out of respect, So-Peng

never asked her, though he often burned with curiosity.

So-Peng's mother was very smart. She knew everyone of importance everywhere the family lived for more than a few weeks and, what was more important, these people often owed her favours. So-Peng knew that she had saved his father from absolute insolvency more than once by her rather miraculous intervention. She managed to do so, moreover, without causing her husband any loss of face.

By 1889, when he was nineteen, So-Peng had accomplished many things. He was, for instance, proficient in an astonishing array of Asian and ancient Indo-European languages and dialects. Having spent his upper school years in Singapura, the Lion's City, as Singapore had been named in 1100 a.d. by lords of the Srivijayan empire, he had the advantage of not only the best teachers in Malaysia, but also the best opportunities that the labyrinth of backstreets overflowing with canny Chinese, Malays, Indians, and Sumatrans could offer.

He had worked on the city's docks, in its wholesale markets, its bars, restaurants and hotels; had even shipped out for six months on one of the new steamships that had more and more been replacing the merchant clipper ships ever since the Suez Canal had been opened in 1869, cutting down on the distance between Europe and Asia. He had immediately grasped what others would not for some time: that with the advent of the steamship, Singapore would burgeon in importance as a major port. Hitherto, the settlement had been wholly dependent on the winds for its naval trade. January and February brought the north-east monsoon winds which were favourable for the junks from Siam and China. Six months later, in the autumn, the winds shifted, bringing the boats from the subcontinental Malay Peninsula. Ships under their own power would free Singapore from the whims of the weather; trade could continue the year round.

So-Peng had, in other words, tried his hand at many jobs, and had become master of none. At nineteen, in fact, though his mind was full of knowledge, he had no profession and, what was worse, he was penniless.

His fondest memory of his childhood before he had moved with his family to Singapore was of warm May nights when he and his best friend, a Malay named Zhao Hsia, would sneak out of their houses and rendezvous to sit amid the foliage ringing the beach at Rantau Abang.

So-Peng could clearly see the host of stars, blue-white, blue-green and red, strung across the heavens. The two boys were enveloped by them as completely as they were by the croaking of the tree frogs, the cries of the night birds, the incessant clicking of the insects, the stirring of the palm fronds.

Before them, starlight and, if they were lucky, moonlight as well, illuminated the churning surf and, further out, on the South China Sea, they could see the winking lights of swift ships bound south-east for Borneo or northwest for Thailand.

But as much as they loved this spot in the night, So-Peng and Zhao Hsia had not come to the beach to stare at the stars or the passing boats. Neither had they come to swim.

Soon their gazes lowered from the star-strewn sky, moved closer than the silvered wavetops, the shadowed troughs of the South China Sea. They watched, instead, the progress of the surf as it rolled up on to the dark beach, retreating only to return again, 'an indomitable force - the creator - upon the sand.

And from the salt water they at last saw emerging the black humped shapes for which they had been waiting. The shapes were enormous as they detached themselves from the waves. The surf churned all around them, and they left this, too, in their wake. As So-Peng watched, he seemed thrown back a million years to another age,

another time. He whispered to them in Vedic, a language so ancient that he was certain they would understand it.

Within the sheltering sands, the shapes ceased to move. Soon, above the hiss and suck of the surf, beyond the insects' drone, the boys could hear the peculiar sound of sand being stirred and moved.

So-Peng and Zhao Hsia waited, learning patience. For this was the end of May, the beginning of giant tortoise season. The boys were here clandestinely. The tortoise of this region was much prized by the Malays and the Chinese for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that the animal's domed carapace was a lucrative source of revenue exported out of the peninsula. What the boys were here to do was strictly forbidden - haram, Zhao Hsia, who knew many Muslims, would say; although this was civil custom and not religious law. If they had been caught, they would have been thrown into prison, and So-Peng suspected that not even his mother would be able to intervene successfully on his behalf.

There were already tortoises on the beach. So-Peng and Zhao Hsia looked at one another. They were physically ill-suited as friends. So-Peng was already tall, towering over the chubby Malay with a sinewy grace that seemed all the more pronounced in Zhao Hsia's presence. But they shared a daring and an unquenchable curiosity that transcended dictates and custom. They were natural explorers, drawn together by their fascination for the different and the bizarre.